The Kronish House is a 7,000 square foot villa designed by Richard Neutra in 1955. The house is located on 9439 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California in the United States. The house was designed for Herbert and Hazel Kronish. [1]
The Kronish House features a formal, pinwheel design. Not visible from the street, the one-story house sits at the end of a 250-foot-long driveway on a 2-acre lot. With 6,891 square feet of living space, six bedrooms and 51/2 bathrooms, the contemporary home is the Neutra's largest in Southern California. [2] The glass-enclosed garden area is visible from several rooms. [1] The original pool was also designed by Neutra. [3]
The house is one of only three Neutra designs ever built in Beverly Hills, and the only one that remains intact (one was demolished, the other completely altered). [3] It was originally built for real estate developer Herbert Kronish and his wife Hazel, who had bought the property from actress Shirley Temple [1] In an October 1953 letter, the couple stated they did not want a design that looked like a wooden box or had a flat roof, radiant heating or sliding doors — Neutra trademarks. [4] The house was owned briefly by Norton Simon and Jennifer Jones, [5] before it was sold in 1999[provide citation, house was not sold in a third-party transaction in 1999 pursuant to public records]. Neighboring estates include Madonna's former Beverly Hills home.
In January 2011, the house was sold in a foreclosure auction for $5.8 million. During that summer, the new owners applied for a permit to cap the house's sewer line, which is often a sign of preparing a building for demolition. The home was in such poor condition that broker firm Hilton & Hyland was trying to sell it for its land value alone. [6] Upon the news, the Los Angeles Conservancy, and other advocacy groups, lobbied the city of Beverly Hills to delay the demolition. [1] Richard Neutra's son, Dion Neutra helped to lobby assistance to save the house. [5] Among the alternatives to demolition being considered was relocating the house off site. Stavros Niarchos Jr., grandson of the Greek shipping tycoon, [6] eventually purchased the house in October for $12.8 million, which was originally being offered for $13.995 million, [5] saving it from demolition. [1] As a consequence, the city of Beverly Hills passed unanimously a local preservation ordinance, requiring a 30-day holding period for alterations to structures 45 years or older designed by a “master” architect. [6] [7] In 2014, the architecture firm Marmol Radziner completed the rehabilitation of the historic home, restoring it to its original footprint, and also adding a guest house.
Richard Joseph Neutra was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for most of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. His most notable works include the Kaufmann Desert House, in Palm Springs, California.
The Ambassador Hotel was a hotel in Los Angeles, California. Designed by architect Myron Hunt, the Ambassador Hotel formally opened to the public on January 1, 1921. Later renovations by architect Paul Williams were made to the hotel in the late 1940s. It was also home to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, a premier Los Angeles night spot for decades; host to six Oscar ceremonies and to every United States President from Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon.
The Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects of the day, including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, Edward Killingsworth, and Ralph Rapson to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the United States residential housing boom caused by the end of World War II and the return of millions of soldiers.
Mid-Wilshire is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is known for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the Miracle Mile shopping district.
Gregory Samuel Ain was an American architect active in the mid-20th century. Working primarily in the Los Angeles area, Ain is best known for bringing elements of modern architecture to lower- and medium-cost housing. He addressed "the common architectural problems of common people".
LaFayette Square is a historic semi-gated neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California.
The Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg was a historic modernist concrete and glass Mission 66 building dedicated November 19, 1962 by the National Park Service (NPS) to serve as a Gettysburg Battlefield visitor center, to exhibit the 1883 Paul Philippoteaux Battle of Gettysburg cyclorama and other artifacts, and to provide an observation deck. The building was demolished in 2013.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Community Charter School is a charter middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, United States. It was designed by famed architect Richard Neutra and was named in honor of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American author, poet, and philosopher.
Jardinette Apartments, now known as Marathon Apartments, is a four-story apartment building in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, designed by modernist Richard Neutra. It was Neutra's first commission in the United States. In his book Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century, Richard Weston called the Jardinette Apartments "one of the first Modernist buildings in America." It has also been called "America's first multi-family, International-style building."
Storer House is a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles built in 1923. The structure is noteworthy as one of the four Mayan Revival style textile-block houses built by Wright in the Los Angeles area from 1922 to 1924.
The Samuel Freeman House is a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California built in 1923. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The house is also listed as California Historical Landmark #1011 and as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #247.
The Neutra Office Building is a 4,800-square-foot (450 m2) office building in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles, California. The building was owned and designed by Modernist architect Richard Neutra in 1950. It served as the studio and office for Neutra's architecture practice from 1950 until Neutra's death in 1970. The building has been declared a Historic Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was listed for sale in 2007 at an asking price of $3,500,000.
Holmby Hills is a neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States.
The Walter L. Dodge House in West Hollywood, California, was an architecturally significant home, designed by Irving Gill in the Early Modern style. Though the Dodge House received significant recognition from architectural experts, it was targeted for redevelopment. A long preservation effort to shield it from the wrecking ball ultimately failed, ending with complete demolition in 1970. The Dodge House was replaced by apartments.
Neutra VDL Studio and Residences, the home of architect Richard Neutra, is located in Los Angeles, California. It is also known as the Neutra Research House, the Van der Leeuw House, the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House II, or the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research Houses and Studio. It was designed by Richard Neutra and his son Dion Neutra. The house is currently owned by California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and is maintained by its College of Environmental Design. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, and was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
Dion Neutra was a modernist / International style American architect and consultant who worked originally with his father, Richard Neutra (1892–1970).
The Hannah Carter Japanese Garden is a private Japanese garden located in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California. Known as Shikyo-en when completed in 1961, it emphasizes water, stones, and evergreen plants. The naturalistic hillside site features streams, a waterfall, a tea house, and blooming magnolia and camellia trees. According to the Los Angeles Conservancy, the garden is among the largest and most significant private residential Japanese-style gardens built in the United States in the immediate Post-World War II period. The garden was donated to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1965 and open to the public until 2011. Following a legal dispute with Hannah Carter's children, it was sold to a private citizen in 2016.
Beverly Grove is an area within the Beverly–Fairfax neighborhood in the Mid-City West region of Los Angeles, California.
The Beverly Hills City Hall is a historic building and city hall in Beverly Hills, California, United States.
The Fairfax Theatre is a mixed-use Art Deco style building constructed in 1930. The building is located in Los Angeles' Fairfax District on the northwest corner of Fairfax Ave, and Beverly Blvd. In 2021, the Fairfax Theatre was added to the list of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, and declared eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The building is recognized both for its importance to the Jewish heritage of the Fairfax district as well as for its Art Deco architecture.