Neutra Place Silver Lake is a short residential street above the Silver Lake Reservoir where Richard Neutra designed several houses between the late 1940s and the 1960s. It was called Earl Street until Los Angeles renamed it for him on July 2, 1992. SurveyLA identifies the block as a potential Neutra Colony Residential Historic District, and one house on it, the 1951 Reunion House, is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
The short Silver Lake street Richard Neutra built on for two decades, why the city renamed it for him, and what its standing as a potential historic district means for the houses on and around it.
Neutra Place is easy to miss and hard to forget once you have found it. It runs a single short block above the Silver Lake Reservoir, renamed for Richard Neutra in 1992, decades after he first built there when it was still called Earl Street. Most Los Angeles streets have one notable house, if that. This one has a cluster.
Richard Neutra is the architect most closely associated with Los Angeles modernism, and Silver Lake, not Beverly Hills or the Palisades, is where he did some of his most persistent work. Debbie Pisaro, an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers and sellers turn to for this category of home, has written before about his houses scattered across the city, from the Nesbitt House in Brentwood, the Hendershot House in Nichols Canyon and the Serulnic House in La Crescenta to the Millard Kaufman Residence and the Bailey House he designed for the Case Study program, and her full profile of the man himself, Richard Neutra, architect, is the place to start for the career-spanning view. Neutra Place is different from those. It is not one house, it is a street, and the street itself is the story.
Debbie Pisaro walked the block in person on a recent afternoon, slipping away from an organized architecture tour to look at the houses on her own. What she found was not polished. The plantings have gone wild, the paint has faded to something closer to bark, and none of it reads as neglect exactly. It reads as a street that has simply been left alone for a very long time.
Why is Richard Neutra on this street?
Neutra kept a home and studio of his own on Silverlake Boulevard, a short walk from where Neutra Place sits today, and the reservoir became something like a proving ground for his ideas about post-and-beam construction and walls of glass that erased the line between a living room and a hillside. He was not alone in choosing the neighborhood. Rudolph Schindler's How House, William Kesling's Skinner House, and John Lautner's Silvertop all sit within a short drive of the reservoir, and Debbie's own Silver Lake architecture guide lays out how the neighborhood became one of the densest concentrations of serious modernist work anywhere in California, not only Los Angeles. Neutra's own most famous Los Angeles commission, the Lovell Health House, sits a few miles away in Los Feliz, not far from his smaller 1949 Wirin House. Neutra Place is the opposite of that kind of fame, a working street rather than a monument, which is exactly what makes it worth the trip.
Sometime around 1948, Neutra began building on what was then Earl Street, at the edge of a tract laid out decades earlier. The city renamed the street Neutra Place on July 2, 1992, a formal recognition of a fact the neighborhood had understood informally for years: this was Neutra's street before it had his name on the sign.
What is the Neutra Colony in Silver Lake?
SurveyLA, the city's citywide historic resources survey, lists the houses on Neutra Place as contributors to what it calls a potential Neutra Colony Residential Historic District, a status short of a formal designated district but a formal acknowledgment that the block is not one landmark surrounded by ordinary houses. It is a cluster, built up gradually over roughly two decades, with the Reunion House as its one individually landmarked address so far. Whether the rest of the block is ever designated as a district in its own right is a City Planning question, not a settled fact, and it is worth being honest about that distinction rather than rounding it up.
What is not in dispute is the density of it. On almost any other Los Angeles street, one Neutra house would be the whole story. On Neutra Place, the Reunion House is the one with a landmark plaque and a case number, and it still shares its block with houses Neutra had a hand in that never got their own headline. Debbie's roundup of seven iconic architectural homes in Los Angeles gives some sense of how wide that wider canon runs, from Neutra's own generation to the plywood and chain link Frank Gehry later pushed into an architectural style of its own, and to the organic Malibu forms of Harry Gesner's houses a generation after that.
It looked like nobody had touched it in fifty years. Not in a bad way. Very vintage and original.
Which house on Neutra Place is a landmark?
The block's one individually designated address is 2440 North Neutra Place, the Reunion House. Neutra designed it in 1951 as a speculative house for Arthur and Kathryn Johnson and imagined it as a grandparents' house, the place a family would gather for reunions. His son Dion Neutra owned it from 1966 and lived there until his death in November 2019, and in June 2021 the City Council added it to the list of Historic-Cultural Monuments as the Dion Neutra/Reunion House, case CHC-2020-6018-HCM. The city's own staff report calls it highly intact seventy years on. Debbie's full profile of the Reunion House covers the house itself in detail.
