The 2,200 square foot home at 1635 Woods Drive<\/a> has been preserved meticulously, funded in part by proceeds from open house tours of the space.<\/p>\n “This home has been the center of our lives for decades, but as we\u2019ve gotten older, it has become increasingly challenging to care for it with the attention and energy it so richly deserves,” the Stahl children continued.<\/p>\n And they are not just looking for a buyer \u2014 but a steward.<\/p>\n The kitchen of the Stahl House, photographed by Julius Shulman.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n “It is a passing of responsibility,” the listing<\/a> for the house reads. “A search for the next custodian who will honor the house’s history, respect its architectural purity, and ensure its preservation for generations to come.”<\/p>\n Post-war housing shortage<\/p>\n The Stahl House, or Case Study House #22, was designed and built by Pierre Koenig in the Hollywood Hills.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n The futuristic house with its stunning panorama and a swimming pool perched at the edge of nothingness has become one of the most recognizable and prized expressions of mid-century modern architecture in L.A. \u2014 how it came to be built was fueled by a similar spirit of experimentation and audacity.<\/p>\n In 1945, the cutting edge Arts & Architecture magazine launched the “Case Study House” program to commission the era’s biggest and most boundary pushing architects \u2014 Richard Neutra, Charles Eames and the like \u2014 to design and build within budget affordable, scalable homes for an exploding middle class after World World II. <\/p>\n “Each house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an ‘individual’ performance,” editor John Entenza wrote in the announcement<\/a>-slashed-manifesto. <\/p>\n The Stahl House photographed by Julius Shulman.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n By its terminus in 1966, the program gave rise to 36 designs, of which 25 prototypes were built \u2014 mostly in and around the city \u2014 forging L.A. into an epicenter of West Coast modernism.<\/p>\n Case Study Home #22<\/p>\n One of them was Case Study Home #22 by Pierre Koenig, who as an architecture student at USC in the early 1950s was already making a name<\/a> for himself particularly with his use of steel.<\/p>\n His student work caught the attention of Entenza, editor of Arts & Architecture, who later invited him to join the Case Study House program.<\/p>\n Architect Pierre Koenig was hired by former football player Buck Stahl and his wife Carlotta to build the Stahl House.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n One of the bedrooms in the Stahl House looking out to the pool.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n The Stahl family home<\/p>\n The Hollywood Hills home would be Koenig’s second Case Study house \u2014 and his most well-known.<\/p>\n The story began with Hughes Aircraft purchasing agent and former football player Buck Stahl and his wife Carlotta, who were bought a small hillside lot overlooking the city for $13,500.<\/p>\n The couple spent weekends putting up a wall around the property using broken concrete sourced from construction sites. Buck, the Stahl family said<\/a>, had built a model of his dream house to take to architects \u2014 many of whom turned the job<\/a> down because the lot was seen as undevelopable. <\/p>\n The Stahl House, part of the Case Study House program, was completed in 1960.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Enter Koenig, who signed on for the challenge in 1957. A month before construction began<\/a> in1959, the project was christened Case Study House #22. The Stahl house was completed a year later, according to the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, at a cost of nearly $38,000.<\/p>\n The birth of cool<\/p>\n With its sleek lines and inviting airiness, Case Study House #22 has come to embody the good life in post-war Los Angeles, an idea reinforced by its countless appearances in movies<\/a>, TV shows and magazine spreads over the decades.<\/p>\n But the photograph that started it all \u2014 elevating the home into the stuff of mythology \u2014 was taken by Julius Shulman, the man tapped to document the entire Arts & Architecture program, after charting an unlikely career photography modernist architecture <\/a>in L.A., starting with those designed by Neutra. <\/p>\n Julius Shulman was responsible for documenting houses in the Case Study House program. The Stahl House is among a number of houses he took photos of.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n \u00a9 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Shulman shot the Stahl House in May 1960 shortly after its completion. In the most iconic shot of the series, two young women in white party dresses are sitting in the glass living room, conversing leisurely as the house dissolves into the shimmering sprawl below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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