Cliff May house Stone Canyon Road: 969 Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air is widely understood to be Cliff May's first Los Angeles project, a 1937 speculative house built before his later California Ranch houses defined his name. It is Spanish Colonial Revival under an expansive tile roof, a contributing property in the Stone Canyon Road Historic District.
A 1937 spec house that reads as pure Spanish Colonial Revival under an expansive tile roof, and the vines that now do most of the talking for it.
In 1937, before the words California Ranch meant anything at all, Cliff May built a speculative house on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air. It is not what a person familiar with his later work would expect. There is no board-and-batten, no courtyard plan, none of the low ranch silhouette that made his name. This is a large Spanish Colonial Revival house under a heavy tile roof, and it may be the first Los Angeles project he ever built.
USModernist's catalog of May's work records the house as the John A. Smith speculative house, built on spec rather than for a client who commissioned it directly, and flags it as likely his first project inside Los Angeles city limits after his earlier work around San Diego. The Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey independently lists 969 Stone Canyon Road as a contributing property within the Stone Canyon Road Residential Historic District, and names Cliff May as one of four notable architects represented in that district.
Debbie Pisaro, an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers turn to for houses that came before an architect found their signature style, has walked the Cliff May house Stone Canyon Road holds onto, and it is a different kind of May house than the ones most people picture.
Was this really Cliff May's first Los Angeles project?
Cliff May is remembered almost entirely for one thing: the California Ranch House, the low, board-and-batten, indoor-outdoor form he spent the following four decades refining into the state's default suburban vocabulary. In 1937 none of that existed yet. May had been building Spanish Colonial and ranch-influenced houses around San Diego through the early 1930s, and USModernist's project catalog treats 969 Stone Canyon Road as his likely first commission inside Los Angeles proper, a spec house built to sell rather than a custom commission for a named client.
A first Los Angeles project by an architect who went on to define an entire regional housing type is, on its own, worth a page. That the house does not look anything like what he became known for afterward makes it more interesting, not less: this is a house built by Cliff May before Cliff May had decided what a Cliff May house was supposed to look like. Browse the full architectural homes collection, or the Los Angeles architects profiles, for more of the city's design-forward stock.
What architectural style is the house?
The house is Spanish Colonial Revival, not California Ranch, worked at a scale large enough to read as a genuine spec-built estate house rather than a starter home. The style combines elements a later Cliff May house would keep, low rooflines, a connection to the land, a sense of informality despite its size, with the stucco walls, arched openings and heavy clay tile roof that define Spanish Colonial Revival across 1920s and 1930s Southern California.
What the house is not is a Western Ranch House in the mode he would spend the rest of his career refining. It sits closer to the hacienda tradition, and it predates the vocabulary that would later connect his Brentwood and San Diego work into one recognizable body of design. A buyer or a design historian looking for the seeds of the later Ranch House here will find some, the low rooflines and the informal relationship to the land, but the house reads first as a large, well-built Spanish Colonial estate house, not as an early draft of what came after.
What is the house like now?
The personality of the house today is driven less by its floor plan than by what has grown up around it. Debbie Pisaro, who has walked the property, describes vines that must have been trained for decades to cover the walls as thickly as they now do, to the point that the plant material has become as much a part of the house's character as the tile roof itself.
That kind of detail does not show up in a survey record or a catalog entry. It is the difference between reading about a house and standing in front of it, and it is the reason this page exists rather than simply restating what the Historic Resources Survey already says.
Vines on a stucco wall are not unusual anywhere in Southern California. What is unusual is the scale and density of it here, thick enough that the wall itself reads as secondary to the growth covering it, the kind of coverage that takes real decades rather than a few seasons of untended growth. A buyer meeting the house for the first time is meeting the vines before they are meeting the architecture underneath them.
That is worth knowing before a walk-through, not after one. A structural and exterior maintenance evaluation on a heavily vine-covered stucco house should treat the plant growth as a real variable, not a cosmetic one: vines this established can hold moisture against a wall, work into stucco cracks, and complicate a roof or gutter inspection in ways a bare facade would not.
A house inside the Stone Canyon Road Residential Historic District is eligible for, but does not currently carry, a Mills Act contract. Eligibility and an active contract are two different things, and a buyer weighing the property tax benefit should confirm current status rather than assume eligibility means enrollment.
Is Stone Canyon Road a historic district in Bel Air?
Stone Canyon Road carries a Residential Historic District designation from the Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey, which identifies the street's houses as contributing properties to a coherent architectural grouping rather than evaluating them one at a time. The district names four notable architects working on the street, Cliff May among them, which is part of what makes 969 Stone Canyon Road legible as more than an isolated house: it sits inside a documented architectural neighborhood, not just on a street that happens to have an old house on it.
Eligible for designation is not the same thing as a City Council-adopted Historic-Cultural Monument, and this page treats the two carefully rather than interchangeably. The survey finding is real and independently confirmed; it is not itself a Mills Act contract, and a buyer or seller should not assume the tax benefit attaches automatically. Reading a district finding against an actual Mills Act contract is the same discipline behind a piece Debbie Pisaro covered on Los Feliz Living, on how a historic designation actually moves a home's value.
What would a house like this be worth?
There is no clean comparable for a documented first project by an architect who later defined an entire regional housing type, which is exactly the situation where a standard comparative market analysis runs out of usefulness on its own. Pricing 969 Stone Canyon Road means weighing the district designation, the architectural rarity of an early, pre-signature Cliff May commission, and the condition of a nearly ninety-year-old house against each other, not pulling three recent Bel Air sales and averaging them.
