John Lautner's Intact 1955 Silver Lake House, Offered for the First Time in 71 Years, Goes Under Contract
In 1955 John Lautner designed the Baldwin Residence for the commercial artist Joseph Baldwin and his wife, Rosemary. He set it on a Silver Lake hillside on slender posts anchored by shear walls, so the 1,679-square-foot house appears to float above the slope. It was offered for sale on October 26 for the first time in 71 years, at $2,099,999, and is now under contract.
Lautner spent six years as a Taliesin Fellow under Frank Lloyd Wright before he settled in Los Angeles in 1939. His later work includes the Chemosphere and the Sheats-Goldstein Residence. Micheltorena Street holds two more of his houses. His own house at number 2007 was designed in 1939 and built in 1940. The Reiner residence, known as Silvertop, at 2138 was designed in 1956, built between 1963 and 1967 and finished by Lautner in 1974.
Posts instead of bracing
A winding entrance descends to a carport tucked below the house. The living floor sits above it on its posts, clad in brick and redwood plank siding, on a 0.17-acre lot full of trees that looks toward the Hollywood Hills and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Under the pyramid
The family room rises beneath an inverted-pyramid ceiling, and triangular clerestory windows repeat its geometry.
Floor-to-ceiling glass meets at a mitered corner and opens onto a wraparound deck suspended over the slope.
A studio behind the fireplace
A brick fireplace anchors the family room. Behind it Lautner placed an artist's studio lit from the north, conceived for Joseph Baldwin's work. A parquet-floored corridor leads away from the living space to the three bedrooms and two baths. Each bedroom keeps the built-ins Lautner designed as part of the architecture.
One floor from door to garden
Skylights light the entry foyer. From there, terrazzo runs through the kitchen and out to the art garden as one continuous surface.
Louis Magnano of Modern California House, who listed the house, says it is completely original, except that a tree growing through the teak deck had to be removed.
The kitchen, the light fixtures, the mahogany paneling and the terrazzo and parquet floors all remain.
The Baldwin Residence is at 1949 W Micheltorena Street in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
