In the late '20s, Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd Wright designed a home for silent film leading man Ramon Novarro's assistant and companion, Louis Samuel. After Novarro caught Samuel embezzling from him, the title was transferred to Novarro as repayment, and the actor rehired Wright to add a pergola, a music room and a bedroom suite. The Mayan-esque residence crowned in oxidized copper has since been a favorite among entertainment elites and B-listers alike; it was rented by composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins in the 1940s while they worked on the musical On the Town, and later owned by Diane Keaton, and Christina Ricci after her. Last sold in 2006 for $2,827,500, it's been bouncing on and off the market since 2011, once rising as high as $4,495,000. Cut down to $3,995,000 in fall of last year, it was relisted again early this month at that same price.
With polished concrete floors and stark white walls, the 1928 four-bedroom can be thought of as a lighter counterpart to Lloyd Wright's Sowden House, where the infamous "Black Dahlia" murder may very well have been committed. When she owned it, Diane Keaton turned the house into one of her many restoration projects, hiring architect Josh Schweitzer to spruce it up. Speaking to the New York Times in 2011, she had this to say of her time there:
If you have a family, it's not as easy to live in a Lloyd Wright house. They are beautiful. But they have very, very small bedrooms. That's not to say a family can't live there, for God's sake. It would be a great pleasure to live there. Which I did enjoy.
Could "tiny bedrooms" be what's keeping this thing on the market? Is the price unreasonable? Is it still showing its age, despite DK's best efforts? Check it out below, and head here for a more detailed look inside the home from back in 2006.
· Lloyd Wright's A-List Fave Samuel-Novarro House Asks $4.5M [Curbed National]
· 2255 Verde Oak Drive [Zillow]
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