The Hackett House at 3370 Canton Lane is a Usonian home in the hills above Studio City, designed in the 1960s by James De Long, a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice at Taliesin, and built in 1979. For anyone watching Studio City architectural homes for sale, it is a direct line back to Wright's Usonian idea.
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The James De Long Hackett House, a Wright-trained architect's Usonian home on a quiet Studio City canyon street.
There's a house on Canton Lane in the hills above Studio City that most people drive past without knowing what they're looking at. It doesn't announce itself. It sits low against the hillside, wide cantilevered overhangs sheltering the entry, fine wood detailing visible through walls of glass. To someone who knows the language, it reads immediately. To everyone else, it just looks like a very beautiful, very quiet home.
That's exactly what James De Long intended. He learned the language from Frank Lloyd Wright himself, and he spent fifty years speaking it in Los Angeles.
Who was James De Long?
James De Long was born in Eagle Rock in 1921. As a teenager he knew Wright's Millard House near his home, and from then on he wanted to train with Wright. He wanted to understand how a building could feel like it grew from its site rather than being placed on it.
It took him years to get there. He studied, worked in Alaska as a surveyor for an engineering firm, and served in the Army Air Corps. In July 1946 he was accepted into Wright's Fellowship at Taliesin, where Wright trained architects by putting them to work on real buildings.
De Long stayed until May 1947. Guided by Jack Howe, Wright's chief draftsman, he made a detailed study of Wright's Goetsch-Winckler House, which became his qualifying thesis, and he worked as a project draftsman and detailer on live commissions, including Wright's first passive-solar house for the Jacobs family.
Then he came back to Los Angeles, drafted under contract for architects including A. Quincy Jones, and opened a one-man studio. For the next fifty years he ran it alone, without hired draftsmen, and quietly built out what he had learned.
What is a Usonian house, and how did De Long adapt it?
Wright's Usonian houses were revolutionary in their simplicity: modest, single-story family homes of wood, brick, and glass, with a carport in place of a garage and every room connected to the garden. Every element had a purpose.
De Long took that framework and adapted it to Southern California: the light, the hillside sites, the indoor-outdoor life Angelenos actually want. Where other Wright apprentices moved toward new geometries or Wrightian ornament, he stayed anchored to the fundamentals. As the archive that holds his papers puts it, his importance rests largely on the continuity he represents, the sober and faithful ways he kept developing the original Usonian idea.
At the Hackett House, those principles are readable in every detail. The wide cantilevered overhangs shade the interior and also serve as the second carport, function and form inseparable, never bolted on. The step-down living room creates a sense of shelter without walls. Fine wood detailing runs through the interior as a continuous material thread, and multiple French doors open the rooms to the canyon beyond.
What did ten years at House Beautiful do to his eye?
In 1963 something unusual happened for a practicing architect: the editor Elizabeth Gordon invited De Long to join House Beautiful as its architecture editor. He stayed until 1974, dividing his time between Los Angeles and New York, and took on more of the magazine after Gordon retired at the end of 1964.
It would be easy to read that chapter as a detour. It wasn't. For ten years De Long looked at, and wrote about, the best residential architecture being produced anywhere, including a major essay in appreciation of Mies van der Rohe. He developed an eye for what separates a resolved building from a merely competent one.
When he came back to full-time practice in Los Angeles in 1974, much of his work went to additions, remodels, and restoration, what he called "adjustment." The Hackett House, designed in the 1960s and not built until 1979, carries that long look. It photographs beautifully, and it rewards the experience of being inside it even more.
What is the Hackett House at 3370 Canton Lane?
The Hackett House was designed in the 1960s for the Hackett family and built in 1979, a long gestation that the De Long papers at UC Santa Barbara record. The site is in the Santa Monica Mountains above Studio City, a hillside that called for exactly the kind of site-specific thinking De Long had learned at Taliesin.
The house delivers. Wide cantilevered overhangs shelter the exterior and make the second carport. Fine wood detailing moves through the interior, accenting the volumes and connecting the spaces. A step-down living room anchors the public rooms. French doors open the rooms to the gardens, and from an upper-level orchard and pergola, panoramic canyon views open across the hills.
The Hackett House is not on a tour. It is a private home in a Studio City canyon, sitting on its hillside the way De Long's teacher always said a building should, as though it had always been there.
The James De Long papers, about 5,000 drawings plus photographs and documents, are in the Architecture and Design Collection at UC Santa Barbara. The owner of a De Long house should ask what the archive holds for their address before listing.
Why does James De Long matter in Studio City?
