Welcome to Ralph Haverkate Real Estate Specializing in Mid Century Modern Homes in the California Desert

Dion Neutra, son of celebrated architect Richard Neutra and surviving partner in the storied architectural firm, invites Neutra fans to help celebrate the firm’s 85th anniversary next weekend in Los Angeles.

Dion plans a series of events that include a birthday party at the Eagle Recreation Center on Friday, April 8, which would be Richard Neutra’s  119th (b. April 8, 1892- d. April 16, 1970). On Saturday and Sunday are a symposium, reunion of Neutra owners, comprehensive walking tour of 10 Silver Lakes homes including the Lovell Health House, plus documentary films and VIP receptions at various Neutra designed sites in Los Angeles.  Ticket sales benefit the Van Der Leeuw Research house restoration and endowment, a 501 c 3 non-profit institute.

A ticket to all weekend events is $250 or separate tickets are available for each event.  To purchase  tickets and for specific information, go to

www.neutra.org/reserve-your-space.html.

The Austrian-born Richard Neutra, who emigrated to the United States in 1923, is best known for  combining Bauhaus modernism with Southern California building trends, creating a unique adaptation that became known as Desert Modernism.

At the Technical University of Vienna, Neutra studied under Adolf Loos , who was influential in European Modern Architecture. He was also influenced by Otto Wagner, a professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, who radically opposed the prevailing architectural styles.  Neutra  worked for a time in Germany in the studio of Erich Mendelsohn who practiced “dynamic functionalism.”

After coming to the US, Neutra worked briefly for Frank Lloyd Wright before collaborating with his close friend and university companion Rudolf Schindler, living and working communally in Schindler’s Kings Road House in California.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neutra

Neutra’s houses were dramatic, flat-surfaced industrialized looking building, constructed with glass, steel and reinforced concrete, and typically finished in stucco. His style was rigorously geometric but composed airy structures that created a modern regionalism for Southern California, a West Coast variation of the Mid-Century Modern residence.

Neutra was regarded for the careful attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project.  He 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.

The Lovell House (1927-1929) in Los Angeles created a sensation in architectural circles both in Europe and America, as stylistically similar to Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.  A special tour of this house for the anniversary celebration takes place on Sunday, April 10 from noon to 5 p.m.

Later, Neutra designed a series of elegant pavilion-style homes composed of layered horizontal planes.  With extensive porches and patios, the homes appeared to merge with the surrounding landscape.  The Kaufman House (1946-47) in Palm Springs and the Tremaine House are examples of Neutra’s pavilion houses.

http://architecture.about.com/od/greaterarchitects/p/richardneurtra.html

The Kaufman House has twice been at the vanguard of new movements in architecture:  First by helping to shape postwar Modernism and later, as a result of a painstaking and expensive restoration in the late 1990s, spurred a revival of interest in mid-20th century homes, according to a New York Times review by Edward Wyatt.

This house is one of Neutra’s the best-known.  Its  unusual pin-wheel plan was designed for Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann, became the last domestic project by the architect, and arguably his most famous.

The house became part of cultural history thanks to a 1947 photo by Julius Shulman that shows Mrs. Kaufmann reclining by the pool, the house glowing in the sunset.  The photo became one of the most reproduced architectural photographs ever.

www.eichlernetwork.com/desert_chron7.html

Neutra extended architectural space into carefully arranged landscapes.  The dramatic images of flat-surface, industrialized residential buildings contrasted against nature were popularized by Shulman’s  photography.

In his architectural firm, Neutra worked with several successful partners including his wife, Dione, from 1922; his protégé Robert Alexander, from 1949 to 1958 (the Alexander homes in Palm Springs); and his son Dion from 1965. In 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.

Dion kept 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.

www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Richard_Neutra.html

An experienced and outspoken writer, Neutra adamantly believed that modern architecture must act as a social force in the betterment of mankind.

www.architectureweek.com/2002/0424/news_1-1.html

Neutra is one of many famous Mid Century Modern architects whose celebrated works abound in the California desert.  For a tour of significant Desert Modern homes and estates currently for sale, contact Ralph Haverkate Real Estate at Ralph@RHaverkate.com.

