Hangover House

Hangover House (also known as the Halliburton House) was designed and built by William Alexander for his friend the travel writer Richard Halliburton. Constructed in 1938 on a Laguna Beach, California hilltop, the house, boasting commanding views of the Pacific Ocean, was built with three bedrooms, one each for Halliburton, Alexander, and Alexander's lover Paul Mooney, who was also Halliburton's editor and ghostwriter. [ Max, Gerry. "Horizon Chasers: The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney". Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., April 2007]

Alexander drew upon European modern architecture and created flat-roofed boxes of concrete and glass. He hoped to create a house that, like the international modern spirit of Halliburton, soared above the clouds. Mies van der Rohe's work and his experimental concrete buildings of the 1920s, along with Le Corbusier's "L'Esprit Nouveau Pavilion" (1924-25) and his famous Villa Savoye (1928-29), influenced Alexander. [ Wells, Ted. "Hangover House: An Obscure Modern Masterpiece." Ted Wells' Living Simple: Architecture, Design, and Living (March 7, 2007): http://twls.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=190016] Concrete and steel were the main materials used in its construction. Glass blocks formed part of the wall along the gallery that looked into a canyon several hundred feet below. A huge bastionlike retaining wall outside the main building made the house appear safe from intrusion and Olympian in its detachment.

Alexander befriended Ayn Rand and provided quotes for her book "The Fountainhead" (1943). Rand's descriptions of the Heller House, and other houses designed by the book's hero Howard Roark, were believed, by Alexander, to be thinly disguised references to Hangover House. [ Wells, Ted. "Hangover House: An Obscure Modern Masterpiece." Ted Wells' Living Simple: Architecture, Design, and Living (March 7, 2007): http://twls.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=190016]

The nickname "Hangover House" is a pun on both the building's location overlooking the cliffs, and the alcohol consumed there.

Notes and references

Further reading

*Austen, Roger. "Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America". Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1977