Hollyhock House

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the Hollyhock House

The Aline Barnsdall Hollyhock House is a building in the Little Armenia neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA, which was originally designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as a residence for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, built in 1919-1921. The building is now the centerpiece of the city's Barnsdall Art Park.

Ms. Barnsdall originally intended it to be part of an arts and theatre complex on a property known as Olive Hill which was never completed. This was Wright's second project in California, and, atypically for Wright, he was not able to personally supervise much of the construction due to his preoccupation with designing the Imperial Hotel in Japan at the time. He delegated many of the responsibilities involved in designing the house to his assistant, Rudolph Schindler, and his son, Lloyd Wright.

Disillusioned by the costs of construction and maintenance, Ms. Barnsdall donated it to the city of Los Angeles in 1927. It has been used as an art gallery and as a United Service Organizations facility over the years. Beginning in the 1974 the city sponsored a series of restorations of the house to try to restore it as best as possible to its original state, but it was damaged in the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. It was again restored, and is currently open to the public as of June, 2005.

[edit] Features

Southwest terrace detail

As with many of Wright's residences it's an introverted building with small windows, and not easy to decode from the outside. The house is arranged around a central courtyard with one side open to form a kind of theatrical stage (never used as such), and a complex system of split levels, steps and roof terraces around that courtyard. Among the many unique design features of the house, the exterior walls are tilted back at 85 degrees (which helps give it a 'Maya' appearance sometimes referred to as the Maya Revival Style), leaded art glass in the windows, and the grand fireplace has a large abstract bas-relief and a moat. Water is meant to flow from a pool in the courtyard through an underground tunnel to this inside moat, and out again to a fountain.

The front doors are stepped similarly to the entryway. The split doors rest on pins and swing open easily despite their massive weight. The keyhole is concealed with a decorative flap.

The hollyhock is used as a central theme to the house, with many decorations recalling the plant's symmetry and length. Planters are decorated with the motif and filled with the plants themselves, and Wright's stained glass windows feature a highly-stylized hollyhock pattern. An interesting feature is the glass corners, an early Wright idea later used at Fallingwater.

Hollyhock House features an entertainment room immediately to the right of the entrance. This room contains possibly the first built-in entertainment center ever devised, complete with LP-sized cabinets along the floor. Other notable rooms include a child's play area as well as a modernist kitchen, which long housed the museum gift shop.

And like many houses designed by Wright, it proved to be better as an aesthetic work than as a livable dwelling. Water tended to flow over the central lawn and into the living room, and the flat roof terraces were conceived without an understanding of Los Angeles' rains. The cantilevered concrete also has not stood up well to the area's earthquakes.

There were a considerable number of revisions. Two smaller structures, called Studio Residence A and B, were built on the grounds. Residence A still stands. The client also commissioned a private kindergarten which was never built.