The Mahler / Adams Residence at 10335 Oletha Lane is an architecturally transformed Bel Air home — originally the open-air studio of Austrian-born sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of composer Gustav Mahler — radically reimagined in 1998 by William Adams, FAIA, into a Miesian live/work retreat in Beverly Glen Canyon.
Some houses hold energy you can't explain until you know the story.
This one holds a century of it.
The address is 10335 Oletha Lane. The canyon is Beverly Glen. The Bel Air zip code is almost beside the point.
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This is where Anna Mahler made her work.
Anna Mahler, Los Angeles
Anna Justine Mahler (1904–1988) was an Austrian sculptor — the daughter of composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma Schindler. She arrived in Los Angeles around 1950, part of a remarkable wave of European intellectuals and artists who had fled Hitler's Europe and found, against all odds, a second life in the California sun. Living in Beverly Glen among a community of cultural exiles — musicians, artists, and intellectuals — her Los Angeles years became the most prolific period of her career.
Her résumé was formidable long before she set up her open-air studio on Oletha Lane. She sculpted bronze portrait heads of many of the musical giants of the 20th century — Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Rudolf Serkin. Her standing figure of a woman won Grand Prix at the Austria Pavilion of the 1937 Paris World Fair.
The losses that preceded her California chapter were staggering. Nearly all of her major works dating from before the war were destroyed when an Allied air raid struck her abandoned studio in Vienna. What survived was her discipline, her vision, and eventually, this canyon.
It was during her Beverly Glen years that she created her most monumental work — The Tower of Masks (1964), permanently installed at UCLA's Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, where it stands today. If you've never made the pilgrimage to that garden, this is your reason to go.
The book chronicling her work opens with views of Anna Mahler's open-air studio at Oletha Lane — introducing readers immediately to the range of her creativity. She worked here through the 1950s and 1960s, carving stone directly, often without a preliminary sketch, letting the will of the material guide her hand.
William Adams and the Radical Transformation
In 1998 — a decade after Mahler's death — architect William Adams, FAIA, was brought in to reimagine the property. The approach was pure Mies. Adams stripped away the original interior walls and ceilings entirely, creating a continuous, light-filled open plan guided by the principle of less is more.
What makes the result so quietly extraordinary is the gesture of remembrance embedded in the floor. The locations of the home's previous walls are marked by dark timber inlays in the hardwood — a kind of architectural archaeology, honoring what was removed by recording where it once stood. Adams didn't erase Mahler's rooms. He memorialized them underfoot.
He also raised one section of the roof to create a dramatic skylight above the living room — flooding the space with exactly the quality of light a sculptor would have wanted. Whether intentional homage or architectural intuition, it feels right.
The result is a spacious, high-ceilinged living and dining space with fireplace, a remodeled kitchen with stainless appliances and corner banquette, and a primary bedroom with en suite bath and walk-in closet fitted with handcrafted mortise-and-tenon cabinetry. A second bedroom opens directly to the exterior — into the canyon — in the way that only a hillside home in Los Angeles can manage.
The Canyon, the Deck, the Light
A large deck overlooks Beverly Glen canyon, sheltered by a canopy of shade trees. This is Southern California residential architecture doing what it does best — dissolving the boundary between inside and out, between the made world and the wild one.
The home measures 1,630 square feet on a third of an acre. It has recently been relisted at $1,589,000 by Robert Moore and Veronika Sznajder of Crosby Doe Associates. The full photo essay ran in Dwell — you can see it here.
About the Author
Debbie Pisaro — Founder, Coastline 840 | DRE #01369110
Debbie Pisaro is a Los Angeles luxury real estate agent with 24 years of experience specializing in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across LA — from Craftsman bungalows in Silver Lake to mid-century moderns in the Hills. She writes about California's most significant properties at debbiepisaro.com.
Why This Home Matters
Bel Air produces a certain category of listing that leads with zip code and stops there. This is not that house.
The Mahler / Adams Residence earns its name in both directions. Anna Mahler spent the most creatively abundant years of her life working stone in this canyon, at this address. William Adams spent his 1998 intervention in genuine dialogue with that history — removing, memorializing, opening, illuminating — and produced something that honors an artist's space by becoming, itself, a work of architecture.
Los Angeles has always been a city of second acts, of reinvention, of people arriving from somewhere else and making something entirely new from what they found. This house is that story told in timber inlays and skylight and canyon air.
FAQ: The Mahler / Adams Residence, Bel Air
Who was Anna Mahler, and what is her connection to this property? Anna Mahler (1904–1988) was an Austrian sculptor and the daughter of composer Gustav Mahler. She used the Beverly Glen property at 10335 Oletha Lane as her open-air studio and residence during her Los Angeles years, roughly the 1950s and 1960s. Her major work, The Tower of Masks (1964), is held by UCLA at the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden.
Who was the architect of the 1998 transformation? William Adams, FAIA, redesigned the home in 1998, removing the original interior walls and ceilings, opening the roofline to create a dramatic skylight, and honoring the original floor plan with dark timber inlays where the walls once stood. The redesign is guided by the Miesian principle of "less is more."
Where exactly is 10335 Oletha Lane located? Oletha Lane is in the Beverly Glen neighborhood of Los Angeles, which carries the prestigious 90077 Bel Air zip code. Beverly Glen Canyon is centrally located between Bel Air, Westwood, and Sherman Oaks — a sylvan pocket deeply connected to Los Angeles's mid-century bohemian and intellectual history.
What are the key features of the home? The home is approximately 1,630 square feet with a high-ceiling open-plan living and dining area, fireplace, remodeled kitchen with corner banquette, a primary bedroom with en suite bath and handcrafted mortise-and-tenon closet cabinetry, a second bedroom that opens to the exterior, a hillside deck with canyon views, and EV charging. Parking for up to six cars.
Is this property a Historic-Cultural Monument? As of this writing, the Mahler / Adams Residence does not appear on the City of Los Angeles HCM register, though its provenance — as the documented studio of a major 20th-century sculptor — makes it a compelling candidate for future designation. If you're interested in historically protected architectural homes in Los Angeles, see my ongoing HCM series.
What is the asking price, and who holds the listing? The home is listed at $1,589,000 by Robert Moore and Veronika Sznajder of Crosby Doe Associates. I am not the listing agent; this post is part of my editorial series on architecturally significant homes in Los Angeles.