St. Michael's and All Angels: A. Quincy Jones in Studio City
Studio City · Architectural landmark
The mid-century modern church A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons built on Coldwater Canyon in 1962, and the Studio City architecture that still stops people on the street.
St. Michael's and All Angels at a glance
St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church is a mid-century modern church at 3646 Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City, completed in 1962 to the design of architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons. It is known for the glue-laminated wood beams that rise forty-six feet to form its sanctuary, and it survives intact and in active use. Debbie Pisaro, a 24-year Studio City realtor, counts it among the most important architecture in the neighborhood.
Stand on Coldwater Canyon Avenue and look up at the roof, and the whole building seems to lift off the ground. St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church is one of the most quietly dramatic structures in Studio City, and most people who drive past it every day have no idea who designed it. The answer is A. Quincy Jones, working with his partner Frederick Emmons, in 1962.
What is St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church?
St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church is a mid-century modern church at 3646 Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City, completed in 1962 to the design of A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons. It is known above all for the glue-laminated wood beams that rise forty-six feet to form its soaring sanctuary, and it survives intact and in active use. Debbie Pisaro counts it among the most important pieces of architecture in Studio City.
Jones and Emmons designed thousands of modern houses during their partnership, but their churches were among their most dramatic and admired work. St. Michael's is the clearest place in the neighborhood to stand inside a Jones space without an appointment, and it rewards the visit.
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The church exists because a congregation wanted more than a building. The parish sought out Jones and Emmons specifically, asking them to design a sanctuary that reflected the congregation's progressive ideals and lent a sense of wonder and beauty to worship.
That brief suited Jones perfectly. He had spent his career arguing that modern architecture was not cold or impersonal, that it could serve human feeling as well as human function. A church gave him a chance to prove it at full scale, with light and structure doing the work that stained glass and stone did in older sanctuaries.
The timing was right for it. The postwar years were a period of ambitious church building across Southern California, and a number of forward-looking congregations decided that modern faith deserved modern architecture rather than a borrowed Gothic costume. An Episcopal parish in Studio City, open to new ideas, was exactly the kind of client willing to take that risk. They did not want a copy of an English country church. They wanted a room that felt alive.
By 1962, Jones and Emmons had been partners for more than a decade, and the practice was at the height of its range. The same office that was turning out efficient tract homes could also reach for something close to the sublime when a client asked for it. That same office also trained the next generation of Valley modernists: Donald Park drafted for Jones and Emmons before founding Benton and Park with Wallace Benton in 1956, whose Studio City houses include the Basin Residence.
The architecture
What Jones and Emmons delivered is a structure that wears its engineering as its beauty. The building is dominated by enormous beams of glue-laminated wood, anchored to large concrete piers, that carry the entire sense of the space.
The beams soar forty-six feet high, spanning the nave and creating a tangible structural tension, the feeling that the room is being held up and opened up at the same time. They are topped by a shingled, A-frame roof that shoots from low eaves up to the top of the beams, where a run of skylights pulls daylight down into the sanctuary.
The front and rear facades, which are essentially the same gabled wall, are built as wood-framed expanses of glass. The result is a wood-clad interior that glows. Light is the real material here, filtered and warmed by the timber, changing through the day. It is a building that does with structure and sun what other churches do with ornament.
Notice what the building does without. There is no tall spire, no figurative stained glass, no heavy masonry meant to overwhelm. The forty-six-foot climb of the beams does the work a vaulted ceiling once did, and the skylights do the work of a rose window. It is reverence expressed in the vocabulary of mid-century modernism, and it is unmistakably of a piece with the rest of A. Quincy Jones's work. The same instinct that opened his houses to the garden opened this church to the sky.
By the numbers
- 1962. Completed for the parish on Coldwater Canyon Avenue, designed by A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons.
- Forty-six feet. The height the glue-laminated wood beams rise, spanning the nave on large concrete piers.
- Eighteen years. The length of the Jones and Emmons partnership that produced thousands of modern buildings, including this one.
- Sixty-plus years. The church survives intact and continues to serve its Studio City congregation today.
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See pocket listingsWhere it sits in Jones's work
To understand St. Michael's, it helps to see it inside the larger arc of A. Quincy Jones, who is credited with more than 5,000 built projects across California, from the Eichler tract homes he designed with Emmons to the Annenberg estate, Sunnylands, in Rancho Mirage. He worked across every scale and budget, and the church belongs to the most expressive end of that range.
It is worth measuring St. Michael's against the architects Jones is usually grouped with, from R.M. Schindler to the Case Study generation behind the Stahl House. Where Richard Neutra could feel cool and precise, and where John Lautner reached for sculptural spectacle, Jones stayed warm. The church is dramatic without being theatrical, and humane without being plain.
