A profile of Roy Seldon Price, the Spanish Colonial Revival architect behind La Casa Nueva and a run of 1920s Beverly Hills houses, written for the buyer who finds one of his houses on the market before they find him in a search engine.
Roy Seldon Price arrived in Los Angeles around 1923 and spent barely seventeen years building before he died young, in early 1940. As a Roy Seldon Price Los Angeles architect record, his file is unusually rich for how short his career was. He is not an obscure figure the way some Los Angeles architects are. He has a Wikipedia page. He has entries in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database. The Homestead Museum in the City of Industry has written more about his life than about almost any other architect connected to its own restored estate. What no site has written is the thing a buyer actually searches for: which of his houses still stand, what to know before buying one, and who to call when one comes on the market.
Debbie Pisaro has spent 24 years working as an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers turn to when a house's history needs to be gotten right before an offer goes in, and Roy Seldon Price is a different kind of case than most architects covered here. He is documented, well documented, but not claimed the way a name like Lautner or Niles has already been claimed by a dozen sites competing for the same search. 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 Roy Seldon Price?
Roy Seldon Price was a Spanish Colonial Revival architect who practiced in Los Angeles from about 1923 until his death in early 1940, concentrated almost entirely in Beverly Hills. His birth date carries a source conflict worth stating plainly: Wikipedia lists July 18, 1888, while a Homestead Museum blog biography, the fullest account of his life in print, gives July 18, 1889, in St. Louis, Missouri. Both sources agree on the day and month, just not the year.
His parents were Julia May Donovan and William S. Price. He graduated from Central High School in St. Louis in 1908, then attended Washington University, serving as class president, art editor, and vice president of the Architectural Club. Price then did something unusual for an architect of his era: he taught high school. He worked at Soldan High School in St. Louis while also practicing architecture, a dual life confirmed by his own 1917 World War I draft registration, which lists his occupation as "High School Teacher & Architect." Before he left for Los Angeles, he worked for the firm Mauran, Russell and Crowell.
Price arrived in Los Angeles around 1923 and built almost exclusively in the Spanish Colonial Revival idiom, the arched, tile-roofed style behind Spanish Colonial Revival homes California-wide during the 1920s. His work concentrated in Beverly Hills, mostly residential, occasionally commercial. He died in early 1940, at age 50 or 51 depending on which birth year is correct. No formal obituary ran; only a brief death notice appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a thin contemporary record given how much has since been written about his best-known project.
What did Roy Seldon Price design in Los Angeles?
Roy Seldon Price's confirmed body of work is small, concentrated in Beverly Hills, and almost entirely Spanish Colonial Revival, built for the film colony that grew up alongside Beverly Hills in the 1920s. What follows is the record as it stands, addresses included where they exist and left honestly undocumented where they do not.
- La Casa Nueva, the Workman-Temple family estate in the City of Industry. Price redesigned it starting in 1924, working through roughly 1927, for Walter P. Temple Sr. It is his best-documented and most significant surviving work, now the public Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, and the primary source for most of what is known about his life.
- Días Dorados, the Thomas H. Ince House in Beverly Hills, designed for silent-film producer Thomas H. Ince. Its date carries a conflict: PCAD lists 1922, while the Homestead Museum blog says it was completed before November 1924. Later owned by Universal Studios' Carl Laemmle, the house was razed in the 1950s and no longer stands.
- The George Fitzmaurice mansion, built in 1925 directly across the street from Días Dorados, reportedly a $100,000 Spanish Colonial Revival house for the French-Dutch émigré film director whose credits include Rudolph Valentino's last film, The Son of the Sheik.
- The Heegard Writers and Artists Building, 9505 Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, 1924, designed with the firm Gable and Wyatt for A.C. Heegaard and J.F. Hohn, a rare commercial commission in a catalog otherwise built from residences.
- The Mrs. Chimorro House, Beverly Hills, 1926, which operated as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Recent press has identified it as reportedly the current home of jewelry designer Liv Ballard, a claim this profile notes as reported, not independently verified.
