The Eames House (also known as Case Study House No. 8) is a historic house museum at 203 Chautauqua Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Designed in the mid-century modern style, the house was constructed in 1949 by Eames Office designers Charles and Ray Eames for themselves. It consists of two standalone rectangular pavilions—a residence and a standalone studio—both constructed of various materials. The Eames House has been operated by the nonprofit Charles & Ray Eames Foundation (originally the Eames Foundation) since 2004.
The house was developed as part of Arts & Architecture magazine's Case Study House program, announced by John Entenza in 1945. After Entenza acquired the site, the Eameses and Eero Saarinen initially proposed an elevated, L-shaped structure. Charles and Ray later revised the design to create two pavilions. Work began in 1948, and the frame was constructed in one-and-a-half days in 1949. Charles and Ray moved into the home on Christmas Eve in 1949 and lived there until their respective deaths: Charles's in 1978 and Ray's in 1988. They used it as a workspace and exhibited their belongings there. After Ray's death, Charles's daughter Lucia inherited the home. By the 2000s, visitors were allowed to tour the grounds, and in 2025, the studio pavilion's interior opened to the public.
The residence and studio flank a central courtyard to the south and north, respectively. The pavilions occupy a hillside along the site's western boundary, while the rest of the site has trees and a meadow. The facade is a steel grid with panels in different materials and colors. The residence pavilion's lower level features a living room, kitchen–dining room, and utility space, while its upper level holds two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The studio pavilion has a similar mezzanine with a kitchen, storage space, and studio room. The arrangement of the Eameses' possessions—such as furniture, toys, artwork, antiques, and decorative ornaments—is also a major element of the interior design.
When the Eames House was completed, it was covered extensively in the architectural press, and commentators praised the house for its technical advances and its role as a symbol of the Eameses' work. The house has inspired other architects, particularly those from Britain, and has been both the subject and setting of various media works, including exhibits and films. The house is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and a National Historic Landmark.
Site The Eames House ( Case Study House No. 8), the former residence of Charles and Ray Eames, is located at 203 Chautauqua Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. The property is variously cited as covering , , or . It occupies a bluff about above the Pacific Ocean. The surrounding topography is characterized by flat mesas, with unstable loose alluvium and marine shales, surrounded by canyons. The Eames House occupies a smaller mesa north of the Santa Monica Canyon.
Surroundings The Eames House is one of four residences designed on the same city block for the Case Study Houses program. The block abuts Corona Del Mar and other property to the northwest, Chautauqua Boulevard to the northeast and southeast, and the Pacific Coast Highway to the southwest. The Entenza House, also known as Case Study House No. 9, is located at 201 Chautauqua Boulevard, to the east and less than away from the Eames House. To the northeast is Case Study House No. 20, a third house designed by Richard J. Neutra. The fourth house on the site, Case Study House No. 18, was designed by Rodney Walker and is located east of the Entenza House. The houses share the same general plot but are oriented to provide privacy to each residence. Writers John and Marilyn Neuhart said the Eames House had the best site on the block, as it was the closest to the Pacific Ocean.
The site was historically part of the homeland of the indigenous Tongva. The parcel was first settled under Mexican colonization in 1839, then acquired by Abbot Kinney in 1889, Collis Huntington in 1891, and the Chautauqua Association in 1921. The land was then sold to actor Will Rogers in 1927, becoming part of the vast Rogers estate. The adjacent parts of Rogers's estate became the Will Rogers State Historic Park.
Grounds Planting consultant J. A. Gooch arranged the trees and shrubs on the house's grounds, in contrast with other Case Study houses, landscaped by Garrett Eckbo. The Eames property is accessed by a driveway from Chautauqua Boulevard, with signage for multiple houses. The driveway is paved in asphalt. The southern edge of this driveway has a fence and trees, while the northern edge has a curving brick wall abutting House 20.
The house itself consists of residence and studio pavilions separated by a central courtyard. The pavilions and courtyard are arranged in a straight line on the western boundary of the site, adjoining a hillside. A wooden walkway, originally made of railroad sleepers, leads to the eastern elevations of both pavilions' facades. An existing row of eucalyptus trees, planted in the 1880s by Abbot Kinney, was preserved east of this walkway. Another walkway leads behind the western elevations of both structures. The western elevations sit on an retaining wall along the hillside, which measures thick and extends either or . This wall extends at an angle past each pavilion.
