Kaufmann Desert House by Richard Neutra

Table Of Content

• Modern Tours Palm Springs
• The Hidden History of the Kaufmann House
• Modernist architectural marvel made famous by Slim Aarons for sale for $25m
• "Tiny homes are not the big solution to homelessness that we need"
• The Most Expensive Homes Sold in Greater Palm Springs in 2023
• For a Cool $25 Million, You Can Buy Richard Neutra’s Most Famous Palm Springs Home
• Top architecture stories

It then went through a series of several owners including famed singer Barry Manilow and Eugene V. Klein, who was the owner of the San Diego Chargers. During this time, it also underwent various interior and architectural changes without any thought of preservation from any of the ensuing owners. The roof was altered to add air-conditioning, wallpaper was put up in the bedrooms, and a wall was torn down in the living room to add additional living space. Following its stint with Hollywood’s best, it was again left vacant for several more years. • Kaufmann House, originally designed in 1946 by architect Richard Neutra, was built for the same client who commissioned Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright. After having been significantly amended by its successive owners, current owners of the residence decided to return it to its original state.

The Untold Darkness Inside the Bright Palm Springs Kaufmann House - Palm Springs Life

The Untold Darkness Inside the Bright Palm Springs Kaufmann House.

Posted: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Modern Tours Palm Springs

Thoughtful placement of larger rooms at the end of each wing helps define adjacent outdoor rooms, with circulation occurring both indoors and out. SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment.

The Hidden History of the Kaufmann House

This seeming contradiction found a strong advocate in an Austrian-born architect named Richard Neutra. He came to the United States in the early 1920 to join his countryman, Rudolph Schindler. Both men gained notoriety in the ’20s and ’30s in Los Angeles, where they championed the International style of architecture, notable for its steel framing, extensive use of glass, and cable-suspended balconies. Though they had at one time been colleagues, Wright was reportedly enraged by Kaufmann’s decision to use Neutra, whose work the elder architect considered “cheap and thin,” according to Neutra biographer Barbara Lamprecht. Before the invention and widespread use of photography in the architectural industry, people had to visit buildings to see and experience them. As photography became more available, magazines, publications, and printed media became the primary way people would consume architecture.

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

It is unknown how he justified this approach to Kaufmann, but it’s well known he supervised much of the work on the house while floating in the water. When Colbert turned down the Linsks’ offer on her weekend home, Nelda and Joe decided to see what they could do with the fixer-upper. They paid $149,000 … with no small amount of trepidation about what the odd modernist house would require in terms of restoration and maintenance. 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. A small amount of controversy came about with the commissioning of the Kaufmann House when Austrian architect Richard Neutra was hired to do the job instead of Wright.

"Tiny homes are not the big solution to homelessness that we need"

Klein built a tennis court on one of the adjacent lots and a tennis pavilion between the pool and the original eastern boundary. Harris says Klein’s structure was unsound, so he had Marmol Radziner replace it with a pool house with modern amenities, including a bar and television viewing area. Such amenities disturbed the aesthetic of the main house, but feel much more at home in the pavilion.

The origins of Neutra’s commission were in a wooded piece of land outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Department store heir and philanthropist Edgar Kaufmann oversaw his family’s business and was a passionate supporter of the local arts. In the mid 1930s, Kaufmann and his wife decided to build a country house near the Bear Run waterfall in the Allegheny Mountains.

For a Cool $25 Million, You Can Buy Richard Neutra’s Most Famous Palm Springs Home

The Kaufmann Desert House was saved in 1992 when it was discovered again by a married couple named Brent and Beth Harris. Brent, an investment banker, and Beth, an architectural historian, found the house was for sale when Beth had snuck onto the property to take a closer look at the historic landmark. The original plans for the property had never been replicated and Neutra had died in 1970, so they went on a journey to restore it back to its original glory. The first effort was a widely publicized auction last year at Christie’s, the New York auction house, where the modernist gem sold for a breathtaking $19.1 million.

She and her son, Edgar Jr., mounted exhibits on Mexican folk art and antiques as well as modern home furnishings. In 1934, she became the first woman to serve as Montefiore Hospital’s president of the board of trustees, and she made a name for herself breeding and showing long-haired dachshunds. While Beth Harris may have moved to Los Angeles, many feel her heart has stayed behind in Palm Springs. She continues to promote architectural education through her work with the California Preservation Foundation, and as a major donor to the emerging Palm Springs Art Museum's Architecture & Design Center, named the Edwards Harris Pavilion in her honor.

