Sten-Frenke House
Santa Monica, CA

Dion Neutra, son of the architect Richard Neutra, architect of the Sten-Frenke House, died in Los Angeles on November 24, 2019. He was our key to all the archive materials when we restored the Sten-Frenke project, and when we wrote the Pentagram Paper "The Russian Garbo". He was a gigantic pain in the ass. 

It was not entirely his fault; being the son of a great man, a truly great architect, and attempting to follow in his footsteps is often a fool's errand. Dion did everything he could to promote his own status to that of his father's. He renamed the office "The Office of Richard and Dion Neutra" claiming on the website that, in answer to the question 'what would Mr. Neutra do?'..."Dion IS Mr. Neutra; or as close as you are going to come to getting the original!" Perhaps, but trying a bit too hard?

Inserting himself into the life of every Richard Neutra project was the best he could do, but he was, in the end thoroughly dedicated to his father's work, even as he tried to claim it as his own. This almost fanatical dedication was apparently part of the Neutra family ethic.

In my youth, seeking every bit of modern architecture I could soak up, I visited the VDL House, an experimental house Neutra built in Silver Lake. An older woman admitted us and allowed us to wander around in what was a perfect example of 1950's LA architecture that had actually been built in the 1930's! 

As we thanked her and started to leave she barked "LOOK AT THE BOOKS!" pointing to the Neutra Oeuvre on the coffee table. We dutifully opened the books and came across a portrait of his wife Dione Neutra playing the cello just as we realized that the dominatrix sitting in the corner, next to a cello on a stand, WAS Dione Neutra!

Anna Sten, the Ukrainian film actress, and her producer husband Dr. Eugene Frenke, came to Hollywood under the aegis of Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn thought he had found his “Russian Garbo” but had failed to reconcile that hope with Sten’s lack of command of English in the age of talking pictures. Just after their arrival they hired fellow emigre Richard Neutra to design a house for them in the hill of Santa Monica.

Neutra had, a few years earlier, finished the Lovell Health House which cemented his reputation as the most important modern architect west of the Mississippi. He was featured in the 1932 International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and had surpassed his elder colleague Rudolph Schindler in fame.

The house Neutra built for Sten and Frenke was a simple European-style modern house. Sited on a double lot, but occupying only one, the house was surrounded by a wall of rough cast ‘California’ blocks and was washed a light grey cement color. The house is remarkable for the amount of continuous ribbons of glass in a ‘balloon frame’ wooden house, giving it the look of modern concrete houses in France and Germany.

The restriction to the one site compressed Neutra’s original design and truncated the pergola’s frame intended to extend to the ocean view. The pool sat in a less than ideal position and the interior was compromised (he might have said) by the actress’s insistence on purple bathroom tile and unimaginative landscaping.

When Biber Architect’s clients found the house it has been owned by only 3 families in nearly 70 years; the Sten-Frenke's, Art Cohn and Berni Gould, a parade of successful Hollywood actors, producers and writers, which continues to this day. The Sten-Frenkes sold the house to Art Cohn, who was killed in Mike Todd's plane in the crash that killed Todd. The Goulds rented the house from Art Cohn and after his death bought it, in 1953, for $50,000, an astonishing sum in the days when typical houses sold for less than $10,000. The Gould's spent nearly 50 years in the house, and the Landmark listing refers to the Sten-Frenke Gould house in recognition of their stewardship.

After purchasing the house in 2001, while awaiting approval to proceed with the renovation, the film Laurel Canyon was filmed in the house. At the time Berni Gould lived in the enormous, overshadowing condo that had been built in the 1960's behind the house. And Mark Lee, the architect who undertook the latest addition to the property, lives in that condo as well!

Our clients undertook an extensive restoration and renovation of the house, replacing nearly every element while maintaining the form, patina and sense of age of this remarkable house.

James Biber, acting as both client and architect, teamed up with Los Angeles architects Marmol + Radziner (experts in Neutra house restorations) to surgically repair the house while at the same time realizing some of Neutra’s original ideas. The pergola was extended to its full length, the pool was relocated to the more gracious original conception and the site was landscaped (by Jay Griffith, Landscape designer) to fill out the newly occupied double lot. In every case the materials, details and integrity of the original was maintained and reinforced. Event the rough block perimeter wall was rebuilt of custom cast blocks to accurately recreate the original.

Inside the bathrooms were restored, leaving the original tile, using vintage faucets and fixtures. The tile, where it could not be repaired, was recreated in a local custom tile workshop. Glass for the stairwell ‘lantern’ was remade in Vancouver to simulate the original glass. Lighting fixtures not realized in the original were fabricated from Neutra’s original sketches and details. The kitchen was enlarged (the only change to the building’s volume) and was fitted with a vintage sink and stove. The wood paneling was replaced with an upgraded veneer (figured redwood and mahogany) to replace the original ‘tobacco stained plywood’ walls.

There were three ‘clients’ for the restoration: the original clients, the original architect and the new owners. Every decision was based on a consideration of all three points of view, and changes to the original were only made where a case could be established that Neutra himself preferred an alternative, or where a change would not affect the integrity of the original design. Decisions to leave such obvious areas of conflict (between Sten and Neutra) as the purple bathroom tile were to allow the quirkiness of the original to remain. There is nothing worse than a restoration that ‘over corrects’ unless it is one that ‘under corrects’. Biber Architects tried to act as the arbiter of the three clients to allow the house to inhabit the present while restoring the past.

Since the renovation the house has been sold and altered yet again. The pergola extension has been removed to allow the addition of a rear yard office/studio, and the interior has been modified to suit the current owner's needs. Like every really good house the life of the Sten-Frenke House, it seems, will continue as it accepts and guides its alterations without losing its essential self.