Something Wicket This Way Comes for Charity : Annual Game Will Benefit the Friends of Hollyhock House
What do hollyhocks and croquet have in common? Nothing much, except to remind us of gentler times when summer Sundays might be spent wandering through flowering gardens or playing a rousing game of croquet on a lush lawn.
But, if Friends of Hollyhock House has its way, those days will return once each year to Barnsdall Park when the volunteer docents of the city’s Frank Lloyd Wright 1921 house sponsor their annual Croquet Classic.
This year’s classic, the docents’ second, will be held Sunday from 1:30 to 6 p.m. at the house, located at 4808 Vermont Ave. in Hollywood.
“We were looking for some way to raise money rather than the usual dinners we’ve had, and we came up with croquet,” tournament founder and chairman Terry Bible said. “It just seemed to fit with the house. And it was such a success, we decided to do it every year. I’ve already had a call from a man at Caltech who wanted to book a team to play Sunday.”
Until Bible came up with the idea for the tournament, the Friends of Hollyhock House didn’t know it was about to become part of a nationwide trend toward having croquet tournaments for charity.
When the resurgence of championship croquet began in the United States in the late 1970s, it was inevitable that people would decide to play the game, too, for fun and funds.
“Hardly a day goes by that we don’t get an inquiry from one charity or another about having a croquet tournament,” said Jack R. Osborn, president of the U.S. Croquet Assn. in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. “I can think of about 20 or 25 this year.”
Osborn mentioned several coming charity tournaments-- Governor’s Cup in Indiana, an eye foundation fund-raiser in Boston, a rehabilitation clinic in Sarasota, Fla., and a library in Ohio.
“That one in Ohio is for a Rutherford B. Hayes library,” he said. “I thought that was funny, because Rutherford B. Hayes was one of our Presidents who played croquet when he was in office (1877-1881). And the Congress got very upset one time with him because he spent $6 on new croquet balls.”
Although croquet is not back to the paramount position it held as a sport in America during the 1920s, its regrowth is remarkable. When Osborn founded the group in 1976 in New York, there were five clubs and 100 members.
Today, Osborn believes that croquet, along with windsurfing, is the fastest-growing participant sport nationally.
‘It’s Awesome’
“Certainly our association is the fastest growing sports association,” he said. “We have clubs coming in at the rate of two and three a week. It’s awesome. Right now we have more than 250 clubs with 3,500 members. We have about four charity events ourselves each year, for the Croquet Foundation of America, our educational arm.”
But, Osborn pointed out, championship croquet is a serious sport, not like the kind people play in their backyards.
“It is quite distinguished from the image of the backyard game between little old ladies in white skirts playing with wide wire wickets and small rubber balls,” he said.
“The equipment is much heavier--the wickets are cast iron and weigh six pounds apiece--and the game is very similar to the advanced game that is played in England and Australia. We just inaugurated a handicap system, too, along the lines of golf.”
Osborn said that there are currently “a couple dozen” colleges in the country with croquet teams. “The nationals in March were won by the team from the University of California at Berkeley,” he added.
“The beauty of the sport is that it appeals to a very broad spectrum,” he said. “Children, adults, both men and women. In croquet men have no advantage over women as they do in some other sports.”
With Sunday’s croquet tournament, Friends of Hollyhock House hopes not only to raise money to build replicas of the oak living room furniture--couches and tables and floor lamps--that Wright originally designed for the house, but to increase the visibility of the house. Three replicas of Wright chairs already have been built.
Surprised and Pleased
“A lot of people don’t even know it’s here,” said Bible, who has been a Hollyhock docent for three years. “And they’re really surprised and pleased at what they see when they do get here.”
The Friends of Hollyhock House, about 65 volunteers ranging in age from 17 to 70 who lead house tours on weekends, estimates the construction of the furniture will take about $40,000. Through fund-raising events, mostly dinners, they have so far collected about $20,000 toward the project.
Some of the original Wright furniture at Hollyhock House has been saved, but most, Bible said, “just disappeared over the years. We were told that the couches--they were each 10-feet long--and the other things were put into storage in Griffith Park. But they were borrowed for stage sets, stolen or vandalized. Today, if you had an original Wright chair, it would probably be worth $75,000 to $100,000.”
A scale model of the living room furniture to be reconstructed was built by docents Jorge Machin, an architect, and architectural student Steven O’Leary. No existing plans for the furniture ever were located at the house, so Machin and O’Leary worked from drawings that Rod Grant, another Hollyhock volunteer, developed from old photographs.
