The Millard Kaufman Residence
A 1949 Richard Neutra house on Multiview Drive, with a Garrett Eckbo landscape and a screenwriter's story built into the walls.
High on Multiview Drive, on the Hollywood side of the Cahuenga Pass, sits a low post and beam house that most people drive past without a second look. That is the point of it. The Millard Kaufman Residence does not perform from the street. It saves everything for the people who live inside it, which is exactly how Richard Neutra intended his houses to work.
The short version is a rare one. A Neutra frame, a Garrett Eckbo garden, and forty years of ownership by an Oscar nominated screenwriter who helped invent Mr. Magoo and quietly lent his name to a blacklisted friend. Debbie Pisaro has walked enough architectural homes in these hills to know that a house carrying three names this good is not a listing. It is a piece of the record.
The Millard Kaufman Residence at 3574 Multiview Drive in the Hollywood Hills is a 1949 post and beam house designed by Richard Neutra with Alexander Ban and Josef Van der Kar, landscaped by Garrett Eckbo, and named for the Oscar nominated screenwriter Millard Kaufman, who owned it for decades.
Who designed the Millard Kaufman Residence?
The house was designed by Richard Neutra, working in 1949 with Alexander Ban and Josef Van der Kar, and it grew in stages over the next fifteen years rather than arriving all at once. That slow assembly is unusual, and it is a large part of why the home reads the way it does today, layered and lived in instead of frozen at a single date.
The original 1949 structure is the post and beam core: exposed wood beams, walls of glass, and a plan that runs the kitchen, living, and dining spaces together and pushes them straight out onto the deck. Neutra came back around 1954 to add the lower level, the primary suite, a workshop, and the stairway that ties the two floors together. Later work continued into the 1960s, including a studio addition and a trellis and service porch that soften the house into its slope.
What you feel standing in it is the thing Neutra chased his whole career. The glass does not frame the hillside so much as erase the line between the room and the canyon. Debbie has toured post and beam houses across the Valley and the basin, and the ones that still work this well, sixty years on, are almost always the ones with a real architect's name on the first set of drawings.
Provenance like this is the whole game on a house of this age. A Neutra frame, a documented Eckbo landscape, and a clean chain of owners are the things a new construction home on the same street can copy in feeling but never in fact. That is why Debbie Pisaro reads these houses first for their record and only second for their finishes.
Who was Richard Neutra?
Richard Neutra was an Austrian born architect who moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s and became one of the defining figures of American modernism. His houses, from the Lovell Health House to the Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, made glass, steel, and open plans feel like the natural language of Southern California living, and they still set the standard collectors chase.
Neutra believed a house should lower a person's pulse. He wrote about it directly, and he built for it: long horizontal lines, reflecting the light, spider legs reaching out to hold a beam past the wall so the roof seems to float free of the glass. On Multiview Drive you can see him doing all of it at domestic scale, on a hillside budget, for a working screenwriter rather than a millionaire client.
His Los Angeles work is well documented, and it rewards comparison. Set this house beside the Nesbitt House in Brentwood or the wider survey of Richard Neutra's Los Angeles houses and the through line is obvious. Neutra is also in good company on this stretch of the hills, where a John Lautner and the work of R.M. Schindler sit within easy reach.
What did Garrett Eckbo bring to the site?
Garrett Eckbo designed the grounds, and on a Neutra house that is not a footnote. Eckbo was one of the most important landscape architects of the twentieth century, a founder of modern landscape design and the author of the field's founding text, Landscape for Living. His name on the garden carries the same weight Neutra's carries on the house.
Eckbo treated a garden as another room, not a decoration around the edges of the building. At the Kaufman house that logic shows up in the way the deck, the patio and fire pit, the pool, and the planting all read as one continuous outdoor floor that the glass simply opens onto. The architecture and the landscape were designed to finish each other, which is rarer than it sounds and almost impossible to recover once it is lost.
For a hillside property, that integration is the quiet luxury. The Eckbo ground plane is why the house feels larger than its 2,503 square feet, and why standing on the deck feels like standing in the canyon rather than looking at it. Debbie Pisaro points buyers to it as a case study in how a designed landscape, not just a view, is what actually makes a modern hillside house live well.
Who was Millard Kaufman?
Millard Kaufman was a two time Oscar nominated screenwriter, a co-creator of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, and the man whose name gave this house its identity for forty years. He was nominated for Take the High Ground and for the 1955 classic Bad Day at Black Rock, and he kept working, and living here, well into his nineties.
