Pioneer Architect Neutra to Be Honored

Spanish-style architecture was as hot as a tamale in 1928 Los Angeles. With its red-tile roofs and arched windows, the style satisfied the romantic vision newcomers expected of Southern California homes.

So imagine the shock of neighbors and critics alike when, in that same year, a stark steel-and-glass spaceship of a house went up virtually overnight in the Hollywood Hills.

The Lovell House, which resembled Cubist sculpture, had interlocking flat roofs, long, unadorned bands of glass and massive cantilevered balconies. Its all-steel skeleton, the first in an American home, had been prefabricated and fitted together in only a week.

No one had ever seen anything like it. “Moon architecture,” one visitor called it. Academics and critics labeled the house’s architecture “International Style.”

The house, designed by Viennese-born architect Richard Neutra (pronounced “Noy-tra”), has been called by some critics the most important modern house in Los Angeles history.

With this single, bold stroke, Neutra put Los Angeles on the architectural map and began a brilliant career that flourished until his death in 1970.

For 50-some years, American children have studied in schools built to emulate Neutra’s 1935 Corona Avenue School in Bell. Families have worshiped in churches that duplicate the glass cathedral of his 1962 Garden Grove Community Church for the Rev. Robert Schuller. And people all over America have become familiar with homes and public buildings that bear the architect’s distinctive design imprint.

Neutra, who invented the sliding glass patio door, would have been 100 years old on Wednesday . The nearly yearlong celebration greeting his 100th birthday anniversary includes local symposiums at schools of architecture, house tours, gallery exhibits, and even the renaming of a street. Mayor Tom Bradley will proclaim Wednesday as Richard Neutra Day.

From Santa Barbara to Palos Verdes, Neutra built 142 houses, 8 apartments, 37 commercial buildings and 16 schools. The Lovell House and the Jardinette Apartments in Hollywood are City of Los Angeles Historical Cultural Landmarks.

Neutra’s clients included the County of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District, film director Josef von Sternberg, “Mutiny on the Bounty” producer Albert Lewin, Teledyne founder Henry Singleton and department store scion Edgar Kaufmann, who had previously commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece home, Fallingwater, in Pennsylvania.

For the federal government, Neutra designed the Lincoln Memorial Museum at Gettysburg and the Painted Desert Visitors Center in Arizona.

A tall, dignified man with a shock of white hair, Neutra was a master self-promoter. He gave popular lectures before women’s clubs and published articles and books. Neutra boldly appeared at clients’ homes unannounced, with noted architectural photographer Julius Shulman in tow. The resulting photo sessions led to national exposure in the leading trade magazines.

In 1949, Neutra made the cover of Time. “What Will the Neighbors Think?” the headline asked.

Betty Topper ought to know. She and her family have lived in the Lovell House since 1960 and it was a constant open house for the steady stream of devotees studying the famous building until she was forced to limit the number of visitors. Neutra himself visited dozens of times, bringing an inevitable entourage who were given the run of the house.

“My kids drove him nuts, throwing balls and breaking windows,” Topper remembers. “Mr. Neutra would tell me ‘You’ve got to explain to them what an important building this is.’ ”

Dr. Philip Lovell, who commissioned the home in 1928, was a health columnist for the Los Angeles Times and believed that architecture could improve the quality of life of his family,

Lovell described the so-called “Health” house as being designed with a social sense “as a place where friends and kin can gather--where children of the neighborhood will prolong their stay voluntarily.”

Neutra’s construction technique, previously used only in industrial buildings, allowed for the removal of most interior walls, creating unprecedented spaciousness in the living areas. Architectural details included factory-style window units, sleek, integrated furniture and Model-T Ford headlights built into a stairwell, which became an icon of modernism.

The house’s technical perfection and fine proportions created a move toward modern, and the Spanish style with its emphasis on ornamentation vanished almost overnight.