The houses on Neutra Place are privately owned, and this piece is not a listing. The Reunion House is not on the market, and Debbie Pisaro is not its listing agent. She writes about Silver Lake's architectural fabric because the record matters whether or not a sign is in the yard, and she represents buyers and sellers of architecturally significant homes throughout the neighborhood and across California.
What should a buyer know about houses near Neutra Place?
A documented architect attribution changes how a Silver Lake house shows and often what it commands on price, whether or not the house itself carries individual landmark status. Buyers researching the neighborhood should expect any exterior work on a designated property, or a property inside an eventual historic district, to go through additional City review, and should ask early whether a Mills Act contract is in place or available, since that can meaningfully change the ongoing cost of owning an older architectural home. None of that should be confused with the day to day mechanics of a sale nearby, which run on the same rough timeline as the rest of the city, a typical list to close window in the seventy to ninety five day range.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran of this category of home, the kind of architectural real estate agent Los Angeles buyers and sellers turn to when the house itself is the reason for the sale, not an afterthought to it. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market at all, which matters most in a pocket of the city where the interesting houses rarely sit with a sign out front for long. Her explainer on how pocket listings actually work covers what that means in practice for a buyer trying to find the next one.
She works under the Coastline 840 brand, built specifically around this kind of home rather than retrofitted for it. Read why Coastline 840 exists in the first place, and why a boutique team often serves an architectural buyer or seller better than a big box brokerage does.
Neutra Place and the Neutra Colony, answered
Where is Neutra Place in Silver Lake?
Neutra Place is a single short residential block above the Silver Lake Reservoir in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, 90039. Its best known address is 2440 North Neutra Place, the Reunion House.
Why is Neutra Place in Silver Lake named after Richard Neutra?
The street was called Earl Street when Neutra began building there in the late 1940s, and Los Angeles renamed it Neutra Place on July 2, 1992, in recognition of the concentration of his work along it.
What is the Neutra Colony Residential Historic District in Silver Lake?
It is a status SurveyLA, the city's historic resources survey, has applied to the houses on Neutra Place, identifying them as contributors to a potential district. That is a research finding, not yet a formal City designation of the whole block, and it exists separately from the Reunion House's own individual monument status.
Which house on Neutra Place is a Historic-Cultural Monument?
The Reunion House at 2440 North Neutra Place, designed by Richard Neutra in 1951. The City Council added it to the list of Historic-Cultural Monuments in June 2021 as the Dion Neutra/Reunion House, case CHC-2020-6018-HCM. It is the only individually landmarked address on the block.
Did the Neutra family live on Neutra Place?
Yes. The Neutra family bought the Reunion House in 1963, and Richard's son Dion Neutra took ownership in 1966 and lived there until his death in November 2019. His brother Raymond later nominated the house for landmark status.
Are houses on Neutra Place for sale?
Houses on a block this small come up rarely. The Reunion House is privately owned and is not listed for sale, and Debbie Pisaro is not its listing agent. She tracks architectural homes throughout Silver Lake, including pocket listings that never reach the open market.
What does a Historic-Cultural Monument designation mean for a Los Angeles home?
It places the exterior of the property under additional City review before most alterations or demolition, and it can open the door to a Mills Act contract, which reduces property taxes in exchange for a maintenance commitment. It is a different mechanism than an HPOZ, which covers a whole neighborhood rather than one address.
What other modernist architects built near Neutra Place in Silver Lake?
Rudolph Schindler, William Kesling, and John Lautner all built significant houses within a short drive of the Silver Lake Reservoir, which is part of why the neighborhood carries so much weight in histories of California modernism. Debbie Pisaro's Silver Lake architecture guide covers the wider picture beyond Neutra Place alone.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Silver Lake?
Debbie Pisaro is an architectural real estate agent Los Angeles owners and buyers turn to for Silver Lake's modernist inventory specifically, with twenty four years of experience and standing as an Inman Luxury Leader. Her architectural homes specialist page has her full background, and she also works with buyers and sellers anywhere in Los Angeles and across California.
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 brand 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.
Los Angeles City Planning, Cultural Heritage Commission staff report, case CHC-2020-6018-HCM, Dion Neutra/Reunion House, 2440 North Neutra Place. SurveyLA, potential Neutra Colony Residential Historic District. The Eastsider LA, June 2021.
On the Register
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