Andalucia in the Palisades

When I blogged about workmanship in this previous post, I used an Andalucian-style house in Pacific Palisades as an example. Although the architect of record was Richard Landry, the house was largely designed by its owner, Lorna Auerbach, who worked with Landry on every aspect of the planning.

Recently, Lorna graciously invited me into her very private but also very welcoming world.

Lorna Auerbach at the outer door of her house on Amalfi Drive.
The 18th-century gates were sourced in Ronda, and the surrounding tiles are
reproductions from Seville, based on a wainscot from a 16th-century palace.

Tile is considered a sign of wealth in southern Europe. Trying to source authentic tile for this project was an impetus for Lorna to found her own import tile company, Antigua del Mar. (More about this Santa Monica-based company in my next post.)

The house has no doorbell: "Use the knocker—it's authentic!"

The entry courtyard, with tower.

The entry courtyard from above.

"What I love about walking down the streets of Córdoba or Sevilla, is the sense of mystery," says Lorna, who is an avid Hispanophile and an authority of the history of tile. "The gates are always closed, and you wonder what's going on behind them."

Lorna, who grew up in Santa Monica Canyon, where all the streets were at one time cobbled, retains a romantic vision of the atmosphere of this erstwhile Spanish land grant area.

"There was something very magical about growing up in that environment," she says. "When I met Richard Landry, he asked me a very leading question: 'What are your strongest childhood memories of home?'" The ensuing dialogue between the designer and the architect led to the eventual look and feel of the house.

A reproduction of a 16th-century tile plaque in a house in Sevilla—a map of the city—graces the entry hall.

Lorna avoided down-lights in the house. Lighting fixtures are Moroccan, Spanish, and Mexican, some original and some replicated by local artisans. The owner also has no qualms about purchasing fixtures from retailers such as Lamps Plus—if they work in the space.

Every room has at least three window walls for cross-ventilation (air-conditioning was installed only on the second level), as well as its own private patio or outdoor space, most of them decorated with artisanal ceramic ware.

A colorful patio off the home office.

Lorna acted as her own interior decorator, sourcing from flea markets and even becoming a dealer in order to have "insider" access to the best merchandise.

The living room viewed from the kitchen.

The dining room also serves as a library.

One of my favorite features of the house is the media room, with generous fenestration of steel-frame windows below Moorish arches, which are covered with tile on the exterior. The motif was copied from a 1920s house in Santa Barbara.

The gorgeous landscaping is by Mark David Levine.

The tiles used on the arches are available from Lorna's company, Antigua del Mar.

Even the undersides of the balconies are tiled. "You see that all over Spain. It's the idea of surprise," Lorna explains. "The idea that everywhere you look there's something interesting to catch the eye."

The design of the wrought iron is taken from a Spanish original.

"The idea of surprise." The undersides of the balconies are covered in tile.

The house is centered around the light-filled double-height central hall, where a skylight allows the California sun to pour in and find its way throughout the house.

Bringing the outdoors in.

A sitting area outside the master suite.

Lorna selected the artwork throughout the residence according to her personal taste and its appropriateness to the mood of the house. The mix includes classic California plein air paintings, work by local artists, collectible posters, fine art photographs and ceramic art.

A landscape of Ronda, Spain, in the master suite sitting room.

A naïviste painting by Los Angeles artist Antonio Rael.

A study for a mural by Sam Hyde Harris.

The house was built by Tyler Development.

This photo by Erhard Pfeiffer.

Many thanks to Lorna Auerbach for her generosity in showing me the house. Watch for my next post about her tile company, Antigua del Mar.

From Belgium with style

I got a nice note recently from David Manrique, the Stateside account manager for the Belgian luxury hardware manufacturer Vervloet, founded in Brussels in 1905.

I'm posting below a few pages from the Vervloet catalogs (which can be downloaded from the Vervloet website). The products range from Louis XIV (who is due for a revival any time now) to Beaux Arts to Art Déco to contemporary classics.

Very impressive design and workmanship, on a par with P. E. Guerin, I'd say. I've always wanted Cremone bolts on my French windows. I'm keeping this web address handy . . . but first I need the windows.

Interested parties can reach David Manrique at D.Manrique@vervloet.com.

Trolley Patrón

Yesterday's post on Curbed L.A. got me thinking . . .

Perhaps the name "Dolly Patron" was in fact a scary Freudian typo on the part of WeHo Confidential, but why shouldn't a major spirits brand like Patrón Tequila sponsor free nighttime trolleys in WeHo and downtown Hollywood, where bar and clubland action is the main draw after dark?

Trolley Patrón (proposed).

Patrón already commands a sizeable chunk of the Hollywood skyline with its snazzy white neon sign atop the Equitable Building (see previous post). Why shouldn't this brand expand its clout in Hollywood and/or WeHo with free bar-hopping jitneys? Can we say "tax write-off"?

My admittedly tacky day-for-night Photoshop rendering aside, this is seriously worth considering. (Are you listening, WeHo? Garcetti?)

Given Patrón owner John Paul DeJoria's other business interests, perhaps riders could be offered Paul Mitchell hair treatments on-board. For a fee, of course.

A little night musing

I'm not a bar-hound, but I do love bars.

I should be thankful, then, for living in downtown Hollywood, which has always had—and now more than ever—a plethora of engaging watering holes. (One irascible local activist, a caustic Diogenes who roams around these parts in a dirty seersucker jacket instead of a barrel, sarcastically refers to the town as Alcohollywood . . . but I suspect he's just someone who can't hold his liquor.)

