The Most Historic Properties in L.A.

In Annie Hall (1977), the dyspeptic New York comic Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) mocks a row of mansions in Beverly Hills: “The architecture is really consistent, isn’t it? French next to Spanish next to Tudor next to Japanese …”

Angelenos have heard all of the jokes in regards to the metropolis’s supposed lack of distinct architectural character, and so they’re not amused. “Los Angeles is sort of a conundrum to the rest of the world,” says actual property agent Rayni Williams of The Beverly Hills Estates. “Because unless you live here, you don’t really get the city.”

Still, in each joke there’s a kernel of reality. “Los Angeles has always been a city of reinvention, and sometimes that means we overlook our own heritage,” concedes The Agency’s Billy Rose. But this outlook is starting to vary. “Buyers are increasingly drawn to the authenticity of design legends like Gesner, Lautner, Gehry, Eames and Neutra. People want homes with soul, not just square footage.”

In that spirit, THR requested the highest brokers within the metropolis to call their favourite historic properties, some on the market and others not; some superstars in their very own proper and others, like so many in Hollywood, ready to be found.

Aaron Kirman
Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California
The Singleton Residence 

Designed by modernist grasp Richard Neutra within the Fifties for industrialist Henry Singleton, the Bel-Air property is “architecture without noise,” says Kirman. “Everything is intentional, everything belongs, nothing is excessive.”

The Mulholland Drive stunner was as soon as the house of Ronnie and Vidal Sassoon. Today, it stays certainly one of L.A.’s most influential estates. “Neutra helped define the architectural identity of Los Angeles, and the Singleton Residence is one of the clearest expressions of his philosophy,” provides Kirman.

Rochelle Atlas Maize
Nourmand & Associates 
The Robert Taylor Ranch 

Built for good-looking main man Robert Taylor in 1950, the 122-acre property on Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood is in the marketplace for $70 million. “To me, the Robert Taylor Ranch represents old school Hollywood elegance at its most grounded and sincere,” says Maize, whose agency holds the itemizing. “It is the opposite of performative luxury; it is real luxury. Thoughtful. Natural. Enduring.”

Fusing California ranch allure with modern modernism, the primary residence has all of the hallmarks of architect Robert Byrd. “His signature vocabulary of warm woods, pitched roofs, exposed beams, expansive windows and seamless indoor-outdoor living helped define the very essence of California style.”

Rayni Williams
The Beverly Hills Estates 
Sheats-Goldstein Residence 

Williams was so enamored with this 1963 John Lautner Beverly Crest masterpiece — now owned by Lakers front-row mainstay James Goldstein — she made it her firm’s emblem nearly 15 years in the past. “It is the roof line of his home!”

The property, with its iconic folded concrete roof, fuses natural structure with futuristic midcentury fashionable strains.  It’s additionally well-known for its sunken occasion house, nicknamed “Club James.” “It’s Beverly Hills, it’s John Lautner. It is a tennis court estate, and it has one of the biggest views in the city,” Williams says. “It just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Linda May
Carolwood Estates  
The Brody House 

Built in 1949 for artwork patrons Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody, The Brody House was created by an inventive A-team — architect A. Quincy Jones (no relation to the Quincy Jones you’re enthusiastic about), main man turned inside designer Billy Haines and panorama architect Garrett Eckbo. “My favorite aspect is the way the house slows you down,” May says. “You feel it the second you step inside. It’s timeless, not nostalgic.”

The modernist Holmby Hills masterpiece, famously flipped by Ellen DeGeneres (and bought by Napster’s Sean Parker) in 2014, awes May each time she experiences it. “It is a master class in proportion, light and flow,” she says. “Jones designed the house around the way people actually live, not the way they pretend to live.”

Brian Linder
Compass
The Jules Salkin Residence

Designed by Lautner in 1948, this Echo Park gem was constructed for musical polymath Jules Salkin. Long thought-about misplaced — missed, uncared for and almost irretrievably altered over time — it was lovingly restored by designer Trina Turk and her late husband, Jonathan Skow, and acknowledged as an early Lautner in 2014. Linder co-listed the house, which bought in December for $2.6 million.

“This home is special because it’s representative of the architect’s early work, shortly after Lautner established his own practice in Los Angeles, after having apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in Arizona,” Linder says.

Rita Whitney
The Agency
Frederick G. Adamson Estate

Whitney has fallen in love with the Frederick G. Adamson Estate on South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena. Unfortunately, she’ll be seeing much less of it quickly sufficient: The Agency has listed it for $12 million.

Designed in 1927 by AIA Fellow Gordon B. Kaufmann, the Italianate property is an ideal instance of the revival kinds that swept throughout Southern California in the course of the Nineteen Twenties and ’30s. “The Adamson Estate is a benchmark for domestic scale and proportion during the late 1920s,” says Whitney. Just as seductive, she provides, is the placement, “perched at the crest of the Arroyo Seco, and sited on 2.71 acres. It’s an extraordinary setting. The estate is the frosting on top!”

Trey Alligood
Douglas Elliman
624 Cole Place

“The home rises from the hillside like a sculpture,” says Alligood of this glass-walled Trousdale property, designed by Harry Gesner within the late Nineteen Sixties. “My favorite aspect is how it feels alive. The light shifts throughout the day, the roofline seems to float, and every space feels intentionally connected to nature. It’s a house that breathes with its environment, which was always Gesner’s gift.”

And this reward remains to be giving: “While others were experimenting with steel and glass, Gesner was sculpting homes that flowed with the land itself.”

Billy Rose and William Baker
The Agency
The Stahl House (Case Study House #22) 

Perhaps essentially the most well-known residence in Los Angeles, The Stahl House, designed by modernist grasp Pierre Koenig, has impressed numerous structure nerds. “The Stahl House is, quite literally, part of what brought me to Los Angeles,” Baker says. “I first encountered it while living in Chicago, and it shifted my sense of what a home could be — how architecture could shape light, landscape and daily life.”

Built in 1960 as a part of The Case Study House Program, the Palisades residence was certainly one of 25 homes in-built L.A. to attract consciousness to the model we now know as midcentury modernism. “It’s L.A.’s confidence distilled into a home,” Rose says.

It has since develop into an icon of L.A. structure, thanks largely to Julius Shulman’s well-known black-and white 1960 picture of two girls sitting within the glass-walled house, seeming to hover over the twinkling lights of Los Angeles, far under.

The home is now listed for $25 million.

Rob Kallick
Compass
The Kappe House 

Modernist educator and architect Ray Kappe designed this Rustic Canyon residence for his household in 1967. Nestled right into a forested hillside, it was designated an L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument in 1996. “The home is the epitome of the exciting design spirit of the 1970s that is near and dear to my heart,” Kallick says. “The bold colors, wood and glass materials, and multi-level design, are just so perfectly done. It also sits elegantly against the canyon backdrop and is in many ways the centerpiece of this incredible neighborhood.”

The floor flooring served as Kappe’s studio. “It represents the idea that a home can be a canvas for someone’s adventurous ideas and spirit,” Kallick says. The house is now listed with Ian Brooks of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties for $11.5 million. 

This story appeared within the Feb. 11 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.