When Jules Salkin returned to California after serving in World War II, the musician found his state in crisis: There wasn't enough housing.
In response, Salkin joined forces with three other musicians. The quartet pooled their resources and established a collaborative housing group, which ultimately gave way to midcentury modern Crestwood Hills development — now a neighborhood near Brentwood in Los Angeles.
But Crestwood Hills isn't the only Salkin project with a storied past.
Around the same time that he was overseeing that project, Salkin commissioned John Lautner, a former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, to design another midcentury modern spec house in the Echo Park neighborhood. The home was constructed in 1948 and sold to the Maxwell family.
Then it was forgotten, according to Brian Linder, a real estate agent with Compass.
"People knew about photos of the model that were at the Getty Center," he told Homes.com in an interview. "There was talk about this Salkin residence and everybody thought, 'oh, it must have never gotten built.'"
That is, until 2014, when, after some 70 years of ownership, the Maxwell children decided to sell their parents' home. In their attempts to market the property's history, they added a line about its origins in the listing details, including the Lautner design. That's all it took to attract the attention of architecture fanatics, including fashion mogul Trina Turk and a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Ultimately, Turk outbid the other interested buyers and took on a restoration of the home.
Now, though, she's selling her "passion project," Linder said. The three-bedroom, one-bathroom house is asking $2.395 million, making it among the most expensive listings in Echo Park.
"I've sold other architect design homes in Echo Park, but when we think of this kind of signature of mid-century modern architecture, we think of the Hollywood Hills or Solar Lake," Linder said, "so it's more of an anomaly."
Restoring an original mid-century modern artifact to its original condition
Lautner is known as "one of the most important American architects of the twentieth century," according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. His early works included some of California's original coffee shops, but his most famous pieces are residential, including the 1960 Malin residence in Hollywood Hills and the 1963 Reiner residence in Silver Lake.
The Salkin residence is another example of the architect's Wright-inspired approach to design, known as the Usonian technique, architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht said in a 2015 historic landmark application for the home. Notable features of that style throughout the original home include "the restricted palette of materials, a compressed hallway accessing all bedrooms, the use of board-and-batten siding, and an overall emphasis on horizontality."
Some of those defining features, however, were lost over the years, Linder said. By the time Turk bought the house, it was barely recognizable.
"This house had been sort of bastardized," Linder explained. "It had been all painted inside and bad, really incompatible finishes and additions that didn't make any sense, and details that were lost."
Turk owns another architectural home in nearby Silver Lake, so she and her husband purchased the Salkin residence with the intent of returning the home to its original design. The couple blended restoration with rehabilitation, according to Linder. So, for example, while they restored features such as the fireplace, woodwork and concrete flooring, they updated other aspects of the home, such as adding built-in Sub-Zero appliances to the kitchen.
"It's a good mix of old and new," Linder said.
Architecture built for everyday use has become a showpiece for billionaires
The Salkin residence spans just shy of 1,400 square feet. That shakes out to a price of about $1,760 per square foot — much higher than the 12-month average of $867 in Echo Park, according to Homes.com.
That said, it's going to take a specific type of buyer to take on the home, especially because it requires a degree of stewardship and caretaking.
One possibility, according to Linder, is a wealthy buyer looking to grow their portfolio.
"Architecture has become such a rarefied world," he explained, calling homes like the Salkin residence "baubles for billionaires." While Linder is trying to sell the home, he's also an architectural connoisseur, and wants to see the home live up to its intended use.
"I've sold a lot of architecture to collectors like that who live in other countries, and they come twice a year for two nights, and that's it," he added. "That's sort of a shame. These weren't really meant to be collectors' items in somebody's investment portfolio."
There's still a chance that the home sells to someone who is both a wealthy architecture lover and someone who wants to live in the home.
"There are a lot of wealthy people who have that kind of money that aren't in the billionaire class. They're not going to just buy it and like mothball it and never visit," Linder said. "There are people who will want to live in signature architecture, so that's our goal — to find somebody who will live there."