An Artist’s Vision Has Neighbors Seeing Red

Loaded with ambition and an appreciation of a former countryman, the Austrians came to West Hollywood to try to rescue a decaying house built by Rudolf Schindler that is considered a modern architecture classic.

But they walked instead into a classic Southern California controversy--one that is stirring up neighborhood passions and European befuddlement and could threaten the future of the Schindler House.

Homeowners living near the low-slung, concrete-and-wood Kings Road landmark have objected to efforts by a Vienna-based arts museum to turn it into a premier Los Angeles-area center for arts and architecture.

Complaining that increased use of the property has led to loud parties and traffic problems, residents have for months demanded that West Hollywood officials place limits on its use.

But leaders of MAK, an acronym for Osterreichisches Museum fur Angewandt Kunst--the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts--say more activities, including some money-making ones, are necessary for the 77-year-old house to eventually survive on its own.

This week, a beleaguered West Hollywood City Council ordered a mediator to step in and referee the spat.

The controversy has revived memories of the Kings Road house’s heyday when Schindler lived there. In the 1920s and ‘30s, it was a haven for avant-garde intellectuals who gathered to experiment with communal living, to party and to discuss art and literature.

Acclaimed as “the cradle of Southern California’s modern architecture,” the rambling structure at 835 N. Kings Road has been described as “sweetly decadent” and “built for swingers.”

In fact, Schindler designed the house as a shared residence for two couples. A succession of friends lived there with him and his wife, Pauline, working by day in studios that opened onto courtyards and sleeping at night in unique rooftop porch areas.

Shielded by stands of bamboo that still remain, the house was linked to the street by a long gravel driveway. Although initially isolated from other homes, it is now surrounded by dense development.

Some residents of a three-story condominium next door to the Schindler House have objected to noisy wedding receptions booked by MAK officials. They have also grumbled that the unruly bamboo harbors rats and that the driveway gravel makes an irritating crunching sound when visitors walk on it.

The complaints have left the Austrians bewildered.

Vienna officials have worked to refurbish the house since 1994, when they formed a 10-year joint venture with a nonprofit local group called Friends of the Schindler House.

The Friends organization had purchased the house in 1980 for $160,000 from the estate of Schindler’s widow, according to group president Robert Sweeney. But afterward, it couldn’t afford to water the lawn, much less make repairs to the structure’s rotting wood beams and cracking concrete walls.

The Austrian government has pumped about $400,000 a year into the Schindler House for structural repairs and maintenance since 1994.

But to make certain it survives when they pull out five years from now, the Austrians have sought to turn it into a self-sustaining public attraction as well as an arts and architecture center for students and professionals.

“What we’re doing is very close to what Schindler himself had in mind,” said Peter Noever, executive director of the MAK center in Vienna.

Noever said he was willing to trim bamboo originally planted by Schindler and to replace the offensive gravel with a quieter decomposed granite.

But cutting back the house’s hours of operation and limiting its number of yearly visitors like some neighbors want would kill the Schindler House economically, he said.

Since MAK became involved, the Schindler House has been open to the public Wednesdays through Sundays. It also has been rented out for occasional private gatherings and has been the scene of architecture lectures, contemporary art exhibitions and seminars.

Condominium resident Elaine Mutchnik urged operators of the house to seek corporate sponsorships instead of relying on special on-site events and paying guests.

Jean Dobrin complained of what she termed the “elitist attitude” of Schindler House boosters. She suggested that Fire Department violations inside the old house make it “a public nuisance.”

But others--including Schindler House neighbor Stanley Epstein and Joe Day, president of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design--praised the Austrians for turning what had been an eyesore into “a real architectural gem,” as Day put it.

Harold Gunther, a representative of the Austrian Consulate, asked the city’s help in keeping the preservation effort alive. He said his country is proud of the accomplishments of Schindler--who was 26 when he moved to the United States from Vienna in 1914 and soon began working with Frank Lloyd Wright. On his own, Schindler became a hero of modern design, and 56 of his structures, mainly homes and apartment buildings erected between 1921 and his death in 1953, have survived in the Los Angeles area.

West Hollywood council members set a Nov. 1 deadline for the two sides to work out a compromise. They indicated that the city may be flexible about the size of crowds, particularly since large numbers of Schindler fans are expected to be in town in 2001 for a Rudolph Schindler retrospective planned by Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art.

MAK officials said they are hoping for the best--in the bureaucracies of both West Hollywood and Vienna. But Daniela Zyman, director of the local MAK center, hinted that Austrian officials might not understand American NIMBYism.

“There’s a real chance they might say, ‘That’s it,’ and walk away,” she said.

Noever suggested the dispute with neighbors might be one that Schindler himself would have relished if he were still alive. Always the bohemian, he was idiosyncratic to the end.

“He was a bright guy, very sociable. He had a lot of parties here,” Noever said.

“If he were still here, they’d have a real enemy.”