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What about his houses did you like?

Why did you want a Neutra house?

I could be in the living room or wherever

and I'm outdoors, too.

You know, the full spectrum.

That's a wonderful thing.

You can't imagine what it is

on a moonlit night here, you know,

or a dark night when the stars

are just busting themselves.

What a sight that is to see.

Then the flashes of lightning

over in Saline Valley, over the range,

in Death Valley or ,

the lightning, you know, and the flash.

All those things that,

if you're in town living in a house here, a house here,

you wouldn't see those things.

But you get on a site like this,

and you see everything clearly,

how things really are.

I'm Kelly Lynch and I'm one of

the current owners of the Oyler House

in Lone Pine, California, with my husband,

Mitch Glazer.

Meeting Mr. Oyler and spending the day with him

will be one of the great days of my life.

I love this house like a person,

and I wanted to--

I wanted to meet the person who had built it.

Hello.

Hello, Kelly.

I so wasn't disappointed.

I mean, from the second I met him,

I feel like I've known-- "Wait, I know you."

You know, like we were old friends.

And sometimes, it's so funny, you can meet somebody,

you know, there's a 40-year age difference between us,

but he just feels like somebody I could hang out with.

And just he-- he's my friend,

you know, he's just my friend.

Like, this house is extremely elegant and complicated,

and yet very simple and--and humble.

I could say the same thing about Mr. Oyler.

He is this house and the house is him.

I'm Richard Oyler.

I grew up in Glendale, California.

My father was a schoolteacher,

my mother was a homemaker.

And I had a younger sister and an older brother.

In high school in those days,

just a few of the young men had cars

and so the best way to get someplace

was to go hitch-hiking.

Sometimes, it would take us a couple hours

to get to Hermosa or Santa Monica.

But we loved the beach, and it was so much fun.

On September the first, 1939,

the Nazi army smashed into Poland.

We knew that there was war on the horizon.

We all knew Hitler was rampaging in Europe

at that time.

And so we all said, "Well,

might as well go in the Navy now

because they're gonna catch us later."

I was sent out to the fleet

which was mostly in Pearl Harbor,

and went aboard a ship called the USS Curtis.

It was a surprise at the very beginning

because we thought, "What kind of practicing

maneuvers are they doing on a Sunday morning?"

And then we realized that they were dropping bombs

and torpedoes and...

And my station was on the bridge

with the captain.

And I was the captain's talker, I wore earphones

like you have on now.

And I would repeat his orders

and also receive orders from the ship

as bombs had hit us and fires had started

on the ship and he sent 353 aircraft

into that attack, and propeller planes

at low level, they aren't quiet.

And several ships were in the process

of blowing up.

And the magazines were blowing up

and the noise, noise, and our guns would fire.

The noise, I still remember in my mind

the noise that morning that just kept going.

I was at this naval station and Lenore,

she was just getting out of a naval training

at Hunter College in New York City.

So one of the ways that worked for me

in this personnel office, receiving station,

she says, "I have a girlfriend I think you should meet.

And how about we arrange a blind date?"

I said, "No way," you know,

I had a girlfriend at Glendale.

I met Lenore at the station

and we used to go to the movies

and go to the waves fountain

and have us a milkshake or something.

I'd go there and go home every weekend

because my girlfriend Marge was in Glendale,

I'd go home and have a date with her,

and come home, you know, we'd have weekend leaves.

Pretty soon, Lenore said, "You've got a choice to make,"

she says, "It's either Marge or me."

I couldn't see anything wrong with having a girlfriend

in Glendale and a girlfriend at the base.

Didn't even occur to me that that was

not the thing to do.

We were married July 21st.

And the war was over August 6.

The bomb went off and everything wound down

and the war was over.

I knew about the Owens Valley

from an uncle who lived in Los Angeles,

who had a relative that worked for the aqueduct

on the Inyokern area.

So when my wife and I talked about

when I got out of the service,

what I would do, I told her

first, I said, I need a break.

