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Wright in Racine
The Ennis House
Posted by:
mhertzberg on
July 21, 2008 at
3:00PM CST
 Robert Leary cooked himself a batch of popcorn (with real butter, if you please), and settled down to watch a movie in the book-lined library of his 1909 California craftsman-style house. He was not just a movie buff that Saturday night. He was an architectural archaeologist, researching Frank Lloyd Wright’s majestic and sprawling Ennis House (1924). There are two buildings at the Ennis House: the main house, and the garage and chauffeur’s quarters, west of the house. The “motor court,” which would be called a driveway today, separates the two.  My friend Robert Leary, at the Ennis House Leary had heard that the 1933 film “Female,” starring Ruth Chatterton shows what the original doors and windows in the garage and chauffeur’s quarters looked like. He found what he was looking for, about eight minutes into the hour-long film, “I let out a yelp last night at 12:30!”
The 75-year-old black and white comedy romance movie confirmed that the original building had garage doors and French windows. “Thank God we had not done those windows (during the restoration)! It is a whole other project that involved money, but at least we have it! It’s clear as day!” Leary wanted to call his friends, but it was too late at night. “I was jumping at the chance of sharing the good news. You can look at the Ennis House, and see all the terrible things that have happened. A lot of bad luck.” The house has had a succession of private owners, including Charles and Mabel Ennis, who commissioned it. It has likely had few stewards like Leary, past president and current member of the Ennis House Foundation board of directors. He is passionate about the house and about the Foundation. Their efforts saved the house from sliding off the southern face of the hills of Los Feliz, defying the expectations of many people who thought the house would be lost forever. The house is one of four that Wright designed for Los Angeles clients using his patented concrete textile block construction method. The numbers are staggering: there are some 27,000 blocks inside and outside the Ennis House, in 27 different varieties. Some are patterned on both sides; others on only one side; some are half blocks; and some are quarter blocks. Each block is 16 x 16 inches. The house is 4,000 square feet; the footprint of the property, including the retaining walls, the motor court, and the garage and chauffeur’s quarters, is about 6500 square feet. Add to those statistics one more that is almost unimaginable: 400 million pounds of concrete have been poured in the last two years to stabilize the house. Just two years earlier, in 2004, the Ennis House had been named one of the Eleven Most Endangered Properties in America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, after being nominated for that dubious distinction by The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The signature retaining wall is now a facade, rather than part of the structure of the house. It hides what Leary calls an “invisible superstructure under the house and the property.” The modern engineering included drilling pylons 57 feet into solid bedrock, behind the wall. Leary first met the Ennis House when he was a docent for Wright’s Hollyhock House, across from Ennis. “We were taken there on a tour as part of our ongoing education. We were taken to a number of Wright properties around California. I had heard of it, and had clearly seen it from Hollyhock House. “To actually see it is one thing, to go inside is a whole other experience. It was so large and it was so different from so many of the other lovely small Frank Lloyd Wright houses I’d seen in California and the East Coast area. Most of the houses I’d seen from outside were modest in scale and the Ennis House and Hollyhock House were so bombastic in their presentation. They were so audacious and grand and beautiful and just thereby being so unique. I could learn that this was Frank Lloyd Wright working on a grander scale.” He was not disappointed. “My first impression was just overwhelming. I wanted to own it. I wanted to buy it on the spot.” The house was owned at the time by Augustus Brown, who was there during Leary’s visit. The Northridge earthquake of January 20,1994 had recently struck the city. “The Ennis House at that time was in grave shape. It was deteriorating. You could see the effect of the earthquake, how they had to put up temporary shoring. “He (Brown) was in process of trying to raise as much money as he could.” The money would be used to restore, rather than save the property. “It was hugely different, the realization was that it had to be saved, not restored yet. It was in immediate danger of structural collapse. I never dreamed that I would be in his position 11 or 12 years later!” The house clung precariously to the side of the hill for the next 11 years, during which time Mr. Brown died. “A very dedicated group of volunteers led by Franklin DeGroot was doing everything they could to raise money, to raise awareness. The probability was that the house was facing imminent structural collapse.” Diane Keaton, the actress, took up the cause of the Ennis House after the National Trust listing of it as one of the most endangered properties in the nation. She wrote press releases and gave interviews about the house. Her message was that the house “is” collapsing, according to Leary. Then, as if the house was