Live Like A Cinema Legend: The David Lynch Compound, $15M

by Philip Ferrato

David Lynch was a surpassingly brilliant individual, a film and television director/producer who would irrevocably change what we see on our screens. From the 1977 Eraserhead to the 1986 Blue Velvet and beyond, Lynch challenged the concept of the banal and of lives swept aside by horror. His work will be influencing aspiring film makers for years to come. And now, we can sneak a peek at Lynch’s unrepentant individuality—and freedom from convention—in the intimate listing of his extensive 2.3-acre compound in the Hollywood Hills, that hit the market this week, just months after his demise in January.

In the late 1980s, Lynch acquired the 1963 Beverly Johnson House, designed by architect Lloyd Wright on a steep hillside site. Lloyd Wright (son of the great Frank Lloyd Wright) arrived in L.A. decades earlier to supervise his projects while the master was in Tokyo building the legendary (and now lost) Imperial Hotel. The younger Wright had a substantial career in L.A., and his son Eric Wright, would go on to be both a successful architect and a sought-after expert in the restoration of his father’s and grandfather’s work, including the design of Lynch’s pool and pool house.

The cast concrete chevron—a consistent motif throughout the original Lloyd Wright structure and Eric Wright’s pool and pool house—is a direct descendent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original textile block, contributing to the property’s unique architectural provenance. Over the decades Lynch bought the adjacent properties and built a number of Neo-Brutalist structures in grey concrete—guest houses, workshops, production offices, an editing suite and screening room—to create a fully realized compound for all his endeavors, glimpses of which be seen in his 1997 film Lost Highway.

Despite being built in the 1960s, the interiors of the Johnson house evoke the Prairie-style influences of the late 1920s.

Visit the listing for additional property details and some very evocative images—a property with a unique architectural pedigree as well as a keystone piece of cinematic history, represented by architecture and luxury specialist Marc Silver at The Agency Beverly Hills.