“fac et spera”

Fac et Spera was commissioned by acclaimed Architect and Interior Designer William Sofield for his Los Angeles home and studio. The title, which translates “Do and Hope,” is one of his mottoes.

       The house itself, a storied Heineman Brothers craftsman with Japanese elements, was built as small hunting lodge in 1914, with later alterations by Greene and Greene. It became the love nest of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford at a time when they were both married to other people, years before their famous house “Pickfair.” Legend associates the house with the couple’s founding of United Artists, together with their friends D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, who undoubtedly would have visited their then-remote hideaway.

The illicit lovers greatly enlarged the little house at the time of the first World War (the subject of the mural), adding on a master bedroom suite with a sleeping porch, and a curious room with the shape and proportions of a train car connecting the new wing with the day-use rooms of the house. Sofield christened this room the “Bridge Room,” and commissioned Benedict to mural the ceiling, end walls, and doors. This was their first collaboration.

Interiors: Studio Sofield

Photography: Toni Meneguzzo, Firooz Zahedi, Matthew Benedict.