Richard Neutra, the California architect often credited with introducing the International style to American architecture, only spent a couple years in the midwest, but they were formative ones. He was fascinated by the innovative commercial architecture of the Chicago School, and worked briefly for Holabird and Roche, the Chicago firm responsible for the first steel-skeleton skyscraper. But he was also obsessed with Frank Lloyd Wright–he named his firstborn son Frank–and put in some time with the Prairie School visionary at his Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
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Born in Vienna in 1892, Neutra had worked briefly with a Swiss architect and then with modernist Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. In 1923 he moved to the U.S. to meet Wright, but by 1925 he’d left Chicago for Los Angeles, where his childhood friend and fellow architect Rudolph Schindler had invited him to join his fledgling practice. Some of Neutra’s works, like the steel-framed Lovell House in the LA hills, are known by architecture buffs worldwide. But at least one, the Helburn House in Bozeman, Montana, still hadn’t been verified as his work even two years ago. Now Chicagoans have a chance to explore the rediscovered house and its history in a Chicago Architecture Foundation exhibit titled “Neutra in Montana: The Blurring of Architecture and Landscape.” Organized by John Brittingham, the associate professor of architecture at Montana State University who did the documentation, the show runs through November 17.
Using Neutra’s floor plan and first elevations, the couple did all the construction themselves, completing the house in 1954. Helburn, who is now retired, lived in it until the mid-60s, when he relocated to Longmont, Colorado. His wife lived in the house until 1971. Neutra died in 1970.
