Harry Gesner homes for sale are rare, because the self-taught California architect built few houses and families keep them for decades. Four have come to market since his death in 2022: the Bernstein House in Malibu Cove Colony, the Erenhault House in Trousdale Estates, Condor Crag in Calabasas and the Reshaw houses outside Porterville.
A beach house in Malibu Cove Colony, a Trousdale ridge house, a cliff house above Calabasas and two round houses on 200 acres. Four Harry Gesner houses, and what each one is.
Harry Gesner homes for sale come up so seldom that four in a short stretch is worth writing down. Gesner was a surfer, a sailor and a self-taught designer who put houses where other architects would not: on the sand at the tide line, into the bedrock of a Beverly Hills ridge, onto a granite cliff in the Santa Monica Mountains. Debbie Pisaro is an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles collectors call when a house like this surfaces, and her Harry Gesner architect profile covers the man, the Wave House and the Hollywood boathouses.
This page is about four of his houses: the Bernstein House in Malibu Cove Colony, the Melvin Erenhault House in Trousdale Estates, Condor Crag above Calabasas, and the Reshaw houses in the foothills east of Porterville. Each has come to market since Gesner died in 2022 at 97. Together they run from 1958 to 1975, the middle of a career that lasted into his eighties, and a long stretch of California, from the Pacific to Tulare County.
A Gesner usually stays with the family that commissioned it, which is why a run of four matters. Below is what each house is, where it is, and what Debbie Pisaro looks at before a buyer makes an offer.
Where are the Harry Gesner houses that came to market?
Four houses, four settings, seventeen years apart from first to last. The dates are the years Gesner finished each one, and the addresses are the full street addresses, so an owner, a neighbor or a buyer can find the house on a map.
The Bernstein House, Malibu Cove Colony
26902 Malibu Cove Colony Drive · Malibu, CA 90265 · 1975
The Bernstein House is a 1975 Gesner on the beach at 26902 Malibu Cove Colony Drive, a small gated colony off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. It sits at the quiet cul-de-sac end of the colony's private road with direct access to the sand, and it stayed with the family that built it for about fifty years.
It is a modest house by Malibu standards: about 2,644 square feet, four bedrooms, on a beach lot of 0.17 acre. What makes it a Gesner is the material. There are wood-beam ceilings and wide-plank floors, five fireplaces, stained glass salvaged from a historic church, and a pair of tall, slender bronze front doors taken from the old San Francisco Mint. Gesner liked salvage with a past, and here it is the front door.
When the house came to market for the first time, it was Gesner's son, the actor Zen Gesner, who recognized it as his father's design.
Malibu Colony, a short drive east, carries a footnote to the same story. In 1966 Gesner drew the Gershwin Beach House for a lot there, and it was never built: the client cancelled and sold the property. In 1968 John Lautner built on that lot, and the result is the house in Debbie Pisaro's post on the Lautner Stevens House in Malibu.
The Erenhault House, Trousdale Estates
624 Cole Place · Beverly Hills, CA 90210 · 1968 to 1970
The Melvin Erenhault House is a 1970 Gesner at 624 Cole Place, at the end of a cul-de-sac in Trousdale Estates, Beverly Hills. Melvin Erenhault commissioned it in 1968. Gesner built it into the bedrock of the ridge and covered it with a curved roof that rises like a cresting wave, then drops the living room down a level and opens it to the city through floor-to-ceiling glass.
It runs to roughly 6,500 square feet with six bedrooms on about two-thirds of an acre. It went about twenty years without being offered for sale, and for part of that time it was available only to rent. The house appears in Houses of the Sundown Sea, Lisa Germany's book on Gesner's work.
Trousdale is better known for the 1950s and 1960s houses of Hal Levitt and Edward Fickett, low and wide behind their hedges. A Gesner there is an outlier, which is exactly its appeal.
Condor Crag, Calabasas
965 Stunt Road · Calabasas, CA 91302 · 1958
Condor Crag is the Fleet Southcott House, a 1958 Gesner at 965 Stunt Road in Calabasas. Gesner designed it for Fleet Southcott, a cinematographer on Gunsmoke, and anchored it directly into a granite cliff in the Santa Monica Mountains with steel beams.
