Schindler's 1948 house in the Studio City hills spent fifty years passing through eight sets of hands before a designer took it apart and rebuilt it from his original drawings.
The Lechner House is at 11600 Amanda Drive, Studio City, Los Angeles, California 91604, in the hills above the boulevard. R.M. Schindler designed it in 1948 for Richard Lechner and his wife. It is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1024, declared 5 February 2013, and it carries a recorded Mills Act contract. This is a private residence.
A house can survive and still be lost. The Lechner House stood on its ridge for sixty years without anyone knocking it down, and by the time somebody finally looked at it properly the stainless-steel fireplace was buried behind Sheetrock, the Douglas fir ceilings were under decades of white paint, and the original windows had been swapped for cheap aluminium. Nothing had been demolished. Everything had been covered up.
Debbie Pisaro works as an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles, and this is the house she points to when someone asks what restoration actually means on an architectural home. It is also the clearest local example of the one question that matters on a designated property, because unlike almost every other Schindler in the city, this one has a Mills Act contract on the record.
Eight owners, and a house nobody was reading
Schindler designed the house in 1948 for Richard Lechner and his wife, on a hillside lot in the Studio City hills. Beyond the name, the record on the client is thin. What is documented is what happened after: the Lechners divorced in the 1950s, and over the following half-century the house changed hands roughly eight times. No single owner held it long enough to understand it, and each one made the small practical decisions that owners make. Sheetrock over an awkward fireplace. Paint over dark ceilings. New windows because the old ones stuck.
None of that is vandalism. It is what happens to a difficult house owned by people who did not buy it for the architecture, and it is the single most common way significant houses are lost. The building survives, the design does not, and by the time anyone notices there is nothing obvious left to save. That is roughly the state the Lechner was in by the mid-2000s.
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The designer Pamela Shamshiri, of Studio Shamshiri and previously a founding partner at Commune, bought the house around 2008 and spent the following years undoing all of it. Her own description of what she found is short: the walls and the bold, angular, stainless-steel fireplace were covered in Sheetrock, and the spirit was gone.
The work went the long way round on every decision. Sheetrock and later materials came off to expose the original fabric. The stainless-steel fireplace was uncovered and restored. Decades of white paint were stripped from the Douglas fir ceilings. The plywood wall surfaces were brought back. The aluminium replacement windows went out. And the built-in furniture and plywood cabinetry, which is where Schindler put most of his thinking, were recreated from his original drawings held in the Architecture and Design Collection at UC Santa Barbara. Not approximated from photographs. Rebuilt from the documents.
The question she says she worked from is a good one for any owner of a house like this: what would Schindler do if he were alive. Her answer to the obvious objection is better still, and it is worth quoting because it is the whole argument against over-restoration. No one wants to live in a museum, suffocated by the past. This exercise in respectful reimagination pays the ultimate compliment to the architect.
One correction worth making, because the coverage blurs it constantly: Shamshiri did the interiors. The exterior revitalisation and structural work came later and were done by Escher GuneWardena, with landscape by Terremoto and a revival of the original swimming pool. Two different campaigns, years apart, by different hands. Anyone crediting the whole house to one firm has not read the record.
This one actually has a Mills Act contract
Here is why this house is worth understanding beyond the architecture. On any designated Los Angeles property the live question is not whether it could qualify for a Mills Act contract. The City of Los Angeles has not accepted a new one since 2020, City Council approved a new annual fee structure for existing contracts on 20 December 2025, effective 23 February 2026, and no date has been announced for reopening applications. The question is whether a contract is already recorded, because recorded contracts keep running and transfer with title.
On the Lechner, one is. It appears in the City Planning batch report of 4 October 2013 under case number CHC-2013-1646-MA, tied to Council File 13-1484, listed against 11600 West Amanda Drive and Monument No. 1024. That is a primary City document, not a listing claim, and it is the kind of thing that should be confirmed from the record rather than taken from marketing on any house that advertises a tax benefit.
It also happens to settle a question the architecture press never quite answers, because the same filing names the owners of record at the time. The paperwork is frequently the best-sourced thing about a house. The mechanics of all this are the same ones at work whenever a designated home changes hands, which is the subject of selling a Mills Act or HCM home and what designation does to value.
Two small things on this house are wrong almost everywhere. The address is 11600 Amanda Drive, not 11606, and that typo has propagated widely. And the design year is 1948, while the assessor carries 1949. On a designated property, read the monument record and the title report rather than the article.
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See pocket listingsThree designated Schindlers, and no district
Studio City holds nine Schindler works, which is the densest concentration anywhere in the San Fernando Valley, and only three of them carry monument status: this house, the Laurelwood Apartments as Monument No. 228, and the Presburger House as No. 1076. The Goodwin and Gold houses on Reklaw Drive, the Roth House on Buena Park Drive and both Ventura Boulevard buildings have no designation at all.
There is no district to fall back on either. Studio City has no Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, and neither does anywhere else in this part of the Valley, so protection here is building by building or it is nothing. The full neighborhood inventory, including the two houses that face each other across one block of Reklaw Drive, is at the nine Schindlers of Studio City.
