Rebirth of Richard Neutra’s home
The Neutra VDL Studio and Residences faced an uncertain future in 2008. The acclaimed Los Angeles house designed by modern architect Richard Neutra was quickly deteriorating and its owner, the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, was considering a sale.
But, this past July, on an almost perfect summer night, the house highlighted by its use of glass as well as reflecting pools and rooftop gardens opened its doors for an experimental installation and its transformation and a return to properly immortalizing Neutra was on full display.
The process did not happen overnight and consisted of a wealth of physical labor, an aggressive public relations campaign, and a rethinking of how the house was being used by Cal Poly Pomona and the College of Environmental Design, its owners and caretakers.
“It has been a great success story in collaboration between private companies, the university, and committed individuals coming together to make all of this possible,” says Leo Marmol, managing principal of Marmol Radziner, a design-build practice based in Los Angeles.
Improvements have included restoring the roofs including penthouse reflecting pools, replacing walls and fences, installing new carpets and linoleum floors, as well as plenty of rewiring and painting.
“If you ask people, they say that the house has never looked as good as it does now since it was built,” says Sarah Lorenzen, associate professor and chair of the Architecture Department at Cal Poly Pomona and resident director of the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences. “For years it was rundown, now, it is pretty happy looking.”
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Neutra was one of the most influential architects of the modern era. His works are regarded worldwide, especially the house in the 2300 block of Silver Lake Boulevard.
In 1932, Neutra built VDL Research House I, named after Dutch industrialist Cees H. Van der Leeuw, who loaned Neutra money for the work on a lot of just 2,000-square-feet. But Neutra made the most of the area in an effort to provide plenty of space as well as privacy. The original two-story house, also called VDL I, incorporated a wealth of natural lighting as well as rooftop and balcony gardens. A rooftop deck provided spectacular views of the mountains and the Silver Lake reservoir.
For more than three decades, the house served as the office for Neutra’s architectural work, a home for his family, an apartment to house an apprentice, such as acclaimed architect Gregory Ain who lived there when working with Neutra, and a host to many notables in politics, music and the arts. A garden house was built in 1939 toward the back of the lot for Neutra’s three sons to play in.
But, in 1963, a fire destroyed most of VDL I. Despite Neutra’s initial reservations, he and his son, Dion, rebuilt it; the house was completed in 1966. The new Richard and Dion VDL Research House II, also called VDL II, included entirely new construction except for the basement and floor joists. The new design referenced spaces in the original house – such as the living and dining room area, but there were other features that reflected trends in the Neutra office in the 1960s. Reflecting pools were also incorporated throughout the house on the roofs, second-floor terrace, entryway and the central courtyard.
The uniqueness of the main house could be seen in its experimental nature before and after the fire, especially in its management of water. One of the experiments involved Neutra trying to make flat roofs functional. With no slope on the roof, the idea was that water would collect on the roof, function as a reflecting pool and eventually evaporate. Trouble would come in future years because the roofing systems installed when Neutra worked on the house were not sophisticated enough to manage that feat. The conventional tar and gravel roof as well as minimal drainage areas were not suited to retain water.
In 1969, Neutra served as a professor at Cal Poly Pomona during a joint appointment with the Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning departments, but passed away in 1970. Neutra’s wife, Dione, donated the house in 1980 to the university’s College of Environmental Design. When Dione passed away in 1990, the house was deeded to the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, which included a $100,000 endowment. The College of Environmental Design and the Department of Architecture were tasked with maintaining the house.
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The wear of age and the impact of Neutra’s experimental style started to show as the years passed. Money had been invested in repairing the roofs, but leaks and water stains in the ceilings were ever present.
“We should have been watching the store more carefully and making sure the house was being well tended to,” says Lauren Bricker, professor in the Department of Architecture.
In the summer of 2007, Lorenzen was appointed as a resident director and moved into the garden house with her husband, David Hartwell. When they arrived, they found the garden house to be unlivable and VDL II needed immediate attention, Lorenzen says.
“The ceilings and carpets needed to be ripped out. Everything needed to be painted,” she says.
They also had no money to do the necessary work. The only revenue source was $5,000 a year from the original endowment that would pay for power, water and utilities. Not much room was available in the budget for restoration efforts. Nevertheless, Lorenzen and Hartwell spent the next two months, six days a week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., working on the house. Linoleum flooring was installed. They painted. The water heater was replaced. Some electrical work was completed.
Lorenzen and Hartwell moved into the garden house in October 2007, but, just a few months afterward, a rainstorm flooded the main house. Lorenzen and Hartwell were up the entire night trying to control the water. Soon thereafter, they would learn that the university had had enough and was considering selling. But, after a drawn out process, the university would eventually decide against it. Lorenzen and a community of supporters of the house started to look at how to raise money for rehabilitation efforts.
“This was an enormous marketing opportunity for the college and certainly for the Department of Architecture,” Lorenzen says. “It’s this incredible thing that makes us visible around the world. It is a great asset for the university.”
