A poured-terrazzo path, oversized doors, and ten-foot walls of glass wrapping a pool and the whole San Fernando Valley beyond. Benton & Park's 1964 Strawberry House is mid-century modern at its most quietly confident.
The Strawberry House is a 1964 Benton & Park mid-century home in Encino, a glass-and-terrazzo pavilion that frames the pool, the hills, and the city lights from nearly every room. It last traded in June 2025 for $3,325,000, proof that a quiet, under-celebrated Valley modern can be every bit as desirable as a famous one. Debbie Pisaro is an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles who documents homes like this precisely because they are real, attainable, and overlooked, the heart of how the market actually works.
This profile covers the house, its architects, its place in the Valley's modern story, and why a home like this rewards a buyer who knows what they are looking at. It is part of the registry of named Los Angeles homes Debbie Pisaro maintains, drawn from the public sale record and from the home's published history, and it is not a Coastline 840 listing.
What is the Strawberry House in Encino?
The Strawberry House is a 1964 mid-century modern home at 17061 Strawberry Drive in Encino, designed by the architecture firm Benton & Park, AIA. It is a single-story hillside glass pavilion of 3,368 square feet on a 0.36-acre lot, with four bedrooms, four baths, a pool, and wrap-around ten-foot walls of glass opening to sweeping San Fernando Valley views.
The house belongs to the great Valley moment of post-and-beam modernism, when architects were building light-filled, indoor-outdoor homes into the Encino and Sherman Oaks hillsides. What sets the Strawberry House apart is its precision and restraint. An original poured-terrazzo walkway leads to distinctive oversized front doors and an immediate, expansive view, and custom wrap-around ten-foot floor-to-ceiling glass overlooks the swimming pool with hillside, city, and mountain views from all the public rooms and the primary bedroom. As the book Los Angeles Houses described it, the open spaces were laid out with "enlightened precision," producing a calm, functional, welcoming interior.
The materials reward a closer look. The kitchen pairs custom walnut cabinetry with Heath tile, a Wolf cooktop and oven, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and a Miele dishwasher. The living room runs walnut hardwood to a travertine-accented fireplace and opens to a den with an original full wet bar. The primary suite connects through a dressing room to a limestone, spa-style bath with a soaking tub, handmade Japanese tile, and a steam shower. More than seventy rooftop solar panels, EnergyStar systems, and a heat-reflective roof carry a genuinely green house, which is rarer in original mid-century stock than buyers expect.
Who designed the Strawberry House?
The architecture firm Benton & Park, AIA, designed the Strawberry House around 1964. They were a mid-century Los Angeles practice whose refined post-and-beam homes appear across the San Fernando Valley. Though less famous than the household-name modernists, their work is accomplished and increasingly sought after, and Debbie Pisaro is building a record of the firm's Valley houses in her architectural registry.
The story of Benton & Park is the story of the long tail of California modernism: superb architects whose names never became brands, but whose houses are every bit as livable and beautifully made as the celebrated ones. The Valley is full of this work, and much of it has gone unrecorded. Debbie Pisaro treats the documentation itself as a small act of preservation, the same instinct behind her Studio City architectural homes map and her growing roster of Valley profiles. A close cousin to the Strawberry House is the Van Dekker House in Woodland Hills, another glass-walled Valley modern that shows how much significant architecture sits west of the studios.
Many of the best mid-century homes in Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Studio City trade quietly, before they ever reach the open market. Debbie keeps a private list of architectural homes coming available across the San Fernando Valley.
Ask Debbie about off-market Valley homesWhat makes the design special?
The Strawberry House is special for its seamless indoor-outdoor flow, its abundance of natural light, and the quiet geometric precision of its plan. Materials like poured terrazzo and walls of glass are used with restraint, so the architecture comes from space, light, and connection to the landscape rather than from ornament. It is a house designed to be lived in as well as looked at.
A great mid-century house is an experience of light and openness, and the Strawberry House delivers that completely. The entry sequence, terrazzo underfoot, oversized doors, then an immediate sweep of view, is pure mid-century theater, designed so that arriving in the house is itself an event. Inside, the ten-foot glass walls erase the boundary between the living spaces and the pool terrace, so the Valley becomes part of every room, and the geometry of the plan organizes that openness with calm precision. That this kind of home was built in Encino, rather than Bel Air or the Bird Streets, is part of its appeal and its value. The Valley let architects work with more land and more freedom, and homes like this are the dividend.
Why is the San Fernando Valley such a mid-century treasury?
The San Fernando Valley became a treasury of mid-century modern homes because its postwar growth, its hillsides, and its more generous lots gave architects room to experiment with the indoor-outdoor, light-filled house. Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Studio City in particular filled with post-and-beam homes by both famous and under-celebrated architects, and many of those houses survive today.