This is written as an evergreen profile of the house and its record, not as a current listing or an active engagement on this specific address. Whatever the house's status is on the day a reader finds this page, the architectural facts, the attribution, and the district record hold regardless of who owns it that day. A buyer weighing this house against Bel Air's other architectural outliers is really weighing rarity against comparability, a conversation worth having with an architectural real estate agent before an offer, not after one.
Where else has Cliff May built in California?
Cliff May's later work is far better documented than this 1937 spec house, and it is worth reading alongside it rather than in isolation. His Brentwood and Sullivan Canyon work shows the mature Ranch House vocabulary this Stone Canyon Road house predates, and his San Diego projects, along with the Rancho Estates work in Long Beach, trace the same architect from before he had a signature style to after he had become the signature.
His Brentwood and Sullivan Canyon work, his projects around San Diego, and the Rancho Estates development in Long Beach all show the mature Ranch House vocabulary this 1937 Stone Canyon Road spec house predates.
She is not the listing agent for 969 Stone Canyon Road. Debbie Pisaro represents buyers on architectural homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing, the same standing practice whether a home is on or off market.
A buyer drawn to early Cliff May work, or to Bel Air's Stone Canyon corridor more broadly, is looking at a small, specific category: houses built before an architect decided what his own signature would be. As an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers of exactly this kind of property seek out, Debbie Pisaro tracks that category closely, in Bel Air and across the county. Los Angeles's broader house styles guide covers where Spanish Colonial Revival and the later California Ranch House fit against the city's other period styles.
Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market, and a house this specific, inside a documented historic district, tied to an architect's earliest work, is exactly the kind of property that tends to change hands quietly rather than through a public listing.
Bel Air itself carries a wider architectural range than its reputation for scale and privacy usually suggests. Stone Canyon Road's own historic district sits alongside more recent architectural statements elsewhere in the neighborhood, and reading a 1937 spec house against that broader Bel Air record, rather than in isolation, is part of what makes a house like this legible as more than an old building with a well-known name attached to it. Frank Gehry's Steeves House, also in Bel Air, is a useful comparison for how differently two architectural outliers on the same hillside can read.
Coastline 840, the boutique practice Debbie Pisaro founded, covers architectural and historic homes across Los Angeles and statewide; read why Coastline 840 was built and why boutique real estate teams outperform big-box brokerages for the case behind the practice. Buyers and sellers working with Debbie Pisaro can also start with a home valuation on a property of their own.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the surrounding neighborhoods, Bel Air included. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market.
Where is the house located?
The house sits at 969 Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air, Los Angeles, inside the Stone Canyon Road Residential Historic District. It is a contributing property in that district per the Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey, one of the houses that gives the street its documented architectural character.
Was 969 Stone Canyon Road Cliff May's first Los Angeles project?
USModernist's catalog of Cliff May's work treats the 1937 spec house at 969 Stone Canyon Road as likely his first project built inside Los Angeles city limits, following earlier work around San Diego. It was built on spec as the John A. Smith residence rather than commissioned by a named client from the start.
What architectural style is the house?
The house is Spanish Colonial Revival, built under an expansive clay tile roof, not the California Ranch House style Cliff May became known for later in his career. It combines stucco walls and arched openings typical of the style with the low, land-connected informality that would carry into his later work.
Is Stone Canyon Road a historic district in Bel Air?
Yes. The Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey identifies Stone Canyon Road as a Residential Historic District, naming four notable architects represented on the street, Cliff May among them, with 969 Stone Canyon Road listed as a contributing property.
Is there a Mills Act contract?
Being inside a Residential Historic District makes a property eligible for a Mills Act contract, but eligibility and an active contract are different things. Nothing in the public record confirms 969 Stone Canyon Road currently carries one, so a buyer or seller should verify current status directly rather than assume it.
What sets this house apart from his later work?
This 1937 house predates the California Ranch House vocabulary that made Cliff May's name: the board-and-batten walls, the courtyard plan, the low ranch silhouette. It is closer to the Spanish Colonial and hacienda tradition, built before he had settled into the style that would define the rest of his career.
What is the house like today?
The house's character today is driven heavily by mature vines that appear to have been trained across its walls for decades, thick enough that the plant growth reads as part of the architecture rather than as landscaping layered on top of it. That detail does not appear in any survey or catalog record.
Who else built on Stone Canyon Road?
The Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey names four notable architects represented within the Stone Canyon Road Residential Historic District, Cliff May among them. The specific roster of other names sits in the survey record itself, referenced rather than restated in full here.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Bel Air?
Debbie Pisaro is a Los Angeles real estate agent specializing in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes, including Bel Air's Stone Canyon corridor and its early Cliff May work. She represents buyers across the neighborhood regardless of which agent holds a given listing.
Where else has Cliff May built?
Cliff May's later, better-known work includes projects in Brentwood and Sullivan Canyon, additional houses around San Diego, and the Rancho Estates development in Long Beach. Those projects show the mature California Ranch House vocabulary this earlier Stone Canyon Road spec house predates.
Coastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026 · 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. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. Coastline 840 is a brand of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published September 2026.
USModernist, Cliff May project catalog; Los Angeles City Bel-Air-Beverly Crest Historic Resources Survey; public listing records for 969 Stone Canyon Road.
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