.jpg){kind=link}
Wright was in Tokyo building a hotel while this one went up. He left it to his son and to Rudolph Schindler, and it is still the only World Heritage Site in Los Angeles.
At a glance
Hollyhock House stands on Olive Hill in East Hollywood, at the centre of what is now Barnsdall Art Park. Frank Lloyd Wright built it between 1919 and 1921 for Aline Barnsdall, an oil heiress who intended it as the centrepiece of an arts complex with a theatre, a cinema, artists’ residences and shops. Only the house and its outbuildings were built. It is named for Barnsdall’s favourite flower, which Wright used as the decorative theme throughout. In 1927 she gave the house and twelve acres to the City of Los Angeles as a memorial to her father. In 2019 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the twentieth-century architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright — the only World Heritage Site in the city.
Key facts
- Built: 1919–1921
- Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
- Built for: Aline Barnsdall, oil heiress and philanthropist
- Supervised on site by: Lloyd Wright, the architect’s son, and Rudolph M. Schindler — Wright was in Tokyo working on the Imperial Hotel
- Manner: what Wright called California Romanza, from the musical term for freedom to make one’s own form
- Given to the city: 1927, with twelve acres on Olive Hill, in memory of her father Theodore
- UNESCO: inscribed 2019, within The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
- GPS: 34.100000, -118.294444 — View on Google Maps
History
Aline Barnsdall bought Olive Hill to build a cultural centre, not a private house. The programme she set out — repertory theatre, cinema, housing for artists, shops — was unusually ambitious for Los Angeles in 1919, a city then only beginning to think of itself as a place with institutions. The house was to be the centre of it. The rest was never built.
Wright took the commission and then left for Tokyo, where the Imperial Hotel occupied him for years. Supervision fell to his son Lloyd Wright and to Rudolph Schindler, both of whom went on to shape Southern Californian modernism in their own right. A building supervised by two future masters, at a distance from its author, is an unusual object, and the tensions show.
Barnsdall gave the house and twelve acres to the city in 1927. Since then it has been through long periods of neglect and several restorations, and in 2019 it entered the World Heritage List with seven other Wright buildings. It is the only World Heritage Site in Los Angeles.
What you see
Heavy, battered walls that lean slightly inward, long horizontals, and almost no windows on the approach — the house turns away from the street and opens onto courtyards. The massing has been called Mayan Revival, and the comparison holds for the profile, though Wright would not have accepted the label.
The hollyhock is the key. Abstracted into a stylised, geometric motif, it runs through the art-stone frieze outside and into the furniture, the fittings and the textiles inside. This is Wright’s method at its clearest: one natural form, abstracted to a geometry, repeated at every scale from the roofline to the chair backs. Look for it on the parapets first, then find it again indoors.
Practical information
- Open for self-guided and guided tours on set days — check the schedule and book
- Barnsdall Art Park around it is free and open, with one of the better views over Los Angeles
- The park also holds the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the arts programmes Barnsdall intended
Getting there
Olive Hill rises off Hollywood Boulevard in East Hollywood. The Metro B Line station at Vermont and Sunset is about ten minutes on foot; there is parking in the park. The walk up the hill from Hollywood Boulevard is short but steep.
Nearby
- Glessner House — the Chicago house Wright admired as a young man
- Otto Wagner Villa — an architect’s own house, in Vienna
Sources
- Wikipedia, « Hollyhock House » — the construction between 1919 and 1921, Aline Barnsdall and the unbuilt arts complex, the hollyhock motif, the supervision by Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler while Wright was in Tokyo, the gift to the city in 1927 and the UNESCO inscription of 2019
- City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs — the house, the park and visiting
- Docomomo US, register entry for Hollyhock House — California Romanza and the building’s significance
- Wikipedia coordinates — location
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.