HOLLYHOCK HOUSE

TOUR GUIDE

Hollyhock House is owned by the

City of Los Angeles and administered
by the Department of Cultural Affairs,
Recreation and Parks, and General
Services Departments. It is supported
by the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation.
Text by David Martino.
Barnsdall Art Park
4800 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 644-6275

FOYER (entry)
DOORWAY TO THE FUTURE
In a device Wright often employed, the homes
entryway steers visitors down a progressively
narrower path which opens up after entering
the house, creating a sense of compression and
then release. The doors to Hollyhock House
are made of cast concrete and inset into the
surrounding masonry, weighing some 250
pounds each. The mass and unusual structural
material create a monumental impression,
as if entering a sacred space or ancient temple.

The handles and lockswhich are
cleverly disguised behind sliding brass
coverswere most likely designed by Rudolph
Schindler, Wrights assistant who oversaw
much of the buildings completion.

WHICH WAY DO YOU GO?

Unlike most traditional architecture of
the time which would guide visitors toward
explicitly defined public rooms, Wrights
design for the entry of Hollyhock House
presents a series of inviting options to
someone first coming through the door.

To the left is the Dining Room, with
its signature Wright-designed furniture
echoing the hollyhock elements of
the house. Straight ahead, indirect views
glimpse the spacious Living Room,
the homes most dramatic interior space.
To the right, filtered by a wood grille
reminiscent of Spanish and Moorish
architecture, is the adjoining Music Room.

Subtle structural cues balance and
define these options, such as the short
stairway which elevates the Dining Room,
and ceiling ornamentation, which creates
invisible partitions and pathways.

All of these design elements are
aspects of Wrights influential evolution
toward freer, more open floor plans rather
than a series of enclosed boxes or rooms.

In 1926 I gave this park to the city; the recreation center

and the playgrounds for the use of children, the house
for the uses of art, and the grounds for the pleasure of all.
Will these artists and art loving people, also the fathers
and the mothers of the children who play here, and those
old HOLLYWOODIANS who have loved the hill for
many years, JOIN ME IN FORMING A COMMITTEE
TO INSURE IT FUNCTIONING PERMANENTLY
UNDER THESE CONDITIONS OF THE DEED?
ALINE BARNSDALL, Box 9622 Los Feliz Station, Los Angeles 27, California

(built 19191921), a work of extraordinary

poetic force, was Frank Lloyd Wrights first first Los Angeles
commission and the first residence after his Prairie style period.
It introduced Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra to
Los Angeles and became a gateway to the development of
California Modernism, including celebrated homes by
all three that impacted the direction of residential design
throughout the 20th century and into the present.
HOLLYHOCK HOUSE

The house was commissioned by Aline Barnsdall, a wealthy

oil heiress, and intended as part of a cultural arts complex on
Olive Hill including a major theater, cinema, artist residences,
and commercial shops. Hollyhock House was to be her personal
residence on the site. She asked him to incorporate her
favorite flower, the hollyhock, into the homes design.

Frank Lloyd Wright and granddaughter, actress Anne Baxter

attend the opening party at the completion of the 1914-76 restoration.
Courtesy of Hollyhock House

(18671959), one of the most influential

architects of the 20th century, was already famous by the
time Aline Barnsdall approached him to design a theater to
showcase experimental dramatic productions. At the time,
his career was stalled as a result of personal scandals and
tragedies, and his only significant commissions were Hollyhock
House and a hotel project in Tokyo, Japan.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Wright and Barnsdall only partly completed her visionary

plan for a thriving arts center in east Hollywood, which
was then little more than a patchwork of citrus farms and
the nascent film industry.

DINING ROOM
and KITCHEN
SOMETHING OLD,
SOMETHING NEW
Hollyhock House was
Wrights first Los Angeles
home and represents a
departure from the older,
Prairie style houses that
helped make him famous.
The Dining Roomwith
itswarm wood surfaces,
hipped ceiling, and leaded
glass windowspossesses
many familiar features
carried over from his older
style. However, also note
how the changing ceiling
heights and moldings
help define the dining area
and walkways.

The chairs and table
are original Wright designs
exclusive to the house.
They were built locally
of Philippine mahogany
and reflect variations on
the hollyhock motif used
throughout the home.

Wright often designed
custom furniture for
his commissions, even
specifying details such as
location and upholstery, as
part of his desire to create a
complete and harmonious
environment. In Hollyhock
House, Barnsdall and Wright
differed over the interior
design and compromised
by building only the Dining

Room and Living Room.

