The nine Schindlers of Studio City
Studio City · Architecture
Nine R.M. Schindler works sit inside the neighborhood, two of them facing each other across the same block of Reklaw Drive. Not one of them is protected by a historic district, because Studio City does not have one.
Schindler in Studio City, at a glance
R.M. Schindler has nine works in and immediately around Studio City: the Goodwin, Roth, Gold, Presburger and Lechner houses, the Laurelwood Apartments, the Coldwater Curve shops on Ventura Boulevard, a commercial remodel on Ventura, and the Kallis House on the Hollywood Hills boundary. Three carry Historic-Cultural Monument status. Studio City has no historic district.
Most neighborhoods in Los Angeles would build a walking tour around one Schindler. Studio City has nine, spread from the flats near the freeway up to the ridge above Laurel Canyon, and almost nobody who lives here could name three of them. Two sit on the same block of Reklaw Drive, facing each other across the street, roughly three hundred and sixty feet apart. Nothing marks either one.
Debbie Pisaro sells architectural homes across Los Angeles and lives with this inventory professionally, and Studio City is the densest concentration of Schindler in the San Fernando Valley by a wide margin. What follows is the actual list, what the City record says about each one, and the two things about it that are genuinely surprising.
The houses
Goodwin House, 3807 Reklaw Drive, 1940–41. Around 1,530 square feet on a small hillside lot, and the earliest of the Studio City houses. Its later renovation cost it standing in the City's own survey: SurveyLA graded it 7SQ, meaning it "appears to no longer convey its historic significance." One footnote worth correcting, because it propagates: the USModernist catalogue files this address under North Hollywood. Every official record, the assessor and the Census address file all say Studio City 91604.
Gold House, 3758 Reklaw Drive, 1945. Directly opposite the Goodwin, on the other side of the same block. Around 2,600 square feet on more than half an acre, which is unusually generous for a Schindler. SurveyLA rated it at the opposite end of the scale from its neighbour, calling it an excellent example and the work of a master architect. Its longtime owner has opened it to the public more than once, including for the Museum of Contemporary Art's Schindler retrospective in 2001, which is not something most privately held houses can say.
Roth House, 3624 Buena Park Drive, 1946. The best-known of the Studio City houses and the most intact. Three bedrooms, three baths, roughly 1,964 square feet, a 400-square-foot writer's studio converted from the original carport by the architect Barbara Bestor, and a picture window that makes the Valley part of the room. The full story is on the Roxy Roth House page. On the date: the drawings in Schindler's own archive at UC Santa Barbara are catalogued 1946, and so is the assessor. The 1945 you will sometimes see is the design start.
Presburger House, 4255 Agnes Avenue, designed 1945, finished 1947. A modest 1,424 square feet, and the best documented of the group because its landmark nomination survives. Felix Presburger had to petition the federal War Board for permission to obtain building materials, which is what building a house in 1946 actually involved. The family left around 1951 because the eucalyptus grove surrounding the house aggravated their son's asthma. It is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1076.
Lechner House, 11600 Amanda Drive, 1948. The highest and southernmost, up on the shoulder above Laurel Canyon, and the one with the most dramatic recent history. Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1024, and the subject of a restoration that stripped decades of accumulated damage back to Schindler's original fabric. It gets its own piece: the Lechner House.
Two Schindlers on one block, facing each other across the street. Nothing marks either one.
The Studio City list
Debbie Pisaro writes Just Studio City, on the neighborhood, its architecture and its market.
Join the list or call (310) 362-6429The apartments, and his largest completed building
Laurelwood Apartments, 11833 to 11847 Laurelwood Drive. Schindler signed the contract in December 1946 and the buildings went up between then and 1949. Two-bedroom units stepped down a sloping site, built on the modular system he called the Schindler Frame, and widely described as his largest completed work and his last multi-family design. Sources split on whether there are twenty units or twenty-two.
It is also the one that nearly did not survive. The Laurelwood was threatened with demolition twice, in 1979 and again in 1986, and preservationists stopped it both times. It became Historic-Cultural Monument No. 228 in April 1980, between those two fights, which tells you what the designation was actually for. A full exterior restoration in 2010 and 2011 rebuilt the stairs and screens, replaced rotted structural beams and stripped away added metal coping to reinstate Schindler's concealed original detail.
