Hollyhock House, a historic Frank Lloyd Wright building in Los Angeles, has narrowly avoided losing its status as a Unesco World Heritage site.
Maintaining the designation, which was originally bestowed in 2019, usually requires the employment of four dedicated full-time staff members. Hollyhock House currently has two filled positions and two vacant ones. A draft city budget proposal had threatened to cut three of these positions, leaving just one staff member at the site. However, according to the local paper Beverly Press, crisis has been averted.
“We’re proud to report that after working with colleagues on the Budget Committee, funding to restore Department of Cultural Affairs staff was included in the updated budget,” Hugo Soto-Martinez, a City Council member, told the paper on Wednesday (21 May).
The City Council’s $14m budget was approved on Thursday (22 May), restoring Hollyhock House’s four full-time positions and scaling back an array of other cuts that had previously been proposed.
Hollyhock House, built between 1919 and 1921, was originally designed for the iconoclastic oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. She eventually fired Wright from the project, citing the house’s impractical design and excessive cost. Soon after construction was completed, she donated the house to the California Art Club. It has been a public museum since 1976, situated in the spacious Barnsdall Art Park. The house and park require $1.36m annually to function but generate about $5m from tours each year, a figure that has been accounted for in the City Council’s new budget.
Hollyhock House is the only Unesco World Heritage site in Los Angeles.