I've worked awful hard,

my work here in the Navy, and I just need a break.

And I want to go up and work

just as a laborer for the city of Los Angeles.

So we moved up to Independence

in this little home.

And it was wonderful.

We were poor, but we didn't know it.

This opening opened up with the county,

county treasurer and county recorder.

And I said to myself, "I can do that."

And I ended up in the next year

as president of the recorders' association

in the state of California,

there was 58 counties.

I had a wonderful learning experience

with the legislature of California.

There was a man named Eugene Deacons.

And he was able to find this property

to buy what we call a fee.

Otherwise, only him, no one else.

And then he couldn't sell what he subdivided.

And so he came down to me and

I had this small office, insurance and real estate,

he says, "I need some help selling the property I have.

Will you help me?"

I said, "Well, we should talk about it."

And this parcel I fell in love with.

I said, "You know, this has to be the site.

So much can be done with it."

And I just love this formation of Alabama Rocks.

I have to tell you that I'm still

overwhelmed with it.

And so I told Deacons, I said,

"You got your first sale,"

after I investigated.

I said, "I just bought parcel 27."

I said, "I love it."

So at the courthouse, the library was right

below me and the librarian, she was a wonderful woman,

and I would tell her what I was looking for,

and so one of the things was

architectural books, different architects,

and the type of.

So I'd spend my lunch hour, I had a little place

I could hide out in the courthouse

on the roof.

And there was a little cubicle up there

I had to lean against

at noon, lunchtime, and read books.

And she got me some real good books

that had been published at that time

by Richard Neutra.

I just made up my mind as this is what I--

I want to live in one of his houses.

Richard Neutra was an architect who

studied and was principal in the beginnings

of modern architecture, and the international style,

as it came to be known.

Richard Neutra, my father, was born in Vienna

and trained there at the university,

and just before World War I.

He had a mentor named Adolf Loos,

who was an early proto-modernist architect

who had been in the United States,

both in New York and Chicago

in the 1880s.

Now, Loos was enthusiastic about these new immigrants

who'd picked up from Europe

and were willing to try anything

and were pragmatic and energetic,

and not constrained by all the old ideas of Europe.

There was this idea about open spaces,

as opposed to you walk into

a little entry room and then you walk into a parlor

and then you walk into a living room and there's

a kit--butler's room and a kitchen.

Like little warrens of rooms.

He felt that family should live together

and the common area should be large.

When my father discovered Frank Lloyd Wright in 1911

and Louie Sullivan,

that just increased his enthusiasm.

He and his--his classmate, Rudolph Schindler,

talked about coming to California at some point.

Schindler made it in 1912.

And he wanted to leave as soon as he graduated

from architecture school in 1914.

Well, as you know, something happened in 1914,

the Archduke of the Austrian Empire

where he grew up was assassinated in Sarajevo,

and my dad was drafted into the Austrian army

and spent four years in the Balkans.

So he didn't get to come to the United States

until 1923, when the United States

finally signed a treaty with Austria.

So he came with a lot of enthusiasm.

And he did meet Louie Sullivan,

he did work with Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1926, he established his firm,

and one of his first commissions was

the Lovell Health House.

And that made his career internationally.

It was a steel-framed house that the structure went up

in 48 hours and they used gunite, concrete,

and there was a swimming pool, it was suspended on

reinforced concrete cradle on the side,

virtually of a cliff.

And this was quite a spectacular place.

The Health House was so called because

Lovell said, "I'd like you to design a house

that would enhance the health of the users

and the inhabitants.

What can we do to do that in the architecture?"

So that was really an inspiring assignment

for my Dad, and it's informed all of our projects ever since.

He was unique in that he combined

not only that philosophy of lack of ornament,

a moving ornament, functionalism,

and very rectilinear designs.

But he also incorporated the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright

in terms of the importance of the setting

and the organic architecture philosophy

of a house or building being naturally evolving

from the site.

Other houses that he did that I think are notable

are the Tremaine House in Montecito of 1948 or so,

the Kaufmann Desert House, of course,

everybody knows that house.

