For Sale

Well, Bush, the "For Sale" sign went up yesterday. The house in which we have spent the past thirty-plus years of our lives is on the market. It's hard to describe the depth and complexity of the feelings involved, but a little history might help.

We bought the house in 1971, pretty much on impulse. We weren't particularly looking for a house, and never dreamed we could afford it. I guess we couldn't really. It was a stretch. But there we were on our morning walk around the hill where we were renting, and saw that "For Sale" sign outside this big old Spanish house on the crest of the Franklin Hill. Not even married at the time, we called the realtor and took the tour, and I decided then and there we had to buy it. Trouble was, the mortgage would be $250 a month, a whole $30 more than the rent we were paying. Where would that extra come from? Well, we agonized during a Christmas trip to England, and were happy to find the house still on the market when we got back. Put our money down. Moved in.

Many of our friends at the time were aritsts. When escrow closed, we invited a bunch of them over and handed each a paintbrush. We liked to say that each beam in the living room was an unsigned painting by a different young L.A. artist! Working in the Rental Gallery at the L.A. County Museum, Ellie was learning that the city was not hospitable to its artists, hearing their crying need for showing space--and watching some of the best of them leave for New York. We now had a big house, lots of wall space… a perfect match. So she wrote a manifesto and opened up the Ellie Blankfort Gallery.

One of the few show places for the emerging artists, the gallery became something of a mecca for those interested in the L. A. art scene. We stripped out the dining room of furniture, and that became our exhibition space--small, but serviceable: sometimes, if the paintings were big, there was room for only three of them. The rest of the house was a continuing group exhibition, rotating every couple of months. Ellie was curator; Peter, the preparator. (It was around this time that the house was featured in the Sunday "Home" section of the Los Angeles Times.) The openings brought in scores of visitors, and even some important collectors. By 1976, the gallery's repuation had reached New York--even Europe. That year, eight of Ellie's artists were selected, in an unprecdented coup of a single gallery, for the Whitney Biennial. And that year, too, came a knock on the door from city officials: the gallery was violating zoning laws, and had to be closed down. Ellie went private.

The house cotinued to be a rendez-vous for artists, poets, writers. Peter, a poet and art critic of growing reputation, brought in his graduate classes from USC, along with visiting poets and scholars from throughout the country. At the same time our daughter, Sarah, was growing up, starting at Franklin Elementary School, just down the hill: she was to spend her entire childhood here, and her teenage years, so the house was often filled with the joy of children's play and laughter.

In 1982, we decided on a huge remodel. Until that time, the downstairs was divided into a number of small rooms, including the living room (configured much as it is today), the dining-room/gallery, a den, and at the back a laundry room, a long, pullman-style kitchen, and a tiny breakfast nook in the northwest corner. With the help of a young architect, Howard Laks, we redesigned and extended the entire downstairs, consolidating the space and pushing out the western and northern walls--with the support of a massive new I-beam--to add a considerable area to the floor plan. We built in the "pit" as the focal living area, turned the den into what is now the dining-room, added in the long kitchen counters and the buffet, and extended the visual reach with the French doors that lead out to the garden.

At the same time, we converted the "maid's quarters" in the southwest corner into a small office, and appropriated its large closet to expand the adjacent bathroom with a double shower. Upstairs, we pushed the bath out onto the newly-built balcony, adding to the light and space in the bathroom area. And outside, we added the spa and the deck, and re-landscaped the back garden. The flagstone apron in front of the garage, along with the steps and the path to the front door, was added much later, in 2001.

The art collection the gives the house some of its special quality is mainly the result of years of friendships with artists and activity in the L.A. art community. The pottery was collected in the 1970s--mostly at garage sales and swap meets--in a great, exciting treasure hunt that lasted through that decade and on into the 1980s. In recent years, the house has been home to thriving artists' groups, which meet here regularly to thrash out the cultural and aesthetic issues of the day.

In short, this beautiful house has been enriched by our involvement n the culture of our time, and we in turn have been enriched by its peculiar serenity, its wonderful vistas of the natural and urban environments, its solidity, and the security it offers. We have lived here with joy, and leave it in the knowledge that it is time, now, for the house to foster other lives, and other interests. We wish it well.