The house where Lautner figured out concrete, the load test that saved the Watts Towers, and the designation record stated correctly.
Silvertop is John Lautner's concrete house at 2138 Micheltorena Street in Silver Lake, commissioned by Kenneth Reiner in 1956 and largely completed in 1963 after nearly seven years of construction. It was Lautner's first major use of monolithic concrete as sculpture, and it is a private residence, not a monument and not open to visitors.
Silvertop is the house John Lautner finally figured out concrete on. Everything he is famous for afterward, the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, the Arango House in Acapulco, the sculpted shells and the cantilevers with no visible means of support, runs back to a hilltop above Silver Lake Reservoir and an industrialist who ran out of money before he could move in.
Debbie Pisaro covers Silvertop the way she covers the rest of the canon, as a building first and an asset second. Working as an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles means knowing that the market value of a house like this flows from the architecture, not the other way around, which is why Coastline 840 treats pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home as its own discipline rather than a comp exercise. What follows is the record: the commission, the construction, the three owners, the restoration, and the designation status, which is the part almost everyone gets wrong.
The house that took nearly seven years to build
In 1956 Kenneth Reiner, an industrialist and engineer, commissioned Lautner to design a home on a hilltop site above Silver Lake Reservoir. What Lautner proposed was radical even by his own standards: a huge arching concrete roof cantilevering over a wall of glass, opening the interior in every direction. The concrete would not merely hold the house up. It would shape the entire experience of moving through it.
Construction began in 1957 and ran into exactly the kind of trouble that defines Lautner's career. The cantilevered driveway, four inches of concrete suspended without a single supporting column, was audacious enough that the city's building inspector refused to approve it. Lautner's response was characteristic. He ordered a static load test. The driveway held the weight of three fire trucks.
Reiner's finances could not hold as long as the driveway did. He never lived in the house. Construction stalled, the property went into foreclosure in 1970, and it sat unfinished until Dr. Philip and Jacklyn Burchill acquired it in the early 1970s. The Burchills hired Lautner himself as a consultant to finish the home to his original specifications and moved in mid-decade. They stayed four decades, one of the longest single-family occupancies of any significant Lautner residence.
How a driveway in Silver Lake helped save the Watts Towers
This is the best story attached to the house and it is worth stating precisely, because it is the kind of claim that gets inflated in retelling. The Los Angeles Conservancy puts it this way: by getting the building department to accept load testing as a means of proving structural integrity, Reiner ultimately helped to save the Watts Towers from demolition.
Read that carefully, because the credit belongs where the Conservancy puts it. It was Reiner, the client and engineer, who pushed the department to accept the method, and it was the method, not this particular driveway, that carried forward. Simon Rodia's towers in South Los Angeles faced a demolition order until a load test demonstrated they were structurally sound. A procedural precedent set on a private hillside in Silver Lake protected one of the most important works of folk architecture in the United States. That is a real and documented connection, and it does not need to be made larger than it is.
Debbie writes All Things Architectural on the houses of Silver Lake, the Los Angeles east side, and the architects who built them.
Join the list or call (310) 362-6429What makes Silvertop architecturally significant
Silvertop matters because it is where Lautner worked out what concrete could do. He was already pushing before this, but the Conservancy identifies Silvertop as his first major use of monolithic concrete as a sculptural component and not only a structural one. The vocabulary he developed here, sculpted shells, cantilevers without precedent, and the dissolution of the wall between interior and landscape, became the language of everything that followed.
The arched roof. The roof sweeps over the main living space like a wave caught mid-break, sheltering the interior and opening it at the same time. The curve is structural, not decorative: it carries the load across the span without interior columns and frees the whole perimeter for glass.
The glass. Beneath the shell the house is close to transparent, and the boundary between inside and outside does not hold. The view takes in the reservoir directly below and the hills in every direction. A retractable glass wall opens the living room to the terraces, a mechanical detail well ahead of its moment.
The pool. One of the first residential infinity-edge pools ever built, cantilevered over the slope without visible supports so that the water reads as continuous with the reservoir far below. Today it is a standard feature on hillside estates across California. When it was built it was unprecedented, and it goes largely unremarked because Lautner made it look inevitable.
The Round House. A circular detached guest house holding one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a photographer's darkroom. It shares the material language of the main house and stands as an independent object in the landscape. In almost any other architect's career it would be the portfolio centerpiece. Here it is the supporting act.
