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124 DIGS.NET | 12.16.2016 (above) Skouras Residence, 1960. Harold Levitt, Architect. Home of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi from 2012-2014 (shown). Photo by Sam Frost. architectural roots in Spanish architecture, but those heavy adobe walls and little bit narrower windows made people feel maybe a little bit less exposed. It was a fashion that was the follow up to Midcentury- Modern. And then that fell out of fashion. Everything is fashion. Speaking of, we all know about the celebrities, the glamour. But what don't we know? What surprised even you? More than anything is the volume of A-list architects who built there. In the book I only had room to share about a quarter of what I actually have found. I'm amazed by the names, and I'm still finding more. Richard Dorman, William Stephenson, William Sutherland Beckett, Buff Straub & Hensman, Lundberg, Armet & Davis, Edward Fickett! Then the artful masters that perhaps never got as famous or whose stars have faded, like George MacLean, Rex Lotery, Amir Farr, Robert Earl, Harry Gesner, and now the stars of today like Marmol Radziner and the white-hot Paul McClean. I am also surprised at how much is being torn down at this moment. Mad Men has imbued a whole new generation with an appreciation for Midcentury-Modern; they want to know how it was lived at the top. I'm astonished that people are so very quick to tear down these things. It's a constant battle… the freedom to build anew and build your own dream house is very much a factor in Los Angeles. As a sociological document, what does Trousdale signify? Aside from the movie stars and media giants, at one time, the heads of some of L.A.'s great merchant, manufacturing and conglomerate empires, both glamorous and ignoble, rewarded themselves with houses here: Gene Klein, who owned the Chargers. Cliff Garrett, whose company made the air pressure systems for the Mercury space program. Bob Six (with wife Audrey Meadows) who ran Continental Airlines. Irving Bulmash, who controlled S&H Green stamps. Barry Taper, of the banking family. Empires almost all now dissolved or recalled only in memories of those of us who grew up with them. Right now it signifies the big, new, what I call bling boxes. And I don't mean that derogatorily. They are really fantastic showplaces. But the thinking is aspirational; the de facto motto of what is going up today is something extremely slick, stylish and with every luxury, from nightclubs inside to waterfalls to two-story garages with elevators. It's just crazy. Homes are also designed by developers to sell to somebody. That's the big difference, the retail aspect. One thing I really was amazed to realize about Trousdale is that so many builders—Nathan Shapell (home builder who developed Porter Ranch), the Familian family, Montgomery Ross Fisher—people who could have lived anywhere, chose to build in Trousdale Estates. Not in one of their own developments, but in this one. That says something about what they were hoping to accomplish by building what they thought was a community of excellence—opulence too, but excellence—and I think that's what people do today. Now that they've veered toward the $100 million mark, they're going to try and exceed it with something showier and grander and glitzier. And that represents the aspirational people of today… people who really want to live well.