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From the car-choked intersection of Highland and Franklin avenues, it's hard to imagine a time when the streets leading up to Hollywood Heights were unpaved dirt roads, when neither smoggy air nor tall buildings blocked the panoramic view. That was 1920s Hollywood, when a walk down from neighboring Hollywood Heights led to a thriving Hollywood Boulevard where one could browse music and bookstores or shop for, say, a Chanel suit before dinner at Musso & Frank.
It was a time when the Freeman House at 1962 Glencoe Way in Hollywood Heights, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was the only house on the block. Completed in 1925, the two-story house is one of only four concrete block houses in Los Angeles designed by the Wisconsin-born architect.
Today, the structure has been badly damaged by time and erosion --as well as the Northridge earthquake. Built for a then-exorbitant $23,000 the house needs an estimated $2.5 million restoration, but its chances of getting that are unclear. While Federal Emergency Management Agency is responsible for seismic repairs (a decision is still pending), additional funds from other sources must be raised for restoration and conservation. In the meantime the house continues to erode.
Wright's L.A. textile-block houses, all constructed of 16-by-16 inch patterned concrete blocks, represent part of his attempt to create a uniquely Californian architectural style. During a brief period in Los Angeles, he built the Freeman House, along with the Millard House, also known as La Miniatura (645 Prospect Crescent, Pasadena, 1923), the Storer House (8161 Hollywood Blvd, 1923), and the Ennis-Brown House (2655 Glendower Ave., Los Feliz,1924, which has received substantial FEMA repair funds), and later concrete- block structures around the country.
The Freeman House was commissioned by a couple described as somewhat odd by those who knew them. Sam was an active Socialist and businessman whose stock inheritance from the family's downtown jewelry business allowed him to retire young. Harriet Freeman, following a brief film and vaudeville career, became a dance teacher, most notably to the starlets at Warner Bros. But she clung to the fringes of the era's avant garde arts scene, dancing to drums and espousing the era's fascination with barefoot Isadora Duncan. "When one is here, one canimagine what life was like...