Silver Lake is northwest of Echo Park, built around the reservoir the neighborhood takes its name from. Construction began in November 1907, and it was named for Herman Silver, a Los Angeles water commissioner. The streets run up and around it, and almost nothing here is flat.
It is also one of the most significant places in American modernist architecture. Richard Neutra built his own house and studio at 2300 Silver Lake Boulevard in 1933 and a cluster of others around it; Rudolph Schindler has nine buildings in the neighborhood, and Harwell Hamilton Harris, Raphael Soriano and Gregory Ain all worked here from the 1930s. Sunset Junction, where Sunset and Santa Monica meet, is the commercial spine.
This is the most expensive kind of buying on the list and the one where the house itself carries the most risk: hillside lots, older custom construction, and in the case of an architecturally significant house, real limits on what can be changed. All three are answerable before you commit.
Ask Mario about Silver LakeWhat to check in Silver Lake
- The slope: retaining walls, drainage and the foundation, with an inspector who does hillsides.
- On an architecturally significant house, what the designation actually restricts — and whether a Mills Act contract is attached to it.
- Access and parking. Some of these houses are reached by a staircase and have no garage.
- The permit history on any remodel, which on a custom house is where the surprises are.
Questions about Silver Lake
Why are there so many modernist houses in Silver Lake?
Richard Neutra built his own house and studio on Silver Lake Boulevard in 1933 and then a cluster of houses around it; Rudolph Schindler built nine here, often on the steeper and cheaper lots. Harwell Hamilton Harris, Raphael Soriano and Gregory Ain followed from the 1930s. The hillside lots were inexpensive and the architects were local.
What is a Mills Act contract?
A California program that can reduce the property tax on a qualifying historic property in exchange for the owner maintaining and restoring it. Whether one is attached to a particular house, and what it obliges you to do, is a specific question with a specific answer — ask before you buy, not after.
Downtown is not one market. It is a few hundred buildings, and the building decides nearly everything — what the dues are, what they actually cover, whether a lender will write a loan in it at all, whether the parking space is yours or the building's, whether the "loft" is a 1920s office floor with twelve-foot windows or a 2008 tower with a pool deck. Two units a block apart with the same square footage and the same price can be completely different purchases. I would rather spend the first conversation on the building than on the tour.
Licensed in California since 1993, in a market that has to be read one building at a time.
Mario Cabello, REALTOR® · CA DRE #01163184