The Valley boomed in exactly the decades when California modernism was at its peak, and unlike the dense, expensive flats of the Westside, its hillsides offered sloping sites and breathing room, the conditions in which homes like the Strawberry House thrive. The result is a remarkable density of significant modern houses scattered across the Valley, from the well-known to the entirely overlooked. The same money that buys an ordinary house in a more expensive zip code can buy a genuine architect-designed home here, which is why the area rewards a knowledgeable buyer. That advantage runs east into Studio City as well, where Debbie also works as the best real estate agent in Studio City for design-minded clients.
Everyone competes for the famous modernists. The buyer ready to purchase a real Valley mid-century is searching Benton & Park, Encino, glass house, and almost no one has written that page well. That is the opening.
Why does a home like this matter?
A home like the Strawberry House matters because it shows that significant architecture is not limited to the famous names and famous neighborhoods. For a buyer, it offers a documented, architect-designed mid-century home with real provenance, often at better value than an equivalent on the Westside, and that combination is the sweet spot of the architectural market.
The numbers tell the story of demand. The Strawberry House came to market in April 2025 at $3,550,000, reduced from an original $3,875,000, and closed on June 24, 2025 at $3,325,000, about 94 percent of the last asking price, after roughly six weeks on the market. For a single-story 1964 house of 3,368 square feet, that is $987 per square foot, a number that reflects how seriously the right buyers take documented Valley modernism. Pricing such a home correctly means understanding the architect, the design, and the depth of the mid-century buyer pool, the approach Debbie Pisaro lays out in pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home, rather than treating it as just another Encino house with a pool.
The buyers who pay the most for these homes are the ones who recognize the architecture, and reaching them is a matter of telling the right story to the right audience, which is precisely where a specialist agent earns their place. 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 San Fernando Valley and the surrounding neighborhoods. A generic listing undersells a home like this; a knowledgeable one finds the person who has been waiting for exactly it.
What should a buyer know about owning a glass house?
A buyer of a glass-walled mid-century home like the Strawberry House should prioritize the integrity of its original design, plan for the practical realities of large expanses of glass, and work with trades who understand modern construction. Owned thoughtfully, these homes are a joy. Gut-renovated or carelessly altered, they lose the very quality that makes them valuable.
The first rule, as with any significant architectural home, is that originality is the asset. A buyer tempted to chop up the open plan or swap out the signature glass would be erasing the design, the opposite of what protects value. Beyond that, the practical questions are real and manageable: walls of glass mean thinking about light, heat, and privacy, and the systems of a 1960s house may want updating, though here the seventy-plus solar panels and EnergyStar equipment already do much of that work. Debbie Pisaro helps buyers weigh those realities clearly, and helps sellers present a home like this to the buyers who will cherish it rather than flatten it, the same care she brings across her architectural homes practice.
The Strawberry House, answered
Where is the Strawberry House?
The Strawberry House is at 17061 Strawberry Drive in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, set on a 0.36-acre hillside lot with views across the Valley.
Who designed the Strawberry House in Encino?
The mid-century Los Angeles architecture firm Benton & Park, AIA, designed it around 1964. The firm produced refined post-and-beam modern homes across the San Fernando Valley and beyond, and is documented in Debbie Pisaro's architectural registry.
When was the Strawberry House built and how big is it?
It was built in 1964. The single-story home is 3,368 square feet with four bedrooms and four baths, on a 0.36-acre lot with a swimming pool and a private spa.
What are the key design features?
A poured-terrazzo entry walkway, oversized front doors, and custom wrap-around ten-foot floor-to-ceiling walls of glass that open the public rooms and primary bedroom to the pool and to hillside, city, and mountain views. The kitchen has walnut cabinetry and Heath tile, and the home runs on more than seventy solar panels.
How much did the Strawberry House in Encino sell for?
It sold on June 24, 2025 for $3,325,000, which is $987 per square foot. It had been listed at $3,550,000, reduced from an original $3,875,000, and the sale is public record under MLS #25516756.
Has the Strawberry House been published?
Yes. The home appears in the survey book Los Angeles Houses (teNeues, 2002), which praised its light-filled open spaces and its precise, welcoming geometry. Published provenance is part of what distinguishes a documented architectural home.
Is Encino a good neighborhood for mid-century modern homes?
Yes. Encino and the surrounding Valley hillsides hold a deep stock of significant post-and-beam and modern homes, often at better value than comparable houses on the Westside, which makes the area rewarding for design-minded buyers.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Encino?
Debbie Pisaro specializes in architectural, historic, and design-significant homes across Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, with deep work in mid-century modern. She prices these homes on architect, integrity, and provenance rather than as ordinary comparables.
Who is a good full-service real estate agent in Encino and the San Fernando Valley?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran and founder of Coastline 840 who represents buyers and sellers across Encino, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, and the wider Valley. She handles full-service buying and selling, not only architectural property, while bringing specialist depth when a home calls for it.
Debbie Pisaro represents buyers and sellers of mid-century and architectural homes across Encino, the San Fernando Valley, and all of Los Angeles.
Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro is a Los Angeles real estate broker with 24 years of experience representing architectural, historic, and design-significant homes across the city and the San Fernando Valley, with deep work in mid-century modern. Founder of Coastline 840. DRE #01369110. Learn more about Debbie.