How This Frank Lloyd Wright House Became a Certified Hollywood Star

"When Frank Lloyd Wright accepted a commission to design what would become the Ennis House, a 6,000-square-foot residence nestled in the hills of Los Feliz, California, he had no idea he was crafting an eventual film star. Having made more than 80 onscreen appearances, the home is now a veritable Hollywood icon and has been featured Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Day of the Locust, and Blade Runner, among others."

""The house can be a bit of a chameleon," Peg Meehan, a film location broker, who represented the Ennis House through Unreel Locations in the early 2000s, once told Financial Times. "In one week I was showing it as a modern setting for a powerful movie star character. A couple of days later I showed it to a director who wanted to shoot it as a castle in the Netherlands.""

"The Ennis House was the last and largest of these properties and was commissioned by Charles and Mabel Ennis, owners of a Los Angeles clothing store. Known as a "textile block" house, the home was constructed from precast, interlocked concrete blocks, which was a new material at the time. Designed in a trabeated style, it lacks curves, arches, vaults, and domes."

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the 6,000-square-foot Ennis House in Los Feliz, California, employing precast interlocked "textile block" concrete with Aztec and Mayan influences. The house was commissioned by Charles and Mabel Ennis and built in a trabeated style that lacks curves, arches, vaults, and domes. Wright created the house after relocating to California in the mid-1910s while experimenting with forms and materials following a personal tragedy. The Ennis House became a frequent film location with more than 80 onscreen appearances, adaptable to varied settings from modern celebrity homes to foreign castles. Its construction method was novel at the time.

Read at Architectural Digest