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Overview

The renowned Los Angeles Modernist Richard Neutra and his colleague Peter Pfisterer designed this five-townhouse / two-apartment complex in the mid-1930s, an epitome of the International Style touted by New York's Museum of Modern Art. During the 1920s and 1930s, Los Angeles architects were producing some of the most radical and innovative architecture in the world.

Building History

The Landfair Realty Company commissioned the Austrian-born architect Richard J. Neutra (1892-1970) to design this small housing complex in the mid-1930s which was completed in 1937. The Los Angeles Times published a photograph and described the new apartment complex in its issue of 09/20/1936: "In lower picture is view of eight-unit, modern-type apartment building nearing completion on a corner site at 501-505 Landfair avenue, Westwood Hills. The structure is owned by the Landfair Realty Company. Building and site represent an investment of about $65,000. The building was designed by Architect Richard J. Neutra. It has a frontage of eighty feet on Landfair avenue, 135 feet on Ophir Derive and sixty-five on Glenrock avenue. Windows of steel casement-type extend from floor to ceiling. Each unit has a penthouse for sun bathing. Multiple-housing construction is active in Westwood.” (See “Distinctive Apartment Structures Further City’s Upbuilding,” Los Angeles Times, 09/20/1936, part V, p.1.)

In another description of the building elsewhere in the same issue, the cost was listed as being $42,000: “Construction is well along on a $42,000, eight-unit Modern apartment building at 501-05 Landfair avenue for the Landfair Realty Company. It was designed by Architect Richard J. Neutra.” (See “Eight-Unit Structure,” Los Angeles Times, 09/20/1936, pt. V, p. 6.)

The UCLA University Cooperative Housing Association (UCHA) has occupied and maintained the Landfair Apartments since 1941. According to the Los Angeles Times, the UCHA was "...a private, nonprofit corporation established during the Depression to provide low-cost housing for UCLA students.” (See Tracy Kaplan, “L.A. Seeks State Grant to Renovate Landfair Apartments in Westwood,” Los Angeles Times, 01/25/1987, p. 2W.)

Building Notes

The Ophir Drive facade had a sawtooth profile when seen from above, with each townhouse slightly set back from the next. Despite the similarity of forms and colors used throughout, the setbacks gave each unit its own individuality.

Tracey Kaplan, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said of the Landfair Apartments in 1987: “A model of the building was one of two chosen to represent Neutra’s work in a 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.” (See Tracy Kaplan, “L.A. Seeks State Grant to Renovate Landfair Apartments in Westwood,” Los Angeles Times, 01/25/1987, p. 2W.)

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission (LACHC) voted on 05/20/1987 to make Landfair Apartments a city Historic-Cultural Monument. On the same day, the LACHC also ratified the stylistically anathema Victorian Eastlake Inn an Historic-Cultural Monument.