Added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 19, 2016

In the 1960s, architect John Lautner’s every new design was an event. He built an octagonal spaceship on a massive pylon. A wave, frozen mid-crest in Malibu. A giant rainbow eyelid staring out from the Hollywood Hills. He experimented with the expressive and structural power of concrete at Silvertop, the Sheats-Goldstein House and the Elrod House. 

Given the bigger budgets and industrial materials that typified much of Lautner’s work in the ‘60s, the Walstrom House from 1969 comes as a surprise. This 1400-square-foot wooden treehouse harkens back to Lautner’s houses of the ‘40s, defined by the warmth of wood and deceptively simple geometries (e.g. the Schaffer House, visit #76 and Lautner’s own house, visit #107). As architect Frank Escher puts it in the Lautner documentary Infinite Space, the Walstrom House is like a symphonic composer “going back, making a small piece of chamber music.” 

Electrical engineer Douglas Walstrom and his wife Octavia were acquainted with Lautner’s work through their aerospace industry colleague Leonard Malin, the owner of the Chemosphere. When Lautner first saw their half-acre lot in hilly Beverly Glen, he “just stood there and looked at the mountains and smiled,” recalled Octavia Walstrom in a 2008 Los Angeles Times interview. He offered them three designs – a tube with interior platforms, a pair of cylinders, and the three-level tower that they picked. 

The Walstrom house was built by Wally Niewadomski, who collaborated with Lautner on Silvertop, the Elrod and the Bob Hope houses. In Infinite Space, the Walstroms recall the massive cranes they brought in to erect their home. Douglas Walstrom apparently did some of the carpentry himself, and even designed a clever system to open six windows at once with the pull of a lever.

From the street, the house appears like a levitating mass of wood and glass, floating above the wooden carport canopy, seemingly detached from the hill behind it. Indeed the only visible connections between the house and the hill are these two massive glulam beams, extending from the steep-sloped roof downward into concrete foundations anchored in the hill.

An outdoor switchback path leads you up to the front door, and even before entering you get a sense of the sculptural quality of the Walstrom House. The entire shape of the home’s west edge forms a triangle resting on the hill, and the stepped band of glass reverses the angle of the floating staircase inside, which itself is perfectly parallel with the roofline.  

The entryway is situated between two floors. You can walk left down a few steps to the master and guest bedrooms. They’re both off a short corridor, lined in glass so you can see the plantings on the hillside, boxed into an ingenious natural atrium, with the northern side open to let the light in. 

Alternately, you can walk up a ramp the entire length of the house, and turn left into the main space. In some ways, this floor follows the logic of the quintessential mid-century modern “open plan,” with living room, dining area, kitchen and library all flowing into one another within the same high-ceilinged space, 18 feet high at its peak. Only the bathroom is sequestered away, tucked into the walls behind the bookcase. 

But with a Lautner, there’s always more at play. The exposed wooden beams on the ceiling fan out slightly as they head from one side of the house to the other, an intentional structural quirk that seems to enlarge the house from the inside. The dark color of those beams contrasts with the blonde wood siding on the east and west, which is set at an opposite angle to the roof – there is so much movement built into the boundaries that define the space here. 

The coolest element of the Walstrom is the banister-free inside staircase, which leads up to a small mezzanine above the bookcase, encased in plywood. It’s a functional space, usable as a lounge, and it’s also another sculptural element that fills out that big open space with even more visual playfulness. 

Lautner always cared deeply about letting nature and setting define the experience of living in his houses. He even specified that the roofs of the main house and the carport be painted forest green, to integrate house and hill. The abundant glass at the Walstrom House serves the dual purpose of letting natural light in and dissolving that boundary between inside and outside. “We looked to the mountains and the trees,” Octavia Walstrom told the Los Angeles Times. “It was just like being in the woods. The deer came right up to the house. You’re just part of nature and everything around you.”

All photos are by Julius Shulman © J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10), unless otherwise noted

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Bricker, Lauren Weiss, Luis Hoyos & students of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (original); Christine Lazzaretto & Historic Resources Group (revised): NRHP Multiple Property Documentation Form: “Residential Architecture of John Lautner in Southern California, 1940-1994” (PDF)

+ Cornelis, Jop: “Walstrom House by John Lautner, complete overview and walkthrough” (John Lautner Architecture Videos on YouTube, November 16, 2021)

+ “Douglas WALSTROM Obituary” (legacy.com)

+ Garfield, Warren: “The Glen Bows Its Head for Doug Walstrom” (PDF – The Glenite, summer 2010)

+ Grigor, Murray: Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner DVD (The Googie Company, 2009)

+ Hess, Alan & Alan Weintraub: The Architecture of John Lautner (Rizzoli, 1999)

+ Houser, Michelle & Jennifer Macdonald, California State Polytechnic University Pomona under the guidance of Lauren Weiss Bricker and Luis G. Hoyos (original); Christine Lazzaretto, John Locasio & Molly Iker, Historic Resources Group (revised): Walstrom House’s NRHP nomination form

+ Kikkert, Jan-Richard & Tycho Saariste: Lautner A-Z (ArtEZ Press, 2019)

+ Macvean, Mary: “Octavia’s gingerbread (recipe)” (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 14, 2009)

+ O’Connor, Anne-Marie: “Keeping his eye on earth and sky” (Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2008)

+ “Walstrom House” (FORM: Pioneering Design, July/August 2008 – via EBSCOhost)