Not all of Wrights designs
for Hollyhock House were
executed. Some features
of the room such as the
chandelier were altered over
time and have been restored
from existing photos of the
1920s interior.
KITCHEN
The original 1921 kitchen is
known only through a single
incomplete plan. The existing
kitchen was remodeled in 1946
by Wrights son, Lloyd Wright,
with features including a
custom Thermador cooking
unit and solid mahogany
countertops.

Some 130 leaded glass windows were designed

by Wright for the house, of which approximately
100 survive in the original. Others have been painstakingly
recreated from photographs and drawings.

Aline Barnsdall circa 1914.

Courtesy of Michael Devine

(18821946) was an American heiress to

one of the largest oil fortunes of the time and a fiercely
independent supporter of the arts as well as radical political
and social causes. She was an unapologetically single
mother who raised a daughter Aline Elizabeth (nicknamed
Sugartop for her light-colored hair), born in 1917. A friend
later described her as one hundred percent rebel and
Wright considered her a fellow unconventional spirit
as well as one of his most difficult clients.
ALINE BARNSDALL

She had a passion for avant-garde theater and approached

Wright in Chicago to design a theater for her ambitious
productions. After settling on Los Angeles as the location,
she purchased Olive Hill in 1919, ultimately expanding her vision
to encompass not just a theater but a main residence for herself,
homes for a director and actors, a movie theater, and commercial
shopsan arts colony for the dawning entertainment capital
of the country. Conflicts resulting from delays, mutual travel
and the larger-than-life personalities of Barnsdall and
Wright eventually shifted the focus to the main residence,
Hollyhock House, as a home for herself and Sugartop.

LIVING ROOM (south view)

MUSIC ROOM
Music and architecture
were linked in Wrights
mind through early family
experiences and he included
music rooms in many of his
houses. Few details survive
of the intended use and
furnishings for the one in
Hollyhock House. It likely
would have contained a
piano, as well as a cabinet
for the latest playback
technology of the daya
gramophone. The Victrola
on display is from the period
but not original to the house.

The cabinets on the
west wall and some on the
north wall were added by
Wrights son Lloyd as part
of later renovations.

A GLIMPSE OF
THINGS TO COME
The homes largest space,
its expansive Living
Room, showcases many of
Wrights design innovations.

The monumental
fireplace with its spectacular
mantle boasting an abstract
geometric sculpture anchors
the space. He believed
the hearth was a homes
symbolic center and his
Prairie style houses reflected
its importance. However,
in Hollyhock House he also
experimented with a new
elementwaterthat he
would continue to refine
until it found expression
in his most famous home,
Fallingwater (1935).

The fireplace was
originally surrounded in front
by a pool fed underground
from waterways outside the
house. This marked a radical

evolution of Wrights concept

of organic architecture,
which sought to unite houses
and their owners with the
natural landscape. With
the addition of the screened
skylight above and the
masonry structure, it brought
together the elemental forces
of natureearth, fire, water,
and lightat the focal point
of the house.

The feature didnt
work properly and was
disconnected early in the
houses history. While not
fully realized here, Wright
continued to explore water
as an integrating feature
of his architecture, including
a planned guesthouse on
Olive Hill (Directors House,
not built) whose flowing
water course and falls
anticipate Fallingwater.

The symphony, as my father first taught me,

is an edifice of sound. I now felt Architecture not only
might be but ought to be symphonic in character.
Frank Lloyd Wright describing the origins of Hollyhock House in his Autobiography

MUSIC ROOM

The Music Rooms spectacular views of the Hollywood sign and

Griffith Observatory are accidentalneither existed when Aline Barnsdall
conceived of a theater, residence and arts complex for Olive Hill in 1919,
a time when Los Angeles was smaller than Providence, Rhode Island,
and the movie industry was still taking shape. The sign, which originally
read Hollywoodland in incandescent bulbs, was built in 1923 to advertise
a real estate development. Griffith Observatory was built in 1935.

LOGGIA and
INNER COURTYARD
LOGGIA
Some of Wrights most important
contributions to architecture revolve
around his desire to create buildings
that are connected to their natural
environment, dissolving the boundary
between interior and exterior. Southern
Californias mild Mediterranean climate
allowed him to explore these ideas more
freely than ever before and he appropriated
a musical term, romanzaused to describe
an impressionistic or personal interpretation
to describe his architectural program.

Hollyhock House is designed to be half
house, half garden. Every major interior room
has an exterior counterpart or direct access
to the outdoors. In addition, the rooftop
terraces were designed as outdoor living
spaces. The Porch or Loggia is a key
transitional space that bridges the homes
Living Room with its exterior equivalent,
the Inner Courtyard.

Two large planters and a gallery of
folding wood doors open the space to the
outside. Note how stucco and decorative
moldings flow continuously between interior
and exterior as if there were no windows.

