Handsome in Hancock Park

This fine house was designed by Webber, Staunton & Spaulding—the architects of Harold Lloyd's Greenaces—and completed in 1927. Beautifully aged like a fine wine, it's currently listed at $5,999,999.

I predict a major price chop before it sells, but had I just won Mega Millions I'd pay the asking price in cash tomorrow for one of the most handsome manses in Hancock Park. (I wonder if they would take an even 6 mil?)

Ladies and gentlemen . . . architecture.

The three-story mansion has four bedrooms and baths upstairs, plus two maids' rooms downstairs. The third floor has a kitchenette and bath (income unit!!), and there's a guest apartment above the three-car garage (ditto!!!).

Its L shape means that it's significantly larger than the streetside façade implies, almost justifying the listing agent's description of it as a "French Chateau" (her overly exuberant capitalization).

"French Chateau" . . . almost.

The interior, while fine (but not exquisite) architecturally, needs some drastic design consideration, having, it seems, last been decorated in the same era in which Jackie Kennedy fired Sister Parish from the White House re-do for telling Caroline to get her saddle oxfords off the upholstery. The overdone faux-gilding in the living room, for example, has got to go.

Louie the Whoie?

I'd love to turn Michael Smith, Joe Nye or that D.C.-area Wonder Woman Mona Hajj loose on this place and see what they could come up with.