It was designed for the same client

who commissioned Falling Water

by Frank Lloyd Wright.

He was on the cover of Time Magazine in, um,

in 1949, I guess.

So when that happened, there was a lot of publicity

around that and he started getting commissions

from all over the country and we ended up

doing work in 20 different states.

I said, "Well, all right, Mr. Neutra."

I wrote him and asked him if--

told him who I was, nobody.

And what I did and what my budget would be.

And where my property would be.

This didn't come from a place of,

"I'm looking to have a famous architect

build something for me," but "I'm attracted by something

in these pictures."

And it's kind of a mystery about why would that

be attractive to a man with a high school education

who had never been around any of that kind

of architecture, it was kind of

an instinctive attraction for him.

So he wanted me to come down and visit with him

and I did.

He was kind.

Yeah.

A kind face to me.

He wasn't abrupt in any way.

I knew just by his office

that he was a very important man.

And I thought, "He's not gonna build

a house for me."

I don't have any memory of my dad

ever turning anybody down, saying,

"I'm too big for you" or "I'm too busy"

or anything like that.

He was much more available, open,

and accessible to people in that.

A lot of clients, oddly enough,

came to Neutra that way.

Feeling that the house would be too small

or not important enough.

But, uh, that wasn't Neutra's way.

He would take each individual,

and wanted to create and make their lives better.

I think my dad really loved to build

the smaller houses.

Because he had that commitment

to build for people of modest means.

He came up and...

We walked around the site.

He loved it.

He says, "This is...

This is unusual," he says,

"There's nothing else anyplace like it."

He loved this property, and I think that's

the only reason he accepted me as a client.

I think he fell in love with the property.

Said, "I want you to send me a photo

from this angle, from this angle, all around."

So we had photographs all around.

Richard Neutra always was a master

at sighting the property so that it would maximize

the experience of living indoors and outdoors

and bring nature in to you.

Here, Neutra characterized it himself

when he said that in standing there,

he had not seen such a great expanse of open space

since he'd been in the Gobi Desert.

I would like to express my own personal feeling

that it's one of the most magic

and spiritual locations that I've experienced.

I had the opportunity to climb to the top

of Huayna Picchu above Machu Picchu,

and my experience of this little Oyler House,

my first experience of that, I think, matches

that feeling.

That gave him the opportunity to create

with this background setting of the Sierra Nevada mountains

and these magnificent rocks in front,

one of the most unique and magical houses

in his career, and basically, it's unknown.

You see all these timbers.

You see the two-by-six ceiling, you see the post.

Right in the front yard, each beam I did myself.

Lumber truck just dumped all these beams and posts

just on the sand out there.

I'd dig 'em out and put 'em on the sawhorses

and it was a job.

Handing those-- these beams are pretty heavy

when you handle 'em.

And you see, Neutra has a certain way

on top of the post, you don't see the post

going any further than your eye, right?

Well, on top of that post

is a three-by-four and the beam goes on top

of that three-by-four.

And then it's all tied in with these

two-by-six tongue and groove ceiling.

Post and beam construction, and of course,

steel and metal framing after, especially windows,

he actually-- this particular window,

he invented that back about 1930.

The roll-out.

It may not be handy today, there may be better things,

but let me tell you, those windows are stout

and steady and they're steel.

'Course, he was very adamant about doing

the cabinet work in all the rooms

with these seats to sit on.

That's his design, his level.

Any cabinet you see in the house, the bedrooms,

he didn't want anyone else doing that.

That was his work.

I can't imagine what the town of Lone Pine thought

about this house going up.

I mean, I've heard some stories

about, you know, people wondering

if it was like a school or a factory

or what they were building.

I lived in the area for 13 years

where the house was built.

And the small communities always have

an apprehension of someone new that comes to town.

But you have to live in a small town

for a while to understand, uh, how people feel.

Some of them go back close to 100 years.

They own the town somewhat.

Their ancestors settled here.

