A profile of the Los Angeles architect behind two documented Spanish Colonial Revival homes: one in Silver Lake, and one an active 2026 listing in Studio City.
Frankie Faulkner practiced architecture in Los Angeles from the 1920s through the early 1950s, then left for Nevada. As a Frankie Faulkner Los Angeles architect record, her file is nearly empty. No Wikipedia page. No entry in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database. No biography from the Los Angeles Conservancy. What survives her is two houses, both still standing, and a handful of facts pulled from deed records and one newspaper feature.
Debbie Pisaro has spent 24 years working as an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles homeowners call when a house has a history worth getting right, and Frankie Faulkner is one of the harder ones. Faulkner was one of the very few women practicing architecture in Los Angeles between the 1920s and the early 1950s, a period when the profession barely admitted women existed, let alone credited them on a building permit. She specialized in Spanish Colonial Revival residential work, the arched, tile-roofed style that still defines whole blocks of Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Studio City. Debbie Pisaro writes this profile as part of On the Register, the ongoing record Coastline 840 keeps of California architecture, whether or not a house happens to be for sale.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods. Coastline 840 exists to write pieces like this one, and to explain why we built Coastline 840 and why boutique real estate teams outperform big-box brokerages on architecturally significant homes that a bigger, more generic operation would skip past.
Who was Frankie Faulkner?
Frankie Faulkner was one of a small number of women who practiced architecture professionally in Los Angeles from the 1920s through the early 1950s, before relocating to Nevada. She worked in the Spanish Colonial Revival style during the height of its popularity in Southern California, and two of her residential commissions survive today, in Silver Lake and Studio City. Almost nothing else about her career has made it into the standard architectural record.
A 2019 feature in The Eastsider LA, reporting on the sale of one of her houses, is the closest thing to a biographical source that exists in print. It describes her, in the paper's own words, as a widow who raised a teenage daughter while running her business, at a time when a woman signing off on a building permit was itself unusual. That single sentence is more personal detail than most of Faulkner's male contemporaries needed, because their names alone carried enough weight to be taken seriously without one.
This is not a rare problem in early twentieth-century Los Angeles architecture. Firms kept the partner's name on the letterhead and let the associate who actually drew the plans go unrecorded, and archives built from those letterheads inherit the same gap. Faulkner is a case where the gap is total: not underattributed, simply absent from the reference works that a Spanish Colonial Revival homes California researcher would normally start with.
What makes the house on Moreno Drive a Faulkner landmark?
2210 Moreno Drive in Silver Lake is a 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival house designed by Frankie Faulkner, and it is the more publicly documented of her two known commissions. It sold in 2019 for $3,485,000, reported at the time by The Eastsider LA as Silver Lake's most expensive sale of that year, which is the closest the house has come to broad public attention since it was built.
The house sits in the same hills that hold much of Los Angeles's modernist canon, a few ridgelines from work covered in Debbie Pisaro's Silver Lake architecture guide and not far from Silvertop, John Lautner's hillside landmark. Faulkner's Spanish Colonial Revival work predates that modernist wave by three decades, and it is a useful reminder that Silver Lake's architectural identity was never one style. The neighborhood's Spanish-era housing stock has a close cousin just over the hill in Los Feliz, where Spanish style homes in Los Feliz follow much of the same vocabulary Faulkner used on Moreno Drive: plastered walls, arched openings, and a red tile roof pitched low against the hillside.
The house's interiors were renovated in 2016 by DISC Interiors, three years before the sale. That renovation touched finishes and rooms, not the building's architecture or its footprint, and DISC Interiors should be credited for the interior work and nothing more. The 1928 design belongs to Faulkner. The house is privately owned today and is not currently listed for sale; Debbie Pisaro does not represent it, and nothing here should be read as an offer or an invitation to inquire about buying it.
The Eastsider LA, 2019, on Frankie Faulkner.
Is the Fredonia Drive house in Studio City for sale right now?
Yes. 3895 Fredonia Drive, Studio City, CA 90068, is an active listing as of August 2026, asking $1,695,000 under MLS number 26868853. It is a 1929 Spanish Colonial Revival house designed by Frankie Faulkner, with three bedrooms and three bathrooms across 2,257 square feet on a 15,287 square foot lot, and it is listed with another brokerage; Debbie Pisaro does not represent this listing.
The house sits in the hills above Ventura Boulevard, a short drive from the ground Debbie Pisaro covers as an Studio City real estate specialist and from her own Studio City real estate price guide. Family history tied to the house holds that Faulkner was commissioned directly by a female client, without the customary oversight of a male patron that architecture firms of the period usually built into a residential commission. If accurate, it would make the house not just a Faulkner design but a rare record of a woman client hiring a woman architect outright, in a decade when neither was common.
The house still carries several details original to 1929: a bow-truss living room ceiling, a Malibu-tile fireplace surround, and the original French doors. In 1959 an attached one-bedroom guest house was added, the one significant change to the property's footprint since Faulkner designed it three decades earlier. For a buyer weighing a house this age, that kind of continuous, documented ownership and renovation history is worth more than the finishes; it is the difference between a home with a paper trail and one where every claim has to be taken on faith.
