08/18/2025
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Then & Now
Storer House is a Frank Lloyd Wright house located at 8161 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills. The house was built in 1923 and the structure is noteworthy as one of the four so-called Mayan Revival style textile-block houses built by Wright in the Los Angeles area from 1922 to 1924. The top photo is dated 1924
The Storer House was built in 1923 for Dr. John Storer, a homeopathic physician. Wright used the textile-block motif to "fit" the home into the hillside, trying to create the impression that the home was "a man-made extension of the landscape."
The house is dominated by a large upstairs living room with a high ceiling, Mayan inspired columns, and tall narrow windows; the living room is the front facade facing the street. The tall banks of windows flood the living room with natural light. Outside the living room, there are two terraces, one with a view of Hollywood and the other with a view of the hillside. The floor plan forms a T and has large public spaces, each with a fireplace. The dining room and kitchen are on the main floor. The house has 2,967 square feet with three bedrooms, a den, three bathrooms, staff wing and a spa. The house was built without a front door, entrance being offered through a rear door, "as if to finalize the metaphor of privacy and retrenchment." Actually there are five door/window openings in front, being very visually pleasing, but perhaps lacking the definitiveness of "one front door."
The house is built on a steep hillside in the Hollywood Hills at a time when the hills did not have the rich foliage present today. At the time of its construction, Storer House is said to have resembled a Pompeiian villa. Frank Lloyd Wright's son, Lloyd Wright, was both the on-site construction manager and the landscape architect, providing an illusion of a ruin barely visible within its jungle environment.
The Storer House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and designated as a Historic-Cultural Landmark #96 in 1972 by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission.
By the early 1980s, the house had fallen into a dilapidated condition before being acquired in 1984 for $800,000 by motion picture producer Joel Silver. Silver, who has produced such films as Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and The Matrix, began a restoration project in 1984. The restoration was carried out under the supervision of Wright's grandson, Eric Lloyd Wright, and Martin Eli Weil, past president of the Los Angeles Conservancy. One of the challenges in the restoration effort was to develop a formula to duplicate the structure's concrete blocks. Ultimately, replacement blocks were made using soil from the backyard mixed with cement to conform to Wright's concept of "organic architecture." In addition to restoring the house, Silver also restored the original landscaping and installed a pool that had been planned but not built. Eric Wright worked with Silver in completing elements included in the original plans. The restoration project won awards from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects and the Los Angeles Conservancy. In 2005, The New York Times wrote that the Storer House "is widely considered the best-preserved Wright building in Los Angeles." Source: Wikipedia
In February 2015 the L.A. Times reported that the Storer House managed to sell for $6.8M, the most expensive sale of a Wright house to date.
