Neutra in Bakersfield | House Tour

well what brought me here was the idea that i could buy a neutral and specifically a business opportunity and then also i knew that merle haggard and buck owens were from here i could see still see music music's a big part of my life and so i could still see music and but one of the biggest drivers was the ability to buy a neutral house so initially it wasn't available i moved here i met the owners of the letty house and they told me that they they weren't ready to sell and that the owner of this house would never sell so don't even approach him and he was he spent the summers in europe so he wasn't even around to approach so i bought another house on the east side 14 months later serendipity i ran into the owner of this house the house fell out of escrow the buyer bought backed out i'd come to look at the house a couple of days after he had i'd met him went through on it came through on his promise he called me and said you want the house and we made the deal and that was that this is the first home in in bakersfield the letty house is late 50s 57 58 it was completed i think that you would refer to this more as international style so it feels much more it's not as relaxed as as his work would become still a lot of glazing still a really strong sense of of connectedness between the inside and the outsides originally it was a 1500 square foot house frank getzy who i bought the home from did a couple of additions one was a dining room and currently it's almost 2 000 square feet so we had an additional 500 square feet to the home we were very fortunate to have a client like frank getzi to purchase the house in 59 there was some of the furniture was removed but this this bookcase is original the furniture in the bedroom is all original frank really was attached to the home all the way till the time he sold it to me in in 2003 in fact when he gave me the last key i could see was really tough for him to to give it to me i said well you know just hang on to a key i'm a bachelor you can come let yourself in any time fortunately he did come back after i'd moved in and he was really pleased and he paid me the ultimate compliment he said it's more neutral than when i lived here he had come up here to work on other buildings and so he came over here to see the delay of the land and where we'd put the swimming pool and what we could do and this that and the other thing and [Music] we worked very closely together and he realized at that time i was a dancer and i you know was active and i needed a swimming pool and i needed to get around the territory and this was my great grandfather's property and we were going to build a rather contemporary modern house it was a starter home to begin with yes and then of course i would at writing letters and notes and so forth and say you know i need this i need that and so one thing developed into another he was a very interesting man and i liked the evolution of everything you know and how it happened it was just great was demanded of the architecture you know nobody had ever thought of building a house with pebble creek running through their living room or anything like that you know so it was it was an experiment very modern contemporary experiment oh it is more than i ever wished for more than i could possibly have ever dreamed about you know we knew that we were going to be near the catholic school and we knew that the grounds were ours and how we were going to divide it all up and all that sort of stuff just sort of gradually came evolved you know so nothing was direct can i say it wasn't it wasn't something that we demanded or anything like that it just developed and one thing and another happened my mother was an artist of course and uh and as i grew up it was you know something that was just everyday life and so i began to paint one thing and another and of course i was dancing and then designing sets and so forth you know for the stage and so one thing led to another to where we are right now talking to each other you know looking at the davis house and looking at the at the letty house davis is 37 uh the letty's 58 and stylistically you go from neutral just being much more european much more formal to when when you get to the letty house it's neutral in his most relaxed state i mean i kind of jokingly say it's the next best thing to camping out because you know you have full floor to ceiling glass slider that opens to the garden it's post and beam it's very casual much more what people think of as mid-century modern architecture than certainly this is and it's really nice to have them both in bakersfield where you can you can go from this to that and see uh you know the evolution of nitrous career well you know the way neutral designed the house and the experience and it's very peaceful because i'm not looking for another house i mean i found the house and it came true at first it was a little precious and i felt like i was living in this piece of artwork and i've been here 17 years i still love it i still see new things the way the light interacts with things we have a lot of trees here and depending on how overgrown or how they've been trimmed back the light quality is different but i still pinch myself that i live in such a great piece of of work it's also been great to share it with people and i've had people that i would never be able to be in conversation with architectural historians or architects or artists pop stars that you know have come and visited that uh i never would have been exposed to if i if i didn't didn't live here so you know part of the joy is sharing uh these spaces with with people so i i think the unique thing about neutra his ability to deal with scale so there aren't these volumes that are impersonal they're very quiet homes this is a very warm house i mean sometimes people think modernism is cold i think this is a really warm house and it just fits like a glove and it works for uh you know our lifestyle and it's great the location's great my office is a 10 minute walk from here i can walk to restaurants i can you know it's a really walkable neighborhood so yeah neutral he's the guy [Music] yeah everything has really flourished for you here it sounds like yes yeah and life goes on and i love it and and as long as as long as i can keep going i'm going got 19 more years on your contract what you have 19 more years on your contract i do yeah oh we've got another 10 years oh i well i'll make it of course you will of course i will

Channel: OPEN SPACE

Views: 175,152

Keywords: Architecture, Design, Home tour, Mid Century, Architects, dwell, local project, bakersfield, los angeles, Palm springs, Neutra, richard neutra, case study, case study homes, frank lloyd wright, eichler, cliff may, Thornton Abell, Charles and Ray Eames, eames, Kemper Nomland, Whitney R. Smith, Rodney Walker, Craig Ellwood, C. Buff, C. Straub, D. Hensman, Pierre Koenig, Raphael Soriano, Killingsworth, Brady, Smith & Assoc., A. Quincy Jones, Frederick E. Emmons, architectural digest

Id: SdY5Sb-0AT8

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021