When Frank Lloyd Wright accepted a commission to design what would become the Ennis House, a 6,000-square-foot residence nestled in the hills of Los Feliz, California, he had no idea he was crafting an eventual film star. Having made more than 80 onscreen appearances, the home is now a veritable Hollywood icon and has been featured Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Day of the Locust, and Blade Runner, among others. “The house can be a bit of a chameleon,” Peg Meehan, a film location broker, who represented the Ennis House through Unreel Locations in the early 2000s, once told Financial Times. “In one week I was showing it as a modern setting for a powerful movie star character. A couple of days later I showed it to a director who wanted to shoot it as a castle in the Netherlands.” But its journey to the silver screen wasn’t ever planned—below, we unpack how the home unexpectedly catapulted to Hollywood legend.
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History of the Ennis House
In the mid 1910s, Wright arrived in California searching for a fresh start after a personal tragedy. (A servant at his estate in Wisconsin had gone on a murderous rampage, killing a number of the architect’s staff, his partner, and her children.) “When he came to California, I think it’s where he thought he would remake himself,” John Waters, preservation programs director at the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, previously told AD. During his time in the Golden State, he experimented with forms and materials, resulting in a series of concrete homes with Aztec and Mayan influences.
The Ennis House was the last and largest of these properties and was commissioned by Charles and Mabel Ennis, owners of a Los Angeles clothing store. Known as a “textile block” house, the home was constructed from precast, interlocked concrete blocks, which was a new material at the time. Designed in a trabeated style, it lacks curves, arches, vaults, and domes.
What makes the Ennis House perfect for Hollywood movies?
None of this was done with the intent of creating a movie location. But as Meehan noted, the Ennis house’s architecture gives it a unique ability to adapt to a number of Hollywood needs.
“It’s a really modern house, yet it uses ancient forms,” said Michael Wyetzner, architect at Michielli + Wyetzner Architects, in an episode of Blueprints, a YouTube series for AD. In the video, Wyetzner breaks down the Ennis House’s role in House on Haunted Hill. “It doesn’t have a very domestic scale, it almost looks like it could be a museum or other type of religious building,” he said. Since it draws from the Mayan-design vernacular, the home looks older than it is—in the House on Haunted Hill, which came out in 1959, the home is described as being built “a century ago,” despite only being 35 years old at the time.
In addition to its unique ability to look both ancient and modern, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation credits the property’s exoticism to its lasting Hollywood appeal. Further, its proximity to Tinseltown and grand scale make it a special piece of LA real estate.
Who lived in the Ennis House?
Of the original owners, Charles Ennis didn’t live in the house long, as he died in 1928 shortly after construction finished. Mabel Ennis, on the other hand, lived there until she sold the property in 1936. Since then, the residence has changed hands a number of times. Most famously, radio personality John Nesbitt owned the home in the 1940s and hired Wright to expand the property, adding a swimming pool and converting the basement into a billiards room.
Who owns Ennis House now?
The Ennis House most recently sold to a limited liability company tied to cannabis executives Robert Rosenheck and Cindy Capobianco, according to the LA Times.