Open Space | The Linnell Residence, Charles W. Wong, (1965)

For me, architecture has always been a part of my life. My mom was sort of an amateur architect, designed a couple of our houses. And as a kid, I was drawing and designing houses, probably not very well, and then always wanted to be an architect. And then found my way into city planning, urban design, historic preservation. So older buildings, modernist architecture, just design in general has always been part of me. It's like, I can't really imagine a world where I don't think about design and the kind of built environment. And I grew up in Southern California. So I grew up with, you know, these neighborhoods of beautiful homes and really developed a love for modern design, especially mid-century modern design. This house was built in 1965. It was designed for the Linnell family by architect Charles W. Wong. And so it's quintessential mid-century modern, but it's a little different than some. So it's not like your typical post and beam, or even, you know, your typical just one story ranch style house. This is a unique in terms of it has a second story. It has this really interesting flow. And what is similar to a lot of other mid-century modern houses is, it's all about the indoors and the outdoors. And this has a lot of the blurring of the lines, like you're inside, but you're looking outside, you're outside looking in. And I think we've got maybe eight different sets of sliding glass doors. So it was always designed with this idea that you just kind of flow in between the spaces, which is really a wonderful feature of this house. The architect is Charles Wong, and he was an early Asian American architect that was up and coming. And you can really see his Asian influences in the house. We have a lot of shoji screens. There's a lot of Japanese elements that bring a lot of Zen to the space, which I love. He's sort of an unsung architect that needs to be discovered, because his work is beautiful. He did a number of houses in this neighborhood and across View Park and other parts, but I think it was fairly humble and modest and didn't really toot his horn like maybe some others. So it's nice to kind of discover him, but also recognize his work, because it's really outstanding. It is outstanding. And I also think as a young Asian American architect, I don't think he had some of the same opportunities as many of his peers. So for us, when we discovered he was the architect, and we actually thought it was the architect before we bought the house, I mean, we thought, this has got to be a Charles Wong just based on some initial kind of studying of his work. And we had been to another one of his houses and saw some of the kind of telltale signs shifting through the cupboard and in the upper part of the garage. And there's this rolled up plans, and it's the full set of house plans for the house, which is remarkable. They're all intact, other than clearly there was a fire at some point. So some of the plans have some burned holes right in the middle, but we were really lucky to find the full set and clearly confirms that this is a Charles Wong. And the plans are really beautiful because Charles Wong, you know, he detailed like the staircase and all the built-ins, and they're exactly as he specified in the plans in terms of what was built. We've also since discovered and connected with his family. He passed away, I think, two years ago. And so we weren't able to meet him, but we did reach out and have connected with his family. They wrote a book about him, or he wrote a book about his work and his life. And so that was just another way to have more personal connection, understanding him and kind of his philosophy around architecture. And it was really nice. I mean, once we found the original full set of plans to the house, you know, we had a collective agreement that we're going to restore the house to the best, to its original glory. And so, you know, it took seven months of rehab because the house was in disrepair. But once we were complete and then the family realized what we had done, they did send us a nice little book and a thank you letter. It was really thoughtful. Ladera Heights, it was, you know, it's sort of this little pocket of mid-century modern homes. They were developed in the 1950s all the way up until probably the early 70s. So you have a range of styles. Some of them are sort of these more, you know, typical kind of U-shaped or L-shaped kind of ranch style houses. We've got some storybook kind of ranch houses. And then there's a whole collection of these, what I would call kind of more high style, you know, capital M modernist style residences, which is how I would characterize this house. We did an extensive restoration. We had a very long escrow. We had a five month escrow, and then we had a seven month restoration period. The house was in disrepair. This has a flat roof, which is a design, you know, which I love from a design perspective, as far as, you know, utility wise, I mean, you know, it collects water, but the roof was not in very good shape. You know, we did have to replumb new electricity, new floors, removed carpet, removed the popcorn ceiling. So this was a pretty extensive restoration. Yeah, it spent a good 20, 25 years, I think, without having like major investment in it. So it was showing in lots of different ways. We had people throughout the neighborhood, neighbors, when they had the open houses here, they've all, apparently the entire neighborhood went through the house, as one does. But they all said, oh my, that house, terrible condition. We're like, okay, yeah, we know. But again, the bones were here. So you could see the beauty through all the kind of neglect and deterioration and just leaking, you know, ceilings and the wood floors that were completely destroyed because of water infiltration over the years. So, but again, if you had the vision to see what it could be, you know, it was just essentially putting the pieces back together. Because when we discovered the house and Adrian was a big yes, I was not. I said, I love the bones, but this house is way too much work. And I was thinking, there has to be a similar house with less work. And over time, I think we just realized, listen, this house is worth it. We took on this project, not only to have a place for us in terms of a home, I meant to restore it and to honor its roots and the story of, you know, the people that lived here before us, but also the architect that designed it. But we also did it from a standpoint of, you know, we want to inspire others to do this kind of work as well. And the beauty of mid-century modern is it's timeless. It was timeless in 1965 in modern and this great kind of flowing floor plan. And that's what people want today as well. So rather than trying to buy one of these houses and destroy those features, keep them, reuse them, figure out how to make it work for you. And for me, it was, you know, it was really important to support the vision and really celebrate Charles Wong as a young Asian-American architect. It was also important for us to kind of lead by example. This is a very intact neighborhood with historic homes. This was a big job. And if we can actually inspire and show other people in the neighborhood what's possible, you know, this neighborhood's going to stay intact.