not already in bad enough shape, 2005 brought rain, “catastrophic rain, like we had not had in one hundred years.” It was a turning point for the house, Leary says. “Between Diane Keaton’s clarion call, the National Trust listing, and the rain of 2005, a new group was brought in to see what we could do immediately to save the house.” There was no time to waste, he says. The Ennis House Foundation was formed, though the efforts of film producer Joel Silver (then owner of Wright’s Storer House, also in Los Angeles, and Auldbrass, in South Carolina); Ron Scherubel, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy; the National Trust; and the Los Angeles Conservancy. Leary was invited to join the board. “I was really stunned that they wanted me, possibly because I had been so involved with Hollyhock House, and was a member of all three (organizations).” He was elected chairman. They had to act decisively, “We did not have the luxury of ‘let’s really think this through.’” The board did not meddle in areas in which it had no expertise. “The board religiously stuck to the behind the scenes stuff, to let the architectural people and engineers do what they do best, and not get involved in the rigimarole.” They told the experts, ‘Go do what you can, and do it quickly.’ Leary singles out another group for praise. “It truly is the accountants and the lawyers that were the genius for this miracle that has taken place in three years. Yes, the architects and engineers were helpful, and historians and others, but it really was the lawyers and the accountants who were able to free up the money, some from FEMA, some from banks, some from loans. It really was a community effort, all volunteer.” A diverse group of people, with varied talents committed to the rescue effort. “Everyone came together and has continued to come together pro bono because of the reality of the grave future of the Ennis House. We all came to the conclusion indeed, that if this house was lost, Los Angeles would never live down the shame. We would never live it down if something so extraordinarily important in the cultural history of the U.S. were lost.” In spite of the problems the house had almost from the beginning, there have been bright spots, Leary says. Lloyd Wright, the architect’s son, was supervising construction, when he wrote to his father that the retaining wall was failing. Decades later, the house was badly damaged by the earthquake and rains, to be sure, but Leary says, “Conversely, at the same time, even ironically, there was so much good luck, the fact that the interior was never really mucked up at all.” There were also some lucky finds. “When the Ennis House Foundation first started taking things over and cleaning out the house and ground in 2005, we were in the chauffeur’s quarters, just after disastrous rains. The ceilings were caving in. It was just abominable and abysmal, beyond gross. We were looking for anything we could salvage, anything that might be important. In the back of the room were these five file cabinets. Three of the five were completely drenched with water and had been there for a year after being drenched. All had to be chucked. In the bottom drawer of the last file cabinet, we found about 300 construction photographs. “They showed every stage of the Ennis House through the years except a few we needed. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of historic construction photos of the Ennis House, the Freeman House, and Julius Schulman photos. Thank God. If they had been only 12-14 inches over to the right, they would have been lost forever. This was the first ball in our court. We don’t have money, the house is collapsing. This got me so jazzed.” That was only the beginning. They found iron work, some of the latches from the gate (in an antique store). “We found gobs of stuff.” It has now all been photographed, scanned, and filed on discs. Leary is especially proud of an artifact he found in the dirt under the house in late 2005. “I found one original mold (for the textile blocks) in the mud, when there basically was no southern retaining wall. I was under the house, literally in the cavernous underside of the house, crawling in the mud and the dirt, knowing this is a rare opportunity. I wanted to see how the house was supported. “Wright called a lot of his supports ‘dead men,’ joists, support beams, load bearing walls under the properties. I wanted to see just how the Ennis House had originally been supported. I was crawling in the guts of the house in the mud and the dirt, and there was this rusted piece of metal that was just sicking out of the dirt. I was wondering what it was. I dug and dug more. I saw it was a square with metal supports on both sides, holding two pieces of wood. I realized it was a mold for the negative space or the inside of a block. Obviously, when the workers were finished, they just left it there, so we have this wonderful cultural artifact of the craftsmanship of these four wonderful (textile block) houses, but especially of the Ennis House, of the 27,000 blocks, produced one at a time. They were not cookie cutter, not mass produced. Here was material that they used; that they used to build the Ennis House! “That sort of thing...is priceless. It is like finding the Raiders of the Lost Ark Holy Grail. Historians and researchers and craftspeople in the future can see that this was in effect just one on one, a worker producing his art.” Leary is not ready to stop searching. “There’s more out there. There