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

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No. 33 - Barnsdall Arts Center (Residence 'A')

Barnsdall Arts Center (Residence ‘A’)
1920 – Frank Lloyd Wright
4800 Hollywood Boulevard – map
Declared: 2/26/65

Just a bit more than two years after declaring the Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park a city monument (see this earlier post on HCM No. 12), the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission gave landmark status to another building in the park, Residence ‘A’, as well as to the eleven-acre park itself.

First is Residence 'A'.

Residence ‘A’ was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as a guest home for Aline Barnsdall, the woman who proposed the art complex on her Olive Hill land in Hollywood and who briefly used the Hollyhock House as her home. Barnsdall donated the park, including Residence 'A', to the city in 1927.

When the Commission declared the building a landmark in 1965, it was the Barnsdall Playground Arts and Crafts Center (see the shot above). In fact, the structure got its designation as the Arts and Crafts Building. I can’t find any evidence of the Residence ‘A’ actually having been used as a residence. (Residence ‘B’, on the other hand, was used on and off by Wright during park construction. Later, it became the permanent home of Aline Barnsdall and her daughter once she tired of living in the Hollyhock House. It was torn down long ago.)

So if you took the EXIT to the right, wouldn't that put you in violation of the ONE WAY to your left?

This zig-zaggy artwork is Jesus Y. Dominguez's "Kaleidoscope" from 1971.

I’ve found places on the web alternately noting Residence ‘A’ as an arts center or arts gallery. Unfortunately, the building hasn’t been open for years, and, as it awaits restoration, there are currently no plans for its re-opening. (If it were me, I’d sell it. I’d much rather see it being used than lying dormant.)

Up next: Barnsdall Art Park

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No. 32 - St Saviour's Chapel

St Saviour's Chapel
1914 – Reginald Johnson
3700 Coldwater Canyon Avenue - map
Declared: 2/5/65

St Saviour’s Chapel was dedicated in 1914 at part of the Harvard School for Boys at its original site down at Venice and Western. The building, designed by Reginald Johnson, was modeled after the chapel at Rugby School in England. Every source I’ve found mentions the pews which face the center aisle, but since I stopped by on a late Sunday afternoon, the chapel was closed and I didn’t get a look inside. I’ll have to take their word for it.

St Saviour's in 1965, courtesy of the UCLA Library Digital Collections.

Founded by Grenville C. Emery, the Harvard School for Boys opened in 1900 as a military academy. In the 1930s, Douglas Aviation’s Sir Donald Douglas gave the school $25,000, allowing the institution to move to the site of the old Hollywood Country Club, its current home.

When the Harvard School relocated to its current site in 1937, the 23-year-old chapel was moved along with it. According to McGrew and Julian’s Landmarks of Los Angeles, St Saviour’s was diced into sixteen sections in order to make the journey by the way of Sepulveda Boulevard.

In 1989, Harvard merged with the Westlake School, formed near present-day MacArthur Park by Jessica Smith Vance and Frederica de Laguna in 1904 as an all-female school. It’s been located in Holmby Hills since 1927. Today, as part of Harvard-Westlake School, grades seven through nine go to the old Westlake campus, while sophomores, juniors, and seniors attend the Sherman Oaks school. (Man, if you need proof how exclusive this school is, their website's URL has just two letters - hw.) Harvard School alumni include Jon Lovitz, H.R. Haldeman, and the Nelsons.

Some of the addresses I see associated with the school list its home as Studio City, others say North Hollywood. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's located in Sherman Oaks.

Up next: Barnsdall Arts Center (Residence "A")

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No. 31 - Rancho Sombra del Roble

Rancho Sombra del Roble
c. 1926 – L.G. Knipe
23600 Roscoe Boulevard – map
Declared: 1/22/65

Rancho Sombra del Roble, now more commonly known as the Orcutt Ranch Horticulture Center, was built by W.W. Orcutt and his wife as a vacation and, ultimately, retirement home.

William Warren Orcutt was a Minnesota native who moved west in around 1880 with his family, then to Los Angeles in 1901 where he got a gig with the Union Oil Company. He stayed with the corporation for nearly forty years. Soon after arriving in L.A., Orcutt became the first finder of fossils in the goo in the La Brea Tar Pits. He later went on to become a geological pioneer in the fields of oil and petroleum. Towns in Santa Barbara and Colorado are named after him.

The courtyard.

Northwest corner.

Southwest corner.

W.W. had a couple of ranches in the area, but focused on the approximately 210-acre Rancho Sombra del Roble (Ranch in the Shade of the Oak), then a cattle ranch and citrus orchard, making up a lot of what Canoga Park is today. The original residence, very much in the style of the American Southwest, was finished being built around 1926, although there has been a lot of changes to the structure, including the additions of a new wing and a solarium, over the years.

