David Wagner reports on housing for LAist.
The developer behind the newly renovated Jardinette Apartments wanted to return the Hollywood building to architect Richard Neutra's original vision. This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist.
If you find value in independent local reporting, When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen anything quite like architect Richard Neutra’s iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like. Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it.
With the renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original concept once again is coming into clear view. Sign up for Building Your Block, a seven-issue newsletter course from LAist that explains the obstacles around housing development in L.A. and what you can do to make things better.
“It was a big, heavy lift,” Hassid said, describing the project as the most complicated in his career. “There are so many apartment buildings in L.A. But none of them will have the story or any of the significance that this does. ”In the 1920s, Neutra was a young Austrian architect who had recently moved to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.
Historians cite the style he would go on to develop — with its flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors — as defining the language of mid-century California modernism. Richard Neutra's family lived in the VDL Research House II, located in Silver Lake and designed by Neutra with his son, Dion. , built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A.
, coming just a few years after his arrival in the United States. Architecture historians say Neutra’s goal was to strip down the Jardinette’s design, maximizing light and fresh air in the building’s 43 modestly sized apartments, all in keeping with the burgeoning International Style. California has cleared an initiative aiming to cancel Measure ULA and similar taxes across the state. But it might not be November’s only “mansion tax” measure.
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Long ribbon windows are the most striking feature in an otherwise unadorned facade. Windows join at corners and stretch across nearly entire walls, connecting living rooms and kitchens. Panes in the walls of interior closets bring “borrowed light” into shadowy interiors. Neutra outfitted many of the apartments with balconies that cantilever off reinforced concrete.
The balconies were ideal for outdoor plants — hence the name Jardinette, or Little Garden.who consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette, said Neutra’s approach would have seemed utterly alien amid the 1920s development boom in L.A.from the publisher Taschen.
“This was not a milieu that encouraged, fostered or remotely understood the tenets of early modernism. ”The Jardinette helped secure Neutra’s fame far beyond the confines of Southern California. His work on the Jardinette was included in a landmarkBut by the 1990s, the Jardinette had all but lost its visionary purity. It was painted pink and green.
The previously uniform steel windows were mismatched, using cheap materials. The walls were graffitied.
“It's just what happens when buildings get neglected,” he said. “It's important to look back on these ideas and not lose them and try to maintain them and not cover them up. Now, hopefully for another 100 years, more generations of people can experience the design the way it was originally intended. ”The team behind the Jardinette’s renewal said the building was not easy to renovate.
It was originally built without a cooling system. Its electrical system couldn’t meet modern energy needs. It didn’t have stand-up showers. Installing those modern amenities while preserving Neutra’s original design proved challenging at times, said Anant Topiwala with June Street Architecture.
The team preserved whatever original materials they could, Topiwala said, but they needed to order custom tiles, windows and other parts in order to match historic photographs and documents.
“We were like archeologists, in a way,” he said. “There was a lot of peeling back. What do we think the paint color was? What do we think that wood detail was?
“Neutra didn't like angles. We needed to make sure, for example, the casing around the doors didn't meet at a mitered corner. There's just so many interesting things. ”The Jardinette has multiple historic designations.
It’s in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And it’s protected as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Those classifications limit what kinds of changes are allowed in a renovation. Getting all the necessary permits was a job in itself, one handled by Michael Norberg withFree passes, safer stations, rising gas prices and expanding lines are inspiring a new generation to ditch cars and ride transit.
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“Everything you can think of that could come up did come up on this building,” Norberg said. “But I think the bones have been reinforced. The historic aspect has been retained. The entire nature and history and spirit of this building is still here.
Hassid said the renovation should be completed by this summer. He added that he’s not yet sure what the building’s future will be, but he won’t sell it to a typical real estate investor. He recently“We've sold some really beautiful buildings, but nothing that has the history that you can find here,” Ahadian said. The buyer will need to be someone who understands the value of preserving a piece of architectural history, he said.
“This building's been through a few ownerships that have not necessarily had the same vision,” Ahadian said. Two windows join at a right angle and a door opens to a balcony in one corner of a Jardinette apartment. When he first took on the project, Hassid said, colleagues told him he was nuts. But he said ultimately the effort was worth it to preserve an L.A. architectural gem.
What does real luxury look like? Neutra built the Jardinette at a time when movie studios were growing. The Paramount studio lot is just a few blocks away. Lamprecht, the Neutra historian, said she’s looking forward to seeing how people occupy the apartments.
She said Neutra designed the Jardinette to bring a new kind of luxury to occupants who might have included up-and-coming actors or below-the-line production workers.
“The luxuries in life are access to sunlight, to views,” Lamprecht said. “This was the raison d'être for this entire building: to provide graceful, expansive lives to people who weren’t in single-family dwellings in the Hollywood Hills. ” Whoever the next tenants will be, Lamprecht said, “I feel like, for the first time, this building is not invisible any longer. ” You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information.
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