Hollyhock House Restoration Starts
One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural landmarks in Los Angeles--Hollyhock House--was closed Sunday for a three-year, $10-million restoration to repair the ravages of time and reverse the damage caused by the Northridge earthquake.
The sprawling Hollywood home built for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall will be restored to its 1921 magnificence as the centerpiece of a $21-million project to upgrade Barnsdall Art Park.
Architecture lovers joined city officials on the park grounds for a gala fund-raiser Sunday for the nonprofit group that has spearheaded efforts to save the house.
Arriving at the event, architect Eric Lloyd Wright said, like many of his famous grandfather’s houses, Hollyhock House is unique because of its “wonderful sense of space, of belonging to the site” high on a hill overlooking the city.
Wright said the house is important because it represents a transition from his grandfather’s earlier days in Oak Park, Ill., when he was building what became known as his Prairie houses.
Hollyhock House was a new design, named Romanza, intended for the far different environment of Southern California. “If you lost Hollyhock, you would lose that unique form,” Wright said.
Wright observed how the house opens to an inner courtyard, encircled by rooms, balconies and rooftop walkways.
Sitting at the crown of what was once known as Olive Hill, the house has a panoramic view of the entire Los Angeles Basin.
Spectacular view aside, the 6,000-square-foot house is “literally falling apart,” Wright said. Its reinforced hollow clay-tile walls are cracked and broken and its wood-frame and stucco second floor is in serious disrepair. Inside, the paint and wallpaper are peeling and water stains are obvious.
Yet, many of the house’s features--interior columns, exterior walls, even the backs of the dining room chairs--still carry a special Hollyhock pattern, designed after Barnsdall’s favorite flower.
The large living room with its soaring ceiling, skylight, massive fireplace and cast stone mantelpiece surrounded by a water-filled moat is vintage Wright. On the walls are two Japanese screens that Wright brought back from Tokyo, where he was building a masterpiece, the Imperial Hotel.
“It was the first Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Los Angeles area,” said Kurt Reichenbach, president of the group Friends of Hollyhock House. “It was very experimental.”
He expressed delight that the home, “one of the very important buildings of its type,” will be saved. “It would be a tragedy” if the deterioration of the house continued. “It was basically falling down in public.”
Reichenbach said preservationists can thank the Northridge earthquake for doing enough damage to the house that the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were able to come up with the money for the time-consuming restoration.
The building has been “long overdue for preservation,” said Earl Sherburn, the city’s community arts director. “When it’s finished and completely restored to the way it was in 1921, it will be an incredible piece of architecture.”
In addition to the restoration, much of the 11-acre park will be replanted and upgraded. In the process, the entry to the park, which has been altered by the construction of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Hollywood subway, will be restored. MTA contributed nearly $7 million to the city for use of some of the parkland.
Sherburn said 1,000 olive trees will be planted along the steep hillside from Hollywood Boulevard, just as they were 80 years ago when Barnsdall commissioned Wright to build her Los Angeles home.
Barnsdall dreamed of establishing an artists colony on the property, including a theater and arts complex with a cinema and housing for artists above their studios, said Laurel Granger, who works for the city at Barnsdall Art Park.
Ruth Ellen Taylor of Friends of Hollyhock House said: “Barnsdall hoped to bring culture to Los Angeles.”
However, the relationship between the prominent architect and the eccentric Barnsdall was strained to the breaking point by the Hollyhock project.
To underscore the difficulty of their working relationship, actors Ken Greenwald and Kate Devine played their roles in a dramatic reading of some of the many letters between client and architect.
Fed up with Barnsdall’s incessant demands and belligerent attitude, Wright’s correspondence includes a threat to sue her. He warns that he will engage in “dirty-linen washing in public” over work for which he had not been paid.
“I intend to fight,” Barnsdall fired back, charging that Wright “did not protect me from my own ignorance” in the building project.
Wright replied later that Barnsdall was his “most difficult client” and took offense at her criticism of the home, whose grounds include semicircular moats and ponds. He told her: “Let’s forget it. The damn thing will float away someday and be forgotten.”
Devine, who played Barnsdall in reading the letters, said the house is in such bad shape that whenever it rains, the roof leaks so much that it fills buckets. “If this [house] didn’t get the care it’s getting, it would literally float away,” she said.
But her connection to the home is truly a personal one: Devine said Barnsdall was her great-grandmother. “She was a free-spirited woman who was willing to take risks in the arts and I can identify with that,” Devine said.
In 1927, after living on the property for six years, Barnsdall gave the house and much of Olive Hill to the city of Los Angeles with the requirement that it be an art park.
Devine said she hopes someday there will be a resident theater company on the site, which features an art gallery, theater and artist studios.
Los Angeles Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg told guests that Hollyhock House is “a city treasure” that will be absolutely stunning “when this jewel reopens.”
Ellen Oppenheim, general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, said the first phase of the restoration will cost about $2 million and take about a year to complete.
Barnsdall Park itself will be closed to the public June 1 for six months to a year while upgrading of electrical, irrigation and other systems takes place.
