The Baldwin House: How John Lautner Built a Hillside Room That Flows Out to the View

The Baldwin Residence: A Lautner Time Capsule in Silver Lake

John Lautner, 1955. 1949 W Micheltorena Street, Los Angeles.

The living room and deck carried on posts over the slope. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

A few days ago I got to walk through John Lautner's Baldwin Residence in Silver Lake. It sits on the same street as Lautner's own 1940 house and Silvertop, on a very steep downhill lot. Lautner designed it for Joseph Baldwin, a commercial artist, and his wife Rosemary. The brief was a three-bedroom house with a studio for Joe, where costs mattered but were not critical. The house has stayed in the Baldwin family ever since, and this fall it went on the market for the first time in 71 years.

It is a modest house. It is also one of the most complete expressions of Lautner's ideas I have stood inside.

The approach

You don't see much of the house from Micheltorena. A short driveway drops downhill, and the building stays low and mostly out of view. Coming down the driveway, the first thing you notice is a solid wall on the right side of the house, along the side yard by the bedrooms. It rises past the roofline and has its own simple geometry. It has no openings at all. That one blank wall anchors the whole composition.

Coming down the driveway. The low roof over the carport and bedroom wing, with the clerestory along its edge. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

There is no garage. You arrive under a carport, and the carport roof is the same low-slope roof that covers the bedroom wing. You enter the house from under that roof.

Under the carport, looking back up the driveway. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

Before the front door, a wall screens off a side yard. Walk around it and you can see that the dining and kitchen area opens onto its own private deck. It is a clever use of a tight hillside lot: the side yard becomes usable, private outdoor space.

The dining area opens to the private side yard. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

Two roofs

The house is two pieces under two roofs. The first is the flat, low-slope roof over the carport and the wing holding the bedrooms and kitchen. Beyond it rises the second, taller roof over the triangular living room. Where the two meet, the height difference creates a clerestory that brings light into the center of the house.

From above: the bedroom wing and carport under one roof, the triangular living room under the other. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

Section. From John Lautner, Architect (1994).

Inside, you turn right for the bedrooms, which are simple and modest. The bedroom wing has its own clerestory, which you can see from the driveway. Inside, it runs over the closets on the right side of the hallway and brings natural light into the corridor. Straight ahead, the kitchen and dining area is on your left. Keep going and you reach the living room.

Plan. From John Lautner, Architect (1994).

The bedroom hallway. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

The living room

This is the reason to see the house. The room is a triangle in plan. The roof is flat on top, but Lautner inverted the ceiling geometry beneath it: in his words, “a triangular inverted pyramid ceiling creates an out-flowing spacious feeling, opening up and out in all directions.” The ceiling comes down to a low point at the center of the room, about 7'-6", and rises to roughly 10'-6" at the glass.

The inverted-pyramid ceiling, low at the center and rising to the edges. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

The effect is exactly what he intended. The room compresses you at the center, then releases you out to the view. Glass wraps the edges, and on a clear day you can see the Hollywood sign. A deck carries the room further out over the slope. You step out to it through the glass walls, and the opening itself reads as a triangle in front of you.

Then: the deck, 1980. Photo: Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).

Now: the glass door from the deck, under the triangular roof edge. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

The view from the deck, with the Hollywood sign. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

It breaks the box completely. Seventy years on, it still feels modern. Standing in it, I kept thinking of aerospace geometry, something closer to a spacecraft than a 1950s house.

Then: the fireplace corner, 1980. Photo: Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).

Now: the same corner at dusk, with the uplights on. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

The light

The lighting is some of the most inventive I have seen in a house of this size. The custom fixtures uplight the ceiling but are themselves hidden from view. They are geometric forms, and some echo the triangular openings punched into the wood walls; one of those triangles is in fact a light fixture.

A triangular uplight set into the wood paneling. Photo: Kris Conner.

Another paneling uplight, with a different geometry. Photo: Kris Conner.

These fixtures are deeper than the wall, so on the outside Lautner wrapped each one in a metal casing. From the exterior you can read the lighting as small protrusions wherever a fixture sits inside. The ceiling downlights have louvers to cut glare, so you never get the harsh direct light of an ordinary can. All of this is balanced against daylight from the clerestory and from the open dining area at the side of the house.

Outside, a metal casing projects where a light fixture sits inside, next to the triangular openings. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

The structure

Lautner's hillside solution is plain and smart. As he described it: “To eliminate the underside bracing so often seen under many hillside houses, I used simple post supports carrying only vertical loads, and solid bracing walls for lateral wind and earthquake loads.” The walls run down to grade, the posts stay slender, and the slope carries on underneath. The living room floats.

Posts and bracing walls, with the slope continuing underneath. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

Echoes of Sheats-Goldstein

I have worked on the Sheats-Goldstein Residence for almost 20 years, first under Duncan Nicholson starting in 2007, and since 2015 with my own firm. So I caught the family resemblance right away, even though the Baldwin house is an entirely original design. Both have a carport instead of a garage. Both set the main living room apart under its own roof, with the bedrooms in a separate wing under a different roof system. At Sheats-Goldstein the living room sits under the concrete roof and the secondary bedrooms are off on their own. The ideas Lautner worked out on a modest budget in Silver Lake in 1955 show up again, at a much bigger scale, in Beverly Hills.

A time capsule

What makes the house rare is that it has never been altered. Houses of this age usually pass through several owners, each one changing something. This one stayed in one family. The original details are intact, down to the kitchen and what appear to be the original appliances.

The original kitchen, with its wall oven and cooktop. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

It does need care. The woodwork needs refinishing, the windows need maintenance, and someone needs to go through every detail. But the design is all there. My hope is that it goes to an owner who understands Lautner's work and brings it back to its original condition, properly maintained.

Gallery

The deck. Photo: Cameron Carothers.	The glass wall at dusk. Photo: Cameron Carothers.
Looking back at the house from the deck. Photo: Cameron Carothers.	The clerestory light filled hallway. Photo: Cameron Carothers.
A bedroom. Photo: Cameron Carothers.	Skylight in the bath. Photo: Cameron Carothers.
The living room, 1980. Photo: Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).	Silver Lake and the Hollywood Hills at sunset. Photo: Cameron Carothers.

Seeing the house

Thanks to Louis Magnano of Modern California House for showing us through. For details on the listing, visit realtor.com or call (716) 998-6695. CA DRE #02116804. Follow on Instagram.

Sources and credits

• John Lautner, Architect (1994), by John Lautner, edited by Frank Escher. Plan, section and project text.
• Julius Shulman photographs, Job 5816 (1980). Photo: Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).
• Listing photographs by Cameron Carothers, courtesy of Louis Magnano, Modern California House.
• Lighting detail photographs by Kris Conner.