An architect credit on an old house is only as good as its source. Family history and a period newspaper feature are the best evidence available for Frankie Faulkner's work, not a stamped permit set, so both houses here are described with the confidence the record actually supports, no more.
Debbie Pisaro explains how these off-market opportunities work in Pocket Listings Explained, for owners of architecturally significant homes who would rather not put a for-sale sign on a house with a story like this one.
Why isn't Frankie Faulkner in the standard architecture archives?
Frankie Faulkner is missing from Wikipedia, the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, and the Los Angeles Conservancy because those archives were built largely from firm records, professional society rosters, and press coverage that consistently under-recorded women architects of the 1920s through the 1950s. A woman practicing under her own name in that period could design and build real, lasting houses and still leave almost no paper trail behind for later researchers to find.
That gap is exactly why Debbie Pisaro keeps this record at all. Two houses, one street address in Silver Lake and one in Studio City, are not enough to reconstruct a full career, and this profile does not pretend otherwise. What it does is put both addresses on the record in one place, with the facts that are actually confirmed, so a future owner searching either address finds a real account instead of nothing. That is the whole point of Debbie Pisaro's architect profiles: California's architectural history is not only the names everyone already knows.
Spanish Colonial Revival houses like both of Faulkner's remain some of the most requested architectural real estate agent Los Angeles searches Debbie Pisaro sees, across neighborhoods from Silver Lake to Studio City to Ojai. A buyer or seller working with the best real estate agent for architectural homes in Los Angeles should expect the same standard applied here: the architect confirmed against a real source, the interior renovation credited separately from the original design, and the address on the public record whether or not the house happens to be for sale. This profile lives alongside every other house and neighborhood story on debbiepisaro.com, Debbie Pisaro's ongoing record of Los Angeles architecture.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Frankie Faulkner?
Frankie Faulkner was one of the very few women practicing architecture in Los Angeles from the 1920s through the early 1950s, before relocating to Nevada. She worked in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and two of her residential commissions survive today in Silver Lake and Studio City. She has no Wikipedia page, PCAD entry, or Los Angeles Conservancy biography.
Where can you see a Frankie Faulkner house in Los Angeles today?
Two confirmed Frankie Faulkner houses stand today. 2210 Moreno Drive in Silver Lake, built 1928, sold privately in 2019 and is not for sale. 3895 Fredonia Drive in Studio City, CA 90068, built 1929, is an active listing as of August 2026, asking $1,695,000 under MLS number 26868853.
Is the Fredonia Drive house in Studio City currently for sale?
Yes. 3895 Fredonia Drive, Studio City, CA 90068, is an active listing as of August 2026, asking $1,695,000 under MLS number 26868853, listed with another brokerage. Debbie Pisaro does not represent this listing and this profile is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy the property.
What was Frankie Faulkner's style?
Frankie Faulkner worked in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, the dominant residential idiom of 1920s Los Angeles, marked by plastered walls, arched doors and windows, and low-pitched red tile roofs. Both of her known houses, in Silver Lake and Studio City, were built in this style within a year of each other, 1928 and 1929.
Why isn't Frankie Faulkner listed on Wikipedia or the PCAD?
Architecture archives from this era were built mostly from firm records, professional rosters, and press coverage that consistently under-recorded women architects working under their own names in the 1920s through the 1950s. Faulkner appears to have left almost no paper trail in those sources, despite having designed real, lasting houses.
Where did Frankie Faulkner go next?
Frankie Faulkner left Los Angeles for Nevada in the early 1950s, after roughly three decades practicing architecture in the city. No confirmed record of her later career or additional built work has surfaced, which is consistent with how thin the documentation of her Los Angeles years already is.
Is 2210 Moreno Drive for sale?
No. 2210 Moreno Drive, the 1928 Frankie Faulkner house in Silver Lake, sold privately in 2019 for $3,485,000, reported by The Eastsider LA as the neighborhood's most expensive sale that year. The home is privately owned today, is not currently listed, and Debbie Pisaro does not represent it.
When was the guest house added?
In 1959, thirty years after Frankie Faulkner completed the original 1929 house, an attached one-bedroom guest house was added to 3895 Fredonia Drive. It is the one significant change to the property's footprint on record, alongside original details that remain, including a bow-truss living room and a Malibu-tile fireplace.
Who is a good real estate agent for architectural homes in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who specializes in architecturally significant, historic, and design-forward homes across Los Angeles. She writes the ongoing On the Register archive on architects like Frankie Faulkner, whether or not their houses are currently for sale.
Does Debbie Pisaro represent either house?
No. Debbie Pisaro does not represent 2210 Moreno Drive in Silver Lake, which is privately owned and not listed, or 3895 Fredonia Drive in Studio City, which is listed with another brokerage. This profile is a historical record, not a listing or a solicitation for either property.
Coastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026 · DRE #01369110
Debbie 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 California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published August 2026.
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 · ontheregister.com