case study house 22 adresse

• RANDOM INSPIRATION
• HISTORICAL TIMELINE
• INFLUENTIAL ARCHITECTS
• BOOKS & RESOURCES

The Stahl House by Pierre Koenig | Case Study House #22

Perched on the Hollywood Hills with a commanding view of Los Angeles, the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22, is a paragon of mid-century modern architecture. Designed by Pierre Koenig and completed in 1960, this residence is an architectural masterpiece and a symbol of a particular era in Los Angeles, characterized by a burgeoning optimism and a new approach to residential design.

The Stahl House Technical Information

• Architects 1 : Pierre Koenig
• Location: 1636 Woods Drive, Los Angeles , California , United States
• Topics: Mid-Century Modern Houses
• Area: 210 m 2 | 2,300 ft 2
• Project Year: 1959-1960
• Photographs: Various, See Caption Details

If you don’t know the Stahl House, then you don’t know mid-century modern architecture. – Julius Shulman 3

The Stahl House Photographs

A Vision of Glass and Steel

The journey of the Stahl House began in 1954 when Buck Stahl purchased a lot that was considered unbuildable. His vision was clear—a home that embraced its surroundings with vast expanses of glass to capture the sprawling cityscape. In 1957, Koenig, known for his proficiency with industrial materials, was commissioned to realize this vision. The result was a structure of steel and glass that was both minimalistic and expressive.

Design and Layout

Koenig’s design was a masterclass in the use of industrial materials in residential architecture. The house is distinguished by its “L” shaped plan, separating public and private spaces through a simple yet effective layout. Large, 20-foot-wide panes of glass form the majority of the walls facing the view, offering unobstructed panoramas of Los Angeles.

The design also cleverly incorporates the landscape into the living experience. The swimming pool, positioned between the wings of the house, not only serves as a physical buffer separating the living spaces but also as a visual corridor to the city beyond.

I design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown. – Pierre Koenig 2

Iconic Status and Architectural Significance

Julius Shulman’s photography cemented the Stahl House’s iconic status. In a series of images that have become synonymous with mid-century modern architecture, Shulman captured the essence of the house. These photographs highlight the house’s integration with its surroundings and open, transparent design.

The Stahl House was included in the Case Study House program, which aimed to reimagine residential architecture post-World War II. Case Study House #22 became an influential model showcasing the possibilities of modernist aesthetics in suburban settings.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Over the years, the Stahl House has transcended its role as a private residence to become a cultural landmark. It has been featured in numerous films, commercials, and fashion shoots, each time underscoring its timeless appeal and architectural significance.

Despite its fame, the house remains a family-owned property, preserved as the Stahls left it. The family offers tours, allowing architecture enthusiasts to experience the space and its spectacular views firsthand.

The Stahl House Plans

The Stahl House Image Gallery

About Pierre Koenig

Pierre Koenig was a pioneering American architect, born on October 17, 1925, in San Francisco. Renowned for his influential contributions to mid-century modern architecture, Koenig is best known for his work in the Case Study House program, particularly the iconic Case Study House #22, or Stahl House. His designs emphasized industrial materials like steel and glass, integrating buildings seamlessly into their environments while promoting sustainability through the use of prefabricated materials. A long-time professor at the University of Southern California, Koenig’s legacy continues to influence architectural practices and education. He passed away on April 4, 2004, leaving behind a significant impact on the landscape of Southern California architecture.

Notes & Additional Credits

• Client: Buck Stahl
• Case Study Houses by Elizabeth A. T. Smith
• Modernism Rediscovered by Julius Shulman
• Pierre Koenig: Living with Steel by Neil Jackson

Share this:

Leave a reply cancel reply.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Topics Overview
• Influential Architects
• 2020’s
• 2010’s
• 2000’s
• 1990’s
• 1980’s
• 1970’s
• 1960’s
• 1950’s
• 1940’s
• 1930’s
• 1920’s
• American Architecture
• Austrian Architecture
• British Architecture
• Chinese Architecture
• Danish Architecture
• German Architecture
• Japanese Architecture
• Mexican Architecture
• Portuguese Architecture
• Spanish Architecture
• Swiss Architecture
• Auditoriums
• Cultural Centers
• Installations
• Headquarters
• Universities
• Restaurants
• Cementeries
• Monasteries
• City Planning
• Landscape Architecture
• Top Book Recommendations
• Top Drawing Tools Recommendations
• Gifts for Architects

Email address:

Timeless Architecture

• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy

Iconic Photos

Famous, Infamous, and Iconic Images

Case Study House No. 22, 1960

Between 1945 and 1966, Californian magazine Arts & Architecture asked major architects of the day to design model homes. The magazine was responding to the postwar building boom with prototype modern homes that could be both easily replicated and readily affordable to the average American. Among many criteria given to the architects was to use “as far as is practicable, many war-born techniques and materials best suited to the expression of man’s life in the modern world.”

Thirty-six model homes were commissioned from major architects of the day, including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, and Ralph Rapson. Not all of them were built but some thirty of them were, mostly around the Greater Los Angeles area.

The magazine also engaged an architectural photographer named Julius Shulman to dutifully record this experiment in residential architecture. Fittingly for Shulman, one of the first architectural photographers to include the inhabitants of homes in the pictures, his most famous image was the 1960 view of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 (also the Stahl House), which showed two well-dressed women conversing casually inside.

In the photo, the cantilevered living room appears to float diaphanously above Los Angeles. “The vertiginous point of view contrasts sharply with the relaxed atmosphere of the house’s interior, testifying to the ability of the Modernist architect to transcend the limits of the natural world,” praised the New York Times . Yet this view was created as meticulously as the house itself. Wide-angle photography belied the actual smallness of the house; furniture and furnishings were staged, and as were the women. Although they were not models (but rather girlfriends of architectural students), they were asked to sit still in the dark as Shulman exposed the film seven minutes to capture lights from LA streets. Then, lights inside were quickly switched on to capture two posing women.

Case Study House No.22 as it appeared in Arts and Architecture . Shulman’s photo with inhabitants did not appear here.

See other Case Study Houses here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Study_Houses

Result was the photo Sir Norman Foster termed his favorite “architectural moment”. Indeed, the photo captured excitement and promises the house held, and propelled Case Study No. 22 into the forefront of national consciousness. Some called it the most iconic building in LA. It appeared as backdrop in many movies, TV series and advertisements. Tim Allen was abducted by aliens here in Galaxy Quest ; Greg Kinnear would make it his bachelor pad in Nurse Betty , and Columbo opened its pilot episode here. Italian models in slicked-back hair would frolic poolside in Valentino ads. It was even replicated in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. According to Koenig, Case Study No. 22. was featured in more than 1,200 books — more often than Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Search the Site

Popular pages.

• Historic Places of Los Angeles
• Important Issues
• Events Calendar

Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Immortalized by photographer Julius Shulman, the Stahl House epitomized the ideal of modern living in postwar Los Angeles.

Place Details

• Pierre Koenig

Designation

• Locally Designated

Property Type

• Single-Family Residential
• Los Angeles

Based on a recent approval by the City of Los Angeles for a new residence at the base of the hillside and below the historic Stahl House, this action now places this Modernist icon at risk. The hillside is especially fragile as it is prone to slides and susceptible to destabilization. This condition will be exacerbated as this proposed new residence is planned to cut into the hillside and erect large retaining walls.

The proposed project received approval despite opposition and documentation submitted that substantiates the problem and potential harm to the Stahl House. An appeal has been filed and the City is reviewing this now. No date has been set yet for when this might come back to the City Planning Commission.

To demonstrate your support for the Stahl House and to ensure the appeal is granted (sending the proposed project back for review), please sign on to the  Save the Stahl House campaign .

Who hasn’t seen the iconic image of architect Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House (Case Study House #22), dramatically soaring over the Los Angeles basin? Built in 1960 as part of the Case Study House program, it is one of the best-known houses of mid-century Los Angeles.

The program was created in 1945 by John Entenza, editor of the groundbreaking magazine  Arts & Architecture . Its mission was to shape and form postwar living through replicable building techniques that used modern industrial materials. With its glass-and-steel construction, the Stahl House remains one of the most famous examples of the program’s principles and aesthetics.

Original owners Buck and Carlotta Stahl found a perfect partner in Koenig, who was the only architect to see the precarious site as an advantage rather than an impediment. The soaring effect was achieved using dramatic roof overhangs and the largest pieces of commercially available glass at the time.

The enduring fame of the Stahl House can be partly attributed to renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who captured nearly a century of growth and development in Southern California but was best-known for conveying the Modern architecture and optimistic lifestyle of postwar Los Angeles. Shulman’s most iconic photo perfectly conveys the drama of the Stahl House at twilight: two women casually recline in the glowing living room as it hovers over the sparkling metropolis below.

View the National Register of Historic Places Nomination

The Conservancy does not own or operate the Stahl House. For any requests, please contact the Stahl House directly at (208) 429-1058.

Issues including Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Case Study Houses

Related content.

Bailey House (Case Study House #21)

St. Martha’s Episcopal Church

St. John’s in the Valley Methodist Church (Demolished)

• Random Project
• Collaborate

Stahl House / Case Study House nº22

Introduction.

Did you find this article useful?

Really sorry to hear that...

Help us improve. How can we make this article better?

Stahl House (Case Study House #22)

Pierre Koenig | Website | 1960 | Visitor Information

1635 Woods Drive , West Hollywood 90069, United States of America

The Stahl House by Pierre Koenig (also known as Case Study House #22) was part of the Case Study House Program, which produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20th Century. The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family. Stahl envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angeles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500. When excavation began, he originally took on the duties of both architect and contractor. It was not until 1957 that Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence. The two-bedroom, 2,200 square foot residence is a true testament to modernist architecture and the Case Study House Program. The program was set in place by John Entenza and sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine. The aim of the program was to introduce modernist principles into residential architecture, not only to advance the aesthetic but to introduce new ways of life, both stylistically and as a representation of modern lifestyle. Koenig was able to hone in on the vision of Buck Stahl and transform that vision into a modernist icon. The glass and steel construction is the most identifiable trait of the house’s architectural modernism, however, way in which Koenig organized the spatial layout of the house, taking both public and private aspects into great consideration, is also notable. As much as architectural modernism is associated with the materials and methods of construction, the juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics. The house is “L”-shaped, completely separating the public and private sections except for a single hallway connecting them. The adjacent swimming pool, which must be crossed to enter the house, is not only a spatial division of public and private but it serves as the interstitial space in which visitors can best experience the panoramic views. The living space of the house is behind the pool and is the only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. The entire house is one large viewing box, capturing amazing perspectives of the house, the landscape, and Los Angeles. Oddly enough, the Stahl house was fairly unknown and unrecognized for its advancement of modern American residential architecture until 1960 when photographer Julius Shulman captured the pure architectural essence of the house in a shot of two women sitting in the living room overlooking the bright lights of the city of Los Angeles. That photo put the Stahl House on the architectural radar as an architectural gem hidden in the Hollywood Hills. The Stahl House is still one of the most visited and admired buildings today. It has undergone many interior transformations. Today, you will not find the same iconic 1960s furniture inside, but the architecture, the view, and the experience still remain.

