Beverly Hills

Location: Los Angeles
Type: Residential
Year: 2023
Sq. Footage: 12,000

The home was originally built in 1926 as a Spanish Colonial Revival and, a little over a decade later, was transformed by “architect to the stars” James E. Dolena into the Georgian-style residence it is today. With only four owners, the historic home retains extraordinary period details, while the interiors bring its legacy into the present through an eclectic mix of eras, art, and design. The living room remains largely intact, anchored by its original black marble fireplace and a large plate-glass window overlooking the pool, pool house, manicured gardens, and iconic Los Angeles palms. Furnishings spanning decades, from vintage European pieces and an angular Dolores chair by Dutch designer Rob Eckhardt to contemporary works of art: create a layered dialogue between past and present, preserving the character of the architecture while allowing the house to continually evolve.

Left largely intact except for the black marble fireplace, added opposite the plate-glass window with its view of pool, garden and palms. The room earns its edge from mixed eras: strong seating from the Twenties through the Eighties, sharp angles in dialogue across entirely different materials, and from the fact that nothing in it relates directly to the Georgian moldings, which lets the moldings join the conversation as equals.

The dining room opens onto the inner courtyard, blurring the boundary between indoors and out. Faye Toogood’s Puffball pendant hangs above a Kelly Wearstler Fractured Glass dining table, each panel of tempered glass fractured by hand and banded in brass, ringed by her Elliott chairs, and holding its own against the room's original boiserie without deferring to it.

The garden room is so named for the way it cantilevers into a canopy of fragrant eucalyptus trees, creating the feeling of lounging in a tree house. Original wood paneling, now painted to echo the tones of the surrounding trunks, creates a dialogue between the interior and landscape. Vintage lounge chairs by Danish designer Illum Wikkelsø sit alongside a Robert Roesch sculpture, while Kelly’s Ives console in ebonized oak with marble legs brings a sculptural counterpoint to the space.

The quietest rooms in the household one of its boldest commissions: Misha Kahn's 2019 bench Somewhere in the Multiverse, made expressly for this space and handcrafted from concrete, steel, glazed earthenware and enamel. Against the suite's preserved architecture it reads exactly as intended: a new anomaly admitted into a century-old room, on the room's own terms.