The 103-year-old Windsor Park villa that once hosted presidents and housed Los Angeles royalty has come on the market asking $50 million.
The Beaux Arts mansion at 455 Lorraine Boulevard was built in 1913 for Dr. Peter Janss, whose Janss Investment Company developed Canoga Park and Westwood. It was designed by J. Martyn Haenke, William Dodd, and Julia Morgan (the famed architect of Hearst Castle and DTLA's Herald-Examiner Building).
The six-bedroom, eight-bathroom estate was later purchased by power couple and major arts patrons Dorothy Buffum Chandler and Norman Chandler. He was a publisher of the Los Angeles Times; she was the driving force behind building the Los Angeles Music Center on Grand Avenue. During the time they owned the house, it was visited by Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and Kennedy.
Following the 1997 death of Dorothy Chandler, the estate was sold to designers Timothy Corrigan and Kathleen Scheinfield. In 2006, Corrigan and Scheinfeld sold to Joseph Handleman and Courtney Callahan for $8.75 million. The sale later led to a lawsuit in which Handleman and Callahan accused Corrigan and Scheinfeld of downplaying the “state of disrepair” that the property was in, the Hollywood Reporter said at the time.
While the legal battle raged on, Callahan and Handleman found time to make a robust series of repairs to the house. They listed in 2012 for $11.25 million.
According to Redfin, it was price-chopped down to $10.6 million in the fall of 2013. In June of 2014, the house sold for $9.5 million. Though that was $1.1 million under its then-asking price, it was still one of the area's biggest sales at the time.
LAist notes that last year, the house was the object of some local scorn, when some neighbors took issue with the period-incorrect updates that the current owners had made to the house, including painting it white and putting in non-historic light fixtures and fencing.
Curbed has reached out to the listing agent for more details on the property.
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