In Brentwood, Legorreta’s House Of Two Towers, $30M

Author:Philip Ferrato

Ricardo Legorreta [1931-1911] was one of Latin America’s most compelling and influential architects— renowned for his very special portfolio of complex, deep-hued public projects that bridged Brutalism and Post-Modern design (like his ‘90s redesign of Pershing Square in downtown L.A.). He only built three houses in L.A. and one of them, built for Audrey and Arthur Greenberg, has come on the market this week for the first time since it was built thirty-five years ago.

Dubbed by Legorreta as the  “House of Two Towers”  (completed in 1991), the Greenberg residence was the architect’s second project in L.A., following the 1985 Casa Montalban, designed for the Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban. Sized generously at just over 9,300 square-feet, the Greenberg’s 6-bed, 8-bath home is unapologetically immense but feel very much on a human scale due to the cluster of interconnected structures and patios that reads more like a village than a house. Arthur Greenberg, who passed away this past year, was one of L.A.’s most prominent attorneys and philanthropists for over five decades, one of the founders of LACMA and the Skirball Center and art collector who had the foresight to commission one of the city’s most extraordinary residences.

Legorreta’s work was deeply influenced by his mentor, the pivotal Mexican Modernist Luis Barragan (the entry patio of the Greenberg house, below, is an homage to Barragan’s Casa Gilardi) and the American Proto-Brutalist architect Louis Kahn, another master of monumental masonry volumes.

One of the two towers encloses a hot tub and the second holds a two-story office and library accessed by a monumental outdoor staircase and an interior one with Legorreta’s signature beamed skylights painted a magenta hue. The setting was an early project by the eminent Salvadoran-American landscape architect Mia Lehrer—who is now one of the most sought-after public landscape designers, whose firm’s most recent project is the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

Inside, the expanses of stone, tile and warm plaster walls are still very human in scale and intimately connected to the outdoors.

Visit the listing for many additional images and details. The House of Two Towers presents an opportunity to own a superb work of architecture in perfectly maintained condition, eminently liveable, and tied to the fabric and history of 20th Century L.A. in a way that few other properties are. Represented by Santiago Arana and Griffin Riddle at The Agency.