Dick Lowry, AIA, Architect | The Lowry Residence, 1973

We're here in Los Feliz today right on the border of Silver Lake. Hyperion is down below the Silver Lake Ridge and the reservoir beyond that and we're at the home of the architect Dick Lowry who studied architecture at USC and worked with the likes of Buff Straub and Hensman and this is a mid-century modern home with all the classic elements. Yeah classic is correct. What I love about mid-century homes is that the exterior is celebrated just as much as the interior and on this one as soon as you enter through that front door you've got this remarkable view of Silver Lake Hill. Every room is connected to the outdoors through walls of glass and you've got this exposed structural system with slender wood posts, larger wood purlins and the roof rafters supporting the two-by wood decking with a fire-resistant standing seam metal roof above but I love the way the rafter tail ends project and provide this rhythm of structure on both sides of the property. Right and on this side you've got where the chimney begins the roof stops but the structure continues so it's a representation of the roof there but there is no roof. And the chimney itself is so great because it could have just been one big rectangle going all the way through the roof and sort of heavy clunky thing. Monolithic. Monolithic but what they did was separated it and pulled the chimney element toward the viewer and then tapered it through the top which makes it almost seem taller and more slender and the penetration at the roof is you know two feet or something where at the base it's five feet so that's just a really nice composite design move. There's a window on the inside that lets you see the chimney straight view of it. I think we should take them in so that we can have a tour of the inside and they'll see that wonderful window that I'm talking about. Let's check it out. At the entry here I'm just struck with how this is a wood house you know and it's I'm thinking of the case study house program which was more about steel and glass and concrete this is almost like the pace setter house program that Harwell Harris participated in that's more organic coming out of the Frank Lloyd Wright tradition of natural materials and all this beautiful structure this big purlin the rafters that have this notch so that at the end you're looking at a five inch element instead of an eight inch element so it makes it look like a slender little thing and then you've got this guard rail that had to have been selected by a colorist I mean this blue teal I guess I might call it is a very sophisticated color that's hard to get from looking at color chips yeah I mean that it really is remarkable one of the things I love about architecture in general are these little discoveries that you make while previewing a home and here as you look there's this frosted glass this honeycomb frosted glass and then you're like wondering what are these fins for but actually right behind these fins the glass is actually transparent and so you can actually the person on the inside to view who's at the front door which is really cool but then if you look at around the corner that same detail is happening where the bathroom is so you're getting a glimpse to the exterior but you're also it also offers privacy and then is that detail the same as in the guest house above the garage there's a louvered piece there we'll have to take a look I don't remember but now but now that you're mentioning that that's got to be what that is yeah vertical green for a door original hardware with this taper that Spencer was observing throughout you know we see it on the poles in the kitchen we see it on the guardrail handrail going down the stairs just all this stuff sums up to this big experience mm-hmm so we're inside now we're here at the entry and the way that this is organized is that all of the public space is up above and all the private spaces down below but what's happening here is that the two spaces are being divided by this exterior deck which is a really nice touch I love the honesty of the materials though everything's expressed I mean the structure is the form you've got this big beam supported by walls on either end and the roof rafters supporting this two-by tongue-and-groove decking which as Luis pointed out it is the roof structure yeah they probably added insulation when they did the standing our cinematographer yes an architectural detail tennis which is awesome it's very attuned to this stuff and originally they wouldn't have had any insulation up there so this would have been pretty warming here so they I'm sure they added insulation and then the standing scene roof but you've got all this original paneling and I have to say you know this furniture by a thousand times better Kirsten at a thousand times better is really exquisite like when I walked in here I was like this is these people live here right but no this is actually staging mm-hmm and then we were talking about the chimney on the outside but here we are on the inside and like I was saying is you get glimpses of the trees on either side so it's a really nice touch and then oh yeah that aspect right probably a pretty heavy window but it would have operated like a hopper the two hinges are here and it would have come to a point and I'm sure they're chains on each side that would have held it in place but then you've got this fireplace element the hearth is raised up off the ground by a foot or so and so you're more at eye level sitting on the couch and then the dynamic sort of sculptural aspect of that chimney you know it's a horizontal element here and two vertical elements on the other side with this kind of ziggurat step into that tapered chimney the chimney is treated two different ways so here you have this raised hearth in the primary the hearth is actually down below it's actually flush with the floor did you