McAlmon guest house for rent (and viewing!)

Guest house in the foreground; house house in the back.

Oh, I love it when a Schindler comes on the market so we can get a peek at the interior and details of the design. Megathanks to the good folks at the Rudolf M Schindler Facebook page for clueing me in to the recent rental listing of the McAlmon guest house.

This is a fascinating project, in part, because of how Schindler Borged the original house on the property. This is what I call Borgitecture: the adaptation of an existing structure into a new architecture. Sometimes these adaptations obliterate any evidence of the original building. But here, Schindler simply integrates the existing house into his addition which gives the guest house it's decidedly Modern appearance today. I'm sure this was done for cost savings (why tear down a perfectly good house to build a new one?), but I wonder if Schindler also did this out of honesty: "Yo, homeboys: There's someone else's house underneath all this Schindlerness!"

Regardless of the whats and whys, the place is fabulous. Schindler reserved the private and utility spaces for the original cottage and went full-on Modern with the living room extending off the front of the original structure. There's an open house this weekend (or next?) that I wish I could attend, but the posting photos do a great job of conveying the glory of Schindler's design.

If you look carefully at the structure on the right (towards its rear), you can see cottage windows from the original structure.

The new space added to the cottage.

On the backside of the cottage, the original house is easier to see (but you can also see the Borging).

Lovely patio added to the original cottage. 

The structures today.

The structures back in the day.

The cottage post-Borged.

I'm guessing that the living room and the patio are "new" (added by Schindler) and the rest of the house is original.

Heading into Schindler's addition.

In the addition.

Overall site plan.

Kitchen (in the original house)

Office (in the original house).

Bedroom (in the original house)

Kallis house is on the market

Schindler's Mischa Kallis House (1946) is on the market for $2,395,000. She looks to be in beautiful shape (although she has a few additions by Schindler associate Josef van der Kar and Leroy Miller (L.A. Twelve).

Words from the listing:

First offering: City of Los Angeles Cultural Historic Monument #860, The Kallis-Sharlin Residence, 1946, by architect Rudolph Schindler, with later additions by Josef Van der Kar, and L.A. Twelve architect Leroy Miller, F.A.I A. 

Art and Music have always flourished in this dynamic space originally designed for artist Mischa Kallis as a residence and art studio. In 1960 Kallis sold the property directly to his cousin Jacqueline and her husband William Sharlin. Jacqueline was a noted concert pianist who had actually performed at Carnegie Hall. 

With the Sharlins' love of entertaining, and a growing family, they needed more space, and commissioned Schindler’s associate Josef Van der Kar to ingeniously convert an open patio between the living quarters and art studio to an entertainment/family room. Later, they hired architect Leroy Miller to convert the art studio to a new master bedroom and bath. These changes have not compromised Schindler’s sensibility. Today the building stands as a great space for living, and a fully resolved work of architecture. 

A sheltering carport at the street level acts as a privacy screen, and the house is covered with vertical split-stake wood fencing to help the house "disappear among the trees." The glassy residence affords dramatic vistas across the Cahuenga Pass to the distant San Gabriel Mountains, and incorporates 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces, and original Schindler built-in furniture. 

Schindler House makes cameo in Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Pretty. Damn. Cool.

Shows up at 1:23 in this snippet of the famous chase scene:

Still frame:

You can see the second-story sleeping basket!

kimberli meyer to leave mak center

photo from here

Read all about it here.

new (old) photos (many in color!)

Thanks to a tip by MidTexMod of a post by Archinet I got hooked into a color teaching slide collection by Fritz Block that includes, you guessed it, several Schindlers. You can access the slides here.

After doing a general search on "R.M. Schindler", I discovered that they also had a number of Julius Schulman shots I hadn't seen before.