Price Reduced 50% From Original Asking Price

LOS FELIZ—For sale and recently reduced! 6,000 square foot Los Feliz mansion in a pre-Columbian style evoking the mystique of a Mayan temple. This fixer-upper was “renovated” in 1994 by the Northridge earthquake, and recent flooding has added an aquatic element to the site. But, with a bit of elbow grease, you can dig out some of the old Hollywood glamour under this pile of concrete bricks.  It can all be yours for the bargain price of $7.495 million.

Why would any buyer be crazy enough to go for this deal? Because this is the Ennis House, meaning Frank Lloyd Wright designed these concrete ruins, and this is the property’s second price chop, after it was reduced from $15 to $10.5 million in February. This latest reduction, announced in June, brings it to 50% off the original asking price.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Everyone knows Frank Lloyd Wright and his iconic work, and one would expect properties like the Ennis House to be snapped up in an instant, by virtue of Wright’s name alone. However, Wright’s four concrete textile-block houses in Los Angeles (the Ennis, Millard, Storer, and Freeman houses) are well known for creating more headaches than headlines, due to expensive and ongoing conservation issues.  Wright’s Millard House in Pasadena has also languished on the market, and both properties are considered to need significant updating and maintenance.

The first Ennis House reduction, announced by Christie’s Great Estates in February, was intended to underscore “the foundation’s commitment to finding the right buyer and enabling that buyer to reinvest in the home’s preservation,” according to Ennis House Foundation President, James DeMeo.

Now, even at the “bargain” price of $7.5 million, it is doubtful many buyers will be able to afford the necessary renovation—the house is rumored to need upwards of $7 million in additional structural repairs and maintenance.

From one particularly picky seller’s point of view, these properties are still rare works of art, and should be treated as such. Yet, from the buyer’s perspective, the evocative allure of owning a Wright house no longer outweighs the conservation concerns, despite the properties’ history and legacy in Los Angeles.

“If you live there, you have to be totally dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright and be willing to spend a lot of money to keep it from floating down the hill,” explained Wim de Wit, Head of the Getty’s Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art. “It demands quite a bit to live in a landmark building.”

But how low must the prices go before these expensive fixer-uppers are again appreciated for their true value?

For now, there is at least one person invested in the future of one of Wright’s homes: its realtor.  Crosby Doe Associates, out of Beverly Hills, owns the listing for the Pasadena Millard House (current asking price: $4.9 million), as well as listings for homes by famed L.A. Modernists such as John Lautner, Rudolph Schindler and Craig Ellwood.

In fact, Crosby Doe deals only in so-called “capital A” architecture, and would surely balk at being described as a “realtor” by profession.  Doe considers himself to be a conservationist and architecture historian rather than simply a real estate broker, and takes great care in ensuring that the architectural integrity of his listings are continued from one owner to the next.  He is as selective with his buyers as he is with his listings.

Doe’s care in the sale and maintenance of each listing has even developed an unofficial catchphrase in real estate circles: “WWCD: What Would Crosby Do?” Many buyers seek Doe’s advice about how to maintain the architects’ intent in their homes.  Even if they do not, he is not shy about letting them know what he thinks.

Of a Richard Neutra house recently sold, Doe complained: “The new owners have ruined it. Inside there is almost nothing left.  And worst of all, they think they have improved on Neutra. It’s as if someone bought a Monet and then said, ‘I don’t like the sky here and I want more flowers there.’”

He has even ruffled the feathers of high-profile clients like Diane Keaton, respected for her passion for Los Angeles architecture, and Madonna, because they made changes not in line with the original design objective of their houses.

In 1922, Wright opened an office in Los Angeles looking for a change, after an unfortunate turn of events at his Wisconsin live-work studio Taliesin, including the brutal murder of his girlfriend by a servant. At 55 years old, he was already considered past his prime, known mostly for his groundbreaking Prairie Houses in Chicago. In the early 1920’s in the growing city of Los Angeles, Wright sought to reinvent himself and his practice, and he began to experiment with concrete.

Wright’s textile-block method was designed to keep the cost of construction and materials down, accessible to any family with a limited budget.  The uniform pieces could be cast and laid by the owners themselves, allowing for easy modifications if need be.  Wright called this method the “Usonian Automatic,” a play on “U.S.A.,” envisioning the future for middle-class living.

Though in the same aesthetic as the Millard House, Wright abandoned all middle-class sensibility with the 1924 Ennis House, his last commission of this type, which was considerably larger and more dramatic.

“In the siting and design of the Ennis house,” according to the late architecture historian David Gebhard in his book, The California Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, “Wright went the furthest in revealing his attachment to the pre-Columbian architecture of Mexico and Central America.” The Ennis House was so sensational that it was used as a movie set several times, including 1959’s House on Haunted Hill.

Though the middle-class ideal of the textile-block method predated L.A.’s popular Case Study House program by several decades, the trend never caught on. In practice, concrete block construction proved to be quite expensive.  For example, in the case of the Pasadena Millard house, Wright contracted the Millards to pay $10,000 to build the house, an already significant sum in 1923; in actuality, it cost $23,000 to build.  


The houses are even less practical to maintain today. While the privately-owned Millard House has been adequately renovated, the foundation-funded Ennis House has fallen under disrepair.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake and a series of heavy rains in 2005, the city red-tagged the building as uninhabitable and the National Trust placed the house on the 11 Most Endangered list. Under private ownership until 2005, the house is now under the purview of the non-profit Ennis House Foundation.  The Foundation has had modest success raising $6.5 million in funding for the stabilization of the house, and has now decided to put the house on the market in hopes of attracting a private buyer.

In a statement by the Ennis House Foundation on their website, they explain that “the house needs more stewardship at this point than a small nonprofit can sustain.”