Architecture Wednesday: The Lukens House

The Lukens House was designed in 1940 by Raphael Soriano, an architect who interned under Richard Neutra, and was built for Glen Lukens, a ceramicist, USC professor, and cofounder of Arts and Architecture Magazine.

The International-style home features many of the Prairie-style designs used by Frank Llyod Wright: the flat roof, large overhanging eaves, and a ribbon-like band of steel-framed windows.  The home appears large, but is just three bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,491-square-feet. But, for LA, it has quite a nice-0sized lot, sitting at nearly half an acre lot in LA’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, surrounded by lush landscaping.

The Lukens House narrowly missed demolition—it had fallen into severe disrepair and was deemed a "nuisance property" and slated to be destroyed in 2006—but the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Modern Committee and West Adams Heritage Association stepped in to designate the dwelling a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2007. 

And then it was snapped by a realtor who purchased the home in 2010, and then painstakingly restored the house and gardens, referencing original drawings and historic photographs in the process. The Lukens House has since earned more awards for preservation than any home in California from organizations such as the Los Angeles Conservancy, California Preservation Foundation, and the Los Angeles Business Council.

The home is sited within the grounds of the Lyndsay Mansion’s garden with just one structure on the property when Soriano designed this house; an old greenhouse built in 1908 that was repurposed into a dining pavilion. In fact, during the restoration, according to original design plans Soriano had perfectly arranged the home to line up with the original greenhouse and removed just four trees from the property to build this house.

A piece of history, and restoration and beautiful well-preserved grounds all for just a hair under two million.

Dwell