Studio City has always attracted serious architects. R.M. Schindler left nine works here, two of them facing each other on Reklaw Drive, among them the Roxy Roth House. John Lautner built on Woodhill Canyon Road and on Berry Drive. Raphael Soriano's 1964 Grossman House, El Paradiso, stands on Dona Cecilia Drive. Add Gregory Ain, the 1961 houses on Laurelcrest Drive, and Jones and Emmons's St. Michael's, and the neighborhood reads as a living gallery of modernist ambition.
De Long belongs in that conversation. His first two houses, for Richard Wolford and Robert Scholfield on Mount Washington, near Lautner's Mauer House, were named Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in 1995. The Los Angeles Conservancy gave him its Modern Master Award in 2011. On Canton Lane he left something rare: a building where the Wright influence is understood from the inside, translated to a California hillside by someone who learned it at the source. For Wright's own hand in California, see the Walker House in Carmel.
That combination, the Taliesin training, the editorial years, and fifty years of one set of principles, is what makes the Hackett House more than a beautiful hillside home. If a house like this is in your future, Debbie Pisaro's architectural homes specialist page explains how she works.
Where else are the architectural homes in Studio City?
The Hackett House is one of more than 30 architecturally significant homes I've documented across Studio City, from Schindler's houses on Reklaw Drive to the Case Study cul-de-sac on Laurelcrest and the Lydecker House on Buena Park Drive. The full list lives on Just Studio City's architectural homes of Studio City.
If you're drawn to homes with this kind of depth, houses with a story, an author, and a point of view, Studio City is one of the richest neighborhoods in Los Angeles to look. The best of them rarely come to market publicly. When they do, they move fast, and pricing them is its own discipline, covered in how to price a one-of-a-kind architectural home and selling a mid-century home in the Studio City hills.
I've been selling architectural homes in Studio City for over two decades. If you want to know what's available, including homes that never reach the MLS through pocket listings, reach out directly. For the wider neighborhood, start with the Studio City real estate guide or the rest of debbiepisaro.com.
Questions about the Hackett House
Who designed the Hackett House in Studio City?
James De Long designed the Hackett House at 3370 Canton Lane in Studio City. De Long was a Los Angeles architect who trained with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in 1946 and 1947, then ran a one-man practice in Los Angeles for about fifty years, working in Wright's Usonian language.
When was the Hackett House built?
De Long designed the Hackett House in the 1960s, but it was not built until 1979, according to the James De Long papers at UC Santa Barbara. The long gap fell across his years as architecture editor of House Beautiful, from 1963 to 1974, when much of his attention went to New York.
Who was James De Long?
James De Long was born in Eagle Rock in 1921. Inspired as a teenager by Wright's Millard House near his home, he joined Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in July 1946, worked under chief draftsman Jack Howe, and returned to Los Angeles in 1947 to open a one-man residential practice he ran for fifty years.
What is a Usonian house?
A Usonian house is Frank Lloyd Wright's modest, single-story American family home: wood, brick, and glass, a carport in place of a garage, and rooms opened to the garden. De Long stayed faithful to that formal language, building system, and material palette for fifty years, varying it for each site and client.
Which James De Long houses are Historic-Cultural Monuments?
His first two houses, built on Mount Washington for Richard Wolford in 1949 and 1950 and for Robert Scholfield in 1950 and 1951, were named Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in 1995. The Los Angeles Conservancy gave James De Long its Modern Master Award in 2011, recognizing his long Usonian practice.
What did De Long do at House Beautiful?
Editor Elizabeth Gordon invited De Long to join House Beautiful as architecture editor in 1963. He stayed until 1974, dividing his time between Los Angeles and New York, took on more after Gordon retired at the end of 1964, and wrote major essays, including one in appreciation of Mies van der Rohe.
What other architects built in Studio City?
Studio City has nine R.M. Schindler works, two facing each other on Reklaw Drive. John Lautner built the Tyler House on Woodhill Canyon Road and the Zimmerman House on Berry Drive. Raphael Soriano's 1964 Grossman House, El Paradiso, on Dona Cecilia Drive is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 638.
How do you sell an architect-designed house in Studio City?
Start with the record: the architect, the dates, the drawings, and any archive that holds them, such as the De Long papers at UC Santa Barbara. Price against other named-architect houses rather than the street, and market to buyers who know the name. Many of these houses trade quietly, before they reach the open market.
Who is the best real estate agent for architectural homes in Studio City?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers of architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across Studio City and Los Angeles. She has documented more than 30 architecturally significant homes in Studio City, and many of the homes she sells never reach the open market.
James De Long papers, Architecture and Design Collection, UC Santa Barbara, biographical note by Nicholas Olsberg; Los Angeles Conservancy, Modern Master Award; list of works by John Lautner.
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 DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. Powered by Side: #1 California-based brokerage, No. 9 in the nation. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, juststudiocity.com, and coastline840.com. First published March 2026, updated October 2026.
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