FOR SUSAN ORLEAN, LIVING IN AN ARCHITECTURAL ICON CAN BE A BLESSING AND A CURSE

There was a rustling near the entrance to my house. Bobcats live in the thicket of trees across the street, and mountain lions have ambled through the neighborhood on occasion, so I’m mindful of movement in the leaves that seems peculiar, predatory. I craned my neck for a better look. “Hello?” I hollered. A head swiveled into view. Unkempt hair, glasses, rapidly blinking eyes: the distracted air and fluorescent-light pallor of an architecture student.

“Hello,” he said. “I would like to look around.”

“You can’t look around,” I said. “This is my house.”

“But...” he stammered, “this is a famous house! I am here to take notes, to study it!”

Yes, I said, it is a famous house, but no, it is not open to the public, and unfortunately, I am in the middle of doing something right now and must get back to it. I was as apologetic and gentle as I could be. Crestfallen, he inched back to the street and appeared to leave, although a half hour later, I noticed him at the end of the driveway, scribbling furiously into his notebook.

My husband and I moved into the Kallis House in Los Angeles six years ago. It was designed in 1946 by the modernist architect Rudolph Schindler, and it’s believed by many, including Frank Gehry, to be among Schindler’s best. The house is eccentric, perched on the lip of a hill, with a butterfly roof and a shaggy exterior made of grape stakes. The interior is an unfolding series of surprising angles, with a wonderful wide view of the San Fernando Valley. Schindler was fond of triangles and trapezoids, and they’re everywhere throughout the house; there aren’t many right angles. It had many aches and pains when we bought it. We sweated through four years of restoration, and then, flush with the thrill of completion, we threw the door open every time anyone walked by. We were like parents with a newborn eager to have the world confirm that we had produced a beauty. Neighbors knocked and we ushered them in. Conservation groups called. Once, we came home to find a bus stuffed with German architects idling in the driveway. Each time, we fussed around excitedly, offered coffee, and provided a guided tour. After a year or two, we stopped offering coffee. Then we stopped offering the tour. By the time the architecture student popped out of the bushes, I had clocked out.

Didn’t Joe DiMaggio occasionally want Marilyn Monroe to just be Norma Jeane? Living in an architecturally significant house is glorious, a privilege. And then, sometimes, it’s just your damn house and yesterday’s mail is piled on the kitchen chair and there are half-chewed dog toys strewn about and someone hasn’t unpacked a suitcase from a trip last month and one of these days I will file my cosmetics in the bathroom cabinet rather than stacking them on the counter, but it won’t be today. When we do tidy and preen, the place is a knockout. But day to day, we live in it like anyone lives anywhere, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of ordinary life.

When we first moved in, we considered each piece of furniture and addition to the decor with Schindler in mind, adding and editing cautiously—almost timidly. Would Schindler have liked this Hans Wegner table? That’s an easy yes. But what about the Blu Dot chairs? Too contemporary? What about my Ikea desk? It’s hard enough to make aesthetic choices, but it’s daunting when you can picture the person who designed the house screwing up his face in disapproval, even if it’s only in your mind’s eye. Still, you can’t help but feel a different responsibility to a place with this pedigree, a sense that you are more steward than owner, tasked with serving its needs even before your own.

When I moved to New York City in 1986, my boyfriend and I scrambled to find an apartment. One of the first places we saw was a ground-floor apartment in a turn-of-the--century brownstone. The owner had restored it reverently; I could almost picture him massaging the mahogany banisters with velvet tea towels. He sized us up anxiously. We were youngsters, fresh out of ratty apartments and tumbledown college dorms, with a motley array of furniture— hand-me-down sofas, a few good finds from Goodwill, tag-sale plunder. “What sort of plan do you have for decorating?” the owner asked. “Will it suit”—he waved his hand around the parlor—“the home?” His tone suggested that the home was a sentient being, capable of being offended by unsuitable furnishings. Alas, we knew it would not suit. We imagined the landlord’s eyes popping out of his head were we to off-load a scarred Parsons table onto his parquet floors or, even worse, a 1960s bubble chair, fished out of some yard sale, thoroughly at war with his painstaking Greek Revival orthodoxy. We found a less spectacular apartment that was more forgiving of our things.

Now I find myself thinking back on that punctilious landlord with empathy. Some houses command compliance: Their presence is so palpable that you yield to it, knowing the results will probably be worth it. I certainly don’t want ours to look like a house museum, one step short of us stocking the kitchen with jellied chicken and potato–hot dog salad and a dial telephone. But there is a strong argument for harmony. What suits it, what sits comfortably and naturally in the space, is furniture with clean shapes and accessories that echo its particular visual rhythm. We don’t feel duty-bound to items from 1946, but it just so happens that a lot of what looks good was made in the 1940s and ’50s. But not all of it, and that’s as it should be. Rather than a slavish attachment, we’ve developed a good relationship with the ghost of Rudolph Schindler. If he showed up, we would put on a pot of coffee and give him a tour.

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE

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