Frank Lloyd Wright’s Californian masterpiece
Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Californian design has a backstory befitting its Hollywood address, writes Tim Ross.
It reads like a movie script. In 1919, bohemian oil heiress Aline Barnsdall bought 14.5 hectares of land in East Hollywood with the purpose of building an arts colony of sorts, replete with a theatre, cinema and kindergarten. It was conceived as a place she could gleefully charleston her way through the Roaring Twenties.
Ms Barnsdall had left Chicago in search of a progressive paradise. She enlisted legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home on the site, where she could live with the daughter she’d had out of wedlock (deliberately, just to annoy the establishment). Two years later, however, she fell out with Wright over budgets and creative control and never actually moved in. In 1927 she gave it to the City of Los Angeles and over the decades it has undergone a number of restorations, including a six-year renovation before reopening in 2015.
Hollyhock was the first commission in California for the architect, who later famously designed New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Barnsdall’s key stipulation for the build was that it should reflect the appearance of the hollyhock, her favourite flower. Wright incorporated the theme in the detail of what could be loosely described as a Modernist interpretation of a Mayan temple.
One of the most striking features of the house is the built-in living room furniture that surrounds an extraordinary concrete fireplace with geometric patterns that echo the layout of the house. The rooms encircle a central courtyard with a garden full of – you guessed it – hollyhocks.
The sophistication of the house makes it hard to fathom that it was designed in 1919. Last year – a century after it was conceived – it was listed as a World Heritage site.
Hollyhock’s meticulous renovation also has a surprising Australian connection. In fact, it couldn’t have happened without us. The conservators found it impossible to locate any original photographs of the house’s interior in the United States. But Walter Burley Griffin – the man who designed Canberra – had once worked with Wright and kept photos of Hollyhock House in his personal collection. A search uncovered them in the National Archives of Australia and they were digitised and sent to California.
Hollyhock is now open as a museum – they even give you booties to wear to protect the carpet. While not the bohemian enclave Barnsdall envisioned, it endures as one of the finest houses in the world.