Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House For Sale

ALL PHOTOS BY ANDREW PIELAGE.

The Ennis House was purchased in 2011 by billionaire Ron Burkle for $4.5 million. Burkle extensively restored the home—with restoration costs totaling nearly $17 million—to repair damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and heavy rains. The home, built in 1924, is the largest of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Los Angeles-area textile block houses.

Perched atop a hill in the Los Feliz neighborhood, it is among the best residential examples of Mayan Revival architecture in the country. The Ennis House rises in stages, with over 27,000 blocks arranged across a concrete platform and buttressed by a retaining wall. The concrete—a combination of gravel, granite and sand from the site—was hand-cast in aluminum molds to create blocks measuring 16”x 16” x 3.5” that were then woven together with steel rods, giving the textile block houses their name.

As with all of Wright’s textile block residences, the Ennis House featured a custom designed pattern. Within the interlocking form, the Greek key design resembles a stylized “g”— perhaps an allusion to the Masonic order that Charles Ennis belonged to, which had an organizational symbol of a compass with the letter “g” for God at its center. Due to its unique appearance, the house has served as the backdrop in numerous films, commercials and television shows including Mulholland Drive, The Rocketeer, Rush Hour, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Predator 2, Beverly Hills Cop II, and Blade Runner.

The home is being shown by appointment only through Branden and Rayni Williams of Hilton & Hyland, along with Ron De Salvo of Coldwell Banker.