Zephyr 005: Selling Stahl

Checking in on the iconic Case Study house as it awaits a buyer. Plus, a dispatch from a New York Review of Architecture party.

Story /// When people talk about the Stahl House, the iconic mid-century modern home in Hollywood Hills West, nearly everyone mentions the Julius Shulman photograph. The 1960 shot is from outside the house, looking in through wall-to-wall windows as two women are seated in party dresses. Opposite them is the lit-up grid of nighttime Los Angeles. The house appears to float over the city.

Now the property is for sale for the first time, and real estate insiders and architectural historians say the asking price probably has a lot to do with that photo. The house hit the market to much fanfare in November at $25 million. Last month, the price dropped to $20 million. The Shulman photo is the first one in the listing.

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

Architect Pierre Koenig designed the Stahl House, completed in 1960, as part of the Case Study Houses program that Arts & Architecture magazine sponsored. The program consisted of around 24 homes built between 1945 and 1966 and another dozen unconstructed designs. These homes were meant to be prototypes for simple, innovative, low-cost housing in the post-war era. Koenig made Case Study House No. 22 for Buck and Carlotta Stahl, using glass and steel, the latter of which was unusual for residences back then.

While those materials were simple, the way the house sat on a hill overlooking the city gave it drama and power, said Elizabeth Smith, an art historian who curated a 1989 Case Study Houses exhibition and is now executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “It wouldn’t be quite the same house if it were situated in another setting,” she said.

House No. 22 stood out in the Case Study program. “The Stahl House just captured the imagination of the architectural world because it just embodied all the things: modern materials, steel and glass, the possibilities of life in a beautiful place up in the hills,” said architect and historian Alan Hess. “That was just such a compelling image of modern life.”

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

By the 1980s, modernism was out and postmodernism was in, with the rise of architects like Frank Gehry. But Smith’s 1989 exhibition at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art changed things. The show featured a full-size recreation of the Stahl House. Smith recalled that they designed it with the Shulman photo in mind, having the structure perched in a darkened area meant to evoke nighttime, and lights shining below. (A recreation of the Eames House, also from the Case Study program, was on view until Sunday at Milano Design Week, as Sanctuaries LA noted.)

After the MOCA exhibition, “there was a reawakening of interest in the houses,” Smith said. The Stahl House soon became an official LA historic monument, and later it earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places and began welcoming public tours, leading to even more notoriety. Instagram is full of people recreating the Shulman shot. The property stayed in the Stahl family, and they also made it available to rent for parties and shoots. “What’s so fabulous about it is that it’s somebody’s home,” said Eleanor Schrader, an art and architectural historian who for years has brought people for tours of the property. “You do feel a warmth there.”

Now Shari Gronwald and Bruce Stahl, the children of Buck and Carlotta, are selling. “After 65 years, our family has made the heartfelt and very difficult decision to place the Stahl House on the market,” they wrote online. “This home has been the center of our lives for decades, but as we’ve gotten older, it has become increasingly challenging to care for it with the attention and energy it so richly deserves.” They didn’t say whether tours would continue under the new owner, only that they hoped the buyer would “be committed to protecting the house today and far into the future.” The family did not respond to interview requests.

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

The listing went to William Baker of The Agency, who for years had been organizing special “twilight” tours of the house. According to the listing, the single-story 2,200-square-foot home on 0.29 acres has two bedrooms, two and a half baths, a pool, and a hot tub.

Baker declined an interview request but said by email, “What makes the Stahl House so special is its singular place in the cultural imagination.” He cited the famous shot: “While the Case Study program produced many extraordinary homes, the Stahl House is the one that transcended architecture to become its most enduring image, cemented by Shulman’s 1960 photograph.”

One agent who said she has shown the house to multiple clients is Linda May of Linda May Properties Group and Carolwood Estates. “It is an extraordinary property and one in a million,” she said. “It’s a house that anyone who has a passion for architecture always is excited to see…. It’s a collectible.” May represented the buyer, reportedly former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt, in the biggest home sale in Los Angeles last year, $110 million for Aaron Spelling’s former Holmby Hills mansion.

