“A real Spanish Colonial a walk from Beverly Hills, done right, and it isn’t eight figures. At some point you stop reading and go see it.”
- Sam O'Connor
1226
Smithwood Dr, Unit 4
Los Angeles
Bedrooms
2
Bathrooms
2
Total Area
1,350 Sq. FT
Lot Size
6,602 Sq. FT
Price
$1,295,000
Small Building, Real Character, Nobody's Second Home
Yes, Beverly Hills is right there, and yes, that’s a real part of the appeal. But the case doesn’t rest on the zip code. This is Unit 4 of a 1931 Spanish Colonial four-plex, exactly our kind of building, which spent most of its life as rental income: four flats with real bones and vintage kitchens. Someone recently bought it, converted it to a four-unit tenancy in common, and gave this one unit a full and unusually tasteful renovation. What earns it a place is the thing sitting underneath the finishes: a genuine prewar building offered at a number a normal person can reach. Old architecture at a human price beats any single material inside.
Listed by John Kostrey and Jennifer Eckert, Nourmand & Associates
Inside
The floors are dark-stained red oak, running the whole plan under graceful archways and past casement windows that still close on their original latches, the sort of thing you notice on the second walkthrough. The kitchen is where the renovation shows its hand: Saltillo tile underfoot, Shaker inset cabinetry finished to a high standard, and honed Taj Mahal quartzite that crosses the counters and keeps going up the wall as the backsplash, with an integrated range hood wrapped in Venetian plaster over KitchenAid stainless appliances and unlacquered brass at the sink. The living room centers on a fireplace that is decorative rather than working, a mantel with no fire behind it, and we’re fine with that, because it does the honest job of giving the room a middle. The bathrooms are where this stops being a nice renovation and starts being a point of view. The primary carries deVOL-adjacent cabinetry, Roman clay walls, off-white Moroccan Zellige around the tub and shower, and more of that honed quartzite on the vanity, while the hallway powder room is the show-off of the house: a custom slab of Calacatta Viola marble, its purple veining set over a floor of dark handmade Moroccan Zellige.
Outside
Unit 4 gets two private outdoor rooms, both laid in Saltillo-style ceramic that keeps the Spanish thread going. Off the living room there’s a front patio the full width of the room, framed by a wooden balustrade, and off the dining room a second, smaller one, so you choose where to sit by the hour rather than by default. At the back of the property, a detached single-car garage handles parking and the storage prewar flats rarely built in, which is not nothing in this part of town. The neighborhood around all this is Beverlywood, which Walter Leimert laid out in 1940 as 1,354 single-family homes governed by some of the first binding design rules in Los Angeles, a district organized entirely around the idea of not letting things change. This building went up before that plan existed, and as a four-unit building it was never one of Leimert’s single-family lots to begin with. It sits instead on a walkable stretch where Factor’s has been slicing pastrami on Pico since 1948, with Matu and its grass-fed Wagyu nearby for the nights that call for more than a sandwich.
The O' Factor
Character only runs one direction. You can put a beautiful kitchen into an old building. You can’t put 1931 into a new one. That’s the case for this place, and it’s easy to miss, because the renovation is the first thing your eye lands on. Someone spent real money and better judgment making this unit look the way it looks, and the work is genuinely good, but it’s also the half anyone with the same budget and the same reference shelf could recreate a block away. The half they couldn’t recreate is what they started with: proportions worked out by people who built for the eye instead of the spreadsheet, ceilings that sit a little higher than they strictly have to, and the specific way light moves through a place laid out by instinct rather than code minimum. That part took most of a century, and it can’t be shopped for. The renovation is the easy half, and it’s already done for you. A tenancy in common is just how you come to own the hard half at all. Enjoy the finishes as long as you like. What you’re actually keeping is the building.
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If this is your taste, let’s talk.
The Homes we Represent,
Represent Us.
Every home has a soul. Every human has a place they were meant to be. Our instinct is knowing when the two finally meet. We honor architecture, preserve great design and celebrate the match. Welcome to O’Connor Estates. We’ve been waiting for you.
Proof is in the Properties
SOLD
Closed $200K over asking
SOLD
Closed for $1,589/sq ft
SOLD
Closed $250k over asking