Tags: Classic , Los Angeles

Information provided in part by: ArchDaily

Projects in West Hollywood

Bradbury building, caltrans district 7 headquarters, eames house, emerson college, getty center, griffith observatory, la county museum of art, petersen automotive museum, samitaur tower, sheats-goldstein residence, the broad museum, walt disney concert hall, wilshire grand.

• Hispanoamérica
• Work at ArchDaily
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

A Virtual Look Into Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #22, The Stahl House

• Written by Madlaina Kalunder and David Tran, Archilogic
• Published on November 30, 2015

Without a doubt, it’s among the most famous houses in Los Angeles . The house is easy to describe: a steel framed L-plan, divided into bedrooms and the communal living spaces, all wrapped around a turquoise pool seemingly impossibly poised above the city. But words don’t do it justice. Julius Shulman ’s 1960 photograph of Pierre Koenig ’s Case Study House 22, perhaps better known as Stahl House, changed the fantasies of a generation.

Shulman’s photograph of, or rather through, Stahl House made plate glass and steel girders, materials normally too industrial to be accepted by home owners, seem glamorous. It was magazine genius: a vouyeristic image of two women in a glass lined room, suspended above the lights of Los Angeles , seen from outside the glass, the ambiguous perspective of either a guest leaving late, or an intruder arriving unannounced—whatever you wanted it to be. Shulman’s notorious photo is more subtle than it first appears. The architecture is not so much shown as hinted at by the geometric underside of the roof, and the city is brought closer by the careful double exposure and the reflected image of the ceiling lamp that appears like a double moon inside and outside the house. Shulman’s genius was that he understood architectural photography first and foremost in terms of film, and not least Hollywood, the dream factory down the road. Where other photographers took static descriptive images of entire houses, Shulman made film stills, frozen moments from places you wished you lived in. When printed in John Entenza’s influential Californian magazine Arts and Architecture , Shulman’s photographs worked like an intoxicant on a generation of post-war architects.

The official agenda of Entenza’s Case Study House program was to reimagine the typical family dwelling using postwar materials and technology. They were meant to be affordable, and replicable, houses for a confident democratic society. But the irony is that almost all of the case study houses were one-offs, modernist gems that were never replicated. Instead of using the best of postwar technology, the building industry used the booming market to cover America in suburban tract housing built by a deunionised and deskilled workforce. Wooden frames proved cheaper than steel, and required less skill to manage. The Stahl House represents an alternative history, a custom built precision architecture that everyone wanted but few ended up getting.

The Stahl house itself was a classic American story, a house built as much by sheer force of will as from the application of contemporary technology. The site was believed to be too steep to build upon, so the owner, C H “Buck“ Stahl, a retired professional football player, heaped up the terraces supporting the structure more or less by hand, and made models of a curving, glass walled home over a year before finding an architect with the courage to take the commission. Pierre Koenig rationalized Stahl’s original plans, but recently rediscovered photographs of the early models suggest that this is one of those cases where the client deserves credit as a co-designer.

Paradoxically, for the most glamorous house in America, it’s all about family. From the street, there’s almost nothing visible. The house presents a blank wall. The schism between privacy and view could not be more extreme. The 3D model from Archilogic shows the strong shift in atmosphere between the photogenic public spaces and the rarely photographed bedrooms, which are clearly designed to offer a feeling of enclosure, and security, in spite of the steep drop only a short distance away.

Although on July 24, 2013, a half a century after completion, the Stahl House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, finally affording it the recognition it deserved, there’s still a strange split between the postwar houses of figures like Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson , and the case study houses of the Eameses , or Pierre Koenig . Whereas Mies and Johnson were drawing on an architecture that went back as far as ancient Greece, and they knew it, the Eameses breezily rejected the weight of tradition. Koenig is a more ambiguous figure. He built, and he taught, for most of his life. He was fascinated by the properties of steel, and he did idealistically motivated work—notably with the Chemehuevi indians when he taught at USC—but nothing ever brought him the fame and recognition of the magazine friendly pieces from early in his career.

So how much does it cost to live in a modernist masterpiece?

Well, Buck Stahl paid the outrageous sum (for the 1950s) of $13,500 for the land, and another $37,651 for the house and pool. At the time of writing, Zillow estimates the value of the house as $2,531,800 (or between 2.23 million and 3.11 million), Trulia’s algorithms estimate its value slightly lower than average for a Hollywood property, at $2,237,000, and Realtor guesses $2,042,328. The real value of the house is almost certainly higher, much higher. A story in the Los Angeles Times (June 27, 2009) reported that Stahl’s widow, Carlotta, and their three children turned down offers as high as $15 million for the house since Buck passed away, but whatever the offer was, the family didn’t sell, so the house is effectively priceless. That’s quite a premium for great architecture.

Don't miss Archilogic's previous models shared on ArchDaily, including Pierre Koenig's other Case Study House #21 , The Eames Case Study House #8 and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House and Barcelona Pavilion .

• Sustainability

想阅读文章的中文版本吗?

Pierre Koenig虚拟现实住宅研究22号，Stahl住宅

You've started following your first account, did you know.

You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.

• Support ICP
• Become a Member

Case Study House #22

Gift of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York and Craig Kroll Gallery, Los Angeles, 2001

Filed under:

Creating the iconic Stahl House

Two dreamers, an architect, a photographer, and the making of America’s most famous house

In 1953 a mutual friend introduced Clarence Stahl, better known as Buck, to Carlotta Gates. They met at the popular Mike Lyman’s Flight Deck restaurant, off Century Boulevard, which overlooked the runways at Los Angeles International Airport. Buck was 41 and Carlotta 24. The couple married a year later and remained together for more than 50 years, until Buck’s death in 2005.

Working with Pierre Koenig, an independent young architect whose primary materials were glass, steel, and concrete, the couple created perhaps the most widely recognized house in Los Angeles, and one of the most iconic homes ever built. No one famous ever lived in it, nor was it the site of a Hollywood scandal or constructed for a wealthy owner. It was just the Stahls’ dream home. And it almost did not come true.

As a newlywed, Carlotta moved into the house Buck was renting—the lower half of a two-story wood-frame house on Hillside Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, just west of Crescent Heights Boulevard and north of Sunset Boulevard. From the house, Buck and Carlotta looked across a ridge toward a promontory that drew their attention every morning and evening. As Carlotta explained during an interview with USC history professor Philip Ethington, this is how the dream of building their own home started: simply and incidentally. Although they felt emotionally and psychically drawn to the promontory, they did not have the financial means to buy the lot, even if it were available.

For months they looked intently across the ridge. Then, in May 1954, the couple decided “Let’s go over and see our lot. We’d already claimed it even though we’d never been here,” Carlotta told Ethington, adding, “And when we came up that day George Beha [the owner of the lot] was in from La Jolla. He and Buck talked, then, I would say an hour, hour and [a] half later, they shook hands. We bought the lot and he agreed to carry the mortgage.” They settled on a price of $13,500. At the end of their meeting, Buck gave Beha $100 as payment to make the agreement binding.

There were no houses along the hillside near the site that would become the Stahl House on Woods Drive, although the land was getting graded in anticipation of development. Richard D. Larkin, a real estate developer, acquired the lots on the ridge in a tax sale from the city of Los Angeles around 1958 and arranged to subdivide and grade them. The city hauled away the dirt without charge to use the decomposed granite for runway construction at LAX. In the process, the city made the road for Woods Drive.

The Stahls’ chance meeting with Beha abruptly made their vision more of a reality, but building was still a long way away. After nearly four years of mortgage payments to Beha, Buck prepared the lot for construction. He did this without having building specs, but knowing it would be necessary to shape the difficult hillside lot. In the first of many do-it-yourself accomplishments, he built up the edges to make the lot flat and level. To create a larger buildable area he laid the edge of the foundation with broken concrete, which was readily available at no cost from construction sites and provided Buck with flexibility for his layout. He could also lift and move the pieces without heavy equipment. He constructed a concrete wall and terracing with broken pieces of concrete. But he was told by architects and others that his effort would not improve the buildability of the property.

The developer, Larkin, showed Buck how to lay out and stack the concrete, Buck recalled to Ethington. It was not a completely new concept, as photographer Julius Shulman, whose photograph of the Stahl House would later become internationally recognized, used broken concrete in the landscaping on his property. But Buck’s use was far more labor-intensive and consuming. On evenings and weekends he managed to pick up discarded concrete from construction sites around Los Angeles, asking the foremen if he could haul the debris away. He did this dozens of times before collecting enough for the concrete wall.

Buck used decomposed granite from the lot and surrounding area, instead of fresh cement, to fill in the gaps between the concrete pieces. The result was a solid form that remains intact and stable today, almost 60 years later. What had been the underlying layer for a man-made structure became the underlying layer for a new man-made structure—Buck’s layers of broken concrete added another facet to the topography of the house and the city, and this hands-on development of the lot connected the Stahls to the land and house.

As they completed their final monthly payments, Buck finished a scale model of their dream home, and the couple began to look for an architect. The central architectural feature of the model was a butterfly roof combined with flat-roofed areas. From the beginning, Buck and Carlotta envisioned a glass house without walls blocking the panoramic view.

Their frequent visits to the lot intensified their desire to build a home of their own design. Like an architect, Buck studied the composition of the land, the shape of the lot, the direction of light, and the best way to ensure the views. Perhaps most importantly, he considered the architectural style that would ideally highlight these qualities.

Carlotta told Ethington they decided to meet with three architects whose work they had seen in different publications: Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig, and one more whom she did not remember. She said Ellwood and the unidentified architect “came to the lot [and] said we were crazy. ‘You’ll never be able to build up here.’”

When Koenig visited the site with the Stahls, he and Buck “just clicked right away,” according to Carlotta. In the 1989 documentary The Case Study House Program, 1945-1966: An Anecdotal History & Commentary , Koenig recalled how Buck “wanted a 270-degree panorama view unobstructed by any exterior wall or sheer wall or anything at all, and I could do it.” The Stahls appreciated Koenig’s enthusiasm and willingness to work with them. They had a written agreement in November of 1957.

The massive spans of glass and the cantilevering of the structure, essential aspects of the design to Koenig, precluded traditional wood-frame house construction. To ensure the open floorplan, uninterrupted views, and the structure required to create those features, steel became inevitable. Steel would also offer greater stability than wood during an earthquake. The use of exposed glass, steel, and concrete was a functional and economic decision that defined the aesthetics of the house. In combination, these industrial materials were not then common choices in home construction, though they were materials Koenig used frequently. Exposing the material structure of the house illuminated its transparency as an indoor-outdoor living space.

Koenig kept the spirit of Buck’s model, but removed a key aspect: the butterfly roof. Koenig flattened the roof and removed the curves from Buck’s design, so the house consisted of two rectangular boxes that formed an L.

When he sited the house and drew his preliminary plans, Koenig aligned the house so that the roof and structural cantilever mirrored the grid-like arrangement of the streets below the lot. Once completed, the house visually extended into the Los Angeles cityscape. The symmetry enhanced the connection between the house and the land. In The Case Study House Program 1945-1966 documentary, Koenig says, “When you look out along the beams it carries your eye out right along the city streets, and the [horizontal] decking disappears into the vanishing point and takes your eye out and the house becomes one with the city below.”