There is a local thread worth pulling, too. A short drive away in Burbank, Jones and his firm designed the Warner Bros. Records building between 1971 and 1975. Debbie Pisaro spent part of her own Warner Bros. Records career working inside that building, in an office that opened onto the patio, which is part of why the architecture of this neighborhood feels personal to her and not only professional.
The beams rise forty-six feet, and the building wears its engineering as its beauty.
Studio City around the church
Studio City has long been one of the San Fernando Valley's richest pockets of modern architecture, and St. Michael's is its most public landmark. Coldwater Canyon Avenue climbs toward TreePeople at Coldwater Canyon Park just up the hill, and Debbie maps the neighborhood's design landmarks on her Studio City architectural homes map.
The hills above Ventura Boulevard hold post-and-beam houses, hidden modernist gems, and the work of architects whose names buyers now seek out. Debbie Pisaro writes about several of them, including Gregory Ain, whose belief that good design belonged to everyone closely echoed Jones's own, along with the James De Long Hackett House, the USC Case Study house, and the Roxy Roth House by Schindler. For buyers who love what St. Michael's does with wood, light, and open space, the neighborhood holds private versions of the same ideas.
That is the through line of Debbie's work in the area. The same qualities that make the church worth preserving, original structure, honest materials, and a real connection to light and landscape, are exactly what give an architectural home its lasting value. It also explains why provenance matters so much here. Studio City has more genuine mid-century architecture than most buyers realize, and a great deal of work that merely borrows the look. Knowing the difference is the part of the job Debbie Pisaro takes most seriously, because it is the part that protects value over time.
Buying an architectural home in Studio City
St. Michael's is not for sale, of course, but the architecture it represents is the thread that runs through Studio City's most desirable homes. Mid-century modern houses in Studio City command a premium over builder-grade comparables precisely because of what cannot be reproduced: original proportions, post-and-beam structure, and the indoor-outdoor flow that Jones and his peers pioneered. Attribution and integrity move the number more than square footage does.
Because those factors are so specific, the only honest valuation is an address-specific one. As the best real estate agent in Studio City for architecture, Debbie Pisaro provides current comparable sales and real guidance for architectural homes across the neighborhood, whether you are buying, selling, or simply trying to understand what you own. 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 of Colfax Meadows, the Silver Triangle, and Fryman Canyon.
Her deeper architectural practice runs through debbiepisaro.com, where she is the best architectural homes specialist in Los Angeles, and her statewide brokerage, Coastline 840, covers architecturally significant homes across California, with nearby Los Feliz getting the same treatment at Los Feliz Living. As a Studio City real estate agent, Debbie has written across the neighborhood's architecture and market for years, and that is the kind of local knowledge a Studio City realtor builds only over decades. For a seller, that diligence shows up in both days on market and final price; for a buyer, it protects against overpaying for a house that only looks the part.
Frequently asked questions
Who designed St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church?
The architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons, working as Jones and Emmons, designed the church, completed in 1962. It is one of the most admired mid-century modern churches in the San Fernando Valley.
Where is St. Michael's and All Angels located?
At 3646 Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City, California, 91604, in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, on the climb toward Coldwater Canyon Park.
When was the church built?
The mid-century modern sanctuary was completed in 1962, near the height of the Jones and Emmons partnership, and it survives intact more than sixty years later.
What architectural style is St. Michael's and All Angels?
Mid-century modern, applied to ecclesiastical design. It is considered a dynamic example of modern church architecture, reaching for wonder through structure and daylight rather than spire and stained glass.
What makes the church architecturally significant?
Its structure is dominated by glue-laminated wood beams that rise forty-six feet on large concrete piers, topped by a shingled A-frame roof with skylights and gabled glass facades that fill the wood-clad interior with daylight.
Can you visit St. Michael's and All Angels?
Yes. It is an active Episcopal congregation that welcomes visitors at Sunday services. The interior, full of filtered light, is the best way to experience the architecture Jones designed.
Is the church a recognized historic building?
It is documented by the Los Angeles Conservancy as a significant example of mid-century modern ecclesiastical design, and it survives intact in its original form.
Are there mid-century modern homes for sale near St. Michael's in Studio City?
Yes. The hills above Ventura Boulevard hold post-and-beam and architect-designed homes, though the strongest examples are limited and often sell privately. Debbie Pisaro tracks Studio City's architectural inventory, including pre-market listings, for buyers who want the real thing.
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 who represents buyers and sellers across Studio City at every price point, with a particular depth in architectural and mid-century homes. She can be reached at (310) 362-6429.
For Studio City buyers and sellers
Looking for an architectural home in Studio City?
Debbie Pisaro and Coastline 840 Real Estate's Studio City team represent buyers and sellers of mid-century and architecturally significant homes across the neighborhood, the same architecture that gives St. Michael's its power.
Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, an independent California brokerage, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes. She writes about Studio City at juststudiocity.com and about California architecture at debbiepisaro.com and coastline840.com. Published July 2026. DRE #01369110 · Coastline 840
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