- The Lita Grey House, Beverly Hills, built 1927-28 for roughly $50,000, with interiors by Harold Grieve, for Lita Grey, Charlie Chaplin's first wife. Later owners included actress Carole Lombard and actress Patricia Barry.
- 624 La Brea Avenue, an office and retail building in Los Angeles, 1925.
- Price's own studio and residence on Sunset Boulevard near Doheny Drive, completed in 1931 and financed in part by a $20,000 trust deed loan from actress Norma Talmadge, wife of studio executive Joseph Schenck. Talmadge was his creditor on the project, not his client, a distinction worth getting right.
- Multiple residences in Beverlyridge, an exclusive tract near Benedict Canyon, described in the record only in the plural, with no individual addresses documented.
- Multiple residences in Hollywoodland, the tract developed by Tracy Shoults and Sidney H. Woodruff between the Hollywood Reservoir and Griffith Park, the subdivision the Hollywood sign originally marketed. As with Beverlyridge, no individual addresses survive in the record.
Two of the ten are gone or unlocatable by address. Días Dorados was razed in the 1950s, and Beverlyridge and Hollywoodland survive only as tracts where Price built, not as addresses a buyer could knock on.
The Spadena House, Beverly Hills' famous "Witch's House," is not a Roy Seldon Price design. It was designed by set decorator Harold "Harry" Oliver. The two architects worked the same few blocks of 1920s Beverly Hills in wildly different registers, and the mix-up is common enough that it is worth correcting here before it spreads further.
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.
Is the Roy Seldon Price house on Appian Way still for sale?
Yes. 8856 Appian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90046, in the Laurel Canyon and Hollywood Hills West area, is an active listing as of August 2026, asking $3,895,000 under MLS number 26868553. Built in 1926 by Roy Seldon Price, it is a 6-bedroom, 6-bathroom house at 5,427 square feet on a 7,653 square foot lot, listed with another brokerage; Debbie Pisaro does not represent this listing.
The house sits across four levels connected to the hillside, with steel casement windows, a chef's kitchen, and a lower-level guest suite carrying its own entrance, kitchen, bedroom, and bath. Terraces and balconies look toward the Hollywood Hills, the Los Angeles skyline, and on clear days, Catalina Island, a short distance from the ground covered in Debbie Pisaro's Laurel Canyon homes for sale guide.
The listing's own marketing copy notes a connection to actor Laurence Olivier having once lived in the house. That claim could not be confirmed through Wikipedia or any independent source Debbie Pisaro checked; it comes from the listing alone, and it is repeated here only as something the listing states, not as settled fact. A buyer weighing the house should treat the confirmed architect credit and the unconfirmed Olivier story as two different kinds of claim.
Appian Way is not an isolated case; Laurel Canyon carries a run of documented architectural houses that Debbie Pisaro tracks the same way, street by street. The Forrest Theriot House Laurel Canyon, a few minutes from Appian Way, is one of the most-visited entries in that record. A short drive up the canyon, the Wonderland Park Avenue house carries its own architect credit and history. The Greenvalley Road house holds a similar record a few streets over. Horse Shoe Canyon Road extends that same documented run further into the hills. So does the Thorgusen Residence, a few streets over, with its own architect record on file. Buyers who want the fuller picture can start with the Laurel Canyon Architectural Homes roundup, which gathers the canyon's documented houses in one place.
A few doors from that documented run, the circa-1961 residence at 9080 Wonderland Park Avenue carries a separate architectural record worth knowing on its own: Garrett Eckbo in Wonderland Park, Laurel Canyon traces its landscape design to Garrett Eckbo, documented through UC Berkeley's Environmental Design Archives, a different house from the Wonderland Park Avenue listing above and one more example of how thoroughly this canyon has been recorded.
Laurel Canyon's architectural record runs alongside its cultural one. The cottage at 8217 Lookout Mountain Avenue, where Joni Mitchell lived starting in 1968 and wrote much of Ladies of the Canyon along with material that became Blue, is the subject of The Joni Mitchell House in Laurel Canyon: The Home Behind "Our House", the private residence that inspired Graham Nash's song of the same name and is covered here only as seen from the street. Down the canyon at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, The Houdini Estate in Laurel Canyon: The Real Story sets the record straight on a persistent myth: the house was built in 1915 by developer Ralf Walker, not Harry Houdini, who only stayed at a nearby guesthouse around 1919, with his widow Bess's later gatherings there giving the estate its lasting name.