With the design completed, the Stahls’ dream was closer to coming to life, but there were further obstacles. The unconventional design of the house and its hillside construction made it difficult to secure a traditional home loan; banks repeatedly turned down Buck because it was considered too risky. As Buck explained to Ethington, “Pierre [kept] looking [for financing] and he had his rounds of contacts.” Koenig was finally able to arrange financing for the Stahls through Broadway Federal Savings and Loan Association, an African-American-owned bank in Los Angeles.

Broadway Federal had one unusual condition for the construction loan: The Stahls were required to secure a second loan for the construction of a pool and would need another bank to finance it. They had had a yard in mind, but a pool would increase the overall cost of the home—for the bank, it added value to the property and made the loan less risky.

After more searching, Buck found a lender for the pool construction so both projects could proceed. Broadway Federal loaned the Stahls $34,000. The second lender financed the pool at a cost of approximately $3,800.

Broadway Federal’s loan is ironic and extraordinary. Although it was not a reflection of the Stahls’ own values, the area that included their lot had legally filed Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions from 1948 that indicated “the property shall not, nor shall any part thereof be occupied at any time by any person not of the Caucasian race, except that servants of other than the Caucasian race may be employed and kept thereon.” It was a discriminatory restriction against African Americans, and yet an African-American-owned bank made it possible for a Caucasian couple to build their home there.

When Pierre Koenig began work on the Stahl House, he was 32 years old and had built seven of the more than 40 projects he would design in his career. The Stahl House is the best known and is considered his masterwork, although Koenig considered the Gantert House (1981) in the Hollywood Hills the most challenging house he built. The long-term influence of the Stahl House is apparent in Gantert House and many of Koenig’s other projects.

Koenig built his first house in 1950—for himself—during his third year of architecture school at USC. It was a steel, glass, and cement structure. Although the architecture program had dropped its focus on Beaux Arts studies and modernism was coming to the fore, residential use of steel was not part of Koenig’s curriculum. But when he looked at the post-and-beam architecture then considered the standard of modern architecture, he felt the wood structures looked thin and fragile, and should be made of steel instead.

Koenig later told interviewer Michael LaFetra about a conversation with his instructor: “He said ‘No, you cannot use steel as an industrial material for domestic architecture. You cannot mix them up. The housewife won’t like [steel houses].’ The more he said I couldn’t do it, the more I wanted to do it. That’s my nature. He failed me. I got absolutely no help from him.”

But wartime production methods, particularly arc welding, were a source of inspiration for Koenig’s use of steel. Electric arc welding did not require bolts or rivets and instead created a rigid connection between beams and columns. Cross-bracing was not required, which opened greater possibilities: Aesthetically, it offered a streamlined look and allowed him to design a large open framework for unobstructed glass walls. The thin lines of the steel looked incidental compared to their strength.

His first house was originally designed as a wood building, but redesigned for steel construction. He commented years later that that was not the way to do it—he learned how to design for steel by taking an entirely new approach. There was little precedent to support his efforts: Such discoveries were an education for him, and he worked to resolve issues on his own. In Esther McCoy’s book Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 , Koenig declares, “Steel is not something you can put up and take down. It is a way of life.”

From then on, Koenig continued to develop his architectural vision—both pragmatic and philosophical. Prefabricated housing was a promising development following the war, but consumers found the homes’ cookie-cutter, invariable design unappealing. Koenig’s goal was to use industrialized components in different ways to create unique, innovative buildings using the same standard parts: endless variations with the core materials of glass, steel, and cement. Koenig’s intention, as captured in James Steel’s biography Pierre Koenig , “was to be part of a mechanism that could produce billions of homes, like sausages or cars in a factory.”

“The basic problem is whether the product is well designed in the first place,” Koenig further explained in a 1957 Los Angeles Times article by architectural historian Esther McCoy. “There are too many advantages to mass production to ignore it. We must accept mass production but we must insist on well-designed products.”

Reducing the number of parts and avoiding small parts were ways to reduce costs and streamline construction. In the case of the Stahl House, the efficiencies generated by the minimal-parts approach led to an inventory of fewer than 60 building components. In 1960, in an interview for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner , Koenig said:

“All I have done is to take what we know about industrial methods and bring it to people who would accept it. You can make anything beautiful given an unlimited amount of money. But to do it within the limits of economy is different. That’s why I never have steel fabricated especially to my design. I use only stock parts. That is the challenge—to take these common everyday parts and work them into an aesthetically pleasing concept.”

Although Koenig completed a plot plan for the Stahl House in January 1958, he did not submit blueprints to the city of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety until that July. Due to the extensive use of steel and glass in a residential plan, combined with the hillside lot and dimensions and form that the department found irregular, the city did not consider the house up to code and would not approve construction. Instead they noted, “Board Action required to build on this site because of the extremely high steep slopes on the east and south sides.”

In a move typical of Koenig’s intellect and his ability to understand all details of construction, he prepared the technical drawings so he was able to discuss details with the planners. He spent several months explaining his design and material specifications to the city. Since they had not seen many plans for the extensive use of steel in home construction, the building officials asked him, “Why steel?”

In his interview with LaFetra, Koenig explained that he thought steel would last longer than wood and knew “building departments were not used to the ideas of modern architecture.” They would frown on “doing away with hip roof, shingles, you had to have a picket fence, window shutters.”

“The Building Department thought I was crazy,” Koenig said. “I can remember one of the engineers saying, ‘Why are you going to all this trouble? All you have to do is open up the code book and put down what’s in the code book. You could have a permit tomorrow.’ I asked myself, Why am I doing this?! I was motivated by some subconscious thing.” Koenig reduced the living room cantilever by 10 feet and removed the walkway around the house in order to move the plans forward.

He finally received approval in January 1959. Carlotta remembers, “One of the officials … said [there’ll] never be another house built like this ’cause they didn’t like the big windows. That was one of the things that bothered them more than anything, and the fact that we’re cantilevered.”

The city’s lengthy approval process contrasted with Koenig’s quick construction of the house. Due to its minimalist structural design and reduced number of building components compared to traditional wood construction, framing of the house was simplified. A crew of five men completed the job in one day.

The challenges of building were known, and they primarily related to the lot. “There’s very little land situated on this eagle nest high above Sunset Boulevard,” Koenig explained in the documentary film about the Case Study House Program. “So the swimming pool and the garage went on the best part, mainly because who wants to spend a lot of money supporting swimming pools and garages? And it’s very hard to support a pool on the edge of a cliff. The house it could handle. So the house is on the precarious edge.”

With the exception of the steel-frame fireplace (chimney and flue were prefabricated and brought to the site), Koenig used only two types of standard structural steel components: 12-inch beams and 4-inch H columns. The result is a profound demonstration of Koenig’s technical and aesthetic expertise with rigid-frame construction. The elimination of load-bearing walls on this scale represented the most advanced use of technology and materials for residential architecture ever.

Koenig’s success with steel-frame construction is partially due to William Porush, the structural engineer for the Stahl House. Porush engineered more than half of Koenig’s projects, beginning with Koenig’s first house in 1950.

A native of Russia, Porush emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1926. After working for a number of firms in Los Angeles and later with the LA Department of Building and Safety during World War II, Porush opened his own office in 1946 and eventually designed his own post-and-beam house in Pasadena in 1956.

The scale of his projects ranged from commercial buildings using concrete tilt-up construction in downtown Los Angeles to professional offices in Glendale, light industrial engineering, and a number of schools in Southern California—including traditional wood and brick, glass, and steel schools in Riverside.

Love midcentury homes?

Compare notes with other obsessives in our private Facebook group. 

When Porush retired at 89 years old, his son Ted ran the practice for several years before retiring himself. Speaking of both his and his father’s experience working with Koenig in 2012, Ted said, “Koenig was quite devoted and always had something in mind all the time without being unreasonable or obstinate, really an artist perhaps,” and added that he and his father “welcomed Koenig’s engineering challenges—whether related to innovations, materials, or budget constraints.”

General contractor Robert J. Brady was the other key member of Koenig’s Stahl House crew. Brady gained industry experience running a construction business in Ojai, California, where he was a school teacher. This was the only time Brady and Koenig worked together, as Koenig was dissatisfied, he later wrote, with Brady’s management of the Stahl House, as indicated in a letter to Brady himself in the Pierre Koenig papers at the Getty Research Institute.

In 1957, Koenig approached Bethlehem Steel about the development of a program for architects using light-steel framing in home construction. At the time, Bethlehem Steel did not see a market or need to formalize a program. Residential use of steel, while known, was still very uncommon.

“The steel house is out of the pioneering stage, but radically new technologies are long past due,” Koenig explained in an interview with Esther McCoy. “Any large-scale experiment of this nature must be conducted by industry, for the architect cannot afford it. Once it is undertaken, the steel house will cost less than the wood house.”

By 1959, Bethlehem Steel saw how quickly the market was changing and started a Pacific Coast Steel Division in Los Angeles to work specifically with architects. The division then shared their preliminary specifications with Koenig for architecturally exposed steel and solicited his comments and opinions.

To introduce Bethlehem’s new marketing effort, they published a booklet in 1960, “The Steel-Framed House: A Bethlehem Steel Report Showing How Architects and Designers Are Making Imaginative Use of Light-Steel Framing In Houses.” Koenig’s Bailey House (CSH No. 21) and the Stahl House both appeared in the booklet. Bethlehem promoted Koenig’s architecture with Shulman photographs and accompanying text: “What could be more sensible than to make this magnificent view of Los Angeles a part of the house—to ‘paper the walls’ with it?” and “Problem Sites? Not with steel framing!” The brochure showed multiple views of the Stahl House.

For architects, having work published during this time led to recognition and often translated to future projects. Arts & Architecture magazine and its publisher John Entenza played an essential role in promoting Koenig’s architecture. Entenza conceived of the Case Study House Program in the months prior to the end of World War II, in anticipation of the demand for affordable, thoughtfully designed middle-class housing, and introduced it in the magazine’s January 1945 issue. The purpose of the program was to promote new ways of living based on advances in design, construction, building methods, and materials.

After the war, an impetus to produce new forms emerged. In architecture, that meant a move away from traditionally built homes and toward modern design. The postwar availability of industrial and previously restricted materials, especially glass, steel, and cement, offered architects freedom to pursue new ideas. In addition to materials, the modern approach in home design resulted in less formal floor plans that could offer continuity, ease of flow, multipurpose spaces, fewer interior walls, sliding glass walls and doors, entryways, and carports. Homes were generally built with a flat roof, which helped define a horizontal feel. Interior finishes were simple and unadorned, and there was no disguising of materials.

The absence of traditional details became part of the new aesthetic. Both exterior and interior structures were simplified. This all contributed to perhaps the most significant appeal of postwar architecture in Southern California: indoor-outdoor living. By physically, visually, and psychologically integrating the indoors and outdoors, it offered a new, casual way of life that more actively connected people to their environment. Combined with year-round mild weather, these new houses afforded a growing sense of independence and freedom of expression.

Arts & Architecture presented works-in-progress and completed homes throughout its pages, devoting more space in the magazine to the modern movement than other publications. Trends with finishes, built-ins, and low-cost materials spread across homes in Southern California after publication in Arts & Architecture . The magazine’s modern aesthetic extended across the country, where architects developed new solutions based on what they had seen in its pages. And since it reached dozens of countries, the international influence of California modernism through Entenza’s editorial eye was profound.