Thomas S. Hines, UCLA architectural history professor and Neutra biographer, compares a Neutra building to “a machine in a garden.” Like Frank Lloyd Wright, for whom he briefly worked, Neutra believed that “buildings should fraternize with the soil,” Hines wrote.

ln Los Angeles, Neutra found a climate, a building industry and a social atmosphere that allowed for experimentation. Thus he set about designing a clean, lean architecture--in the process inventing the sliding glass patio door--that placed man in a powerful connection with nature.

“This was a connection I felt I could get across in such a health conscious climate,” Neutra wrote in one of his 18 books.

To demonstrate his belief that the innovations of the Lovell House could be incorporated into designs for less affluent clients, Neutra constructed a 2,000-square-foot “research house” for his family on Silver Lake Boulevard in 1932. He proved that living in a small space need not be confining by using strategically placed mirrors, which reflected the nearby lake, and expansive glass walls opening onto patio gardens and rooftop terraces.

“No matter where you are in the house, you always have the sense that it is two or three times larger than it is,” said Marvin Malecha, dean of the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona.

It was in this “VDL Research House,” named after C. H. Van der Leeuw who loaned Neutra the money to build it, that the architect and his wife, Dione, raised three sons. Eventually the home became the focus of a cluster of 10 Neutra-designed houses on Argent Place, sited among a grove of eucalyptus trees overlooking Silver Lake. It is this block-long cul-de-sac that Councilman Michael Woo will rededicate as Neutra Place at 2 p.m. next Sunday.

Neutra eventually outgrew his VDL studios and moved his practice to spacious offices on nearby Glendale Boulevard. Because the Lovell House had brought international acclaim, his practice flourished even during the Depression.

All Neutra-designed buildings, commercial and residential, reflected the architect’s innovative design ethic. In 1968, architect Walter Gropius noted that Neutra “worked as a lonely pioneer designing modern buildings, the likes of which were then unknown on the West Coast. By skill and stamina, he slowly achieved a true breakthrough.”

Neutra was a creative engineer as well as a designer. He used his invention of the sliding glass door to architecturally describe his belief in the Southern California indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Opening a sliding glass door, often 20 feet wide in Neutra’s designs, removed the physical separation between the house and the garden, enhancing the connection between man and nature.

Today’s architects still want to bring the outdoors in, but building codes are not what they were in Neutra’s day. Energy conservation and large expanses of exterior glass do not easily go hand-in-hand. And Neutra’s ideas don’t jibe with all architects today any more than they did in 1928.

“The luster may have fallen off the imagery,” observed architect and UCLA professor Barton Phelps of the Neutra aura. “Historically, Neutra’s impact is very limited. Neutra’s work had an image which you need to distinguish your ‘product’ from others, and he could sell it. He did the same thing over and over.” Phelps sees Neutra’s impact as a regional one, focused on the Lovell House.

Frank Israel, another L.A. architect, disagrees. Neutra’s work, he said, exemplifies “the spirit of modernism and at the same time recognizes the idiosyncratic nature of our city. His buildings represent his concept of the machine in the garden--an idea inherent to life in Los Angeles.”

Neutra’s son, Dion, also an architect, directs the Institute for Survival Through Design, a nonprofit organization that promotes the Richard Neutra legacy. The institute will be the beneficiary of the proceeds from some of the events planned for the centennial celebration. Events include a $100 per plate black tie gala on May 2 at the Lovell House, an exhibition of never-before-seen Neutra drawings at UCLA’s Wight Gallery through May 10, and a first tour of all the Neutra Place homes on April 12.

In 1928, when his house was complete, Lovell invited his readers to come see what Neutra had built. Fifteen thousand curious Angelenos turned up. Neutra centennial organizers hope history will repeat itself next week on Neutra Place.

Where to Call for Reservations

To make reservations for the Lovell House gala and the Neutra Place house tour, contact the Institute for Survival Through Design, (213) 665-4950 or 666-1806.

Lectures and exhibits at UCLA are being organized at the school’s Wight Gallery, (310) 825-9345.

The College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, is sponsoring a lecture series and an exhibit. Call (714) 869-2664.

Events during the summer and fall will be announced by USC and the Los Angeles Conservancy.