They've been here, all born here.

I was born in Nebraska.

As late as 1992, when we bought the house,

people said--they saw some pictures I had shot

and they said, "Well, that doesn't really

look like a house, you know,

it looks kind of like--"

They couldn't really put their finger on it,

but I don't think they understood it.

I think human nature is when people don't

understand something, they tend to

protect their lack of intelligence by saying

it's "bad" or "wrong" or they think people

and things that are different, you know,

are not to be trusted.

Frank Chrysler, he's an old-timer.

He packed it in the mountains here for years and years

with pack mules and...

One day, I was out here, I might've been taking care

of these beams out here, I don't know.

And he drove up and had an old pickup.

He leaned out the window and he said, "Oyler,"

he said, "What are you doing?"

He says, "Are you building some kind of a factory here?"

I said, "No, I'm building my home, Frank."

He says, "It certainly doesn't look like a home," you know,

and it didn't, because all we had up

was the post and beams and the outline, you know,

and probably to him, an old-timer, it looked like

I was building a factory.

You see this home that repeats on eight-foot modulars

from that end to the other end.

And so when you put the framing up,

everything was on an eight-foot modular.

It looked like a factory to him.

I've since talked to a lot of the people

'cause I know Mr. Oyler feels that they were confused

about the structure going up

and I know that they were.

I've heard--people have told me that.

And again, when I bought the house,

they were confused by it, then it started

showing up in magazines and things,

and all of a sudden they took another look

at the whole situation.

Now often, I'll have cars driving by,

looking at the place.

I'm always bemused when I look at movies

that have modern houses because it's always

the bad guy or the deviant guy or gal who lives

in one of these houses.

Quite frankly, I've been selling

historic architecture and Neutra houses

and Schindler houses and Wright houses

for many years and I would say

in my experience I haven't met a single villain.

You know, it's again the war on "elitism."

The war on intelligence, the war on--

it's like saying that jazz musician--music is--

is only scary, complicated music,

only for evil smart people.

Many of these directors probably live in a modern house.

It's not that they have something against it,

but they instinctively know that this is deviant behavior

to build a house like that.

And I would say that it's deviant in a good way.

You know, he was so far ahead of his time,

sixty years at least ahead of his time.

I think now we look at these homes

and we understand them and think,

"Oh, God, I could love, love to live like that!"

And, wh--you know?

Getting rid of all my crap and having these beautiful

walls of glass sit open up and I can just have the garden

be right there and, you know, I don't need all this stuff

and we're thinking more about recycling and being, you know,

using natural materials and materials found on the sites

of where our homes are built.

All these things.

The rocks here in the passageway

were gathered by my wife and I from the Inyo mountains

across the valley.

They're what you call dolomite.

It was an outgrowth of experience at using

what was close by and, um...

trying to be respectful of nature,

respectful of the planet, thinking about sustainability

long before that was a term that anybody used.

Trying to sort of convince the society that we should

be careful with our planet, we only have one

and we should be thinking about how it's gonna be sustained.

I find that people will drive up and look and not quite know

how do you live there, how does that work.

The second someone comes into one of these houses,

a Neutra house, and sits down and looks out the windows,

I see what happens, they just sort of, kinda,

just kinda mellow out and sort of take it all in

and can relax and start thinking about stuff

and it's like a whole different thing happens to them

and it starts to become like listening

to beautiful music, it just takes you to another place.

And that's really maybe what people have to experience

what it feels like three-dimensionally

to be in this space.

As opposed to seeing a picture or looking at the bad guy house.

Neutra designed a pool right off of here.

I had these deep fears of these small children

and how do I fence that off, it would look terrible.

And I said, "No, I'm not gonna build that pool."

When we came up here to look at the house,

Crosby Doe, our real estate agent,

said, "Check out the pool,"

and we walked around the property and there was

just sand and some lawn and we went way out

and we were looking around and I got on the phone

and I said, "Crosby, I don't understand,

there's a pool here, right, there's a pool?"