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Despite its stature among architects, many had doubts that the house could ever receive the necessary fixes because raising funds would prove difficult. At a meeting in 2008 with university officials and the house’s supporters, Lorenzen stressed that the house had plenty of fundraising potential.
“I said ‘I don’t think we have tried hard enough to figure out a way to raise funds — a real effort to raise funds, even if it’s just small amounts,’” Lorenzen says. “If (President Barack) Obama could raise a lot of money with small donations so could the house.”
Lorenzen started by opening up VDL II on Saturdays for tours. On the first Saturday, hundreds of people showed up paying $10 apiece. Lorenzen and Bricker also started a docents course that involved students leading the tours and providing complex architectural concepts in an easy to understand manner.
Lorenzen then started cold-calling members of the media locally and throughout the country to bring attention to the rough condition of the house and the need for money to handle repairs. Articles would soon be published in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times as well as on Archinect.com, a popular architecture website.
Many people who admired Neutra’s work and understood the value of the house also helped out. Actress Kelly Lynch of “Road House” fame helped spread the word about the house’s dire state in Hollywood circles. Catherine Meyler of Meyler & Company, working pro-bono, set up photo shoots of celebrities at the house. Local groups held private fundraising events there.
Raymond Neutra and real estate developer Anthony Greenberg worked with acclaimed architectural photographer Julius Shulman to have the Getty reissue 35 prints of Shulman’s iconic photo showing Richard Neutra on the roof of VDL II soon after it was completed. Raymond Neutra also compiled a National Historic Landmark nomination form for the house that is expected to be submitted later this year. Neutra’s son, Dion, encouraged and supported the effort to rehab the house.
Lorenzen says the vast majority of the money raised immediately went into rehabilitation efforts to stabilize the condition of the house so the public could see and appreciate it.
“You can’t escape the passion she shows for the resource,” Marmol says. “We got infected by that passion. It attracted us to find ways to help.”
The house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, also received a $10,000 matching grant in 2010 for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a $50,000 grant from Friends of Heritage Preservation.
Many businesses also dedicated time and services on a pro-bono basis. Linoleum floors in the garden house were provided by Forbo Flooring Systems, Neutra-designed furniture was reissued by VS America, Inc., a German-based furniture company, and new carpets were given by Coverall Industries.
But the pesky problem of the faulty roofs was ever present.
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Marmol’s company has restored several buildings designed by Neutra, but he always had an appreciation for the VDL House.
“I was always so sad in visiting the house that it was in such disrepair and there was so much damage created by the problems in the waterproofing system,” Marmol says.
Marmol especially saw the problems when there was rainfall. Lorenzen and her husband would put on ponchos and stay up all night protecting the house and minimizing damage. This included rolling out tarps on the roofs before rainfall, installing sandbags, as well as clearing water systems, gutters and the downspouts. They would do almost anything to make sure water didn’t enter the house, Marmol says.
“My heart went out to them as individuals but also for the house and that continuing deterioration,” he says. “We, as an office, decided that something had to be done to protect the historic resource.”
Marmol Radziner volunteered its architectural and research services, specifically to tackle Neutra VDL Research House’s water intrusion issues. The work was broken up into phases. The first two phases were the most problematic: an upper roof that included a reflecting pool and a connecting roof between VDL II and the garden house. The office looked at the areas and developed a research and repair process that kept the historic integrity of the house and addressed the leakage. One lively discussion involving architecture Professors Bricker and Luis Hoyos, university officials, community supporters, Marmol, Lorenzen and Dion Neutra delved into authenticity concerns over whether to add a minimal slope on the roof to help with water management.
“These are very dull, detailed, pragmatic issues that go unnoticed every day, but from the perspective of restoration and technical performance of historic resources these are very important discussions,” Marmol says.
A slight slope was eventually implemented and a couple of areas were added where water could come off the roof. An effort was made to put these changes in areas where they would go unnoticed.
“We did decide to change the house to improve its performance,” Marmol says. “It’s really a process of managing change to have minimal visual impact and have the greatest success in preserving the character defining features of the resource.”
Future phases will include addressing water management on the entire site.
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Preserving modern architecture is not easy and is different from preserving other periods of architecture, Bricker says.
“Our expectations of modern is that it has a kind of a timeless quality and it always stays very sort of shiny and always has this kind of new look and when the effects of time set in, we don’t love it the same way that we might with other types of architecture,” she says.
Cal Poly Pomona’s pride in VDL II and recognition of it serving as the university’s connection to Los Angeles was evident on July 12 at the opening of “Competing Utopias,” an experimental installation, in which the house was filled with Cold War era artifacts from Eastern Bloc countries. Students, alumni and faculty members raved about the improved condition of the house.
“It is a very significant property that has this incredible association and it is part of our historic tie to Los Angeles,” Bricker says. “I think our students grow up with a tremendous pride that this is Cal Poly’s property. It is very much a part of our identity.”
