The Shulman Home Virtual Tour when listed for sale in 2009
I was schedule to meet the Iconic Architectural Photographer Julius Shulman for lunch at Pinot’s on Sunset, April 4th of 2004. The lunch had been arranged by a client of mine who’d known him for years. Once the date was set, I cleared my schedule and arrived early for our 1:00 meeting. At 1:15 my client came dashing in the door and said ‘Julius can’t make it, his friend Pierre just died and he’s fielding phone calls, would you mind getting lunch to go and meeting us at the house?‘ Absolutely. I arrived 30 minutes later at his Hollywood Hills home with our lunch in tow. From the moment I crossed the threshold into his home, I was speechless. There in front of me was every iconic image of his that I’d ever studied in my art history classes at UCLA, and then some. I had to fight back the tears, because at that moment I knew I was in the presence of genius. No Hollywood celebrity could hold a candle to this man standing in front of me, a man who’d shaped how I’d seen the world of architecture, long before I even knew who he was. But in that moment, his life’s work touched me in a very profound way that I’ll never forget.
As we were setting our lunch entrees on the dining room table, Julius began telling his stories. Stories about how his peers looked to nature to create the homes of their era… cutting an avocado in half and being inspired by it’s color. He gushed about how the architect Soriano had built his home for him nearly 50 years ago and that he’d watched the trees grow up around the home. The phone rang and interrupted him… it was another publication calling and wanting to use his image of the Case Study Home #22 for free. ‘Absolutely not, I don’t work for free’ he replied. His friend Pierre Koenig had built it… the man who’d just died. It was all making sense now. He was the architect of the Stahl House, one of LA’s most iconic home’s for 50 years, the home that Julius made famous as 2 elegant women sat perched in the glass box that appeared to float over the city at night when he snapped their photo in 1960.
After lunch Julius gladly autographed one of his books for me, which is what he’s doing in the studio shot above. It’s a bit jarring to watch the virtual tour and see his studio stripped bare, and the walls of his home without his iconic photos, but they’re all in safe keeping at the Getty Archives. Ultimately I ended up buying that iconic photo from Julius and returned to his home a second time to pick it up. He rolled it out on his dining room table, inspected the print, and signed it in white ink. It’s still one of my favorite possessions to this day and I’m so grateful that I had the incredible honor of meeting him.
Julius Shulman: October 10, 1910 – July 15, 2009