Known as the Crowder House, this Dana Point, Orange County home was completed in 1964. Not an ... [+]
Time travel. Is it really a thing? For any aficionado of mid-century design, standing in the orbit of a particular house in Dana Point, Orange County, the answer is absolutely yes.
So let’s travel back to 1945, because that’s when Californian architectural history got rewritten. There’s a man sitting behind the editor’s desk of Arts and Architecture magazine in a musty office on Wilshire Boulevard. His name is John Entenza, and as chief thinker of that publication he has a singular idea about how new family homes should be built in this time of change, post-war. Homes should be affordable and practical but innovative and modern too, constructed from materials that exploit recent production techniques. Entenza gave West Coast architects free rein on the notion. The result became the influential Case Study House project (1945-1966), which saw California redraw the map of what Western architecture could do now, as the see-saw of the mid-20th century tipped away from its ugly past.
The 440-page illustrated authority on the matter, Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program ... [+]
In fact, the pioneering imaginations of West Coast architects like Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra and others drew Entenza’s original ambition beyond functional dwellings for the common man, and produced a fanfare of sleek new domestic environments that ran low-level horizontal planes into open-plan areas, with floor-to-ceiling glazed panels that brought the outdoors inside from shimmering pools that made the living easy. The common man didn’t always have the cash.
One such house is now Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No.670. You may know it from photographs or films, if not by name. The Stahl House, designed by architect Pierre Koenig and completed May 1960, cantilevers vertiginously out over the Hollywood hills, commanding the panoramic sprawl of L.A. from on high. It is the modernist Parnassus.
You can’t buy the Stahl House. Happily, however, a property of immense interest has just hit the market not too far away. The Crowder House in Dana Point, Orange County, 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Los Angeles wasn’t designated part of the Case Study House project but it looks like it was. It’s entirely infused with the sunshine spirit of Californian mid-century design.
Sleek lines, floor-to-ceiling glass, smooth surfaces, reflections from the pool… the Californian ... [+]
The house was built in 1964 by the LA architectural firm Crowder & Associates—a husband-and-wife team, like Charles and Ray Eames—as a vacation retreat for themselves. A two-story, 3,000-square-foot home on a plot almost triple that size, it expresses the open-plan optimism of modernism through its transparency of scale and airy horizontal volumes.
The thoughtful 2016 restoration of the Crowder House upgraded the home for modern living while ... [+]
A wide open-tread staircase leads from the walnut-walled hallway entrance, past mature green potted leaves and high narrow clerestory windows to the capacious living and dining spaces. Paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling glass continue the rectilinear lines.
But there’s another bonus. This property isn’t a sentimental swan song of worn original parts, as some heritage homes turn out to be. It’s the carefully planned result of a deep and loving restoration by the current owners. When they bought the house in 2016, it was tired—tired of being used as a multi-unit rental, with all the wear and tear that wreaked upon it.
Mid-century design language: post-and-beam, lean and clean.
In fact, “restoration” does not do justice to the comprehensive structural and decorative upgrade that means the 4-bed, 3.5-bath Crowder House now presents as a modern family home that has not only revived the original architectural intent and retained its authentic true-to-era feel, but has also added the functionality that families require today.
The simplicities of zoning make for seamless open-plan living.
That means comfort. Upgraded heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical and lighting systems—the whole works reworked—plus double-pane aluminum windows throughout, built-in Bowers & Wilkins home audio, and the large heated outdoor pool re-tiled and re-engineered. Immaculate walnut paneling abounds in the living and dining areas below fresh, white-planked ceilings. In the Gaggenau kitchen too, cabinets float above a brick-tiled floor. And here’s a special touch: six round oversize gas-burner controls on a long walnut false drawer-front project the feel of a serious cook’s station.
Efficiency enhanced by elegance, the kitchen beckons serious cooks with floating walnut cabinets and ... [+]
The exterior accommodates generous seating areas, floodlit for warm evenings under mature native trees. From its tranquil hilltop setting, the property opens to views of Dana Point Harbor, the sparkle of city lights and the surrounding greenery of nature. The Crowder House on Via California offers a very rare opportunity to own a piece of architectural history. And to enjoy it for years to come.
It is listed for sale at $3,395,000 exclusively through Forbes Global Properties brokerage EQTY.
EQTY is a member of Forbes Global Properties, an invitation-only network of top-tier brokerages worldwide and the exclusive real estate partner of Forbes.
