Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House to reopen on February

In the heart of Hollywood's Barnsdall Park, Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House will officially reopen on February 13, as recently announced by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell, and the Barnsdall Park Art Foundation.

This isn't the first time the iconic house has been restored, but the latest renovation focused on bringing back the house, and all its decorative details, to its original early 20th-century state.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Iconic Hollyhock House. Photography by Joshua White. © PRNewsFoto/City of Los Angeles Department. Courtesy of City of Los Angeles Department.

Atop a lush hilltop in East Hollywood, the Hollyhock House was Frank Lloyd Wright's first residence in Los Angeles. Pennsylvanian oil heiress and art enthusiast Aline Barnsdall commissioned Wright to build the house -which was named after her favourite flower- as her own venue for producing avant-garde plays. It later became a performing arts complex including Barnsdall's private residence.

Construction began in 1919 but came to a halt in 1921 when Barnsdall fired Wright, primarily due to costs. Over many decades, however, the property fell into gross decline. Now, following an effort that took place from 2008 to 2014, and cost $4,359,000 in restoration via grants and private donations, the National Historic Landmark reopens for public viewing.

Nonetheless, the house continued to serve different functions. In 1927, it was used as the California Art Club headquarters for 15 years, then the City of L.A. restored it into a public museum in 1974-76. In 1963, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission designated the Hollyhock House as a historic cultural monument. After being listed as a National Historic Landmark in 2007, the Hollyhock House is currently on a tentative nomination roster for the UNESCO World Heritage List.

For curator Jeffrey Herr, the first challenge in restoration wasn’t only cracks so wide that you could see daylight or flat-roof water damage; it has been uncovering Hollyhock’s “real” design. “This house has almost gone away several times and changed, with a lot of details gone missing,” says Herr. “This was the opportunity to reinstate some of the history, some of the details that made it an exotically fabulous place.”

Herr consulted archival images to assemble an authentic working history. “In almost every instance we opted to go back to 1921. There was testing and analysis and painting to try to get as close to the original as possible.”

With project architect Hsiao-Ling Ting, this overhaul went macro (drainage replacement) to micro (replicating period screws). In the dining room—one of two with Wright’s furniture designs—the beige walls were resurfaced and returned to a glorious olive/tan hue. “In the scheme of things, $4.5 million is a whole lot of money—but it’s not nearly enough. What really eats up money is craftsmanship,” Herr adds.

Finally, by recreating missing decorative molding throughout, Herr believes there’s an extra dimension of purity. “We know Wright was experimenting with the use of interior space and how to open it up. You’ve got choices. He defines entry with the molding. Those are his ‘doors.’”

With Hollyhock House’s doors opening, the Barnsdall Art Park, on February 13, the house will feature self-guided “Walk Wright In” tours on Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for a fee of $7 for adults, $3 for students and seniors with ID, and $3 for children under 12.

The bas-relief fireplace in the living room as repointed (refilling the mortar between the cast concrete blocks). It was cleaned -but not over- cleaned. "It doesn't need to be pristine because it's not," says curator Jefrey Herr. Photography by Joshua White. © PRNewsFoto/City of Los Angeles Department. Courtesy of City of Los Angeles Department.

There are 130 art glass windows in the huse. Photography by Joshua White. © PRNewsFoto/City of Los Angeles Department o), Courtesy of City of Los Angeles Department.

View into the courtyard. Photography by Joshua White. © PRNewsFoto/City of Los Angeles Department o), Courtesy of City of Los Angeles Department.

Site plan. Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House.

Ground floor plan. Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House.

Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood. Photography courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library.

Exterior view of the Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, 1921. Photography © Julius Shulman.

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Frank Lloyd WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1869 and died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1959. He is considered as one of the Modern Movement’s father in architecture and one of the most important architects of the XX Century, together with Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Wright was placed in Chicago, San Francisco, Spring Green (Wisconsin) and Phoenix (Arizona). His life as an active architect in USA was from 1889 to 1962 and in Japan between 1915 and 1923.