He said, "Yeah, it's in the boulder."

The rock was on the property and on top of the rock,

I noticed little pools were already up there.

Then, I noticed that after a rain why, you know,

there'd be that water in that pool.

My father-in-law was mostly a miner in his work in his life,

he used explosives and powder and that type of what we call

"hard rock mining."

I said, "Do you think we could enlarge that?"

He said, "Well, you got a friend with a compressor?"

He said, "I have to drill it."

So, I got Bill Skinner, a friend, and I said,

"Bill, I'll need to use your compressor

and can you get a couple of hard rock miners with you?"

But he used the men and not as much as blasting it

but as lookouts, because when you blast it

that rock went airborne

and if I walk this desert here, I can pick up a rock

and I'll say, "That's from the pool."

I thought this is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

It's like Flintstones, you know, it's beyond like,

it's just incredible.

We wanted it to say, hey, this is a rock, you know?

It's not a swimming-- this is a rock.

I said, "How does this thing work?

He said, "You fill it up with a garden hose, you put,

there's like a kitchen plug, you put that down

and then you put the hose in and it takes about a day

to fill up and then you have this incredible water,

it's like swimming in one of the lakes

in the middle of the Sierras.

It feels different than water feels,"

and I thought, "Well, he's a salesman," you know?

So, we-we filled it up and we checked it out

and the water is a weird color blue,

like glaciers look like that color, I mean,

cause it's kinda gunited inside.

It almost feels like swimming in effervescent water.

It's got a life to it that you can't, you know, imagine.

It's just incredible.

And there was lots of good times on that pool.

I used to go out there and cool off myself.

I've got a beautiful photo of me diving off one end

into the pool.

It's one of the sweetest things that Richard Neutra came back

to the Oyler House every year for the end of the year

to write his letter, uh, to his friends and family

about what the year had been and his clients and...

He'd kinda like to shut down the architectural office

during the holidays, at least partly

and then she would drive him in this big Chrysler

they had at that time and he would sit there

and have a tablet, he was always busy

and she had her cello in the back seat.

Knowing them, they would typically bring work with them,

you know, my mother travelled with her typewriter,

and so, they were constantly catching up on stuff.

But, still it was a nice break to get away

from the office for a few days.

I think that my parents were just charmed

by the Oyler family and this was on a continuum maybe

an extremely cordial relationship.

I've just never heard of that, where an architect

has such a connection to, not only to a building,

but to a family and to a place, like Richard Neutra had.

I do think that my dad liked to see

whether things worked or not in these visits.

But it also was a comfort to him that he had tried to provide

a service to somebody and they were getting pleasure from it.

A little bit like a surgeon might be satisfied

to see someone whose leg he had fixed, uh, walking again.

So, when he would come, we'd have maybe a couple days

when we'd be here while they were there.

It was a time for us in the holidays

to go see the Norris family in Arizona.

We'd go off and then we'd come home

and they'd still be here.

They came every year during the '60s it seemed like.

This was something that was a profound and, you know,

very meaningful part of Richard Neutra's life

and he so fell in love with every bit of this project,

the family, the landscape here.

We had a good association and I don't like

to go beyond that because...

he enjoyed coming up here and visiting with, with me

and with the family and with the children.

It was a little bit like having your...

your parents or grandparents come see, you know they were...

we were a different generation.

I don't like to take advantage of that, you know what...

He knows it and I know it.

And we had this client-architect relationship that got to be

more of a personal relationship, you know?

Well, I would say that my dad

was a very egalitarian kind of person.

He did not...he did not cater to any kind of snobbish clientele

or anything like that, he was a person who would relate

to anybody who came to him.

He explored everything.

He'd wanna know all kinds of things.

He could get, he could get personal with you, you know?

Because he was, he had that inquisitive mind, you know,

that just, his mind just raced with him, you could just see it,

you know, but he never, he never did...

occupy all the space when he was with you.

Otherwise, he, he allowed you space

to return your conversation to talk to him

and he would listen intently.