Top architecture stories

The home was built for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., who was also the first owner of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater home in Pennsylvania. Built in 1946, the home is one of its most legendary examples of California modernism. As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. If walking the rich through Palm Springs’ most exclusive house is a privilege, it is also wistful. The Harrises, who reportedly share the house on alternating weekends, may not be happy about parting with the house they have done so much to preserve.

The Kaufmann House was designed and built when American architecture was undergoing significant transformation. The mid-20th century marked the rise of the International Style, characterized by minimalism, open floor plans, and a harmonious blend of aesthetic simplicity and functionalism. Edgar J. Kaufmann, a prominent Pittsburgh department store owner, was deeply embedded in the architectural innovations of his time. Having previously commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to create the iconic Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, Kaufmann’s collaboration with Richard Neutra signified a pivot towards the burgeoning modernist movement on the West Coast. One of the Harris’ most significant upgrades was Marmol Radziner’s pool house at the eastern end of the property. There was no structure in Neutra’s original plans; when Aarons took his famous photograph, he backed up against a wall of bushes.

Iconic Neutra-Designed Home Featured in Slim Aarons Photo Hits the Market - Architectural Digest

Iconic Neutra-Designed Home Featured in Slim Aarons Photo Hits the Market.

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Wright was very offended at his choice, but Kaufmann was looking for something that fit his new desert landscape and felt Neutra would be a stronger choice. The main outdoor rooms are enclosed by a vertical aluminum fins that offer flexible protection against sandstorms and intense heat. In the west wing there is a kitchen, service spaces and rooms for staff which can be reached by a deck “breezway”. The desert, or rather, this primordial wilderness area that stretches around Palm Springs, fascinated Neutra. His 1927 book “Wie Baute Amerika” ends with images of houses of the Indian peoples of New Mexico and Arizona, praising their overlapping rooms, with terraces on the roof and the ability of mud brick to withstand inclement weather. Despite the neat precision of the Desert House, it evokes the spirit of the houses of those Indian tribes, which he admired so much.

Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. (1885–1955) and Liliane Kaufmann (1889–1952), Neutra’s clients, had been patrons of modern art and architecture for many years, mainly in the Midwest, where they owned a department store in Pittsburgh. Until they commissioned the Desert House, the Kaufmanns had been loyal patrons of Frank Lloyd Wright, who had designed an office for E. Kaufmann inside the department store (now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) and Fallingwater near Mill Run, Pennsylvania, both completed in 1937. Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs was designed and built in 1946–1947, although some sources claim that the preparatory contact between client and architect occurred in 1945. The house exemplifies Neutra’s approach to designing a house and its surroundings as a single, continuous environment, a concept he had begun to work with in the early 1940s. Other examples are Neutra’s Nesbitt House (1942, Los Angeles) and the Tremaine House (1945–1948, Montecito).

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. Although both have unprotected glass in the southern part of a home located in the middle of the desert seems crazy, this is because the house was to be used only one month per year, in January. The decision to build the bedrooms and courtyards a spiral, reveals a specific social order.

Even though Doe is selling the house the old-fashioned way, by walking prospective buyers through the property one by one, he does not disparage the headline-grabbing method of selling rare houses at public auction. Doe, in fact, says he ran into Beth Harris the day after the auction, and opined he “could not have done a better job of marketing.” When the auction sale fell through, the Harrises turned to Doe. The Kaufmann House was built by Austrian-born architect Richard Neutra for Edgar J Kaufmann – an American department store entrepreneur – as a vacation residence away from his Pittsburgh home. The same retail baron commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, a decade earlier.

The east wing is connected with the living space of the north wing through a gallery that houses a bedroom suite. A symphony of steel, glass, sandstone and stucco, it exemplifies California living with terrazzo flooring, mountain views and the famed central swimming pool. It wasn’t until 1993, when Brent and Beth Harris, a financial executive and an architectural historian, moved in that there was an attempt to bring the Neutra house back to its original splendor piece by piece.

Following Edgar Kaufmann's death in 1955, his desert house sold to Francis C. Park, who in turn sold it in 1962 to art dealer Joseph Linsk and his wife Nelda. Ft. of interior space by converting a patio into a media room; a wall was removed so the newly enclosed space could open into the original living room; additional air conditioning was placed on the roof that cluttered the roof planes. Even if the final sales figure is a multimillion-dollar drop from the original listing price, this rambling hilltop stunner still claims the No. 1 regional slot by a long shot. The homeowners and their guests never want for anything when it comes to recreation and activities, given the private pickleball court, gym, game room, screening room, and angular pool that echoes the rectilinearity of the modern two-story design. The Los Angeles Times and its panel of experts named it one of the best houses of all time in southern California in 2008.