One of Frank Gehry’s Early L.A. Homes Just Hit the Market for $1.7M

by Grace Bernard

The famed architect experimented with raw materials as he constructed the landmark Benson House in the Calabasas Highlands.

Designed as two structures connected by a vertebrae-like bridge, Gehry described the composition as "Almost touching. It is like a Japanese sculpture, when you have two stones almost touching.

Location: 23685 Clover Trail, Calabasas, California

Price: $1,745,000

Architect: Frank Gehry

Year: 1981

Footprint: 1,719 square feet (2 bed, 3 bath)

From the Agent: "Before Bilbao, the Disney Concert Hall, and the other iconic global works that would define his career, Frank Gehry quietly rewrote the rules of domestic architecture on a hillside in the Calabasas Highlands. Completed in 1981, The Benson House belongs to Gehry’s pivotal early Los Angeles period, when residential work carried the same experimental force his museums would later claim. Created for law professor Robert ‘Bob’ Benson, who told Gehry, ‘Whatever you want to do, we will go for,’ the home became one of Gehry’s favorite projects and most personal residential works. Set into a slope, the architecture separates from the hillside to create a moat-like negative space, allowing two distinct vertical volumes to emerge. A vertebrae-like wooden walkway connects the bedroom wing with the living and gathering spaces, creating a daily experience of movement, sequence, and spatial discovery. Clad in humble asphalt shingles and grounded by concrete floors, exposed rafters, and raw material contrasts, the home reflects Gehry’s early language of recontextualized vernacular, California modernism, and architecture as sculpture. The Benson House is Calabasas Historical Landmark No. 2 and an important early Gehry residence archived at the Getty Research Institute. Early Gehry homes rarely come to market, making this a singular opportunity to own a formative work by one of the most influential architects of our time."