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Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House, a Los Feliz hilltop masterpiece composed of patterned and smooth concrete blocks that has been mightily threatened by man and Mother Nature, is being offered for sale at $15 million by the private foundation that has been restoring it.
Eric Lloyd Wright, the architect's grandson and a member of the nonprofit Ennis House Foundation's board, said that, given harsh economic realities, private ownership would be the best way to save the house and honor his grandfather's intentions.
"My grandfather designed homes to be occupied by people," he said in a statement to The Times. "His homes are works of art. He created the space, but the space becomes a creative force and uplifts when it is lived in every day."
Completed in 1924 for Charles and Mabel Ennis, the owners of a men's clothing store who liked to entertain, the house was the last and largest of four homes that Wright designed in an experimental "textile block" style.
Mabel Ennis sold the house in 1936, and it has changed hands several times since. Radio personality John Nesbitt, who owned the property from 1940 to 1942, had Wright convert a ground-floor storage space into a billiards room with a fireplace, add a lap pool on the north terrace and install a heating system.
The house suffered over the years from neglect. In June 1968, Augustus O. Brown, the last private owner, bought the estate for $119,000 and made extensive repairs. In 1980, he donated the property to a...