Archinect - News

Iwan and Manuela Wirth are reportedly buying Richard Neutra's iconic Lovell Health House in Los Angeles

2021-09-21T12:24:00-04:00

The Lovell Health House, as the behemoth on Dundee Drive came to be known, remains a dumbfounding sight. It occupies a steep slope at the edge of Griffith Park, plunging three stories from street level. [...] It is a monumental yet unreal creation—a silver-white vessel that seems to have docked at the top of a canyon.

Neutra's 1929 home has and was featured in the classic 1997 film LA Confidential. Wirth's eponymous gallery first established a presence in Downtown Los Angeles in 2016 and is set to expand to a second site soon with some help from Selldorf Architects, who has designed seven of the gallery’s sixteen spaces worldwide thus far.

The 4616 Dundee Drive property in Los Feliz has been on the market for over a year at a listing price north of $9.75 million. Its current owner inherited the architectural gem from his parents, who purchased it for $60,000 in 1960. The New Yorker has more on the unmistakable beauty behind Neutra’s biorealist masterpiece here.

Richard Neutra's Lovell Health House still for sale

2020-12-29T13:50:00-05:00

If you're shopping for a modernist architectural landmark to kick off the new year, you might be in luck: the Richard Neutra-designed Lovell Health House in the Los Feliz hills of Los Angeles is still available after hitting the market back in February.

Featured in several Hollywood movies, the expansive 4,807-square-foot home was completed in 1929 and quickly became an icon of the International Style.

Previously on Archinect: Neutra's Lovell Health House is heading for sale. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user MichaelJLocke.

"Without question, this house together with Schindler’s Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach are the greatest monuments of the International Style in Southern California," wrote historians David Gebhard and Robert Winter. "The Lovell House…firmly established Neutra’s world reputation."

In late January, Archinect reported on the current owner's intention to list the property.

The current asking price for the expansive five-bedroom, four-bathroom property is...

Neutra's Lovell Health House is heading for sale

2020-01-28T15:50:00-05:00

Richard Neutra's Lovell Health House in the hills above Los Angeles is reportedly going up for sale.

According to a recent report in The Real Deal, the current owner of the 4,807-square-foot cliffside, International Style home is currently working to build buzz around the house in advance of a potential sale.

The owner, Ken Topper, grew up in the home, which was owned previously by his parents Betty and Morton Topper. Morton, who purchased the house back in 1960 for $60,000, passed away in 1971, while Betty continued to live in the home until last August when she herself passed away.

An as-built drawing of the home created for the Historic American Building Survey. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Now, the aging home is in need of a slate of repairs, including structural upgrades, though it is largely intact. The Mortons purchased the home from the original owners, Morris and Leah Lovell. The home features off-the-shelf factory windows that wrap around the exterior walls...