“A compound is not a size. It’s the number of doors you can close behind you.”
- Sam O'Connor
3249
3249 Bennett Dr
Los Angeles
Bedrooms
4
Bathrooms
4
Total Area
3,235 Sq. FT
Lot Size
4,967 Sq. FT
Price
$2,399,000
Old Hollywood, Behind Two Gates
Bennett Drive climbs into the hills behind Hollywood, and this Spanish has been sitting on it since the 1920s, which was the decade those hills were subdivided and built out about as quickly as the roads could be cut into them. It was gated then and it is gated now. The renovation that brought it forward was thorough without ever getting loud about it: smooth stucco, Spanish tile, white oak floors run up against the original arches, and enough restraint that the house still reads as its own age rather than as ours. What sets it apart is not the finish level, which this stretch of the hills more or less expects at any price, but the plan. The house works across three levels on a lot that touches two different streets, and almost every decision in it gives somebody a place to be alone without having to leave.
Listed by Myles Lewis, Coldwell Banker, and Adam Kang, Highland Premiere Real Estate
Inside
The top floor is the social one, and the only place the house goes open. The kitchen runs into the living, dining, and family rooms without a break, and picture windows and French doors carry the mountain and treetop views its whole length, so it changes character three or four times between breakfast and dark. One floor down, the logic reverses. Two guest bedrooms and the primary suite have the floor to themselves, and it does one thing only. The primary keeps a cedar-lined closet (cedar is what you line a closet with when you plan to keep the clothes), a private deck angled at the hills, and a bath built around a deep soaking tub rather than a shower, which tells you the hour it was for. The media room takes the lowest level, far enough below the kitchen that a film and a dinner party can run at once without either apologizing.
Outside
The grounds are terraced the way hillside lots insist on, with dining decks newly finished in Spanish tile and mature planting grown in tight on every side, so the city stays audible and invisible at once. The casita is where the house makes its case: one bedroom, its own entrance, a living area and a kitchenette, which is the whole difference between a guest room and a guest’s own address. Someone can stay a month out there without either party performing. The lot runs street to street with an entrance at each end, so arriving and leaving are separate acts rather than the same one in reverse, and the 750-square-foot garage takes four cars and all the unglamorous parts of life. The Hollywood Bowl is a few minutes down the hill, which matters mainly on the nights you would rather walk back up it than wait out the parking.
The O' Factor
The last twenty years taught every renovator in Los Angeles the same lesson: walls come out. Openness photographs well and sells quickly, and it is the right answer for exactly one room, the one where people cook and talk over each other. It is the wrong answer everywhere else, and most renovations learn that after the drywall is gone. This house opened the floor that benefits and left the rest alone, then put real distance between the parts of a day. Gathering happens on top, sleeping a floor below it, watching a floor below that, and guests get their own building. Three thousand square feet is not a large house at this price, and yet four people can be home on the same evening and each have a different one, which far bigger houses routinely fail to manage. That is not square footage. That is a plan, drawn for a household that stopped needing more room and started needing more doors.
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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
SOLD
$8,250,000
11945
Lockridge Rd
Studio City
“Closed in under two weeks at $250,000 over asking, after multiple offers.”
SOLD
$7,775,000
12221
Benmore Ter
Los Angeles
“Sold for $1,514 per square foot.”
SOLD
$5,300,000
2525
Outpost Dr
Los Angeles
“Closed off-market for $250,000 over asking.”
SOLD
$5,140,000
708
N Kenter Ave
Los Angeles
“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
Park Lane Dr
Los Angeles
“Sold for $1,227 per square foot.”
