West Ellis Avenue, a desirable Inglewood address, holds three residences by architect Rudolph Schindler.  Schindler believed interior and exterior structures should blend through gardens and natural light. Committed to affordable housing, Schindler used inexpensive materials, including plywood for outside walls and built-in furniture.

Schnidler’s speculative houses were built without prospective buyers. Schindler engaged Richard Lind to act as project architect.  Architect Stephen Ehrlich bought one of the Ellis Avenue houses in 2009 and oversaw a complete restoration. New landscaping, designed by Stefan Hammerschmidt, removed existing plantings and created a more natural desert-type landscape. The adjacent Schindler house is owned by Kali Nikitas and Richard Shelton.

Rudolph Schindler was born in Vienna, Austria in 1887. He studied architecture and embraced modern materials as central to contemporary architectural form. Schindler discovered American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in 1911. Hoping to work on architecture more advanced than that of his teachers, Schindler decamped for Wright’s Chicago practice in 1914.

He joined Wright’s firm in 1918 and was sent to Los Angeles to supervise the Hollyhock House construction in 1920. For Schindler, theory and practice were intimately connected. He predicted architects would control “space, climate, light, mood,” to create ‘Space Architecture’. Schindler built many single-family houses before his 1953 demise.

Date: 1939
Collection: Architecture

Location
423, 429, 433 West Ellis Avenue
Inglewood, California 90301

Rich Shelton & Kali Nikkitas, Schindler House

Anne Cheek La Rose, Inglewood Modern Architecture