“A house like this isn’t for being seen in. It’s for disappearing into the trees and forgetting the city is there.”
- Sam O'Connor
980
Mesa Verde Rd
Pasadena
Bedrooms
4
Bathrooms
4
Total Area
2,876 Sq. FT
Lot Size
10,010 Sq. FT
Price
$3,250,000
A 1957 Buff and Hensman That Lives in the Trees
It sits at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the San Rafael hills, hidden enough that you could drive past the street and never know it’s down there. You reach it on foot, down a path from the garage through a garden, which is the first sign the house means to keep to itself. Buff and Hensman built it in 1957 around a single idea that these post-and-beam houses do better than almost anything since: set you in the middle of the outdoors without making you leave the room. The current owners renovated it with real care, and it arrived with one idea in 1957. It still has it now.
Listed by Evangelyn Lin, eXp Realty of California
Inside
The main level is a single open room for living, dining, and cooking, set under a pitched ceiling of exposed wood beams and wrapped in glass so the garden is always right there. A brick fireplace anchors one end, and vintage light fixtures and natural materials keep the room warm instead of cold (a lot of glass houses skip that step and end up feeling like a display case). The interiors are by Tiffany Howell of Night Palm, a designer known for rooms that feel moody and lived in rather than staged, and her hand is why the place reads as a home. A skylit hallway leads to the bedrooms and to the primary suite, which opens straight to the outdoors. A floating staircase drops to a guest suite and two flexible rooms, ready to be a family room, an office, or a gym.
Outside
The lot runs about 10,000 square feet and sits completely private, which in these hills is the entire point. The landscape is by Sarita Jaccard, named one to watch by Architectural Digest, who works mostly in California natives and climate-appropriate planting, so the garden feels like it belongs to the canyon instead of fighting it. There’s a patio built for entertaining, terraced beds, and a grassy knoll for kids or dogs, all of it folded into mature growth. This is the San Rafael neighborhood of West Pasadena, up in the hills above the Arroyo Seco, a pocket of winding streets and old canopy that feels far from the freeway it’s actually close to. You drive to most things from here. That’s the trade for this much quiet.
The O' Factor
Buff and Hensman built this house around a single idea in 1957: set it down in the greenery, wrap it in glass, and let the outside do the decorating. You don’t buy a house like this to be seen in it. You buy it to disappear into the trees and shut the door on the city. One family understood that and lived here most of sixty years without spoiling it. When the current owners renovated, they could have made it louder and more of the moment. Instead they hired an interior designer and a landscape designer who both understood the assignment, and the house came out more itself, not less. Plenty of old houses get renovated. Very few come through it still meaning the exact thing they were built to mean.
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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
