If it wasn’t for Aline Barnsdall, Frank Lloyd Wright may have never made it to California. Barnsdall was a single parent, a radical nonconformist, and the heir to a large oil fortune. She hired Wright in 1919 to design an arts complex and residence on a 36-acre parcel in Los Angeles. The commission came at a difficult time in the architect’s life. In 1914, Wright’s mistress Mamah Borthwick, her two children, and four others were murdered by a servant at Taliesin, his Wisconsin estate. Wright moved to Tokyo shortly after the tragedy and was at work designing the Imperial Hotel.
Long-distance client-architect collaborations are notoriously difficult, and what ensued was an especially rocky relationship. Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, and then Wright’s assistant Rudolph Schindler (who would go on to become a well-respected architect) ended up overseeing much of the construction. Barnsdall battled regularly with Wright over delays and cost.
Despite the struggles, what emerged changed architectural history. Set around a central courtyard and a succession of spaces enclosed by pergolas, porches, and colonnades, the residence took unique advantage of California’s temperate climate and offered a vision for a new type of open-plan design. Wright used abstracted iterations of the hollyhock, Barnsdall’s favorite flowering plant, throughout the exterior and interior, and even in furniture and textiles.
Earlier this year, the Hollyhock House reopened to the public after a four-year restoration overseen by curator Jeffrey Herr.
Click here to tour one of America’s residential masterpieces.
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