“We only raised about $1,000 from last year’s croquet,” Bible explained. “But it was our first year. This year we’re hoping for about $5,000 to $10,000. We’re charging $10 a person, but that’s a tax-deductible contribution. (Children under 12 will be admitted free if accompanied by an adult.) They get free refreshments . . . music. They can play croquet or watch or tour the house if they wish.”
Croquet matches are scheduled for 2 and 3 p.m., with six players to a course. With 12 separate courses, some on the west lawn and others on the perimeter of the property that borders Vermont Avenue, 172 people may participate. From the 24 people who will be eventual winners, tournament officials will place their names in a hat and draw six to play in the final at 4 p.m.
A 1920s Theme
Bible said that the Croquet Classic will have a 1920s theme and participants are being asked to wear summer white “with a ‘20s flair.”
To enhance the 1920s setting, Bible said, several vintage cars will be parked on the grounds. Trophies will be awarded to the tournament winners and to the man and woman judged to be dressed most appropriately “for a 1920s Sunday summer afternoon outing.”
The ‘20s feeling of the tournament suits the house, which was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1921 for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall on 36 acres of land on the west side of Vermont Avenue at Hollywood Boulevard that was known as Olive Hill.
Originally, Barnsdall had planned an elaborate complex on the hill of living quarters and a theater for artists and actors, but later scaled down those plans.
She wanted her own residence to be named Hollyhock for her favorite flower, and instructed Wright to incorporate the flower in its design. Hollyhocks grew wild on Olive Hill when Barnsdall bought it, and today there are still many-colored stocks of them towering along some of the garden walls.
Virginia Kazor, Hollyhock House’s curator who oversees the house for the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, which operates the entire Barnsdall Art Park complex, and co-sponsors the croquet tournament, explained that the repeated design around the outside border of the structure is Wright’s “geometric abstract of the plant itself.
“The rectangle at the bottom is the hollyhock root, the single shaft is the stock and the large squares represent the leaves,” Kazor said. “The smaller squares at the top are the flowers and buds.”
The 6,000-square-foot Hollyhock House, with 17 living and sleeping rooms and seven bathrooms, took almost three years to construct at a cost of about $125,000, and was the first and largest house Wright designed in Los Angeles.
A Gift to the City
But Barnsdall and her daughter, “Sugar Top,” were more interested in world traveling than settling permanently in Los Angeles, so they remained in the residence at Hollyhock for only six years.
As a Christmas gift in 1926, Barnsdall gave Hollyhock House, a small guest house and 11 acres of land to the City of Los Angeles for use as a cultural and recreational center.
Barnsdall kept the remaining 25 acres of land, and another guest house on the property, which she used as a residence when she returned to Los Angeles to visit. She died there on Dec. 18, 1946, and the guest quarters was razed for commercial usage after her death.
The remaining Olive Hill land became the site of Kaiser Permanente Medical Complex on Sunset Boulevard and commercial developments on Vermont Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood boulevards.
Hollyhock House survived, barely. By 1942, the residence had fallen into such state of disrepair that the city boarded it up, and in 1946 considered demolishing it.
But major renovations began on the dilapidated structure in 1974, and were completed in 1976 at a cost of about $500,000. The house was then reopened to the public, as were the surrounding grounds. Prior to that a 300-seat theater and 10,000-square-foot art gallery were added to the property in 1971, and the remaining small guest home became an arts and crafts building.
Officials of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department made Kazor a full-time curator for Hollyhock two years ago. She had worked at Barnsdall’s art gallery since 1970, and took on parttime responsibility for the house in 1978, when the volunteer Friends of Hollyhock House group was started with only 10 docents.
Today, Kazor said, Hollyhock House is enjoying its largest popularity, with more tour groups viewing it than ever. She estimates about 12,000 tourists will visit Hollyhock this year, due to an increased interest in Frank Lloyd Wright architecture all over the country, and to an escalated program of lectures about the house and Wright.
Kazor said that some of last year’s visitors during the Croquet Classic became so interested in Hollyhock House that they returned to volunteer their services in putting together Sunday’s event.
“Twelve people gave us private donations to buy trophies and banners,” Bible said. “And Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch are giving us free beverages. So far, we’ve only spent about $200, and that was to buy five new croquet sets.”
