645 Prospect Crescent
Pasadena, CA 91103, USA

Millard House (La Miniatura) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance

There is more significance to La Miniatura than the fact that it was merely another house by Frank Lloyd Wright, this the only one in Pasadena. Three elements created La Miniatura - Frank Lloyd Wright, the site itself, and Alice Millard - and these cannot be disassociated; and dominating them all, perhaps, is Wright's use of textile block construction for the first time with this house.

Wright had built an earlier house for Mrs. Millard and her husband, George Madison Millard, a noted book collector and friend of William Morris. When her husband died, Alice Millard left Highland Park, Illinois, and moved to California in 1918 to enter a new field for women, the collecting and selling of rare and fine books, particularly Kelmscott Press. Wright, having first experimented xri.th concrete blocks at Hollyhock House, was dissatisfied with his purely decorative use of them there; returning to California from Japan, he brought an intensified desire to wed architecture to the material and method of construction.

Wright was pleased to rediscover Alice Millard, a client he respected for her artistic sense and one who was willing to listen to his ideas about the textile - block." Gradually," he recounts, " I unfolded to her the scheme of the textile - block slab house gradually forming in it mind since I got home from Japan. She wasn't frightened by the idea. Not at all Wright, himself, understood her and her needs as an artist, and remarked, in retrospect, "I was proud to have a client survive the first house and ask me to build a second'.'^

Wright convinced Alice Millard that the ravine showed more promise than the adjacent level lot she had purchased, and work began in 1923 on a studio house suited to her book collecting needs and fitted to a small budget. A snail house, an inexpensive house, it was to rise like another tree at the head of the ravine; Wright called it, "...a distinctly genuine expression of California in terms of modem industry and American life'.'^ Alice Millard called it La Miniatura.

Her needs were specific and spatial: a tin usually large living room with a great fireplace; an interior balcony leading to the bedroom; a guest room capable of doubling as an office; a bedroom with a view of the ravine. His aim was thus:

We would take the concrete block, knit it together with steel in the joints, and so construct the joints that they could be poured full of concrete after they were set up. The walls would thus become thin but solid reinforced slabs. We would make the walls double, one wall facing inside and the other facing outside — continuous hollow spaces between, so all would thus be cool in summer, warm in winter and dry always. Furthermore, the inside blocks would make a fine background for old pictures and fine books and tapestries. Instead of a fire-trap for her precious book collections and i antiques, my client would have a house pretty well fireproof. ^

Wright's fascination was to see his concept of woven concrete take shape; his obsession became the impact his use of textile block construction might have on future building practice. The accomplishment was up to his expectations and the technique was used in other houses built during the next few years, e.g., the Fnnis House, Storer House, and Freeman House, all in the Los Angeles area.

Alice Millard, for her part, was equally pleased. To provide for the growing number of artistic avant-garde and students who visited to talk with and learn from her, a smaller studio was added to the rear of the main house. Wright entrusted this job to his son Lloyd, and, completed in 1926 in the identical style, drew the house further into the site and aroma the reflecting pool. At her death in 1938,

Alice Millard's efforts to share her collection and knowledge were considered to be a significant contribution to the cultural growth of the southern California region (Pasadena Star-News, July l6, 1938). Certainly, her willingness to open her home to students and friends had a part in building links amongst like-minded enthusiasts for books, ideas, and Frank Lloyd Wright, strengthening a cultural network.

The wedding of a sensitive client to an architectural pioneer, and the careful/fortunate selection of the ravine site, produced a house known to all students of modem architecture. In the local or regional context, Alice Millard alone makes La Miniatura significant as the arena for cultural interchange and growth. That Frank Lloyd Wright created the scene elevates the significance.

The setting and siting of La Miniatura prove that house and landscape can join in an exciting way, interpretating the lay of the land in a manner complementing the native growth and topography, using the natural setting to accentuate the structure while firmly teeing it to place.

Wright's daily supervision of construction indicates the importance this commission had for him. Working with unskilled labor, another experiment, he was able to supervise the sand and concrete mixture closely. An esthetic gain was recorded in this way as he discovered slight alterations in each block's mixture allowed tonal variations when affected by sunlight. The result was a plastic woven texture of patterned concrete wrapped around a light but strong steel w^ — construction become architecture.

Finally, Wright, himself, felt the house was one of his finest efforts. This belief is verified both by the amount of time he spent on site, bringing the house into being (including a substantial financial investment), and by the amount of space he later devotes to the details of the process in his Autobiography. That his dreams of a more creative use of industrial products may remain unrealized today is of less importance than his own evaluation that here, with La Miniatura, he had shown the way to use the cheapest of construction materials architecturally. The form grew from the technology, or, in his own words,"...some system of building construction as a basis for architecture’. ‘As for the ultimate carry over, he writes:

How then, you may ask, can people with even more limited means experience the liberation, the sense of freedom, that comes with true architecture? This problem will probably always exist in one direction or another. But we have gone far in solving this generic problem by the natural concrete block house we call the "Usonian Automatic'.' This Usonian house incorporates innovations which reduce most of the heavier building costs, labor in particular. The earlier versions of these concrete block houses built in Los Angeles about 1921 - 2li may also be seen in the Arizona-Biltmore cottages. The Millard House was first(.)