You have, what today young people use this word,

a connection.

I had a connection with him.

I knew it and he had a connection with me too

and I'm not sure just why, but he, he was very kind to me,

kind to my children, and uh, for which I consider

such an important personality, I thought,

"Why is he so good to me?"

And so, I had no times where I felt

I was in over my head with him.

We connected.

There were a lot of letters between the Neutras

and the Oylers, but there was one letter

that was particularly poignant.

"There is a great, calm, spiritual quietness

about your family in that landscape.

You are wonderful people and you live in a lovely house

somebody must have built who loved you."

I remember telling him how I enjoyed being inside

and feeling I was outside.

He understood what I was talking about.

You have no idea the silent moments I had,

when I'd be laying in bed or sitting here

in a chair like this and just drinking in

what my eyes would bring to me.

I'd never tire.

You know the Oylers, were the, I think, the perfect family

for this living experiment that Neutra was undertaking

with them and every one of them remembers this house as a place

of love and fun and it just functioned so well.

When we first opened the door, if a house could hold memory,

I'd just, you know, because it's an empty

and quiet place, it could have felt spooky,

but to me, it just, I didn't know at the time,

the first time I saw this house who the Oylers were

or what the history of this place was,

but I just was hit with a feeling of ease

and fun, and love, and comfort, and nothing grand, nothing...

very modest and just right, you know, just right.

Well, we had plays during occasions, you know,

festive occasions with everyone and Lenore

would make little costumes or doll 'em up with some makeup.

They were hiking and exploring in the rocks.

That did frighten their mother.

She worried about them, she was afraid

that they would get hurt, but, you know, how do you stop

young people from doing something like that?

You don't.

You don't.

The Camel Table was something he came up with, um, early on

in response to people living in very tight quarters.

His concept was a table that could be raised

from coffee table height to dining room table height

in a matter of a few minutes and then after dinner,

you could go back down to a coffee table if you chose,

which would make the room seem larger

and less like you're living in a dining room.

Okay, this is a demonstration of how the Camel Table

gets lowered from its dining table level

to a coffee table, which we just saw in the other shot.

So, we're gonna demonstrate what's involved here.

And just pick the leg up and pull it forward.

Voilà!

So, it's pretty quick, but you do have to take

the things off the top.

Actually, when I think about it, I don't know of anybody

who ever used the table that way,

it's very interesting.

It's a great feature, we love the idea.

We have two of them, we have one up, and one down.

But, as far as actually somebody living in a small house

and actually raising it up and down,

I have yet to meet that person, I would love to, I would love

to hear about it.

I talked to him about my wife, Lenore,

that she was unhappy with feeding the children

on the Camel Table out here in the living room.

I said, "Okay, so when I phoned they told me he won't be back

for a couple months, he's on a lecture tour."

I just said, "Well, I know what I could do."

And so I, I made a little eating area

where that big dining room is, off the kitchen.

It was really quite nice and Lenore loved it

and isn't that what matters, that she loved it?

What else matters?

I think all architects are very sensitive

about changes that are made and, uh, it's a little bit like

Picasso painting a painting and having the owner say,

"Well, wouldn't it be nice to have a little patch

of blue over here?"

Uh, but sometimes the client can be very sensitive, and,

and do it in a way that is within the spirit

of what's being done.

So, we ate there until he came up the next year,

about Christmastime.

He walked down the hall, and got to that area

where we had the eating for the family

and right off the kitchen.

He didn't say anything, he was just a little frustrated,

he looked at me and he looked at the dining situation

and there it was, like restaurant-style, kinda,

you know, a big table?

And he looked at me intently and he said, "So you think

you're an architect?"

And then I got that little twinkle

and little smile, it wasn't very much

that he'd give you.

And...he was just teasing me again.

He did that every--he teased me.

And so afterwards, when they went home that year,

and his wife always wrote me a nice letter of what they did

or what he did, and she told me

that he spent nearly all his time at that dining table

that I had created and doing his work,

spreading his work, and he stayed there all day long.

