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The Stahl House is on the market for the first time ever. See it in its original light
The iconic photograph of the Stahl House taken by photographer Julius Shuman.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STAHL HOUSE
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Iconic midcentury home up for sale in LA for $25 million. A brief look at the Stahl House
The famed icon, otherwise known as Case Study House #22, has become a kind of epitome of West Coast modernism. It's for sale for the first time in its 65 year history.
A quintessential piece of Los Angeles history — a jaw-dropping midcentury modern house of glass, steel and seemingly all skies soaring high above the Hollywood Hills — is up for sale.
Asking price: $25 million.
The Stahl House, designed and built by Pierre Koenig, photographed by Julius Shulman.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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The Stahl House, otherwise known as Case Study House #22, has stayed with the same family since it was built in 1960.
"After 65 years, our family has made the heartfelt and very difficult decision to place the Stahl House on the market," wrote the Stahl children, Bruce Stahl and Shari Stahl Gronwald.
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The Cedars-Sinai doctor who delivered the baby successfully said the odds of this outcome were “far less than one in a million.”
The 2,200-square-foot home at 1635 Woods Drive has been preserved meticulously, funded in part by proceeds from open-house tours of the space.
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"This home has been the center of our lives for decades, but as we’ve gotten older, it has become increasingly challenging to care for it with the attention and energy it so richly deserves," the Stahl children continued.
And they are not just looking for a buyer — but a steward.
The kitchen of the Stahl House, photographed by Julius Shulman.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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"It is a passing of responsibility," the listing for the house reads. "A search for the next custodian who will honor the house's history, respect its architectural purity, and ensure its preservation for generations to come."
Post-war housing shortage
The Stahl House, or Case Study House #22, was designed and built by Pierre Koenig in the Hollywood Hills.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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The futuristic house, with its stunning panorama and a swimming pool perched at the edge of nothingness, has become one of the most recognizable and prized expressions of midcentury modern architecture in L.A. How it came to be built was fueled by a similar spirit of experimentation and audacity.
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In 1945, the cutting-edge Arts & Architecture magazine launched the "Case Study House" program to commission the era's biggest and most boundary-pushing architects — Richard Neutra, Charles Eames and the like — to design and build affordable, scalable homes for an exploding middle class after World War II.
"Each house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an 'individual' performance," editor John Entenza wrote in the announcement-slash-manifesto.
The Stahl House photographed by Julius Shulman.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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By its terminus in 1966, the program gave rise to 36 designs, of which 25 prototypes were built — mostly in and around the city — forging L.A. into an epicenter of West Coast modernism.
Case Study Home #22
One of them was Case Study Home #22 by Pierre Koenig, who, as an architecture student at USC in the early 1950s, was already making a name for himself, particularly for his use of steel.
His student work caught the attention of Entenza, who later invited him to join the Case Study House program.
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Architect Pierre Koenig was hired by former football player Buck Stahl and his wife Carlotta to build the Stahl House.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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One of the bedrooms in the Stahl House looking out to the pool.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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The Stahl family home
The Hollywood Hills home would be Koenig's second Case Study house — and his most well-known.
The story began with Hughes Aircraft purchasing agent and former football player Buck Stahl and his wife, Carlotta, who bought a small hillside lot overlooking the city for $13,500.
The couple spent weekends putting up a wall around the property using broken concrete sourced from construction sites. Buck, the Stahl family said, had built a model of his dream house to take to architects — many of whom turned the job down because the lot was seen as undevelopable.
The Stahl House, part of the Case Study House program, was completed in 1960.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Enter Koenig, who signed on for the challenge in 1957. A month before construction began in 1959, the project was christened Case Study House #22. The Stahl House was completed a year later, according to the Los Angeles Times, at a cost of nearly $38,000.
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The birth of cool
With its sleek lines and inviting airiness, Case Study House #22 has come to embody the good life in postwar Los Angeles, an idea reinforced by its countless appearances in movies, TV shows and magazine spreads over the decades.
But the photographs that started it all — elevating the home into the stuff of mythology — were taken by Julius Shulman. He was tapped to document the entire Arts & Architecture program after charting an unlikely career photographing modernist architecture in L.A., starting with those designed by Neutra.
Julius Shulman was responsible for documenting houses in the Case Study House program. The Stahl House is among a number of houses he took photos of.
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Julius Shulman
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© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
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Shulman shot the Stahl House in May 1960, shortly after its completion. In the most iconic shot of the series, two young women in white party dresses are sitting in the glass living room, conversing leisurely as the house dissolves into the shimmering sprawl below.
"It was not an architectural quote-unquote 'photograph,'" said Shulman about the image in an interview for the Archives of American Art. "It is a picture of a mood.”
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