Home Sweet Gnome
The European Period Revival trend of the 1920s took a hard turn toward fantasy, once upon a time, and it started in Los Angeles. STORY AND PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS KEISTER
The European period revival of the 1920s takes a fantasy turn.
Walong the steep hillside flanking Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and you’ll encounter streets with old-world names like Inverness, Cromwell, Aberdeen, and Dundee. It seems fitting that, after rounding a curve on Glendower Avenue, you stumble on a house straight out of a fairy tale. In a city known for make-believe and artifice, this Storybook home built in 1923 is a touchstone to which all others of the style may be compared. Its studied imperfections are perfectly imperfect.
Compared with its upright neighbors, the home is wonderfully bonkers, to echo Alice. Indeed, a few years ago the current owners installed a new weathervane: a witch on a broomstick, which is very appropriate, though installed straight and plumb, unlike anything else on the house. Fate intervened. A ferocious windstorm skewed the weathervane, bending it to a jaunty angle. The homeowners decided to leave it alone.
The genesis of the house can be traced to a civil engineer named Rufus Buck, who was likely inspired by some of art director Harry Oliver’s creations. Oliver holds title to the Storybook Style’s first permutations; it was he who designed the
“Have I gone mad?” Alice: “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All best people are"
Tam O’Shanter, a swayback restaurant built in 1921, as well as the first Storybook Style home, now called the Witch’s House (or Spadena House), which was built as a movie set in Culver City, also in 1921.
Little is known about the original owner of this house, a woman listed as Lulu Hlaffer, except that, like others during the Great Depression, she may have fallen on hard times as the home went into foreclosure in 1931. In 1933, it was acquired by John and Irene Courcier. The house would remain in the Courcier family until Donald Brown and Chris Parsons bought it in 1999. Luckily for Brown and Parsons, little had changed in three quarters of a century, save for some features added by the Courciers, which are best described as eclectically Bohemian.
The first order of business was essentially to clean the slate. Later carpets and linoleum were ripped up, exposing beautiful oak floors. Unsympathetic light fixtures were removed. Window air conditioners and awnings were jettisoned, and modern heating and air conditioning unobtrusively installed. Upgrades were made to the kitchen and bathrooms.
As with most Storybook Style homes, the exterior features artificial aging, a big part of the charm. But it needed tending to, after 70 years of real-time aging. The owners’ biggest challenge may have been discovering artisans skilled in the sympa-
thetic repair of Storybook houses.
Soon Brown and Parsons, who are avid antiquers and travelers, could set upon “medievalizing” and rusticating the interior with a blend of wrought-iron and mica light fixtures, old-world antiques, and some bungalow-era Arts & Crafts furniture. Rooms are relaxed, comfortable, and unpretentious as a result.
Unlike the case with more academic styles—Aesthetic Movement, Art Deco, even Arts & Crafts—original Storybook interior decorating was not married to any particular ethos. Medieval and rustic do fit its informality. Doilies are discouraged, but battle axes are perfectly okay.
It has been said that Storybook Style is the architecture that makes you smile. The houses are, in short, paeans to a less hurried and complex time. If you stumble across one, take the time to stare and absorb all the cartoonish curves and whimsical dilapidation: it’s good for your soul! You may spy a few lawn gnomes and twinkling pixies. Don’t worry if others think you are bonkers for liking them. All the best people do.