Tasteful Friends: Pretty Little Bel Air Poppy

This design by this "legendary" architect looks more than a little derivative.

I think I've been to this house before, but Connie Stevens owned it then (I went to a party she hosted)

Bel Air Pastiche.

The front doesn't have enough columns, they're too skinny.

The painting of the monkey holding a crucifix is terrifying.

Utter perfection--I'd demand that the decor be retained (except for the monkey portrait over the fireplace). Purest LA.

Ceilings too low for that style. Cluttered, dark, and depressing.

I took Nan Kempner to a party there (She actually took me.) and spent the evening with Betsy Bloomington laughing at the house and guests. The furnishings and colors were very different but the effect of "jus' our little cottage on the cape up east" was still there, only a bit more intelligently expressed.

A bit.

Hate! faux plantation homes. The interior is tolerable, minus the furnishings but i couldn’t look at it without thinking Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Hideous, and certainly not worth the listing price

I like the house, and thankfully the decor can be redone.

This faux plantation pastiche looks mundane compared to this "legendary black LA architect's" other stuff.

[quote] Betsy Bloomington

Oh, DEAR.

Tara! I like it too. How would you describe the furniture and the decoration? “Overdone” seems inadequate. Except for the kitchen which is strangely barren. Love the huge window over the sink.

He really didn't have a signature style. He did a lot of slightly contemporary takes on traditional styles, as well as some fairly mainstream modernism. I wonder if the ceilings were dropped at some point to accommodate the cans. He would have used traditional proportions for a house like this--his designs all have real quality even if he wasn't an innovator.

[quote] the cans

Such an unpleasant expression!

That house is worth $7 mil max because it’s Bel Air. $2.5 in the Valley.

What apartment building OP? Am I missing something?

Why does the door at photo 30 (kitchen/office) overlook what appears to be a parking lot? (And why are there Aeron chairs in the kitchen?)

What's with the matching portraits on the stairs at photo 34? Is it a paean to the Hall of Presidents at Disneyland?

You can see a pool out of the window at photo 23 (and more office chairs in the indoor room) --why are there no photos of the pool?

why live in something like that in LA. Go back East or down South. In LA , I want the modern or Mediterranean or even Spanish colonial for the "lifestyle" vibe!

R16 I agree that the photos with plans are designed to mislead.

It is a narrow block. And I can't tell why the upstairs rooms have such small windows.

R12: I'd call it oversized crap. Even "California style" often isn't really indigenous, unless you count stucco fronted versions of houses you'd find anywhere else. The Inside/outside stuff from Wright and others wasn't original to California.

It looks a lot like Eva Gabor's old pile

Paul Williams certainly was an innovator - he used past styles to dress up what were essentially modern homes. This is more conservative than his usual take on things, but you can still see the degree of stylization in the facade. He designed over 2,000 buildings throughout LA and did more than anyone to create the postwar "traditional" look associated with places like Hollywood. He was Barbara Stanwyck's favorite architect - I believe he designed two houses for her.

The present decor seems to have been salvaged out of a Victorian castle. But I rather like the porcelain collection.

R7- It's BLOOMINGDALE, BITCH!!!

And I'd rather live in a Drago Box sitting on a tanker in the middle of the Suez Fucking Canal.

Betsy Bloomington eats my asshole.

Yikes. It looks like the lodge of a secret society (portraits of former members all over the walls) with a ritual chamber in the basement ... and a sex dungeon.

Who the hell wants to live in faux plantation style in Bel Air?

Well lookee here! It's a mini-southern mansion, complete with portraits of the ancestors. I guess the grounds are nice, park-like. The inside is too colorful for my taste. If I bought it, I would have to redecorate the whole thing to lighter colors.

While they painted the lawn jockey white, they kept their blackamoors (Two matching sets) as well as an Italian centurian collared at the neck!

I like that you can wheel yourself from the bar to your Mac - and probably out to the kitchen. That’s convenience!

The exterior was used as the home of a family in a TV series, but I can't remember what the name of the show was.

There's nothing innovative about slapping a traditional facade on a "modern house".

[quote]And I can't tell why the upstairs rooms have such small windows.

Forced perspective.

Horrible!

R16 in the design in a house like this in LA then, one meant for entertaining, the kitchen is a service area and would have parking for staff, deliveries and guests, and valet parking for events.

The Aeron barstools are nice. It’s a sort of nook or high counter. I’m confused by the terminal and screen in or on the mirrored bar with more barstools but what is it for: checking email or keeping bar tabs?

There’s a lot of bric a brac an English friend once described as “in the Eastern taste” which in context meant the Middle East and not something she thought highly oh. Lots of stuffed camels and mounted gazelle heads along with the china room make me wonder who did it up last?

You can tell the people who live there are real classy.

And the bathrooms?

This plantation home isn't as big as my plantation home!

Less than 5 minutes from the Hotel Bel-Air, which means guests won't have to stay with you.

[quote]Great bones, some of the decor is sur le dessus, but the powder room's a classic.

