Master Architect’s Own Home - Page 2

The property is protected within the Hancock Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone.

"The Pereira design is all there," notes architect and historian Alan Hess in a social media post. "It is entirely restorable in spite of long‐deferred maintenance. By my research, Pereira built 13 single‐family houses, including this one. It is unique among them and shows his design aesthetic at a significant turning point in his career after parting with [partner Charles] Luckman."

Discussing that Los Angeles' cultural community has managed to find ways to restore the Rudolph Schindler House and Richard Neutra's Lovell House, Hess points out, "This is an equal treasure demonstrating SoCal's remarkable 20th‐century creativity. It would be well worth the effort and money to restore it."

Commercial and residential architect William L. Pereira (1909‐1985) was born in Chicago, earning a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois. Notably, Pereira was part of the team that drafted the master plan for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. One of Chicago's finest examples of the Art Deco style, the Esquire Theatre, was a design created in 1938 by Pereira with his brother, Hal.

The Pereira brothers moved to the West Coast in the late 1930s, settling in Los Angeles. For a time, William worked as an art director in Hollywood (as did Hal, who worked on over 200 films over the course of his career). In 1942, William was among those awarded an Oscar for special effects on a Cecil B. DeMille film 'Reap the Wild Wind.'

In 1949, Pereira became a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California, and established a prolific partnership with architect Charles Luckman. William L. Pereira & Associates, his final company, was formed without Luckman. The Pereira name is attached to more than 400 projects, among them CBS Television City in Hollywood, development of the master plan for the city of Irvine, and the Pepperdine University campus at Malibu.

Pereira's residential projects include Dora Hutchinson's Chatsworth estate built in 1950 (heiress to the Chase Manhattan Bank fortune), and Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler's 1963 estate in San Marino.

"The William Pereira residence provides an opportunity for a new owner to preserve a very special piece of Los Angeles architecture," Devitt says with contagious enthusiasm, adding that "Pereira's grand civic gestures can be found here at home."

For more information and photos on the Pereira House listing, click here.