John Sowden House - Architecture and Design

Architecture and Design

The original owner, John Sowden, was a painter and photographer who hired his friend, Lloyd Wright (eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright), to build their home in Los Feliz. The house has been recognized as one of Lloyd Wright's most important works and a landmark in the Los Angeles area for its imposing Mayan-style front facade and temple-like features. When Lloyd Wright died in 1978, the Los Angeles Times wrote that Sowden house had been "hailed as the apogee of his residential work."

The house is also noteworthy for Lloyd Wright's continuation of his work in the early 1920s with textile-block construction and Mayan themes. His father had used the textile blocks in building the Millard House, Samuel Freeman House, Ennis House, and Storer House. On the Sowden House, Lloyd Wright used ornamented concrete blocks to decorate a distinctive entry that it has been said "challenges the street." From the street, the home has the appearance of a Mayan fortress or temple. The sharp ridges and lines of the facade have been said to resemble the gaping open mouth of a great white shark, resulting in the home's being known in Los Angeles as the "Jaws House." It has also been described as having a "cultic, brooding" appearance. The Los Angeles Times has also described it as a "quasi-Mayan-style mansion, an otherwordly apparition that looms over Franklin Avenue in Los Feliz." A guest arriving at Sowden House passes through sculpted copper gates and then up "a narrow, tomb-like staircase" to the house. Sowden wanted a house that would be a showplace where he could entertain his friends in the Hollywood film community.

From 1945 through 1951, the house was owned by Dr. George Hodel, a Los Angeles physician who was a prime suspect in the infamous Black Dahlia murder, although he was not publicly named as such at the time. The doctor's own son, Steve Hodel, himself a retired City of Los Angeles homicide detective, argued in his 2003 book "Black Dahlia Avenger" that the Black Dahlia victim, Elizabeth Short, was actually tortured, murdered and dissected by his father inside of the Sowden House, in January 1947.

The house was used as a shooting location to depict the home of Ava Gardner in Martin Scorsese's film "The Aviator." The house was also used as the residence of actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) in Joe Johnston's 1991 film, The Rocketeer, an adaptation of the Dave Stevens comic of the same name.