“Charles Wong never became a household name. That’s a marketing problem, not an architecture problem.”
- Claire O'Connor
1437
Hillside Dr
Glendale
Bedrooms
4
Bathrooms
3
Total Area
2,901 Sq. FT
Lot Size
6,362 Sq. FT
Price
$1,999,000
The Modernist Who Missed the Postcards
Charles W. Wong, A.I.A., designed this house in the Verdugo foothills in 1961, ten years after he graduated from USC’s School of Architecture and somewhere in the middle of the decade that gave Los Angeles most of the modernism it is still known for. He was one of a small group of architects working in that language here, and he worked in it fluently: post and beam, wood paneling, tongue-and-groove ceilings, clerestory windows, and walls of glass doing the job that walls of plaster do everywhere else. What makes the house particular is the split in Wong’s thinking. Inside, he kept the post-and-beam vocabulary as plain as it will go, and outside, he let the detail get complicated. The result does not resemble anything else on the street, which in 1961 was almost certainly the point, and sixty-five years later still is.
Listed by: Chris Suarez, Compass
Inside
The living room is the argument the whole house is making. Floor-to-ceiling glass and sliding walls of it open the room to the mountains and the greenery on every side, and the clerestory windows above bring in a second, higher light that arrives at a different hour than the first. The wood paneling and the tongue-and-groove ceilings keep all that glass from going cold, which is the difference between a modernist house that is pleasant to live in and one that photographs beautifully and then never quite warms up. Upstairs, the bedrooms turn away from the performance and look into the trees instead. The house asks something of whoever owns it in return, mostly a tolerance for being seen by the hillside and a settled opinion about window coverings, and the people who want this house have usually made peace with both before they walk in.
Outside
The guest house is the piece people remember. It is wrapped in glass on all sides and lifted off the ground so it sits up in the treetops, roughly 705 square feet with a three-quarter bath, and it works as a studio or an office for anyone who has learned that working from home and working in the home are different arrangements. Detached is doing real work in that sentence. The main house opens onto the hillside through its sliding walls, so the greenery reads as part of the floor plan rather than as scenery beyond it, and the mountain views stay unobstructed from both levels. Wong saved his more intricate detailing for the exterior, so the house rewards the walk around it, which is not something every post-and-beam of this era can claim once you step off the entry path.
The O' Factor
Five or six mid-century architects get named over and over in this city, and Los Angeles had a great many more than six. Neutra, Lautner, Ellwood, Koenig: those four got photographed, the pictures got reprinted for sixty years, and every house outside that frame became a nice old place on a hill. Charles Wong graduated in 1951 and worked in the same language through the sixties without landing on the postcards. The argument for him is not ours to make. Glendale’s Historic Preservation Commission recommended this house for historic designation unanimously, and the owners paused the application before final approval, so the next owner inherits the recommendation and the choice of whether to record it and pursue the Mills Act tax savings that follow. Reputation is a distribution problem. The building is either good or it is not, and the people who look at buildings for a living already voted.
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The Homes we Represent,
Represent Us.
Every home has a soul. Every human has a place they were meant to be. Our instinct is knowing when the two finally meet. We honor architecture, preserve great design and celebrate the match. Welcome to O’Connor Estates. We’ve been waiting for you.
Proof is in the Properties
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“Sold off-market for $1,249 per square foot.”
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