Etan Does LA 200: Lloyd Wright House & Studio (West Hollywood) | Los Angeles architecture history

National Register visit 200: Lloyd Wright House and Studio📍858 North Doheny Drive, West Hollywood
Happy heavenly birthday to architect Lloyd Wright, born March 31, 1890. If you couldn’t tell from all the background noise, the stretch of Doheny where Wright built his own home and studio is a busy one. It’s surrounded by whooshing cars, but set back from the street, within thick walls of concrete, it still manages to feel secluded.
Wright lived and worked here for over 50 years. This was where he designed the @wayfarers_chapel, an early @hollywoodbowl bandshell and many of the projects that defined his career. It was built in 1927 during an important transitional phase that found him flourishing as an independent designer after years of collaborating with others - including his dad, Frank Lloyd Wright, who hired him to work on @hollyhockhouse plus his four LA “textile block” homes - the Millard, Freeman, Storer & Ennis.
The Lloyd Wright House and Studio showcases the uniqueness of his design sense. The outside reads as an imposing, cubist jumble of intersecting masses, encrusted and transformed by patterned concrete blocks, carved into the form of a stylized Joshua tree. So many LA architects of the ‘20s were inspired by SoCal’s Spanish colonial past. Wright went even further back, to pre-colonial Mexico. Those patterned blocks evoke ancient Mayan temples, an impression enhanced by the vines and ivy covering the northern wall.
Inside is something else entirely. It’s spacious and airy, with light-filled living spaces upstairs, and drafting rooms on the bottom floor around a central living room. A sliding door opens to a breathtaking patio, seemingly a world away from the packed West Hollywood neighborhood on the other side of the wall.
I’m visiting all the LA landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places. Read about the ones and many more at Etandoesla.com: etandoesla.com...
Photo Credits:
📷 House & Studio, 1939: Los Angeles Public Library
📷 Hollywood Bowl bandshell: Hollywood Bowl Museum
📷 Interior pics: Matthew Momberger
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