So, did he like it?

I don't know.

I think the story's good.

And maybe I shouldn't have done it,

because this was his creation, not mine.

Well, when my husband and I came up here

to look at the property, we were made aware

that there were two properties on either side of the house

that were, could be, you know, purchased.

And to the right of the house, there was a sort of pink,

tract house, that was built in the sight line

of the Oyler House.

Most of the houses you see in Lone Pine are built up

at the street, so everybody has their beautiful views.

Well, I had a near nervous breakdown.

Not really, but it wasn't too far off.

I thought, "What is he thinking?"

Mr. Neutra was completely unglued by this idea.

Oh, he was offended, he says, "Why would they

put that house back there, right in your view?"

He says, "Why didn't they put it out front here, by the road?"

When you're living in Inyo County, with, like I say,

only two percent of the land is built on, you don't want

part of that two percent to be next door to you,

when you can have that in L.A.

If it was up to me, I would buy all of the Alabama Hills

and just keep it all to myself.

It's so gorgeous.

I can't imagine, when I sit here and look out to the things

that Indians looked at, you know, 150 years ago.

Why would I wanna look at a house?

There are plenty of houses to look at, that, you know,

like John Lautner said, he'd like to take

a giant boulder at the top of the Hollywood Hills and just,

like, throw it down and knock whatever's in its way.

I understand that.

We made arrangements for it to be demolished.

It took three hours and two trucks

to cart it down to the dump and I was nervous

about the people in town thinking, "What kind of people

are these Hollywood types, that come up here and knock

a perfectly good house down?"

And then one day, a man on a bike came by

and he says, "I see you tore the house down over there."

I said, "The pink house, yeah. It was in the eye line."

And I was nervous that, you know,

he was one of the people from town and he would

think badly of us, but I said, "You know, we wouldn't

have done it, if the house had been at the street.

We wouldn't have just knocked down

a perfectly good house, probably," but he said,

"Yeah, well I grew up in that house."

I said, "And it was beautiful," and I...was like, "Whoops!"

But I sort of just... and then I think he invited me

to come over for a barbecue they were having.

So I, I think it was, it was all right.

Maybe...maybe he understood, you know?

A lot of our, sort of treasured Frank Lloyd Wright,

Richard Neutra, Schindler, these, you know,

pieces of history, and I look at them

as living sculptures, works of art, are threatened.

You know, they've been on the planet for a long time,

they need constant upkeep, you need to, when you own

one of these homes, the ideal way to look at it

is that you're a caretaker, that you never really own it,

it'd be like owning the Mona Lisa, you know?

You don't really own, somebody has it and can show it

and can be part of it for a while, but it,

if it is truly a work of art

and a piece of world-class architecture,

you know, you become a patron of that piece of art

and, and you care for it the best you can.

If you find you can't care for it,

you need to find someone who can.

The fact is that we're not doing enough

and, unless we do something pretty quickly, we're gonna lose

many, many of these examples.

Increasingly, I think there is a recognition

that these mid-century modern and before houses

are very special.

Being a preservationist is not for sissies.

It's much easier to build something from the ground up

than to keep something on the earth for many decades.

It's just wood and glass and rock that can fall apart

in an earthquake, or burn down, or get wood rot,

or...or one bad owner, quite honestly.

One bad owner can just do a lot of "improvements"

that are not improvements at all.

I think it was the love of my life.

I think of something that is directly

the center to the family.

There's all these memories of little and small things,

but they're, you can't help but cherish them.

The children call them, "The Two Big Toes,"

When Mrs. Neutra came one year, she heard the children discuss

going out there and playing near the Big Two Toes,

and she inquired, "Well, what are those,

tell me about it?" to the children.

And so the told her about these two big,

that that's what their name was, the Two Big Toes.

And she shook her head no.

She says, "I don't think they're the Two Big Toes."

She says, "They're two hands blessing your home."

And I thought that was really sweet of her.

You know, to inject that, so, I think that she had a point.