The house has a central courtyard and two patios (one each to the north of the studio and south of the residence). The patios and courtyard have vegetation and brick, marble, and wood floor surfaces, along with potted plants arranged by Ray. The south patio (or south court) sits beneath an overhanging roof eave and has three pilings salvaged from a demolished pier in Venice, Los Angeles. The floor of the south patio has a grid of wood planks, filled in with brick and scattered unpaved squares, a design feature also used in the courtyard and in the north patio. The courtyard has marble pavers outside a doorway to the studio pavilion, along with various pots. The north patio is L-shaped and leads to the house's carport, next to the driveway. There are plants and rocks between the patio and carport.
The rest of the property was less formally landscaped. The eastern portion has a meadow enclosed by an earthen berm; the pavilions' alignment, facing the meadow, allowed a greater contrast with the landscape compared with a site in the middle of the city. Before Charles and Ray built the house, the meadow had rye and wildflowers, which the couple rarely cut, even decades afterward. The meadow and trees host various birds and animals. Shrubs surround a berm separating the Entenza and Eames properties, which Charles felt was a successful landscape feature.
History Development
The house's original owners, Charles Eames and his wife Ray (nee Kaiser), were industrial designers who led the Eames Office. While primarily known for their furniture designs, the Eameses also designed a small number of buildings. Charles and Ray both had design backgrounds—Charles under architect Eliel Saarinen and Ray under artist Hans Hofmann—and met at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1940. They were married the next year. The Eameses moved to Los Angeles in 1941 because, as Charles recalled, they wanted a quiet place to work. They became friends with John Entenza, publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine, who helped the Eameses find an apartment in Westwood, their residence for the next eight years. Entenza appointed the Eameses to Arts & Architecture editorial board, and they cofounded the Plyformed Wood Company, a furniture firm.
The couple initially considered designing a Spanish-style house of their own in Santa Monica. The house they eventually built was part of the Case Study Houses program, announced in the January 1945 issue of Arts & Architecture magazine; The program, which ran until 1966, sought to develop inexpensive and efficient model homes to meet housing demand in the postwar United States. The first 13 Case Study houses, including the Eames House and the neighboring Entenza House, were developed together in the 1940s, while the other houses were developed incrementally. These houses were built on private lots across Southern California, rather than at expositions or on government-owned land as other demonstration houses had been, and were given a strict budget. The early Case Study houses tended to use wood, brick, concrete, and glass, although the Eames House had a steel frame despite ongoing steel shortages. Because the houses did not receive government subsidies, materials were either donated or, more commonly, bought at market value.
Land acquisition and early design Entenza bought in the Pacific Palisades from Rogers's family in January 1945; the site was, at the time, very sparsely populated. Entenza announced the first eight architectural teams shortly afterward, among them Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. The team was tasked with designing houses for the Eames family (Case Study House 8) and Entenza himself (No. 9). Entenza set aside of the Pacific Palisades site for houses 8 and 9, and another for two other Case Study houses. From the outset, houses 8 and 9 were designed together. The northwestern boundary of House 8's site had an embankment, which sloped up toward a plain. North of the embankment was to be House 9. Furniture designer D. J. De Pree later recalled Charles saying that he liked the site's proximity to mountains, deserts, and ocean, and that "the silence of these great entities would bring wholeness to his life".
With the new location in hand, the Eameses decided to build in the International Style. The Eameses and Saarinen hired Edgardo Contini as the structural consultant for both houses. Charles, Ray, and Saarinen's initial conception for House 8 consisted of an L-shaped structure with interconnected residence and studio wings, thereby allowing the Eameses to combine their personal and work activities. The building was to be carried on stilts above the existing meadow at the bottom of the embankment. The studio was to be nestled into the slope, and the residential wing was to extend perpendicularly from the embankment above the meadow. Contini proposed a cantilevered footbridge between House 8's upper story and the meadow; as a result, the Eameses originally called their residence the Bridge House. The footbridge was to be the secondary entrance, while a spiral staircase under the residential wing would be the main entrance. The building's steel frame, though more expensive to fabricate and transport compared with wood, was projected to reduce labor costs substantially, from 50% to 33% of the total construction cost.
The plans for houses 8 and 9 were published in the December 1945 issue of Arts & Architecture magazine. In that article, the Eameses and Saarinen wrote that the two designs were inapplicable as "solutions of typical living problems". Charles and Saarinen also felt that the two houses would "aid as background for [the] life in work". House 8's original plan was similar to other cantilevered glass residences designed by Saarinen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Entenza split his assemblage into six parcels, selling four in January 1946 and retaining ownership of the House 8 and 9 sites. Delivery of materials—particularly steel, of which both houses were made—was delayed for over two years, during which Case Study houses with wood frames were constructed. The delay in construction was also attributed to the Eames Office's tendency to contemplate a promising design for several years before execution. In any case, Charles and Ray held picnics in the meadow in the meantime, developing an affinity for the landscape.
Final design