Pedigreed homes are going unsold

daily breeze ^ | 8/29/10 | Jacob Adelman

[Nachum]

The home sale slump has left some dwellings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other architectural luminaries languishing on the Southern California market. Marquee homes by Wright and others like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, which once sold briskly to Los Angeles design aficionados for stratospheric prices, are now selling at a loss if at all, with the well-heeled increasingly reluctant to buy.

[PetroniusMaximus]

ping

[casuist]

This is unacceptable. Someone needs to buy those homes.

[bereanway]

Pierre Koenig’s late 1960s Case Study House No. 21, for example, sold in December 2006 after barely a week on the market for $3.2 million, or around $2,400 a square foot. That compares with an average of $500 to $600 per square foot for neighboring homes at the time, Linder said.”

Man, somebody took a real hickey on that deal.

[hinckley buzzard]

Houses once bought on the "greater fool" theory are now proving that the supply of wealthy fools is not limitless.

[AnAmericanMother]

No big surprise here. When the economy is bad, the money to maintain these big-name white elephants just isn't there.

James Ebert, a property appraiser who specializes in architecturally significant homes, said prices would have to come down even more in order to attract buyers for these homes, many of which are in disrepair and require expensive maintenance.

And that goes double in spades for Frank Lloyd Wright's houses, which are notoriously hard to live in and structurally unsound. Low ceilings (Wright was short), lots of unusable space, tiny kitchens. Leaky roofs, sagging cantilevers, shifting foundations. Plus everything is non-standard size - windows, doors, even the bricks - which means expensive special orders. Classic example of undeserved good press -- at least as far as the poor homeowner goes.

[anniegetyourgun]

The wealthy have flown the coop. Little do they know - there’s no where to run.

[truth_seeker]

Often historic houses are in need of a lot of expensive rehabilitation.

One particular Frank Lloyd Wright house in Los Angleles is an example. He used a new concrete mix for molding concrete blocks, and they have deteriorated.

And often they aren’t in the best neighborhoods, as neighborhoods change over time.

In downtown Long Beach CA, there are wonderful old homes, but a few blocks away gang grafitti and blight is present.

In Pasadena some classic old neighborhoods have fared very well. Greene & Greene homes, for example.

I saw an area a few weeks ago in Denver called Park Hill, and there was a sense of neighborhood, homes very well maintained.

Better still in Boulder.

[ClearCase_guy]

The wealthy have flown the coop. Little do they know - there’s no where to run.

Galt's Gulch can hold a lot of people.

[rrrod]

they will be occupied by illgals soon enough...

[Claud]

Wow, didn’t know that about FLW’s houses.

I think we’ve discussed this before on here, but when I first saw Fallingwater I was astounded how utterly UNharmonious it was with the surroundings. It was this weird pinkish peach thing in the middle of the rugged Western Pennsylvania woods. Stuck out horribly. Practically every old farmhouse in PA built from local stone blends better with its environment that that thing does.

So what’s his deal? Why did he get that huge hype?

[AnAmericanMother]

He was a relentless self-promoter, with an enormous ego. His private life was of course a shambles, with scandal and debt and flamboyant affectations in dress, cars, etc.

He did have a good eye, and some of his houses are very beautiful. The early Prairie Houses in particular - you can Google them and see exterior and interior views. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo is beautiful (and very well designed - it survived the 1923 earthquake).

But his ego eventually led him to overrule engineers (as was the case at Fallingwater) and design unbuildable buildings. He still occasionally hit the mark (e.g. the Guggenheim which is weird but wonderful) but much of his later stuff is unliveable.

You couldn't pay me, etc. etc.

[kabumpo]

That describes my friend’s house to a t. Nevertheless it’s also wonderful and I would live there in a minute.

[tlb]

>>> Meanwhile, in the hills overlooking the neighborhood of Los Feliz, Wright's 1924 Ennis house, which was in "Blade Runner" and "House on Haunted Hill," has had its price reduced from $15 million last summer to about $7.5million, and it still hasn't found a buyer. The nonprofit Ennis House Foundation fixed about $6.5 million in water and earthquake damage to the imposing home, one of only four in Wright's "textile block" style. I love this structure. I once saw the building described as a Mayan Temple by way of the Reich Chancellery. This should be preserved. If not for Frank Lloyd Wright, then in honor of Vincent Price.

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, you can rent FLW houses by the week, just so you can say you've lived in them. They're certainly unique, and as I said some of them are very beautiful.

But when the bills for the maintenance and repairs come due, you need to hope you're made of money. Fine Homebuilding magazine awhile back did an article on the complete ground-up restoration of a FLW house in Mississippi. They had to start with new foundations and work their way up. I don't remember the exact cost, but I remember it made my eyes pop and it takes something to do that. Something in the millions, I think. In fact, readers wrote in to the magazine complaining that the article was of zero interest to anybody from a practical standpoint. The mag is always trying to balance between the folks who like the high-end spare-no-expense "wow" houses and stuff that normal people could actually learn something from.

I think a nice compromise would be a house with an FLW "look and feel" but more realistic engineering. One of his sons and numbers of his students are still practicing architecture.

[blam]

Tiny houses simpler, easier on the environment

[onedoug]

ping!

Thanks, N.

[RegulatorCountry]

Some of his Usonian houses were very practical, livable and affordable. Think low-slung California ranch with deep eaves. Most were slab with radiant heat. the u-shaped ones with the majority of the glass facing the courtyard were/are especially nice. Not all were, they were highly individual, some had flat or shed roofs as opposed to the more aesthetically pleasing shallow pitched or hip roof, some had inscrutable window placement, etcetera. But, all in all they’re well loved, mostly preserved and never were unaffordable.

[AnAmericanMother]

Really an outgrowth of his Prairie style. Like I said, his early stuff wasn't bad at all.

The architect who designed our house was a sort of Wright devotee -- at a safe remove. He was the son of a contractor, so he didn't design anything that couldn't be built.

[RegulatorCountry]

The nicest Usonian in my opinion is in Kentucky, low slung single story with deep eaves, constructed of rough quarried stone, windows other than entry sidelights on the front were reduced to a decorative native pattern in a wide band of cedar, courtyard to the rear surrounded by floor to ceiling glass that completely retracts, the best example of “bringing the outdoors in” I’ve ever seen, seamless transition with Tennessee Craborchard stone floors in and out, no steps at all.