When writer Susan Orlean was posting pictures of her new home on Facebook earlier this year, she received rapturous replies of the “Gorgeous!” and “When can I come visit?” variety. Under an image of her bedroom, showing a rough stone-and-cement fireplace, a trapezoidal window, slanted walls, and a tongue-and-groove ceiling, one friend wrote, “It looks like high modernist meets Fred Flintstone.” Another friend asked, “Is that a Schindler?”

The house was indeed designed by Austrian-born architect Rudolph M. Schindler, and its clean lines, clerestory windows, and large glass expanses make it immediately recognizable. Yet the home—“an exploded box,” according to architecture critic Paul Goldberger—has a specific, almost wacky appeal, with curiously shaped rooms, split-stake fencing used as siding, and complex volumes with multiple nontraditional roof forms. For Susan and her husband, investor and writer John Gillespie, restoring it cemented an obsession that began years earlier.

In 2007, the couple were living temporarily in Los Angeles, so that Susan—a staff writer at the New Yorker and author of 1998’s The Orchid Thief and, most recently, the best-selling The Library Book—could research her book Rin Tin Tin. In their free time, they looked at houses.

One day, they toured a 1946 Schindler called the Roth House. “When we saw its amazing interplay of angles and light and wood, we just flipped out,”says Susan. They immediately decided to buy. “It was insane,” she adds, as she and John had only recently built a home in Hudson, New York. But soon enough, they became, as Susan puts it, “Schindler maniacs,” learning about the architect’s work and personal life—a story of big personalities, celebrity friends, affairs, betrayals, grudges, and even a death-bed reconciliation with his estranged former colleague, Richard Neutra.

Susan and John rented out the Roth House before moving there themselves in 2011. Knowing that Schindler owners like seeing other Schindler houses, their former realtor, Crosby Doe, called one day with a convenient invitation. The Kallis House, a Schindler three miles down the road that was completed in the same year as the Roth, had come on the market. Did they want to see it?

Many considered the home Schindler’s late-period masterpiece, with its ample fenestration, including clerestory windows; built-in furniture; and consistent use of a 15-degree angle for the sloping walls, cabinet fronts, and chimney. Plus, the Kallis had a glorious view of the San Fernando Valley. And more pedigree: In architecture school, Frank Gehry, tasked with studying a building by an architect he admired, chose the Kallis House.

“Schindler described himself as a space architect. He didn’t design a facade—he designed spaces and the way they interconnect.”
—Jeff Fink, restoration architect

Not only did Susan and John want to see the nearby Schindler, but after a look they wanted to buy it. The home had originally been built as a studio and residence, connected by a terrace, for Mischa Kallis, an artist and art director for Universal Studios. Eventually he sold the property to his cousin and her husband, Jacqueline and William Sharlin, who covered the patio to create a family room/entertaining area and turned the studio into a principal bedroom and bath. Nearly twice as big as the Roth House, which they subsequently sold, the Kallis better suited Susan and John’s needs.

An upside to Schindler’s work is the sheer originality of his designs. A downside is that he often built for artists, who typically had smaller budgets, so here sorted to less costly materials at times. Many of the floors in the Kallis were plywood covered with carpeting. By the time of Susan and John’s purchase, the foundation was cracked, the roof leaked, and half of the house was sloping six inches down the hill into which it had so cleverly been built. Meanwhile, the entire interior had been painted a gunmetal gray, making Susan’s first thought, “We’ve got to get rid of that paint color.”

They soon found Jeff Fink, an architect-builder who has now restored 12 of the approximately 35 Schindlers in the Los Angeles area and was clearly the go-to person for the job. Fink completely repaired and overhauled the structure and its systems, removing many of the alterations and substituting red oak for carpeting. “The process was reductive rather than additive,” says Fink. “We took away to get to the original elements.”

“Yes, our house looks like a praying mantis.”
—Susan Orlean, resident

Scraping revealed Douglas fir and mahogany under all that paint— an arduous four-month process, with workers sometimes having to lie on a scaffold as they picked paint from the ceiling. Though the wood is beautiful, lighting designer Dan Weinreber says, “The light gray paint was very reflective. Taking it away instantly made the space feel darker.” Weinreber added cove lighting, with a warm and cold LED strip, so Susan and John could adjust as needed.

The Kallis House has always sheltered artists of one sort or another. The Sharlins, the second owners, were a concert pianist and cantor, respectively, and Jacqueline’s mother, an artist-weaver, made the fabric on the living room furniture and built-in dining room bench, which Susan and John acquired with the house. As writers living in a home designed for creatives, Susan and John are staying true to Schindler’s intent, which they have become adept at interpreting over the years. “After living in Schindler houses for nearly a decade,” Susan says, “we feel like we’re always having a conversation with him.”

My House Q&A: Writer Susan Orlean’s Modernist Masterpiece in L.A.

Project Credits:

Original Architect: Rudolph M. Schindler

Restoration Architect: Jeff Fink

Structural Engineer: Craig Philips Engineering and Design

Consulting Engineer: Johnson Leifield Structural Engineers

Lighting: KGM Architectural Lighting

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