As Palisadian Maxine Greenspan describes how it feels to be inside A. Quincy Jones’ Brody House in Holmby Hills, Jones, the pragmatic visionary, must be smiling from heaven.
“It’s shocking that such contemporary modern architecture was built then,” Greenspan says of the Brody House, completed in 1951. “When I see those angles, drama, views, all I want to do is be a better, smarter person. Nothing is soft, it’s all dynamic; it lifts you up and makes you say, ‘I’ve got to get with the program.’”
While Greenspan is not an architectural historian—“a volunteer is all I am”— she is passionate and devoted to honoring the rich architectural history of Los Angeles. To that end, she commits those volunteer hours to the Los Angeles Conservancy and its mission of recognizing, preserving and revitalizing the historic architectural and cultural resources of Los Angeles County.
One of Jones’ most exemplary fully restored houses is the 11,000-sq., -ft. Brody House, which will be open for one evening for Conservancy members and guests on October 19. The annual fundraiser will allow the public an opportunity to explore the forward-thinking innovations in Jones’ designs, the interior design by William Haines and landscape by Garrett Eckbo.
Greenspan and fellow Palisadians Diane Keaton and Linda Bruckheimer have masterminded the event, sharing duties from securing permission from the current homeowners to visit their home to planning an exquisite cocktail party and VIP dinner.
The house was built off Beverly Glen for real estate developer Sidney Brody and his wife, Frances, who discovered a deep passion for modern art that helped transform the L.A. art scene.
The commission was quite a feat for Jones, who had opened his architecture practice just three years before. But Jones’ plot design, interpretation of space and experimentation with building materials suited the Brodys’ desire to take full advantage of the Southern California lifestyle. Relocated from New York, they were looking for a spacious house where they could display art and entertain inside and outside.
While we today have become accustomed to so many of the mid-century innovations, Jones was a pioneer in what have become hallmark elements: walls that transition from interior to exterior without a change in material, floor-to-ceiling expanses of glass, the use of steel and concrete and cantilevered fireplaces that separate the living and dining spaces.
A few autobiographical facts give clues to Jones’ professional avocation. Born in Kansas in 1913, he came out to Los Angeles at age 7 with his maternal grandparents. He was befriended by the Kobata family and given the responsibilities of a son in their plant nurseries in the Gardena area, learning the traditional Japanese attitudes toward nature and plant materials.
A gifted artist, Jones entertained the idea of becoming an artist, but a job with an architectural firm in high school fired his aspiration to study architecture at the University of Washington. World War II interrupted his career, but on November 2, 1945, the day after his release from the U. S. Navy, he founded his firm in the house he and his first wife, architect Ruth Schneider, built in Laurel Canyon.
In the 34 years of the firm’s continuous work during his lifetime (Jones died in 1979), there are three periods: five years of individual practice (1945-50); 19 years of partnership with Frederick E. Emmons (1950-69) and nine years of return to sole ownership.
Emmons and Jones complemented one another with their individual strengths that came together as a powerful team. Jones preferred to work in partnerships; unlike some of his contemporaries, he was not interested in proving himself as a lone innovator with a signature style. The firm practiced in a diversified and selected field of work rather than specializing. In the office at one time, various phases of several projects might include large housing projects, such as the Mutual Housing Association of Crestwood Hills, single-family residences with a wide range of budgets, including several houses in Pacific Palisades; low-rise apartments; university campuses; libraries; hospitals; recreational facilities and churches, including St. Matthew’s Church (1953) that burned down in 1978.
In their architectural office building on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L. A., completed in 1955, 25 to 35 men and women worked on projects.
Jones viewed design as creating experience. He was less interested in a single inhabitant, more attuned to the collective: how the space would be used, whether for housing, work or single family. He enjoyed input from others, joining with developers, manufacturers and government agencies as well as with engineers, other architects and landscape, interior and furniture designers.
“My first job after graduating from architecture school at Notre Dame was with Quincy,” recalls Santa Monica architect Greg Cahill, who worked at the firm from 1973-1974. “Quincy was a warm person with a quite good sense of humor. He was a hands-on guy and we all felt respected. There was no hierarchy.
“During my time, we were working on mostly homes, including a house in Rancho Mirage that I was doing projection drawings for. Jones houses seem to be the right size with a great relationship to the environment. This proportion is vanishing with the trend these days of maximizing house versus property. A lot of people don’t seem to handle the simplicity; they need to have some childhood referential.”
When Palisadian Winston Chappell’s parents wanted to build a house, they hired Jones, who had been recommended by friends. “It was blind luck,” says Chappell, who has an architectural practice in Santa Monica. “It was 1947, Quincy was just out of the Navy so our house was one of his first projects. Dad was a golfer and had bought .9 acres on the 12th hole at the Bel-Air Country Club to build a house.”
Chappell’s mom, Helen, drove the project and wanted a modernist house. Jones plotted the house at the bottom of a canyon off Chalon Road employing a basic floor plan of two long rectangles. The roofline, which consisted of two intersecting shapes, created the silhouette and upward sweep that encompassed a view of the surrounding hills and brought light into the house.
Small by today’s standards, the 1,800-sq.-ft. wood-framed house incorporated various Jones details, including soaring ceilings to clerestory windows and indirect lighting throughout using a “new material,” fluorescence. The house was all-electric with forced-air heating. The landscape also featured landscape architect Garrett Eckbo’s desire to bring the outside in by building planter boxes inside. The floors, all cork, were flush to the outside. The walls were huge plateglass windows except where other materials were required for structural reasons. The kitchen featured stained redwood plywood cabinets and countertops of another new material, Formica. The furniture was contemporary, including pieces by Charles Eames, George Nelson and Herman Miller. The sofas were cantilevered, as was the hearth.
“Our families were friends,” Chappell says, who credits Jones with his own ambition to become an architect. “I remember being at Quincy and Elaine’s Crestwood house and walking into his studio and seeing this big drafting table and glasses full of sharpened pencils. I thought would be great to be an adult who has so many toys.”
Design was the lens through which Jones envisioned better living. But “He offered more than talent as a designer,” architecture historian Esther McCoy said in her eulogy. “He eased the path from the old to the new for all architects who followed.”
(For information on the L.A. Conservancy’s Evening at the Brody House, visit: laconservancy.org.
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