It is early Gesner, and it carries the same instinct as the Wave House, drawn two years earlier: make the house grip the place instead of sitting on top of it. The property runs to about 4.7 acres across three contiguous lots, with a house of roughly 2,500 square feet and three bedrooms. It changed hands in 1980 and again in 2011.
Stunt Road climbs out of Calabasas toward the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains, and Condor Crag belongs to that country: chaparral, rock and long views.
The Reshaw houses, Porterville
31898 Success Valley Drive · Porterville, CA 93257 · 1966
The Reshaw houses are a 1966 Gesner design of two round houses side by side at 31898 Success Valley Drive, on about 200 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Porterville, in Tulare County. Gesner designed them for Wiley Reshaw.
There is a three-bedroom main house and a one-bedroom second residence, both round, plus a guest dwelling. The property sold in 2021. At some point the original main structure was gutted and rebuilt and the garage moved into a building of its own, which matters to a buyer: the site plan and the round forms are Gesner's, but how much original fabric survives is the first question to ask.
The Reshaw houses are also the plainest reminder on this list that Gesner was a California architect, not only a Malibu one. Success Valley is a long way from the surf, and he answered it with circles instead of waves.
Who was Harry Gesner, the self-taught architect behind these houses?
Harry Gesner (1925 to 2022) was a self-taught California architect who surfed, sailed and served in the Second World War, and who built houses that answer their land instead of flattening it. He never earned an architecture degree, worked mostly in Malibu, the Hollywood Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains, and was 97 when he died.
The Wave House is the story everyone tells. In 1956 his old friends and fellow surfers Glenn and Gerry Cooper asked him to design a house on the beach in Malibu. Gesner paddled out, sketched the house in grease pencil on his surfboard while he looked back at the site, and transferred the drawing to paper once he was ashore.
The same years produced Eagle's Watch in Malibu, which burned in 1993 and which Gesner rebuilt in concrete and steel, and the Triangle House, the Richard Kimball House in Tarzana. In 1974 he finished his own house, the Sandcastle, on the sand in Malibu, built almost entirely from salvage for his wife, the actress Nan Martin. Debbie Pisaro has written separately about Harry Gesner's Malibu houses and the Hollywood boathouses.
His contemporaries are part of the picture. John Lautner was building Silvertop in Silver Lake while Gesner was sketching on a surfboard, and Ed Niles later took steel and glass up the same Malibu coast. Debbie Pisaro keeps all of them in her architect register and her guide to the architects of California modernism.
What should a buyer check before buying a Harry Gesner house?
A buyer should confirm three things before making an offer on a Harry Gesner house: that the attribution is documented, how much of the original design survives, and what the setting costs to own. Each Gesner answers its own piece of land, so no two are comparable, and appraisers struggle with that.
Documentation comes first. A house with a clear record in USModernist, in Gesner's own book or in the permit file is a different purchase from one carried on a seller's say-so. Survival comes second: the Bernstein House kept its family and its fabric for fifty years, and the Reshaw main house was gutted. Both are Gesners, and they are not the same house to own.
Setting comes third. A Malibu beach house means the Coastal Commission and the tide line. Trousdale has its own height and view rules. A canyon house in the Santa Monica Mountains means fire insurance before anything else. Check designation as well: a few Gesner houses carry Mills Act contracts written before Los Angeles stopped accepting new applications in 2020, and an existing contract transfers with the title. Debbie Pisaro's Los Feliz work shows what Historic-Cultural Monument designation does to a home value.
Price the land and the record, not the square footage. A 2,644-square-foot Gesner on the sand and a 6,500-square-foot Gesner on a ridge are priced on their settings and their paperwork, never on comparable sales down the street.
Pricing a house like this is its own discipline, and Debbie Pisaro has written on how to price an architectural home in Los Angeles. She is not the listing agent for 26902 Malibu Cove Colony Drive, 624 Cole Place, 965 Stunt Road or 31898 Success Valley Drive. Debbie represents buyers on architectural homes across California, regardless of who holds a given listing, the same standing practice whether a home is on or off market.
She does it through Coastline 840, the boutique California practice she built for architectural and historic homes, and the reason a boutique practice suits houses like these is set out in why boutique real estate teams outperform the big firms. Her architectural homes specialist page explains how she works.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and California's coast and foothills. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. For a Gesner, from the Malibu sand to Tulare County, that is the work of an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers can lean on, and the rest of her work is at debbiepisaro.com.