notice that I didn't yeah no we'll have to check that out and so now I'm struck with you know this is an open plan but there's differentiation of the various spaces and so sometimes we see these plans where it's just one big room and it doesn't feel right where we can see all the way into the kitchen and into the dining area but we're also looking through this outdoor deck which could either be a dining area or a sitting area or it also reminds me of the gamble house and the old sleeping porches you know I could see having a cot up here and sleeping out on cool spring or fall yeah it does kind of feel like the gamble house a little bit out here yeah and then look at these views you've got the mountains on one side and then you've got Silver Lake on the other and and are those mountains for sure gonna be snowcapped oh at some point yeah that's your favorite thing snowcat mountains so as you might expect from this era gotta have a bar and you know this underwent a renovation after 50 years of occupancy by the architect and his family and those owners the previous owners had the good sense to keep this original Formica countertop but you see all the elements in the home the tapered kind of backsplash the tapered pulls on the cabinets flat face fronts that you'll see in the kitchen the knife hinges I just love that when those have been preserved and all those elements are here and in the kitchen yeah the home is really cohesive in that way the kitchens treat it that way as well should we go and show them yep I really love the openness you know we're just looking all out at the hills and the sky and some of the things I'm aware of in here are that you know I'm having trouble differentiating between old and new you know I know the cabinets are original because we can see the hardware the poles the tapered poles the knife hinges that you just pointed out and I love the way that floats these louvered doors are sort of vintage 1970s so those are original but then this clever enclosure of the ductwork you know we don't know if air conditioning would have been original but the plywood of the enclosure downstairs makes me think that it was original and then we've got this really compatible kitchen remodel in here with a new I think quartz countertop beautiful European hardware maybe that's I don't know what kind of tile that is but the vertical placement of the tile and so they didn't attempt they didn't keep the Formica they weren't pretending that this is a restoration it's a remodel where they took artistic license but it's all very compatible with the original design intent I think right and then if you think about it this is it's almost bordering on the edge of not being mid-century because it is in the 70s so that brings me to this beam and the structure up here in that most mid-century homes are supported by posts but here if you think about it or if you look all of the walls if you all the way down the living room or actually the the beams are supported on like partial walls here true at the center of the ridge beam and then on the outside edge we see these four by all right yeah that support the purlin on this exterior building envelope got the original fixtures and then this wonderful yellow window again that color had to have been selected by somebody who really understood color you don't go down to Sherwin-Williams and pull out that fan deck and end up with that color or the color of that tile or the color of the blue on the guardrails they're really sophisticated color selections so we're downstairs now in the private area and I was just we you and I were just doing this tapping to see what we were working with and you were describing it yeah this is a metal element where the rest of this is wood and there's so much design in here this wasn't like they just called in a carpenter and said build me a stair they said we want an open I mean this is the architect who lived here designed this house for himself and his family and you got the big wood stringers this substructure that supports a hardwood finish and these little brass screws two on each side that hold that in place the steel comes down and bends out and then walking down and feeling how the fingers can wrap around to the other side this was designed to the dimensions of a human hand and tapered in this direction and so there's just so much thought that went into this not least of which is the finishes this is a high gloss finish for you know heavily handled and trafficked area this is flat this is semi-gloss I love all that design I feel like we could talk about that for an hour and a half yeah so let's check out these secondary bedrooms there are two bedrooms on this end separated by the living you know den family area with the primary bedroom on the opposite end mm-hmm love these original doors with that pull full vertical pull original plywood and these wonderful drawers down below which have kind of a dual function they are are both functional in that if you had that up here most people wouldn't be able to use those where down here you know the kids can throw their Legos in there and books and your socks and whatever down in these drawers but it also provides this loft to the entire cabinet closet so it raises it up off the floor 10 inches or so I'm loving the plywood on each side this is really beautiful but the problem I'm having is that my five-year-old would have a field day I'm just writing all over I'm not kidding that's what the Palm Sanders for and then these original white fixtures built-in and these are good room sizes I mean you have two rooms on either side this one has a remarkable view again Silver Lake but this is where the kids would be and then on the other side is where the parents would be yep tell me how you read this fireplace I think it's interesting that it just stops and allows the beam to be expressed rather than just continuing you know yeah I agree some