Richard Halliburton - Hangover House in Laguna Beach, California

Hangover House in Laguna Beach, California

In 1937 Halliburton commissioned William Alexander Levy, a recent graduate of the New York University School of Architecture and close friend of Paul Mooney, to build him a home overlooking Laguna Beach. Mooney managed the construction of the house, and offered occasional design advice, suggesting the creation of a small pond behind the house which, for its shape and size, he called "Clark Gable's ears." A mutual friend of Levy and Mooney, Charles Wolfsohn (born 1912), a penthouse garden designer, did the flower landscaping. The house, built of concrete and steel and bastion-like in appearance, contained, a spacious living room, a spacious dining room and three bedrooms, one for Halliburton, which featured a wall-sized map of the world, one for Mooney, and one for Levy. Its Acropolitan stature, some 400 feet (120m) atop a ridge, and its apparent suspension between two canyons, gave it its name "Hangover House." When he first saw the completed structure, Halliburton enthused, "it flies!" Writer Ayn Rand, who visited the house in 1937 when she was still an unknown writer, is believed to have based the "Heller House" in The Fountainhead (1943) upon Halliburton's home.

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