A Tale of Two Houses: Made in L.A.
As of this posting in December 2025, there are two houses for sale in Los Angeles a 15-minute drive from one another. One was built in the 1930s, the other in the 1950s. One an icon of Modern design, the other renovated to resemble an Austrian chalet. Each house has been privately owned for over a half century. And each in their way helped define the post-war aesthetic of the city.
The Natzler House, located at 7837 Woodrow Wilson Drive, was the longtime home of the husband-and-wife team of ceramicists Gertrud and Otto Natzler. In their studio above the garage, Gertrud threw pots on the wheel she and Otto took with them when they fled Nazi-occupied Austria. Otto created hundreds of glazes in different colors and textures that would help define their work. The warmth of their home is matched only by the light flooding in from the windows overlooking Upper Nichols Canyon. In no part of their home is the collaboration more evident than in the kitchen which is covered with hundreds of brightly glazed tiles. This writer can only hope whoever purchases this home doesn’t replace them with a slab of marble.
The kitchen in the Naztler home featuring tiles glazed by Otto, credit: Cameron Carothers
The Stahl House is one of the most famous homes in all of Los Angeles. Used in many films and TV shows, the glass-walled home perched on top of the Hollywood Hills with views of a sprawling city below is one of the most evocative and impressive feats in design. For the first time since it was built 65 years ago the home is available for sale. C.H. “Buck” Stahl purchased the land the house would be built on in 1954 for $13,500 and shopped his idea for his home around to several local architects who all turned him down, thinking the site was not buildable. 31-year-old Pierre Koenig accepted the job and reimagined Stahl’s concept into the home we know today. Koenig is the one who brought the project to the attention of Arts and Architecture magazine whose Case Study program paired architects with middle-to-low-income families to build novel but livable but ordinary residences. The Stahl House, Case Study No. 22, was subsequently built for $37,651. Once complete photographer Julius Shulman was sent to photograph the home for the magazine. Staged with mid-century furniture, he positioned two ladies in the living room and photographed them from the patio, now one of the most enduring architectural photographs in America.
Julius Shulman/Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust
Two houses, a 15-minute drive from each other, built for a different time, for different people, but each impacting the post-war boom in design and craft are up for sale. We hope the next buyers honor the ethos and legacy of the Natzler’s as well as the Stahl family and architect Pierre Koenig; then a little bit of history, made in Los Angeles, can live on.