“Most midcentury houses just copy the look. This one is the real thing.”
- Claire O'Connor
3499
Beverly Glen Blvd
Sherman Oaks
Bedrooms
4
Bathrooms
5
Total Area
3,411 Sq. FT
Lot Size
25,265 Sq. FT
Price
$3,950,000
Nothing Here Is Decorated. The Light Does That.
This is the Asher Residence, built in 1949 by Rodney Walker, who designed three houses for the Case Study program and called himself a designer-builder, not an architect. He trained under Schindler, built in redwood and glass, and made a small budget look like conviction. For Dr. Leonard and Betty Asher, he had real money to work with. They gave him a doctor’s budget and a ridge above Beverly Glen, and he gave them the Case Study look at full scale, with more room and finer detail. The house earns its place on that history alone, and there’s more to it.
Inside
The house is redwood, glass, and exposed post-and-beam. Rooms open into one another instead of closing off, so the space reads as one volume or breaks into parts when you want it to, and Walker built it so the main living areas can be reconfigured without touching the structure. Glass walls bring the ridge indoors on every side, and because the frame does the structural work, the surfaces stay simple and let the light move across them all day. The stairs climb to a primary suite that sits alone at the top like a treehouse, its beams running out over an open roof deck, with a picture window in the bath so the view is the first thing you see and the last. Downstairs, a studio with its own entrance keeps to itself (Walker built plenty of houses with a guest room; not many with a room that actually wants to be left alone). It’s a small house by today’s standards, and it never feels like one.
Outside
Outside is the reason people build up here. The lot runs nearly twice the size of the typical parcel on this stretch of Beverly Glen, and unlike most hillside land it’s actually usable, with lawn wrapping two sides of the house and desert planting worked in among mature avocado, walnut, pomegranate, magnolia, and olive trees. The view runs a full 180 degrees across the San Fernando Valley to the San Gabriel Mountains, and it shifts slowly from sunrise to dusk. You reach the house by leaving Beverly Glen just below Mulholland for a private lane whose street sign reads No Name. It sits right on the line between Sherman Oaks and Bel Air, close to the city on one side and quiet on the other. Private without being far from anything, which up here is the hard part to find.
The O' Factor
The listing just calls them the Asher family. Dr. Leonard and Betty Asher built this house, and Betty went on to spend decades at the center of the Los Angeles art world: thirteen years on staff at LACMA, then her own gallery, Asher/Faure, and an early eye for Johns, Warhol, and Ruscha before most of the country caught on. Their son Michael grew up here and became one of the city’s most serious conceptual artists. This was a house made by real modernists for real modernists, and Julius Shulman came to photograph it when it was new. That lineage is the thing you can’t buy anywhere else. Walker built fewer than a hundred houses and threw out most of the plans when he retired, which makes the survivors rare, and this one, built without cutting corners and carefully brought forward since, is about as good as they get. The rest of what’s for sale is a look. This is the house that look came from.
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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
Closed $200K over asking
SOLD
Closed for $1,589/sq ft
SOLD
Closed $250k over asking