OP, I'm sincerely curious as to what you feel using [italic]sur le dessus[/italic] instead of [italic]over the top[/italic] , adds to the above sentence. Since they mean the same, why not just use the English version? Am I wrong in assuming that it would be much more familiar to most---though not all---of DL readers?

One room has walls that are a beautiful shade of blue. Otherwise, it's straining hard to be grand...

I like it, although the can lights would have to go. Like R13, I wondered if the ceilings were dropped to accommodate those - removing them would allow it toe be restored to how it was built in 1942 which would improve it no end. I like some of the decor, but that picture of the monkey with the crucifix can go. Current owners will take that along with everything else anyway

Its a nicer house than most I see in that part of the world

Google shows excavation to the north. How many cars are going to be traveling that road? Will there be dumpsters in front of the pool or will that be the parking lot?

This house was used as the exteriors in Mommie Dearest.

You guys are slipping.

This house obviously belonged to an old BH doctor or lawyer who has passed on.

It’s a tear down.

Another Paul W. Williams I hate. It looks derivative because it's one of 100s of American houses built between 1920 and the 1970 that are modelled on Mount Vernon, lifting mostly from its mostly symmetrical river facade with pilasters. Some of them are archaeologically perfect, most take some liberties or make innovations, and then there are very free-form watered down variants that only qualify if you have seen enough to recognize the germ if the thing that is all but lost.

Williams makes a fairly straightforward interpretation, reducing the pilasters to pencil thin, and regrouping the windows: hideous walleyed placement of fatty proportioned windows on the first floor; and at the second floor small under-the-eaves type attic windows lifted straight from Mount Vernon but regrouped above the front door (that post-1910 pride of Americans to show you where their shitter is ("right above the front door where it goddamn outta be"), and these flanked by hideous paired windows.

It's a fucking abomination of proportion and massing of detail. Made worse by the little demi-house-trailer winglets to either side (tearooms if the Mount Vernon Ladies Association?). Inside its a fucking mess as well, with it's grand stair with it's nod to Chinese Chippendale balusters and the Colonial Fauxlonial architecture if the more ambitious interstate highway tests tips if the 1920-40s. Scale is all very stage set except that the ceilings are everywhere too low for filming anything, they are all but too low to hang a chandelier.

Williams' work too is too often mannered where it should be confident, too often timid where it should be bold, and too often a Mr. Potatohead arrangement of parts that don't come together as a whole. But it's perfect for L.A., a town where not only its emperor but none of its inhabitants have any clothes, where a house like this, found in some variation in every American town big enough to have a Cadillac dealership and a Cadillac dealer with some cash to blow, passed as something special. $20M special.

I can't believe no one has brought the realtor's headshot. Only in LA would a realtor think that's the photo to use for business.

[quote] [R16] in the design in a house like this in LA then, one meant for entertaining, the kitchen is a service area and would have parking for staff, deliveries and guests, and valet parking for events.

I lived in LA for a few years and never encountered that--there was usually another room, I think "butler's pantry" is the real estate term, that had that sort of access, versus the main kitchen, but even assuming it's the case, if I'm eating my meals in the kitchen 7 days a week and entertaining once a week, I still think I'd want a better view than a parking lot.

You still haven't explained the Hall of Presidents on the staircase.

gay Gay GAY!

R40 Thank you! I was thinking the same but had no way of confirming it.

Why they haven't used this fact in the marketing materials is beyond me; am sure it would add appeal, certainly to someone on L.

Thank you, r40. It was a pathetically long scroll to arrive at that comment. This place was used for the front exteriors. Another house was used for the rear.

The decor is trying way too hard (and failing) to look like old money. It's a joke - a lot of crap and some are just cringey. WTH would you have several portraits of US PRESIDENTS on the wall?

The owner is an old striver - and just never gets it right.

It’s almost always the case that the more expensive the house, the more likely that the kitchen needs to be completely ripped out. I understand not caring if you don’t do the cooking, but the general upkeep of a property includes the kitchen. This also applies to bathrooms in the guest rooms. They’re invariably dated.

The house used for the back/pool shots was also recently on the market.

That realtor was smart and used the MD angle in marketing.

I was really surprised nobody else saw it.

We stalked that house when I was in L.A. Among others.

From an angle it's pretty nice but face on it looks like a box.

The house is a 19 Million Dollar fixer upper. 😝

What's with the collar on the bust, chained to the staircase in photo 15?

R52 restraint in case of earthquake?

R53 Perhaps but there are other items - like the statues by the fireplace - which don't seem to be similarly secured. And you'd think they'd find a more aesthetic way to secure it if that is the case.

R52-R53-R54: Museums and collectors use various putty like products to secure objects in place. It's fairly strong, actuallly, if only an added level of protection. But people and institutions who use it and who have gone through earthquakes of any seriousness speak well of the products.

R43 Are you suggesting Mr Klug is a sleazy gay realtor?

