place

Albert Lewin House

Buildings and structures in Santa Monica, CaliforniaHouses completed in 1938Modernist architecture in CaliforniaRichard Neutra buildings

The Albert Lewin House at 512-514 Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica, California was designed by the Modernist architects Richard Neutra and Peter Pfisterer for the film producer Albert Lewin and built in 1938. It was built by Frank A. Hellenthal. It is 5400 sq ft in size. Lewin was familiar with Neutra's work from his designs for the Von Sternberg House and the nearby Sten Frenke House. The house is clad in white stucco and situated on a long and narrow plot on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier. An elliptical living room is a prominent feature on the ground floor, above it is a balcony accessed from the upstairs bedrooms. The living and dining rooms are situated on the first floor.Lewin's wife, Millie, was the interior decorator of the house at the time of its construction. Mary Stothart, the wife of composer Herbert Stothart, recalled attending parties at the house with guests including painter Max Ernst, photographer Man Ray and the film director Jean Renoir. Another guest was the poet Charles Reznikoff who quoted Lewin's letters of complaint to Neutra in his novel The Manner Music; Lewin was the model for the character of Paul Pasha in the book. Lewin had been aggrieved by the publication of photographs of the house in an architectural journal. It was illustrated in a Life magazine feature on Californian architecture in October 1945. The house was sold to the actress and writer Mae West in 1954. West renovated the house in 1957; her renovations included the painting of six nude gladiators on a curved wall that led to the six bedrooms on the first floor. West also held psychic demonstrations here with the psychic Richard Ireland. West's pet monkeys overran the house during her tenure.The French-American architect François de Menil leased the house in the 1980s. It was subsequently owned by the architect Charles Gwathmey who added a swimming pool to the property in 1981. The house was sold in 1988. It was restored by the architect Steven Ehrlich between 1996 and 1998. It was featured in issue 56 of GA Houses. The owners of the house purchased an adjoining lot of 50 x 200 ft into which Erlich's expansion of an entertainment complex and swimming pool was built. The landscape architect Barry Beer created a minimalist garden of lawn and bamboo, with trees planted for privacy. The property was illustrated in the 2002 book Private Landscapes: Modernist Gardens in Southern California.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Albert Lewin House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Albert Lewin House
Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Albert Lewin HouseContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 34.02365 ° E -118.51169 °
placeShow on map

Address

Pacific Coast Highway (Palisades Beach Road)

Pacific Coast Highway
90401 Santa Monica
California, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

Entenza House

The Entenza House, also known as Case Study House #9, is a single occupancy residential building in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. The address is 205 Chautauqua Boulevard, Los Angeles California, 90272. It was designed by industrial designer Charles Eames, and architect Eero Saarinen for John Entenza as part of the Case Study House Program. The house was designed between 1945 and 1949 and construction was completed in 1950. Named accordingly, Entenza wanted to use the Case Study House #9 for himself as his private residence. He lived within the home for five years before selling it.The Case Study Houses program, included 36 prototypes, and was led by John Entenza in 1945 to 1966 after the Weißenhof-siedlung exposition in an effort to study “economic, easy-to build houses” in regards to residential purposes following the Second World War. As the ninth house to be built for the Case Study Houses project, the Entenza House started construction in 1945 and was completed in 1949 in the Modern style, and later added to until 1962. The new materials of concrete, plywood panels, metal, and glass were used to showcase the technological advances of the time, exemplifying the new automotive era. These materials allowed for a flexible and adaptable design with open concepts that proved to be both comfortable and functional. Due to a recovering economy from the Second World War, these materials were also considered to be low-cost and budget friendly. The Entenza House later went on to receive a place on the list for the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery
Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery

The Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery, located in Santa Monica Canyon, is the family burial ground of one of the original grantees of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica. “This is not only one of the original pioneer settlements, but one of the last which survives in the midst of modern developments.”“The cemetery grounds consist of a rectangular lot surrounded by a masonry and stucco wall built in 1926 by architect John Byers. Belonging to the Marquez family, this private family cemetery dates to the 1840s and formed part of the 6,656-acre (26,940,000 m2) Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, a Mexican land grant given to Francisco Marquez in 1839. The cemetery is…the oldest private family cemetery in Los Angeles.”The cemetery and a separate piece of property owned by descendant Rosemary Marquez Romero Miano are the last remnants of the original ranch to be still owned by the Marquez family. The rancho originally extended along the beach from Topanga Road to Montana Avenue and then east. “The Marquez and Reyes families lived…in the Canyon, under the flags of three countries: Spain, Mexico, and the United States, without ever leaving their Rancho homes.”The first burials in the cemetery were infants of rancho grantee Francisco Marquez and his wife Roque Valenzuela; Marquez buried the babies just outside his home in the canyon. The couple had 11 children altogether but only five survived to adulthood. In 1916, the final burial on the land was Pascual Marquez, Francisco’s youngest son.Burials are now marked with contemporary crosses in various artistic styles made by Pascual Marquez’s grandson Ernest Marquez. A photo from the 1890s shows a few wooden crosses placed on graves, “all of them [now] long gone.” Ground-penetrating radar provided by UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and search dogs trained in “historical human remains detection” were used to find the lost locations of the graves.Dorothy Gillis Loomis, daughter of the owner of Santa Monica Land & Water Company, which bought most of the rancho land in the early 20th century, was the first protector of the cemetery from outside of the family. She convinced her father not to develop the cemetery land, provided for the construction of the adobe wall, and donated the statue of San Lorenzo, which is from Mexico and carved out of a whole tree trunk. The cemetery was photographed by the Works Progress Administration on July 21, 1937. The landscaping of the San Lorenzo shrine at that time was opuntia and cholla. The original wooden crosses are already gone from the burial ground. One grave marker or footstone is visible in the center. The San Lorenzo Garden, or Santuario San Lorenzo, in front of the burial ground was a subject of legal disputes over historic easements. In 2011, the owners of the “garden” property, Fred Marcus and Davida Rochlin, sold the land (then said to be valued at $127,500 and likely worth many millions at current Palisades residential real estate prices) for $35,000, so that the cemetery would always be accessible to descendants and students of history.The sanctuary garden and burial ground are closed to the public but the descendants occasionally offer guided tours, including to students from the local Canyon Elementary School.