Tasteful Friends: Frank Lloyd Wright’s monumental Ennis House hits the market for $23M

This house has been on and off the market for a good decade......I think its kinda cool....whats wrong with it ?

Perhaps it's haunted?

It’s tiny, that’s why it doesn’t sell. Too much money for little room.

It reminds me of walking into the Egyptian exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

It's gorgeous to visit, but I can't see living there. I do love that dining room set

The "Mayan" bricks are quite...repetitive.

Same here, R4. It's nice, but too 'museumy' looking.

Perhaps, r2.

r3....its 10,000 square feet.....so not small at all.

If I understand correctly, the reason may be that any owner, existing or future, have to make the house available to the public at least 12 days per year. I understand its a landmark, but thats kinda fucked up.

Can you imagine having to give public tours? I don't even let my close friends inside my apartment without a full cleaning!

Here's a different shot; quite a view.

This house is a giant maintenance nightmare. Those blocks are deteriorating and sometime in the 60's I think they "sealed" them, which only made it even worse. At some point it was sliding off the hill.

Those Game of Thrones idiots would be a major nuisance.

I think its a beautiful house.

It used to have 3 acres, now its just a quarter acre that it sits on......plus, I havent lived in LA in close to 20 years, isnt that are kinda seedy ? I know Griffin Observatory is right there.

r10....that was due to an earthquake......and supposedly the current owner spent 15 mil on the renovation so Im sure the bricks are fine. PLUS its now a historical building

This would be a dream home for me. Imagine the opportunities for entertainment.

Make it the Elizabeth Taylor Museum. All her costumes from all her pictures with an emphasis on Cleopatra. Blow ups from tabloids and magazine covers. Holographic clips from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The Amfar Gala could be there every year. It’s a natural.

The gift shop could sell her perfume and violet contact lenses.

It's hideous.

R5's pic looks like a mausoleum/columbarium.

Looked a lot better back in 1933 with sexually insatiable automobile executive Ruth Chatterton.

R14, that made me LOL!

I have Ennis envy.

It needs to be purchased by a dysfunctional trust run by known homosexuals and lesbians.

The price jump is justified when you look at how much restoration has been done in the last ten years. It's going to require fund raising to survive.

I love the house but it requires constant very expensive conservation. They had to do millions of dollars of work on one of the retaining walls that hold one side of the house from sliding down the hill not too long ago because so many of the decorative concrete blocks made by FLW had literally rotted and fallen apart.

Most of Wright's houses are money pits. He was a great designer but he didn't care one bit about whether the building would last. He just wanted them to look good. The whole balcony at Falling Water was on the verge of collapsing several years ago and they had to spend millions to fix the place. It had become dangerous.

A little trivia: If you are an eldergay who remembers the Vincent Price movie "House On Haunted Hill", this is the house.

Werent there exterior shots used in the remake also ? I dont remember.

sorry, no, it wasnt

If only we had Jan Hooks to give us a tour...

It's going to be the new Datalounge World Headquarters!

It feels too much like a hotel to me. The dining room is great. The view from it amazing.

I hadn't heard that about Falling Water r21, who ended up paying for the repairs?

Ennis House looks interesting and might be a nice place to visit, but I don't think I would want to live there.

OP I have a request, can you do something on the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York? I realize you only seem to show expensive houses that are for sale, but the last time I visited the Vanderbilt place it was in rather sad shape and as a National Historic Site one would think there could be something allocated for its maintenance. I believe Anderson Cooper's great great uncle (on his mother's side) owned it.

Even Frank Lloyd Wright made mistakes.

This is hideous.

We took the sky tour when we went to view the house.

I haven't been this moved by the elegance of De Milleian Egyptianism since my last visit to Harrod's.

Art Deco is really tacky and ugly.

You are too much for me, Ennis… I wish I knew how to quit you!

Isn’t there some LAPD detective who claimed his father murdered the Black Dahlia in that house?

Yes, was just going to say that, R34]! It is allegedly “The Black Dahlia House”—where the evil doctor to the stars and elite of Los Angeles lived and may have tortured and killed Elizabeth Short (“The Black Dahlia”).

Even if Dr. George Hodel is not the killer, the house itself probably still has some bad mojo because by all accounts Dr. Hodel raped his own daughter there multiple times and according to his children it was a house of horrors for them and all the women he lived there with (he also allegedly had Man Ray over to take nude pics of his daughter at the house)...

Oops, guess I got it wrong; the creepy Dr. lived in Lloyd Wright’s John Sowden House

(I’m [R35] btw)

Ugly

Mike Brady would've done it better.

I've always loved this house. It's been used in movie sets before. I think it was a movie called "It's the rage" or something.

I have no idea why, but the place feels heavy, oppressive, and full of bad vibes to me. I can't put my finger on what gives me that feeling, but it's there!

It can't just be the awful red and black tile in the bathroom, but that hardly helps.

My favorite description of the architecture is "a Mayan temple by way of the Reich Chancellery".

I like the Art Deco element in the house . The walls inside the house are hedious . A bit to much for my taste .if the walls where normal walls I would love it .

The Sowden house just sold — again — a couple of months ago. I’ve been there a few times and as much as I like the idea of the house, it just isn’t pleasant. It goes from airy, sunny courtyard to cave pretty quickly and the whole building is musty and dated; quite a feat considering how open it is.

Still, it’s the Armenian renovation next door that’s the true horror.

I actually love this house. I usually respect FLW's houses more than I like them, but I'd move right into this one if I had unlimited cash.

LOVE IT. It's so grotesque that defies any laws of taste therefore it's iconic and unjudgeable. There is not such a thing as an ugly FLW creation.

I would love it if they disassembled this house and moved it to a climate controlled space at LACMA. They can recreate the view as a cyclorama.