#HTE

Harry Gesner’s Cantilevered House Designs from the 1950s

On a recent trip to L.A. I stayed in the Hollywood Hills. My host drove me past this series of structures, which at first glance appeared to be a row of carports.

However, when I later passed these on foot, I noticed something interesting:

As you can see, these “carports” extend far beyond the car parking space, and they have a second story built beneath street level. In the shot below you can see the window cut into this lower level.

In this shot, you can see a yellow addition has also been built, providing another room.

So yeah, these are proper houses, cantilevered over the valley. Photos cannot adequately convey how steep the slope is. I have a fear of heights so looking over this precipice caused automatic ass-clenching.

I could barely find any windows on these, and imagined the parts of the house I couldn’t see would have massive clerestory windows to compensate.

When I got back to New York I looked these houses up. Called “Boathouses,” they were designed by the unconventional architect Harry Gesner in the 1950s. Executing their fanciful design on such a challenging site was reportedly so difficult that Norwegian shipbuilders had to be hired to do it. Here’s what they look like from the valley side:

And here are what some of these look like on the inside:

The friend I was crashing with said she actually looked into buying one of these when it was on the market, but was put off at the open house walkthrough; she said the precariousness of the height made her uneasy. I couldn’t live in one of these things either, but I’m impressed at the sheer bravery of the design.