R.M. Schindler’s Lovell Beach House has come up for sale for the first time since being commissioned 100 years ago.
A registered national landmark, the Orange County home was built in 1926 for the California wellness pioneer Philip Lovell and his wife, Leah. Since then, it’s become regarded as Schindler’s second most important work, after his personal residence on Kings Road in West Hollywood. Adding to the home’s gravitas, the landscape plan was designed by Richard Neutra, making the property an early collaboration between the two architects before they became rivals.
In the early 1900s, Lovell was a well-known naturopathic health practitioner with a widely read column in the L.A. Times. Both he and his wife believed that architecture could help promote healthy living, which inspired Schindler to design the Newport Beach spread with abundant natural light, a rooftop terrace for sunbathing, and open-air sleeping porches. Just a couple of years later, though, the Lovells realized the foggy weather wasn’t so conducive to sleeping outdoors, so Schindler enclosed the porches, creating four indoor bedrooms…