The Storer House was one of multiple high-profile projects that Wright completed in the 1920s, along with his other Los Angeles houses and Tokyo's
Imperial Hotel. Wright had received the commissions for the
Freeman,
Ennis, and Storer houses nearly simultaneously, shortly after he had completed
La Miniatura. The order in which the three houses was constructed is disputed, although the Storer House is agreed to have been built before the other two. Wright's grandson
Eric Lloyd Wright and
Los Angeles Times reporter
Charles Lockwood stated that the Freeman House was built last, Prior to constructing the textile-block houses, Wright had used pre-Columbian motifs in other structures such as Chicago's
Midway Gardens and
Richland Center, Wisconsin's
German Warehouse.
Development The client, John Storer, was a
homeopathic physician. Unlike the clients of Wright's other textile-block houses, Storer was not part of either the
avant-garde or a
progressive movement. Storer moved from Chicago to the Los Angeles area in 1917 and became a real estate developer two years later, when he failed a
medical licensing exam. The Superior Building Company was established in 1921 at number 1920 Grammercy Place, where Storer lived at the time. Eric later said that Wright was "trying to create something beautiful, with its own character and quality", even though his grandfather's textile-block houses generally featured little ornamentation. had been hired by November 1923 to construct the Storer House. Parlee was fired within five weeks, after Storer had sued Parlee to obtain the formula for the concrete textile blocks. The Storer House's concrete blocks differed from those used in the Millard House, in that the Storer blocks had interior
coffers and were laid in multiple layers. Work proceeded steadily at first; by February 1924, images showed that the house's exterior walls had been built up to the second floor. and the blocks were removed from the molds and kept moist for weeks. Wright filed a notice of completion on October 27, 1924, while other features were excluded due to disagreements between architect and client.
Mid-20th-century ownership Storer's opinion of the house has not been documented, in contrast to some of Wright's other clients, who were vocal about what they thought of their houses. and Storer ultimately sold it in 1927, having owned the house for less than four years. renting it for several years. In the decades after Storer sold the house, the building fell into disrepair; the concrete decorations, roofs, doors, and window surrounds were particularly badly affected. The lack of joints allowed water to leak through the walls, and the roof also lacked properly-installed
flashing, allowing water to seep through that way as well. a later owner tried to remove the paint using a
sandblaster, creating dents in the concrete blocks. but he did not have enough money until 1982, when the film
48 Hrs. became a box-office hit. He eventually agreed to buy it in January 1984, $750,000, Furthermore, relatively little attention was being paid to Wright's Los Angeles textile-block houses, which had fallen into disrepair. Silver also bought decorations and furniture by Wright and other early-20th-century architects, and the art dealer
Tod Volpe helped Silver with the purchases. Among the objects Silver acquired were a dining table from the house of Wright's secretary, as well as a chair from the Trier House, which Wright had designed in Iowa. The mechanical systems and the original design details were replaced, and workers removed lacquer and varnish from the woodwork, which instead had to be coated in oil regularly. Newer electric wires were concealed within existing architectural details. and he discovered Wright's original plans for the house's colorful awnings. During the renovation, there were disagreements over the extent to which the original design should be reproduced. For the bathroom, Silver agreed to remove fixtures from the 1950s and add fixtures that would have been commonplace in the 1920s. By contrast, he insisted on modern appliances for the kitchen, over objections from the architects. These included installing a pool, and he also invited members of the Los Angeles Conservancy to tour it. Silver's restoration project won a Preservation Award from the Los Angeles Conservancy in 1985. The project also received an architectural-excellence award from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects in 1986, one of the first times a restoration project in California had received that prize. which he also renovated, using furnishings designed by Wright. The Storer House remained a private residence through the 1990s. Though Silver had initially planned to host tours of the house after renovating it,
Subsequent sales By 1998, Silver had placed the Storer House on sale for $5.5 million, including its furnishings, as he wanted to build a new Los Angeles residence. It was one of the most expensive Wright–designed properties listed for sale at the time. Despite having put "a small fortune" into the restoration, Silver had difficulty finding a buyer. Reports indicated that a similar home would sell for $1 million, leading
Forbes magazine to ask: "Will someone pay a 400% premium to live in a piece of architectural history? Probably not. Even immaculately restored, the Storer House still has drawbacks: It's small, the address is just a shade east of swanky Beverly Hills and the other houses on the hills above invade its privacy." The asking price had been decreased to $4.5 million by 2000, and it was reduced again the next year to $3.5 million. Silver ultimately sold the house in 2002 or $6.9 million. At the time, it was believed to be the most expensive Wright–designed house ever sold; this record was broken in 2019 when
Ronald Burkle sold the nearby Ennis House for $18 million. == Impact ==