Open Space _ Neutra in Bakersfield

Well, what brought me here was the idea that I could buy a Neutra, specifically a business opportunity. And then also, I knew that Merle Haggard and Buck Owens were from here. I could still see music. Music's a big part of my life, and so I could still see music. But one of the biggest drivers was the ability to buy a Neutra house. So initially, it wasn't available. I moved here. I met the owners of the Leti house, and they told me that they weren't ready to sell and that the owner of this house would never sell. So don't even approach him. And he spent the summers in Europe, so he wasn't even around to approach. So I bought another house on the east side. Fourteen months later, serendipity, I ran into the owner of this house. The house fell out of escrow. The buyer backed out. I'd come to look at the house a couple of days after I'd met him. I came through on his promise. He called me and said, do you want the house? And we made the deal, and that was that. This is the first home in Bakersfield. The Leti house is late 50s, 57, 58. It was completed. I think that you would refer to this as international style. So it feels much more, it's not as relaxed as his work would become. Still a lot of glazing, still a really strong sense of connectedness between the inside and the outsides. Originally it was a 1,500 square foot house. Frank Goetze, who I bought the home from, did a couple of additions. One was a dining room, and currently it's almost 2,000 square feet, so he added an additional 500 square feet to the home. We were very fortunate to have a client like Frank Goetze to purchase the house in 59. Some of the furniture was removed, but this bookcase is original. The furniture in the bedroom is all original. Frank really was attached to the home all the way till the time he sold it to me in 2003. In fact, when he gave me the last key, I could see it was really tough for him to to give it to me. I said, well, you know, just hang on to a key. I'm a bachelor. You can come let yourself in anytime. Fortunately, he did come back after I'd moved in, and he was really pleased, and he paid me the ultimate compliment. He said, it's more Neutra than when I lived here. He had come up here to work on other buildings, so he came over here to see the lay of the land, and where we'd put the swimming pool, and what we could do, and this, that, and the other thing, and we worked very closely together, and he realized at that time I was a dancer, and I, you know, was active, and I needed a swimming pool, and I needed to get around the territory, and this was my great-grandfather's property, and we were going to build a rather contemporary modern house. It was a starter home to begin with, yes, and then, of course, I would write matters and notes and so forth and say, you know, I need this, I need that, and so one thing developed into another. He was a very interesting man, and I liked the evolution of everything, you know, and how it happened. It was just great. What was demanded of the architecture, you know, nobody had ever thought of building a house with Pebble Creek running through their living room or anything like that, you know, so it was it was an experiment, very modern contemporary experiment. Oh, it is more than I ever wished for, more than I could possibly have ever dreamed about, you know. We knew that we were going to be near the Catholic school, and we knew that the grounds were ours, and how we were going to divide it all up and all that sort of stuff just sort of gradually came, evolved, you know, so nothing was direct, can I say. It wasn't something that we demanded or anything like that. It just developed. One thing and another happened. My mother was an artist, of course, and as I grew up, it was, you know, something that was just everyday life, and so I began to paint one thing and another, and of course, I was dancing then and designing sets and so forth, you know, for the stage, and so one thing led to another to where we are right now, talking to each other. You know, looking at the Davis house and looking at the at the Leddy house, Davis is 37, the Leddy's 58, and stylistically, you go from Neutra just being much more European, much more formal, to when you get to the Leddy house, it's Neutra in his most relaxed state. I mean, I kind of jokingly say it's the next best thing to camping out because, you know, you have full floor-to-ceiling glass slider that opens to the garden. It's post and beam. It's very casual, much more what people think of as mid-century modern architecture than certainly this is, and it's really nice to have them both in Bakersfield where you can you can go from this to that and see, you know, the evolution of Neutra's career. Well, you know, the way Neutra designed the house and the experience, and it's very peaceful because I'm not looking for another house. I mean, I found the house, and it came true. At first, it was a little precious, and I felt like I was living in this piece of artwork, and I've been here 17 years. I still love it. I still see new things, the way the light interacts with things. We have a lot of trees here, and depending on how overgrown or how they've been trimmed back, the light quality is different, but I still pinch myself that I live in such a great piece of work. It's also been great to share it with people, and I've had people that I would never be able to be in conversation with, architectural historians or architects or artists, pop stars that, you know, have come and visited that I never would have been exposed to if I didn't live here. So, you know, part of the joy is sharing these spaces with people. I think the unique thing about Neutra, his ability to deal with scale. So, there aren't these volumes that are impersonal. They're very quiet homes. This is a very warm house. I mean, sometimes people think modernism is cold. I think this is a really warm house, and it just fits like a glove, and it works for, you know, our lifestyle, and it's great. The location's great. My office is a 10-minute walk from here. I can walk to restaurants. I can, you know, it's a really walkable neighborhood. So, yeah, Neutra, he's the guy. Everything has really flourished for you here, it sounds like. Yes, yes, and life goes on, and I love it, and as long as I can keep going, I'm going. What? You have 19 more years on your contract. I do? Yeah. Oh, dear. You'll get another 10 years. Oh, I will. I'll make it. Of course you will. Of course I will.