The two on Ventura Boulevard
The shops at 12634 to 12672 Ventura Boulevard, 1939. Here is a small thing worth knowing: everybody calls these the Lingenbrink Shops, after the developer William Lingenbrink who commissioned them, but the City's own survey calls them the Coldwater Curve Shops and dates them 1939, three years earlier than the date usually printed. A staggered run of connected flat-roofed buildings with perpendicular stucco planes, original display windows, flagstone columns and flagstone planter walls. They survive largely unscathed under later signage. The Los Angeles Conservancy makes the claim that matters: in this little strip Schindler prefigured the mini-mall.
12307 Ventura Boulevard, 1945 to 1948. This one belongs on the list with an asterisk, and most lists get it wrong. It is usually presented as a Schindler building. It is not. Schindler remodelled an existing medical arts building for a client named Elmer Rivkin. The building stands and is in ordinary commercial use, and no source I could find describes how much of his work survives inside it. Treat it as a Schindler job rather than a Schindler design, and do not expect it to read like one from the pavement.
And one on the boundary
Kallis House, 3580 Multiview Drive, 1946. Built for the film art director Mischa Kallis, expanded in 1960, and Historic-Cultural Monument No. 860. Several architectural sources file it under Studio City; the City files it under Hollywood Hills West, and its zip is 90068. It sits in the same community plan area as the rest of this list and it is a ten-minute drive from Reklaw Drive, so it belongs in the conversation with the boundary stated rather than hidden. The full account is on the Kallis-Sharlin Residence page.
What the record actually shows
Two findings from going through the City's files, and both of them cut against the way this inventory usually gets written up.
The survey failed two of these houses. SurveyLA, the citywide historic resources survey, graded both the Goodwin and the Presburger 7SQ, which means not significant. The surveyors wrote that the Goodwin no longer conveys its historic significance because of renovation, and that the Presburger does not retain sufficient integrity because of new window and door openings. Being by Schindler was not enough on its own. Condition and alteration decided it.
And then the City designated the Presburger anyway. Twenty-two months after the survey rejected it, it became Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1076 in December 2014. A survey grading and a monument designation are two different processes asking two different questions, and this house is the clearest local demonstration that failing one does not decide the other. If you have ever been told your house "did not qualify," that is worth knowing.
Off-market access
Some of the best architectural houses in Los Angeles trade before they ever reach the open market. Debbie Pisaro sees them first.
See pocket listingsStudio City has no historic district at all
None of the City's adopted Historic Preservation Overlay Zones is in Studio City. Not one is anywhere in this part of the Valley. So there is no district-level protection here and no design review attached to a neighborhood boundary; a Schindler is protected only if that individual building has been designated, and six of the nine have not been.
The survey did identify a potential district on Agnes Avenue, five American Colonial Revival houses from 1937 and 1938, and three of those five are now individually designated monuments. That cluster is the densest concentration of landmarks in Studio City, and the Presburger House sits one lot outside it. The Schindler is not what made the street dense.
Living with one
These are not large houses. Most of them run between 1,400 and 2,600 square feet, they were built for clients with modest budgets in the years around the war, and the things that make them valuable are the built-ins, the ceiling heights, the clerestories and the original windows, which is to say precisely the things a conventional renovation removes. The Goodwin's survey grade is what that looks like on paper.
They also do not price against the block. The buyer pool for a documented Schindler is national and small enough that a single sale moves the conversation, which is why a modest house on a Studio City hillside can trade on a logic that has nothing to do with its neighbors. That argument is set out at length in how to price an architectural home in Los Angeles.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, and the founder of Coastline 840. She has listed and sold a Schindler in Studio City. The wider architectural record sits on her R.M. Schindler page, and the neighborhood ground is covered street by street at Just Studio City.
Questions
How many Schindler buildings are in Studio City?
