LA on the cheap HHH

Cost: $8
Where is it? Between Hollywood and Sunset, between Edgemont and Vermont, hidden behind ugly stripmalls

I finally found a willing participant to tour Aline Barnsdall's Hollyhock House with me a few weeks ago. It is a sprawling estate on top of Barnsdall Hill, in the Los Feliz neighborhood, built for the oil heiress in the '20s. You can tell by the quote from Frank Lloyd Wright that he and Aline did not see eye to eye. (We thought lovers spat) I think he was fired and re-hired from the project at least once.

We unfortunately got a tour guide that had only done the tour once before, that day. She couldn't really elaborate beyond what her white 4 x6 note cards said. Also, the tour was colored by these two yokels who loved loved loved puns and joking around. So whenever the guide told us to..

"watch our heads"
They replied "Well, I think we would need a mirror for that."
They were in their 50s, no excuse.

Hollyhock is a gorgeous maze of a house that has been fantastically restored. Frank Lloyd Wright has great attention to detail and made a lot of interesting functional pieces. This house was built in what I call his mexic-amerindian phase as you can see with the "abstraction" of the Hollyhock seen below:

(Do you see the flower in the geometrical shapes, I don't)

And the other houses he built in the area like the Ennis House and Sowden House which you may have seen in a couple commercials and a season of America's next top model. (by the way you can rent Sowden house for $3,900 a night, 3 night minimum)

A lot of what we saw were replicas and adjustments, since the house went through some ownership changes after Barnsdall left, including the USO who demolished the kitchen and turned it into a formica hell.

Aline had envisioned an artist compound with a theater, gallery and studio, much of which is still standing and is being used for that very purpose. (see my post on Excavated Shellac)

I recommend going at $8 a ticket. I think I will do it again soon, maybe the tour guide will be off book/cards.