What Is That Monster House in Silver Lake?
Credit: Photo by Sven Kirsten
The eponymous body of water draws all the attention along its stretch of Silver Lake Boulevard, but across the street stands a collection of stunning modernist homes designed by architect Richard Neutra. All of them still look as crisp as they did in the 1960s, but one now sports fangs and a pair of giant mesmerizing eyes! “Every year we turn the façade of the house into a literal face,” homeowner Elizabeth Timme tells Los Angeles magazine. “A kind of monster face.”
The architect, her actor-turned-social-worker husband Hank, and three kids have been dressing up the landmark for years, including turning silver poles into candy canes for Christmas and adding a wash of pink lighting on Valentine’s Day. The home was designed for Dr. George Kambara and his family, who sold the house to Timme in 2014.
“Even though the Supreme Court knocked out race laws in 1948, they were still largely in place when the house was built,” according to historian Barbara Lamprecht, an expert in the architect’s work. “This was a Japanese couple and he made it a point to work with any client who wanted to build a house.” Four Kambara kids lived in the colorful upstairs rooms and Neutra installed extra telephone outlets, giant bathrooms, and rounded walls so the teenagers didn’t “hurt themselves when they raced to get the phone,” according to Lamprecht.
Timme is a 4th generation architect whose late father Robert Timme was once the dean of architecture at USC. She has lived in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman house and seems like she would have been a great collaborator with Neutra, who famously designed public housing projects everywhere from San Pedro to South L.A. to the spot where Dodger Stadium now resides.
Lamprecht is happy with the temporary changes, but offered a few suggestions for future iterations. “It’s hilarious and irreverent,” the preservationist says. “The mouth needs to be more prominent with more teeth.” She also envisions some furrier eaves. “Neutra had this shock of silver hair but his eyebrows were invariably dark and bushy and emphatic. What if they riffed on those?”