A woman credited with Spanish Colonial Revival houses in Silver Lake, the Cahuenga Pass and Eagle Rock, almost nothing in the reference works, and now a set of her own signed drawings.
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Frankie Faulkner is credited with Spanish Colonial Revival houses in Los Angeles from the 1920s to the early 1950s. She appears in no architectural reference work and no licensure record has been found. Houses in Silver Lake and the Cahuenga Pass are commonly identified, and her signed original blueprints for 5030 Lockehaven in Eagle Rock add a third.
Frankie Faulkner has no Wikipedia page, no entry in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, and no Los Angeles Conservancy biography. Each of those absences has been checked individually rather than assumed. What survives is a handful of houses, one paragraph in a 2019 real estate column, one document nobody has pulled, and, as of October 2026, a set of her original blueprints for a house in Eagle Rock with her name in the title block.
What the record supports, and what it does not
Start with the hardest part. No licensure record for Frankie Faulkner has been found. She does not appear in the AIA Historical Directory of American Architects, which indexes nine Faulkners and none of them her. She is not in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, which carries one Faulkner, a man. She is not in the Los Angeles Conservancy's architect biographies, a section that does include women, which makes the absence meaningful rather than incidental.
The California Architects Board's public search covers current and expired modern licensees and does not reach practitioners of the 1920s through the 1950s, so it can neither confirm nor refute. That is the honest state of it. The whole basis for the word architect, as applied to Faulkner, is a 2019 real estate column describing her as a noted female architect, and listing copy that followed. So this page says credited with rather than designed, and identifies her as an architect only where a source does. One source now does it in her own hand: the title block of the Lockehaven drawings, covered below, is signed Frankie Faulkner, Archt. That is not a licence record and it does not settle the licensing question. It does mean she presented herself as an architect on her own working drawings.
That is not a claim that she was not one. Women practicing in Los Angeles in this period are systematically under-recorded, and the archives were built from firm records and professional rosters that under-counted them. It is a claim about what can be published as fact by someone working under a real estate license. The distinction between an under-documented architect and an undocumented attribution is exactly the distinction a buyer is paying an agent to hold.
The same caution applies to how early she was. The documented candidate for the earliest woman architect practicing in Los Angeles is Edith Mortensen Northman, licensed by 1931, and Julia Morgan was California's first licensed woman architect in 1904. Faulkner appears in neither account. She may well have been early. Nothing in the record supports calling her first.
The 2019 column this page relies on contains one more sentence: several other single-family homes she designed still survive in Silver Lake, according to a historic monument application for another of her buildings. That application is a City of Los Angeles record. It is the strongest documentary lead on Faulkner in existence, and pulling it is the obvious next step.
Three named houses, and more standing
Two Faulkner houses turn up again and again in public writing, one in Silver Lake and one above the Cahuenga Pass. A third, in Eagle Rock, now has her original drawings behind it. The 2019 column that carries most of what is known about her points past both of them, in the same article: a landmark application for another of her buildings records that several more of her Silver Lake houses survive.
So the framing is narrower and more interesting than a simple count. Two houses are commonly identified in public writing, a third is tied to her by her own drawings, and an unknown larger number is documented in a city file nobody has published. That is a research gap rather than an empty record.
2210 Moreno Drive, Silver Lake
A 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival house on the Silver Lake hillside, credited to Faulkner, and the better documented of the two. The county assessor gives 1928, which is worth noting because the 2019 column gives 1929. Its interiors were reimagined in 2016 by DISC Interiors, three years before it changed hands; that renovation touched finishes and rooms rather than the architecture, and DISC should be credited for the interior work and nothing more.
The sale record runs like this. It sold in May 2019 for 3,485,000 dollars, on a public MLS listing that drew multiple offers and closed above asking, with the buyers reported as Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis. It was described at the time as the neighborhood's most expensive sale so far that year, in an article published in early May, which makes that a five-month figure rather than a full-year record. The house traded again in 2023 for 4,230,000 dollars.
3895 Fredonia Drive
A 1929 Spanish Colonial Revival house of about 2,257 square feet on a 15,287 square foot lot, three bedrooms and three baths, with marketed and assessor figures in agreement, which is not always the case. It is credited to Faulkner.
The location is worth stating precisely, because listings file the house under Studio City. Studio City is the MLS area name. The postal city is Los Angeles, the zip is 90068, and Fredonia Drive runs off Cahuenga Boulevard West on the Hollywood side of the pass, not the Valley side. A reader who drove to Ventura Boulevard looking for it would be on the wrong side of a mountain.