INNER COURTYARD
The Inner Courtyard, provides a theatrical
space at the homes center. The central pool
originally fed a stream that connected to
the fireplace pool via an underground pipe
and then continued on to another pool on
the west side of the house. The statue of a
faun is a replica of a famous original excavated
in Pompeii.

The most recognizable feature of
Hollyhock House is easily visible here
the stylized floral decorations that give the
house its name. Hollyhocks were owner
Aline Barnsdalls favorite flower and she
asked Wright to incorporate them into the
homes design.

They appear on the interior and exterior,
most visibly as the masonry banding just
below the homes roofline. The deeply incised,
geometric forms were made of cast concrete
in molds. Their abstract design appears both
futuristic and primitive, echoing elements
of Mayan carving that mirror the structures
pre-Columbian temple form.

The design recurs throughout the house
in wood, stone, and even carpeting.

TIMELINE

1919

Aline Barnsdall purchases 36 acres of Olive Hill for $300,000

19191921 Hollyhock House constructed; planned cost $50,000 (per building permit)
Actual cost $125,000$150,000 estimated

1927 Hollyhock House and 11 acres donated by Aline Barnsdall to City of

Los Angeles a art park honoring her late father, Theodore Barnsdall

19271942 The California Art Club occupies Hollyhock House as its headquarters,

altering some spaces

19461948 Major renovation financed by Dorothy Clune Murray rehabilitated the

structure which served as the headquarters of the Olive Hill Foundation

and as a memorial to her son, James William Clune, Jr. who was killed
in World War II

1954

Residence B razed

19541974 A temporary art gallery designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was constructed

parallel to the structure connecting the garage and the house to

accommodate the installation of the Museum of Modern Arts Frank
Lloyd Wright: Sixty Years of Living Architecture retrospective

1956

Olive Hill Foundations lease expires

1967

Junior Art Center constructed (architects Hunt, Kahn and Farrell)

1971 Municipal Art Gallery constructed (architects Wehmueller and Stephens)

19741976

1976

Hollyhock House undergoes a major restoration by the City of Los Angeles

Hollyhock House becomes a house museum open for public viewing

20102014 $4.36 million restoration project funded by City of Los Angeles, the California

Cultural and Historical Endowment, and the National Park Service

LIVING ROOM (north view)

The large, flanking sofas and other furnishings
in the room are made of quartersawn oak, a
signature of Wrights earlier style as well as
the Arts and Crafts movement. The originals
were lost or removed at some point in the
homes history and the ones on display were
recreated by a Pasadena woodworking firm
utilizing photos of the 1920s interior and
original drawings.

The rooms original color scheme,
described in newspapers of the day as soft
gold or light Nile green and bronze, was
restored in 2014 through microscopic analysis
of paint layers.

Other features lost or damaged over
time such as the upholstery fabric have also
been recreated as part of ongoing restoration
work by the City of Los Angeles.

The Japanese screens in the room do
not match early photos but are similar to
descriptions of screens listed in the inventory
of Aline Barnsdalls art collection. These
have been in place since before 1945 but their
provenance prior to that is unknown.

The carpet, with its two-dimensional
Hollyhock designs, is a reproduction of the
original designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright created over 1,000 designs in his lifetime, some
500 of which were realized. Nearly 20% of his completed works have
been lost over time to demolition, fire, weather and other causes.

PERGOLA
The Pergola or enclosed hallway was an
important access and buffer leading to
the homes private wing. Wright increasingly
experimented with dividing spaces into
separate zones for public, private, and service
functions, notably at Taliesin (1911), and
brought it to a new level of execution in
Hollyhock House.

The Pergola is one of the most drastically
altered original spaces, having its roof
removed and later replaced and double doors
broken out in the middle. In its original
form as a simple long hallway with multiple
windows accessing the sights and sounds of
the garden, it would have served as a pleasant,

semi-outdoor space filtering the homes

bedrooms from noise and activity in the
public areas.

The marble Chinese welcoming goddess
at the far end of the Pergola originally greeted
guests upon their arrival from a niche at the
head of the homes entry walkway. It has been
moved indoors for reasons of security and
preservation. Wright and Barnsdall both had
interests in Asian art and Wright sometimes
collected pieces for his clients (although it
is not known if this sculpture was similarly
acquired). Funds are being sought to replicate
the sculpture so a duplicate can once again
be placed at the entry portal.

