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Overview

When built, this residence for the architect Rudolph Schindler and his wife, and the engineer Clyde Chace and his wife occupied a rural and undeveloped section of Los Angeles. Schindler synthesized various influences, the Prairie Style and California work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and American Indian architecture of the Southwest, to produce one of the most original Modern residences of the twentieth century. The spareness and geometry of the house was utterly striking for 1922, as was the frank, unadorned treatment of materials, most notably wood and concrete. Schindler derived Its tilt-slab structural concrete method from the work of Irving Gill (employed first at his La Jolla Woman's Club [1913]), another avant-garde architectural experimenter in Southern CA. Its U-shaped plan, shaped around a secluded patio, reflected Spanish/Early California ranch houses, whose linear configurations of rooms enabled easy movement from inside to out. This was the quintessential California Modernist experiment, a rich mixture of influences, produced by one of the region's greatest design talents.

Building History

Austrian-born architect Rudolph Schindler designed this revolutionary dwelling for himself, his wife, Sophie Pauline Gibling (03/19/1893-05/04/1977), a friend, Clyde Burgess Chace (07/02/1891-12/21/1991), an engineer colleague, and his wife, Marian Da Camara Chace (08/01/1892-11/17/1978); the inspiration for the tilt-slab construction of the Schindler-Chace House's walls was derived from earlier experiments by Irving J. Gill; Chace worked briefly for Gill in 1921, and learned of the architect's methods at this time; work on the house began in 11/1921 and concluded in the summer of 1923; in order to preserve the house as an historic monument, the MAK Center, Vienna, Austria, founded the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles at the King's Road House as well as the nearby Pearl M. Mackey House.