The Grossman House: Soriano's aluminum house in Studio City
The last house standing from Raphael Soriano's aluminum system is up a Studio City hillside, and it is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 638.
The Grossman House at a glance
The Grossman House, also known as El Paradiso, is a 1964 house at 11468 Dona Cecilia Drive in Studio City built in steel, aluminum, and glass on Raphael Soriano's aluminum framing system. It is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 638 and the only house from that system still standing.
What is the Grossman House?
Search mid century modern homes for sale Studio City and you get a long list of good post-and-beam houses and one outlier that almost never comes up. Raphael Soriano drew roughly 150 projects and built about thirty-one of them. Around a dozen are still standing. Of those, exactly one came out of his aluminum framing system, and it is up a hillside off Laurel Canyon, three minutes from Ventura Boulevard.
It was built in 1964 for an aluminum manufacturer named Grossman, who called it El Paradiso and lived in it for more than fifty years. The record carries both names, and the Grossman House is the one that sticks. That is the first thing to understand about the house. It was not a commission from a client who wanted something modern. It was a demonstration. Soriano had spent twenty years proving a house could be framed in steel, and by the sixties he had moved on to the harder argument.
The scarcity is not a marketing line, it is arithmetic, and it is the reason a Studio City realtor should know this house exists. Soriano built the least of any major California modernist and lost the most. His eleven aluminum houses on Maui are gone. His finest building, the Colby Apartments on Beverly Green Drive, came down in 1988. The Soto-Michigan Jewish Community Center in Boyle Heights, his first public work, came down in 2006. What is left runs east to west across the city: the Lipetz House in Silver Lake, the Ross House in Echo Park, the Gogol and Schrage houses in Los Feliz, the Polito House on Queens Road, the Shulman House and Studio, the Glen Lukens House in Jefferson Park, the Katz House in Van Nuys, and this one.
There is a correction buried in that list, and it is worth knowing if you own any of these. Most published accounts say three Soriano buildings carry landmark protection. Six do. The Lipetz House is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 967, the Ross House is No. 964, and the Polito House was declared No. 1100 in December 2015, and none of those three appear alongside the Lukens, Shulman, and Grossman House designations everyone cites. There is a seventh house waiting on somebody: the Meyers House on Angelus Avenue was graded by SurveyLA as eligible for the National Register, the California Register, and local monument listing, all three at once, and nobody has ever filed the nomination.
Debbie Pisaro writes Just Studio City, on the neighborhood, its architecture, and its market.
Join the list or call (310) 362-6429The house on Dona Cecilia Drive
The system behind it was called Soria Structures. Long-span aluminum frames, made in a factory and assembled on site. Soriano founded the company in 1965 and registered the name as a trademark, which is worth saying plainly because the literature usually calls it a patent and no patent exists. What exists is a trademark for plans and blueprints, registered in 1973 and expired in 1994.
What that system produced on Dona Cecilia Drive is a house with almost no solid wall on the garden side. Twenty-eight sliding glass doors in about 3,200 square feet, built in steel, aluminum, and glass. The aluminum members are thin because aluminum lets them be thin, and the whole plan reads as a canopy over glass rather than a box with windows cut into it.
Soriano spent twenty years proving a house could be framed in steel, then spent the rest of his career on the harder argument, that it could be framed in aluminum and shipped out of a factory.
An architect bought it in 2021 and spent about a year on it. The original aluminum members were repaired rather than replaced, the Micarta cabinetry was restored, and a terrazzo bathtub that had been covered over was recovered. It took a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award in 2026. That work is why the house reads today as the least altered thing Soriano left behind, and it is also a fair warning about what this kind of ownership costs.
What Historic-Cultural Monument No. 638 means
Monument status in Los Angeles is a review requirement, not a freeze. The Cultural Heritage Commission gets to look at proposed exterior alterations and can delay a demolition, and in exchange the owner has a path to a Mills Act contract, which is the part that actually shows up in the checkbook. It can cut property taxes substantially, and it transfers to the next owner, so it reads as an asset in a sale rather than a restriction.
The practical effect on a Studio City sale is narrower than owners fear and more useful than buyers expect. It narrows the pool, because some people will not take on review. It also concentrates it, because the buyers who do want a designated house tend to want that house and no substitute. Debbie Pisaro sees both sides of that, and what designation does to a home's value is almost always a question about how the house is presented rather than what it is worth on paper.
How do I find out if my Studio City home is by a noted architect?
Pull the original building permit from Los Angeles Building and Safety. It names the architect of record and it settles the question, which matters because listing copy and neighborhood lore credit architects who never touched a house. Studio City has more of this than its reputation suggests, and the attribution is wrong often enough that a Studio City realtor who does not check the permit is guessing.
