the skunks of los feliz
3.02.2005
Good news and bad news for the Ennis-Brown house:
The good news is that city officials have upgraded the landmark structure from a red tag to a yellow tag.
The bad news? The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, which was already on the World Monument Fund's list of One Hundred Most Endangered Sites, has sustained significant structural damage due to the recent rains.
Since the original building materials (which were not as well-chosen as they could have been) had already been weakened by the Northridge quake, not to mention 80 years of exposure to the elements, the house is in as precarious a state as it has ever been.
Hopefully this Mayan temple will continue to stand lookout over the city for a long time to come. I think of it and the Hollyhock house as bookends to the neighborhood, guardians of the Rancho Los Feliz. Indispensable components of L.A.'s ever shrinking endowment of architectural treasures, they are Frank Lloyd Wright's gifts to the city, and to Los Feliz.
Photo courtesy of Mary Ann Sullivan's Digital Imaging Project website, which features many fine views (interior and exterior) of the Ennis-Brown house, as well as other significant buildings.
Comments:
Over on blogging.la I played comment tag with a Nuetra lover who responded to a post about the Ennis-Brown house's red-tagging, by calling Wright a hack and saying better one of his home's crumble than a Nuetra or a Schindler. Being a certified Wright fanatic, I'm not so gone as to be unable to admit there are flaws in Wright's design and materials choices for his SoCal residences... but even if one prefer's one famed architect over another, it's all rare treasure that we should work to save not demean. And alling my Frankie a hack! Them's just fightin' words!
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