If you’ve ever seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Day of the Locust, or Blade Runner, then you’ve also seen the Ennis House. In the films, the property is used to depict a vampire mansion, a private residence, and an apartment building respectively. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1923 and constructed in 1924, the home has made more than 80 onscreen appearances throughout its near century-long existence, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. However, it was the home’s feature in House on Haunted Hill in 1959 that brought it into ghoulish acclaim.
“In just a minute, I’ll show you the only really haunted house in the world,” Watson Pritchard, played by Elisha Cook Jr., says in the movie. “Since it was built a century ago, seven people—including my brother—have been murdered in it.” The film’s plot follows five people who are promised $10,000 each if they can spend the whole night in the eerie property, which is “played” by the Ennis House.
“It’s a really modern house, yet it uses ancient forms,” said Michael Wyetzner, architect at Michielli + Wyetzner Architects, in the newest episode of Blueprints, a YouTube series for AD. In the video, Wyetzner breaks down the Ennis House’s role in House on Haunted Hill, as well as the role of five other properties featured in horror films. “It doesn’t have a very domestic scale, it almost looks like it could be a museum or other type of religious building,” he said.
Of course, though large, it was designed as a residential property. Located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, Wright designed the home in the early ’20s for Charles and Mabel Ennis, owners of a local men’s clothing store. The home is one of four that makes use of Wright’s textile block system, which is constructed from precast, interlocked concrete blocks. Designed in a trabeated style, the home lacks curves, arches, vaults, and domes and is heavily inspired by Mayan architecture. As such, many have classified the home as a Mayan Revival.