When the Party's Over, It's All Serenity and Light
By Michael Cannell | photos by Michael Weschler
When the dance beat dies and the stragglers disperse, Tom Whitman heads to the hills above the Sunset Strip for a little peace. An event planner catering to Hollywood’s gay community, he stages 200 or so parties a year, including Wonderland, the largest of the city’s Gay Pride events, which will be held Saturday on Paramount Studio’s back lot.
A party boy needs a place to unwind. So three or four nights a week, well after 1 a.m., he drives his silver Porsche convertible up the twisting back roads of Silver Lake, the once rough-at-the-edges-neighborhood now populated by hipsters and musicians, to a 1921 Spanish bungalow he renovated last year as his refuge from all things rowdy and raucous.
“My job means being around thousands of people talking dancing and having fun,” Mr. Whitman said. “When I come home I want to simplify my life. The house is designed for calm, starting with the black slate stepping stones that meander across his abbreviated thatch of lawn and the pocketsize rock garden with beach pebbles and a trickling water basin that manages to feel authentically Asian.
The bungalow inside is simple, verging on austere, with little deviation from dark stained wood, white walls and stainless steel. Mr. Whitman, 35, who bought the house two years ago for $600,000, outlawed any carpets or color. “I never wanted it to be a crazy, vibrant place,” he said last month in a tour of the place, which he moved into in September. “I don’t think that’s relaxing. He added: “It may be a gay man’s house, but it’s masculine. It’s not fussy.”
The only decorations are a series of Mr. Whitman’s sepia-tone photographs of far-flung spots like the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul and a Roman fountain by Bernini. The pictures reflect Mr. Whitman’s itinerant upbringing: his father was an Air Force colonel, and the family moved every two years around Europe and America. The bungalow is the first residence he has owned, and he said he sees it as his first real home. “Home was always where my parents were,” he said. “ This is my fist opportunity to translate the idea of home into a physical place.”
Mr. Whitman’s architect Michael Neumayr also lives in Silver Lake about a mile away in a renovated cottage he shares with his wife Pia DeLeon, a lighting consultant, whose clients include Brad Pitt and Kanye West. She is also an owner of Plug Lighting (pluglighting.com), a West Hollywood store regarded by California designers as the West Coast’s preeminent source for modernist lighting.
When Mr. Neumayr, who grew up in a remote part of Austria, settled in Silver Lake two years ago with Ms. DeLeon, he was unaware, that the neighborhood was a showcase of Austrian design. R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, the Austrian masters of modernism, moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s after working for Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin and Illinois, and built a disproportionate number of homes in Silver Lake, in part because their spare, progressive designs appealed to the movie industry’s creative community, which was then concentrated there. Like his countrymen, Mr. Neumayr has found that Austrian modernism translates well to Southern California. He brought a Neutra-like modernist rigor to Mr. Whitman’s bungalow, most evident in the black lacquer cabinets and a 14 foot-long island with a black slate countertop. “I’m not into manufactured materials,” Mr. Neumayr said. I like the beauty of humble natural materials, like wood, metal, glass and stone, the materials you can find in any old Austrian farmhouse.”
Oddly enough, Mr. Neumayr also brought a taste of Asian tradition. At first a skeptic, he began experimenting with Feng Shui while renting part of a 12th century castle outside Munich and came to believe in it’s benefits. At Mr. Whitman’s house, Feng Shui influenced the placement of the path and fountain at the entrance (“the East is considered the direction of wealth”) and the careful symmetry of the floor plan (”you should feel like it is calm and balanced”).
Feng Shui also encouraged Mr. Neumayr to position the Bosch range in the cooking island so that Mr. Whitman faces guests while frying steaks or stirring soup. “It’s much better if you can look at people and talk to them while you’re cooking rather than face a cubicle,” Mr. Neumayr said.
As a painter and a director of two animated short films, Mr. Whitman brought his own visual acuity to the renovation; the men say they pushed each other, particularly in the detailing. The master bathroom, for example, attained a level of refinement neither would have achieved on his own, with it’s painstakingly assembled oak floors, frosted glass, stainless steel and slate. A custom designed black concrete sink and vanity stand in front of a mirrored wall with integrated medicine cabinet. The materials flow seamlessly into one another without a single lip or overlap. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Mr. Neumayr said.
They chose to keep much of the front of the house, including its original stucco facade, either intact or close to its original condition, and added white doors. The house grows more modern and the palette turns darker as you walk to the back where three French doors open onto a yard with views of the Hollywood sign and seating of poured concrete and Ipe, a durable hardwood from South America, built around a fire pit made of Balinese lava stone.
Their collaborative push for refinement was not without its cost, the renovation budget tripled to $300.000.
Their only point of contention was the refrigerator. Mr. Neumayr advocated a compact version fashionable in Europe, in part because it would integrate neatly into the kitchen. “But I’m an American,” Mr. Whitman said, ”and I want a big American refrigerator.” They settled on a Frigidaire big enough for Mr. Whitman’s ample supply of Corona, wine and leftovers from Saturday afternoon barbecues.
By Mr. Neumayr’s description the completed house is mostly about it’s lighting. “Its very theatrical,’ he said, “without being Las Vegas.” Of course he may say that because Ms. DeLeon provided the lighting, choosing luminous hanging sculptures that glow against the subdued furnishings and white walls. “Before now I’d always thought of lighting as an afterthought,” Mr. Whitman said. “Pia taught me that the drama of a room comes from it’s lighting.”
In the master bedroom, for example, matching Drop pendants made of blown glass with halogen bulbs by Heinrich Fiedler and Michael Raasch add a subtle industrial touch. Over the dining table hangs Clara, a pendant designed by Mr. Neumayr with dark wood and lampshades. (The couple met when Ms. DeLeon stopped to admire his design for the Clara lamp at a lighting show in 1999.) “I wanted Tom’s house to be lit in such a way that when he’s entertaining, it’s very sexy and diaphanous,” she said. “It was important, that the lighting be unobtrusive, so you notice only the light, not the fixture. I wanted there to be a tactile feel to the light.”
At night the house glows like a lantern as Mr. Whitman passes the Coronas and turns up the fire pit. “For me, hanging out with friends doesn’t mean going to a bar,” he said. “Because of my job, it’s the last thing I want to do. It’s nice to be away from all that. It’s nice to be here.”
Top caption:
ASIAN FUSION: Feng Shui inspired lighting by Pia DeLeon suffuse a 1920’s bungalow. Clockwise from top left: the owner Tom Whitman, on left and architect, Michael Neumayr, on a built-in banquette; a lave stone fire pit set in Ipe wood and concrete’ a drop pendant light; a bathroom with brushed stainless steel tile from Ann Sahks; a pendant by Mr. Neumayr over his custom designed oak table; a slate-topped island with LEM piston stools.
Bottom captions:
The source: Ms. DeLeon at Plug-Lighting, her store in West Hollywood, Calif.
Photos: Michael Weschler
