#wallace neff

[nightworldrecords]

Wallace Neff

[ofhouses]

1003. Wallace Neff /// Andrew Neff Airform Bubble House /// Pasadena, California, USA /// 1946

OfHouses presents: The Show Must Go On, part III. (Photos: © Maynard L. Parker, Leslie Williamson. Source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Jeffrey Head, ‘No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff’, New York: Princeton Architectural Press , 2011.)

[iliketoseeeverythinginneon]

Instagram: iliketoseeeverythinginneon

[libraryofva]

Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection Original November 15, 1941 caption: "Fairfax County, Va. Workmen were busy in a defense housing experiment here today, spraying a concrete mixture onto inflated rubber forms to produce finished products requiring neither plaster nor paint. The Defense Homes Corporation is conducting the experiment."

[hollyweirdangeleno]

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard lived here

[zazamatic]

One of the great “power” couples of silent Hollywood, Fred Thomson and Frances Marion were counted among Cinemaland’s most popular pairs during the ten years they spent together in the heady twenties before their fairy tale existence was shattered by Fred’s sudden and tragic death on Christmas Day 1928 at age 38.

The brilliant architect Wallace Neff transformed the Thomson’s dreams and needs onto the barren hillside converting it into a kingdom unto itself and an enchanted one at that. As Frances was to write:

“In a short while our hill resembled a gigantic wedding cake. pine trees studded every tier, while on top rose a huge house with a drawing room two stories and a half high, rare tapestries on the walls, an Aeolian pipe organ, and windows overlooking five acres of lawn. Beautifully laid out on the terrace were a tiled barbeque, an aviary, and a hundred-foot swimming pool. Fred and his horses and I had gone Hollywood!”

Reporter Grace Kingsley breathlessly recounted a visit to a party Frances threw for her lady friends at the Enchanted hill in 1927, “We were being ushered into the lofty hall and into the great living room, with its wide view of the surrounding country, which you look at through those beautiful arched windows and which gives also a view on the other side of the long Italian garden, with its colored walls, its fountains and many-hued flowers. If there was a feminine star missing that day from Frances’ party I don’t know who it could have been.” Kingsley went on to prove her point by naming such luminaries as Lillian Gish, Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, Gloria Swanson, Hedda Hopper, Theda Bara, Mabel Normand, Claire Windsor, Mary Astor, ZaSu Pitts, Peg Talmadge, Janet Gaynor, Bessie Love and Marie Dressler among those in attendance. “Somewhere in the Fred Thomson-Frances Marion home is a big pipe organ,” she continued, “and somebody was playing it as we visited together – a charming, distant harmony that lent a still more beautiful atmosphere in an already entirely delightful occasion.”

Ten days before Christmas, as the couple gazed down at the twinkling lights of Beverly Hills far down in the distance, she noticed her husband had a slight limp. She asked him if the leg he broke the previous year in an on-set accident was troubling him. “No,” he replied. “I stepped on a rusty nail and it bothers me a little. Nothing to worry about.” He died Christmas Day in his wife’s arms. A victim of medical misdiagnosis with his tetanus believed by doctors to be a gallbladder problem.

In 1997 the estate was sold to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Allen paid $20,000,000 for the legendary estate and then quickly ordered the entire Enchanted Hill and its outbuildings, Silver King’s mahogany-floored stable; the guest house; Cowboy’s House; the two riding rings; tennis court; acres of mature and lush gardens; and the 100-foot swimming pool to be bulldozed into oblivion. More than a decade later, it sits as a vacant, weed-covered lot.

https://paradiseleased.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/lost-hollywood-the-enchanted-hill-of-fred-thomson-and-frances-marion/

[zazamatic]

Harry H. Culver - Wallace Neff – California Spanish

A young architect, Wallace Neff, was Culver’s choice to design his Cheviot Hills mansion.  Neff convinced Culver to build a Spanish style home, which is featured in books on Neff. The young Neff, destined to become a famous architect, went on to design for many familiar names, like Darryl Zanuck, Harpo Marx, King Vidor, Groucho Marx.

Harry Culver was born in 1880 in Milford, Nebraska. Milford had been founded by his grandfather and from an early age Culver shared his family's enterprising spirit.  After a brief stint in the Spanish American War and success as a reporter for the Manila Times, where he befriended future president William Taft, he landed in California in 1910. Determined to found his own "dream" town, he apprenticed with the developer I.N. Van Nuys and explored the greater L.A. area, looking for his own perfect plot of land.

Soon this master salesman was acquiring the land with other people's money and wooing Midwestern investors to live in the newly named "Culver City."  Harry employed similarly enthusiastic young men to ride the rails from New York to L.A. They would then befriend tourists and lure them to the La Ballona Valley, where they gave high pressure talks in sweaty sales tents. Observing that "what seems to attract people is something moving,"He and his sales staff lashed down an auto's steering wheel to set an attention getting 'run-away car' circling adjacent to his office. He staged a polo game featuring Fords rather than horses ... invited boys under 16 to race home-made cars for a Junior Vanderbilt Cup, promoted a ... marathon race from Los Angeles to Culver City, recruited residents to join a monthly Chamber of Commerce caravan that followed a brass band into neighboring towns to convert their residents.

Since the 1920’s, Culver City has been a significant center for motion picture and later television production, in part because it was home to MGM Studios for many years.  By enticing movie industry moguls such as Thomas Ince and Hal Roach to move into his city in the early years, Harry Culver’s plan played a vital role in bringing movie making into his backyard.

https://vickielester.com/2014/10/06/wallace-neff-california-spanish-on-steroids/

http://www.culvercityhistoricalsociety.org/articles/spring-2015-notes-from-from-your-city-historian/

http://www.oldspanishtrail.org

http://www.culverhotel.com/default.aspx?pg=history

https://www.kcet.org/history-society/the-culver-hotel-harry-c-culvers-flatiron-of-fun

[wernergvt]

An illustration of a substantial, two-story, Tuscan-style home

Angi