"Tweedland" The Gentlemen's club: Kaufmann Desert House // Modernist architectural marvel made famous by Slim Aarons for sale for $25m

Modernist architectural marvel made famous by Slim Aarons for sale for $25m

California

The Kaufmann Desert House, designed by Richard Neutra, paved the way for the west coast concept of ‘indoor outdoor’ living

Vivian Ho in San Francisco

Wed 21 Oct 2020 21.05 BSTLast modified on Thu 22 Oct 2020 00.10 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/21/kaufmann-desert-house-slim-aarons-sale

The exterior of the Kaufmann Desert House, built in 1946 to the designs of Richard Neutra. Photograph: Arcaid Images/Alamy

The Kaufmann Desert House, an architectural marvel that helped define the modernist aesthetic of the resort city of Palm Springs, is up for sale at $25m.

Built in 1946 to the designs of Richard Neutra, the house first became famous in Julius Shulman’s twilight black-and-white frame, the misty San Jacinto Mountains in the background, and then again in 1970 when the society photographer Slim Aarons used the house and its pool for the setting of his legendary snapshot, Poolside Gossip.

The Los Angeles Times and its panel of experts named it one of the best houses of all time in southern California in 2008. Neutra’s sleek glass, steel and Utah stone design was considered radical at the time, paving the way for the west coast concept of “indoor outdoor” living. At the time of construction, the focus of the house was the vast desert terrain outside – in the years since, southern California’s suburban sprawl has caught up to the property. The home consists of glass walls that slide open to a number of terraces or pool, garden and desert views. A covered rooftop living room with a view of the mountains is protected on the sides by adjustable louvres.

In 2008, the Los Angeles Times and its panel of experts named the Kaufmann Desert House one of the best houses of all times in southern California.

With five bedrooms and six full baths at 3,162 sq ft, the house sits on more than two acres and includes a large wood deck, tennis court and lush lawn surrounding the famous pool. The house has had at least two celebrity owners, the singer Barry Manilow and the former NFL Chargers owner Gene Klein.

The house underwent “an award-winning restoration” by Marmol Radziner in the 1990s that included the installation of air conditioning. Neutra had died by then, but the restoration team consulted photographer Shulman, who snapped the first famous photo of the home the year after it was built, and looked through letters between Neutra and the original owner, Edgar Kaufmann, a department store owner who would go on before his death to commission Fallingwater from Frank Lloyd Wright.

“Its place in history as a home – a pristine, modern sculpture in the raw desert – is incredible,” Radziner told home design magazine Dwell. “As you walk around and experience it, it’s incredibly dynamic. The significance of this home in the fundamental sense is that it’s moving to people.”

A bedroom in the Kaufmann Desert House. The current owner of the home is Brent Harris, who bought the home with his ex-wife in 1993 for $1.5m.

FacebookTwitterPinterest A bedroom in the Kaufmann Desert House. The current owner of the home is Brent Harris, who bought the home with his ex-wife in 1993 for $1.5m. Photograph: Alamy

The house last went on sale in 2008, with Christie’s auctioning the house as a work of art for $25m. The housing market took a significant downturn that year. The house sold for $19.1m, but the sale fell through, according to Palm Springs Life. The house was then listed for $13m in 2009.

The current owner of the home is Brent Harris, who bought the home with his ex-wife in 1993 for $1.5m. The couple oversaw the restoration, and put the house on the market when they divorced.

“The home has an unusual resonance when you see it,” Harris told Dwell last year. “It has a volumetric, spatial beauty that changes throughout the day, particularly at twilight. There are a lot of great Neutra houses, but this has different feel entirely. It’s very photogenic.”

Kaufmann Desert House

The Kaufmann House (or Kaufmann Desert House) is a house located in Palm Springs, California, that was designed by architect Richard Neutra in 1946.

It was one of the last large-commission domestic projects designed by Richard Neutra, but it is also arguably one of his most architecturally noteworthy and famous homes.

It is "one of the most important examples of International style architecture in the United States and the only one still in private hands", and in 2008 was offered for sale.

This five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation house in Palm Springs, was designed to emphasize connection to the desert landscape while offering shelter from harsh climatic conditions. Large sliding-glass walls open the living spaces and master bedroom to adjacent patios. Major outdoor rooms are enclosed by a row of movable vertical fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat.

A combined living and dining space, roughly square, lies at the center of the house. While the house favors an east-west axis, four long, perpendicular wings extend in each cardinal direction from the living areas. Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out.

The south wing connects to the public realm and includes a carport and two long, covered walkways. These walkways are separated by a massive stone wall and lead to public and service entries, respectively. The east wing of the house is connected to the living space by a north-facing internal gallery and houses a master bedroom suite. To the west, a kitchen, service spaces, and staff quarters are reached by a covered breezeway. In the northern wing, another open walkway passes along an exterior patio, leading to two guest rooms.

History

The home was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., a Pittsburgh department store tycoon as a desert retreat from harsh winters, and was built in 1946. It was made famous by the 1947 photos by Julius Shulman. A decade earlier, Kaufmann commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

After Kaufmann died in 1955, the house stood vacant for several years. It then had a series of owners, including singer Barry Manilow and San Diego Chargers owner Eugene V. Klein,[3] and had several renovations. These renovations enclosed a patio, added floral wallpaper to the bedrooms and removed a wall for the addition of a media room; additionally, the roof lines were altered with the addition of air conditioning units. In 1992, the home was rediscovered and purchased by a married couple: Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian; at the time it had been for sale on the market three and a half years.

The Harrises purchased the home for US$1.5 million, then sought to restore the home to its original design. Neutra died in 1970 and the original plans were not available, so the couple brought in Los Angeles architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner to restore the design. For clues to the original design, the Harrises looked through the extensive Neutra archives at UCLA, found additional documents through Columbia University and were able to work with Shulman to access some of his never-printed photos of the home's interior. They were able to obtain pieces from the original suppliers of paint and fixtures; they purchased a metal-crimping machine to reproduce the sheet-metal fascia that lined the roof.

Additionally, the Harrises were able to have a long-closed section of a Utah quarry reopened to mine matching stone to replace what had been removed or damaged. To help restore the desert buffer Neutra had envisioned for the house, the Harrises also bought several adjoining plots to more than double the land around the 3,200-square-foot (300 m2) house.

They rebuilt a pool house that serves as a viewing pavilion for the main house, and kept a tennis court that was built on a parcel added to the original Kaufmann property.

After the Harrises divorced, the home was sold on May 13, 2008, for US$15 million at auction by Christie's as a part of a high-profile sale of contemporary art. The house had a presale estimate of US$15 million to US$25 million. The sale later fell through, as the bidder breached terms of the purchase agreement.

In October 2008, the house was listed for sale at US$12.95 million[6], though the listing was later removed.

As of October, 2020, the house is listed for sale at US$25 million.

The restoration by Marmol Radziner + Associates was critically lauded. Today, many critics place the Kaufmann House among the most important houses of the 20th century in the United States, with the likes of Fallingwater, Robie House, Gropius House, and the Gamble House.

The Kaufmann house was included in a list of all-time top 10 houses in Los Angeles, despite its location in Palm Springs, in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008.