and that's one of those design decisions somebody made that decision to not have the vertical element be the dominating element so you read the beams but there's like a serenity that comes over me in this house because it's very much the same from room to room you know the beams the decking the plywood this plywood is a little different it's kind of a board and batten situation with these tapered battens that cover the joints the built-in light fixtures here they're unpainted in the secondary bedroom they were painted the yellow valance the floating cabinets with the vertical poles the lower pull drawers that make that system float I'm enjoying that there's no hierarchy in terms of storage space the kids have the same amount of storage as the parents I mean it's essentially the same setup that's true this bedrooms a little bigger but and then this the piece de resistance I love this and again this is part of a remodel the fact that those are self-closing drawers with plywood boxes they remade this with new hardware but they kept the original faces and countertop and poles so it looks original but it has the functionality of 21st century cabinet-making so we're here in a separate studio so over there is the primary residence and then this would have acted as a studio of some sort yep studio or home office it's not quite an ADU because it has a half bath not a full bath there's not a shower or tub in here I think it was the architect's studio I mean this was you know Dick Lowry's home and I think this was his architecture studio I could be wrong I mean you've got all the original elements just like the main house you know you've got posts and beams the valance covering well here's the track here they're actually curtains with the track hidden by that valance and the decking that supports the roof the plywood all the elements consistent with the architecture of the main house but then this wonderful remodel and we got to find out who the architect was that did this remodel because it's just exquisite mm-hmm I mean we were just like going through the details and everything that they've done it's just thought out pull a lot of these like plywood type of cabinet trees as we're saying looks dated but it doesn't look dated here no it's nice to see the the plies in the plywood and I love these poles that allows for a flat front you know hardware list space and you know I like the way they did for Micah here but the plywood face there and I'm jealous of a lot of their their selection of tile because this looks really great for this space and then I'm also jealous of the fixtures as they picked out because here and the kitchen have really just great great beautiful sleek fixtures I mean they're brand-new they're of this millennium and they're European you know they're probably growy or something but really tasteful it says blonde Blanco you're familiar with that brain either and then I want to call this Heath tile maybe it's not but it's a beautiful horizontal module you know kind of a counterpoint to the vertical tile in the kitchen of the main house and then I have a feeling I mean this piece here the cabinet on the other side I have a strong suspicion that this one was intended for the house as well but this one happens to be on wheels I love that so you could just roll it over to the other side and you know put a bed here in a corner if you had somebody visiting from out of town should we talk about these skylights here would you get skylights or would you kind of skylights their windows but they're in the roof they're almost like dormer vents but they pop up and form this butterfly condition that goes in the opposite direction of the general roof pitch and they've got those louver fins on the ends are yeah basically which you were saying matches what's happening in the bathroom and then what we were talking about matches in the main house to entry and they're just they're functional you know the one at the entry allows you to view the visitor the shade the windows from I think the Southern Sun and that louver prevents people from looking at you in the bathroom when they're at this front door so they're they're functional but they're in conversation with one another and then what about that element that you pointed out next to the front door yeah that that composition of that window is just quite exquisite I wonder if there was fins on the other side of this at one point I'm certain that this translucent window was intended to be transparent because it matches the same detail as the main house I agree yeah I wonder why they decided to change that but then look at these different these two glass patterns three are the same and then this is reminds me of the honeycomb pattern on the front entry but it's different and you know there's something about the scale and proportions there that I can't articulate that gives me a good feeling Wow what a comfortable space I just love being in this house I guess what I'm struck with is that it's like a no bullshit house it's not screaming at you it's not trying to be architecture it's just a very elegant structural system connected to nature it's listed by Carrie Field at Coldwell Banker who was so kind to let us have this kind of time in the house it's a three-bedroom two-and-a-half bathroom main house with a separate studio and half bath it's just under 3,000 square feet it's about a 16,000 and change square foot lot and the list price is four two nine five we're architecture brokers we'd love to represent you sometimes people think we just do free home tours which we do it's funny we kind of do this avocationally and vocationally we were on the Mack Center tour two weekends ago at Silvertop today we're here checking out a new listing and we just feel very fortunate that this is what we do for a living absolutely but we'd love to represent you yep and thank you guys for watching all right on that note high five me