Schindler's largest residence, a Woodland Hills landmark that came within reach of the wrecking ball, and what a house like this is actually worth.
What is the Van Dekker House?
The Van Dekker House is a 1940 residence at 19950 W. Collier Street, Woodland Hills, California 91364, designed by R.M. Schindler for the actor Albert Van Dekker. At 3,756 square feet it is Schindler's largest known residential commission, and the City of Los Angeles designated it Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974 in 2009.
Schindler built roughly 150 things in his life and almost all of them were small. Tight lots, tight budgets, clients who wanted a new way to live more than they wanted square footage. The house on Collier Street is where he got to do it big, and it is the reason this address keeps turning up in conversations about what California modernism was actually for.
Why a Schindler matters beyond Woodland Hills
A Schindler is not a regional collectible. Buyers for these houses shop the architect first and the neighborhood second, and they fly in from New York, Chicago, and London to do it. That is why the Van Dekker House belongs in the same conversation as work in Newport Beach and the Bay Area rather than in a San Fernando Valley comp set, and it is how Debbie Pisaro frames these houses.
Rudolph M. Schindler trained under Frank Lloyd Wright and came to Los Angeles in 1920 to oversee construction of Hollyhock House before opening his own practice. The Van Dekker House breaks his usual pattern almost everywhere it can. At 3,756 square feet it is Schindler at a scale he rarely reached, and it was the first house where he left flat and sloping roofs behind for sculptural forms, draping wrinkled copper over tightly interlocking volumes. Frank Gamwell, the owner who led its restoration, called the result "Schindler on steroids." Stand in the driveway and the phrase stops sounding like hyperbole.
His footprint runs the length of the state. The Kings Road House in West Hollywood, the Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach, the Roxy Roth House in Studio City, the Kallis-Sharlin Residence above Cahuenga Pass, the Howenstein Residence, and the Van Dekker out at the western end of the Valley. Read them together and the Van Dekker is the outlier in the best sense. Debbie Pisaro maps that footprint the same way she maps the rest of the architectural homes archive, because a Schindler buyer is almost never shopping one zip code.
The Hollywood provenance
Albert Van Dekker commissioned the house. He was a Tony Award-winning character actor remembered for Dr. Cyclops in 1940, Kiss Me Deadly in 1955, and The Wild Bunch in 1969. He 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 Kiss Me Deadly.
Bezzerides lived there until his death in 2007, and across those decades the house became a quiet Hollywood gathering place. Humphrey Bogart came through. So did Robert Mitchum, and so did William Faulkner during his screenwriting years. For anyone tracing how the film industry shaped residential architecture in California, this address is a primary source, not a footnote.
Back from the wrecking ball
By 2009 the house was in genuinely poor condition. Copper 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, and it very nearly was. With coaching from the Los Angeles Conservancy, a volunteer nominated the home for Historic-Cultural Monument designation, and the City declared it HCM No. 974 that year, which protected it from demolition.
Frank Gamwell bought the property in 2013 and led a meticulous rehabilitation. The copper roof was rebuilt by hand, sheet by sheet. Built-ins were restored, boarded windows uncovered and repaired, and solar panels went in discreetly on the carport roof. Schindler had drawn seven bedrooms; Gamwell reworked the same 3,756 square feet into four larger 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. That the two Neutra and Schindler rescues shared a stage in the same year says something about how narrow the margin is on houses like these.
The names behind the houses. Schindler, Neutra, Ain, Soriano, the list for people who care who designed a home, not just what it sold for.
Join the list or call (310) 362-6429What is inside the compound
The restoration left a working landmark rather than a museum piece, which is the harder thing to pull off. The property is gated, south of Ventura Boulevard, with roughly 4,000 square feet under roof on about half an acre.
- Layout: four bedrooms and 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 under an angular metal hood, wood-beamed angled ceilings, and clerestory and polygonal windows throughout.
- Kitchen and entertaining: a rebuilt kitchen with custom cabinetry, a formal dining room, and a billiards room with a wine cellar.
- Detached office: a 256-square-foot 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.
The detail that stays with you is not on that list. It is the copper. Gamwell's crew formed it panel by panel to match Schindler's original wrinkled surface, and on a grey morning it reads almost matte, then turns molten the moment the sun clears the ridge. No photograph gets it right, which is a problem when a house is marketed on pictures and a reason Debbie Pisaro walks these properties before she says anything about value.
