a visit to the Breacher Apartments

 

The Bride and I were in Los Angeles to tour several Schindlers as part of a MAK Center fundraiser. We also scoped in time to street-visit several Schindlers not on the tour and to see the new Zumthor at LACMA (more on all of this later). Since the Breacher Apartments were on the way to the Zumthor from LAX, we stopped in to gawk at this formerly lost Schindler to get a closer look.

In a previous post, I reported how Dan Caroselli found this Schindler that was presumably lost due to highway construction. As Dan sleuthed, the owners moved the apartment building across town and placed it here at 2045 South Sherbourne Drive. 

The structure is somewhat modified, but there's still a lot of Schindler there, certainly enough to say that this is a Schindler.  Most of the mods have been made in the entry area with window "upgrades" and the addition of shade structures. Enough is left such that someone could easily restore the original elements if they wanted to. Visiting the structure reminded me that someone (me?) needs to write the current owner and let them know what they have (and what they could do if they wanted to). 

I tried to reproduce the angle of a photo of the building in its prime below to show the differences. As you can see, the patios walls were lost in the relocation. The original lot was presumably flat. Because this lot has a slope, the front of the building at its current location stands three to four feet higher. The lower floor windows appear to be How House-ish with glass corners. 

 

Right around the corners (the building is a mirror image of itself flipped around the long axis) are these push-outs with tiny windows. I'm guessing these are bathrooms. Interestingly, the rear units don't have these bump-outs, perhaps because they are wider than the units in the front. The lower front unit on this side doesn't have this bump-out, bu the other side does. The photo below also shows the grade of the lot as well as where the original building sat on the landscape (that shady bulge). 

Halfway down the side are stairwells to the second story units as well as back doors (?) to the first floor units. 

 

 

The rear of the building is understandably less interesting than the front, but retains the large inner patio area of the front. Accordingly, the main volumes are wider than in the front. 

 

Off the back alley was a five-car garage. "That sure looks like a Schindler," I told The Bride. Indeed, it is! I hadn't noticed it on the plans before, but there it is in black and smudged white: a five car garage for the apartment building. The original plan shows a large side yard for the original location. That was probably the case at the new location as well, but there's now a vaguely art deco apartment building there now, perhaps installed later for additional income. On the other hand, Schindler's axiometric drawing shows a building in that location, so who knows. The current garage doesn't have all the side crenelations of the original design. 

We had a pleasant conversation with a neighbor off the back alley cleaning his gutters about the neighborhood and housing prices in the area (expensive!). "You looking to rent?" No. "You looking to buy?" No. He looked confused. "This building was designed by a famous architect," I said. He looked a the building and then back at me. He wasn't impressed. But we sure were!