Robert Koch Woolf, 81, Decorator for the Stars, Is Dead
MuckTheDuck
Arts
November 15, 2004
Robert Koch Woolf, 81, Decorator for the Stars, Is Dead
By DAVID COLMAN
Robert Koch Woolf, the Los Angeles decorator who with his partner, the
architect John Elgin Woolf, created a new style of luxury in Hollywood
in the 1950's and 1960's, died on Nov. 3 at his home in Montecito,
Calif. He was 81.
The cause was complications of surgery, according to Gene Woolf, his
adopted brother, and William Woolf, his companion, who are his only
survivors.
Working with John Woolf, Robert Woolf, then working as Robert Koch,
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. They designed houses for,
among others, George Cukor, John Wayne, David O. Selznick and Barbara
Hutton.
Moving to Los Angeles after the war, the handsome, blue-eyed Mr. Koch
originally dreamed of movie stardom. But in the late 1940's he met
John Woolf, who persuaded the young man to come live and work with
him. They became business and domestic partners. John Woolf, better
known and 15 years older than Robert, did the architecture, with
Robert providing the decor.
"They did their own version of Régence," said Paige Rense, the editor
of Architectural Digest, which covered some of the firm's later
projects in the 1970's. "In the 60's and into the 70's, there was a
fear of Modern and contemporary architecture," she said. "Their
traditional twist was very reassuring. It was a certification of taste
to have a Woolf house."
Outfitting the horizontal, single-floor plan of a hacienda-style house
with white stucco walls, straight, Moorish rooflines, Greek columns
and mansard roofs - the last a Woolf signature - the two men
established a distinctive look that appealed to people for whom stark
Modernism was too spartan and traditional styles were too boring. In
one of the more pointed responses to pure Modernist style, in 1962 the
two men bought one of the largest so-called Case Study houses - a
clean glass and steel box of a house built in 1954 as part of a
utopian design project - and remodeled it completely, adding a mansard
roof to the house and a Doric colonnade around the pool.
The restrained theatricality they brought to their many projects also
inspired a wave of renovation of the many small bungalows in West
Hollywood, which was in the 1960's a Mecca for gay men out to create a
new home. While many "Woolf-ized" houses have been torn down, a number
remain.
The Woolfs' own unorthodox living arrangements, known to friends as
the "Woolf pack,'' grew out of efforts in the 1970's to give legal
standing to gay relationships. John and Robert had grown apart
romantically but continued to live together. In the early 1960's,
Robert met Gene Oney, who moved in with both men. In 1971, after John
Woolf learned he had Parkinson's disease, he adopted both Robert and
Gene, who changed their names to Woolf. Later in the decade, Gene and
Robert also grew apart, and Robert brought home a new man, William
Capp. After John Woolf died in 1980, Robert, Gene and William moved to
a large estate designed by Addison Mizner in Montecito, which Robert
devoted himself to restoring in his later years.
The three men lived together until Robert's death.
Mr. Woolf was born Robert Koch, an only child, in Temple, Tex., in
1923. In World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a tail
gunner before moving to Hollywood and starting his decorating career.
After having fallen into disfavor in the last two decades, the Woolf
style is enjoying a minor resurgence. The 1942 Pendleton house, one of
the grandest that John Woolf designed, is now the home of Robert
Evans, the film producer; Sean MacPherson, a Los Angeles restaurateur
and hotelier, also bought a Woolf house. Last year, the University Art
Museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara presented an
exhibition of the two men's work, and Vanity Fair magazine is
preparing a major feature on them for publication early next year.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company