Hey! What’s the deal with all the swastikas found on the ranch house, above the windows, the courtyard floor, and even in some ironwork? Was ol’ W.W. some sort of Nazi? Nein! Before the Nazis got a hold of it, the swastika stood as a symbol of well-being and good fortune and luck. So Orcutt’s swastika usage predates Adolf’s.

The Valley Oak (Quercus Lobata) in the right rear is about 600 years old.

The barn.

A little sign by the 700-year-old Coastal Live Oak (Quercus Agrifolia) below states:

The limbs of this historical oak tree were cut and hauled to nearby kilns to fire the limestone to a powdery ash. The limestone then was transported to the site of the San Fernando mission. Limestone was combined with the clay to make the mortar for the bricks and tiles in building the mission.

This oak's got a circumference of about 33 feet.

The ranch entrance these days is on Roscoe Boulevard, but it used to be on Justice Street (the disused gate’s above). Just inside the old entrance is the monument below. You can see the WWO intitials, but was there some sort of lamp on top originally?

Orcutt died in the home in 1942. His wife, Mary Logan Orcutt, was still living at the rancho when the city declared twenty-four acres of it a Historic-Cultural Landmark (less than forty years after the residence was built). The designation includes the ranch house, a few outbuildings, the gardens, a bunch of huge, ancient oaks, and the citrus orchards. The city’s Recreation and Parks department bought the site in 1966 and it's now open to the public.

Today, Rancho Sombra del Roble may be rented for special occasions. Docented tours are also offered, but only on nine Sundays in the year, not in the summer. For Judith Stock's take on the Orcutt Ranch, go here and here.

Up next: St Saviour’s Chapel

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No. 30 - Doheny Mansion

Doheny Mansion
1899 – Theodore Eisen and Sumner P. Hunt
8 Chester Place – map
Declared: 1/8/65

The Poseys – Oliver, a mining engineer, and his socialite wife, Sara, an entrepreneur in her own right – moved into their brand new 22-room Spanish Gothic Revival mansion in 1900. They didn’t stay there long, though. They moved out the following fall, selling the mansion and nearly all its furnishings to oil magnate Edward L. Doheny and his second wife, Estelle.

Backtracking, 8 Chester Place was designed by Theodore Eisen and Sumner P. Hunt, who also came up with Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 241, The Froebel Institute, No. 418, the Owen Residence (demolished), and No. 541, the Irvine/Byrne Building. With Silas Burns, Hunt designed another half dozen landmarks. Eisen was also responsible for No. 493, Casa de Adobe in Highland Park.

The back entrance, leading into the Pompeian Room.

Here are five things to know about Edward Doheny:

-- with his partner, Charles Canfield, dug the first successful oil well in the city Los Angeles
-- established the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company
-- had the oil rights to more than half a million acres of land in Mexico
-- was implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal, from which he was cleared after ten years of court action
-- the murder-suicide of his son, Ned, and an employee in 1929 in Ned’s Beverly Hills Greystone Mansion created a media sensation

The Dohenys made a ton of changes to the mansion after buying it from the Poseys, including putting on a third-floor addition in the 1920s and instituting major interior alterations following the Long Beach earthquake in 1933. The most notable change, though, was the 1906 addition of the Pompeian Room, used for special occasions. Today, the room still has its original marble floor and a 24-foot-wide glass dome by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Unlike the rest of the home, the Pompeian Room made it through the 1933 earthquake fine. (Sorry, no photos allowed inside.)

The conservatory/naturarium

The conservatory/naturarium was designed in 1913 by Alfred Rosenheim. (Rosenheim himself was responsible for a couple of other HCMs). Doheny used this 200-foot long greenhouse to keep his collection of crazy plant life, most notably his palm trees and orchids (you know you’ve reached filthy rich status when you begin collecting palm trees). The picture above is how it is now, nearly a century later – no plants, no windows, and no arched glass ceiling (and no canoe in the pool, either.)

Edward Doheny died in 1935 and left his estate to Estelle, who was declared a papal countess by Pope Pius XII four years later. When she died in 1958, the property went to L.A.’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese who in turn gave the Chester Place land to Mount St Mary’s College for what is now known as the Doheny Campus.

Mount St Mary’s offers tours of the Doheny Mansion a handful of times a year, in which you get a look at not only the Doheny home’s interior, but also the inside of 10 Chester Place next door, in which Ned lived with his family from 1916 to 1928.

Now, you should know that not only are you forbidden from taking pictures inside the monument, the college is really uptight about your taking pictures outside, too. In fact, I was busted by security guards twice, even though I was part of the official tour. So just be advised.

Up next: Rancho Sombra del Roble

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