KAUFMANN HOUSE
By saving Neutra's Kaufmann house, its owners
helped to spur Palm Springs' modern revival

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Beth and Brent Harris were architectural tourists, not house-hunters, when they first visited the Kaufmann house.

Designed in 1946 by Viennese émigré Richard Neutra, the house was one of the best-known icons of the modern movement, thanks to its striking silhouette, unusual pinwheel plan, remarkable mix of airy lightness and sandstone weight, and the delicacy and precision of its detail.

The house became a part of cultural history thanks to an iconic photo by Julius Shulman that shows Mrs. Kaufmann reclining by the pool like a Greek goddess, the house glowing in the sunset. One of the most-reproduced architectural photographs ever, the photo suggested that modernism is less about machine precision than sybaritic release.

But by the time the Harrises came along, the house was an aesthetic wreck. Originally so open and light-filled that its walls and ceilings seemed more like planes floating in space than enclosures, the house was "dense and dark," Beth Harris says, thanks to 2,200 square feet of additions that turned courtyards into interior spaces. The 'gloriette,' an upstairs, open-air deck that really is one of the house's glories, had its views of mountains and palm trees blocked by air-conditioning compressors.

Neutra's original blond cabinetry, much of the original wall surfaces, and screens of aluminum louvers had been removed or severely altered. Floors were damaged. Douglas fir ceilings had been sand-blasted.

Climate and neglect had also done their part. Beth Harris also blames Neutra's lack of desert expertise. "It's an extremely expensive house to maintain, because everything is exposed. The way it's sited is unusual. It gets a lot of heavy sun."

It was more than pity, however, that convinced the Harrises they had to rescue the house. They could either buy the house, says Beth Harris, an architectural historian who was finishing up her Ph.D. at UCLA, or let it be destroyed. Brent Harris is a managing director of an investment firm.

"We weren't looking for a place to live in Palm Springs," Beth Harris said during a recent afternoon in the home. "We bought the house to restore it. That's the only reason we bought it. To see what it would be like when I was finished. And if we could enjoy it beyond that, that would be the icing on the cake."

"The house had been on the market for four years," she says, "the price had dropped several times, and nobody wanted it."

This was years before Palm Springs came to treasure its modern heritage, and before Palm Springs began its current commercial revival. The broker, Nelda Linsk, a well-known Palm Springs business woman and hostess, had once lived in the house herself and had expanded it by 2,200 square feet. In the late 1980s, Linsk made it clear that she was selling the house, which was then owned by singer Barry Manilow, for its land value.

"We could easily make it more stylish by making it Spanish," Linsk advised the Harrises, "or we could take it down."

"That was really the deciding moment for us," Beth says. "We knew that we absolutely had to get it."

They bought the house in 1993, and by 1999 their accomplishment had become legend, one of the most painstaking and heroic rescues of a modern house anywhere. It was based on a 'philosophy' developed by Beth Harris to guide the restoration, which was to return the house to its original condition, adhering to the strictest historical guidelines.

The architectural and building firm Marmol Radziner and Associates, which had earlier restored Neutra's Kun house in Los Angeles, was soon dismantling the crumbling fireplaces and numbering each stone for reassembly. To repair gashes in the walls of Utah sandstone, the firm convinced the original quarry in Utah to return to a long-closed portion of its site so the color and texture of the new stone would match that of the old.

To find a source for mica, a crystalline sand which workers applied to the house's exterior to provide a subtle, starry-night glow, the architects had to work with the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

The additions were removed, returning light to the interior. Ironically, the additions had been designed by one of Palm Springs' most famous desert modernists, William Cody, a fact not mentioned in most accounts of the house's restoration.

The Kaufmann house is one of perhaps 25 in the country that deserves such painstaking restoration, says Ron Radziner, one of the firm's principals. "Looking at it from every angle, every piece of the house was really considered and designed so thoroughly," he says. "That house does not have a bad side. Every angle is beautifully executed. The proportions of all the spaces, from the interior to the exterior, are amazing."

When it was through, all was worth it, Beth Harris says. "The house looks exactly as it did in 1946. It became more and more beautiful over the restoration, as we pulled the layers off. We realized it was the icon we believed it was.

"All the cliché things people say about the oriental qualities, the open space, the use of wood, it really does work; the use of natural stone, the juxtaposition of the metal against the natural materials. It creates a really beautiful environment, with the least amount of distractions. There's a tremendous amount of detail here, but it's a very simple space." Beth Harris, whose Ph.D. thesis was 'Phoebe Apperson Hearst and the Changing Nature of 19th Century Architectural Patronage,' never thought she'd become a patron herself. "I see the role of the architectural patron today to educate a wider community," she says.

Beth and Brent used the Kaufmann house as an educational tool, and an argument for the beauty and value of modern architecture. Almost anyone who wanted to see the house was allowed to visit, by prior arrangement.

The project did more than restore one of America's most important 20th century houses. It gave Beth Harris a new calling, and helped the city of Palm Springs recover its love for all things modern.

After restoring the Kaufmann house, Beth Harris says, she and her husband bought and restored two other historically important modern houses--a 1946 William Lescaze house in New York City, and a house in Hermosa Beach designed by the firm Morphosis. Neither restoration was nearly as profound as the Kaufmann houses, and both of the other houses were purchased to live in, not primarily to restore.

Beth Harris switched her career from scholar and teacher to preservation advocate. She helped found the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, serves on the board of the California Preservation Foundation, and has focused her writing on such endangered modernist buildings as the Salk Institute in La Jolla. "That's my focus now," she says of historic preservation. "It's all I have time for now."

Palm Springs preservationists say the restoration of the Kaufmann house inspired other owners of mid-century modern houses to restore their own houses in town. Preservationist and architectural guide Robert Imber credits the Kaufmann house restoration, along with Jim Moore's earlier restoration of a steel house designed by Donald Wexler, and the successful fight to preserve Albert Frey's Tramway Gas Station, with spurring the renewed interest in the town's modernist heritage.

Nickie McLaughlin, vice president of the preservation organization PS ModCom, agrees. The Kaufmann restoration, she says, "let people know, we should really value these treasures that we have."

"They just went the whole gamut," McLaughlin says of the Harrisses. "I have enormous respect for people who take on this kind of project. It just devours your attention and your bank account."

The Harrises, who have divorced, plan to sell the Kaufmann house in part because opening it to the public had become "a mini-business," she says. She's not worried about the new owner turning the house into a hacienda.

The only people who show interest in this house are people who want it for exactly what it is," she says. "It's done now and people want it for a work of art."

Photos: David Glomb, Barry Sturgill

See other Palm Springs Stories