"Alcohollywood" (from Curbed LA)

Unlike the under-30 crowd that fills most of these places, I don't do velvet ropes, preening queues, walkie-talkie-equipped doorman, or cover charges, which effectively eliminates 85 percent of Hollywood nightlife from my consideration, making the choices that are left all the more attractive.

Favorite haunts include the remarkably attitude-free public house with the overly understated name The Bar, newish Harvard & Stone (a contender that needs to work on its anemic single malt collection), and the simply indispensable Boardner's, which can always be counted on for people-watching sans the scene.

Last night I visited Wood & Vine, a 150-seat restaurant-cum-saloon on Hollywood Boulevard that opened earlier this year. Taking over the Taft Building space formerly occupied by the leasing office for the ill-fated W Hollywood Residences next door (of which, per a recent Curbed post, only a measly 15 of 143 have sold), it's a welcome addition to the world's most famous intersection. (Whoever thought this town revolved around the corner of Hollywood and Highland was sorely deceived.)


Restaurant specialty firm Kelly Architects redid the space as a lofted two-story room. Interior designer Kenneth Brown used a lumber yard's worth of reclaimed and faux-reclaimed wood to created a toweringly dramatic bar, stylishly accoutered and fetchingly lit with a couple of fabu Mad Men–worthy midcentury sconces and other fixtures using bare-filament Edison-style bulbs. The mood is dark, sexy, and ripe for romance—over retro cocktails, natch.


A spacious patio in the rear has a fireplace, bare-bulb string lights, and a view of the looming posterior of the Taft Building (not the old girl's best side) and its fluorescent office lights that gives the entire place a kind of noirish Naked City vibe. Eventually, I'm told, movies will be projected against the side of the adjacent building.



The upstairs sports windows overlooking the boulevard but shaded from the glare of the Kliegs and passers-by by slatted wooden blinds, making it the perfect place for Jake Gittes to take a meeting with Evelyn Mulwray without being counter-detected.


And check out those floors.

Pull up a stool, doll. Drinks are on me.

Flying saucers over Hollywood!

YouTube video by GrimlyForming PW. Music: "We've Come To Take The Earth Away" by The Driving Stupid (1966)

I'm sure this wasn't the first time aliens invaded Hollywood to wreak havoc on humanity and architecture, and it won't be the last. But it may well be the cheesiest.


The KFWB radio antennae on the Warner Cinerama (later the Pacific Hollywood Theatre) never looked more useful: Maybe these avant-garde creatures, hell-bent on leveling all that is human, can be contacted, reasoned with, and talked out of destroying Los Angeles?

Not a chance.
 
The preservationists following them drive right by my street on the then brand new Hollywood Freeway at 0:47. Castle Argyle is in the background.How many other Hollywood locations—long gone or still standing—can you find?
 
Happy Halloween.

Food for thought

Like many of us, I live in an enclave of NIMBYism (mine is in a neighborhood of downtown Hollywood), where "development" categorically equals "anti-environmental," "anti-ecological," "anti-green," "anti-community," and perhaps just downright "evil."

Why should this be so?

I've often wondered why the same people who oooh and aaah at the glittering Manhattan or Chicago skylines, with their towering skyscrapers, begin to polish up the pitchforks when a developer like Millennium Partners even suggests putting two skyscrapers in downtown Hollywood. (The tallest of the two, at 48 stories, would still be less than half the height of Chicago's 100-story mixed-use John Hancock Center.)

One rendering of the project (below) seems intentionally to disguise the height of the towers, probably to quell local phobia about their dwarfing of the "iconic" Capitol Records Building—which nonetheless shows up for the squat little runt it is in this drawing.

Millennium Hollywood (proposed).

Arguments about such towers "spoiling the view" hold little weight in my book. On the contrary, for urban dwellers towers are the view, and if anyone is under the illusion that the seemingly sacrosanct Capitol Records Building is an architectural marvel that can't be obscured, just let him or her reflect that someone felt the same way about the existing structures that the Capitol Records Building—at a whopping 13 stories, then the zoning height limit—obscured from view in 1956. It completely obliterates my own view of the Taft Building, a much handsomer structure, for example.

A more honest and circumspect rendering (below) shows that the two towers might provide a vibrant architectural addition to the downtown Hollywood skyline and prove a nexus for further development.

Hollywood Millennium (proposed).

Which brings me to this book:

The Triumph of the City, by Edward Glaeser (Penguin Press, $29.95 hardcover)

Glaeser is an urban economist and he has some very surprising—and, for the NIMBYs, very likely upsetting—things to say about the kinds of buildings that these urban acrophobes detest.

One of his main premises, for example, is that denser, taller cities are actually greener than shorter, more spread out ones—and that they are certainly far, far greener than suburbia, where everyone drives. Being a Harvard academic, Glaeser has plenty of facts and figure to back up his assertions, but the book is hardly dry. Instead, it reads like an engaging conversation with someone you meet at a cocktail party, a well- informed contrarian, who gives you a whole new way of looking at something.

Glaeser has some harsh words for the Bay Area environmentalists, for example, who proudly oppose building in the San Francisco region—thereby passively encouraging development in previously pristine areas such as the Nevada desert or in highly "brown" regions such as Phoenix, and ultimately contributing to overall carbon emissions. "Think globally"? Hardly.

For Glaeser, development—and, yes, that means skyscrapers—is a sign of urban health, but also of planetary health. Pointing to the viability of tall metropolises such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, he makes a case for upward rather than outward expansion, and shows how dense, concentrated cities can provide the greenest of all possible worlds.

I love a good contrarian as much as I detest NIMBYs.