Nine in and immediately around the neighborhood: the Goodwin, Roth, Gold, Presburger and Lechner houses, the Laurelwood Apartments, the Coldwater Curve shops, a commercial remodel on Ventura Boulevard, and the Kallis House on the Hollywood Hills boundary. That last one is filed by the City under Hollywood Hills West rather than Studio City.
Which Studio City Schindlers are historic landmarks?
Three. The Laurelwood Apartments are Historic-Cultural Monument No. 228, declared April 1980. The Lechner House is No. 1024, declared February 2013. The Presburger House is No. 1076, declared December 2014. The Kallis House on the boundary is No. 860. The Goodwin, Roth and Gold houses and both Ventura Boulevard buildings carry no designation.
Are there two Schindler houses on the same street?
Yes. The Goodwin House at 3807 Reklaw Drive and the Gold House at 3758 Reklaw Drive sit on the same block, on opposite sides of the road, roughly three hundred and sixty feet apart. They are the only two Schindlers on one street in Studio City, and they bracket his local output, one from 1940 and one from 1945.
Does Studio City have a historic district?
No. There is no Historic Preservation Overlay Zone in Studio City, or anywhere nearby in the San Fernando Valley. Protection here works building by building through individual Historic-Cultural Monument designation, so six of the nine Schindler works in the neighborhood have no formal protection of any kind.
What is the oldest Schindler in Studio City?
The shops at 12634 to 12672 Ventura Boulevard, which the City's survey dates to 1939 and calls the Coldwater Curve Shops rather than the Lingenbrink Shops. Among the houses, the Goodwin House on Reklaw Drive came first, in 1940 and 1941. Everything else in the neighborhood is postwar, from 1945 onward.
Is the Medical Arts Building on Ventura a Schindler design?
No, and this is a common error. Schindler remodelled an existing building at 12307 Ventura Boulevard for a client named Elmer Rivkin between 1945 and 1948. It was a remodel rather than a ground-up design, the building is in ordinary commercial use today, and no available source establishes how much of his work survives inside it.
Can a house fail a historic survey and still be landmarked?
Yes, and Studio City has the clearest local example. SurveyLA graded the Presburger House not significant on integrity grounds because of altered windows and doors. Twenty-two months later the City declared it Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1076. A survey grade and a monument designation are separate processes asking different questions.
What is the Laurelwood Apartments?
Schindler's largest completed work and his last multi-family design, on Laurelwood Drive, contracted in December 1946 and built by 1949 on his modular Schindler Frame system. It was threatened with demolition in 1979 and again in 1986 and saved both times, became a monument in 1980, and had its exterior fully restored in 2010 and 2011.
Do architectural homes sell for more in Studio City?
A documented house by a named architect draws from a national buyer pool rather than a local one, and the comparable set is small enough that a single sale can move it. A mid-century-style house with a recent renovation prices against its neighbors instead. Architect, condition and integrity decide which one you have.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Studio City?
Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840, CA DRE #01369110, is a 24-year veteran and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who has listed and sold a Schindler in Studio City. She represents buyers and sellers of architectural, historic and design-forward homes across the neighborhood and greater Los Angeles, with Side, Inc. as responsible broker.
For Studio City buyers and sellers
Own one of the nine?
Whether you hold a documented Schindler, think you might, or want to buy one, Debbie brings 24 years of reading the architecture, the City record and the market.
Call(310) 362-6429
OfficeCoastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026
DRECA #01369110 · Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker
Debbie Pisaro, CA DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, a California real estate brand, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic and design-forward homes. Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. Designation numbers and dates in this piece come from the City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments record; survey grades from SurveyLA's Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Toluca Lake and Cahuenga Pass report; the Presburger details from its landmark nomination; and the Laurelwood restoration from the Los Angeles Conservancy. Every house named here is a private residence. CA DRE #01369110 · Coastline 840
On the Register
On the Register is the record we keep of California architecture: its architects, streets, styles, and design-forward homes. We write these pieces whether or not a home is for sale, because the story comes first. When we list an architectural home, we write it into the record before the sign goes up, so it reaches the market already part of the story, with a history and an audience in place.
© 2026 Debbie Pisaro, Coastline 840