The Laing House by Harwell Hamilton Harris, $1.68M

by Philip Ferrato

The Laing House—one of Pasadena’s most admired Modernist houses—designed by the young Harwell Hamilton Harris in 1935, is on the market, asking $1,680,000. Perched above the road in the Poppy Peak historic district, the house is defined by ribbons of windows set into the crisp stucco volumes under a shallow roof with knife edged eaves.

While training to be a sculptor at the Otis Art Insitute, Harwell Hamilton Harris, FAIA [1903-1990] went to work as a draftsman in the office of Richard Neutra. It was Neutra who convinced the young art student to become an architect, but stylistically, Harris was most profoundly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright after a visit to the master’s Hollyhock House. While Harris eschewed Wright’s extravagant “Mayan” style and some of his early projects are closer to Prairie Style, the 1935 Graham Laing House in Pasadena has those all classic Wrightian details: a low-slung, sweeping roof and bands of windows, immaculate timber detailing, east flow between rooms and the outdoors, and a stucco-clad exterior. It’s been said that Laing, an eminent economist and professor, chose the young Harris over Wright because he’d be more malleable, but Harris delivered one of Pasadena’s most elegantly proportioned interior spaces, a simple 18×30-ft room wrapped in bookshelves and bespoke windows opening to a terrace, designed with Laing’s requirement for a large interior space for at-home lectures and room for his library.

Throughout the house, rooms are illuminated by bands of windows.

Visit the listing for additional images and details. A rare opportunity to acquire an historic and architecturally significant property in outstanding condition, represented by architecture specialists Nate Cole and Lillian Pfaff at Modern California House.