Inside an enchanting Modernist House discreetly tucked away in Long Beach, California | House Tour

The modernist scene in Long Beach is pretty awesome. We have Killingsworth, he's pretty ubiquitous. I believe he was the master planner for Cal State Long Beach. His fingerprints are all over the university and a lot of the buildings. There's also Paul Tay, a little lesser known, but very famous architect in his own right. Not far from here, there's actually a Neutra, there's actually a Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, and then there's this house. There's the Leopold Fisher, where nobody knew who he was. My name is Eric Aiken, my wife, who's Mayumi Aiken, and we're in Long Beach. We're in the Los Altos neighborhood. We're directly across from Cal State Long Beach in the shadow of the pyramid. I initially would go to mid-century modern, but I think that's almost a misnomer for this house because initially it was built as just a standard tract home in 1952. Subsequently, the room that we're sitting in right now was added on. Technically, this is Bauhaus-inspired by the architect that did it, and then we also have a studio off back, which is more 1970s, so it's kind of a mashup. I don't know if there's any really one word that sums up our home, but probably mid-century modern is the best place to go with it. It really is three different houses, and it's front, middle, back. I joke it's kind of like a mullet. It's very business up front, but the party's all happening in the back. The original home, I believe the architect's name were Popper and Tackett, and they fell under Palo Verde Home. The room that we're sitting in right now was designed by an architect, Leopold Fisher, and Leopold Fisher also did the studio, which is out back. The original owner of the home was Dr. Ward Ury. He founded the ceramics department across the street at Cal State Long Beach. At some point, he met Leopold Fisher. Interesting story about Leopold. For inspiration for this addition, he told Ward that he was going to show up at the house unexpectedly, and he wanted to sit in the corner and observe the family for hours at a time. When he was done, he designed this room. When we first saw the house, it had a grand piano right here and had some furniture towards that end of the room, so I really think the room was built just for Ward without the family's consideration because it was Ward's grand piano plus his ceramic collection, which is on the shelves behind you. In 1967, they asked Leopold Fisher again to design a studio, which is out that way. When we came to see the house for the first time, they mentioned that it was owned by Ward Ury. The house had many of his ceramic works all around the place. You could really feel the creative energy in the home. Something else that they mentioned, but not quite as distinctly as they mentioned Ward Ury, was the architect, Leopold Fisher. As we were touring the home, I grabbed my phone and I immediately started googling him and who he was, and lines to Frank Lloyd Wright, lines to Walter Gropius, lines to Bauhaus. I knew we really had something here that most people didn't know about, including myself at the time, so we were eager to see more, and as we moved out from this room to the studio, that really is what cinched the deal. We saw the design that Leopold Fisher had for that, and we knew this house was ours. From what I know of Leopold Fisher, in somewhere around the 1920s, he became acquainted with Adolf Loos. Adolf Loos was an architect in Austria, and many consider him as a pioneer, or the pioneer of modern architecture, and two of his early students were Neutra and Schindler. So we moved into the house in the spring of 2019, and we realized we had some work in front of us. The house was very comfortable and was utterly livable, but we knew we really wanted to do something with the kitchen. At that time, the kitchen was really blocked off from the rest of the house, and it was dark, and there wasn't much airflow coming into the rest of the home, so we felt that that was the first thing we had to address. So we essentially gutted the kitchen and replaced it with something lighter and definitely more airy than what was there before. So the studio is really a time capsule of the 1970s, and we've always been really hesitant to overuse it because we don't want to damage it in any way. We want to keep it pristine. However, we do use it for when our family visits, when our son and our daughter come down to visit. They'll stay there, and then it also was a great place for us when we were remodeling the kitchen that we escaped to and wrote it out out there. The studio is completely original, all the way down to the floors, to the laminate. Everything's original to that room. We haven't done a single thing to it. It's in really good shape because we don't go out there very often. It's something we admire from afar, but it really is a treasure to us. We realize that something like that doesn't exist in many places, and we almost feel it's our responsibility to keep it in that stage for as long as we can. So we're lucky here in the main house. There's three bedrooms. One is obviously our master bedroom, but the other two are for hers and my pursuits. Mine is my home office to do my job, and hers is where she does all her leather goods creation. She is always in there creating bags, creating wallets, works on mouse pads. You name it, she can make it. She is just an incredibly creative person. I feel once we finish the remodel in the house, the quality of life that we experience just went through the roof. This house is so comfortable. We have all this warm light pouring in during the day. We both have these great spaces where we can get our work done, and we're not interfering with each other. We have this fantastic kitchen where we can get in there and cook some great meals for dinner. We've got just an abundance of space for the two of us, and not to mention the outdoor. It's right there. We're not only living in this room, but we're living in that room, that room being the patio and the lawn area. One of the most unique features of this house is our bell tower. I'd never had seen a house with a bell tower before. I spoke of the professor at UCSB previously, and he actually terms this a folly. When we first saw the home, they did have a large solari bell hanging from it, and we inquired, hey, would it be possible for us to keep that bell there? And they said, well, no, we're taking it with us. So we were kind of bummed, thinking, how are we going to replace that? But our real estate agent, Steven Meade, the day we moved in, he found exactly the same bell, and we hung it in the same place. And it's just a fantastic thing. The sound that emanates from it on a slightly breezy day is just, it's like a temple bell. It's just, it's beautiful. There's a saying in watch collecting that you never truly own a watch, you're just a steward. And I feel that way about this house. I mentioned about the studio, we don't want to change anything. We really feel that it's our responsibility to keep that as is, as long as we can. Something else that was pretty interesting about this house is the front yard. Can't say I was a huge fan initially when I saw it, but we feel that it needs to stay in place. It was the design of the original owner. And on certain days, you'll look at it and you can see the geometry that went into it. You can see the thoughtfulness, you can see the art behind it. So I'm really happy that we hung on to it. We also have two huge trees. They're pink trumpet trees, is what I believe they're called, and they're massive. And that was the one thing that the previous owner, Sue, who was the daughter of the original owner, Ward, asked us to never cut down. Those trees, I feel they serve as two centuries to our house. They give a shade in the summer, they keep us cool. And in the spring, they give us that beautiful pink flower to look at. We were so fortunate to find this house. We looked high and low for something that fit the bill, what we wanted, which was mid-century. And we struck out trying to get a glyphmate. And when we thought all hope was lost, this house came to us, I feel like. The warmth and the creative energy that's been imbued into this home from the previous owners, you can feel it. It's tangible when you walk in. People walk in, they just say, wow. And as you look out the window, out onto the grass, and you see the solari bell, it's just, it's comforting, it's relaxing. And we're just so appreciative that we got in here when we did, and we were able to make it our own with the remodel. And we hope to live here for many, many years to come and maybe pass it down to our kids so they can live here as well and enjoy it as much as we did.