The first Palmer and Krisel tract, roughly 274 modernist houses in Woodland Hills, and the proving ground for everything the firm later built in Palm Springs.
The mid century modern homes Woodland Hills is best known for sit in one place. Corbin Palms, roughly 274 post-and-beam houses that Dan Palmer and William Krisel designed for the Alexander Construction Company between 1953 and 1955, is the tract with two city monuments on it, the tract Walt Disney filmed as the suburbia of tomorrow, and the tract where the whole Palmer and Krisel story starts. As of this August it is also a tract with a Krisel on the market. This is the record an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers and sellers rely on should be able to put on the table, so here it is.
Corbin Palms is a neighborhood of roughly 274 mid century modern homes in Woodland Hills, California, designed by Palmer and Krisel and built by the Alexander Construction Company in four phases between 1953 and 1955. Two houses on Jumilla Avenue are Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, and a renovated Palmer and Krisel home at 19748 Victory Blvd is offered at $995,000.
What is Corbin Palms in Woodland Hills?
Corbin Palms is the largest concentration of modernist tract housing in Woodland Hills, spread across the streets between Victory Boulevard and Oxnard Street west of Corbin Avenue: Jumilla, Hatillo, Lubao, Oakdale, and Quartz Avenues, with Gilmore Street to the north and Hamlin Street to the south. In 1953 the Alexander Construction Company hired a young Los Angeles firm, Palmer and Krisel, AIA, Architects, to design a merchant builder subdivision on former farmland here, and the result went up fast.
The city's own Historic-Cultural Monument report lays the phases out plainly: 70 homes in Tract 18024 in 1953, 60 more in Tract 19183, another 55 in Tract 19813, and a final 89 in Tract 13606 by the fall of 1954, with sales running into 1955. That paper trail matters, because it makes Corbin Palms one of the few Valley tracts whose documentation is as clean as its rooflines, and it is the same kind of record the firm left behind a mile east in Reseda, where its sister tract went unrecognized for seventy years.
The trick that made Corbin Palms work was variety on a budget. Palmer and Krisel drew three rectangular plans, F, G, and H, then varied the elevations, the rooflines, and the carport placement, and flipped each plan into a reverse version. The variety showed up in the streetscape details buyers still recognize: butterfly and low-gabled rooflines, stacked stone, decorative concrete block, and walls of clerestory glass. The alphanumeric variants, H-1, H-2, H2R, and H-3, meant a street of economical houses never repeated itself. Only 12 of the final phase's 89 homes are the H-3, which is precisely the scarcity the monument process would later reward.
Walt Disney thought enough of the result to film it. Corbin Palms appears in an America the Beautiful segment made for Disneyland, its glass-walled houses standing in for the sunny suburbia of tomorrow. That is not a line a listing agent invented. It sits in the neighborhood's published record, and it is the kind of fact that follows a house onto its listing page seventy years later.
Two monuments on Jumilla Avenue
Corbin Palms is one of the few Valley tracts where the city eventually followed the enthusiasts. 6118 Jumilla Avenue was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument 976 in 2010, and 6134 Jumilla Avenue, one of the 12 Model H-3 houses, became Monument 1163 in 2018. SurveyLA recognized the neighborhood's significance, and the Los Angeles Conservancy's modern committee has described Corbin Palms as among the most intact of the endangered modern neighborhoods in the Valley.
Intact was not the default. By the 1990s many of the houses had been remodeled past recognition, clerestories filled, rooflines buried under period costume. The revival began around 1997, when residents researched the tract's history and reconnected with William Krisel himself, and restored originals now anchor the streets. The difference between a restored Corbin Palms house and a compromised one shows up directly in the price, which is the pattern Debbie Pisaro tracks across every architect tract she documents.
Designation cuts two ways here, exactly as it does in Gregory Ain's Mar Vista tract, the HPOZ that shows what full protection looks like for a postwar modern subdivision. A designated Corbin Palms owner can pursue a Mills Act contract, and what that contract actually does to a tax bill is laid out in the network's Mills Act guide. The other 272 houses carry no individual protection at all, which keeps the preservation question a private decision made one escrow at a time.