The Case Study House Program provided a point of focus. As noted by Elizabeth Smith, art historian and museum curator, all 36 of the Case Study houses were featured in the magazine, although only 24 were built. With the exception of one apartment building, they were all single-family residences completed between 1945 and 1966.

“John Entenza’s idea was that people would not really understand modern architecture unless they saw it, and they weren’t going to see it unless it was built,” Koenig said in James Steel’s monograph. “[Entenza’s] talent was to promulgate ideas that many architects had at that time.”

In conjunction with the magazine, Entenza sponsored open houses at recently completed Case Study houses, giving visitors the opportunity to experience the modern aesthetic. Contemporary design pieces such as furniture, lamps, floor coverings, and decorative objects created a context for everyday living. The open houses took on a realistic dimension that generated a range of responses: “Oh, steel, glass and cement are cold.” “This is not homey.” “Could I live here?” “How would I live here?”

The program gave architects exposure and in many cases brought them credibility and a new clientele—although it was not a wealth-generating endeavor for the architects. For manufacturers and suppliers, it was a convenient way to receive publicity since people could see their products or services in use.

The Case Study House Program did not achieve Entenza’s goal: the development of affordable housing based on the design of houses in the program. None of the houses spurred duplicates or widespread construction of like-designed homes. The motivation from the building industry to apply the program’s new approaches was short-lived and not widely adopted.

Speaking many years later, Koenig stated in Steel’s monograph that “in the end the program failed because it addressed clients and architects, rather than contractors, who do 95 percent of all housing.” Instead, the known, accepted, and traditional design, methods of construction, and materials continued to prevail. Buyers still largely preferred conventional homes—a fact reinforced by the standard type of construction taught in many architecture schools during the postwar years.

However, today the program must be considered highly successful for its impact on residential architecture, and for initiating the California Modern Movement. The program influenced architects, designers, manufacturers, homeowners, and future home buyers. As McCoy reported, “The popularity of the Case Studies exceeded all expectations. The first six houses to be opened [built between 1946 and 1949] received 368,554 visitors.” The houses in the program, and their respective architects, now characterize their architectural era, representing the height of midcentury modern residential design.

The Stahl House became Case Study House No. 22 in the most informal way. With the success of Koenig’s Bailey House (CSH No. 21), Entenza told Koenig if he had another house for the program, to let him know. Koenig told him about his next project, the Stahl House.

In April 1959, months before construction started, Entenza and the Stahls signed an exclusive agreement indicating the house would become known as Case Study House No. 22 and appear in Arts & Architecture magazine. This also meant the house would be made available for public viewings over eight consecutive weekends and Entenza had the rights to publish photographs and materials in connection with the house. Additionally, he had approval of the furnishings. (He included an option for the Stahls to buy any or all of the furnishings at a discount.)

By agreeing to make their house CSH No. 22, the Stahls were making their dream home more affordable. Equipment and material suppliers sold at cost in exchange for advertising space in the magazine. The arrangement gave Koenig the opportunity to negotiate further with vendors, since he was likely to use them in the future. Buck estimated in his interview with Ethington that it “ended up saving us conservatively $10,000 or $15,000” on the construction.

The house was featured in Arts & Architecture four times between May 1959 and May 1960, in articles documenting its progress and completion.

Arts & Architecture only ended up opening the house for public viewings on four weekends, from May 7 to May 29, 1960. The showings were well attended, and the shorter schedule meant the Stahls could move into the house sooner.

The Stahl House is a 2,200-square-foot home with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, built on an approximately 12,000-square-foot lot.

Construction began in May 1959 and was completed a year later, in May 1960. The pre-construction built estimate was $25,000, with Koenig to receive his usual 10 percent architect’s fee. His agreement with the Stahls additionally provided him 10 percent of any savings he secured on construction materials. The budget for the house was revised to $34,000, but Koenig’s fee of $2,500 did not change.

The final cost was over $15 per square foot—notably more than the average cost per square foot of $10 to $12 in Southern California at the time.

During its lifetime, the Stahl House has had very few modifications. For a short time, AstroTurf surrounded the pool area to serve as a lawn and make the area less slippery for the Stahls’ three children. There have been minor kitchen remodels with necessary updates to appliances. The kitchen cabinets, which were originally dark mahogany, were replaced with matched-grain white-oak cabinets due to fading caused by heavy exposure to sunlight. A catwalk along the outside of the living room, on the west side, was added to make it easier to wash the windows. Stones were applied to the fireplace, which was originally white-painted gypsum board with a stone base. A stone planter was also added to match the base. The pool was converted to solar heat.

These changes maintain the spirit of the house. Perhaps without effort, Koenig activated what architect William Krisel termed “defensive architecture”: building to preempt alterations and keep a structure as originally designed. Koenig's original steel design, comprehending potential earthquake risk, remains superior to traditional building materials.

The Stahl House has served as the setting for dozens of films, television shows, music videos, and commercials. Its appearances in print advertisements number in the hundreds. By Koenig’s count, the house can be seen in more than 1,200 books.

At times, the house has played a leading role. Its first commercial use was in 1962, when the Stahls made the house available for the Italian film Smog not long after they moved in.

Movies featuring the Stahl House

The First Power (1990)

The Marrying Man (1991)

Corina Corina (1994)

Playing By Heart (1998)

Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1998)

Galaxy Quest (1999)

The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

Nurse Betty (2000)

Where the Truth Lies (2005)

In Los Angeles magazine, years later, Carlotta recalled the production: “One of the days they were shooting, the view was too clear, so they got spray and smogged the windows.” The Stahls grew to accept such requests, and the result has been decades of commercial use.

Koenig explained its attraction in the New York Times : “The relationship of the house to the city below is very photogenic … the house is open and has simple lines, so it foregrounds the action. And it’s malleable. With a little color change or different furniture, you can modify its emotional content, which you can’t do in houses with a fixed mood and image.”

This versatility offers a wide range of settings, from kitsch to urbane, comedy to drama. The house has also been rendered in 3D software for various architectural studies and appears in the game The Sims 3 , perhaps the most revealing proof of its demographic reach.

In nearly all appearances, the Stahl House conveys a sense of livability that is aspirational while remaining accessible. It reflects Koenig’s skillful architectural purpose. The architect is invisible by design. Understandably, Koenig was very pleased to see the frequent and varied use of the Stahl House. However, as he said in the New York Times , “My gripe is the movies use [houses] as props but never list the architect in the credits.” He added, “Architects, of course, get no residuals from it. The Stahls paid off the original $35,000 mortgage for the house and pool in a couple of years through location rentals, and now the house is their entire income.”

Once Buck retired in 1978, renting the house for commercial use became an especially helpful way to supplement their income. Today the family offers tours and rents the house for events and media activities. They also honor Carlotta’s restriction, noted in a 2001 interview with Los Angeles magazine: “I will not allow nudity. My Case Study House is not going to be associated with that.”

“Julius Shulman called. ... He’ll be there tonight. Call him at 6 p.m. and make arrangements for tonite. By then he’d appreciate it if you would know if Stahl could put off moving in until pictures are shot.”

This ordinary call logged in Koenig’s office journal eventually led to the creation of one of the most iconic photographs of the postwar modern era.

However, delays with completing interior details almost prevented Shulman from photographing the house and meeting his publication deadline, even after he negotiated with his editor to change it several times. The potential of missing an opportunity to promote the house frustrated Koenig. “As you know we were supposed to shoot Monday [April 18, 1960],” he wrote to his general contractor, Robert Brady:

“The deadline has been changed once but it is impossible to change it again. The die is set. Mr. Van Keppel is waiting to move furniture in. Shulman comes by the job every day to see when he can shoot. Mr. Entenza is shouting for photos so he can print the next issue. The president of Bethlehem is supposed to visit the finished house this Friday [April 22]. There is to be a press conference this week-end. Not to mention Mr. Stahl. This will give you some idea of the pressure being put on.”

After Brady completed the finishing work, and months after it was originally scheduled, Shulman photographed the house over the course of a week. There was still construction material in the carport, and the master bathroom was not complete.

The color image of the two women sitting in the house with the city lights at night first appeared on the cover of the July 17, 1960, Los Angeles Examiner Pictorial Living section, a pull-out section in the Sunday edition of the newspaper. The article about the house, “Milestone on a Hilltop,” also included additional Shulman photographs.

By the time Shulman photographed the Stahl House he was an internationally recognized photographer. He was indirectly becoming a documentarian, historian, participant, witness, and promulgator of modern architecture and design in Los Angeles.

The Stahl House photograph, taken Monday, May 9, 1960, has the feel of a Saturday night, projecting enjoyment and life in a modern home. Shulman reinforces the open but private space by minimizing the separation of indoor and outdoor. The photograph achieves a visual balance through lighting that is both conventional and dramatic. As with much of Shulman’s signature work, horizontal and vertical lines and corners appear in the frame to create depth and direct the viewer’s eye, creating a dimensional perspective instead of a flat, straightforward position. The effect is a narrative that emphasizes Koenig’s architecture.

“What’s so amazing is that the house is completely ethereal,” architect Leo Marmol said in an interview with LaFetra in 2007. “It’s almost as though it’s not there. We talk about it as though it’s a photograph of an architectural expression but really, there’s very little architecture and space. It’s a view. It’s two people. It’s a relationship.”

Shulman recalled how the image came about in an interview with Taina Rikala De Noriega for the Archives of American Art:

So we worked, and it got dark and the lights came on and I think somebody had brought sandwiches. We ate in the kitchen, coffee, and we had a nice pleasant time. My assistant and I were setting up lights and taking pictures all along. I was outside looking at the view. And suddenly I perceived a composition. Here are the elements. I set up the furniture and I called the girls. I said, “Girls. Come over sit down on those chairs, the sofa in the background there.” And I planted them there, and I said, “You sit down and talk. I'm going outside and look at the view.” And I called my assistant and I said, “Hey, let's set some lights.” Because we used flash in those days. We didn't use floodlights. We set up lights, and I set up my camera and created this composition in which I assembled a statement. It was not an architectural quote-unquote “photograph.” It was a picture of a mood.

The two girls in the photograph were Ann Lightbody, a 21-year-old UCLA student, and her friend, Cynthia Murfee (now Tindle), a senior at Pasadena High School. At Shulman’s suggestion, Koenig told his assistant Jim Jennings, a USC architecture student, and his friend, fellow architecture student Don Murphy, to bring their girlfriends to the house. Shulman liked to include people in his photographs and intuitively felt the girls’ presence would offer more options. As for their white dresses, Tindle explains, “… in 1960, you didn't go out without wearing a dress. You would never have gone out wearing jeans or pants.”

In a rare explanation of the mechanics of his photography published in Los Angeles Magazine , Shulman described how he created the photograph: a double-exposure with two images captured on one negative with his Sinar 4x5 camera. He took the first image, a 7.5-minute exposure of the cityscape, while the girls sat still inside the house with the lights off. To ensure deep focus, he used a smaller lens opening (F/32) for the long exposure. After the exposure, Leland Lee, Shulman’s assistant, replaced the light bulbs in the globe-shaped ceiling lights with flash bulbs. Shulman then captured the second exposure, triggering the flash bulbs as the girls posed. The composite image belies Shulman’s technical and aesthetic achievement.