The bigger issue is provenance. Every distinguishing detail attached to the house, the Faulkner attribution itself, the bow-truss living room ceiling, the Malibu-tile fireplace surround, the original French doors, the 1959 guest house addition, and the family history about a woman client commissioning a woman architect, traces to a single marketing description written by another brokerage. And the previous listing of the same house describes a detached guest house and a two-bedroom main residence, and never mentions Faulkner, the bow truss, the tile or 1959 at all. That does not make the new account false. It does mean the historic detail package appeared with the current marketing, and a page written under a license should say so rather than repeat it as established history.
5030 Lockehaven, Eagle Rock
In October 2026 a set of original blueprints for 5030 Lockehaven, in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles 90041, was sent to Debbie Pisaro. They are period cyanotype prints, white line on blue, creased and water-marked from decades folded in paper. The title block reads Residence for Mrs. Gol (the rest of the client's surname is lost to a stain), on Lot No. __, Tract No. __, Los Angeles, and is signed Frankie Faulkner, Archt. The lot and tract numbers are written over and not legible in the photographs.
The sheets show a one-story Spanish house. The plan runs a living room with a beamed ceiling, a dining room, a kitchen and a breakfast room, two bedrooms, a sun room and a tiled bath, with oak floors called out in the main rooms and a curved wall turning the entry. The front elevation carries two arched openings, a round vent in the gable, a tile ridge, a brick chimney finished in stucco, and a wood grille set over padre tile, with stepped footings following the grade of the hillside lot.
This is the first Faulkner house with anything from the top of the attribution hierarchy in view: the architect's own drawings, rather than a column or a listing. It also moves her map. Every other house credited to her sits in Silver Lake or the Cahuenga Pass. Eagle Rock, on the far side of the Glendale Freeway, extends the known reach of her practice across the northeast of the city, into the same hills where John Lautner later built the Mauer House in Mount Washington. What the drawings do not give is a date, and the build year, permit history and how closely the house as it stands follows the plans have not yet been checked against city and county records.
Why the archives are thin here
Architecture archives from this era were built largely from firm records, professional society rosters and press coverage, all of which under-recorded women practicing under their own names between the 1920s and the 1950s. A woman could design and build real, lasting houses and leave almost no trail for a later researcher. That is a documented pattern rather than a theory, and it is the most likely explanation for the Faulkner gap.
It is not the only possible explanation, which is why this page holds the line at credited with. The same period produced architects whose Spanish Colonial Revival work is thoroughly recorded, and the contrast is instructive. John Byers built a documented practice in the same idiom. Roy Seldon Price is another. A Peter Damm Spanish Revival house in Glendale shows the style at the same moment with an attribution that holds.
The style itself is well covered. California's Spanish Colonial Revival houses traces the idiom statewide, Spanish style homes in Los Feliz covers the neighborhood over the hill from Moreno Drive, the Seyler House is a documented individual example, and Hobson Heights in Ventura shows an entire neighborhood of it. Why Ojai looks Spanish answers the same question a county away.
Silver Lake's own record runs deeper than one style. The Silver Lake architecture guide works through the hills around the reservoir, and Silvertop, John Lautner's hillside landmark, sits a few ridgelines from Moreno Drive. Faulkner's work predates that modernist wave by three decades, which is a useful reminder that the neighborhood's identity was never one idiom.
What an attribution is actually worth
An architect credit on an old house is only as good as its source, and the sources sit in a hierarchy. A permit set, an archive holding, a designation report or a survey record is the top of it. A period newspaper account is next. Family history is below that. A current listing description is at the bottom, because it is written to sell the house. Until the Lockehaven drawings surfaced, no Faulkner house had anything from the top tier in public view, and one of them still rests entirely on the bottom.
That does not make the Silver Lake or Cahuenga Pass house less desirable. It makes the attribution an open question rather than a settled premium, and a buyer should price it that way. At Lockehaven the attribution is on paper, which is the version worth paying for. Neither of the other two carries a Historic-Cultural Monument designation, and neither sits in an HPOZ; Los Angeles has 36 of those and none covers Silver Lake or the Cahuenga Pass. So there is no protection here either, in either direction.
The practical version, for anyone weighing one of these: ask for the paper before you pay for the name. That is the method in pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home, and it is what an architectural homes specialist is for. The quiet side of this market is in how pocket listings work, and the Studio City side of the hill is covered at Just Studio City and in the Studio City price guide.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers of architectural homes across California. This profile is part of On the Register, the record Coastline 840 keeps of California architecture whether or not a house is for sale, and it exists in the form it does because the honest version of a thin record is more useful than a confident one. The rest sits on debbiepisaro.com and Coastline 840, a boutique California practice built for the reasons set out here.
