No. 34 - Barnsdall Art Park

Barnsdall Art Park
4800 Hollywood Boulevard – mapDeclared: 2/26/65

So if you’ve already read my posts on HCM No. 12, The Hollyhock House, and HCM No. 33, Barnsdall Arts Center (Residence ‘A’), you’ll find a lot of repetitive repetition here.

Basically, right around World War I, Aline Barnsdall had intended a large art colony to emerge on her Olive Hill estate in east Hollywood. She even had architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf M. Schindler, and Richard Neutra help her out. For a bunch of reasons, though, the grand plan – which included a movie theatre, actors’ dorms, artists’ studios, etc. – never came together, and Aline gave the park to the city in 1927. However, the eleven-acre Barnsdall Art Park today does serve as an art colony, with buildings new and old scattered about.

In the shot above, behind those evergreens, is the Municipal Art Gallery (1971 – Wehmueller and Stephens). Below is the view of the back of the building, with a kid-created monument from the 1970s in the foreground. According to Gebhard and Winter’s Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide, the Gallery was built after a “temporary” one designed by Wright, elsewhere on the property, was torn down.

Below is the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, which, although you can’t see it here, adjoins the Art Gallery.

Above is the Junior Arts Center & Barnsdall Art Center (1967 – Paul Hunter, Walter Benedict, Herbert Kahn, Edward Tarrell).

Above and below is a pair of murals found among the Arts Center. The upper is a 25th anniversary mosaic project overseen by instructor Richard Godfrey. The lower is a 1995 “contemporary cave painting” by muralist Hawley Hussey and more than thirty junior artists of the Barnsdall Jr. Art Camp. The colors were created with spices (it tasted like hell, though).

Above is the Spring House, standing in front (behind) of the Junior Arts Center. And below, with Residence ‘A’ in the background, is “Temple II” by Gene Flores, a 1979 work in the memory of Adam Kemper Becket.

Above: What do you call this? Is it a fountain? In any case, it’s dedicated to Aline’s pop, filthy rich oil tycoon Theodore N. Barnsdall.

Below: Schindler’s Terrace/The Wading Pool and Pergola (1925 – Rudolf Schindler and Richard Neutra). Or what’s left of it, anyway.

Okay, this is something you have when you don’t know what to do with your money. These compartments above were actually built as animal pens. Like a petting zoo. They didn’t serve that purpose very long, and according to an onsite docent, only four of the sections were ever used, although one did hold a llama.

The above is Wright’s Hollyhock House, now a National Landmark. And that’s a new lawn! (It was dirt when I was there a couple of months ago.)

This final picture was taken from the parking lot along Hollywood Boulevard. That’s Residence ‘A’ on the left, and you can see just a bit of the Hollyhock House Garage at the top of the hill on the right.

Oh. One more thing. Barnsdall Art Park is located in the officially designated Los Angeles community of Little Armenia, which, according to its MySpace page, is 85-years-old and in a relationship.

Up next: The Birthplace of Adlai E. Stevenson III