The Hollyhock House

The Hollyhock House, the first house FLW built in Southern California, predates all of his “textile block” houses, and anything built by his son, Lloyd Wright, in later years. Like most of the properties he built in Los Angeles, this house was commissioned to him by oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. The central motif of the house, as well as all interior and exterior design, is the hollyhock flower, thus the name.

The Hollyhock House only really served as a house for just a few years. It was built between 1919-1921, and by 1927 it had already been donated by Mrs. Barnsdall to the City of Los Angeles where it would serve as the center-piece of what is now the Barnsdall Art Park.

Interestingly enough, the house has some of the most spectacular views of the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Sign, which did not exist when the house was originally built.

Like almost everything FLW built in California, the actual construction of the house was supervised by his son Lloyd Wright, including a its first restoration in the 1940s. The most resent restoration, completed just months ago with a 14 million-dollar grant by the City of Los Angeles, has brought the house back to its best condition since its initial inception.

At the center of living room there is an indistinct concrete mural which many have speculated upon. Some say it is a modern rendition of Aline Barnsdall contemplating a sunset, some others say it is the result of FLWs contact with extraterrestrial “higher beings”. Its true meaning might always remain a mystery.

At the center of the living room lives a fireplace that is surrounded by water which originally flowed from a fountain at the other end of the house. The water then travelled underneath the foundation, surfacing through the living room, and then again submerging to come out at the other end of the house. The windows of the living room allowed for the wind to flow directly, from east to west, across the distance of the room, thus creating a cross roads between fire, water, earth and wind.

It is all these little things that made Frank Lloyd Wright one of the greatest Architects of the 20th century.