The same technique was applied when he photographed the man wearing the light-blue sport coat looking out over the city with his back to the camera. This photograph creates its own mystique around the man’s identity: perhaps a bachelor in repose, or homeowner Buck Stahl. But in fact, he was neither. The photograph was a pragmatic solution.

“We had been working all day photographing the house,” Shulman explained. “The representative from Bethlehem Steel was at the house. Bethlehem Steel provided the steel, and he was there to select certain areas they wanted to show for advertising. Pierre [Koenig] suggested we photograph the representative in the house, but the man from Bethlehem Steel could not be photographed as an employee of the company, so he stood in the doorway with his back to the camera.”

Shulman routinely staged interiors using furniture from his own home, particularly when a house was just completed or vacant. He believed realistic settings created warmth and helped viewers imagine scale. Placement of furniture could convey a clearer sense of life in a particular house and highlight the architecture. Although the Stahl House was vacant, Shulman did not bring in his own furniture. Instead, designer Hendrik Van Keppel of the firm Van Keppel-Green furnished the interiors in keeping with Koenig’s feeling that “everything in the house should be designed consistently with the same design throughout.”

Keppel-Green’s popular outdoor furniture, made with anodized metal frames and wrapped with nylon marine cord, are seen around the pool of the Stahl House. Although VKG sold “architectural pottery” in their design gallery, many of the large white planters both inside and outside the house were Koenig’s, which he brought over from his own house along with several outdoor pieces. For the interior, Van Keppel selected a different line of metal VKG pieces to parallel the thin lines of Koenig’s architecture. The furniture and other household goods made of steel and aluminum reflected the materials used in the construction.

Other pieces included a couch; a coffee table; side tables by Greta Grossman, made by Brown Saltman; and a chair, ottoman, and chaise by Stanley Young, made by Glenn of California. For the kitchen, Van Keppel arranged a set of Scandinavian pieces: Herbert Krenchel’s Krenit bowls made by Normann Copenhagen, Kobenstyle cookware by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk, and Descoware pans from Belgium.

Van Keppel placed the high-fidelity audio player in the dining area. The unit was from the A.E. Rediger Furniture Company, which also provided the kitchen appliances. The Prescolite lighting company, whose products ranged from commercial and industrial products down to desk lamps, provided the three large white-glass hanging globe lights: two inside, one outside (more than 55 years later, only the outside globe has been replaced).

The Stahls had the option to buy the furnishings, but as their daughter later said in a Los Angeles Times story about the house, “My mother always said she wished they would have left it, but my parents didn't have the money at the time.”

The popularity of Shulman’s photograph with the two girls speaks to the era’s postwar optimism and could be said to represent aspirational middle class ideals. Shulman received a variety of accolades for the photograph beginning in 1960, when he won first prize in the color category for architectural photography from the Architects Institute of America—the first time the AIA gave an award for a color photograph. As part of a traveling program arranged through the Smithsonian Institution, hundreds of people saw the photograph at nearly a dozen museums and university art galleries across the country from 1962 to 1964.

Then, as now, the photograph with the two girls is more often associated with its photographer than with the architect. “People request the photograph, or an editor or publisher writing to me or calling me says, ‘I want the picture of the two girls,’” Shulman explains. “They don’t say the Pierre Koenig house. All they ask is the picture of the two girls. That’s what creates an impact. This picture is now the most widely published architectural picture in the world since it was taken in 1960.”

That was not always the case. After the photograph first appeared as the cover for the Los Angeles Examiner Pictorial Living section, it virtually disappeared. Koenig told LaFetra: “That was the last of it until Reyner Banham was going through Julius’s file and he saw the picture of the two girls and he said ‘Oh, I like this. Can I use this?’ and Julius said, ‘Sure.’ [Banham] used it in one of his articles and it took off, it just caught on like crazy.” The photograph resurfaced in Banham’s essential 1971 book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies .

Smog , the first Italian film produced in the United States, as noted by the New York Times , was shot entirely in Los Angeles.

The story’s central character is a formal, class-conscious, wealthy Italian lawyer played by Enrico Maria Salerno. En route to Mexico for a divorce case, he arrives at LAX for an extended layover. A representative from the airline encourages him to leave the airport and return later for his flight. He begins a 24-hour odyssey that involves meeting several Italians making new lives for themselves, having left Italy and its postwar political and economic struggles.

One of the expatriates Salerno meets in Hollywood is a woman, played by Annie Girardot, who is conflicted by her independence. The Stahl House features prominently as Girardot’s home. To varying degrees, the characters, especially Salerno and Girardot, struggle with the contradictions of modern life and tradition, resulting in feelings of alienation, hope, and despair. Emotionally, Smog is an Italian story transplanted to Los Angeles, where the characters’ psychological landscape parallels the topography of the city, incorporating the city’s air pollution as a character.

Curiously, the film credits an entirely different residence—the Geodesic Dome House designed by Bernard Judge—and that property’s owner, industrial designer Hendrik de Kanter. Neither the Stahls, their home, nor Koenig are acknowledged. Along with Judge’s appearance in a party scene, the error perpetuates the misidentification of the Stahl House in the film.

CSH No. 22 remains virtually unchanged since Smog was released. Its countless media appearances since then continue to convey the ideals and lifestyle represented by the house. Its influence is cross-generational and international: Instead of perpetuating an architectural cliche of residential living, the house is symbolic and inspirational; its identity and feeling are unmistakable. Rarely has a combination of client and architect, minimal use of materials, and uncomplicated design created such lasting dramatic impact.

Editor: Adrian Glick Kudler

How to Avert the Next Housing Crisis

The neighbors issue, can a neighborhood become a network, share this story.

Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 as home

• Copy Link URL Copied!

Each Christmas they hung their homemade stockings from the crannies of the rock-faced fireplace in the living room. Summers found them diving off the flat roof into the pool for coins their grandfather threw into the deep end, or playing safari in the dense foliage of the hillside below their house, under the glass-enclosed room that cantilevered precipitously above them.

FOR THE RECORD: Stahl house: A June 27 story on Case Study House No. 22 said 1956 news coverage of architect Pierre Koenig’s work was most likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The coverage was likely in a pictorial section of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express. —

For the Stahl children -- Bruce, Sharon and Mark -- who grew up roller skating on the concrete floors of Case Study House No. 22, the glass-and-steel pavilion perched in the Hollywood Hills has always been more than a landmark. It has been more than the house in Julius Shulman’s famed 1960 photo of two pretty girls suspended in time, floating above the twinkling lights of the city -- arguably the most iconic image of midcentury L.A.

For the children of C.H. “Buck” Stahl and his wife, Carlotta, the house was and always will be “just home.”

As the Stahl house celebrates its 50th birthday and opens for public tours this weekend, perhaps what’s most remarkable is how little people know about the property, despite its fame. The house has appeared in more than 1,200 newspaper and magazine articles, journals and books, not to mention a slew of films, TV shows and commercials.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t think of the house you live in as being anything unusual,” says Mark Stahl, 42, whose family still owns the home. “I first began to think of it as something special in junior high when film companies rented the house to shoot movies. Then later, after bus tours of architects from all over the world began coming, the architectural importance of our home began to sink in.”

Three sides of the home were made of plate glass -- the largest available at the time -- that made for fabulous views. But the windows were not the tempered safety glass used today, and they could shatter into a thousand jagged pieces if anyone were to walk -- or roller skate -- into one accidentally. The radiant-heated concrete floors were sleek, but they were hard and unforgiving for toddlers who fell a lot. Then there was the cantilevered living room that extended 10 feet over the hill -- so dramatic, but just how did one wash all those windows or put up Christmas lights under the eaves?

Eldest son Bruce Stahl, a 2-year-old when the family moved into the house in the summer of 1960, recalls his dad putting up a chain-link fence under the house where the children used to play, simply to keep them from falling down the hillside.

The floors have since been covered with wall-to-wall carpet, the windows have been replaced with shatterproof glass and the cantilevered living room has been given a narrow walkway around its perimeter for window washers.

To many, though, the house will be forever frozen in 1960, the moment when those two pretty girls sat for Shulman’s photo. Nevermind that they were not members of the Stahl family -- just two students that the photographer used as models. And all that glorious midcentury furniture in the living room? Every piece was brought in by casual furniture maker Van Keppel-Green to decorate the house for its premiere in the pages of Arts & Architecture magazine as part of the Case Study House Program.

Begun in 1945, the program aimed to introduce the middle class to the beauty of modernism: simplicity of form, natural light, a seamless connection between inside and out. Owners agreed to open up their homes as part of the program, but after the public tours wrapped at the Stahl house, every stick of furniture was hauled away, daughter Sharon Stahl Gronwald says.

“My mother always said she wished they would have left it,” says Gronwald, 49. “They were given the option to buy the furniture, but my parents didn’t have the money at the time.”

Indeed, over the years the house has been appointed with contemporary furnishings with nary a midcentury chair in sight.

Perhaps the most surprising fact is that the original inspiration for the design may not have come from architect Pierre Koenig but rather his client, Buck Stahl.

Before the children were born, the house was the dream of Buck Stahl, a former professional football player, his children say, then a purchasing agent for Hughes Aircraft. In 1954, he and Carlotta were renting a house in the Hollywood Hills when he spotted grading equipment on an empty lot nearby.

“My dad told me he went down to see what was happening, and the owner just happened to be there,” Mark Stahl says. “Two hours later, he shook hands on a deal.”

Sale price: $13,500.

“At the time he got a lot of teasing from the family,” says son Bruce, 50. “In those days you could have gotten a three-bedroom home in the flats for the amount my dad paid just for the lot. My grandfather told my dad, ‘You’ll never get your money out.’ The whole family thought my parents were crazy.”

Buck Stahl spent two years collecting broken-up concrete from construction sites and hauling it to the lot in his Cadillac convertible. He dedicated most weekends to building the retaining walls for what would be the front and back of the house. In the Life magazine article “Way Up Way of Living on California’s Cliffs,” dated Feb. 23, 1962, Stahl is shown dangling “1,000 feet above Los Angeles” from a rope tied around his waist, planting ivy around his concrete terracing to secure the hillside.

Architect Koenig was hired in 1957. Construction didn’t begin until September 1959 and finished in May 1960. The two-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house cost $34,000 to build; the pool, $3,651 more. Buck passed away four years ago, and today Carlotta and the three children have no intention of selling, though there’s a list of wannabe owners -- recognizable figures in the film and fashion world, the family says, although they decline to cite names. The highest offer so far: $15 million.

That might be the end of the story if it were not for a previously unpublished photo from the family album. Taken in July 1956, 16 months before Koenig received the commission, the image shows a shirtless Stahl posing with his nephew Bobby Duemler next to a large-scale model of a glass-and-steel house. It bears more than a passing resemblance to the iconic design attributed to Koenig.

Is it possible that Stahl deserves some of the credit for the house?

The children say the initial concept of the home was their father’s, though it’s possible he may have been influenced by Koenig’s other work when building the model. Buck Stahl had seen photos of the architect’s elegant steel and glass homes before the two men ever met. In a 2001 Los Angeles Magazine article, Carlotta remembered seeing a “pictorial section of the Sunday paper,” most likely the Pictorial Living Section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1956, which featured layouts of Koenig’s work. The family archives include an article from Roberts News by Toni Edgerton in 1957 that talked about Koenig’s steel homes.

