History
The home was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., a Pittsburgh department store tycoon as a desert retreat from harsh winters and built in 1946. It was made famous by the 1947 photos by Julius Shulman. A decade earlier, Kaufmann commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.
After Kaufmann died in 1955, the house stood vacant for several years. It then had a series of owners, including singer Barry Manilow and San Diego Chargers owner Eugene V. Klein, and had several renovations. These renovations enclosed a patio, added floral wallpaper to the bedrooms and removed a wall for the addition of a media room; additionally the roof lines were altered with the addition of air conditioning units. In 1992 the home was rediscovered and purchased by a married couple: Brent Harris, an investment manager, and Beth Edwards Harris, an architectural historian; at the time it had been for sale on the market three and a half years.
The Harrises purchased the home for US$1.5 million, then sought to restore the home to its original design. Neutra died in 1970 and the original plans were not available, so the couple brought in Los Angeles architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner to restore the design. For clues to the original design, the Harrises looked through the extensive Neutra archives at UCLA, found additional documents through Columbia University and were able to work with Shulman to access some of his never-printed photos of the home's interior. They were able to obtain pieces from the original suppliers of paint and fixtures; and they purchased a metal-crimping machine to reproduce the sheet-metal fascia that lined the roof.
Additionally, the Harrises were able to have a long-closed section of a Utah quarry re-opened to mine matching stone to replace what had been removed or damaged. To help restore the desert buffer Neutra had envisioned for the house, the Harrises also bought several adjoining plots to more than double the land around the 3,200-square-foot (300 m2) house.
They rebuilt a pool house that serves as a viewing pavilion for the main house, and kept a tennis court that was built on a parcel added to the original Kaufmann property.
After the Harrises divorced, the home was supposedly sold on May 13, 2008, for US$15 million at auction by Christie's as a part of a high-profile sale of contemporary art. The house had a presale estimate of US$15 million to US$25 million. The sale later fell through, as the bidder breached terms of the purchase agreement.
In October 2008, the house was listed for sale at US$12.95 million.
The restoration by Marmol Radziner + Associates was critically lauded. Today, many critics place the Kaufmann House amongst the most important houses of the 20th century in the United States, with the likes of Fallingwater, Robie House, Gropius House and the Gamble House.
The Kaufmann house was included in a list of all time top 10 houses in Los Angeles, despite its being in Palm Springs, in a Los Angeles Times survey of experts in December 2008.
Read more about this topic: Kaufmann Desert House
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