Misplaced Pages

#63936

49-609: In 1933, its owner and charter member of the Midwestern Ballroom Operators' Association (MBOA), Orlaf K. Farr hired Rudolph Michael Schindler , a well-known architect, to convert the existing arena amusement hall that had been built in 1927 into configuration more suitable to accommodate a dance floor. Farr operated Rainbow Ballroom since its opening until selling in December 1946 to Felix Bernard Beyer and James Raymond Norton. Verne Byers , Felix Beyer's son, became manager of

98-479: A 1947 article for the Los Angeles Times , "The Changing House," Neutra emphasizes the "ready-for-anything" plan – stressing an open, multifunctional plan for living spaces that are flexible, adaptable and easily modified for any type of life or event. Neutra had a sharp sense of irony. In his autobiography, Life and Shape , he included a playful anecdote about an anonymous movie producer-client who electrified

147-691: A contemporary revaluation for its inventiveness, character, and formal qualities, which are making his designs familiar to a new generation of architects. The Mackey Apartments and the Schindler Residence are maintained by the Friends of the Schindler House and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture . The MAK Center offers a variety of exhibitions and events. The center also sponsors six-month residencies for emerging architects and artists who are housed in

196-408: A number of buildings in and around Los Angeles that seem to be admirable from the standpoint of design, and I have not heard of any of them falling down." "He has a good mind, is affectionate in disposition, and is fairly honorable I believe. Personally, though strongly individual, he is not unduly eccentric and I, in common with many others, like him very much." "Personally, I appreciate Rudolph. He

245-653: A partnership with his son Dion Neutra. Between 1960 and 1970, Neutra created eight villas in Europe, four in Switzerland, three in Germany, and one in France. Prominent clients in this period included Gerd Bucerius , publisher of Die Zeit , as well as figures from commerce and science. His work was also part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics . Richard Joseph Neutra died on April 16, 1970, at

294-567: A physician and environmental epidemiologist. Richard Neutra moved to the United States by 1923 and became a naturalized citizen in 1929. He worked briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright before accepting an invitation from Rudolf Schindler , a close friend from his university days, to work and live communally in Schindler's Kings Road House in California. Neutra's first works in California were both in

343-417: A publicity man, but I am not willing to sail under his flag as an architect." "I consider myself the first and still one of the few architects who consciously abandoned stylistic sculptural architecture in order to develop space as a medium of art. ... I believe that outside of Frank Lloyd Wright I am the only architect in U.S. who has attained a distinct local and personal form language." "He has built quite

392-414: A race riot broke out during a Fats Domino concert/dance when an unidentified man kicked over the table of a man and woman who had just finished a dance – the man was African American and the woman was Caucasian. It took more than an hour to quell the disturbance, which drew 18 police patrol cars, three police paddy wagons, and an ambulance. Police estimated that were 2,500 people in the ballroom during

441-509: A study trip to Italy and the Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud (son of Sigmund Freud ). In June 1914, Neutra's studies were interrupted when he was ordered to Trebinje , where he served as a lieutenant in the artillery until the end of World War I. Dione Neutra recalled her husband Richard's hatred of the retribution against the Serbs in an interview conducted in 1978 after his death: "He talked about

490-1098: A visiting professor of design at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. In 1949 Neutra formed a partnership with Robert E. Alexander that lasted until 1958, which finally gave him the opportunity to design larger commercial and institutional buildings. In 1955, the United States Department of State commissioned Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. Neutra's appointment was part of an ambitious program of architectural commissions to renowned architects, which included embassies by Walter Gropius in Athens, Edward Durrell Stone in New Delhi, Marcel Breuer in The Hague, Josep Lluis Sert in Baghdad, and Eero Saarinen in London. In 1965, Neutra formed

539-458: A warehouse. After years of abuse and neglect, the red brick building was renovated in 2002 into offices by the architectural firm of Sink Combs Dethlefs. The renewed facility serves as the national headquarters for the architectural firm and is shared with several businesses. The entrance is at 475 N Lincoln Street. Rudolph Michael Schindler Rudolph Michael Schindler (born Rudolf Michael Schlesinger ; September 10, 1887 - August 22, 1953)

SECTION 10

#1733085853064

588-541: A year before Schindler's death. Schindler's early buildings usually are characterized by concrete construction. The Kings Road House, Pueblo Ribera Court, Lovell Beach House, Wolfe House, and How House are the projects most frequently identified among these. The Kings Road house was designed as a studio and home for Schindler, his wife, and their friends Clyde and Marian DaCamara Chace. The floor plan worked itself around several L-shapes. Construction features included tilt up concrete panels cast on site, which contrasted with

