With the Van Sicklen House returning to the market, a new chapter opens in the very particular California life of Richard Neutra, the Austria-born master of modern architecture who settled on the Pacific coast in the 1920s.
Neutra’s architectural journey took many forms, each reflected in the homes he designed over the decades. There’s the Neutra of the Lovell Health House (recently listed for sale), of the residence for film director Joseph von Sternberg, and the home for art collector Galka Scheyer – soon to reopen for artist’s residencies – each situated stylistically somewhere between Bauhaus influences and a developing sensitivity to a new context.
There’s also the Neutra regarded as a founding figure of California Modernism, with his Kaufmann House naturally taking its place among the Case Study Houses and the works of Craig Ellwood around the greater Los Angeles area.
Then comes the Neutra of houses where crisp rationalism meets local materials, evoking a quasi-vernacular touch: stone accents, extensive use of wood for exterior cladding, interior finishes, and built-in furnishings. These design elements briefly allude to pre-modern rural architecture, only to quickly reconnect with more celebrated cabins like Le Corbusier’s Cabanon or Charlotte Perriand’s Maison en bord de l’Eau.
This is the Neutra who, in 1947, began designing a home for Fred and Bea Van Sicklen in Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego County. Completed by his firm in 1952, it’s one of just four Neutra-designed houses in the area. The home saw an expansion in 1976 by Gerald Jerome and Fred Dong, growing from 230 to 370 square meters.
Today, the property is an eight-bedroom house set on a 5,000-square-meter lot, a continuation of the iconic image shaped by Neutra and his collaborators: an elongated, redwood-clad volume, with a sloped roof that rises toward the street, and a long sequence of windows flooding the kitchen and adjacent service areas with light. The interiors, then, center around the garden and three patios.
As the listings proclaim, this is a rare opportunity to purchase and restore one of the few Neutra works in the region. More importantly, it's a chance to ensure that architecture continues to live and engage with history, through its very use.
Opening image: Richard Neutra, Van Sicklen House, Rancho San Jose, California. Photo courtesy Agents of Architecture