The Ennis House in Los Feliz: Frank Lloyd Wright's Largest Textile Block House

The Ennis House is a concrete block residence at 2607 Glendower Avenue in the Los Feliz Hills, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built by his son Lloyd Wright in the mid-1920s. It is the last and largest of the elder Wright's four textile block houses in the Los Angeles area. The City of Los Angeles lists it as Historic-Cultural Monument #149 and it is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a private residence. View it from the street only.

The house is built from more than 27,000 concrete blocks, every one made by hand from decomposed granite dug out of the site itself, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. That single fact explains most of what makes the house what it is. The walls are the ornament. The material is the hillside.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed it. His son Lloyd Wright ran the construction, per the Conservancy. The Docomomo US register entry places the commission in 1923 and the completion in 1924. The Conservancy dates construction to 1924 through 1926. Wikipedia's account records building permits issued in May 1924, the garage finished that December and the main house finished in August 1925. The careful summary is that the house was designed in 1923 and 1924 and built over the following two years.

Frank Lloyd Wright returned to the property in 1940, and Lloyd Wright converted a basement storage area into a billiard room and designed a swimming pool for the north terrace, per the Conservancy. The two Wrights, father and son, are the only designers the record names for the house.

In the early 1920s Frank Lloyd Wright set out to make concrete block a respectable material for a house, per Docomomo. He gave the blocks a repeating geometric pattern, hid the joints and hid the steel reinforcing inside them. The result reads like woven fabric, which is where the textile name comes from. The Conservancy notes the patterned and perforated blocks give texture to both the outside and the inside of the house.

Wright built four of these houses in the Los Angeles area. The Ennis House was the last one designed and the largest one built, with the home and chauffeur's quarters spanning more than 6,000 square feet, per the Conservancy. Docomomo describes it as the most monumental of the series. Two other houses in Los Feliz share the block idea and the Wright name: the Sowden House on Franklin Avenue and the Samuel-Novarro House in The Oaks, both by Lloyd Wright.

Glendower Avenue is a narrow road that winds through the Los Feliz Hills and wraps around the house on three sides, per Wikipedia. The property covers about five sixths of an acre and measures 248 feet from west to east. The house sits on top of a hill that drops sharply toward the south, with views over Griffith Park and downtown to the east.

The compound has two parts. A main building and a garage wing stand apart from each other, separated by a motor court and joined by a footbridge, and a high retaining wall runs around the whole site. Wikipedia describes stained glass windows, roofs shaped like stepped ziggurats and an entrance hall placed below the main floor, which is the reverse of Wright's usual arrangement. Inside, the main house has about 6,000 square feet with three bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms, plus one more bedroom in the garage wing.

Concrete block made from site granite is beautiful and fragile. By 2005 the house had suffered from deferred maintenance and block deterioration, then from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the record rains of that winter. The Conservancy records all four. Foundations and walls had begun to fail. The National Trust for Historic Preservation put the house on its 2005 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Three things followed, in the Conservancy's timeline.

1. November 2005. A conservation easement was placed on the house. The Conservancy holds it, and it protects the house in perpetuity through every later change of ownership.
2. 2006 to 2008. Stabilization and early restoration work began in 2006 and earned a Conservancy Preservation Award in 2008.
3. 2011 onward. After a sale in 2011 the house received a full restoration. It included replacing 4,000 textile blocks and sealing the rest, plus new roofing, new flooring and general maintenance. Because the easement covers interior and exterior spaces, Conservancy staff reviewed all of that work.

The house sold again in October 2019, per the Conservancy, and remains a private residence.

Four separate layers of protection sit on this one address, and each one works differently.

• City Historic-Cultural Monument #149. The City's monument list records it as the Ennis-Brown House at 2607 Glendower Avenue, designated March 3, 1976.
• National Register of Historic Places. Docomomo records the listing date as October 14, 1971.
• The conservation easement. This is the layer with the most day-to-day effect. The Conservancy holds an easement covering both interior and exterior spaces, it runs in perpetuity, and every piece of work on the house is reviewed by Conservancy staff so nothing of the original design is lost. The easement also calls for some form of public access at least 12 times a year, per the Conservancy.
• The Mills Act. The City's Mills Act program is a revolving 10-year contract between the City and the owner of a qualified historic property that can lower property taxes in exchange for using the savings on restoration and upkeep. A Historic-Cultural Monument qualifies, per the City's 2019 program brief. The contract transfers to a new owner when the property sells and binds every later owner. The brief sets a $1.5 million assessed value limit for single-family homes on new applications, with an exemption path that requires a Historic Structure Report.

For a buyer, the practical steps are the same ones we walk through for any historic home in Los Feliz. Confirm the monument number on the City list. Ask for a copy of any recorded easement or Mills Act contract. Ask the City and the easement holder what review applies before you plan any change. This section explains how the programs work. It is not tax or legal advice. For your own situation, talk with your CPA or attorney as well.

This site calls the hillside above Los Feliz Boulevard the Los Feliz Hills. The City's own survey calls the heart of it the Los Feliz Heights Residential Historic District, and Glendower Avenue runs through it. Per the City's SurveyLA report for Hollywood, the district runs from Nottingham Avenue on the west to Vermont Avenue on the east and from Los Feliz Boulevard north to the edge of Griffith Park. It occupies a south-facing slope below the Griffith Observatory.

The survey describes curving streets that follow the contours of the foothills and concrete sidewalks without parkways. It notes mature cedar and carob trees, period street lights and several public stairways. The tract was subdivided in 1921 and built lot by lot, with each owner hiring an architect for that specific site. The survey counts 317 properties in the district with 232 contributors, and a period of significance from 1920 to 1949. The Ennis House is the most famous of them, and it has company. The City list shows the Wirin House at 2622 Glendower Avenue as Monument #812 and the Hlaffer-Courcier Residence at 2574 Glendower Avenue as Monument #1069.

Rooster Homes is a Los Feliz, Los Angeles real estate team led by Brandon and Sarah Arlington (DRE #02051216). We keep a map of every landmark house in the neighborhood on our Los Feliz historic homes page, with the monument number and the source for each one.

Rooster Homes starts every historic home conversation with the record. Rooster Homes is a Los Feliz, Los Angeles real estate team led by Brandon and Sarah Arlington (DRE #02051216). Brandon has been licensed since 2015 and holds the ABR designation for buyer representation. For a landmark home, that means the monument number and the easement come first, and the plans come second. When we list a home in this neighborhood, the same-day kickoff and a real update after every showing are part of the work from day one.

If a hillside landmark is on your list, see how our buying process fits the research in, or read the three kinds of Los Feliz luxury home to see where a house like this fits. Then let us know what works best for you. We will coordinate our schedule around yours.