Wright was born in a protestant family. His father was preacher of the unitary church, of which he inherited a romantic view, in continuous searching of the universality and the non-conformism. In 1885 he began to study civil engineering in Wisconsin University and worked as draughtsman for an engineer-constructor. Two years later, in 1887 he placed in Chicago where he worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee, an architect of picturesque nature. Shorty afterward he became a member of Louis Sullivan’s and Dankmar Adler’s studio, and he was the responsible of it in 1889. In this year he started the construction of his first house, for himself in the Oak Park of Chicago (1889-1890).

With Sullivan he made the Charley’s House in Chicago (1891-1892). But at the same time and independently of his work at Sullivan’s studio, he took part of the construction of the Wainwright Building (1890-1891) and the Schiller Building (1891-1892). In 1893 he broke up with Sullivan and he established on his own account, working as domestic architecture.

In 1901 he began his first great creative phase, the “Prairie Houses” period. In this phase, he made the space a real discipline. His most outstanding works were the Susan Lawrence Dana’s house in Sprinfield ¡1902-1904), Avery Coonley’s house in Riverside (1906-1908) and Frederick C. Robie’s house in Chicago (1906) and the unitary temple of Oak Park (1905-1908). He also built the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, New York (1902-1906) where he tacked the theme of the work space.

Wirght published in the Architectural Record magazine in 1908, the called 6 organic architecture principles; although he said he had written them in 1894. The principles are: simplicity and elimination of the superfluous; to each client, his life style and his house style; correlation among the nature, topography and architecture; adaptation and integration of the building in his environment and the harmony of the used materials (conventionalization); material expression; and at least, the analogy between the human qualities and the architecture.

In 1909 he decided to travel to Europe and he prepared two synoptic publications with the editor Wasmuth in Berlin. In this phase, Wright has already more than 130 works built. He came back to the United States in 1910. In 1922 he placed in the family lands in Spring Green. Here he planned the called Taliesin House, which would be his house, architecture studio, art gallery and farm. He would extend and modify it during the next years because of two fires in 1914 and in 1925.

Since 1913 he changed his ornamental language due to the European influence and his architecture became more geometric as a consequence, inclusively cubist. This change can be appreciated in the Midway Garden in Chicago (1913-1914) or in the Imperial Hotel of Tokio (1913-1923).

He planned after the Mrs. George Madison Millard’s house “The Miniature” in Pasadena (1923), the John Storer’s house in Hollywood (1923-1924) and the Samuel Freeman’s and Charles Ennis’s houses in Los Ángeles (1923-1924); houses built with reinforced rubblework and walls made of moulding concrete ashlars. But Wright moved to the Arizona desert in 1927, where he found other nature conditions to adapt to. Here he projected a hotel complex in San Marcos, near Chandler, Arizona (1928-1929), which is a growth model that Wright compared with the landscape.

In the 30s, the financial scandals and the consequences of the great depression prevented him to carry out many of his designs and he only projected the Kaufmann Family’s Vacation House: “Fallingwater”, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania; where Wright achieved to unify the nature, the technology and the social organization. In this phase, Wright used the term “Usonians” that referred to the union of the terms USA, utopia and “organic social order”. One example of that is the Herbert Jacops’s House in Madison, Wisconsin (1936-1937). Simultaneously, he built the de Johnson & Company’s headquarters in Racine Wisconsin (1936-1939) and his adjoining tower, where are the investigation laboratories (1943-1950). In 1943, his most important project came: the Art Museum “non objective”, put in charge by Solomon Guggenheim in the 5th Avenue in New York, finished in 1959.

In the 50s, Wright exaggerated increasingly the formal aspect of his buildings. His last projects were: the unitary church of Madison (1945-1951), the synagogue of Beth Sholom in Alkins Park, Pennsylvania (1953-1959), the Annunciation Church in Wautatosa, Wisconsin (1955-1961) and the Martin County’s civic centre in San Rafael, California (1957-1962).

JOSÉ JUAN BARBA

José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He has been an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he advised different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).

Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2024), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".

He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...

Awards.-

- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International Committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.