Outdoors in Hollywood: BARNSDALL ART PARK
1919 was a watershed year in Hollywood history. World War I had ended. The motion picture industry had put down roots. Hollywood had been a part of the City of Los Angeles for almost a decade. In the Cahuenga Pass, an outdoor cultural venue for music (Hollywood Bowl) was being planned in the Daisy Dell and a second outdoor amphitheater (Pilgrimage Play Theater) was being envisioned in Weid Canyon thanks to the largesse of Christine Wetherill Stevenson, an heiress from Philadelphia. In Vermont Canyon, Griffith J. Griffith was envisioning and endowing a Greek Theater and Observatory in the park he’d donated to the city in 1896 (projects which would not be realized until long after his death in 1919).
Coincidentally, another Pennsylvania heiress would soon complete the circle of hillside arts venues which stretched from Vermont Avenue to the Cahuenga Pass. It’s a story fit for Hollywood screenplays, starring the era’s most famous architect and an unconventional, dramatic, free-spirited heiress.
The fortunes of Pennsylvania oil baron William Barnsdall and his son, Theodore Newton, financed the artistic ambitions of Newton’s daughter, Aline. Well-travelled and unconventional, Aline possessed a passion for the arts. Her interest in experimental theater led her to Chicago, where she met the equally unconventional architect Frank Lloyd Wright who’d just finished his Midway Gardens project. Barnsdall envisioned her own arts complex years before she found her perfect site in Hollywood. Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco had also been contenders. She finally decided that Los Angeles would be the ideal location for the ambitious and innovative development, so in 1919 she purchased a Hollywood hilltop known as Olive Hill, on the east end of Hollywood. The thirty-six-acre site had panoramic views of the Cahuenga Valley, the Hollywood Hills and downtown. Wright had already been doing conceptual designs as early as 1915 and took full advantage of this prominent canvas, designing a series of structures and terraces staggered on the hillside.
The residence for Ms. Barnsdall claimed priority. Aline had a daughter in 1917 and desired a home as she contemplated an even larger business venture. Known as Hollyhock House because its abstract design motif incorporated her favorite flower, the house was Wright’s first Los Angeles commission. Built between 1919 and 1921, it represents his earliest efforts to develop a regionally appropriate style of architecture in Southern California that integrated the use of indigenous materials. Taking advantage of the mild climate, the residence is incorporated into its landscape with many of its rooms opening into its garden setting. Said Barnsdall, “Mr. Wright believes that a California house should be half house and half gardens, and I am strongly of the same opinion. I therefore require much room for my own home, but I propose to keep my garden always open to the public, that this spot may be available to those lovers of the beautiful who wish to come here to view sunsets, dawn on the mountains and other spectacles of nature, visible in few other places in the City.”
Like many of Wright’s commissions, the relationship between client and architect proved difficult. Both travelled extensively throughout the project, money was tight, and the construction and sequencing changed often with Aline’s disparate visions. A Master Plan for Olive Hill was developed in 1920 and repeatedly revised. A theater, main residence, several ancillary residences, terraced shops and apartments were all contemplated. By 1923, Hollyhock, Residence A, and the now demolished Residence B, along with gardens and landscape features crowned the hilltop. Barnsdall, however, never seemed entirely comfortable or committed to the project and within a year, began to explore the idea of donating it to the City. By 1927, with just a few of the planned structures built, Barnsdall gave Hollyhock House and eleven of the surrounding acres to the City of Los Angeles for use as a public park. The amazing collaboration, which also played a significant role in the careers of Wright’s son Lloyd, and modernist architect Rudolf Schindler, came to an end.
The city later added a Junior Arts Center (1961) and Municipal Arts Gallery (1971), and restored the house, Residence A, and other features. Today, the Barnsdall Park complex is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is also a World Heritage site. With its mission to present and develop arts in the region, the City continues to restore Wright’s structures with great care.
~ Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs
Sources: Bruce Torrence; EO Palmer; Discover Hollywood magazine; laparks.org; Kathryn Smith’s Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House and Olive Hill, Rizzoli, 1992.
