Frank Lloyd Wright's famed, long-endangered Ennis House, which served as a location for films such as "Blade Runner," is putting out a "for sale" sign with a $15 million asking price, Christie's said on Friday. The 6,000-square-foot Los Angeles estate is being sold by the Ennis House Foundation, which recently completed the initial phase of a stabilization and restoration project after years of decay and damage from earthquakes and torrential rains. In March 2005, it was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's most-endangered list. "Our goal has always been to be a good steward of the house," said the foundation's president, James DeMeo."We've made a lot of progress, but at this point a private owner with the right vision and sufficient resources can better preserve the house than we can as a small nonprofit," he said, explaining the decision to place the historic home on the market.Perched atop a hill in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles just south of Griffith Park, the Mayan-inspired estate built in 1924 from some 27,000 16-inch concrete blocks is one of only four of the legendary American architect's "textile block" homes. [ read more on Reuters ]

Completed in 1924 for Charles and Mabel Ennis, the owners of a men's clothing store who liked to entertain, the house was the last and largest of four homes that Wright designed in an experimental "textile block" style. Mabel Ennis sold the house in 1936, and it has changed hands several times since. Radio personality John Nesbitt, who owned the property from 1940 to 1942, had Wright convert a ground-floor storage space into a billiards room with a fireplace, add a lap pool on the north terrace and install a heating system.The house suffered over the years from neglect. In June 1968, Augustus O. Brown, the last private owner, bought the estate for $119,000 and made extensive repairs. In 1980, he donated the property to a nonprofit trust he established to ensure that the house would be maintained. That group became the Ennis House Foundation. The foundation began its restoration in 2005 after the estate, heavily damaged by rain and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, was placed on "most endangered" lists by both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the World Monuments Fund. Torrential rains had caused the retaining wall to buckle in March 2005, sending several patterned blocks tumbling down the hill. City inspectors briefly red-tagged the estate, spread on half an acre along a ridge with breathtaking views in the Hollywood Hills. The Maya-inspired estate, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been featured in films including "House on Haunted Hill," "Grand Canyon" and the futuristic "Blade Runner."Jointly offering the house are Hilton & Hyland and Dilbeck Realtors in Los Angeles, with international marketing provided by Christie's Great Estates in Santa Fe, N.M. A new owner would face a projected bill of $5 million to $7 million to return the house to its former grandeur, atop $6.5 million the foundation has already invested to stabilize the property and begin restoration. The listing came about after much soul-searching by the foundation's board, said James DeMeo, president. In 2008, a consulting firm, Cultural + Planning Group of Los Angeles, determined that, given the difficulty of raising funds, the best path was to put the property up for private sale. "Our hope was it would go to an owner with the passion, the vision and the resources to continue the restoration and to preserve this property," DeMeo said.
Inspired by the ruins of Uxmal, Mexico, the striking 6,000-square-foot estate consists of a main house and a smaller chauffeur's quarters, separated by a paved motor court. Wright's notion was to craft an organic structure that literally seemed to rise from the site. Workers extracted decomposed granite from the property to use in many of the 27,000 blocks.[ latimes.com ]
source photo:latimes.com