The Samuel-Novarro House in The Oaks: Lloyd Wright's Hillside Landmark

Every street in The Oaks has an oak in its name. Valley Oak and Live Oak. Canyon Oak and Holly Oak. The neighborhood sits directly below Griffith Park, and the City's SurveyLA report for Hollywood says it takes its name from those streets. On one of them stands the Samuel-Novarro House at 5609 Valley Oak Drive, a four-level concrete residence by Lloyd Wright from 1928 and City Historic-Cultural Monument #130.

The direct answer for anyone searching: the Samuel-Novarro House is a Lloyd Wright hillside house in The Oaks section of Los Feliz, designated a City landmark on July 17, 1974. It is a private residence. View it from the street only, and do not disturb the property.

Lloyd Wright designed the house in 1928, per the Los Angeles Conservancy. He was the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Conservancy calls him a master architect and lists the style as Mayan Revival and Wrightian. Lloyd Wright is the same architect who ran construction on his father's Ennis House on Glendower Avenue and designed the Sowden House on Franklin Avenue, so Los Feliz holds three houses that carry his hand within a short drive of each other.

The Conservancy's record of the house names one designer, and that is Lloyd Wright. He also returned to the property in the 1930s to expand it, which is covered below.

The Conservancy describes a four-level residence set into the hillside rather than perched on top of it. Three features define the exterior.

• Smooth concrete surfaces. Where the Ennis House and Sowden House use patterned concrete blocks, this house reads as smooth planes.
• Oxidized copper accents. Copper trim, weathered to green, runs against the concrete.
• Horizontal bands of windows. The glazing runs in long bands that follow the levels of the house across the slope.

Wikipedia's entry records the house at about 2,700 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, on a hillside lot of about 13,267 square feet. Those are modest numbers for a landmark. The house earns its status through design rather than size, which is a useful thing to remember when the word landmark makes a buyer picture something enormous.

The house did not stay as built. In the 1930s Lloyd Wright was commissioned again to expand the garden and the interiors, per the Conservancy. That second campaign added a music room, a bedroom suite and an outdoor pergola. The additions came from the original architect, so the expanded house still reads as one design rather than an original with later work bolted on.

That matters for how the City and preservation groups treat the house today. Work by the original architect within the first decade is part of the historic fabric, not a later alteration. A buyer reading the house should count the music room and pergola as original in spirit, even though they postdate 1928.

The Oaks Neighborhood Association gives the boundaries on its about page: Fern Dell Drive on the east, Foothill Drive to the south, both sides of Canyon Drive to the west and Griffith Park to the north. The Conservancy lists the house at zip 90068, which is the mailing zip for this part of Los Feliz.

The City's survey describes the neighborhood as subdivided into several tracts between 1922 and 1924, with a first wave of building in the 1920s and a second in the 1950s and 1960s. Homes occupy sloping sites with city and canyon views, in a mix of prewar Period Revival and postwar Modern styles. The survey also found the Upper Oaks Period Revival Residential Historic District eligible for listing, with 76 properties and 67 contributors and a period of significance from 1926 to 1948. That is a survey finding rather than a formal designation. The Samuel-Novarro House holds a stronger status than that, because it is an individually designated City monument.

Other landmarks share the hillside. The City's monument list records the Taggart House at 2150-2158 Live Oak Drive as Monument #521, the Edwards House at 5642 Holly Oak Drive as Monument #260 and the Amsalem A. Ernst House at 5670 Holly Oak Drive as Monument #840. Our guide to The Oaks covers the neighborhood as a whole.

The house carries one designation, and that designation opens the door to one program.

• City Historic-Cultural Monument #130. The City's monument list records the Samuel-Novarro House, designated July 17, 1974. This is a local designation by the City of Los Angeles. The Conservancy's record shows the house as locally designated and does not show a National Register listing, so this post makes no claim about the National Register.
• The Mills Act. The City's Mills Act program is a revolving 10-year contract between the City and the owner of a qualified historic property. A Historic-Cultural Monument is a qualified property, per the City's 2019 program brief. In exchange for a potential property tax reduction, the owner agrees to rehabilitate and maintain the historic character of the property for the life of the contract. City and County officials inspect periodically. The contract transfers to new owners when the property sells and binds all of them. New single-family applications carry a $1.5 million assessed value limit, with an exemption path that requires a Historic Structure Report.

On this site, luxury in Los Feliz starts at about $2 million, which is above that single-family limit for a new application. A home that already holds a contract is a different case, because the contract comes with the house. Ask for a copy early in escrow. This section explains how the programs work. It is not tax or legal advice. For your own situation, talk with your CPA or attorney as well.

Here is one hypothetical example. It is not a real client or a real transaction.

A buyer moving up from a village house. A buyer who has lived below Los Feliz Boulevard wants a hillside house with a name. They find a City monument on an Oak street. Before the second showing, they pull the monument number from the City list and confirm the designation date. They ask the seller for any recorded Mills Act contract, prior permits and any Cultural Heritage Commission file on past work. They ask the City's Office of Historic Resources what review applies to a kitchen update. They bring an architect who has worked on concrete houses of the 1920s. All of that happens inside their inspection contingency, while they still have room to decide. The house they buy is the house they understood.

Rooster Homes is a Los Feliz, Los Angeles real estate team led by Brandon and Sarah Arlington (DRE #02051216). That checklist is step four of our buyer approach, walk the whole process, and it is the same one we use for every historic home in Los Feliz.

Rooster Homes keeps every landmark house in Los Feliz on one map, with the monument number and the source for each, on our Los Feliz historic homes page. Rooster Homes is a Los Feliz, Los Angeles real estate team led by Brandon and Sarah Arlington (DRE #02051216). Brandon has been licensed since 2015 and holds the ABR designation for buyer representation. For a house like this one, the record comes first and the plans come second.

Read how our buying process fits the research in, or see where a Lloyd Wright house fits among the three kinds of Los Feliz luxury home. Then let us know what works best for you. We will coordinate our schedule around yours.