That instinct, treating each house as a specific answer to a specific site, is what runs through the whole east-side canon Debbie covers, from R.M. Schindler and his interlocking plans to the discipline of Richard Neutra and the social ambition of Gregory Ain's Mar Vista tract. The Silver Lake architecture guide maps the immediate neighborhood.
Is Silvertop a monument? And which Lautner houses actually are?
Silvertop is not a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. It carries no HCM number, and that surprises people, because it holds some of the highest preservation honors the city gives: a 2018 Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award, an AIA Los Angeles Merit Award for Adaptive Reuse, and a Residential Design Award of Excellence from Docomomo US, all for the restoration. Awards are recognition. A monument number is protection. They are not the same thing and the difference matters if you are buying.
On which Lautner houses do carry designation, the record is more generous than it is usually reported. The city's own historic context statement on Lautner's residential architecture documents the Harpel House as HCM #896, the Chemosphere, also called the Malin House, as HCM #785, and the Mauer House as HCM #481. Anyone who tells you the Harpel House is the only designated Lautner in Los Angeles is working from an incomplete list, and that claim has circulated widely, including on this page before today.
The owners, and the two-and-a-half-year restoration
Silvertop has had three owners in nearly seven decades, and each chapter is a different relationship to the same building. Reiner commissioned it and lost it. The Burchills finished it and lived in it, raising a family there across forty years and giving the house the domestic life its first owner never got to have.
In 2014 Mrs. Burchill sold Silvertop for $8.55 million, then a record for a Silver Lake home, in a competitive process that closed roughly a million dollars above the $7.5 million asking price. The buyer, a longtime Silver Lake resident, commissioned Bestor Architecture, led by Barbara Bestor, for a two-and-a-half-year restoration, with interiors by Jamie Bush and Co. The team worked to the original Reiner and Lautner intent, bringing mechanical systems into the present while leaving the architecture alone. That work is what earned the three awards. For more on the architect who led it, see the profile of Barbara Bestor and her Los Angeles practice.
On what it would be worth now, the honest answer is that nobody knows, and anyone who gives you a number is guessing. A restored, award-winning Lautner has a comp set of perhaps a handful of houses nationally, and a single sale moves the entire conversation. That is the actual valuation problem with a house at this level, and it is why the 2014 figure is stated here as history rather than as a benchmark.
Some of the best Silver Lake houses trade before they ever reach the open market. Debbie Pisaro sees them first.
See pocket listingsAn evening inside Silvertop
Debbie Pisaro has been inside Silvertop. What no photograph captures is what the architecture does to sound. The concrete shell holds voices the way a cello holds notes, low and full and slightly delayed at the far edge of the curve. You hear the house before you have finished looking at it.
Silvertop remains a private residence. It is not open for tours, it is not a venue, and it is not a public building. The references here are architectural and historical context, not an invitation.
The Los Angeles Conservancy lists Silvertop as Private Residence, Do Not Disturb. The house is best seen from East Silver Lake Boulevard across the reservoir, where the sweep of the roof reads clearly against the hillside. Observe from public vantage points only.
Silvertop in popular culture
Silvertop has appeared in music videos, commercials, and most memorably in scenes from the 1987 film Less Than Zero. The cinematic quality is not incidental. The concrete forms, the glass framing the city, the pool that appears to pour into the sky: it is a set that already exists, and productions that want to communicate a particular kind of Los Angeles keep finding their way to it.
In the decades since completion the house has run regularly through the architectural press worldwide, in Architectural Digest, Wallpaper, Dezeen and the preservation publications. Its reputation extends well past Los Angeles. Its physical presence stays rooted in the Silver Lake hills, visible from across the reservoir to anyone who knows where to look.
John Lautner's Los Angeles legacy
Lautner trained under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin and moved to Los Angeles in 1939, where he spent five decades designing some of the most inventive residential architecture anywhere. His Los Angeles portfolio includes Silvertop in Silver Lake, the Sheats-Goldstein Residence of 1963 in Beverly Crest, donated to LACMA in 2016, the Chemosphere of 1960 in the Hollywood Hills, the Garcia House of 1962 on Mulholland Drive, the Harpel House of 1956, and the Derby House of 1947 on Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz.