Why isn't Roy Seldon Price better known than other Beverly Hills architects?
Roy Seldon Price is better documented than most of the architects profiled on this site: a Wikipedia page, multiple PCAD entries, and an extensive Homestead Museum biography all exist. What is missing is not documentation but real estate framing. No site had claimed "Roy Seldon Price homes for sale" or written the buyer's version of his story before this piece, which is a different problem than the one an undocumented architect presents, and it is the one this profile is built to solve.
Price worked in the same 1920s Beverly Hills that produced Paul R. Williams, architect to the stars, and the neighborhood that now holds some of the most expensive homes in Beverly Hills. His Spanish Colonial Revival vocabulary shares roots with the houses in Debbie Pisaro's guide to Los Feliz architecture, just over the hill. His name never attached to the same volume of coverage Williams or Wallace Neff received, likely because his career was short, his death went unmarked by a proper obituary, and his most significant work, La Casa Nueva, sits outside the neighborhood most associated with his name.
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 credit confirmed against a real source, the marketing claims sorted from the documented facts, and the address on the 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, and it stands as one more reason she is the architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers of unusual houses keep coming back to.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Roy Seldon Price?
Roy Seldon Price was a Spanish Colonial Revival architect who practiced in Los Angeles from about 1923 until his death in early 1940. He is best known for redesigning La Casa Nueva at the Workman-Temple family estate and for a run of 1920s Beverly Hills houses built mostly for the film industry.
Where can you see a Roy Seldon Price house in Los Angeles today?
La Casa Nueva, now the public Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, is his best-documented surviving work. 8856 Appian Way, a 1926 Price house in Laurel Canyon and Hollywood Hills West, is an active listing as of August 2026. Several other 1920s Beverly Hills houses survive without confirmed public addresses.
Is 8856 Appian Way for sale?
Yes. 8856 Appian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90046, is an active listing as of August 2026, asking $3,895,000 under MLS number 26868553, 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.
Did Laurence Olivier really live at 8856 Appian Way?
That claim comes only from the current listing's own marketing copy. Debbie Pisaro could not confirm it through Wikipedia or any independent source, so it is reported here as an unverified listing claim, not as a settled fact. Buyers should weigh it separately from the confirmed 1926 Roy Seldon Price architect credit.
What is La Casa Nueva?
La Casa Nueva is the Workman-Temple family estate in the City of Industry, which Roy Seldon Price redesigned starting in 1924 through roughly 1927 for Walter P. Temple Sr. It is his best-documented, most significant surviving work, now the public Homestead Museum, and the primary source behind most of what is known about his career.
Is the Witch's House in Beverly Hills a Roy Seldon Price design?
No. The Spadena House, known as the Witch's House, was designed by set decorator Harold "Harry" Oliver, not Roy Seldon Price. The two architects worked the same few blocks of 1920s Beverly Hills in very different styles, and the two are sometimes confused, which is why this profile states the correction directly.
What style did Price design in?
Roy Seldon Price worked almost exclusively in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, the arched, plastered, tile-roofed idiom that defined much of 1920s Beverly Hills. His confirmed catalog runs from the extensive La Casa Nueva estate redesign to smaller residential and commercial commissions, nearly all built within a few years of each other in the mid-1920s.
When did Roy Seldon Price die?
Roy Seldon Price died in early 1940, at age 50 or 51 depending on which of his two recorded birth years, 1888 or 1889, is correct. No formal obituary was published; only a brief death notice appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a thin record for an architect whose best-known work is now a public museum.
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 Roy Seldon Price, whether or not their houses are currently for sale.
Does Debbie Pisaro represent this listing?
No. 8856 Appian Way is listed with another brokerage, and Debbie Pisaro does not represent this property. This profile is a historical and architectural record of Roy Seldon Price's work, not a listing, an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy any specific property discussed here.
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