What is a Schindler house actually worth?
A Schindler does not price on dollars per square foot. The comparable set is tiny and national rather than local, often a handful of trades in a five-year window, so neighborhood math produces a number that means very little. Value tracks the architect's standing, the integrity of the original design, documentation, and whether the house was restored or merely updated.
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 and sold for roughly $2 million in 2018. Set that against the Van Dekker House and the variables stack up quickly: nearly two and a half times the size, HCM status, a complete and documented restoration, a Mills Act contract, and Hollywood provenance a smaller hillside Schindler cannot match. None of those are rounding errors when the object is a work of art that also happens to have a kitchen. Debbie Pisaro works this arithmetic in the Coastline 840 guide to pricing an architectural home in Los Angeles, and it holds whether the house is a Schindler in the Valley or one of the seven iconic architectural homes that anchor the citywide conversation.
When a house at this level trades, it resets the comp set for every significant modernist home in the region, which is why owners of a Gregory Ain tract house or a canyon modernist like the Forrest Theriot House should be paying attention to it even if they have no plans to sell. Debbie Pisaro reads those resets across California for the buyers and sellers she represents.
What does it mean to own an HCM with a Mills Act contract?
Buying a designated landmark is a different transaction from buying an ordinary luxury home, and two mechanisms decide the deal. HCM No. 974 protects the house from demolition and routes significant exterior alterations through review. That preserves value rather than limiting it, though the buyer inherits a maintenance covenant along with the copper.
A Mills Act contract is the financial half of that story: 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 property tax using an income-based formula rather than market value. For a landmark of this caliber the savings can be substantial, and the exact figure depends on the individual assessment, so a buyer models it with a tax advisor rather than assuming a number. The mechanism is worked through in the Los Feliz Living guides to selling a Mills Act HCM home and what HCM designation does to home value, and it applies the same way in the Valley as it does on the Eastside.
This is also where independent representation earns its keep. Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for 19950 W. Collier Street. She represents buyers independently on architectural homes across California, regardless of who holds a given listing, the same standing practice whether a home is on or off market, and she makes that case in full as an architectural homes specialist in Los Angeles. She built Coastline 840 around exactly this kind of work, on the conviction that a boutique team outperforms a big-box brokerage when the asset is one of one.
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.
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View off-market homesWhat is the Van Dekker House?
The Van Dekker House is a 1940 residence at 19950 W. Collier Street, Woodland Hills, California 91364, designed by R.M. Schindler for the actor Albert Van Dekker. At 3,756 square feet on roughly half an acre, it is Schindler's largest known residential commission and is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 974.
Where is the Van Dekker House?
The house stands at 19950 W. Collier Street in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California 91364, on a gated parcel of roughly half an acre south of Ventura Boulevard at the western end of the San Fernando Valley. It is a private residence and is not open to the public.
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 the first major retrospective of his work opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2001.
Is the Van Dekker House a protected historic property?
Yes. The City of Los Angeles declared it 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.
What does a Mills Act contract do for a historic home in California?
A Mills Act contract is a ten-year, automatically renewing agreement in which the owner maintains a designated historic property and the county reassesses its property tax using an income-based formula rather than market value. For landmark homes the reduction can be substantial, and the exact figure depends on the individual assessment.
How does a Mills Act contract affect home value?
It generally supports value, because the tax reduction lowers the cost of carrying the home and widens the pool of buyers who can afford it. The offsetting factor is the maintenance covenant and the alteration-review process, which narrow the pool to buyers who actually want a preserved house. A buyer models both sides with a tax advisor before contract.
How many R.M. Schindler houses come to market in California at once?
Usually between zero and three. Schindler completed roughly 150 projects, most remain in private hands, and significant examples trade infrequently. A house combining HCM status, a documented restoration, and a Mills Act contract, as the Van Dekker House does, is rarer still.
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 California.
Who is a good real estate agent for Schindler and architectural homes in California?
Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840, California DRE #01369110, is a real estate agent who specializes in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across California, with deep coverage of Los Angeles and the 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.
Considering a Schindler, an HCM, or any architectural home in California?
Whether the goal is an independent read on a landmark, a buyer-side offer on a house someone else has listed, or selling an architecturally significant home of your own, Debbie Pisaro of Coastline 840 represents buyers and sellers across California.
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