Iconic Stahl House, a Midcentury Modern stunner, up for sale

For decades, the Stahl House successful the Hollywood Hills has been a rarity — a globally known icon of Midcentury Modernism and Los Angeles glamour, inactive successful the hands of the household who commissioned it successful 1960. But present it’s for sale.

The asking terms is $25 million, which mightiness look a startling fig for a two-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot location connected a snug lot. But that fig mightiness not astonishment lovers of modernist architecture who cognize it arsenic Case Study House #22.

It was designed for the Stahl household by designer Pierre Koenig, captured connected black-and-white movie by lensman Julius Shulman and has been admired worldwide ever since.

The Architect’s Newspaper called it “one of the world’s astir celebrated buildings.” Los Angeles mag called Shulman’s representation “perhaps the astir celebrated representation ever taken of Los Angeles.”

“There are nary comps for the Stahl house. It’s incomparable,” said William Baker, architecture manager for the existent property steadfast the Agency Beverly Hills. The location was included successful the company’s autumn catalog Nov. 12.

By Friday afternoon, Baker said, helium had received hundreds of inquiring calls. In considering offers, Baker said, the household is unfastened to individuals oregon institutions — “someone who’s going to recognize it, grant the location and the communicative astir it.”

The Stahls purchased the batch successful 1954 for $13,500 and enlisted Koenig to plan the location aft different architects were daunted by the slope of the lot. Koenig’s solution was a cantilevered L-shaped operation with walls of alloy and glass, a excavation and a free-standing stone-faced fireplace betwixt the surviving and eating areas.

The 2nd chamber tin lone beryllium accessed done the superior chamber — “an businesslike usage of space” for a household of five, Baker said. The Stahl household has said the location outgo $37,500 to build.

Shortly aft the home’s completion, lensman Julius Shulman made a black-and-white photograph that became emblematic of the era. It shows the location astatine night, with 2 young women sitting wrong successful a cantilevered corner, its floor-to-ceiling windows revealing the lights of the L.A. Basin glittering successful the background.

To bring up the lights, Shulman aboriginal told Los Angeles magazine, helium utilized a seven-minute exposure. The resulting image, on with others Shulman made of the house, is present owned by the Getty Research Institute.

In years since, the location has served arsenic a filming determination for galore TV and movie productions, including the 1968 aviator occurrence of “Columbo” and the movies “Galaxy Quest” (1999) and “Nurse Betty” (2000).

“This location has been the halfway of our lives for decades, but arsenic we’ve gotten older, it has go progressively challenging to attraction for it with the attraction and vigor it truthful richly deserves,” the Stahl household announced connected its website. Bruce and Shari Stahl, the surviving children of archetypal owners Buck and Carlotta Stahl, added, “[O]ur circuit programme volition proceed unchanged for the clip being, and we volition supply ample announcement earlier immoderate adjustments are made.”

For the past 17 years, the location has been unfastened for tours, astir precocious connected Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, starting astatine $60 per big during the day, $90 successful the evening, with beforehand booking required and choky limits connected photography. However, the Stahl website indicates each tours are sold retired done the extremity of February.

The existent property listing notes that the location is “a protected landmark and the lone Case Study House with archetypal household ownership.”

In nominating it for the National Register of Historic Places successful 2009, Amanda Stewart of the Los Angeles Conservancy called it “perhaps the astir iconic location constructed successful the Case Study House Program.” That program, sponsored by John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture mag from 1945 to 1966, yielded 25 completed homes, contiguous considered apical exemplars of Midcentury location design.

“There’s not a batch of these Case Study houses left. I deliberation determination are 19 now,” Baker said. (Baker besides said helium had precocious handled the merchantability of Case Study House #10 successful Pasadena to a purchaser who mislaid a location successful January’s Pacific Palisades fire.)

The Stahl location stands connected Woods Drive conscionable northbound of West Hollywood’s metropolis limit, astir a 4th of a mile from Chateau Marmont.

Many architecturally important Southern California Modern homes person landed successful the hands of institutions, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (1921), owned by the metropolis of Los Angeles; the Schindler House (1922), owned by the Friends of the Schindler House and operated by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture; and the Eames House (1949), owned by the nonprofit Eames Foundation. The Sheats-Goldstein Residence, designed by John Lautner successful 1961-63 and renovated by Lautner successful the 1990s, has been promised by proprietor James Goldstein to the L.A. County Museum of Art.