637-566: Is an incorrigible Bohemian and refuses to allow the Los Angeles barber to apply the razor to the scruff of his neck. He also has peculiarly simple and effective ideas regarding his own personal conduct. I believe, however, that he is capable as an artist. I have found him a too complacent and therefore a rotten superintendent. The buildings that he has recently built in Los Angeles are well designed, but badly executed. I suspect him of trying to give his clients too much for their money. I should say that

686-568: The Vienna University of Technology before attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts , or Wagnerschule , being graduated in 1911 with a degree in architecture. For unknown reasons, his family changed their surname from 'Schlesinger' to 'Schindler' in 1901. Schindler was most influenced by professor Carl König , despite the presence of many other famous professors such as Otto Wagner and particularly, Adolf Loos . Most notably, in 1911, he

735-594: The Walk of Stars in Palm Springs, California . Neutra's 14,000 sqf "Windshield" house built on Fishers Island, NY for John Nicholas Brown II burned down on New Year's Eve 1973 and was not rebuilt. The 1935 Von Sternberg House in Northridge, California was demolished in 1972. Neutra's 1960 Fine Arts Building at California State University, Northridge was demolished in 1997, three years after suffering severe damage in

784-522: The mavericks of early twentieth century architecture . Reyner Banham said he designed "as if there had never been houses before." Rudolf Michael Schindler was born on September 10, 1887, to a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna , Austria . His father was a wood and metal craftsman and an importer; his mother was a dressmaker. He attended the Imperial and Royal High School , from 1899 to 1906, and enrolled at

833-673: The Austrian art historian Arpad Weixlgärtner and who later emigrated to Sweden. Her work can be seen at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm. Neutra attended the Sophiengymnasium in Vienna until 1910. He studied under Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder at the Vienna University of Technology (1910–18) and also attended the private architecture school of Adolf Loos . In 1912, he undertook

882-648: The German town of Luckenwalde , and later in the same year he joined the office of Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. Neutra contributed to the firm's competition entry for a new commercial center for Haifa, Palestine (1922), and to the Zehlendorf housing project in Berlin (1923). He married Dione Niedermann, the daughter of an architect, in 1922. They had three sons, Frank L (1924–2008), Dion (1926–2019), who became an architect and his father's partner, and Raymond Richard Neutra (1939–),

931-591: The Lovell Beach House, and the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House (HCM #640; 1966). In California, he became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that epitomized a West Coast version of mid-century modern residential design. His clients included Edgar J. Kaufmann , (who had commissioned Wright to design Fallingwater , in Pennsylvania), Galka Scheyer , and Walter Conrad Arensberg . In

980-512: The MARTa Herford, Germany. The Kaufmann Desert House was restored by Marmol Radziner + Associates in the mid-1990s. The typeface family Neutraface , designed by Christian Schwartz for House Industries , was based on Richard Neutra's architecture and design principles. In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal , and in 2015, he was honored with a Golden Palm Star on

1029-548: The Mackey Apartments. "My dear Rodolph Schindler: ...I am in receipt of a letter from the Board asking if you had made designs for me. The answer to that is,-- No you didn’t. Nobody makes designs for me. Sometimes if they are in luck, or rather if I am in luck, they make them with me. ...Nevertheless, I believe that you now are competent to design exceedingly good buildings. I believe that anything you would design would take rank in

SECTION 20

#1733085853064

1078-598: The Neutra-designed Kronish House (1954) at 9439 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills sold for $ 12.8 million. In 2009, the exhibition "Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings" at the Los Angeles Central Library featured a selection of Neutra's travel sketches, figure drawings and building renderings. An exhibition on the architect's work in Europe between 1960 and 1979 was mounted by

1127-616: The Rainbow Room January 24, 1947. Byers continued the past policy of booking territory bands and name bands. In 1948, James Norton purchased Felix Beyer's interest in the ballroom and then leased it for 10 years to Joseph Leher. At some point in the 1950s, Joseph Leher purchased the Rainbow Ballroom. In its heyday, the ballroom was open six nights a week, play host venue for national big bands (often referred to as orchestras) and territory bands . The bands included: In July 1959,

