Thanks for sharing. I'm jealous -- all my time in LA, the home was closed for renovation.

Thanks! I like how it looks in black and white historic photos, and the view of the sky at night from the hill's grassy spot nearby.

What a stunning building.

When I was in art school, I lived in Pasadena and used to walk by another private FLW house, LaMiniatura all the time. I decided to do a report on it for school and then one lucky day I saw that there were construction workers there and I snuck onto the property. It was really an amazing experience, sneaking around inside of someone's famous house like that.

It's interesting because the woman who had owned the property had a gigantic library so she decided she wanted FLW's concrete architecture as a form of fire-proofing. His basic idea for all of those concrete block homes was that he wanted to see if you could create a form of architecture that could be just cast in concrete & then assembled by unskilled laborers. He felt maybe people would be able to practically mail order reasonably priced architecture in the future that way... you'd just order the house, get the concrete blocks, and just pay workmen to assemble it for you. He thought maybe it could take off and be a common form of inexpensive construction. Would've been nice but nothing is ever as easy as you want it to be, especially when you're a genius. The houses weren't as simple to build as he wanted them to be. Anyhow, one thing I really remember is that I felt like I had to duck down to get through the doorways. Frank Lloyd Wright was only 5'8" or so and in many of his houses he built the doorways to fit HIM. He just didn't think taller doorways were necessary or something, if HE fit through it, then it was perfect.

I'm something of a Wright fan, I've toured a few of his houses and its always been fairly rewarding. Though if you want one piece of advice, if you ever go to Taliesen West, go when the architects aren't there. I went in April of 95 when they were there, and the tour was extremely abbreviated, only a little bit of the grounds, nothing interior.

My boss (who is an architect) told me a really funny story about his visit to the other Taliesen, in Wisconsin: While touring the (still active) design studio, he commented on the fact that all the current drawings were hardlined, and asked why nothing was drawn freehand. The architect giving the tour clenched up and stated tersely that "Mister Wright believed in the correct use of tools!" Such slavish devotion is ironic for the atelier of a man who stood for innovation and creativity.