Twenty years ago the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Calif., existed in people's minds more as a photograph in numberless histories of architecture than as a place many of us had seen in person. Ray Eames, the widow of Charles, lived here until her death in 1988, and unless you were a friend of hers or a devoted student of California modernism with the right connections, chances were nil you could inspect one of the most celebrated private homes built in postwar America.

Eames Demetrios/Eames Office Charles Eames's Case Study House #8, a bold California experiment in residential living.

Even now, with the Eames Foundation in charge since 2004 and an Internet site offering directions (www.eamesfoundation.org), the location still feels like a secret that will be revealed only to those who know the password. Strolling down the unpaved driveway from the entrance on Chautauqua Blvd., past a tangle of roses on the right, visitors have barely a clue of the treat in store for them.

One of the original Case Study Houses, a bold California experiment in residential living begun in 1945 by editor John Entenza for his Arts and Architecture magazine, the Eames House (officially known as Case Study House #8) was planned as a model home for the flood of returning GIs. Entenza asked his architects, a list that eventually included Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig and Eero Saarinen, to keep economy and efficiency in the front of their minds.

In both these regards, the Eames House stands out. On entering the property, what's most impressive is the modesty of everything, the easygoing relationship between structures and site. The two-story house and artist's studio -- separated by a courtyard and backed into a hill with a row of eucalyptus trees in front -- are proudly informal as well as modernist. Charles and Ray Eames excelled as object designers, a mentality that requires blending human needs within an interior space rather than imposing one's will on a piece of land.

Both buildings are like a pair of rectangular cabinets, with steel beams acting as structural elements and also dividing the façade into modular sections: eight bays for the house, five for the studio. These modules are filled by glass windows -- some of them further subdivided by thinner steel mullions, others clear from floor to ceiling -- or by steel panels. A select few of these are painted red, blue, yellow and white. The frontal effect is like staring at a 3-D Mondrian painting.

Eames Demetrios/Eames Office

Charles Eames wanted to employ only prefabricated parts. As Ray Eames once described their thinking, the idea was to use "materials that could be bought from a catalog . . . so that people would not have to build stick by stick."

The idea itself was not new. Industrial design from preconstructed materials dates back to the 19th century. London's Crystal Palace was erected in 1851 with pre-fab cast iron. Gustave Eiffel designed schools from pressed metal that could be shipped anywhere. But the fashion picked up steam in the Machine Age. At the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 about a dozen pre-fab houses were on display. The German architect Konrad Wachsmann, who in 1929 had designed an "off-the-shelf" wooden house for Albert Einstein, teamed up in 1942 with former Bauhaus director Walter Gropius to patent a "Packaged House." (MoMA's current exhibition "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," which runs through Oct. 20, traces the history back to the first "balloon frame" wooden homes in 1833.)

Charles Eames and Saarinen in a 1945 issue of Arts and Architecture published a joint plan for Case Study House #8. This so-called "Bridge House" design, a single-story residence that cantilevered over the meadow, was never realized. After picnicking for a couple of years amid the wild flowers in front, the Eameses decided they would rather gaze at than intrude on nature. Between 1947 and 1949 they reconfigured the plan into a pair of two-story buildings, separating work and living spaces and opting for the current orientation with both structures parallel to the meadow.

A steel shortage delayed final construction. But according to Charles, when all the parts had arrived he needed only to order one extra beam. Assembly of the steel shell took five men only 16 hours, and on Christmas Eve 1949 the couple moved in.

The house is only 1,500 square feet; the studio, an even more compact 1,000 square feet. The Eameses imagined these spaces for a working couple with no children. Upstairs has two bedrooms (their college-age daughter, Lucia, slept in the second on visits) and a sleeping gallery with sliding screens. The main living room is light and airy, its 17-foot ceiling extending up the entire two stories. Sliding glass doors provide quick access to the outdoors. Pleated floor-to-ceiling curtains on the windows add a vertical note to the generally horizontal rhythms.

The interior of the house is open to the public on a guided tour once a year (on June 20 and then just for Eames Foundation members). But as the exterior has lots of glass, the living spaces are highly visible. The books and folk-art collection of Ray Eames, along with many kinds of Eames chairs, fabrics and other joint creations have been left as they were on her death. Wear-and-tear is also apparent. Fund raising is under way to make some crucial repairs.

The studio is also off-limits and now houses the office -- admission to the grounds is free with a $5 donation suggested -- but dozens of Eames experiments, from typography to toy-making, are on view through the many windows.

As with Philip Johnson's Glass House -- its swankier East Coast modernist cousin, finished the same year -- the setting is hard to improve upon. Walking the small lot's boundaries brings glimpses of the adjacent Case House #9 (an Eames-Saarinen design where Entenza lived) as well as a canyon below. A rope swing hangs from an oak in the midst of the meadow. There is a murmur of traffic -- the end of Sunset Blvd. runs below into the Pacific Coast Highway -- and the more welcome white noise of the surf. The Eameses chose the property for this feature: At the western edge of the property you look down and far out at the Pacific Ocean. Fog often drifts up and over to cool the place in the early morning.

The American public rejected the modernism of the Case Study Houses. Postwar home construction was dominated by Levitt and Sons with their prefab "Cape Codder" and in California by the timber-framed ranch house. The transparent rationality of the Eames House, its utter lack of conceit or affectation, looks better now, when viewed in our age of architectural pomposity, than perhaps ever before.

In their first edition of "The City Observed: Los Angeles," published in 1984 and still the best-written guidebook to the area's architecture and scenery, Charles Moore, Peter Becker and Regula Campbell wrote that the Eames House "may be the only place in Southern California where the romantic and the real are both operating full tilt."

Decades later, it is still one of a diminishing number of places where visitors from afar -- and the Eames House guest book is filled with addresses from Europe and Asia, as well as across the U.S. -- can imagine the kind of casual, sun-dappled paradise Los Angeles once must have been.

Mr. Woodward is an arts critic in New York.

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