HOME ARTICLES MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBE DONATE ARCHIVES ABOUT BOOKS PODCASTS FAQS JANUARY 28, 2020 Who Cares If It Leaks? An Afternoon Search at Hollyhock House by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1919- 1921, crowns a knoll called Olive Hill in East Hollywood. Once it was surrounded by citrus fields, now Hollyhock House and the small shady park it inhabits is hemmed in by New from LA sprawl: strip malls, gas stations, fast-food joints, the CounterPunch endless growl of traffic. The views from the hilltop stretch from the imperial towers of downtown LA to the Griffith Observatory in the Hollywood Hills. The commission for the house came from Aline Barnsdall, an oil heiress, who wanted Wright to build a complex of buildings on the site–a theater, art gallery, concert hall, cinema–to enrich the cultural life of Los Angeles. But the doyenne and the architect fell out before construction even began. Wright headed to off Japan to build the Imperial Hotel and oversight of the Hollyhock project was left to his radical young protegé, Rudolph Schindler, who felt the decorative Mayan design was a minor retreat from Wright’s modernist aesthetics. (Wright and Schindler were both uncompromising iconoclasts, but Schindler designed the more comfortable furniture. Alexander Cockburn, who adored them both, described Wright as “a little man who hated chairs.”) Barnsdall lived in the house less than a year, before moving into a smaller Wright-designed house nearby, where Schindler had worked during the two-year-long construction, and then donated the entire site to the city of Los Angeles, which has never really known what to do with the bequest. What Wright understood February 18, at the time, and the city’s boosters, managers and moguls 2020 failed to acknowledge for decades, was that LA’s architectural past and future pointed south, to Mexico and JOHN PILGER Julian Assange Central America. Must be Freed, Not Betrayed On the sunny day I visited, there were maybe 100 people PETER HARRISON sprawled across Olive Hill, doing yoga, drinking wine, vaping Religion is a and photographing the Hollywood sign. Few seemed to Repeating notice the iconic structure, now barricaded behind an Chapter in the unsightly and forbidding fence. Barnsdall complained that History of Politics the house was dark, moist and tomb-like. In fact, for a NORMAN SOLOMON structure with so few windows natural light flows through The Escalating Class War Against the building, softening the edges of the interior, leaving few Bernie Sanders dark corners and giving the living quarters a warm, golden CONN HALLINAN tone. Wright was 54 when Hollyhock was completed. He was Irish Elections to build only seven more structures in the LA area, including and Unification the Ennis House, which can be seen clinging to the DEAN BAKER Hollywood Hills from the grounds of Olive Hill. Wright’s We Shouldn’t Mayan structures aren’t exactly dead ends, more like Have to Beg Mark Zuckerberg to exuberant follies, expensive case studies. Remarkably, Frank Respect Lloyd Wright’s most innovative work was ahead of him and Democracy the spacial lessons and building techniques he learned in Los SAM PIZZIGATI Angeles he would put to creative effect in his later A Silicon Valley masterpieces: Taliesin West, the Usonian houses and Falling Life Lesson: Money That Water. But LA belonged to his three understudies: Schindler, ‘Clumps’ Crushes Richard Neutra and John Lautner, who would soon redefine ARSHAD KHAN modernist architecture. Hollyhock remains, a house out of Minority Abuse: A place and out of time, a lovely manicured ruin on a hill, Slice of Life in under siege from all sides. – JSC Modi’s India WALDEN BELLO China’s Economy: Powerful But Vulernable NICOLAS J S DAVIES Afghan Troops say Taliban are Brothers and War is “Not Really Our Fight.” NYLA ALI KHAN The BJP is Not India, and Every Indian is Not a Modi-Devotee BINOY KAMPMARK Buying Elections: The Bloomberg Meme Campaign JONAH RASKIN Here’s Hoping EVAGGELOS VALLIANATOS Herakles in the Age of Climate Chaos BOB TOPPER The Conscience of a Conservative JOHN W. WHITEHEAD We’re All in This Together GALA PIN Bodies in Freedom: a Barcelona Story LAURA FLANDERS Democracy, Dictatorship and Bloomberg JAMES CHANDLER Among Cruel Children February 17, 2020 SHELDON RICHMAN Anti-BDS Laws Violate Our Freedom JOHN HORNING NEPA is Our National Defense System EVELYN LEOPOLD How the UN’s Middle East Peace Plan Was Trounced by Its Own Members STEPHEN COOPER “Just Mercy” and Justice Don’t Exist in Alabama PATRICK COCKBURN Sinn Fein’s Victory is Ireland’s ‘Brexit Moment’ When Left-Out Voters Turn on the Elite RALPH NADER “Democratic Socialism” – Bring it on Corporate Socialists! PHILLIP DOE Every Day’s a Holiday for the Oil Business in Colorado BINOY KAMPMARK Fashion Fetishism, Surgical Masks and Coronavirus CESAR CHELALA The Democrats’ New Chapter ROBERT KOEHLER The Wall: Separating Democracy From Voters PETER COHEN Time to Retire the “He Can’t Beat Trump” Trope SR. KATHLEEN ERICKSON Lessons From Ministering on the Border ALVARO HUERTA Another Five Lessons for Democrats to Defeat Trump in 2020 WIM LAVEN Donald Trump’s Plan for America: Make it Ignorant CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI You Tube’s Trump Predicament STEVE KLINGER Trump Shoots Romney at Prayer Breakfast; GOP Shrugs ELLIOT SPERBER Ode to the City Bus JAMES HAUGHT Megachurch Mess Weekend Edition February 14, 2020 Friday - Sunday ANDREW LEVINE Mayor Mike, Worse Than Mayor Pete BRUCE E. LEVINE “Sublime Madness”: Anarchists, Psychiatric Survivors, Emma Goldman & Harriet Tubman JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Roaming Charges: Leader of the Pack JENNIFER MATSUI The Doomsday Cuckoo Clock PAUL STREET Things Said in Confidence to 4000 Close Friends This Week JONATHAN COOK Even With Corbyn Gone, Antisemitism Threats Will Keep Destroying the UK Labour Party THOMAS KLIKAUER Cambridge Analytica: a Salesgirl’s Report JOSEPH NATOLI Vichy Democrats vs. the Master Voice DAVID ROSEN Sanders vs. the Establishment Democrats: McGovern All Over Again? All photographs by Jeffrey St. Clair. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: [email protected] or on Twitter @JSCCounterPunch . CounterPunch Mailing Address Editorial Business Tells the Facts and Names the CounterPunch Jeffrey St. Clair, Editor Becky Grant Names PO Box 228 Joshua Frank, Business Manager Published since 1996 Petrolia, CA 95558 Managing Editor [email protected] Copyright © CounterPunch Telephone Nathaniel St. Clair, Deva Wheeler All rights reserved. 1(707) 629-3683 Social Media Subscription and merchandise [email protected] Alexander Cockburn, fulfillment g 1941-2012 [email protected].