Harvey House
Los Angeles
Lautner Associates

John Lautner's 1950 Hollywood Hills residence for an aluminum magnate

© Alan Weintraub

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Alan Hess

Designed in 1949 for aluminum magnate Leo Harvey, with a magnificent site encompassing unfettered views from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean, John Lautner's Harvey House was intended for a master of the universe. Harvey clearly felt at home there. But by 1998, it was a modern ruin marred by remodeling, and its exotic satinwood and padauk walls had been stained by water.

When L.A. was rediscovering its midcentury modern heritage in the 1990s, many found Lautner's houses still difficult to embrace. They were not like those by Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra, or even Rudolf Schindler. Elegant minimalism was never Lautner's interest. In combatively creative designs like the Chemosphere House, designed in 1960 and today an L.A. icon, he had staked out a distinct but uncontestable branch of native Southern California Modernism: organic, dynamic, spatially opulent, geometrically complex, technically exuberant.

These unmistakable qualities were apparent to the architects in the Harvey House, even through the ruins. To execute the unconventional restoration, they selected three people who had worked closely with Lautner: Helena Arahuete, an architect who had been with the Lautner office for 25 years; Robin Poirier, a contractor who had worked with Lautner before his death in 1994, and John de La Veaux, the original contractor for the Harvey House.

To keep the character of 1940s construction techniques, the owners elected to restore the heftier aluminum door and window frames. Damaged wood and marble were painstakingly restored or seamlessly replaced. Another decision involved retaining and restoring a large entry and art gallery addition designed for Harvey by Lautner in 1959 to enclose the outdoor forecourt. It featured a remarkable trellis of concentric circles radiating from a trunklike column clad in vertical ashlar pink Arizona stone.

Another major change from the 1950 house came with Poirier's recommendation to clad the gray downturned eaves of the compound curved roof with copper. The original pumice and cement roofing had failed immediately (Lautner often pushed new materials to their limits) and was covered with a traditional (if unsightly) hot-mopped asphalt roof.

See the November 2001 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Harvey House

Location:
Los Angeles

Client:
Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer

Architect:
Lautner Associates