The historic Frank Lloyd Wright Samuel-Novarro house has been home to Hollywood celebrities since 1928. This beautiful 2,690 square foot home has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, while offering luxuries like sleek concrete floors, dramatic windows, enclosed pool, peaceful terrace with jasmine covered walkway and bamboo tree-lined sitting area.
The home was listed for $4.1 million in 2011 and now it has just been re-listed for $4.4 million, hoping to achieve the highest price ever for the home.
The home was originally commissioned by silent film star Ramon Navarro’s assistant, Louis Samuel, but after Samuel was caught embezzling from his employer, he agreed to transfer the title on the home to Novorro in an agreement to avoid prosecution.
In the 1940s, composer Leonard Bernstein rented the property, where he worked on “On The Town”. In the 1990s, Diane Keaton made this the first of her many restoration projects. In 2005 the Samuel-Navarro home was purchased by actress Christina Ricci, but she moved out and sold it for a modest profit after living in it for only a year.
This home is much more streamlined than Lloyd Wright’s most famous architectural creation, the Sowden House, where it is speculated the infamous “Black Dahlia” murder was committed.
Lloyd Wright began his independent career in 1920. In 1922 he was a production designer at Paramount Studios and was responsible for the extensive castle and 12th century village sets for the Douglas Fairbanks version of Robin Hood.
Wright designed and built a number of other houses in the Hollywood and Los Feliz districts of Los Angeles in the to late 1920s. His first notable house there was for the mother of his second wife Helen Taggart, the Taggart House, a registered Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument located next to the city’s Griffith Park.