Schindler's largest residence, a Woodland Hills landmark once bound for the wrecking ball, is for sale in 2026 at $4.195 million, Mills Act contract in place.
Every few years a single listing stops the Los Angeles architectural world mid-sentence. The Van Dekker House is one of those listings, and the fact that anyone can buy it in 2026 is close to a miracle.
What is the Van Dekker House?
The Van Dekker House is a 1940 residence at 19950 W. Collier Street in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, designed by architect R.M. Schindler for actor Albert Van Dekker. At 3,756 square feet on a roughly half-acre gated compound, it is Schindler's largest known residential project and is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974. The four-bedroom, four-bath, three-story home is offered in 2026 at $4,195,000 with a Mills Act contract in place, a rare combination of architectural pedigree, landmark protection, and a property-tax benefit that almost never appears together on one title. Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 (California DRE #01369110) is a Los Angeles real estate agent who specializes in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across Studio City and the greater San Fernando Valley, and she tracks Schindler sales closely. When his largest house trades, it resets the way every significant modernist home in the region gets valued.
Why a Schindler matters beyond Woodland Hills
R.M. Schindler completed roughly 150 built projects across his career, and the vast majority are modest in scale, tucked into hillside lots, and built on tight budgets for clients who shared his belief that architecture should reinvent daily life. The Van Dekker House breaks that pattern almost everywhere it can. At 3,756 square feet it is Schindler working at a scale he rarely reached, and it was the first house where he abandoned flat and sloping roofs for sculptural roof forms, draping wrinkled copper over a set of tightly interlocking volumes. Frank Gamwell, the restoration owner who brought the house back, called the result "Schindler on steroids," and the phrase fits.
Schindler trained under Frank Lloyd Wright and arrived in Los Angeles in 1920 to oversee construction of Hollyhock House before opening his own practice. Nearly fifty years after his death, his standing has only grown: he was the subject of the first major retrospective of his work, The Architecture of R.M. Schindler, mounted at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2001. For buyers who collect his work, the Van Dekker House is the rare case where scale, provenance, landmark status, and a documented restoration all land on the same property.
Collectors do not shop Schindler by zip code, they shop the architect. His footprint runs across the city: the Kings Road House in West Hollywood, the Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach, the Buck House in Mid-City, the Roxy Roth House and the Laurelwood Apartments in Studio City, and the Van Dekker House up in Woodland Hills. Debbie Pisaro maps that footprint the same way she maps the architecturally significant homes on her Studio City architectural homes map, because the buyers for these houses fly in from New York, Chicago, and London and ask about the architect first and the neighborhood second.
The Hollywood provenance
The house was commissioned by Albert Van Dekker, a Tony Award-winning character actor remembered for Dr. Cyclops (1940), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and The Wild Bunch (1969). Van Dekker became an outspoken critic of the McCarthy-era hearings and was blacklisted, which pushed his work toward Broadway and prompted him to sell the house to his friend and collaborator, the film-noir screenwriter A.I. "Buzz" Bezzerides, who wrote the screenplay for Kiss Me Deadly.
Bezzerides lived in the house until his death in 2007, and during those decades it became a quiet Hollywood gathering place. Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and William Faulkner all passed through. For anyone who cares about how the film industry shaped Los Angeles residential architecture, the Van Dekker House reads as a primary source rather than a footnote.
Back from the wrecking ball
By 2009 the Van Dekker House was in genuinely poor condition. Copper roof panels were missing, water had worked through the interiors, and the windows were boarded over. When it came to market that year it could easily have been treated as a teardown. With coaching from the Los Angeles Conservancy, a volunteer successfully nominated the home for Historic-Cultural Monument designation, and the City of Los Angeles declared it HCM No. 974 in 2009, which protected it from demolition.
Frank Gamwell, a construction executive with a record of restoring older Los Angeles homes, bought the property in 2013 and led a meticulous rehabilitation. The copper roof was rebuilt by hand, sheet by sheet. Original built-ins were restored, boarded windows were uncovered and repaired or replaced, and solar panels were added discreetly on the carport roof. Schindler had originally drawn the house with seven bedrooms; Gamwell scaled the same 3,756 square feet into four larger, more usable ones. In 2016 the Los Angeles Conservancy recognized the work with a Preservation Award, pairing it with the restoration of Richard Neutra's Kronish House in Beverly Hills as the only two single-family homes honored that year.
Inside the compound in 2026
The current offering presents the house as a working landmark rather than a museum piece. It is gated and set south of Ventura Boulevard, with approximately 4,000 square feet under roof on roughly half an acre.
- Layout: four bedrooms, four baths across three stories, with a top-floor primary suite that takes in panoramic San Fernando Valley views.
- Great room: a two-story living space with a loft, a charcoal fieldstone fireplace with an angular metal hood, wood-beamed angled ceilings, and clerestory and polygonal windows throughout.
- Kitchen and entertaining: an updated kitchen with custom cabinetry and Bosch appliances, a formal dining room, plus a billiards room with a wine cellar.
- Detached office: a 256-square-foot detached structure with a second kitchen and laundry.
- Grounds: a salt-water pool with swim jets, a waterfall spa, a wood deck with a fire pit, mature landscaping, and a sweeping driveway with parking for up to eight cars.
- Systems: upgraded major systems, the rehabilitated copper roof, solar panels, and greywater and rainwater catchment.
What a Schindler is actually worth
Pricing is the question Debbie Pisaro fields most often when a landmark like this comes to market, and the honest answer is that Schindler houses do not follow standard price-per-square-foot logic. The comparable set is tiny and national, often a handful of sales in any five-year window. The clearest local benchmark is the Roxy Roth House, a 1946 Schindler in Studio City at 1,564 square feet, which was listed at $2,295,000 in 2017, sold for roughly $2 million in 2018, and returned to the market in late 2025 around $2.8 million.
