Neutra Dame

Situated on a ridge along Laurel Canyon, above the flight paths of red-tailed hawks, crows, and the occasional helicopter, the Galka Scheyer House is an overlooked entry in LA’s modernist canon. Built by Richard Neutra in 1934 and featuring a living room that could double as a gallery, the avant-garde “airship,” as its owner affectionally dubbed it, secured Scheyer’s role as a doyenne of the local bohemia. A German Jewish émigré dealer and collector of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexej von Jawlensky (she publicized the tetrad as “the Blue Four” via shows in New York and elsewhere), Scheyer had arrived in Los Angeles from the Bay Area four years prior. A painter herself, she befriended the likes of Diego Rivera, as well as the composer John Cage and photographer Edward Weston, some of whom became fixtures at the home.

From Neutra protégé Gregory Ain, Scheyer commissioned a penthouse addition intended to temporarily house artists. But with her death in 1945, the residency never came to pass. When the house was listed last year, a German busine…