Aline Barnsdall Hollyhock House

Frontal view of entry passage, from west; "Built between 1919 and 1921 for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, Hollyhock House is Frank Lloyd Wright's first project in Los Angeles. Its namesake is abstracted and geometricized in much of the house's design, including exterior walls and interior furniture. Hollyhock House was the centerpiece of a mostly unrealized Wright master plan for a theater community set on a thirty-six acre site, "Olive Hill." Wright left much of the supervision of construction of Hollyhock House to his son, landscape architect Lloyd Wright, and to architect Rudolf Schindler, as Wright himself was working on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (since destroyed). In 1927, Aline Barnsdall donated the Hollyhock House and eleven surrounding acres to the City of Los Angeles for use as a public art park. It has been leased over the years to various arts organizations, necessitating a cycle of alteration and rehabilitation that is culminating in the large-scale rehabilitation which started in the fall of 1998. Today Hollyhock House is a part of Barnsdall Art Park, with a local art gallery, theater, and children's activities." Source: Galinsky [website]; http://www.galinsky.com/ (accessed 7/14/2008