“Everyone who has owned it walked in planning changes and walked out agreeing with Clements.”
- Claire O'Connor
2666
Aberdeen Ave
Los Angeles
Bedrooms
4
Bathrooms
4
Total Area
4,026 Sq. FT
Lot Size
63,162 Sq. FT
Price
$7,495,000
The House That Stayed Itself
Stiles O. Clements designed the Seyler House in 1922, before the Mayan Theater and before the Wiltern, which is to say before the buildings most Angelenos know him for. It sits on a Los Feliz hillside on 1.45 acres of terraced ground, a Spanish Colonial Revival on one of the more storied streets in the neighborhood, and Architectural Digest published it in August 1924, two years after completion. That is a fast turn for a private residence and a fair measure of what people made of it at the time. The magazine came back in 1998 to document Tim Curry’s restoration, and the house it photographed then was recognizably the one from 1924. Very few Los Angeles homes are written about twice in a century. Fewer still look like themselves by the time the second story runs.
Listed by: Ben Belack, Serhant California
Inside
The 1998 restoration is why there is so much original material left to enjoy. Exposed wood-beam ceilings, hand-painted surfaces, stained glass, iridescent copper, and vintage tile all came through intact, and none of it reads as reproduction, because none of it is. In 2019 Commune Design was brought in to move the house forward, and their work is remarkable for how little it argues with what was there, a harder brief than a gut renovation and a far less visible one. The plan is Spanish Colonial at its most resolved, rooms in proportion doing the jobs they were drawn to do. Then there is the passageway to a speakeasy behind a combination vault, which is either the least serious thing in the house or the most, depending on how you feel about a century-old Spanish that has kept a secret this long.
Outside
The 1.45 acres do not read as a yard. The grounds terrace down the hillside as a series of decisions rather than one gesture, taking in a freeform pool, flat grassy pads that are genuinely rare on a Los Feliz slope, fire pits, a koi pond, a cold plunge, and a spa. Below all of it the downtown skyline sits at the right distance and does what a view is supposed to do, which is give the eye somewhere to end up. The natural amphitheater is the piece that explains the property. It is a room with no walls, cut into the hill, landing somewhere between Andalusia and the Santa Monica Mountains without fully committing to either. Grounds like this are not arrived at by accident. Somebody has been paying attention here for a hundred years.
The O' Factor
There is a difference between a house that gets preserved and a house that gets kept, and it comes down to who is doing it. Preservation is a project. It has a budget, an end date, and a plaque. Keeping is quieter and far less organized, and it happens when the people living somewhere like the house better than their own ideas about it. That is the pattern here. Curry restored the original detail rather than replacing it, Commune worked in 2019 in the vocabulary the house already had, and the owners in between, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Noah Wyle, Robert Pattinson, Jim Parsons and Aaron Paul, each had the taste to leave it alone. A hundred years of that produces something no renovation can. It is for someone waiting on a house they have no wish to change.
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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
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$8,250,000
11945
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“Closed in under two weeks at $250,000 over asking, after multiple offers.”
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$7,775,000
12221
Benmore Ter
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“Sold for $1,514 per square foot.”
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$5,300,000
2525
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“Closed off-market for $250,000 over asking.”
SOLD
$5,140,000
708
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“Sold for $1,619 per square foot.”
SOLD
$4,995,000
10317
Valley Spring Ln
Toluca Lake
“Sold off-market for $1,249 per square foot.”
SOLD
$4,900,000
16557
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“Sold for $1,227 per square foot.”