“My dad always wanted to build his own house with a completely unobstructed view of the mountains to the sea,” Bruce Stahl says. “I think he’s not given enough credit for the initial design of the home. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s pretty darn close.”

Brother Mark agrees, saying that their father played a larger role in the design than history has recorded.

“It was a collaboration,” he says. “Pierre bought into my dad’s vision but made alterations to make it buildable. In the end, he gave my dad what he wanted.”

The CA Boom contemporary design show this weekend will include shuttle tours of the home, still considered by many the archetypal 20th century Southern California house. Show impresario Charles Trotter says the “aha” moment for attendees will be when they learn the extent to which Buck Stahl worked with Pierre Koenig “in this masterpiece of modern architecture.”

However, the architect’s widow, Gloria Koenig, dismisses the idea that the house should be credited to Stahl.

“Pierre used to say that every client thinks they designed their house,” she says, “and this is a perfect example of that.”

Architect and writer Joseph Giovannini, former architecture critic of the Herald Examiner, recalls Stahl telling him that he had “given Pierre the idea for the house.”

“I dismissed it as typical owner hubris at the time,” Giovannini says. However, upon seeing the photograph of the model, he changed his mind.

“The gesture of the house cantilevering over the side of the hill into the distant view is clearly here in this model,” he says. “But it is Pierre’s skill that elevated the idea into a masterpiece. This is one of the rare cases it seems that there is a shared authorship.”

One thing seems certain: Koenig was the right architect at the right time. Others had turned down the project. The jagged-edged hillside lot was problematic, and Buck Stahl insisted on a 270-degree uninterrupted view. He also had Champagne tastes and a beer budget, the children say.

According to family lore, Koenig honed Buck Stahl’s ideas into a masterpiece. In Stahl’s model, the two-bedroom wing along the pool was curved, with the carport between the bedrooms. Koenig straightened out the curve, relocated the carport to the end and changed the butterfly-type roof to a flat tar-and-gravel roof.

“The design indeed shares certain similarities with what was later built, but Pierre Koenig would never have introduced curving forms into his work, and I’m struck by the pronounced arc of the house’s wings in Stahl’s model,” says Elizabeth Smith, a former curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and organizer of the seminal 1989 exhibit “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses.”

“From this I can infer that Koenig adhered to the basic attributes of Stahl’s concept but refined the design into something much more rigorous, geometric and ‘pure’ in its form and materials -- in essence adapting it to his own vocabulary.”

One of Koenig’s innovations was to use the largest possible sheets of glass available at the time for residential construction, reducing the presence of framing elements so that the house seems to float, Smith says.

Adds Giovannini: “Koenig suspended disbelief along with gravity when he designed the daring, transparent structure, capturing in a single building what modern life in a modern house could be.”

In the end, Buck, Carlotta and their children got their home -- a modern dream house that lives on for them, as well as for other Angelenos for whom Shulman’s photo represents the halcyon days of mid-20th century.

“My dad loved the house,” Gronwald says. “He never wanted to leave.”

[email protected]

Sign up for The Wild

We’ll help you find the best places to hike, bike and run, as well as the perfect silent spots for meditation and yoga.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Travel & Experiences

The hootin’-hollerin’ allure of Knott’s Berry Farm’s summer staple Ghost Town Alive!

Aug. 12, 2024

World & Nation

How not to be a terrible tourist: What Europeans want travelers to know

Aug. 11, 2024

Why some residents of European hot spots just want tourists to stay away

‘Avatar,’ ‘Coco’ attractions are coming to Disneyland — and other big news from D23

• à propos

Pierre Koenig

Stahl house.

The Case Study House Program produced some of the most iconic architectural projects of the 20th Century, but none more iconic than or as famous as the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House #22 by Pierre Koenig. The modern residence overlooks Los Angeles from the Hollywood Hills. It was completed in 1959 for Buck Stahl and his family.

Buck Stahl had envisioned a modernist glass and steel constructed house that offered panoramic views of Los Angles when he originally purchased the land for the house in 1954 for $13,500. Stahl had originally begun to excavate and take on the duties of architect and contractor; it was not until 1957 when Stahl hired Pierre Koenig to take over the design of the family’s residence.

The two-bedroom, 2’200 square foot residence is a true testament to modernist architecture and the Case Study House Program. The program was set in place by John Entenza and sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine. The aim of the program was to introduce modernist principles into residential architecture, not only to advance the aesthetic, but to introduce new ways of life both in a stylistic sense and one that represented the lifestyles of the modern age.

Pierre Koenig was able to hone in on the vision of Buck Stahl and transform that vision into a modernist icon. The glass and steel construction is understandably the most identifiable trait of architectural modernism, but it is the way in which Koenig organized the spatial layout of the house taking the public and private aspects of the house into great consideration. As much as architectural modernism is associated with the materials and methods of construction, the juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics.

The house is “L” shaped in that the private and public sectors are completely separated save for a single hallway that connects the two wings. Compositionally adjacent is the swimming pool that one must cross in order to get into the house; it is not only a spatial division of public and private but its serves as the interstitial space that one must pass through in order to experience the panoramic views.

The living space of the house is set back behind the pool and is the only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. The entire house is understood to be one large viewing box that captures amazing perspectives of the house, the landscape, and Los Angeles. Oddly enough, the Stahl house was fairly unknown and unrecognized for its advancement of modern American residential architecture, until 1960 when Julius Shulman captured the pure architectural essence of the house. It was the night shot of two women sitting in the living room overlooking the bright lights of the city of Los Angeles.

Client: Buck Stahl Drawings: Adam Caruso Chair ETH Zürich Photography: Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman’s Case Study House #22

The Greatest American Architectural Photographer of the 20th Century

Julius Shulman is often considered the greatest American architectural photographer of the 20th century. His photography shaped the image of South Californian lifestyle of midcentury America. For 70 years, he created on of the most comprehensive visual archives of modern architecture, especially focusing on the development of the Los Angeles region. The designs of some of the world’s most noted architectures including Richard Neutra, Ray Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright came to life though his photographs. To this day, it is through Shulman’s photography that we witness the beauty of modern architecture and the allure of Californian living.

Neutra and Beyond

Born in 1910 in Brooklyn, Julius Shulman grew up in a small farm in Connecticut before his family moved to Los Angeles at the age of ten. While in Los Angeles, Shulman was introduced to Boy Scouts and often went hiking in Mount Wilson. This allowed him to organically study light and shadow, and be immersed in the outdoors. While in college between UCLA and Berkeley, he was offered to photograph the newly designed Kun House by Richard Neutra. Upon photographing, Shulman sent the six images to the draftsman who then showed them to Neutra. Impressed, Richard Neutra asked Shulman to photograph his other houses and went on to introduce him to other architectures.

The Case Study Houses

Julius Shulman’s photographs revealed the true essence of the architect’s vision. He did not merely document the structures, but interpreted them in his unique way which presented the casual residential elegance of the West Coast. The buildings became studies of light and shadow set against breathtaking vistas. One of the most significant series in Shulman’s portfolio is without a doubt his documentation of the Case Study Houses. The Case Study House Program was established under the patronage of the Arts & Architectue magazine in 1945 in an effort to produce model houses for efficient and affordable living during the housing boom generated after the Second World War. Southern California was used as the location for the prototypes and the program commissioned top architects of the day to design the houses. Julius Shulman was chosen to document the designs and throughout the course of the program he photographed the majority of the 36 houses. Shulman’s photography gave new meaning to the structures, elevating them to a status of international recognition in the realm of architecture and design. His way of composition rendered the structures as inviting places for modern living, reflecting a sense of optimism of modern living.

Case Study House #22

Case Study House #22, also known as the Stahl House was one of the designs Julius Shulman photographed which later become one of the most iconic of his images. Designed by architect Pierre Koenig in 1959, the Stahl House was the residential home of American football player C.H Buck Stahl located in the Hollywood Hills. The property was initially regarded as undevelopable due to its hillside location, but became an icon of modern Californian architecture. Regarded as one of the most interesting masterpieces of contemporary architecture, Pierre Koenig preferred merging unconventional materials for its time such as steel with a simple, ethereal, indoor-outdoor feel. Julius’s dramatic image, taking in a warm evening in the May of 1960, shows two young ladies dressed in white party dresses lounging and chatting. The lights of the city shimmer in the distant horizon matching the grid of the city, while the ladies sit above the distant bustle and chaos. Pierre Koenig further explains in the documentary titled Case Study Houses 1945-1966 saying;

“When you look out along the beam it carries your eye right along the city streets, and the (horizontal) decking disappears into the vanishing point and takes your eye out and the house becomes one with the city below.”

The Los Angeles Good Life

The image presents a fantasy and is a true embodiment of the Los Angeles good life. By situating two models in the scene, Shulman creates warmth, helping the viewer to imagine scale as well as how life would be like living in this very house. In an interview with Taina Rikala De Noriega for the Archives of American Art Shulman recalls the making of the photograph;

“ So we worked, and it got dark and the lights came on and I think somebody had brought sandwiches. We ate in the kitchen, coffee, and we had a nice pleasant time. My assistant and I were setting up lights and taking pictures all along. I was outside looking at the view. And suddenly I perceived a composition. Here are the elements. I set up the furniture and I called the girls. I said, ‘Girls. Come over sit down on those chairs, the sofa in the background there.’ And I planted them there, and I said, ‘You sit down and talk. I’m going outside and look at the view.’ And I called my assistant and I said, ‘Hey, let’s set some lights.’ Because we used flash in those days. We didn’t use floodlights. We set up lights, and I set up my camera and created this composition in which I assembled a statement. It was not an architectural quote-unquote “photograph.” It was a picture of a mood.”

Purity in Line and Design to Perfection

Shulman’s preference to shoot in black and white reduces the subject to its geometrical essence allowing the viewer to observe the reflections, shadows and forms. A Shulman signature, horizontal and vertical lines appear throughout the image to create depth and dimensional perspective. A mastery in composition, the photograph catches purity in line and design to perfection.

A Lifetime of Achievements

Julius Shulman retired from active architectural work in 1989, leaving behind an incredibly rich archive chronicling the development of modern living in Southern California. A large part of his archive resides at the Getty Museum in California. For the next twenty years he participated in major museum and gallery exhibitions around the world, and created numerous books by publishers such as Taschen and Nazraeli Press. Among his honors, Shulman is the only photographer to have been granted honorary lifetime membership in the American Institute of Architects. In 1998 he was given a lifetime achievement award by ICP. Julius passed away in 2009 in his home in Los Angeles.

CASE STUDY HOUSE #22

Designed in 1959, the Stahl House is located in the hills around Los Angeles and is one of the most interesting masterpieces of contemporary architecture. Constructively, it is made through the use of a steel structure resting on a reinforced concrete base with some parts overhanging the valley below. The privileged position of the house is decisive for the L-shaped development of the system, which opens towards the landscape and the swimming pool, and closes towards the road behind it. The L not only allows you to look towards the city but also to divide the rooms into two areas, private and representative.

The house is simple, modern, with a structure almost entirely in iron and glass, light and transparent, just to look away, without barriers and without brakes.

CASE STUDY HOUSE #22 Architect: Pierre Koenig Photo: Julius Shulman

Related articles

GORDON MATTA-CLARK

© Strato International 2022  |  All rights reserved  |  REA MI - 2122745  |  P. Iva 09931650965  |  +39 02 82950608  |  [email protected]  |  Privacy & Cookie Policy  |  Terms & Conditions  |  Newsletter

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest news.