– Pamela Bieri

Palevsky Residence, Palm Springs, CA 1968

Welcome to Ralph Haverkate Real Estate Specializing in Mid Century Modern Homes in the California Desert

Craig Ellwood is credited with designing some of the most elegant modern homes built in California in the 1950s and 1960s, but he was not educated as an architect.  Greatly influenced by Mies van der Rohe as well as Charles Eames and Richard Neutra, Ellwood’s designs were characterized by exposed lightweight steel or timber framing, and by floating wall planes separated by a shadow line or “flash gap” detail.  Ellwood homes were spare, modernist and elegant.

On Saturday, April 2, 10 a.m.,  the Palm Springs Museum focuses on Ellwood’s work as the final seasonal lecture on the history of modernism architecture in Palm Springs.  A tour of Ellwood’s most significant Coachella Valley work, the Max Palevsky residence in Palm Springs, follows the lecture.  The late billionaire Palevsky was a computer technology pioneer, venture capitalist and philanthropist. Cost for the event is $25.  www.psmuseum.com.

An influential Los Angeles-based modernist whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s, Ellwood was recognized for fusing the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with the more casual  California modernism, adapting the style into an accessible and fashionable vernacular.

The controversial designer fashioned a “persona” and career through his innate talent for good design, ambition and self-promotion.  If ever there was a product of Hollywood, it was architect Craig Ellwood.  Even his name was an invention:  Born Jon Nelson Burke in Clarendon, Texas, in 1922 his family moved to Los Angeles in 1937 where he attended Belmont High School.

After discharge from the Army Air Corps in 1946, Burke returned to Los Angeles and set up a company with his brother Cleve and two friends from the war, the Marzicola brothers, one of whom had a contractor’s license.  The four men named their firm “Craig Ellwood” after a liquor store called Lords and Elwood located in front of their offices.  Burke later legally changed his name to Ellwood and established Craig Ellwood Design in 1951.   www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Craig_Ellwood

Ellwood entered LA’s percolating, post World War II design world as a construction supervisor, draftsman and a cost estimator.  He worked for a construction company in Los Angeles while taking night classes at the University of California Los Angeles Extension Division.  One year before completing his studies, he and his partners established Craig Ellwood Associates in Los Angeles.

Ellwood learned hands-on about building in steel and plastic sheet before he studied architectural theory which gave him an understanding of steel construction and a practical application that eluded many contemporaries from architectural school.  His designs incorporated steel with thoughtful detailing and craftsmanship;  his trademark structural devise incorporated an exposed warren truss that used small member to span big distances.   www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Craig_Ellwood.html.

As a cost estimator for a firm of modern house builders — Lamport, Cofer, Salzman —  Jack Cofer asked Ellwood to design his first house for Milton Lappin in 1948.  Although an awkward  derivative of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sturges House in Brentwood, the house was published in the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine in 1950, bringing Ellwood recognition, further commissions, and encouraged him to set up, illegally, as Craig Ellwood, Architect.

Soon after he began co-designing homes, Ellwood met John Entenza, founder of the important Case Study House Program which commissioned and promoted modern, economical housing designs.  As editor of Arts & Architecture magazine, Entenza promoted the creative and cost-effective prefabricated, modular housing by publishing these demonstration houses, designed by such luminaries as Charles Eames, Eero Saarien, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Edward Killinsworth.  Ellwood eventually designed three Case Study houses all built with exposed steel frames and columns.

His first commission outside of Los Angeles, in 1955 for Charles and Gerry Bobertz in San Diego, Ellwood designed an early example of what later came to be called Ellwood’s “wall houses,” named because of an unrelenting street facade and the defining, perpendicular rhythms and materials of interior and exterior walls.