R17 I really like the LA storybook houses but they aren't indigenous either, or are they? Because LA is largely a company town, with that industry being Hollywood, I would say the storybook houses, antebellum mansions, Mediterranean villas, etc. ARE indigenous. They are indigenous because they were largely the creation of talented craftspeople brought to LA to build sets for films. They used their talents to create film sets that you could live in. You were able to live out your fantasy of living in Snow White, Robinhood, Gone With The Wind, etc. and at the heart of what LA is, is being the city of fantasy.

It's a beautiful house. Too bad the people who live there now have such poor taste in decor. It's as if they feel they must put something, anything, in every bare spot, whether it matches the rest of the decor or not.

What does Poppy mean ?

It was purchased in 2017, so apparently everything we see in the photos was done to it between 2017 and the listing date.

I guess that's... impressive.

^blind

Am I missing something?

I'm gonna redecorate this whole fucking house!

R42 10/10.

What are you opinions on all those hideous glass boxes popping up in Trousdale Estates and all over the hills?

Thanks, R64, (I think?)

I don't know anything of the glass boxes in Trousdale Estates and elsewhere. I don't live in L.A. or even know it at all well, just some aspects of its architectural history and some of its key architects and their work.

R59 "Amapola" in Spanish. Big song from the past, maybe most famously by Benny Goodman, here sung by Helen Forrest.

R65 Ah, I see.

I figured you had some connection to the area.

I enjoyed your post because I rarely see anyone question blind Paul Williams worship when there are other lauded architects of a similar vernacular and time period (like John Elgin Woolf) who seem to get dismissed more often. The designs of Paul Williams (to me at least) seem to age poorly into looking dirty and dilapidated.

I once saw a hilarious T-shirt that said "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." For me it would be "Paul Williams's designs are more glamorous than they appear."

r60, no. That house was used for the rear exteriors and has since been torn down. This house was used for the front exterior.

Also, what's up with all the raised office chairs, everywhere?

R67. At some point I realized I had seen a lot of Paul Williams houses in some fairy lush photo spreads but even more gushing praise and wondered: where are the ones that do live up to the adoration?

I especially like historicist and regionalist architecture for the particular vein of creativity that it can exhibit, but Williams' work doesn't have that depth and confidence; it seems flimsy and disconnected parts, and, yes, the houses show their age badly.

Woolf I know less, but like the designs based on pavilion forms, even when there's some frivolity as if a roof lifted from the temple on an Asian screen (or a blue willow plate), he gets both the historic references right and then makes then his own. It doesn't work unless he understands the models and he did, he made MCM Mansard elegant somehow, and kind of fun. There's a house or two (maybe more with clipped ivy that are striking.) His Regency retake is as smart at times as some English architects working with the same ideas.

R69 Totally agree with you.

For Woolf, I feel he really captured a glamour of the golden movie star era; flimsy palm trees with a windowless facade to communicate a private exclusivity that the average person could never quite be. Cue the mansard roof becoming all the rage starting in the early 60s. I have never seen any one reference this, but I see a huge influence of Woolf in Italianate and Second-Empire homes as he grew up in the south. The signature porthole windows, the Pullman-style doors, and of course, the stylized Mansard roof were all present in these earlier styles and no doubt encapsulated in the Hollywood Regency vernacular that we now recognize as an endemic style to Southern California.

A virtual toast to you this Monday evening - thanks for the interesting conversation.

yum

Ha, R70. Thanks for the observations. Makes absolute sense about Woolf and the influence of Italianate, Second Empire, and Greek Revival styles. Any gay man who came up from Atlanta to become a sought after architect in Hollywood beginning in the 1940s/50s almost certainly had in his head the powerful memories of high ceilings, of those massive doors at the Hay Mansion in Macon, or the tripartite treatment of the very upright Mansard roofs on South Battery (#2, #20) in Charleston, or the equivalents that he would have taken note of among the grandest houses in any Southern city or even a small town with a rich judge.

A more interesting body of work than Williams'.

R72 Thanks for pointing out those great examples in Charleston! I have never been and would love to visit someday.

I agree about Woolf having a more interesting oeuvre than Williams. Williams seemed more versatile in his style repertoire and deferred to his clients and their desires in bespoke way. I feel like people went to Woolf because they wanted a Woolf house.

This is a regency home that I actually do like by Williams. Located on the same street as Woolf's famous Reynolds house which became a very copied archetype for homes of this vernacular.

R72 You probably are already familiar with this one but here is 200 S Rimpau.

I hope someone doesn't demolish it when it finally comes up for sale.

The Paul Williams at No. 232 S. RIMPAU is good - and confident, and with ingenuity and the look of a design thought through. Would that there were more that were as accomplished.

What a shame if the Woolf house at No. 200 is lost. This form is my favorite of his, though this may be my favorite.

R75 Yes, No. 232 is great. I would've snapped it up if I had a reason to be in Los Angeles and had spare millions laying around.

And not to fret; No. 200 Rimpau isn't lost! I was just saying that I hope it doesn't get demolished as the home across the street and the one next door have been razed in the past few years.

And I love that picture you shared of the Menefee house at 615 N Camden Dr. in Beverly Hills. Absolutely fabulous. I just checked on Google Earth and it is still extant.