Living in a Legend : Everyday Life in an Architectural Masterpiece Presents Unusual Challenges
The period between the early 1900s and 1960s was a Golden Age for modern architecture in Los Angeles. By some estimates, more than 300 houses that are now considered masterpieces were designed by at least a dozen leading architects.
Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, designed eight Los Angeles homes between 1917 and 1950, and his former associate, R. M. Schindler, accounted for roughly 40 more. John Lautner, another former associate of Wright’s, designed about 10, and Raphael Soriano, who worked briefly for Schindler, went on to design at least 13.
And from their base in Pasadena, brothers Henry Mather Greene and Charles Sumner Greene, whose designs and philosophies held some seeds of Modernism, designed more than 40 houses in their signature Craftsman style.
The popularity of architecturally significant homes with design groupies is undeniable. Just look at the plethora of publications showcasing California architecture in any design bookstore.
But while many of these homes made important architectural statements (Lautner’s sweeping expanses of concrete, Schindler’s site-sensitive designs) or advanced experimental construction methods (Soriano’s steel-and-aluminum frames, Wright’s use of concrete block), living in them today can be a challenge.
Even though they are mostly fans of famous architects, owners of some of these homes report that their day-to-day existence requires much more than reverence. Massive doses of flexibility, humor and tolerance are also essential.
Recently, owners of houses designed by Greene and Greene, Lautner, Schindler, Soriano and Wright talked about what daily life is like in their architectural masterpieces.
In many of these homes, closets are small and few in number by today’s standards, so owners learn to live with less clothes and knickknacks, or they have added new storage. Bathrooms, too, were much tighter in the past than they are today and floor plans were different, meaning you must make do without baths or walk a longer distance to the bathroom with a tub. Today’s luxurious master bedroom suites were relatively unknown through the 1960s, so several of these owners have reconfigured interiors or knocked out walls to gain roomier master bedrooms and/or baths.
And predominantly small kitchens are perhaps the most trying spaces of all, with minimal counter and floor space and plans that don’t seem intended for efficient cooking. Some owners don’t mind. They say they don’t throw lavish parties anyway. Others have drastically revamped their kitchens to bring them up to current standards.
Finally, some experimental elements that made these houses interesting and unusual, such as Schindler’s blue glass skylights and Lautner’s “air curtain” wall, proved to be unworkable and have been removed.
Updating a Lautner Masterpiece
Jim Goldstein, a real estate entrepreneur, is in love with his 1960s-vintage Lautner, but he admits that day-to-day life in this stunning concrete-and-glass palace presents challenges.
Previous owners had already replaced Lautner’s quirky, Popular Mechanics-sounding “air curtain” when Goldstein bought the house for $185,000 in 1972. Pumping air in a sheet across one edge of the living room, it was intended to create an invisible wall between the interior and exterior, leaving the room open to impressive views.
But even though the end of the cavernous central living space has been enclosed with glass, it still gets chilly on the coldest winter days. Lautner’s experimental heating system, with pipes in the floor that carry hot water, is not adequate to take away the bite of the coldest days.
“It takes a long time to heat up, but the plus side is it’s wonderful to feel the heat in the floor, particularly with bare feet,” Goldstein said in defense of the system. “Also, this kind of heat feels more natural. You don’t get that stuffy feeling you get with forced air.”
Goldstein has been remodeling the house for the last 10 years and has upgraded numerous design details to make the house suit his needs. Lautner, still practicing architecture, has supervised these many changes.
The master bedroom, for example, was once part of a suite of several small rooms. Not only was the bedroom itself cramped and lacking the kind of view Goldstein wanted, but closet space was minimal.
Through a radical remodeling, Goldstein blew out walls to create one spacious master suite from the small rooms. He added seamless floor-to-ceiling glass that wraps around two sides to capture views, moved the bathroom from a dark corner to the edge of the space to take advantage of views, and installed a larger closet made all the more accommodating by one of those laundry-style conveyor systems that brings clothes around on a sliding track.