My take on the Bernstein House
The detail that stops me is the front door. It's a pair of tall, slender bronze doors that came out of the old San Francisco Mint, hung on a beach house in Malibu Cove Colony. Gesner liked salvage with a past, and here he put it where you'd touch it every day.
What the house does well is restraint. It's about 2,644 square feet with four bedrooms on a 0.17-acre lot, which is small for Malibu, and it doesn't pretend to be bigger. Wood-beam ceilings, wide-plank floors, five fireplaces, stained glass from a historic church. It reads warm rather than glassy, and it sits on the sand at the quiet cul-de-sac end of a private road.
I picture someone who wants the beach more than the square footage. A buyer who'd rather light a fire on a gray June morning than host a party for a hundred. Probably someone who already knows who Harry Gesner was, or who'll want to learn.
The honest part: this house stayed with one family for about fifty years, and it was Gesner's own son who recognized it as his father's design when it came to market. That tells me the paper trail may be thin. Before anyone writes an offer, I'd want the permit history, the USModernist record and a clear read on what's original. On the sand, I'd also get the Coastal Commission questions answered early. That's homework, and it's mine to do.
Bottom line: of the four Gesner houses that came up, this is the one I'd want to own. It isn't the biggest and it isn't the most famous. It's the one that feels most like him: salvaged history, five fireplaces and the Pacific a few steps away.
Harry Gesner houses, answered
Where are Harry Gesner homes for sale in California?
Four Gesner houses have come to market since he died in 2022: the Bernstein House at 26902 Malibu Cove Colony Drive in Malibu, the Erenhault House at 624 Cole Place in Beverly Hills, Condor Crag at 965 Stunt Road in Calabasas, and the Reshaw houses at 31898 Success Valley Drive in Porterville.
Where is the Erenhault House?
The Melvin Erenhault House is at 624 Cole Place, at the end of a cul-de-sac in Trousdale Estates, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Harry Gesner took the commission in 1968 and finished the house in 1970, building it into the bedrock of the ridge under a curved roof that opens to the city.
What is the most famous Harry Gesner house?
The Wave House in Malibu is Gesner's best-known work. He drew it in 1956 for his old friends and fellow surfers Glenn and Gerry Cooper, sketching it in grease pencil on his surfboard while he looked back at the site. Its copper-clad roofs read as breaking surf at the edge of the Pacific.
Was Harry Gesner a licensed architect?
Harry Gesner was self-taught. He surfed, sailed and served in the Second World War, and he never earned an architecture degree, yet he spent his career building houses that answer their land instead of flattening it. He worked mostly in Malibu, the Hollywood Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains, and died in 2022 at 97.
Where is the Bernstein House?
The Bernstein House is at 26902 Malibu Cove Colony Drive, Malibu, CA 90265, on the sand at the quiet cul-de-sac end of the colony's private road, with direct beach access. Gesner finished it in 1975, and it stayed with the same family for about fifty years before it first came to market.
What should a buyer check before buying a Harry Gesner house?
Start with the record: confirm the attribution against an archive such as USModernist, read the permit history, and learn how much of the original survives. Then price the setting, because a Malibu beach lot, a Trousdale ridge and a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains each carry their own permits, insurance and rules.
How rare are Harry Gesner houses?
Rare. Gesner built a small body of work across a long career, much of it custom houses for friends, surfers and Hollywood clients, and many of those houses have stayed in one family for decades. The Bernstein House went about fifty years without a sale, and the Erenhault House about twenty years.
Who is the best real estate agent for buying a Harry Gesner house?
Look for a real estate agent who works in architectural homes across California and reads permit files and archives as closely as comps. Debbie Pisaro, founder of Coastline 840 and an Inman Luxury Leader, represents buyers and sellers of architecturally significant homes statewide, and many of the homes she sells never reach the open market.
Coastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026 · DRE #01369110
Debbie Pisaro, Real Estate Salesperson, 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 DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, losfelizliving.com, and coastline840.com. Published October 2026.
USModernist, Harry Harmer Gesner; Wikipedia, Harry Gesner; Getty, Harry Gesner's buildings surf the California hillsides; Dwell, the Malibu Cove Colony house; Robb Report, the Malibu Cove Colony house; Galerie, the Erenhault House; e-architect, Erenhault House; Dwell, the Sandcastle.
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