His influence runs through the architectural DNA of the city. The willingness to treat every house as a unique response to its site, its topography, its views and its light, is what buyers are actually describing when they say they want architectural character. That tradition is visible across Los Feliz, where Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House and Neutra's Lovell Health House both sit, and out into the Valley on the Studio City architectural homes map.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, the founder of Coastline 840 and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who represents buyers and sellers of architecturally significant homes across California. The wider collection sits on her architectural homes page, the terms of representation on the architectural homes specialist page, with the neighbouring canon on the Stahl House profile, and she is among the names owners weigh when they search for an architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles or for the best Los Angeles historic and architectural real estate agent.
Who designed Silvertop?
John Lautner, FAIA, who trained under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin before opening his own Los Angeles practice in 1939. Silvertop was commissioned by Kenneth Reiner in 1956 and largely completed in 1963, after nearly seven years of construction, at 2138 Micheltorena Street in Silver Lake.
Is Silvertop a Historic-Cultural Monument?
No. Silvertop carries no HCM number. It holds a 2018 Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award, an AIA Los Angeles Merit Award for Adaptive Reuse and a Docomomo US Residential Design Award of Excellence, all for the restoration. Those are recognition rather than legal protection, and the distinction matters to a buyer.
Which Lautner houses are city monuments?
The city's historic context statement on Lautner's residential architecture documents the Harpel House as HCM #896, the Chemosphere or Malin House as HCM #785, and the Mauer House as HCM #481. Silvertop, the Sheats-Goldstein Residence and the Garcia House are not designated. The Harpel House is often described as the only one, which is not correct.
Can you visit Silvertop?
No. It is a private residence and is not open for public tours. The Los Angeles Conservancy lists it as Private Residence, Do Not Disturb. The best public view is from East Silver Lake Boulevard, across the reservoir, where the curve of the concrete roof reads against the hillside.
What is the Round House?
A circular detached guest house on the Silvertop property containing one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a photographer's darkroom. Lautner designed it as part of the overall composition. It shares the material language of the main residence while standing as an independent architectural object in the landscape.
Who restored Silvertop?
Barbara Bestor of Bestor Architecture led the two-and-a-half-year restoration for the owner who bought the house in 2014, with interiors by Jamie Bush and Co. The team worked to the original Reiner and Lautner intent, updating mechanical and electrical systems while leaving the architecture intact.
Did Silvertop help save the Watts Towers?
Indirectly, and the credit belongs to the client. The Los Angeles Conservancy documents that by getting the building department to accept load testing as proof of structural integrity, Kenneth Reiner ultimately helped save the Watts Towers from demolition. Simon Rodia's towers faced a demolition order until a load test showed they were sound.
How much did Silvertop last sell for?
$8.55 million in 2014, then a record for a Silver Lake home, closing roughly a million dollars above the $7.5 million asking price after a competitive bidding process. That figure predates the restoration completed afterward. A restored award-winning Lautner has a comp set of a handful of houses nationally, so any current estimate is speculation.
What other Lautner homes are in Los Angeles?
The Sheats-Goldstein Residence of 1963 in Beverly Crest, donated to LACMA in 2016; the Chemosphere of 1960 in the Hollywood Hills, HCM #785; the Garcia House of 1962 on Mulholland Drive; the Harpel House of 1956, HCM #896; and the Derby House of 1947 in Los Feliz, an early piece of the concrete experimentation that emerged fully at Silvertop.
Who is a good architectural real estate agent in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro is among the agents most often considered. She is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840 and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who represents buyers and sellers of architectural, historic and design-forward homes across California, with a track record in Silver Lake, Los Feliz and the modernist east side.
Coastline 840 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90026 · DRE #01369110
Los Angeles Conservancy, Reiner-Burchill Residence (Silvertop), for the address, the 1956 commission, largely completed in 1963 after nearly seven years, the first major use of monolithic concrete as a sculptural component, the four-inch cantilevered driveway and the three-fire-truck load test, the cantilevered pool, the ownership sequence, the two-and-a-half-year restoration, the 2018 Preservation Award, the Private Residence Do Not Disturb classification, and the Watts Towers precedent. City of Los Angeles historic context statement, Residential Architecture of John Lautner in Southern California 1940 to 1994, for HCM #896 Harpel House, HCM #785 Chemosphere and HCM #481 Mauer House. Square footage and lot size vary between published sources and are not stated here. Confirm any designation claim parcel by parcel before relying on it.
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. Updated August 2026.
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