The kitchen designed by Lautner was atypical for its time, spacious and efficient. But the wood-and-Formica counters seemed dated to Goldstein, so he replaced them with stainless steel. And to improve ventilation while cooking and bring in more natural light, Goldstein replaced fixed skylights with larger electrically operated sliding skylights he can open at the push of a button.
“It’s an ongoing project, and I’ll never be done,” Goldstein said of his house. “I’ve got plans on paper for additional projects that could keep me going another 10 years.”
Schindler’s Oft-Impractical Genius
Adolph and Beatrice Tischler’s Bel-Air house was designed by Schindler and completed in 1950 at a cost of $17,500 ($3,000 more than Schindler’s original estimate).
The Tischler house incorporates several of Schindler’s experimental ideas. For example, the architect used corrugated blue fiberglass skylights above the living room, believing they would lend the interior a pleasing aura. “But there was too much light and too much heat, and they made everything in the room look blue, including the people,” said Tischler, who eventually covered the inside of the blue skylights with plywood.
Also, the house was short on closets and storage cupboards.
“I finally built some cabinets outside in our service yard to hold things you’d normally keep in a service closet inside, such as the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, and cleaning materials,” Tischler said.
“Schindler hated closets. And he never believed in lavish bathrooms. They’re not meant to be beauty parlors where women put on their makeup. You’re supposed to do what you need to do and get out.”
The Tischlers have not remodeled their baths or added clothes closets. But they edit their clothes judiciously, donating frequently to charities to keep their wardrobes within the confines of the cramped closets.
“It’s a matter of trade-offs,” Tischler said. “I liken our house to a living person, with good and bad points. Nobody’s perfect, but we have a wonderful feeling about it.”
Wright’s Idiosyncratic Vision
Jack Larsen, who played Jimmy Olsen in the original “Superman” television series, lives in Frank Lloyd Wright’s circa-1939 Sturges house in Brentwood. For several years, Larsen shared the house with his companion, screenwriter James Bridges, who died in June. The house has the dynamic cantilevered thrust of Wright’s world-famous Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania--and a classic leaky Wright roof to go with it.
“That was part of his genius,” Larsen said, with a laugh. “It damaged books, and that’s a problem when you are two writers. We had to learn where to put canvas over the books in some rooms, because the roof is prone to leaks.”
Also, Wright, who was about 5 foot 8, was conceited enough to believe he was created in “perfect proportion,” Larsen said. So ceiling beams hang precariously low, and the trellis that shades the deck is barely 6 feet high.
“I’m 5 foot 8, so it’s fine for me,” Larsen said, “but Aaron Latham, a tall Texan who collaborated with James on ‘Urban Cowboy,’ definitely has to duck.”
Wright insisted on using wood throughout the house, including a redwood exterior that takes a beating from the weather.
“He didn’t believe in dry-rot,” said Larsen, who replaced exterior wood and added steel flashing to protect it. Also, the original wood awning over the outdoor deck had sagged and Larsen had it shored up with new steel.
Larsen says he doesn’t mind the cramped kitchen, but the shortage of storage space is a problem. Lautner, Wright’s protege, added built-in cabinets concealed in living room walls a few years ago. In bedrooms, Larsen makes do with limited closet space.
“You don’t over-shop,” he said. “This would not be the house for Elizabeth Taylor!”
Soriano’s Spacious Experiment
Architectural photographer Julius Shulman lives in a house designed by Raphael Soriano and completed in 1950 at a cost of $40,000.
Soriano was known for experimenting with steel and aluminum frames for houses, which allowed open, flowing interior space, without a need for columns and load-bearing walls. The ceiling above Shulman’s separate studio rises to a roomy 10 feet. Those who prefer today’s popular California Mediterranean houses, with their traditional details, more conservative floor plans and standard room configurations, might feel lost in these roomy spaces.
