Los Feliz: Frank Lloyd Wright

Los Feliz is another one of L.A.'s pleasant, walkable neighborhoods that people from NYC and the Bay Area tend to like. Vermont Avenue between Prospect and Franklin has restaurants, shops, cafes, and Skylight Books which, so far, is my favorite book store in Los Angeles. Los Feliz is also home to two large and distinctive houses built by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

The magnificent Ennis House, built in 1924, is located at the top of the hill and looms over Los Feliz like a futuristic Mayan fortress. It is one of four houses, all in the Los Angeles area, that Wright built with patterned concrete blocks in the early 1920s. The somewhat ominous looking house has been featured in many TV shows and movies including Blade Runner.

In Frank Lloyd Wright's own words: "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other." Here is the Ennis House rising out of its hill and mirroring the silhouette of the mountains in the background:

The Ennis House has a panoramic view stretching from the San Gabriel Mountains in the East over the entire Los Angeles Basin out to the Pacific Ocean and the Catalina Islands in the West. Here is a view of downtown L.A. from the front patio:

A view over Los Angeles from the side terrace:

The Ennis House is not currently open to the public, however, I was in the right place at the right time and got myself invited into the house during a private tour for some out-of-town donors. The interior of the house is gorgeous but has a slightly sinister feeling. Here are the pictures that I took of the living room and the raised dining room area:

The long, low hallway has layers of the same patterned concrete blocks that form the exterior of the building:

A close-up of the concrete block design:


The exterior windows and interior glass door panels include beautiful art glass in classic Frank Lloyd Wright designs:

This original glass mosaic above the living room fireplace is supposedly the only remaining glass mosaic in any Frank Lloyd Wright house:

The Ennis House includes three corner panorama windows with unbroken views over the city:

The Berendo Stairs lead up to the Ennis House from Los Feliz:



Down at the Southern edge of Los Feliz, the Hollyhock House, a Mayan-inspired concrete home that Frank Lloyd Wright built between 1917 and 1920 for eccentric oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, is less impressive than the Ennis House. However, it is nicely situated on a scenic hill that was previously an olive grove and which is now owned and administered by the City of Los Angeles as the Barnsdall Art Park. In addition to the Hollyhock House, the park includes a gallery, a children's art center, and an outdoor sculpture garden with beautiful views of the city and Griffith Park.

A view of the exterior of Hollyhock House:

The Hollyhock House was Wright's first building in Los Angeles and he experimented with integrating indoor and outdoor spaces to try to find a style that would work well for the temperate Southern California climate. The house is open for public tours, but I only recommend the tour for people who are specifically interested in architecture or Frank Lloyd Wright. The one hour tour that I went on was led by a somewhat belligerent docent and lasted for almost two hours. The house is also not one of Wright's more livable, attractive designs and, in fact, Aline Barnsdall herself only lived in the house for a few years before moving out.


The hollyhock was Aline Barnsdall's favorite flower and she requested that it provide the motif for the building. Here is a detail of the stylized hollyhock pattern that decorates the interior and exterior of the house:

And some actual hollyhock flowers from the gardens:

Another detail from the exterior of the house:


This house, refered to simply as Residence A, is the other original Frank Lloyd Wright structure on the Barnsdall Art Park:

A view of the Griffith Park Observatory from the Art Park:

Walk number 23 in my favorite book "Walking L.A." by Erin Mahoney Harris covers Los Feliz including the Barnsdall Art Park/Hollyhock House, the Ennis House, the Bonvue and Berendo stairs, and the nice part of Vermont Avenue. If you are from Berkeley and feeling homesick, the quiet residential streets off of Hillhurst and Vermont look a lot like the East Bay.


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Griffith Park Observatory

Griffith J. Griffith (1850-1919) was a Welsh immigrant who made a fortune in mining in Southern California at the end of the 19th Century. In 1896, he donated 3,015 acres of his land to the City of Los Angeles to establish a public park that is five times the size of NYC's Central Park. In 1903, Griffith shot his wife during a dispute and he subsequently served 2 years in San Quentin for attempted murder. After his release, he donated money to the city to build a grand public observatory in the park. Architect John C. Austin (1870-1963) built the observatory in 1935 on the West slope of Mount Hollywood overlooking the Los Angeles basin.

Here is a view of the Griffith Observatory from Los Feliz with the peak of Mount Hollywood to the right:

The exterior of the observatory was originally going to be decorated with elaborate teracotta tiles. However, after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 caused extensive damage to many local tiled buildings, the architects revised the design and built the observatory in plain reinforced concrete.

The Public Works of Art Project, one of the federally funded New Deal initiatives, comissioned the Astronomers Monument in front of the observatory in 1933. The monument was designed by Los Angeles artist Archibald Garner and includes depictions of the six great astronomers: Hipparchus (about 150 B.C.), Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and William Herschel (1738-1822).

Here is the copper-plated dome of the central planetarium with the downtown skyline in the background:

A view of the dome that houses the nighttime viewing telescope:

The dome that houses the solar telescopes:

The interior rotunda is decorated with murals painted in 1935 by Hugo Ballin (1879-1956) depicting the history of science:

A detail of the panel "Navigation":

Trails from the observatory lead up to the peak of Mount Hollywood with views over Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley on the other side of the hills. Here is a view from the Mount Hollywood trail looking back down to the observatory:

Many movies and television shows have been filmed at the observatory but the first major movie that the observatory starred in was "Rebel Without a Cause." In front of the observatory, there is a 1955 bronze bust of James Dean by artist Kenneth Kendall:

The observatory underwent a major renovation between 2002 and 2006 and is now open to the public again. I highly recommend that tourists to Los Angeles and people who just moved to Los Angeles visit the Griffith Observatory. Admission to the building and exhibits are free but there is a fee for planetarium shows. The telescopes are open to the public free of charge on clear nights. Be warned that there is limited parking and the observatory tends to get very crowded on weekends. If you drive on a weekend, arrive early or take a shuttle from Los Feliz.

The Griffith Observatory is very kid-friendly with lots of interactive exhibits, shows, etc ...



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Silver Lake: Neutra Houses

Silver Lake has a lot of things that make someone from the Bay Area feel at home: pretentious coffee shops, pretty views, secret pathways with cats on them, and hip people. The fancier area of East Silver Lake around the reservoir also has some of L.A.'s best modern and contemporary residential architecture including a collection of houses by Richard Neutra (1892-1970).

Neutra, who was born in Vienna, moved to the U.S. in the 1920s and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright for several years before becoming one of California's leading Modernist architects. Neutra worked from Silver Lake where his studio and office were located and he built about ten residential houses on Silver Lake Boulevard and on a small cul-de-sac that is now called Neutra Place. These simple and elegant houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s in Neutra's Japanese influenced "Pavilion Style." The houses have strong horizontal lines and large windows to take advantage of beautiful views over the reservoir:

A slightly earlier Neutra house on Silver Lake Boulevard built in 1948:

Views of the Silver Lake Reservoir:

The hills around the reservoir have lots of secret pathways and stairways with overgrown plants like Berkeley:


Some other interesting residences in Silver Lake include this 1957 Eric Lloyd Wright (grandson of Frank) house on Cove Avenue:

A boxy modern home near Sunset Junction built in 1999 by Lewis Schoeplein Architects:

An even boxier residence at the top of the hill on Earl Street with gorgeous views over the reservoir - built in 2004 by Barbara Bestor Architects:

Sunset Junction at the bottom of the hill in West Silver Lake:


Walk 28 in my favorite book "Walking L.A." by Erin Mahoney Harris covers the Loma Vista Place steps and Neutra Place in East Silver Lake by the reservoir.


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