was a time last year where Steve (McAvoy, a fellow board member) and I were literally finding a piece of the puzzle once a week.” They traded phone calls. “Steve, you’re never going to believe this. Robert, you’re never going to believe this.” These kinds of finds helped them restore the Ennis bathrooms to their original colors. “Now the biggest example of this energy or luck is ‘Female’ (the movie) with the garage door and the French windows.” Leary believes that the chauffeur’s quarters are overlooked in their importance. “I try to emphasize that the Ennis House property has two buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright. In actuality the chauffeur’s quarters was built first. It was built before the Ennis House. The geometrics of the chauffeur’s quarters are revelatory of where Wright is going with pre-Usonian ideas, like Residence A at Barnsdall Park. These are two buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright that get very little notice. Wright completely redesigned the interior of the Ennis House in the 1940s for John Nesbitt, the second owner of the home. Not only did Wright suggest furniture and a fireplace designed in styles seen in his Usonian homes, but he also suggested renaming the house “Sijistan,” the Persian name of the Safavid Caliph’s palace, according to Prof. Neil Levine.1 “He completely reworks the scale and the proportions and the living spaces and dining. None of that came to be through Nesbitt’s tenure. They did add a billiard room downstairs in what had been storage space. In the upper part, in what had once been a garden, they added a lap pool and a few other minor alterations. Those were the only ones carried out in the 1940s. Plans for furniture, light fixtures, dimensions are in the Taliesin archives. Most of it was never carried out.” The house has many leaded glass windows. Leary thinks only five were designed by Wright. They are not the most prominent windows in the house (one opaque one is between Mrs. Ennis’ bathroom and the signature hallway of the house). The more prominent windows, including those in the dining room and living room, may be the work of Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, who supervised construction of the house. The extant dining room table dates to the 1930s. Wright designed one for the house in the 1940s, but it was never built. Leary is asked about whether Wright might have had “a fit” about the furniture and light fixtures which he did not design. “I would imagine. They are Mediterranean, neo-Spanish of that period, which does work with the California southwest houses of that period, just not with the Ennis House.” He has advice for people who want to experience Wright’s work. “Let the house speak to you. In my experience in visiting homes and buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the experience of other people I’ve talked to, it’s one thing to go into a Frank Lloyd Wright space on a tour or experience it for an hour or so. It’s completely different to spend large amounts of time in these spaces, quietly and let the house or building speak to you. “There is nothing like the extraordinarily unique opportunity to spend time in one of the spaces with friends, good food, a good bottle of wine; a fireplace is working, the light changes. See how the character of these spaces are completely different from the day time into the evening. Encourage people to go to these buildings where you could spend time. Spend as much time as you can in these places. That’s when the real genius of Wright surfaces, 50 years or so after he died.” Leary is an unshakable optimist. “As many stumbles, and as many heartbreaks, and God-awful stuff that you just want to tear your hair out, then there’s just been something that’s been incredible. It’s just going to go on. What could be more exciting? The house will be better studied, better researched, better catalogued than ever.” The Ennis House restoration won a 2007 Preservation Award from the Los Angeles Conservancy. Leary was moved by the award, but knows the work is far from over. “I look at the work that has to be done. I think it’s a little early, but it’s nice, it gets out the perception that the Ennis House is not dead.” Leary is Roman Catholic, but turns to a Yiddish expression, when he talks about the effort to save the house, “It’s a mitzvah” (good deed). Indeed! Links: Ennis House Foundation: http://www.ennishouse.org Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy: www.savewright.org Los Angeles Conservancy: http://www.laconservancy.org/ Movies and television shows that have been filmed on location at the Ennis House include: Female (1933) The House on Haunted Hill (1959) * The Terminal Man (1974) Day of the Locust (1975) Blade Runner (1982) * Black Rain (1989) The Karate Kid, Part III (1989) * Moon 44 (1990) Predator 2 (1990) Twin Peaks (1990) Blood Ties (1991) Grand Canyon (1991) The Rocketeer (1991) Fallen Angels (1993) The Glimmer Man (1996) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) The Replacement Killers (1998) Rush Hour (1998) The Thirteenth Floor (1999) * Indicates the three most famous uses of the house as a movie location (Source: The Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ which lists the house as the Ennis-Brown House. It is now known only by its original name, the Ennis House).   Many thanks to my colleague Scott Anderson, for his technical help producing the slide shows of my photos.
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