The neighborhood keeps turning these up. The Basin Residence on Wrightwood Court is a Benton and Park ranch and Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1303. St. Michael's and All Angels on Coldwater Canyon is A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons. The Roxy Roth House is a Schindler, and Schindler built more here than most people realize. The USC Case Study home from 1961 and the Hackett House are both here too. The full run of architectural homes in Studio City is longer than the drive along Ventura Boulevard suggests.
Some of the best homes here trade before they ever reach the open market. Debbie Pisaro sees them first.
See pocket listingsWhat is a landmarked Studio City home worth?
There is no premium you can look up, and anyone quoting one is making it up. What is true is that a documented house sells to a different buyer than an undocumented one, and that buyer arrives already knowing what the house is. The work that produces the price is the work of assembling the record before the house goes out: the permit, the designation file, the restoration receipts, the architect.
Timing behaves differently too. With about a dozen Soriano buildings in existence and most of them held by owners who bought them deliberately, supply is not really a market. A house like this moves through a conversation before it moves through the MLS, which is the ground off-market and pocket listings cover, and the Measure ULA transfer tax is worth understanding early on anything in this price range.
The Grossman House is a private residence and is not on the market. Debbie Pisaro represents buyers independently on architectural homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing, the same standing practice whether a home is on or off market. She founded Coastline 840 to work this way, and the reasoning behind a boutique team is the same reasoning that makes a house like this findable at all. The wider record on Soriano and his contemporaries lives on her architectural homes practice.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Grossman House in Studio City?
The Grossman House sits at 11468 Dona Cecilia Drive in Studio City, Los Angeles, California 91604, in the hills above Ventura Boulevard. It is also recorded as El Paradiso, the name the aluminum manufacturer who commissioned it in 1964 gave it. He lived there more than fifty years. It is a private residence.
Can you visit the Grossman House?
Not on any regular schedule. The Grossman House is somebody's home, not a museum or a tour stop, and it is not on the market. It has hosted occasional ticketed architecture society salons, which sell out quickly, and those evenings are the only realistic way to see the interior.
How do I find out if my Studio City home is by a noted architect?
Pull the original building permit from Los Angeles Building and Safety, which names the architect of record and settles it. Listing copy and neighborhood lore credit architects who never touched a house, so the permit outranks both. Debbie Pisaro runs that check for Studio City owners before anything else gets decided.
How many Soriano buildings survive?
About a dozen. Cal Poly Pomona, which holds Soriano's drawings, counts roughly 151 designs and about thirty-one buildings actually constructed. The rest were lost to demolition, fire, and redevelopment, which gives Soriano one of the lowest survival rates of any major California modernist working at his level.
Which Soriano buildings are landmarked?
Six hold Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument status: the Lipetz House, the Ross House, the Polito House, the Glen Lukens House, the Shulman House, and the Grossman House in Studio City. Most published accounts name only three, because the Lipetz, Ross, and Polito designations sit in city records rather than the popular write-ups.
What does monument status do to a Studio City home?
It adds a design review on exterior alterations and a delay on demolition, and it opens the door to a Mills Act contract, which can cut property taxes substantially in exchange for maintaining the house. The contract transfers to the next owner, which makes it a selling point rather than a burden.
What happened to Soriano's aluminum houses on Maui?
He built eleven prefabricated aluminum houses at Kuau Estates on Maui in 1965, the full production run of his Soria Structures system and the last work he saw completed. All eleven are gone and the site is now a restaurant, which is what leaves the Grossman House as the last house standing from that system.
Is a metal-framed house harder to renovate than a wood-framed one?
Usually, and the difference lands in the budget rather than the drawings. A metal frame sets the module, so walls, glazing, and openings are not freely movable, and matching original sections often means fabrication instead of a lumberyard order. Anyone pricing one wants a contractor who has done it before.
Who is a good full-service real estate agent in Studio City?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Studio City and the surrounding neighborhoods. She works the whole market, from landmarked houses in the hills to ordinary resales on the flats, and handles trust and estate sales.
Studio City sits on more of this than almost anywhere in the Valley, spread from the hillsides down through Colfax Meadows, the Silver Triangle, and Fryman Canyon, and most of it goes unrecorded until somebody sells. If you own one of these houses, or you want one, the Studio City realtor worth calling is the one who checks the permit before quoting a number. Debbie Pisaro keeps that record, and the best real estate agent in Studio City page covers how she works. More of the neighborhood is at Just Studio City.
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Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market, the founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Studio City and the surrounding neighborhoods. She specializes in architectural and historic homes, Historic-Cultural Monuments, Mills Act properties, and trust and estate sales, and writes about Studio City at juststudiocity.com.DRE #01369110 · Coastline 840
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