When Dion Neutra closed his father, modernist architect Richard Neutra's office in Silver Lake in the 90's, there was a kind of thrift sale of leftover items open to the public. I hurried to see the iconic space and found a few bibelots--a map that had once hung on the wall, a scrap of an unsigned drawing, and this radio.

I imagined it had once played the compositions of Neutra's fellow emigres to LA (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Heifetz et al) from Europe, as he and his staff listened while they worked. Neutra had opened the studio, now on the National Register, preserved by Dion, in 1950. By then, many of his most iconic works had been built, but other landmark buildings were designed there.

The vintage radio still works, albeit badly, but I turn it on from time to time hoping to channel the creative energies that once surrounded it.