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Frankie Faulkner, answered
Who was Frankie Faulkner?
A woman credited with Spanish Colonial Revival residential work in Los Angeles from the 1920s through the early 1950s, before she left for Nevada. Almost everything published about her traces to one 2019 real estate column. She has no Wikipedia page, no Pacific Coast Architecture Database entry and no Los Angeles Conservancy biography.
Was Frankie Faulkner a licensed architect?
No licensure record has been located. She does not appear in the AIA Historical Directory, which indexes nine Faulkners and none of them her, nor in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database. The state board's public search does not reach practitioners of that era. This page credits her rather than asserting the title.
How many Faulkner houses survive?
More than the three now named. Beyond the Silver Lake, Cahuenga Pass and Eagle Rock houses, the 2019 column reports that several other single-family homes she designed still stand in Silver Lake, citing a historic monument application for another of her buildings. That application has not been published and is the strongest documentary lead on her that exists.
Where are her known houses?
Three. A 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival house at 2210 Moreno Drive in Silver Lake; a 1929 house at 3895 Fredonia Drive, postal Los Angeles 90068 on the Hollywood side of the Cahuenga Pass, not Studio City; and 5030 Lockehaven in Eagle Rock, 90041, documented by her signed original blueprints.
What was Frankie Faulkner's style?
Spanish Colonial Revival, the dominant residential idiom of 1920s Los Angeles, marked by plastered walls, arched doors and windows, and low-pitched red tile roofs. Her houses in Silver Lake and the Cahuenga Pass date to 1928 and 1929, and her drawings for Lockehaven in Eagle Rock call for a tile ridge, stucco, arched openings and padre tile.
Do Frankie Faulkner's original plans survive?
At least one set does. Original blueprints for 5030 Lockehaven in Eagle Rock carry a title block reading Residence for Mrs. Gol, the surname partly lost, and signed Frankie Faulkner, Archt. They show a one-story Spanish house with a beamed living room, oak floors and a tiled bath. They are the first primary document tied to her in public view.
Was she the first woman architect in Los Angeles?
No source supports that. The documented candidate for the earliest woman practicing architecture in Los Angeles is Edith Mortensen Northman, licensed by 1931, and Julia Morgan was California's first licensed woman architect in 1904. Faulkner appears in neither account. She may well have been early, but nothing documents it.
Why is she missing from the archives?
Architecture archives of this era were built from firm records, professional rosters and press coverage that consistently under-recorded women practicing under their own names. A woman could design real, lasting houses and leave almost no trail. That is the most likely explanation, though it is not the only one the evidence permits.
What happened at the Silver Lake house?
Its interiors were reimagined by DISC Interiors in 2016, which touched finishes and rooms rather than the architecture. It sold in May 2019 for 3,485,000 dollars, described then as the neighborhood's most expensive sale so far that year, and it traded again in 2023 for 4,230,000. It was a public sale, not a private one.
Are any of the houses landmarked?
Not the two in Silver Lake and the Cahuenga Pass. Neither carries a Historic-Cultural Monument designation or sits in a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone; none of the city's 36 HPOZs covers either area. Designation status at Lockehaven in Eagle Rock has not yet been checked.
Who is a good real estate agent for architectural homes?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader specializing in architecturally significant, historic and design-forward homes across California. She checks an attribution against primary records before it reaches a listing. Reachable at (310) 362-6429, DRE #01369110.
Debbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, a boutique California practice, and an 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. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. Coastline 840 is a DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153. Powered by Side: #1 California-based brokerage, No. 9 in the nation. Published August 2026, updated October 2026.
The biographical material traces to a single item in an Eastsider LA real estate column of May 2019, which is the origin of nearly everything published about Faulkner since. Absences were checked individually against the AIA Historical Directory of American Architects, the Pacific Coast Architecture Database and the Los Angeles Conservancy's architect biographies. Build years, lot and building figures come from Los Angeles County assessor records, and sale figures from recorded deeds. Designation status was checked against City Planning's Historic-Cultural Monument list and its list of Historic Preservation Overlay Zones. The detail package at Fredonia Drive, including the attribution itself, comes from current listing material and is identified as such in the text; the prior listing of the same house describes the guest house differently and does not mention Faulkner. The historic monument application referenced above has not been retrieved. The Lockehaven material comes from photographs of the original blueprints, provided privately to the author; the client's surname and the lot and tract numbers are partly illegible, the drawings are undated, and the build year, permit history and designation status of the house have not yet been checked against city and county records.
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.
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