From 1917 to its completion in 1923, Wright was preoccupied with the design and construction
of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan. His long absences from the United States made work
on Hollyhock House difficult at times, especially given the expanding creative vision of owner
Aline Barnsdall. Wright sometimes dismissed those who saw the influence of Japanese
architecture on his designs, but he admired its artistic traditions and especially its synthesis
of natural and aesthetic formssomething he was actively exploring in Hollyhock House.
The Imperial Hotel, in turn, was influenced by the Mayan or Mesoamerican temple form that
Wright was simultaneously developing at Hollyhock House. The Imperial Hotel survived a major
earthquake in 1923 but was damaged during World War II and demolished in 1967. Portions of
the original structure were preserved and reconstructed at the Meiji Mura Museum in Japan.

LIBRARY
Aline Barnsdall was a cultured, educated
woman who was reportedly very fond
of books. The library was designed as a
sanctuary for her reading and interests in
art, particularly French Impressionism and
Japanese wood block prints.

There is little documentation of the
original furnishings for the room, although
anecdotal evidence suggests it had two
chairs and a Chinese rug similar to the one

on display. The books and artworks are not

original but are representative of the period.
The nesting tables were designed by Wrights
son Lloyd Wright for the Olive Hill Foundation
(c. 1947) and the chairs are believed to be of the
same vintage.

In the homes symmetrical floor plan, the
Library and Music Room balance each other
on either side of the Living Room, although the
Library is separated by a partition for privacy.

GALLERY (guest bedrooms)

The first rooms in the homes private wing
were originally two en suite Guest Bedrooms
(self-contained bedrooms with adjoining
bathrooms). Beyond them lay the bedroom
of Barnsdalls daughter Sugartop, with its
own bath, nursemaids quarters and sun
porch that led outside.

The bedrooms were remodeled to
create an exhibition gallery in 1927 by the
California Art Club, and the doors to the
Pergola were opened up at this time.
Today the Gallery serves as an exhibition
space for models, drawings and photographs
relating to Olive Hill.

Dissatisfied with the house and disappointed

over the lack of construction plans for the
theatre, Barnsdall fired Wright in 1921 and set
about making plans to give the house to the
City of Los Angeles. The gift was accepted in
1927 and dedicated to and forever remain a
public park in memory of her father, Theodore
Barnsdall. The California Art Club was the
first tenant (19271942), although the house
eventually fell into neglect. Major renovations
supervised by Wrights son Lloyd occurred in
194648 and in 197476. The City of Los Angeles
continues to develop and restore portions of
the park as part of its ongoing stewardship
of this unique architectural treasure.

CONSERVATORY
CONSERVATORY
The Conservatory, traditionally a sun room
for plants, faces south and receives natural
light throughout the day. Intended partly as a
breakfast room, it is scaled for people who are
seated and has garden views on three sides.

The room exemplifies Wrights ideas
about blurring the distinction between outside
and inside spaces. Beyond the French doors
is an exterior space that is as much a room as
its interior counterpart, lacking only a roof
and upper walls. Recently uncovered masonry
details emphasize the flowing horizontal lines
and continuity between interior and exterior.

Frank Lloyd Wright, widely

regarded as the most
important American architect
and one of the most influential,
achieved new directions with
the design for Hollyhock House
that he would continue to
pursue in a life that spanned
the decades from the end
of the Civil War to the
Eisenhower presidency and
revolutionary buildings such
as the Johnson Wax Building,
Fallingwater, and the

EXCAVATED WALL (PARTIAL)

The layers of time and ownership of the house
have resulted in ongoing efforts by the City of
Los Angeles to restore Olive Hill to its original
vision. The partially excavated plaster wall
seen here is an example of the careful historic
reconstruction efforts that have yielded many
clues about the homes original construction
and details. Other research takes place in
the documents and correspondence of the
far-flung lives of its principal creators,
Barnsdall and Wright. Much work remains
to be done, and the Barnsdall Art Park
Foundation remains dedicated to bringing to
life a vision that was in many ways ahead
of its time and only partially realized in 1921.

Guggenheim Museum.
Hollyhock House introduced
Wright along with Rudolph
Schindler, Richard Neutra, and
son Lloyd Wright to Southern
California and sparked a
design movement geared
toward outdoor living and
greater connection to the
environment that continues
to find new expressions in the
21st century.

Hollyhock House was

designated a National
Historic Landmark in 2007.
A UNESCO World Heritage
Site nomination is pending,
recognizing the house as an
international cultural treasure.
Its inscription on the World
Heritage List would place it
alongside other cultural sites
in the United States like
Independence Hall and the
Statue of Liberty.

Visitors wishing to further explore, support and connect with Barnsdall

Art Park and its history are encouraged to visit www.barnsdall.org.

Please do not remove from the House.

Barnsdall Art Park Foundation 2015.
3,896,063