Architect Pierre Koenig / © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

Some in LA’s real estate world question how serious the Stahl House listing is. Brian Linder, founder of The Value Of Architecture at Compass, said it seems like a publicity stunt. Linder in December sold the John Lautner-designed Salkin House in Echo Park to eyewear impresario Jérôme Mage, which does not appear to have been previously reported.

“The Stahl House isn’t for sale,” said Linder, who noted that he has rented out the property in the past. “I don’t think they want to sell it for less than $20 million, because they’re making a ton of money on it just renting it out every night.” Linder said his sense from speaking with Baker was that the family hadn’t intended to sell but liked the potential sales numbers they were hearing.

Asked whether the listing was a stunt, Baker responded by email that he “can confirm that is not the case.”

Others see it differently from Linder. “Knowing the two Stahls…that’s just so not them,” said Schrader, the historian and tour organizer. “They’re so down to earth.” Rochelle Maize, an agent with Nourmand & Associates who said she handled possibly the first showing of the residence to a client last year, said, “I think they’re definitely sellers, and I think they’re looking at passing the baton.” She added, “They don’t need a publicity stunt for that property.”

However, Linder and Maize agree that the spectacular house has a few issues. First, it’s in a very high fire hazard severity zone, which impacts insurance costs and is front of mind for buyers after the January 2025 wildfires. Second, both said it was on the small side for today’s buyers. Third, Linder said any attempts to keep the home open to the public in some way might dim interest. “Most people who own homes, they don’t want to even be told what color [they can] paint the exterior,” he said. However, historic status can have benefits; under California’s Mills Act, tax relief is available for restoring and preserving significant private properties.

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

Linder pointed to other Koenig-designed dwellings that in the past couple of years had more modest pricing. The architect’s Case Study House No. 21, the Bailey House, is perhaps the Stahl House’s closest analogue and located nearby. It sold for $3.26 million in 2019. Linder sold Koenig’s Schwartz House in Santa Monica for $4 million in 2021, and then for $3.49 in 2024. Linder sold another Koenig home, in the Pacific Palisades, for $3.74 million in 2022. Yet another by Koenig, the LaFetra Beach House in Malibu, sold for $8.75 million in 2018, down from an initial asking price of nearly $18.5 million and after almost six years on the market. It was listed again in 2021 for $20 million and is still on the market, now at $14.9 million.

Other celebrated mid-century architects’ dwellings have recently sold for below-asking: Lautner’s Garcia House in the Hollywood Hills, Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House in Los Feliz, and Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, which ended up at almost half the initial asking price.

A January report by Compass said ultra-luxury sales in Greater Los Angeles increased in 2025, but it indicated that was largely for new construction. Well-priced properties are selling instantly and generating bidding wars, but over-priced trophy ones are languishing on the market for months and years, according to Linder. Twelve million dollars for the Stahl House is a more realistic number, and it’s unclear if the family would accept that, he said. The newsletter Mid-Century Mondays put it this way when discussing the property in December: “How do you value something that probably belongs in a museum, or a structure that could itself be a museum?”

Architectural historians say the transformation of Case Study Houses into luxury real estate is ironic. “They were meant to be really strong, well-designed middle class houses, and now they sell for millions of dollars,” Hess said. Smith, the former curator, said she hopes people will still get to visit, as they did under the Stahl family. “They’ve done a real service to the field by having the house be open to people,” she said.

© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)

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Dispatch /// When the New York Review of Architecture last fall decided to do a Los Angeles issue, the cover art paid homage to Julius Shulman’s Stahl House photo. Instead of two women inside the house were the publication’s rat mascot and another creature.

NYRA celebrated its 50th issue with a party last Thursday night at Van Alen Institute in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood. The setting was appropriate for an architecture publication, since few areas have transformed over the past decade as much as that one. Subscriptions are up to 4,200, publisher Nicolas Kemper told the at-capacity crowd.

The issue features the publication’s first-ever full insert, a New York City architecture guide. “This is the first time we’ve done something like this and had so many guest contributors,” editorial fellow Kim Hew-Low told Zephyr. “It really started as a bare-bones publication, so it’s grown a lot since then.”