Behind the stark street facade, however, logically arranged living area unfold, flooded with natural light from windows and skylights.  Eight-foot tall floor to ceiling glass doors open the house to the back yard and a children’s courtyard.  Inside, partition walls, capped with bands of glass that meet the wood ceilings, seem to float.   www.legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/2006/09/03/news_mzlhs03moder.html

The enigmatic exterior wall theme continued when Ellwood designed the Palevsky home on West Cielo Drive in 1968 on what was then described as “the best site in Palm Springs.”  Based on Casablanca desert  style homes that were white-walled compounds with structures set within rectangular walls, the minimalist Palevsky home is integrated into its boulder-strewn site.

www.palmspringsarchitectureblogspot.com/2010/05/max-palevsky-residence.html

Often formal in arrangement, sometimes symmetrical in plan and frequently launching into the landscape, Ellwood houses populated the more exclusive Los Angeles suburb including Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood and Pasadena.

Although Ellwood’s style translated less well in large commercial projects, the Scientific Data Systems site in El Segundo, (1968) where the administration and manufacturing buildings are pavilions in an open landscape, achieved a successful expression.  Ellwood’s last building, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, was conceived as a huge truss spanning a canyon, a final, successful realization of a theme often repeated in his earlier buildings.

Although Ellwood’s work is limited in Palm Springs, the California desert is a treasure trove of remarkable, architecturally significant homes and estates by some of the world’s most prominent Mid Century Modern architects.  For a personal tour of significant homes for sale in the area, contact Ralph Haverkate at Ralph@RHaverkate.com.

–Pamela Bieri

Welcome to Team Haverkate Real Estate Specializing in Mid-Century Modern Homes For Sale in the California Desert.

Alexander Weekend tickets are now on sale!

The Alexander Weekend,  March 25-27, celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation’s inaugural event in 2001 that first recognized the Alexander Construction Company’s significant contributions to modernist residential architecture in Palm Springs.

In conjunction with its first Great Alexander Weekend, the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation published a tribute journal entitled When Mod Went Mass: A Celebration of Alexander Homes. The weekend and tribute journal launched a growing appreciation of the seminal role the Alexander Construction Company played in the creation of Palm Springs’ “built environment.”  It also brought to the forefront the architectural importance of those Alexander-built tract homes designed by architects William Krisel and Donald Wexler.

This year, a new commemorative tribute journal devoted to the Alexanders is entitled The Alexander: A Desert Legacy and written by architect/author Jim Harlan.

The Alexander Company, founded by George Alexander and his son Robert, was a Palm Springs based residential development company that built more than 2,200 homes in the desert between 1947 and 1965.  The “Alexanders,” as these homes are now  known, doubled Palm Springs residential population, giving the city a whole new shape and direction.  www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Construction_Company.

Key to the Alexanders’ success was the talented young architect Krisel, partner in the Los Angeles firm Palmer and Krisel, Inc. and a close friend of Bob Alexander.   www.psmodcom.com/Architects%20pages/PalmerKrisel.

The Alexanders’ foray into desert tract homes began with Twin Palms Estates, named for two palm trees included in the front landscaping of each home.  Hallmarks were a single story, open floor plan with an indoor-outdoor feeling enhanced by skylights, sliding glass doors, and an interior atrium.

Three quarter walls divided the main room to provide abundant light, eliminating the need for full framed walls, molding and trim, so created a clean contemporary look.  Exposed tongue-and-groove planks and beamed ceilings also enhanced the room’s soaring architectural lines.  The same floor plan repeated within the housing development saved construction and materials costs.

Krisel was involved with every facet of design, planning, engineering and construction.  From site and landscape choices to interior colors and trim, each house was oriented and embellished differently, making the Alexanders look like a collection of individualized custom homes.

Other Palmer & Krisel projects included the Ocotillo Lodge, Vista Las Palmas, Racquet Club Estates, Sandpiper condominiums in Palm Desert, and the famous “House of Tomorrow” also known as the “Elvis Presley Honeymoon Hideaway.”  Robert Alexander and his wife lived in this house for a time, featured in Look Magazine in September, 1962.

