John Elgin Woolf

John Elgin Woolf (1908 in Atlanta – 1980 in Beverly Hills, California), was an American architect noted for the Hollywood homes he created with partner and adopted son Robert Koch Woolf.

Career

After receiving his bachelor's degree in architecture from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1929, Mr. Woolf (known as Jack) moved to Hollywood, hoping to pursue a career in film. Hoping his Southern background might prove an asset in filming Gone with the Wind, he met the film's first director, George Cukor, who was instrumental in helping Woolf meet other influential people in Hollywood who later became his clients.

In the late 1940s, Woolf met Robert Koch, an interior designer. They became partners and together built or renovated homes for many of the wealthy and famous Los Angeles area residents of the 1950s and 1960s.

They "established a new vocabulary for glamorous movie-star living; they synthesized 19th-century French, Greek Revival and Modernist touches into a heady mixture that has since been christened Hollywood Regency, which foreshadowed aspects of postmodernism."[1]

One of their most notable renovations was Case Study House No. 17, the largest and most technology-enhanced of the Case Study Houses sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, designed by Craig Ellwood and originally built in 1955.[2] Woolf and Koch purchased the house in 1962 and transformed it from its original utilitarian design to their own more glamorous architectural style, which they used for their own residence.

Legacy

Woolf designed homes for clients Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, Ira Gershwin, Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Agnes Moorehead, Ronald Colman, Jean Howard, Lillian Gish, Mervyn LeRoy, Paul Lynde, Ray Milland, Ricardo Montalbán, Loretta Young, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Bob and Dolores Hope hired John Elgin Woolf in the 1950s to remodel and update their 1939 Robert Finkelhor-designed house in Toluca Lake.[3]

Additionally, many Hollywood builders of the same era imitated the style created by Woolf, which typically featured his "Pullman doors" front entry, leaded oval glass window, mansard roofline and Doric columns.

Family

Robert Koch Woolf was Jack's partner and lover. In 1971, after being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, Woolf adopted Koch and Gene Oney Woolf, who had come to reside with them, in order to legalize their relationship and formally establish a family. A later household member, William Capp, was included as a "brother," although never formally adopted. This became known to friends as the "Woolf Pack" and is still present in Hollywood vernacular.[4]

Significant projects

References
  1. Colman, David (2004-11-15). "Robert Koch Woolf, 81, Decorator for the Stars". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  2. http://en.wikiarquitectura.com/index.php?title=Hoffman_House_/_Case_Study_House_n%C2%BA_17
  3. Lauren Beale (October 4, 2013), Hope estate hits market Los Angeles Times.
  4. http://la.curbed.com/archives/2010/06/john_elgin_woolfdesigned_above_the_sunset_strip.php
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