Neighbors, Trust Fight Over Parties at Landmark

On a hilltop in a wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood, preservationists and some local residents are battling over the use of a landmark house built in 1924 by internationally famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Neighbors are demanding that the owners of the house refrain from leasing out the hilltop residence for private parties and wedding receptions and stop renting several of its rooms to an insurance business owned by a live-in caretaker. They say such activities bring excessive noise and traffic to the otherwise quiet area.

Members of the Trust for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, a nonprofit organization that owns the Ennis-Brown house at 2655 Glendower Ave., say the rental income is needed to pay for maintenance and an estimated $500,000 in needed repairs. Without the parties, trustees say, the historic cement-block house will eventually crumble away.

The 7,000-square-foot, two-bedroom house is listed by the federal government in the National Register of Historic Places and has been declared a Cultural Heritage Monument by the Los Angeles City Council. It is one of eight homes built in Los Angeles by Wright, considered this century’s premier American architect. The exterior resembles a Mayan temple and, inside, massive walls of concrete block rise to 22-foot-high, wood-beamed ceilings. All rooms open onto a 100-foot-long marble-floored corridor. The art-glass doors and windows alone are said to be worth more than $1 million.

The fight over the leasing of the house began last winter with a petition drive protesting the parties. The issue was aired Tuesday during a lengthy hearing before Los Angeles zoning administrator Jack Sedwick, who is expected to decide later this month whether the trust should get a variance allowing the fund-raising parties and office use to continue.

Sedwick said activities at the house appear to violate zoning laws that restrict commercial uses in the single-family neighborhood.

‘Ability to Legalize Them’

“The activities now are not sanctioned,” Sedwick said. “But they have the ability to legalize them if the request for a zone variance is granted.”

Whatever Sedwick decides, those on both sides of the issue say they will appeal if they lose.

Wright’s grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright, is a member of the board of trustees for the preservation trust. He said Tuesday’s hearing was the first opportunity he has had to publicly fight for the preservation of one of his grandfather’s structures.

“If we are restricted from fund-raising activities, we would have to give up the building,” Wright said.

So far this year, at least 10 clients have leased the house for a minimum of $2,000 a day, with additional charges for parties of more than 200 people. In the last year, rental income, tours and donations generated $74,000, a little more than the cost of maintaining the house, Wright said.

No funding is now available from the state or federal governments for major repairs needed on a large retaining wall, said Wright, who has consulted on the restoration of other houses designed by his grandfather. Wright said the repairs, which he estimated would cost $475,000 to $550,000, must be done in the next five years or the house will suffer irreversible damage.

Woo’s Position

Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo, in an attempt to mediate the dispute in his district, has suggested that the tours of the house be allowed to continue but not the parties. Woo conceded that the tours would not compensate for the loss of income from the party rentals. Tax records indicate that, at $5 a person, the tours raise only about $7,000 a year. However, he offered to help with fund-raising activities held away from the house.

Woo’s proposal was welcomed by neighbors who say that, since the parties began in 1983, parking, traffic and noise generated by party-goers and live rock bands have made life in the posh area unbearable on those days.

“If the trust can only raise money by having loud, obnoxious parties, then it is not the correct conservator of the building,” said Derek Sutton, who lives across the street.

‘A House He Can’t Afford’

Sutton charges that the trust was formed by the house’s former owner and current live-in caretaker, G. Oliver Brown, so that Brown could continue to live in the house and have it repaired without using his own money. “He’s living in a house he can’t afford,” Sutton said.

Brown, who has offices for three insurance companies he runs in the house, said he receives no pay and derives no financial benefit from the trust arrangement.

“I donated the house so it would remain in perpetuity for the benefit of the public,” Brown said. After he donated the house to the trust in 1980, it was renamed the Ennis-Brown house; it used to called the Ennis house after its original owner, Los Angeles businessman Charles Ennis.

Brown purchased the house in 1968 for $119,000. While still owner of the property, Brown said, he spent about $250,000 on repairs. Now, the trust owes Brown about $56,000 in loans for home repairs, according to IRS documents.

Tax-Deductible Contributions

The trust pays all monthly expenses, including utilities, housekeeping and gardening. But Brown said that, whenever there is a shortfall, he pays the difference. The contributions made by Brown and his firms for house repair and upkeep, however, are now tax-deductible.

The former servants’ quarters have been turned into offices for his insurance companies, which employ four workers. He pays the trust $1,000 a month in rent, which helps defray the cost of repairs and upkeep, he said.

Brown, 74, said he was once offered $4 million for the house but declined the offer because “I would have to pay half of that in taxes, and where would I live?”

Brown describes his neighbors who complain about the parties as “a bunch of vigilantes” who, he claimed, have thrown rocks at the house and attempted to disrupt valet parking by removing identifying tags from parked cars. He believes one of them once phoned in a phony bomb threat.

‘Can’t Take It Back’

After the hearing Tuesday, Brown said he feels “stupid” now for donating the house to the trust, in light of his neighbors’ objections.

“I don’t know what I can do now,” he said. “I can’t take the house back.”

The zoning ordinance requested by the trust asks permission to hold parties, concerts and tours at the house and use the former servants’ quarters for Brown’s insurance offices. When more than 35 people attend parties there, the trust has offered to hire shuttle buses to carry guests from parking lots in a commercial area, away from the neighborhood.

But neighbors who live along Glendower Avenue, a twisting, narrow road, say that, even with those promises, the parties must stop.

John Mutlow, a neighbor and professor of architecture at USC, described what he said was a typical party weekend.

All-Day Use Related

“At 9 a.m., the rental trucks with furniture drive up and unload,” he said. “Then come the delivery of plants and flowers. Then the food and bar people come to set up. By 1 p.m., the people serving will get there. If it’s a wedding, it may start at 3.

“Last weekend the music went on until nearly midnight. By 9 a.m. the next morning, the trucks come back to pick up the furniture.”