His best story is not on any Academy list. In 1950, when the House Un-American Activities Committee had blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, Kaufman let his own name go on the screenplay for the film noir Gun Crazy so Trumbo could keep working. He was a Baltimore native and a Marine who fought at Guadalcanal and Okinawa before he ever wrote a word in Hollywood, and at ninety he published his first novel, Bowl of Cherries.
A name like that is not marketing. It is the kind of concrete, verifiable history that makes a house legible decades later, and it is the reason this profile belongs in the same shelf as Debbie's other named homes, from the Hackett House over the ridge in Studio City to the Roxy Roth House and the Stahl House.
On a provenance house, the value lives in what cannot be rebuilt: a Neutra frame, an Eckbo garden, and a chain of custody a spec home can never claim.
Is 3574 Multiview Drive in Studio City or the Hollywood Hills?
The house sits in the Hollywood Hills, in the 90068 zip code, on the Hollywood side of the Cahuenga Pass, not in Studio City proper. The confusion is understandable, because the north slope of these hills faces the San Fernando Valley and the city groups the area administratively as Studio City and Cahuenga Pass, but the home's address and every MLS record read Hollywood Hills.
The distinction matters if you are searching. Studio City proper is over the ridge on the Valley floor, in the 91604 zip. Multiview Drive climbs the pass but stays on the city side of it, which is why its architectural neighbors read as a Hollywood Hills story even though the Valley begins a short drive down the hill. If you want to see how the two connect, Debbie keeps a map of Studio City architectural homes and a companion piece on Studio City's architectural marvels that place houses like this one in context.
Either way, the person to call about a house like this is a specialist, not a generalist. Debbie Pisaro is an architectural homes specialist in Los Angeles who works these hillside modernist streets specifically, and she also serves buyers and sellers as the best real estate agent in Studio City and across Los Feliz.
Who designed the house at 3574 Multiview Drive?
Richard Neutra designed the original 1949 house, working with Alexander Ban and Josef Van der Kar. Neutra returned around 1954 to add the lower level and primary suite, and further additions followed into the 1960s. The landscape is by Garrett Eckbo.
Is the Millard Kaufman Residence a real Richard Neutra house?
Yes. Neutra is credited on the original 1949 design and on the mid 1950s additions. Because the house was built and expanded in stages by more than one hand, it is best described as a Neutra house that grew over time, rather than a single sealed 1949 commission.
Who was Garrett Eckbo?
Garrett Eckbo was a founder of modern landscape architecture and the author of Landscape for Living, one of the field's defining books. He designed the grounds of the Kaufman Residence, treating the garden, deck, and pool as one continuous outdoor room tied to the architecture.
Who was Millard Kaufman?
Millard Kaufman was a two time Oscar nominated screenwriter, a co-creator of Mr. Magoo, and the writer who fronted his name for blacklisted Dalton Trumbo on Gun Crazy in 1950. He owned this house for roughly forty years until his death in 2009.
Is 3574 Multiview Drive in Studio City or the Hollywood Hills?
It is in the Hollywood Hills, in the 90068 zip code on the Hollywood side of the Cahuenga Pass. Studio City proper sits over the ridge on the Valley floor in the 91604 zip. The area is sometimes marketed as Studio City adjacent because the north slope faces the Valley.
How big is the Millard Kaufman Residence?
The house is roughly 2,503 square feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, set on a hillside lot of about 12,440 square feet. The plan is post and beam, with an open main level that opens through glass onto a large deck and the Eckbo landscape.
What makes a Neutra house worth more than a comparable home?
Documented authorship, intact original architecture, and provenance are the drivers. A verified Neutra design with an Eckbo landscape and a known ownership history carries value that builder grade construction cannot replicate, which is why these homes are valued as scarce architectural assets, not just square footage.
Are there other Neutra or modernist homes near Multiview Drive?
Yes. The Hollywood Hills and the ridgeline above Studio City hold a dense cluster of modernist work, including houses attributed to John Lautner and R.M. Schindler within a short distance. Debbie Pisaro maps and tracks these architectural homes across the area.
Who is a good real estate agent for architectural homes in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24 year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who specializes in architectural, historic, and design forward homes across Studio City, the Hollywood Hills, and the wider Los Angeles market, representing both buyers and sellers.
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 July 2026.
Dwell, Millard Kaufman Residence; the owner's restoration record at michaellafetra.com; property listing history via HOUS.; Richard Neutra and Millard Kaufman biographical record. Construction dates for the post 1949 additions vary by source and are described here as documented.
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