Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House

Starchitecture

Textile Bricks.

Recognize this image?  You might, it’s been featured in numerous movies.  On the right is a concrete textile block from the Ennis House in Loz Feliz, on the left is what the brick originally looked like.  Suffice to say this brick, and the Ennis House at large needs lots of conservation, and I’m not just a little nip tuck.  How much is this browlift going to cost?—Well a bunch of stabilization work was done by the Ennis House Foundation to keep the house from slipping down the hill, but there is still an additional $5-7 million needed.  The additional conservation cost is probably the reason why the house sold for WAY below its initial asking price.  The Ennis House Foundation made the decision to sell the house to a private owner way back in June 2009 and put it on the market for $15 million.  There weren’t any biters, so in February 2010, the price was chopped to $10.5 million.  Still no takers, and another chop in May 2010 to $7.5 million.  The Ennis House has sat on the market at the price since.  Until last week when it was announced that supermarket magnate Ron Burke had purchased the Ennis House for just under $4.5 million.  Thanks Ron, one more price cut, and it could have been in my price range.  (Yes, all of these links have been to curbed, and here’s another one, full of pretty pictures.)

And in case you still don’t recognize the Ennis House, here are some of the Ennis House’s onscreen appearances:

21st Century apartment.

Ennis House’s most famous cameo: Blade Runner.

Vincent Price’s disembodied head.

Serving as a spooky backdrop in House on Haunted Hill.

Animated version.

Lair of a Chinese gang in South Park episode Wing.

Distopian Hollywood.

My personal favorite appearance, serving as a movie producer’s abode in Day of the Locust.

The pool was a later addition.

Complete with bloated, dead horse at bottom of pool.  You should probably read the book.

IMDB has a more complete list of the films the Ennis House has appeared in; it was also been in a Calvin Klein perfume ad, and multiple music videos.  Here is a clip from LA Plays Itself, which documents some of the Ennis House’s cameos (skip to 10:15):

Take good care of the Ennis House Ron Burke, and please make it open to the public sometimes.  I’ve still only ever seen it from the outside.

– H.I.