On the market now: 19748 Victory Blvd
As of August 2026 there is a Palmer and Krisel home for sale in Corbin Palms. 19748 Victory Blvd, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 is a 1954 post-and-beam with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in 1,980 square feet on a 7,200 square foot lot, 60 feet by 120, offered at $995,000. The renovation is contemporary, white oak cabinetry, quartz counters, and polished concrete floors under the original vaulted wood ceilings and clerestory glazing, with a pool and an outdoor kitchen behind. Listing courtesy of Compass, MLS 26865261.
A renovated Krisel under a million dollars deserves a moment of arithmetic. Comparable Palmer and Krisel architecture in Palm Springs trades well above that number, and the pedigree is identical: same firm, same years, same construction logic. What separates the two markets is recognition, not architecture. How a house like this should be priced, against its plan variant and its surviving original fabric rather than against the generic comp set, is the subject of Debbie Pisaro's guide to pricing an architectural home.
The middle row is the one most readers have never heard of. Yolanda Gardens, a mile east in Reseda, is a 1954 Palmer and Krisel tract documented in the Getty Research Institute's William Krisel papers and missing from the city's own historic survey. Same architects, same year, no designation, and prices that have not caught up to the architecture. Corbin Palms shows what recognition does to value. Yolanda Gardens shows what value looks like before recognition arrives, and Debbie Pisaro has documented that tract down to the parcel. The scale of the firm's Valley work is part of the story too: Palmer and Krisel designed roughly 4,000 homes in the San Fernando Valley alone, which is exactly why attribution questions keep surfacing on tracts nobody thought to document.
How do I know if my Woodland Hills house is in Corbin Palms?
Pull the tract number, because the tract number is what ties a parcel to the record. Every Los Angeles parcel carries one, free to look up on ZIMAS, the city planning department's public parcel map. Enter the address, and the Address and Legal Information panel returns the tract. Corbin Palms parcels return Tract 18024, 19183, 19813, or 13606, and a 1954 build year inside those numbers closes the chain to the archive.
Run it on the current listing and the chain closes on the spot. 19748 Victory Blvd, parcel 2134031017, returns Tract 19813, Lot 114, map reference M B 503-39/41: the 55-home third phase of 1954. The tract brackets its main boulevard, Gilmore Street homes to the north and Hamlin Street homes to the south, all drawn from the same three plans. Run the lookup on any block between Corbin Avenue and Winnetka Avenue and the boundary draws itself, parcel by parcel. It is a twenty-minute exercise, and most owners have never run it, which is how attribution goes quietly missing on tracts far better known than this one.
Woodland Hills was a modernist town all along
Corbin Palms did not happen in a vacuum. Rudolph Schindler's Van Dekker House had already brought custom modernism to the Woodland Hills hills in 1940, more than a decade before the first Corbin Palms slab was poured. A few minutes away, Charles Du Bois drew Woodland West, whose A-frame rooflines followed the same road to Palm Springs that Palmer and Krisel took, and Rams Village filled in the mid-century streetscape around them.
Stack those tracts up and Woodland Hills reads less like a bedroom suburb and more like what it actually was, a proving ground where serious architects worked at production scale because that was where the building was happening. That is a California story, not a neighborhood one: the ideas tested here furnished the desert a year later, and the buyers who chase them today fly in from well beyond Los Angeles.
Buying or selling in Corbin Palms
An owner inside these four tracts holds something the standard comp set does not measure. A documented architect tract reaches a different buyer, one who searches by architect and by tract rather than by bedroom count, and who will cross the city, or the state, for a house most listing copy would describe as a three-bedroom with a pool. The work is in the proof: the tract number, the monument reports, the plan variant, and an honest accounting of how much original fabric survives.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across the San Fernando Valley and the surrounding neighborhoods. Coastline 840 is an independent brokerage, and the reasons she built it that way are on the record: read why we built Coastline 840 and why boutique teams outperform big-box brokerages for how that changes the work.
