Welcome to the Neutra House Conference Center

The Neutra House was designed in 1935 and completed in 1939 by internationally renowned architect Richard Neutra. 

Its clean lines exemplify mid-century modernism and the California modern style.  Neutra collaborated with architect Otto Winkler on a dozen residential projects/homes in the S.F. Bay Area in the 1930s. 

Only two of these projects were south of Atherton, with both in Los Altos. Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation, the City of Los Altos, and a group of citizens interested in preserving architectural history united to save this house.

It was moved to city land, and it is now available for rental as a conference center. 

The Neutra House is home to educational programs on modern architecture and the original clients’ history.

“Three Small Houses in an Orchard” 

Jacqueline Johnson, a graduate student at Stanford in English, and an avocational poet Clayton Stafford purchased a half-acre lot at 180/182/184 Marvin Avenue – a prune orchard at the time.  

Stafford’s and Johnson’s one-bedroom houses were essentially identical, with approximately 750 square feet each. A third smaller house was also built, perhaps for a third writer, but Johnson owned it. 

The house that was moved and is now the “Neutra House” was Jacqueline Johnson’s home for a little over a year. She sold her two houses on her half of the lot in 1941 after marrying the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford. 

After marrying in May, they moved to Mexico to wait out the war. They returned to San Francisco in 1947 and lived out their lives in the Bay Area.

Clayton Stafford married, served in the war, and returned to live here for many years. 

He had Richard Neutra design an extension of the house with a second bedroom and contracted with Gary Ekbo to landscape the lot in the late forties.