Inconveniences include the absence of a kitchen pantry and the lack of a convenient guest bathroom or walk-in master closet. “Fortunately, neither my wife nor I are abundant dressers,” Shulman said. Had he listened to his architect completely, Shulman’s house would be as obsolete today as some other experimental modern monuments. But, through his experience with architects and design publications, Shulman favorably influenced the design.
“One day I told Soriano I’d like to have a large shower,” Shulman recalled. “The one he had designed was maybe 36-by-30 inches. I said, ‘Raphael, this is wrong, it’s much too skimpy.’ Well, he had also placed a large dressing room nearby with banks of drawers, and I said, ‘I don’t have that much underwear.’ ”
So, at Shulman’s suggestion, Soriano downsized the dressing room and significantly enlarged the shower.
With a knowledge of kitchen design gleaned from his work for design publications, Shulman also made sure his house had a large, efficient kitchen, one that was ahead of its time and compares favorably with large kitchens that are more typical today.
“I had learned so much about kitchen design from my photography for all the magazines that Soriano said to me, ‘You and your wife can design this better than I can.’ He was a bachelor most of his life who cooked on a one-burner stove. I drew a rough plan, executing the spaces between the elements, the range, refrigerator, dining, and we created a kitchen design which was perfect and was eventually published quite a few times.”
Charles Greene’s Laboratory
John and Nina Kirby and their three children live in a more nostalgic house in Pasadena, designed by Charles Sumner Greene, one half of Greene and Greene, the prominent Craftsman-style architects. Greene used it as a laboratory for his architectural ideas, remodeling the original modest cottage three times in rambling fashion after it was completed in 1901.
Since buying the four-level house in 1980, the Kirbys have restored it and remodeled some spaces to make them more livable.
One oddity is that, while bedrooms, including the master, are upstairs, the largest bathroom, and the only one that includes a shower, is on the first floor. Instead of knocking out upstairs walls to expand their relatively small master bath, the Kirbys remodeled the large downstairs one as the most luxurious bathroom in the house.
While the lower level has a roomy, open floor plan, the upper floors are cramped and the steep staircase that climbs up to them is confining. Anyone approaching six feet in height can bump his or her head, and the narrow stairs are a far cry from the broad, sweeping staircases offered in many of today’s new homes.
“Small closets are another major hang-up,” John Kirby says, “but there are enough of them to make up for their size.”
Because of die-hard preservationists and city zoning laws that have been created since the house was built, the Kirbys have faced opposition to some changes they made or proposed over the years.
When they first moved in, they wanted to rebuild an original pergola, or wooden shade structure, that cantilevered over the street. But the city no longer allows such projections, and today, the pergola no longer exists. And it took a drawn-out battle to persuade the city to let them replace the original wood shingles that covered the exterior with authentic new ones, instead of those fireproof, but phony-looking, contemporary ones. And although some preservationists approved when they painted their pantry in pastels, one architectural historian “flipped out” when he toured the house and discovered they had chosen their own colors to replace Greene’s original earth tones.
But perhaps the biggest pain in the neck about living in this monument has been finding workers who know how to handle the specialized jobs of restoring the house.
Kirby recalls the day a contractor, in an attempt to whiten an antique bathtub Kirby had found after months of searching, poured muriatic acid into it to clean it, without properly diluting the liquid. It quickly ate away much of the white surface, and the tub had to be re-coated.
“Not everybody who charges a lot knows what they’re doing,” John Kirby says. “Some just capitalize on the kind of house it is and figure they can charge us more.”
With Kirby retired from his surgical practice, the Kirbys have been spending more time at home and are thinking of moving to a more rural setting. If they move, they’ll probably miss the atmosphere--but not some of the inconveniences.
“It’s a labor of love to live in a house like this,” Nina Kirby confesses.
Sutro is a free-lance writer who lives in Cardiff.