• About Julius

Julius Shulman – Poster. “Case Study House 22, Two Girls” Los Angeles, Ca. Pierre Koenig. 1960

$ 195.00

Description

Photographer: Julius Shulman

Subject: The Stahl Case Study House #22, Two Girls

Location: Los Angeles, California

Architect: Pierre Koenig

Lot:  Poster, Case Study 22

Date: May 9, 1960

Assignment: Arts & Architecture Magazine

Julius’ most famous assignment, Case Study House #22, Two Girls by Pierre Koenig. These black and white posters have Julius’ name printed on the bottom of the poster.

Case Study House #22, Two Girls. The Stahl House 1960 considered by many to be the most iconic home of the modern movement, Case Study House #22 (The Stahl House) is a classic mid-century modern home. Built in the Hollywood Hills, on the side of a mountain.

Black & white poster. Unframed: Print paper size: 18″ x 21.75″ (45.72 cm. x 55.245 cm.) Poster image size: 14″ x 17″ (35.56 cm. x 43.18 cm.) Poster is in Excellent Condition. Condition Report: Any condition statement is given as an opinion and the condition statement does not imply that this poster is in perfect condition or completely free from wear and tear, imperfection or the effects of aging.

This Julius Shulman poster came from Shulman’s Hollywood Hills studio.

Related products

Julius Shulman – Poster. “Los Angeles Bicentennial Street Scene Festival & Festival.” Los Angeles, Ca. 1980

Julius Shulman – Poster. “Elrod House.” Palm Springs Art Museum. Palm Springs, Ca. 2008

Julius Shulman – Poster. “Modernism New Mexico.” New Mexico. 2002

Julius Shulman – Poster. “Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles.” University of California Press. Los Angeles, California.

• Share full article

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

Harris Chooses Walz

A guide to the career, politics and sudden stardom of gov. tim walz of minnesota, now vice president kamala harris’s running mate..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

Hey, it’s Michael. Before we get started, I want to tell you about another show made by “The New York Times” that pairs perfectly with “The Daily.” It’s called “The Headlines.” It’s a show hosted by my colleague, Tracy Mumford, that quickly catches you up on the day’s top stories and features insights from “The Times” reporters who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes or less.

So if you like “The Daily”— and if you’re listening, I have to assume you do — I hope that means you’re going to “The Headlines” as well. You can now find “The Headlines” wherever you get your podcasts. So find it, subscribe to it, and thank you. And now, here’s today’s “Daily.”

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the story of how a little known Midwestern governor became Kamala Harris’s choice for a running mate. My colleague Ernesto Londoño walks us through the career, politics, and sudden stardom of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.

It’s Wednesday, August 7.

Ernesto, over the past few days, we watched Vice President Harris bring the final three contenders for her running mate to her house in Washington, DC, for a set of in-person interviews. And then we watched as she seemed to narrow her pool of choices down to a final two — the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. And now, of course, we know that she has made her choice. What has she told us about her campaign strategy, the way she views this race, in ultimately choosing Tim Walz?

Michael, I think what the choice tells us is that Kamala Harris was drawn to two qualities that Governor Walz brings to the table. And what’s interesting is they may seem to be in tension. For starters, here’s the ultimate everyday man, somebody who grew up in a small town in Middle America, served in the National Guard, was a high school teacher, a football coach, very plain-spoken, goes to campaign events wearing T-shirts and baseball caps, is a gun owner and very proud about it. He sort of embodies the Midwest.

And she clearly thinks that that is going to bring the kind of moderate, white, working class voters that the campaign needs in swing states to come to them, to make this feel like a balanced ticket and something that will give her enough of the crucial votes to defeat Donald Trump in the fall.

On the other hand, as governor, he passed a slew of pretty progressive legislation in the past couple of years, everything from abortion rights to gun control. So these things are likely to appeal to bread and butter Democrats.

But the question is, when voters have examined these two facets of Tim Walz, may it bring them enough enthusiasm from the base and enough undecided voters that the campaign desperately needs, or at some point, do these two aspects of him start canceling each other out?

Right. In short, you’re saying Harris is betting on a dual appeal from Walz to two essential constituencies, but the risk is that the appeal to one of them is just much, much greater than to the other.

Right. You could definitely see a scenario where voters, once they’ve examined Tim Walz’s story and legacy, may conclude that both of these candidates are quite liberal.

OK, so tell us the story of Tim Walz, a story that I think a lot of us don’t know because we really don’t know Walz all that well, and how he has come to embody these two qualities and that tension that you just described.

Michael, the origin story of Tim Walz’s political career is quite fascinating.

He and his wife were teachers in a small city south of Minneapolis. And in 2004, when George W. Bush was running for re-election, Walz took a group of his students to a political rally in his hometown. They wanted to just see the president make his case. And a strange scuffle happened when they were trying to get in.

Well, one of the kids had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet. And this is where the individual says, well, you’re not going to be allowed to enter. You’ve been deemed a threat.

Apparently, one of the students had a sticker for Bush’s rival, John Kerry, on his wallet. And security officials at the rally didn’t want to let them in.

And I said, oh, it’s OK. They’re with me. And who are you? And I said, I’m Tim Walz. I’m their teacher here, and showed them my ID. And they said, well, you two have been deemed a threat to the president. And I said, well, that’s not true. And it kind of escalated.

And this really ticked off Tim Walz. He was really upset. There was a fight and a confrontation at the rally.

At this point in time, I’m kind of nervous. I’m getting arrested. So I’m like saying, well, I’m Teacher of the Year in Mankato. And they didn’t care about that. And it was kind of a sad epiphany moment, how it felt for people to be looked right through by people. These people didn’t see me. And this is happening.

And ultimately, he sort of walks away from this moment feeling really sick of the Bush administration, the politics of the day. And he turns around and volunteers for the Kerry campaign.

And then the more interested he becomes in politics in this era, he starts looking around his congressional district, and there’s a Republican who’s held the seat for many, many years. This was a largely rural district in southern Minnesota. And there’s no reason to believe that a newcomer to politics, somebody without a donor base, could make a run for this seat and win.

But Walz signs up for this weekend boot camp, where expert campaigners train newcomers who want to run for office. And he gets really enthused by the idea that he can pull it off. So he starts raising money with the support of an army of students who become so thrilled and energized by the prospect that their nerdy and kind geography teacher is making this uphill bid for a congressional race.

So his campaign staff is basically his former students.

That’s right. And he proves to be a formidable candidate. He draws a lot of attention to his experience in the classroom and as a coach.

When I coached football, these stands held about 3,000 people. That’s a lot. It’s also the number of American soldiers who have died fighting in Iraq.

He’s a very strong advocate for pulling out of the war in Iraq.

Serving right now are kids that I taught, coached, and trained to be soldiers. They deserve a plan for Iraq to govern itself, so they can come home.

And one thing that happens in the campaign that is really surprising to people is he comes out as being in favor of same-sex marriage. Now, it’s useful to remember that this is 2006, when the vast majority of Democrats, Democrats running for most elected office, were not ready to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.

And here’s a guy who’s new to politics, who’s trying to unseat a Republican who’s held on to his seat for more than 12 years, taking what appeared to be a reckless position on something. And when he was asked about it at the time, Tim Walz told a supporter, this just happens to be what I believe in. And I’d rather lose a race that I’ve ran being true and consistent to my values than try to run as somebody I’m not.

And of course, he wins.

Yes. To everybody’s surprise, he pulled it off.

So from the get-go, he shows a kind of maverick, “politics be damned” quality, taking stands that he knows may be unpopular among the voters he’s trying to win over. But he’s got some innate political gifts that are all making it work.

Yeah, I think that first campaign showed us that Tim Walz had real political chops. He was a very effective campaigner. And people really liked him. When he was knocking on doors, when he was introducing himself to voters, they saw him as somebody who was very genuine and who was admirable.

So once he gets elected in this conservative leaning district in Minnesota, what does he actually do in Congress?

In Congress, he develops a reputation for being somebody who can work across the aisle. And this is a period where Democrats and Republicans were deeply polarized over the Iraq War. He spends a lot of his time lobbying to expand benefits for veterans, so it’s easier for them to go to college after their service, and also becomes a leading voice in the quest to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy that prohibited openly gay servicemen from serving in uniform.

And he remained really popular. He easily won re-election five times. The last time he runs for his seat happens to be 2016, when President Trump wins his district by about 15 points.

And still, voters kept Tim Walz in office.

I think it’s important to note what you just said. Walz is distinguishing himself as a Democrat who can take some pretty progressive positions, as he did in that first campaign on gay rights, as he did with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and keep winning in very Trump-friendly districts of his state.

That’s right. And as he’s serving his sixth term in office, he sets his sights on the governor’s mansion and decides to run for office in 2018. He wins that race easily. And early on, during his time as governor, the eyes of the world are on Minnesota after a police officer kills George Floyd. And what we see is massive looting and protests in Minneapolis.

Right, and remind us how Governor Walz handles that violence, those protests.

Yeah, I think that’s a crucial chapter in Tim Walz’s political career and one that will come under scrutiny in the days ahead.

After George Floyd was killed on a Monday —

People are upset, and they’re tired. And being Black in Minnesota already has a stigma and a mark on your back.

— protests took root in Minneapolis.

Y’all want to sit out here and shoot off your rubber bullets and tear gas.

And they got progressively larger and more violent.

There comes a point where the mayor and the police chief in Minneapolis plead for help. They ask the governor to send in the National Guard. And crucially, that request was not immediately heeded.

This is the third precinct here. There are fires burning to the left of it at the —

And at the height of the crisis, a police precinct building was abandoned.

There’s someone climbing up the wall right now, kicking the window in, trying to climb up the wall.

Because city officials grew concerned that protesters were about to overrun it and may attack the cops inside their own turf.

[EXPLOSIONS]

And the building is set on fire.

Right, a very memorable image. I can recall it happening in real-time.

Yeah, and in the days that followed, I think there were a lot of questions of why the governor didn’t send in troops earlier and whether a more muscular, decisive response could have averted some of the destruction that spread through the city.

And how does Walz end up explaining his decision not to send in the National Guard more quickly?

The governor and his administration have said that they were really, really dealing with an unprecedented challenge. And I think there was a concern that sending in troops into this really, really tense situation could have done more to escalate rather than pacify things on the street.

But in the weeks and months that followed, there were a lot of questions about Governor Walz’s leadership. And there were critics who said, during what may have been the most challenging week of his life, we saw a governor who was indecisive and who waited too long to send in resources that ultimately allowed the city to get to a semblance of order.

Right, and it feels like this is a moment that will almost assuredly be used against him by Donald Trump and JD Vance, the Republican ticket, which has made law and order so central to their message in this campaign.

Yeah, absolutely. And here in Minnesota, that was certainly a liability for him when he ran for re-election in 2022. But voters kept him in office, and he won that race handily. And not only did he win, but Democrats managed to flip the Senate and have full control of the legislature on his watch.

And that sets in motion one of the most productive legislative sessions in Minnesota history, where Tim Walz and his allies in the House and the Senate managed to pass a trove of really progressive legislation, oftentimes on a party vote.

Tell us about some of that legislation.