From as early as the 1920s and through the 1970s, an impressive roster of talented architects have been captivated by Palm Springs:  R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright’s son); young Swiss architect Albert Frey whose work profoundly influenced desert architecture; and regional modernists William F. Cody, E. Stewart Williams, Wexler and Krisel.

Each made their mark with “striking custom homes, impressive commercial complexes, hotels and motels, commanding civic and educational campuses … and created an architectural treasury of great consequence and innovation in and around Palm Springs,” writes Robert Imber  in his story on The Alexander Homes.  www.eichlernetwork.com/desert_chron1.html.

Imber noted that Palm Springs remained a sleepy seasonal village until postwar American affluence and growing families began to emerge with a demand for mass market housing.  Coupled with the fact that Palm Springs already was a discrete playground for Hollywood’s elite, a bevy of builders and architects grew to fill the increasing demand for year round residential and well as seasonal vacation homes.

The Alexander Weekend includes a free Kick Off event with Jim Harlan’s lively, entertaining overview of the Alexander Construction Company’s post-war housing stock in Palm Springs on Friday, March 25, 6 – 7:30 p.m. at the Canyon Conference Center.  Panelists include architects Krisel and Wexler along with author Alan Hess and architect/author Patrick McGrew discussing the lasting impact the Alexanders made on Palm Springs post-war building boom.

Join Honorary Chair Jill Alexander Kitnick at the Opening Night Cocktail Party on Friday, 8 to 10 p.m. and be among the first to preview the new tribute journal.   The party will be held in a Krisel-designed “long butterfly” home in Twin Palms, an example of the Alexanders’ early work that has never been open to the public.  A specialty cocktail has been created to celebrate the event.

The Alexanders had five distinctive rooflines:  The classic butterfly;  a flat roof with side or front entry; narrow gabled roof with front or side entry; wide gable roof; and side gabled roof with clerestory windows.

Modernist Home Tour I on Saturday, March 26, includes two of the Alexander Construction Company’s most important modernist neighborhoods, Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas, showcasing fine examples of mid-century residential architecture including “Butterfly,” “Swiss Miss” and other Alexander rooflines.  www.eichlernetwork.com/desert_chron1.html.

The tour also includes the “House of Tomorrow,” considered one of the most innovative modernist residences built at that time.  Tour times are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and includes a one-hour lunch break.   www.elvishoneymoon.com.

The second day of the Modernist Home Tour on Sunday, March 27, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. uncovers more of the Alexander Construction Company’s legacy with tours of the Krisel-designed Racquet Club Road Estates and the Sunmor neighborhood, along with the Wexler-designed Green Fairway Estates neighborhood.  www.racquetclubestates.com

Harlan will be on hand to sign his new book at Just Fabulous bookstore, 515 N. Palm Canyon Drive, during a complimentary book signing from 3 to 5 p.m.

The opening night cocktail party is $50 per person; Modernist Home Tour I is $85 and Modernist Home Tour II is $45.  The AW multi-pass option at $165 offers the best value and includes the exclusive Friday night cocktail party and two full days of house tours, a $15 savings to all events.

For tickets and reservations, log onto www.pspreservationfoundation.org

“We are proud to be partners in celebrating the annual Modernism Week and the Alexander Weekend, ” said Ralph Haverkate of Team Haverkate Real Estate.  “Both events further the cause of historic preservation in the Palm Springs area, so that for years to come we will have something tangible to celebrate, to own and pass down to future generations.”

Citywide, the collection of Alexanders range from 1,225 square feet in the Racquet Club Road Estates at the north end to over 2,500 square feet in the Vista Las Palmas, Golden Vista,  Mountain View, and Green Fairway Estates nearer to the center of town.  These were originally priced from $16,950 to $50,000.  Today, the Alexanders are highly sought after and refurbished sells from $400,000 to well over one million dollars.

For a personal tour of Wexler and Krisel designed Alexander homes and estates for sale in the Palm Springs area, contact Ralph@RHaverkate.com.

– Pamela Bieri