Millard House (Pasadena, California)
Millard House (La Miniatura)
The Millard House, also known as La Miniatura, is a striking home at 645 Prospect Crescent in Pasadena, California. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and finished around 1924 for Alice Millard, a rare-book dealer. This building was the first of Wright’s four concrete textile-block houses in Greater Los Angeles during the 1920s.
The house sits three stories tall with a detached garage, set on an arroyo ravine. It has two entrances: a pedestrian door on Rosemont Avenue and a vehicle entrance on Prospect Crescent. The front features a stucco water table, while the rest of the facade is made from decorative concrete blocks with cross-like patterns. Inside, the home covers about 4,230 square feet and is laid out as two overlapping square shapes. The first floor has a dining room, the second floor houses the living room, and bedrooms are on all three levels. Wood, plaster, and concrete are used throughout, and there are balconies off the living room and the top bedroom.
Adjacent to the house is a separate gallery building called the Doll’s House, designed by Wright’s son Lloyd Wright and connected by a footbridge. The Doll’s House hosted book and art exhibitions in the 1920s and 1930s, and La Miniatura itself was used by Millard to display her large collection of books and objects.
Construction began in 1923 with a local contractor, but costs rose and the project faced delays. The contractor left partway through, and Wright and Millard finished the work by 1924, with cost overruns. Millard’s book collection and other items were later donated to the Huntington Library. Millard died in 1938, and the house passed to the Daniels family for several decades.
La Miniatura was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and is a contributing property to the Prospect Historic District. The house underwent renovations in the 1990s, and in 1998 Barry Sloane bought and renovated it. It changed ownership again in 2015 when a private buyer from China purchased it. The property has appeared in media and been used as a filming location, including for HBO’s Westworld in 2018, though interior access for such shoots is usually limited.
La Miniatura is celebrated as one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s best Los Angeles designs and a prime example of his textile-block, Mayan-influenced approach to modern architecture.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 16:34 (CET).