Across the hill and along the ridge the pattern repeats with different outcomes. The Roxy Roth House is intact and undesignated. The Kallis-Sharlin Residence is a monument. The Van Dekker House in Woodland Hills is designated and one of the largest houses he built, and the Howenstein Residence in South Pasadena has nothing at all. Same architect, same decade in some cases, entirely different legal footing.
What this house asks of its next owner
The Lechner is the rare architectural house where the hard work is already done and documented. Someone has stripped it back, found the original fabric, rebuilt the built-ins from the drawings, and put a Mills Act contract on the record. What that asks of a buyer is not restoration. It is restraint: not undoing it, and understanding that the value sits in the parts a normal remodel would treat as obstacles.
It also asks for a particular kind of attention. Schindler's late work rewards close looking, and the pleasures here are the angle of a built-in, the height of a ceiling, the way plywood is used as a finished surface rather than a substrate. Even the furniture has become collectable in its own right; a Schindler dining chair made for this house came up at auction in Los Angeles in 2022.
Pricing one is its own discipline, because the comparable pool for a documented Schindler is national rather than local and small enough that a single sale moves the conversation. This house traded in 2019 at a price that no Studio City comparison would have produced. Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, and the founder of Coastline 840; she has listed and sold a Schindler in this neighborhood. The argument in full is in how to price an architectural home in Los Angeles, the wider record is on her architectural homes page and on the R.M. Schindler page, and the terms of the work are on the architectural homes specialist page. Owners weighing a sale find her through the best Los Angeles historic and architectural real estate agent page.
The Lechner House, answered
Where is the Lechner House?
At 11600 Amanda Drive, Studio City, Los Angeles, California 91604, high in the Studio City hills. Note the number: several published accounts give 11606, and that is wrong. Every City and county record uses 11600. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.
When was the Lechner House built?
R.M. Schindler designed it in 1948, in the late stretch of his career, and the county assessor records the year built as 1949. Design dates in the range 1946 to 1948 appear in various catalogues. Where the assessor and the architectural record disagree slightly, both are worth knowing before relying on either.
Is the Lechner House a historic landmark?
Yes. It is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1024, declared on 5 February 2013. It is one of only three designated Schindler works in Studio City, alongside the Laurelwood Apartments and the Presburger House. Studio City has no historic district, so individual designation is the only protection available there.
Does the Lechner House have a Mills Act contract?
Yes, and it is documented in the City's own record rather than in marketing. It appears in the City Planning batch report of 4 October 2013 under case CHC-2013-1646-MA, tied to Council File 13-1484 and to Monument No. 1024. Recorded contracts continue to run and transfer with the title.
Who restored the Lechner House?
The designer Pamela Shamshiri of Studio Shamshiri did the interiors, acquiring the house around 2008 and completing the work in 2016. The exterior revitalisation and structural work came later and were carried out by Escher GuneWardena, with landscape by Terremoto. Coverage frequently credits the whole house to one firm, which is wrong.
What did the restoration involve?
Stripping Sheetrock and later materials to expose the original fabric, uncovering and restoring the angular stainless-steel fireplace, removing decades of white paint from the Douglas fir ceilings, restoring the plywood wall surfaces, replacing poor-quality aluminium windows, and recreating the built-in furniture and cabinetry from Schindler's original drawings.
Where are Schindler's original drawings kept?
In the Architecture and Design Collection at UC Santa Barbara, which holds his drawings, photographs and manuscripts. The Lechner restoration used them directly to rebuild the built-in furniture and plywood cabinetry, which is a materially different standard from copying what appears in surviving photographs of a house.
Who was Richard Lechner?
The client who commissioned the house with his wife in 1948, and beyond the name the record is genuinely thin. No accessible source establishes his profession or biography. What is documented is that the Lechners divorced in the 1950s and the house then changed hands roughly eight times across the following fifty years.
How big is the Lechner House?
The county assessor records about 3,539 square feet on a lot of roughly 15,913, with four bedrooms. Marketing material has described closer to 4,000 square feet, a difference that probably reflects whether later additions are counted. Confirm permitted area against the assessor and permit record before relying on any published figure.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in California?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, and the founder of Coastline 840. She has listed and sold a Schindler in Studio City, and represents buyers and sellers of architectural, historic and design-forward houses statewide, including Historic-Cultural Monuments and Mills Act properties. CA DRE #01369110, with Side, Inc. as responsible broker.
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Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources and the City's Historic-Cultural Monuments record, for Monument No. 1024 and its declaration date of 5 February 2013. Los Angeles City Planning, batch report of 4 October 2013 and Council File 13-1484, for the Mills Act contract under case CHC-2013-1646-MA. Los Angeles County Assessor, for the floor area, the lot and the year built. Studio Shamshiri, for the scope of the interior restoration and the quoted remarks. Escher GuneWardena and Terremoto, for the later exterior and landscape work. UC Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collection, which holds the Schindler drawings used in the restoration. Los Angeles Modern Auctions, for the Lechner House dining chair offered in 2022. The design year is given variously between 1946 and 1948 across catalogues and the assessor records 1949; both are noted above. This is a private residence.
Debbie Pisaro, CA DRE #01369110, is the founder of Coastline 840, a California real estate brand, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader with 24 years of experience in architectural, historic and design-forward homes across California. Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. She writes about California real estate at debbiepisaro.com, juststudiocity.com and coastline840.com.
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