1176-577: The San Fernando Valley (now destroyed). A photo of Neutra and Rand at the home was taken by Julius Shulman . Neutra's early watercolors and drawings, most of them of places he traveled (particularly his trips to the Balkans in WWI) and portrait sketches, showed influence from artists such as Gustav Klimt , Egon Schiele etc. Neutra's sister Josefine, who could draw, is cited as developing Neutra's inclination towards drawing. Neutra's son Dion has kept

1225-568: The Schindler-Wright relationship. Schindler complained, with some validity, of being underpaid and exploited. As well as his architectural affairs, he was running Frank Lloyd Wright's businesses, such as the rental of the Oak Park houses. Of the houses Wright built in this period, the Hollyhock House was undoubtedly the most significant, for which Schindler did most of the drawings and oversaw

1274-640: The Silver Lake offices designed and built by his father open as "Richard and Dion Neutra Architecture" in Los Angeles. The Neutra Office Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . In 1980, Neutra's widow donated the Van der Leeuw House (VDL Research House) , then valued at $ 207,500, to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) to be used by the university's College of Environmental Design faculty and students. In 2011,

1323-409: The age of 78. He was known for the attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client. Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his client's needs, much to their surprise. His domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape, and practical comfort. In

1372-526: The architectural and structural plans of the Imperial Hotel. Wright, however, refused to validate these claims. Eventually, disputes over whose work was whose, escalated until Schindler released a flier for a series of talks with Richard Neutra, describing himself as having been, "in charge of the architectural office of Frank Lloyd Wright for two years during his absence". Wright refuted this claim. The two split in 1931 and didn't reconcile until 1953, less than

1421-611: The commission for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo , a major project that would keep the architect in Japan for several years. Schindler's role was to continue Wright's American operations in his absence, working out of Wright's Oak Park studio. In 1919, Schindler met and married Pauline Gibling (1893–1977). In 1920, Wright summoned him to Los Angeles to work on the Barnsdall House . Schindler

1470-514: The construction of, while Frank Lloyd Wright still was in Japan. The client, Aline Barnsdall , subsequently chose Schindler as her architect to design a number of other small projects for her on Olive Hill and a spectacular beach-side 'translucent house' in 1927, which remains one of the great uncompleted projects of the twentieth century. As Schindler was applying for a Los Angeles license to practice architecture in 1929, he mentioned his extensive work on

1519-490: The disturbance and that 40 different fights were going on when they arrived. The concert promoter, LeRoy Smith estimated that 1,600 were in attendance and that only 4 fights had broken out. There were no serious injuries or damage to the ballroom. No arrests were made. The Rainbow Ballroom closed in 1961. Subsequent to its closing as a ballroom, the building was used as a demonstration chamber for missiles by Martin Company , then

The Rainbow Ballroom (Denver) - Misplaced Pages Continue

1568-591: The early 1930s, Neutra's Los Angeles practice trained several young architects who went on to independent success, including Gregory Ain , Harwell Hamilton Harris , and Raphael Soriano . In 1932, he tried to move to the Soviet Union, to help design workers' housing that could be easily constructed, as a means of helping with the housing shortage. In 1932, Neutra was included in the seminal MoMA exhibition on modern architecture, curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock . From 1943 to 1944, Neutra served as

1617-551: The film Pineapple Express . He developed his own platform frame system, the Schindler Frame in 1945. His later work uses this system extensively as a basis for experimentation. Schindler's early work, such as the Kings Road House and Lovell Beach House, largely went unnoticed in the wider architectural world. As early and radical as they were for modernism, they may have been too different for recognition and Los Angeles

1666-425: The first time on December 30, 1914. Wright had little work at this stage, was still plagued by the destruction of Taliesin and the murder of his mistress earlier that year, and did not offer Schindler a job. Schindler continued work at OSR, keeping himself occupied with trips and study, notably familiarizing himself with the early tilt up slab work of Irving Gill . Wright was able to hire Schindler after obtaining

1715-464: The moat around the house that Neutra designed for him and had his Persian butler fish out the bodies in the morning and dispose of them in a specially designed incinerator. This was a much-embellished account of an actual client, Josef von Sternberg , who indeed had a moated house but not an electrified one. The novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand was the second owner of the Von Sternberg House in

1764-401: The more 'open' walls of redwood and glass. It has largely become the symbol of Schindler's architecture. In a search to create a more inexpensive architecture, Schindler abandoned concrete and turned to the plaster-skin design. This type of construction is characteristic of his work throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but his interest in form and space never changed. The Rodriguez House appears in

