Housing in the 1930s

The stock market crash and in 1929 and the Great Depression which followed, negatively affected the architecture profession-- with loss of income, commissions, and a general downturn in construction. Schindler, however, was able to maintain his small practice with commissions by clients in the film and entertainment industries, which were not as severely impacted by the economic problems of the decade. By the late thirties, Schindler had developed a clientle who were eager for his Modern residences. 

"The stepped four-tiered Wolfe house was designed with a flexible arrangement of interior space, so that the house could be used as a single-family unit or as a two- or three- family unit. While the roof terrace was connected directly to the main third level, the lower two floors were entirely independent. The sleeping space on the main floor was raised four feet above the living room, and was connected to it by means of three ascending volumes which served both as steps and as seats." Gebhard, p. 76 

The beach house for Henry Braxton and his wife Viola Brothers Shore was to be sited along the ocean in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles. The three story house (with sleeping porch and deck on the roof) was never built. Braxton was an art dealer and Schindler had previously worked with him on an interior for his art gallery.

"The Braxton house on the Venice beach was to be a rectangular box into and out of which secondary volumes projected. The cube which forms the living room penetrates upwards into the third level. While a sleeping porch and terrace are perched on top of the house, conventional bedrooms on the third level now face out over the ocean front." Gebhard, p.76

For the Oliver house in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, Schindler designed a single-story house set above the street-level garage. The relatively flat lot allowed for a patio at the rear of the house, and for views in two directions-- towards the Silverlake reservior, and west towards the ocean. The roof appears to be flat from the street view, but is actually a shed and gable roof, which gives Schindler room inside the house to change the ceiling height and volume.

The distinctive A-frame shape of the Gisela Bennati cabin is possibly one of the earliest uses of the style as a residence in the United States. The steeply pitched roof is a very good choice for the Lake Arrowhead region, since the lake is at a high elevation which receives many inches of heavy, wet snow each winter. The large volume of roof also allowed Schindler to abide by local building codes, which specified 'French Norman' style. The shape helps to shed snow while providing walls of windows to look out on the view.

For the Milton Shep house in Silverlake, Schindler hinted at International Style for the street view, but gave the house a much more characteristic canyon side, with a play on various interlocking volumes and angles. 

For a location on San Franciso Bay in Richmond, California, Schindler designed a small beach house for a UC Berkeley professor and his artist wife. The design was lauded at the time of construction as a good example of a small house, built for a low price. Schindler also performed alterations on the Kaun's main residence in Berkeley.

The house in Silverlake for Elizabeth Van Patten presents a very modern view: "on the street side of the Van Patten house one sees only three attached garages, each stepped back from the other and each covered by a shed roof, the total effect being akin to a saw-tooth factory roof. The pitch of the main shed roof is repeated in the ramp leading to the lower deck and in the angled base of the second floor deck." Gebhard, p. 103-105

Multi-Unit dwellings

"The blank in Schindler's productive upswing of the thirties is in the field of multiple housing; yet it was an area of design that really interested him, and he grasped at every opportunity, no matter how remote." Gebhard p.122

The DeKeyser duplex is set on a steep lot, with only limited access via a small footpath and staircase up to the house. The units consisted of one two-bedroom unit on the top floor, and one one-bedroom unit on the lower floor.

"Until the end of the thirties, the closest he came to getting a housing group built was with the beach colony for A.E. Rose, probably at Santa Monica (1937). The colony was to consist of a large number of wood-framed, canvas- and stucco-covered beach houses which would be rented for summer use. A small-scale portable mock-up was made of one of the beach houses. In the end the project was abandoned because of the high cost of beach frontage property." Gebhard p. 122

Anastasia Bubeshko and her daughter Luby commissioned Schindler to design an apartment complex on Griffith Park Boulevard in the Silverlake neighborhood in Los Angeles. They wanted a modular design on the sloping lot, one which could contain 5 apartment units, but also be reconfigured into 7 units, if desired. Schindler utliized the hillside site to place each apartment as a step above the previous; it allowed for all of the units to have a private outdoor terrace on the roof of the other unit. 

The Mackey apartments were designed in 1939 for Pearl Mackey. Three apartments were rented out, with the fourth, a two-story penthouse, was for Mrs. Mackey herself. Each unit had a different layout, and included built-in furniture, outdoor spaces, and Schindler's characteristic modernist shapes and volumes of indoor space.

Similar to the Bubeshko apartments, each unit in the Mackey apartment building also had its own outdoor space, either a patio or a rooftop garden. The apartment building is owned by the Austrian government and run as residential apartments and event space for artists who are part of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture.