The Boyd Collection – III. Life of Design 
8 November 2018
The Boyd Collection – III. Life of Design 
284

Richard Neutra

bookshelves from the Kelton Apartments, pair

USA, 1942
pine 31¼ h × 75 w × 14½ d in (79 × 190 × 37 cm)
estimate: $3,000–5,000
result: $3,000
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provenance: Kelton Apartments, Westwood, CA | Collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd
literature: Richard Neutra Complete Works, Lamprecht, pg. 164 discusses commission

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I try to make a house like a flowerpot, in which you can root something and out of which family life will bloom.

Richard Neutra

Kelton Apartments

Richard Neutra designed several apartment complexes in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, including the Strathmore Apartments, Landfair, Elkay and Kelton, which was completed in 1942. All were built in the prevailing modernist International Style — geometric planar construction, unadorned surfaces, light, open interior spaces and an overall weightless harmony of forms. In 1947 it received an Honor Award from the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and became a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1988. Kelton Apartments are a particular standout in Neutra's extraordinary body of work, modest as they are, as they were built for him and his family to live in and are still owned and occupied by the family today. 

In 1947, Architect and Engineer magazine praised the building, saying: "while the architecture is recognizable as the famous Neutra idiom, rigid intellectual design has been transformed with an ever increasing human quality...Good planning, a cheerful general aspect to the architecture as a whole, plus frequent bits of genuine charm, place these apartments in a class by themselves."

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The Kelton Apartments were a triplex, comprised of two apartments on the ground floor and a second-story "tree-house" apartment. The clean, geometric planes of the exterior of Kelton are less severe than those of other complexes Neutra built in Westwood, pointing toward Neutra's shift to more simple, gracious structures in the 1940s and 1950s. Image: Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture.

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