1813-401: The new work being done in the country as worthy of respect." "Can't you give me two lines, just two lines of recommendations without any hints at what a great man the boss is and what poor fishes they are in comparison." "You further called it an exhibition of ‘California Architects’. Now it has become one of ‘Neutra and others’. I am quite willing to give Neutra the crown for his ability as

1862-576: The people he met [i.e. in Trebinje] … how his commander was a sadist, who was able to play out his sadistic tendencies…. He was just a small town clerk in Vienna, but then he became his commander." Neutra took a leave in 1917 to return to the Technische Hochschule to take his final examinations. After World War I, Neutra moved to Switzerland, where he worked with the landscape architect Gustav Ammann . In 1921, he served briefly as city architect in

1911-648: The realm of landscape architecture: namely, the grounds of the Lovell Beach House (1922–25), in Newport Beach, which Schindler had designed for Philip Lovell ; and a pergola and wading pool for the complex that Wright and Schindler had designed for Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill (1925), in Hollywood. Schindler and Neutra would go on to collaborate on an entry for the League of Nations Competition (1926–27); in

1960-457: The same clients. At one point, they and their wives shared a communal office and living structure that Schindler designed as his home and studio. In Vienna, Schindler acquired experience in the firm of Hans Mayr and Theodore Mayer , working there from September 1911 to February 1914. Schindler then moved to Chicago to work in the firm of Ottenheimer, Stern, and Reichert (OSR), accepting a cut in pay to be in that progressive American city, which

2009-596: The same year, they formed a firm with the planner Carol Aronovici (1881–1957), called the Architectural Group for Industry and Commerce (AGIC). Neutra subsequently developed his own practice and went on to design numerous buildings embodying the International Style, 12 of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments (HCM), including the Lovell Health House (HCM #123; 1929), for the same client as

The Rainbow Ballroom (Denver) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2058-481: Was an Austrian-born American architect whose most important works were built in or near Los Angeles during the early to mid-twentieth century. Although he worked and trained with some of its foremost practitioners, he often is associated with the fringes of the modernist movement in architecture. His use of complex three-dimensional forms, "warm" materials, and striking colors, as well as his ability to work within tight budgets, however, have placed him as one of

2107-564: Was born in Leopoldstadt, the second district of Vienna , Austria Hungary , on April 8, 1892, into a wealthy Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra (1844–1920), was a proprietor of a metal foundry, and his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Glaser Neutra (1851–1905) was a member of the IKG Wien . Richard had two brothers, who also emigrated to the United States, and a sister, Josephine Theresia "Pepi" Weixlgärtner , an artist who married

2156-532: Was engaged to design several private commissions while in Los Angeles, notably, he completed what many think is his finest building, the Kings Road House , also known as the Schindler house or the Schindler-Chase house, as an office and home for two professional couples by late spring 1922. He and his wife were one of the couples living in the communal structure. He also started to take on several projects of his own. During this time, fractures started to appear in

2205-423: Was his extreme fault in these circumstances of endeavoring to build buildings." "Rudolph was a patient assistant who seemed well aware of the significance of what I was then doing. His sympathetic appreciation never failed. His talents were adequate to any demands made upon them by me." In 2024 Schindler Space Architect , a feature-length documentary film by Valentina Ganeva on the life and works of Schindler,

2254-511: Was introduced to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright through the influential Wasmuth Portfolio . Schindler also met his lifelong friend and rival Richard Neutra at the university in 1912, before completing his thesis project in 1913. Their careers would parallel each other: both would go to Los Angeles through Chicago, be recognized as important early modernists creating new styles suited to the Californian climate, and sometimes, both would work for

2303-478: Was not a significant location on the architectural map. Schindler was not included in the highly influential International Style exhibit of 1932, while Richard Neutra was and, to add insult to injury, Neutra, incorrectly, was credited as the Austrian who worked on the Imperial Hotel with Wright. His first major exposure came in Esther McCoy 's 'Five California Architects' of 1960. His work is undergoing somewhat of

2352-553: Was released. Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( / ˈ n ɔɪ t r ə / NOI -tra ; April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was an Austrian-American architect . Living and building for most of his career in Southern California , he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. His most notable works include the Kaufmann Desert House , in Palm Springs, California . Neutra

2401-447: Was the home of Frank Lloyd Wright . He found New York City , which he visited along the way, to be crowded, unattractive, and commercial. Chicago was more appealing to him, however, with less congestion and providing access to the architectural work of Henry Hobson Richardson , Louis Sullivan , and Frank Lloyd Wright . Schindler continued to seek contact with Wright, writing letters despite his limited English. He finally met him for

#63936