Well, Minnesota becomes the first state in the wake of the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion to actually codify this right under state statute. And they did a lot more stuff. They had a huge budget surplus, and they used that, for instance, to fund meals for all school children.

They managed to pass a couple of gun control laws that were very contentious. They gave the right to undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. They legalized recreational marijuana. And finally, the governor takes a pretty bold stance on this issue of gender affirming care for transgender kids and teenagers, and says that Minnesota will be a safe haven for people who want that health care.

So, Ernesto, so how should we think about that blitz of legislation and the largely progressive tone of it, given the way that Walz had campaigned and succeeded up to that moment as somebody with such broad appeal across the political spectrum?

When the governor was asked whether this had been too much too quickly in terms of progressive legislation, his answer was that these were broadly popular policies, that these are issues Democrats had campaigned on. And here, Democrats had a window of opportunity where they were in control of the governor’s mansion and control of the House, the Senate, and that when you have political capital, you spend it.

But when you start listening to Republicans in Minnesota, they say, here’s a guy who campaigned on this mantra of “One Minnesota.” That was his campaign slogan. And he sort of came into office with this promise that he would govern in a bipartisan way, reach across the aisle.

But when they had all the votes they needed to pass their policies, Republicans felt that Walz was not bothering to bring them into the fold and to pass legislation that was going to be palatable to conservatives in the state. So I think people who once regarded him as a moderate now start seeing him as somebody who, when he had the power, acted in ways that were really progressive and liberal.

So at the height of his power, Governor Walz emerges as somebody who, when given a shot at getting done what he really wants to get done with a Democratic legislature, is a pretty progressive leader, even at the risk of being somewhat at odds with his earlier image as more moderate, because in his mind, enough people in the state are behind these policies.

Yeah, and I think he assumed that he had banked enough goodwill and that people across the state liked him enough to tolerate policies they may have disagreed with. And I think it’s safe to say, among the people who cover him here regularly, there was never any real hint that Tim Walz was eyeing a run for higher office. He’s not somebody who has written the kind of political memoir that oftentimes serves as a case of what you would bring to a national ticket or to the White House. And he seems pretty happy with a state job.

So it was a huge surprise when Tim Walz starts going viral through a string of cable news appearances right after President Biden drops out of the race, and the Democrats are scrambling to put Harris at the top of the ticket. And what becomes clear is that Walz is very forcefully auditioning for the role of vice president, and Vice President. Harris starts taking him very seriously.

We’ll be right back.

So, Ernesto, tell us about this cable news audition that Governor Walz undertakes over the past few weeks and how, ultimately, it seemed to help him land this job of being Harris’s running mate.

I think Walz does something really interesting, and that is that he says that Democrats shouldn’t be talking about Trump and Vance as existential threats. He kind of makes the case that Democrats have been in this state of fear and paralysis for too long, and that it’s not serving them well. So the word he latches onto is “weird.”

Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.

It is. It is.

And they’re running for he-man women hater’s club or something. That’s what they go at. That’s not what people are interested in.

And I think one other thing we see in Walz is somebody who’s putting himself out there as a foil to JD Vance.

That angst that JD Vance talks about in “Hillbilly Elegy,” none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale, and none of them went on to be venture capitalists or whatever. It’s not —

I think the case he’s making is that Tim Walz is a more authentic embodiment of small town values.

What I know is, is that people like JD Vance know nothing about small town America. My town had 400 people in it, 24 kids in my graduating class. 12 were cousins. And he gets it all wrong. It’s not about hate.

And behind the scenes, people from Tim Walz’s days on Capitol Hill start calling everybody they know in the Harris campaign and the Harris orbit and saying, here’s a guy who has executive experience as governor, but also somebody who has a really impressive record from his time on Capitol Hill and somebody who could be an asset in helping a Harris administration pass tough legislation. So you should take a hard look at this guy.

Which is, of course, exactly what Harris ends up doing. And I want to talk for a moment about how Harris announces Walz as her running mate on Tuesday morning. She did it in an Instagram message. And it felt like the way she did it very much embraced this idea that you raised earlier, Ernesto, that Walz contains these two appeals, one to the Democratic base, one to the white working class.

Harris specifically cites the work that Walz did with Republicans on infrastructure and then cites his work on gun control. She mentions that he was a football coach and the founder of the high school Gay Straight Alliance. She’s straddling these two versions of Walz.

But I want to linger on the idea for a moment of Walz’s vulnerabilities, because once he becomes Harris’s running mate, Harris and Walz are going to lose a fair amount of control over how they present him to the country, because he’s going to become the subject of very fierce attacks from the Republicans in this race. So talk about that for just a moment.

Yeah, I mean, it’s important to keep in mind that Governor Walz has never endured the scrutiny of a presidential race. So the questions he’s going to be asked and the way his record is going to be looked at is going to be different and sharper. I think the Harris campaign is billing him as, first and foremost, a fighter for the middle class. And I think that certainly will have some appeal.

But I think in coming days, there’s going to be a lot of attention drawn to parts of his record that may be unpopular with many voters. For instance, giving undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses, which Governor Walz championed. It’s likely to provide fodder for an attack ad.

The very dramatic footage of Minneapolis burning in 2020 is also something that I think people will be drawn to. And there’s going to be interest in reexamining what the governor did and what he could have done differently to avert the chaos.

And on Tuesday, we saw that the Trump campaign wasted no time in trying to define Tim Walz as soft on crime, permissive on immigration policy. And they also made clear they wanted to relitigate the era of George Floyd’s killing. And specifically, they want to try to tie him to the effort at the time to defund the police, which is a movement that Walz personally never endorsed.

So the Republican attack here will be pretty simple. Walz is liberal. Harris is liberal. So, in their efforts to speak to especially white working class and rural voters in swing states, the Trump campaign is going to say this is not the ticket for that group of voters. This is the ticket of burning police precincts and gun control. And of course, that may not be fair, but that’s very likely going to be the message over the next couple of months.

Right. I think there’s going to be effort to portray him as a radical liberal who has used his small town roots to put on this sort of veneer of being a moderate and a really sort of understanding and being part of the segments of the electorate that I think are critical in this election.

I want to speak for just a moment about the person Harris did not pick when she chose Walz because many Democrats had felt that Walz was a potentially too liberal seeming running mate for a candidate, Kamala Harris, who herself comes from a blue state and is caricatured by the Republicans as liberal herself.

And the person she didn’t choose was Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who was seen as having a huge appeal in that particular key swing state, but also presented risks of his own of alienating parts of the Democratic base with his well-documented support for Israel and his criticism of campus protesters. How should we think about the fact that, ultimately, Harris chose Walz over Shapiro?

Yeah, I think in the final stretch of this campaign to be the vice presidential pick, we started seeing a lot of acrimony in pockets of the Democratic base, drawing attention to the fact that Governor Shapiro could be divisive on Gaza, which has really sort of split the party in recent months.

So I think at the end of the day, they made a calculation that Tim Walz would be more of a unifying figure and would be somebody who would inspire and energize enough pockets of the electorate that they need, particularly in the Midwest, to make him the stronger and more exciting pick and somebody who wouldn’t force them to go back to defending and relitigating the Biden administration’s record on Israel and on the war in Gaza.

Right, and then, on Tuesday night, we got our first glimpse of Harris and Walz together on stage for the first time at a campaign rally. I’m curious, what struck you about their debut together.

Good evening, Philadelphia.

I think everybody was watching the opening scene of this rally to see what the chemistry between these two people was going to be like. And they both seemed giddy. They were literally, at times, bouncing with enthusiasm.

Since the day that I announced my candidacy, I set out to find a partner who can help build this brighter future.

So Pennsylvania, I’m here today because I found such a leader.

Governor Tim Walz of the great state of Minnesota.

They soon got down to business. And that business was how to define Tim Waltz for voters who don’t know him well.

To those who know him best, Tim is more than a governor.

And right off the bat, we saw that Kamala Harris really highlighted a lot of pieces of his pre-political career.

To his former high school football players, he was Coach.

She repeatedly called him Coach Walz, Mr. Walz, evoking his time in the classroom, and even used his military title from his days in the Army.

To his fellow veterans, he is Sergeant Major Walz.

And then when it came time for Tim Walz to introduce himself on this massive stage —

Welcome the next vice president of the United States, Tim Walz.

— he drew a lot of attention to his small town roots.

I was born in West Point, Nebraska. I lived in Butte, a small town of 400.

He said something that he said repeatedly recently in campaign appearances, which is —

In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule — mind your own damn business.

The golden rule of small towns is you mind your own damn business, which is something he said in the context of his argument that Republicans have been limiting, rather than expanding, people’s rights. But he also drew attention to the fact that he’s a gun owner.

By the way, as you heard, I was one of the best shots in Congress. But in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws.

And then when it came time to draw a sharp contrast with their opponents, Tim Walz said, these guys are phonies.

Donald Trump is not fighting for you or your family. He never sat at that kitchen table like the one I grew up at, wondering how we were going to pay the bills. He sat at his country club in Mar-a-Lago, wondering how he can cut taxes for his rich friends.

He said it’s actually people like me and Kamala Harris who come from humble origins and showed what is possible in America when you hail from a working class background, and you seize opportunities that were available to you.

Thank you, Philadelphia. Thank you, Vice President. God bless America.

So when it comes to this question of Walz’s dual identities and dual appeals, what did we learn on day one of this new Democratic ticket, do you think?

I think the campaign is trying to convey that these two facets of Tim Walz’s life are not mutually exclusive, that they don’t need to be in tension. They don’t cancel each other out. They’re both part of Tim Walz’s story. And I think that’s how they’re going to present him from now until Election Day.

Ernesto, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure, Michael.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, Hamas said that Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind the deadly October 7 attacks on Israel, had consolidated his power over the entire organization. Until now, Sinwar had held the title of Hamas’s leader in Gaza. But with the assassination of Hamas’s top political leader by Israel last week, Hamas said that Sinwar would take on that title as well. Sinwar remains a major target of Israel and is believed to have been hiding in tunnels underneath Gaza since October 7.

And the US Department of Justice has charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran with trying to hire a hitman to assassinate political figures in the United States. The man recently traveled to the US and was arrested in New York last month. American authorities believe that his potential targets likely included former President Trump.

Today’s episode was produced by Alex Stern, Eric Krupke, and Olivia Natt. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Patricia Willens, contains original music by Pat McCusker and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Nick Pittman and Minnesota Public Radio.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Ernesto Londoño

Produced by Alex Stern Eric Krupke and Olivia Natt

Edited by Lisa Chow and Patricia Willens

Original music by Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Earlier this summer, few Democrats could have identified Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.

But, in a matter of weeks, Mr. Walz has garnered an enthusiastic following in his party, particularly among the liberals who cheer on his progressive policies. On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris named him as her running mate. Ernesto Londoño, who reports for The Times from Minnesota, walks us through Mr. Walz’s career, politics and sudden stardom.

On today’s episode

Ernesto Londoño , a reporter for The Times based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest.

Background reading

Who is Tim Walz , Kamala Harris’s running mate?

Mr. Walz has faced criticism for his response to the George Floyd protests.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

An earlier version of this episode misstated the subject that Walz’s wife taught. She taught English, not Social Studies.

How we handle corrections

Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. More about Ernesto Londoño

Advertisement