Bob Hope’s Volcanic Lair By John Lautner Could Be Yours For $50 Million

Architizer News

Bob Hope’s Volcanic Lair By John Lautner Could Be Yours For $50 Million

March 7, 2013

Bob Hope died ten years ago, and now his Palm Springs estate is on the market for the first time. Designed in 1973 by John Lautner, the 22,366-square-foot garden manse takes indoor-outdoor living to an outsize level. Lautner designed the copper roof to resemble a volcano, and his sleek, curvaceous take on rugged rock didn’t stop there. With six bedrooms, ten baths, indoor and outdoor pools, a wavy concrete roof punctured by a giant open-air skylight, and a boulder that juts into the living room, the Hope estate is nothing short of a modernist Candyland. From its vantage point high above the Coachella Valley, the house commands sweeping views of the valley and the San Jacinto Mountains. “The whole desert was at your feet,” Hope’s daughter, Linda Hope, told the New York Times. Read more!

The property is listed at $50 million—a far higher price than other Lautner residences recently on the market, notes Co.Design. We can probably thank the sheen of celebrity for that. But only a particular kind of celebrity, it seems! Judging from the reasonable price put on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Baltimore home ($450,000 is pretty standard for the neighborhood, says HuffPo) entertainers still outrank literary figures by a lot.

bob-hope-john-lautner

Despite all its splendor and inventive use of concrete, Lautner’s design is less well known than his Elrod House or the Sheats-Goldstein Residence (which, as acolytes of the Dude will recall, was featured in The Big Lebowski). This may be because Lautner distanced himself from the project after Hope’s wife, Dolores Hope, made some changes to the interior. The Times explains:

“[S]he simply made interior modifications to make it ‘more livable,’ according to Linda Hope. The changes included extending the dining room toward a balcony and making it possible to get from the bedrooms to the front door without crossing a patio, Ms. Hope said.”

“I think my mother was a frustrated architect,” Linda Hope added, noting that her mother frequently remodeled the family’s primary residence Toluca Lake, California. “My dad used to say every time he went away he needed a road map to get back through his house.”

bob-hope-lautner

For any billionaires still reading, the Hope estate is listed with Ann Eysenring of Partners Trust (brochure here) in Beverly Hills and with Patrick Jordan and Stewart Smith of Windermere Real Estate in Palm Springs.

bob-hope-john-lautner-interior