Living Like Jake Shears In Los Feliz, $2.25M

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Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears has put his handsome Streamline Moderne on the market. Beautifully and sensitively renovated, his seductively simple home not only has views from Los Feliz to Downtown, but is a surviving link in Los Angeles to the European Modernism of the 1930s.

The street front doesn’t give much away, except for potentially glamorous glass block stair tower. Built in 1937, and dubbed the Ulm House after its first owners, this is classic Streamline Moderne–crisp and light and fundamentally modest.

Covered previously by Pauline O’Connor at Curbed LA, the house is attributed to William Kesling, whose design/build firm was active in producing multiple Streamline Moderne homes in Los Feliz and Silver Lake between 1934 and 1937. It’s also been attributed to architect Milton Black with Kesling as the builder. For the record, our vote is for Kesling, whose signature light touch with finely-wrought steel windows are especially evident here. We also don’t know who the Ulms were, but let’s assume they were part of the great 1930s German diaspora to Los Angeles– sophisticated, educated, familiar with European modernism, and completely smitten by California living.

The street front doesn’t give much away, except for potentially glamorous glass block stair tower. Built in 1937, and dubbed the Ulm House after its first owners, this is classic Streamline Moderne– crisp and light and fundamentally modest– and a direct descendant of the French modernists Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens.

Covered previously by Pauline O’Connor at Curbed LA, the house is attributed to William Kesling, whose design/build firm was active in producing multiple Streamline Moderne homes in Los Feliz and Silver Lake between 1934 and 1937. It’s also been attributed to architect Milton Black with Kesling as the builder. For the record, our vote is for Kesling, whose signature light touch with finely-wrought steel windows are especially evident here. We also don’t know who the Ulms were, but let’s pretend they were part of the great 1930s German diaspora to Los Angeles– sophisticated, educated, familiar with modernism, and completely smitten by California living.

Obviously staged for sale, but go to the listing for additional details, video and images. Represented by Nancy Osborne and Penny Muck of Halton Pardee + Partners. For a peek further back in time, there’s this vintage listing with images of how the house looked before Shears purchased it.

Photo Credit: Nils Timm for Halton Pardee + Partners