Set that against the Van Dekker House and the variables stack up fast. It is nearly two and a half times the size, it carries HCM status, it comes with a complete and documented restoration, it holds a Mills Act contract, and it brings Hollywood provenance that a smaller hillside Schindler simply cannot match. None of those are rounding errors when the object is a work of art that also happens to be a residence. Whatever the Van Dekker House ultimately trades at will become a reference point for valuing significant modernist homes across Los Angeles for years, which matters whether a seller owns a Schindler in Studio City, a Neutra in Silver Lake, or a Lautner in the Hollywood Hills. Big trades reset the comp set, and Debbie Pisaro reads those resets for the buyers and sellers she represents.
Owning a landmark: HCM and the Mills Act
Buying a designated landmark is a different transaction than buying an ordinary luxury home, and the buyer-intent questions are the ones that actually decide the deal. HCM No. 974 protects the Van Dekker House from demolition and means that significant exterior alterations go through a review process, which is part of what preserves the value, not a limitation on it. The Mills Act contract is the financial half of that story.
A Mills Act contract is a ten-year, automatically renewing agreement between the owner and the City of Los Angeles in which the owner maintains the historic property and the county reassesses the property tax using an income-based formula rather than market value. For a landmark of this caliber the savings can be substantial, which is why the listing flags the contract and why any serious buyer should model it with their own tax advisor before contract. The exact figure depends on the assessment, so buyers verify it rather than assume it. This is also where independent representation earns its keep. The agents on the listing represent the seller. A buyer acquiring an HCM home with a Mills Act contract needs someone modeling the tax math, the maintenance obligations, and the alteration-review reality on their side of the table. Debbie Pisaro represents buyers and sellers of architecturally significant and Historic-Cultural Monument homes across Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, and she works through exactly these questions before a buyer writes an offer.
For buyers relocating into California for a home like this, the path often starts well before the showing. Debbie covers that ground in the Coastline 840 guide to buying a second home in California, and for the Eastside collector weighing a landmark closer to the reservoir, the Los Feliz neighborhood guide covers the same HCM and Mills Act terrain on familiar ground.
An HCM designation and a Mills Act contract are assets, not red tape, but they change the math. Model the property-tax reassessment and the maintenance covenant with your own advisor before you write an offer, and keep your own agent at the table. The listing team works for the seller.
Considering a Schindler, an HCM, or any architectural home in Los Angeles?
Whether the goal is to tour the Van Dekker House, get an independent read on a landmark listing, or sell an architecturally significant home, Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 represents buyers and sellers across Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
Reach DebbieWhat is the Van Dekker House?
The Van Dekker House is a 1940 residence at 19950 W. Collier Street in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, designed by R.M. Schindler for actor Albert Van Dekker. At 3,756 square feet on roughly half an acre, it is Schindler's largest known residential project and is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974.
Who was R.M. Schindler?
Rudolph M. Schindler (1887 to 1953) was a Vienna-born architect who trained under Frank Lloyd Wright and settled in Los Angeles in 1920. He is regarded as one of the most important Southern California architects of the twentieth century and was the subject of the first major retrospective of his work, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2001.
How much is the Van Dekker House listed for in 2026?
The Van Dekker House is offered at $4,195,000 in 2026. The listing includes a Mills Act contract, which may provide a significant property-tax benefit, subject to buyer verification.
Is the Van Dekker House a protected historic property?
Yes. It was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974 in 2009, which protects it from demolition and requires review of significant alterations. The Los Angeles Conservancy also recognized its restoration with a 2016 Preservation Award, alongside Richard Neutra's Kronish House.
Does the Van Dekker House have a Mills Act contract?
Yes. The 2026 listing states that the home carries a Mills Act contract for a significant tax incentive, with buyer verification recommended. A Mills Act contract reassesses property tax using an income-based formula in exchange for the owner maintaining the historic property.
How much can a Mills Act contract save on property taxes?
Savings vary by property because the county reassesses the home using an income-based formula rather than its market value, and for landmark homes the reduction can be substantial. The exact figure depends on the individual assessment, so a buyer should model it with a tax advisor before contract rather than assume a number.
How many R.M. Schindler houses are for sale in Los Angeles at once?
Usually between zero and three. Schindler built roughly 150 projects, most remain in private hands, and significant examples trade infrequently. A listing with HCM status, a documented restoration, and a Mills Act contract, like the Van Dekker House, is rare.
Do I need my own agent to buy an architectural or HCM home in Los Angeles?
Yes. The agents on a listing represent the seller. A buyer acquiring a Historic-Cultural Monument home with a Mills Act contract needs independent representation to model the tax reassessment, the maintenance covenant, and the alteration-review process before writing an offer. Debbie Pisaro represents buyers of architecturally significant homes across Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
Who is a good real estate agent for Schindler and architectural homes in Los Angeles?
Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 (California DRE #01369110) is a Los Angeles real estate agent who specializes in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes, with a focus on Studio City and the greater San Fernando Valley. She works with buyers and sellers of Schindler, Neutra, mid-century, and Historic-Cultural Monument properties and can be reached at debbie@coastline840.com.
About Debbie Pisaro
Debbie Pisaro is the founder of Coastline 840, an independent California luxury real estate brokerage built on the Side platform, and a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market. She specializes in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across Studio City, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and the San Fernando Valley. Before real estate she spent years at Warner Bros. Records, a background that shaped how she thinks about creative industries and why provenance matters. Browse more architectural home profiles on debbiepisaro.com, explore statewide California listings at coastline840.com, or reach Debbie directly at debbie@coastline840.com.