I made the trek to Silver Lake today to visit a colleague’s listing, which just happens to be R.M. Schindler’s famous Silver Ridge property, built in 1925, that has undergone a meticulous restoration. I learned that Dr. How, for whom the house was originally commissioned, loved to entertain and lecture in his living room, hence the loft area open to the room below, and oftentimes would invite “hobos” to sit in on his soirees - he found these guests meandering around the train tracks near the foot of his property (attention potential buyers, the tracks are now defunct!). This art piece can be yours for the modern price of $2.7mm. That definitely makes one want to utter the words, “how now brown cow!” p.s. for those of you who are truly into details, Richard Neutra designed the gardens.
p.p.s. I couldn’t resist pilfering this from Wikipedia: How now brown cow” is a phrase used in elocution teaching to demonstrate rounded vowel sounds. Each “ow” sound in the phrase represents an individual diphthong. The phrase does not have an explicit meaning per se but can be used as a light-hearted greeting.[1] Although the exact origins of the phrase are unclear, it can be dated to at least 1942 in the United States.[1] In February of that year the Maryland newspaper The Capital mentioned the phrase when discussing a famous thespian’s voice:
Laird Cregar, now contributing his booming voice to ‘Ten Gentlemen from West Point’: explains how he got it. When he first tried out for the Pasadena Community Playhouse his voice wouldn’t carry past the front rows. Coach Belle Kennedy had him declaim ‘How, Now, Brown Cow? and The Rain in Spain Still Stains’ – over and over.[1]
p.p.p.s. And I just can’t fail to tell you that the “Rain in Spain Still Strains” reminds me of Eliza Doolittle’s character in “My Fair Lady” and her lovely “aha!” moment when she utters “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” in perfect British diction. Okay, how did I go from real estate to speech and enunciation? It’s called Adult ADD!
