Story
The Particular Client
Andrew Romano
Most clients would be lucky to coax one masterpiece out of their architects. The Lovells got two.
The Lovell Beach House
R.M. Schindler, 1926
Newport Beach, California
One of the defining masterpieces of early California modernism, offered for the first time on the centenary of its completion.
The House
Revered as “an icon of modernity at a Promethean scale,” the Lovell Beach House has served for the last 100 years as the Lovell family’s personal oceanfront retreat.
Widely recognized as “Schindler’s second most important work,” after the home he built for himself on Kings Road, the house now seeks a steward who can enjoy and enrich the “playful mood of beach life” that Schindler sought to conjure up.
Details
- Architect
- Rudolph M. Schindler
Photographs
History
Film
In Schindler’s Words
Beach House: Dr. P. H. Lovell, Newport Beach, California. Architect: R. M. Schindler, 1926.
- Location
- The beach sands of the Pacific Ocean. A level corner lot at an intersection of the board walk and a cross street.
Legacy
“Deserves a place with Gropius’s Bauhaus at Dessau, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion at Barcelona as a key work of twentieth-century architecture.”
David Gebhard, architectural historian
“An icon of modernity at a Promethean scale.”
Stefanos Polyzoides, 1997
“Schindler’s second most important work,” after the home he built for himself on Kings Road.
James Steele, 2005
“A world-class building not only because of its quality as a design, but also because its style, and manner of handling space, demand comparison with the best European work of the same period – and emerges from the comparison enhanced, not diminished.”
Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, 1971
“I loved (R.M.) Schindler because there was a directness to his buildings. An honesty, an accessibility that was very exciting for a young architect.”
Frank Gehry, 2003
“Schindler was the groundbreaking theorist, having already commenced his revolutionary masterpieces – his Kings Road House and the Lovell Beach House – before Neutra even arrived in America.”
Frank Escher, 2021
“…the structure is heroic; the massive reinforced concrete frames, exposed on the exterior like a grand entry porch…”
Judith Sheine, R.M. Schindler: Works and Projects, 1998
Private viewings by appointment.
Nate Cole
Modern California House
moderncaliforniahouse.com
DRE 02014153
nate@mcahouse.com 562 673 3550 DRE 01405140