What is it that entices us to want to live in an iconic Modern house? Prestige? Spare lines and simplicity? We wouldn’t want to go without air conditioning today, as many in California did in the 1950s and ’60s. Almost all Case Study Houses lacked air conditioning, for example.
Until the past two decades, the majority who live close by the Pacific did so without modern climate control. Even in Malibu and Venice, however, house by house, older structures are retrofitted for broiling temperatures.
In contrast, perhaps another way to cope with our changing climate might be to acquire one of the eternally ‘Cool’ (and sensually cerebral) residential designs of Craig Ellwood and his architect-partners.
The Mysterious Mr. Ellwood
Yet Ellwood himself, even called in the 1950s “the Cary Grant of architecture,” is now in the 21st century a contested figure. At least since a new biography (published in 2002) challenged the idea of the man himself as the actual principal designer at his firm. For an individual regularly described as a Case-Study architect (with three to the firm’s credit), this is a fall indeed.
However, for those who venerate the houses in question, perhaps that history is beside the point. There is a unity to most of the built output of Ellwood Associates that is extraordinary. A label used at the time and much since is apt: “The California Mies van der Rohe ” – Ellwood & Company as local masters of “Less is More.”
An Embarrassment of Ellwood Modern Icons
2024 boasts something extraordinary: Four Craig Ellwood houses are available! To have two of these residences available at the same time is exceptionally rare in Southern California. To have three, even four? Astounding.
Let’s look first at the redwood-beam framed Kubly House, now restored and re-listed in Pasadena by Crosby Doe Associates’ John Jacob Matthes.
Closer to the ocean, there is another Modern icon available for lease: The floating Smith House in Brentwood (completed in 1958), serenely looking out to the Pacific on an ‘Erector Set’ of steel beams.
Ellwood’s restored and slightly altered Casa Kuderna, high above Universal City in the Hollywood Hills is available for sale. And so is the beautifully restored 1953 Bobertz House in San Diego.
The Kubly House, 1965, An Iconic Modern Mid-Century Design
The Kubly House is sited on 6/10 of an acre, almost all of it gently sloping down towards the Pasadena Arroyo and Rose Bowl not very far away. A long driveway leads from the street under giant mature sycamores to a paved parking court and 2-car carport. Even so, the rear yard with its pool area is on a grand scale. With room to spare and nature on all sides, this glass house retains near-perfect privacy.
Originally a mirror-image symmetrical plan with four small bedrooms, the house now has one primary and two secondary bedrooms. That one change aside, all the original finishes remain as they were built, never having been mistakenly ‘upgraded’.
As crisp and clean as the finishes are, there is much warmth to this landmark modern house. The 1965 budget of $45,000 didn’t permit the all-steel I-beam framing as Ellwood had first proposed. The redwood used instead fits the natural setting here so exactly, it’s impossible to imagine the house built any differently.
(If we compare the Kubly House with the all-white palette of the Daphne House up near San Francisco, the difference is striking: https://architectureforsale.com/afsquarterly/temple-of-steel-craig-ellwoods-daphne-residence/ )
As the listing agent John Matthes writes : “The Kublys, satisfied in their working relationship with Ellwood, were instrumental in hiring [Ellwood Associates] to design Art Center’s hillside campus.” That campus is itself a celebrated landmark of Southern California Modernism. The Kubly House is not just beautiful in itself – it’s part of a historic circuit directly connecting the next generation of designers with the best ideas from postwar Modernism.
*** UPDATE: As of September 1, 2024, the Kubly House has been leased for two years. ***
