About The Architect
Richard Neutra
Chief Architect, The Lew House
Richard Neutra was born in 1892 in Vienna, Austria to a wealthy Jewish family. He studied architecture under Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner at the Vienna University of Technology from 1910 to 1918. In 1922, Neutra married Dione Niedermann, and they moved in 1923 to the US, where Neutra’s career flourished, and he made his most lasting impact. At the funeral of Louis Sullivan, Neutra met Frank Lloyd Wright, who hired him to work at Taliesin in Wisconsin while Wright was in Japan. Work there finished in 1925, and Neutra left Taliesin to work in California with Rudolf Schindler, a fellow Austrian-American architect. Neutra and Schindler and their families were so close that they all lived together with their families in Schindler’s house on Kings Road in Los Angeles from February 1925 to May 1930.
Neutra started his own practice around this time and went on to design multiple buildings embodying the International Style that Neutra pioneered, twelve of which are designated as Historic Cultural Monuments, including the Lovell Health House and the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House. In California, Neutra became celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that would later be called Mid-Century Modernism, California’s signature style. Architectural historian Thomas Hines wrote that, “ In retrospect it is difficult to imagine Neutra’s style style developing anywhere else or to imagine twentieth century Los Angeles without his contribution.” He was known for the attention he gave to defining the real needs of his clients, regardless of the size of the project, in contrast to other architects eager to impose their artistic vision on a client. Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his client’s needs, much to their surprise. His domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape, and practical comfort.
It is said, however, that Neutra did not always live up to his ideals. If he did not agree with clients’ demands, Neutra would sometimes refuse to accommodate them on the basis that he would not do that to “his” home. Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand based character Howard Roark in The Fountainhead partially on Neutra, and by all accounts he cut a powerful and domineering figure. Between 1927 and 1969, Neutra designed more than 300 houses in California and elsewhere. In 1946, Neutra built the stunning and much-celebrated Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, which would earn him the moniker of the Father of Mid-Century Modernism that is as popular and modern today as it was eighty years ago. In 1949, Time Magazine featured Neutra on its cover and ranked him second only to Frank Lloyd Wright in American architecture. After that, Neutra had all the work he could ever want. He hired many young architects who went on to independent success including Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, and Raphael Soriano.
In 1958, Neutra completed the beloved Lew House above Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills, the only Neutra home ever available to the public through short term rental sites such as Airbnb and VRBO and now offered through this website to become even more accessible to fans of Neutra’s work by saving the exorbitant fees of middlemen. Thank you for finding us here.
In 1965, Neutra formally partnered with his son Dion Neutra as Richard and Dion Neutra and Associates. The following year Neutra moved back to Germany, and a few years later in 1970, he died in the middle of an argument with a client, according to grandson Justin, who later made a short film about Neutra. In 1977 Neutra was posthumously awarded the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal but his reputation would only grow exponentially over the next half century, becoming the near household name he is today. We’re so glad you love him as much as we do. Book now to join us in one of his most beloved homes.
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