Party House with MCM Roots - Page 2

Healey said the initial ask was "an ambitious price," admitting, "The number we came out [at,] people were saying, ‘Can they do that'?"

He adds, however, that for its proximity to Hollywood and downtown and especially "for the Palm Springs feel in the Hollywood Hills, there's not many options. It's pretty much one of one, and there's a demand for mid-century."

Choy and Associates was founded in 1947 after the designer graduated from the acclaimed Univeristy of Southern California School of Architecture. Born in Guangdong and raised partly in Bakersfield, Choy worked on several projects with his brother Allan, also an architect, including the Las Vegas offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The architect's son, retired architect Barton Choy, told Erica Martin that the Brander House was his father's favorite project of a career that she says was stunted by racial prejudice.

"His career definitely suffered from not being white," she commented, comparing Choy's career to that of other, more renowned Los Angeles modernists from Europe or USC. "Unlike some of his compatriots, he didn't get recognized."

The architect's son also apprised her of the location of Shulman's photos, which were published in a 1961 Los Angeles Times ‘Home' magazine and are viewable on the Getty Center website. She said Choy and Shulman were friends, but noted the apparent absence of the Brander House in any books of the famed photographer's work.

Both Martin and realtor Hartley praised Choy's "exquisite ability to know how to lay out a house."

"The house was clearly done with feng shui in mind. Whether it was intuitive or intentional, I don't really know," the owner observed.

What Hartley knows for sure is that higher prices for Hollywood Hills homes seem to be spreading east through the hills, noting that if you "scoot over one canyon…you can't even get into those neighborhoods for less than $20, $30 million."

Martin said several reputable professionals told her the house should fetch between $7.5 and $15 million, and she worried of the recent price cut, "I hope we didn't do too much."

"Eugene Kinn Choy was an historic figure," declared Martin. As for the prospect of getting $8 million-plus for her childhood home, she said in summation, "A lot of the legal community remember that house, and of course a lot of our friends are horrified we're selling it."