For the wider map of who built what, the architectural homes guide and the architectural homes specialist page are the two front doors, and debbiepisaro.com carries the rest of the record. If your parcel returns one of the four Corbin Palms tract numbers, you own a piece of the place where the Palm Springs vocabulary was first tested, and proving that on paper is exactly what an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles sellers hire is for.
Frequently asked questions
Where are the mid century modern homes in Woodland Hills?
The largest concentration is Corbin Palms, roughly 274 Palmer and Krisel houses built from 1953 to 1955 on the streets between Victory Boulevard and Oxnard Street, west of Corbin Avenue, including Jumilla, Hatillo, Lubao, Oakdale, and Quartz Avenues. Woodland West by Charles Du Bois and Schindler's Van Dekker House round out the neighborhood's modernist record.
Who designed Corbin Palms?
Dan Palmer and William Krisel of Palmer and Krisel, AIA, Architects designed Corbin Palms for the Alexander Construction Company. It was the firm's first modern tract, built in four phases from 1953 to 1955, and the same partnership went on to design more than 2,500 homes in Palm Springs.
How big is Corbin Palms?
Corbin Palms holds roughly 274 homes across four recorded tracts: 70 houses in Tract 18024, 60 in Tract 19183, 55 in Tract 19813, and 89 in Tract 13606. Palmer and Krisel drew three basic plans, F, G, and H, then varied rooflines and carports so no street repeats itself.
Is 19748 Victory Blvd in Corbin Palms?
Yes. ZIMAS returns Tract 19813, Lot 114 for the parcel, one of the four recorded Corbin Palms tracts, and the home is a 1954 Palmer and Krisel design. As of August 2026 it is offered at $995,000 through Compass, MLS 26865261, on a 7,200 square foot lot.
Are Corbin Palms homes historic landmarks?
Two are. 6118 Jumilla Avenue was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument 976 in 2010, and 6134 Jumilla Avenue, a Model H-3, became Monument 1163 in 2018. The rest of the tract carries no individual protection, though SurveyLA and the Los Angeles Conservancy both recognize the neighborhood's significance.
What is a Corbin Palms home worth?
The current listing, a renovated 1,980 square foot Palmer and Krisel at 19748 Victory Blvd, is offered at $995,000. Pricing in the tract moves with the plan variant, how much original fabric survives, and renovation quality, and restored examples reach buyers who search by architect rather than by bedroom count.
How do I know if my Woodland Hills house is in Corbin Palms?
Pull the tract number on ZIMAS, the city's free parcel map. Enter your address and the Address and Legal Information panel returns the tract. Corbin Palms parcels return Tract 18024, 19183, 19813, or 13606, and a 1954 build year inside those tracts closes the chain to the archive.
What are the best San Fernando Valley mid century modern neighborhoods?
Corbin Palms in Woodland Hills is the most recognized, with two Historic-Cultural Monuments. Yolanda Gardens in Reseda is its undocumented Palmer and Krisel sibling, and Woodland West by Charles Du Bois sits nearby. Louise Manor in Northridge and Edward Fickett's Meadowlark Park in Reseda round out the west Valley.
Who is a good real estate agent for mid century modern homes in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across the San Fernando Valley and the surrounding neighborhoods. She documents architect tracts like Corbin Palms and Yolanda Gardens before a sign ever goes up, and her DRE license number is 01369110.
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.
Corbin Palms Model H-3, Historic-Cultural Monument report CHC-2018-376-HCM, Los Angeles City Planning (planning.lacity.gov). William Krisel architect biography, Los Angeles Conservancy (laconservancy.org). Corbin Palms archive, USModernist (usmodernist.org). "The Elite Modern of Corbin Palms," Eichler Network (eichlernetwork.com). William Krisel papers, accession 2009.M.23, Getty Research Institute, finding aid at the Online Archive of California (oac.cdlib.org). Parcel and tract data for 19748 Victory Blvd (Tract 19813, Lot 114, APN 2134031017) from ZIMAS, Los Angeles City Planning (zimas.lacity.org), retrieved August 1, 2026. Listing data, MLS 26865261, retrieved August 1, 2026 (zillow.com).
On the Register
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