🌟 Old Hollywood Royalty

Cecil B. DeMille Estate — 2000 De Mille Drive, Laughlin Park (1913) DeMille purchased the home in 1916 for $27,893 and lived there with his family until his death in 1959. The Beaux Arts mansion is located in the gated Laughlin Park neighborhood — it is rumored that once DeMille bought the house, he also purchased Charlie Chaplin's smaller house next door and added an arboretum connecting the two. Angelina Jolie later purchased the estate for a reported $24.5 million. The Hollywood Home Ranker

Walt Disney's First LA House — 4406 Kingswell Ave. (1914) This 1914 Craftsman bungalow was owned by Disney's uncle, and when 21-year-old Walt relocated to Los Angeles in 1923 he lived here and began his animation work in the garage. It's a designated Historic-Cultural Monument. The shed where he reportedly finished his "Alice Comedies" — the series that launched his career — still stands on the property. LA Conservancy

Laughlin Park generally has housed an astonishing concentration of Hollywood history. The gated compound between Los Feliz Boulevard and Franklin Avenue has been home to Cecil B. DeMille, W.C. Fields, Kristen Stewart, and Natalie Portman, among others.

🏰 The Cedars (aka "The Talmadge Estate") — Los Feliz Hills (1921–1926)

The most storied party house in Los Angeles history, and one of the most layered properties in the entire city.

Built for MGM director Maurice Tourneur and modeled on the Venetian palazzo of the Duke of Alba, the estate became known as the Talmadge Estate after one of its early owners — silent film superstar Norma Talmadge. Talmadge was at the core of an elite group of early silent film stars that included Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Tom Mix, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., John Barrymore, Clara Bow, and Mary Pickford. The 10,000-square-foot villa cost $500,000 — an extraordinary sum for its day. HGTV Discoverhollywood

The residents and visitors that followed make it arguably the single most star-saturated address in LA history. The Cedars has hosted Béla Lugosi, Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, John Phillips, Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones, and Johnny Depp. The Hype Magazine

It went through a long rock-and-roll chapter too. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" was reportedly composed on the property, and the Cedars was a famed rock palace in the 1960s. PopWrapped

On the film side, interior scenes from Sunset Boulevard (1949) were shot in the house, and a scene from Easy Rider (1969) was filmed there as well. The echoes are appropriately dark: Joe Gillis, the doomed screenwriter protagonist of Sunset Boulevard, could have been talking about The Cedars in an earlier incarnation when he said: "A neglected house gets an unhappy look; this one had it in spades." InCollectInCollect

The house spent years in decay before fashion designer Sue Wong rescued and restored it in the 2000s. The palatial estate once encompassed terraced gardens, lakes, and fountains across 15 acres. It has since gone back on the market — asking price in the millions — and the walls, if they could talk, would probably need a few days. HGTV

🔪 True Crime — The Big three

The Los Feliz Murder Mansion — 2475 Glendower Place (1925) The most notorious untouched crime scene in Los Angeles history. On the night of December 6th, 1959, cardiologist Dr. Harold Perelson struck his wife Lillian in the head with a ball-peen hammer as she lay in bed. Lillian died from asphyxiation. Dr. Perelson then struck his 16-year-old daughter Judye with the same hammer, waking her screaming. The neighbors heard Judye scream "Don't kill me" before she managed to run out of the house and call for help. Judye's younger sister Debbie was still inside, and when she woke, her father told her: "Go back to bed. This is a nightmare." Then he took a fatal overdose. Next to Harold's corpse police found a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy, open to Canto 1: "Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost." Listverse Cody Loves Horror

The real horror is what happened next. The year after the murders, the mansion sold to a couple who only used the 5,050-square-foot house as a storage site — never living there, never removing any of the Perelson family's belongings. Through grimy windows, one could see a 1950s-style television set, a Christmas tree, and neatly-wrapped gifts. The furniture sat under a thick layer of dust, the living room unchanged from that December night. The house sat like this for over 50 years. It was not uncommon for fans of spooky late-night cruising in Los Angeles to head up the winding hills above Los Feliz Boulevard in search of the holy grail of LA true crime relics. It finally sold in 2016 for $2.3 million. atlasobscura Discover Los Angeles

The LaBianca House — 3311 Waverly Drive (originally 3301) The house at 3311 Waverly Drive was the site of the August 10, 1969 LaBianca murders — the second wave of the Manson gang attacks, following the gruesome slaying of Sharon Tate and four others the night before in Beverly Hills. The Manson gang had attended a party at a house next door the previous year and randomly selected the LaBiancas for execution. On the refrigerator, Krenwinkel wrote "Healter Skelter" in LaBianca's blood. The street number was later changed from 3301 to 3311 to thwart the curious. In 2020, the house sold to Zak Bagans, star of Ghost Adventures, who told People Magazine: "the house has a very dark and gruesome history, but I was also intrigued by the energy I felt while there." Deadline + 3

🏚️ The Black Dahlia House

The Sowden House — 5121 Franklin Ave. (1926) Constructed in 1926 by Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd Wright, the Sowden House is a classic California home filtered through a Mayan Art Deco sieve — presenting a blank white wall to the street before opening into a magnificent sun-dappled courtyard. The darkness came later. The house was the home from 1945 through 1951 of Black Dahlia murder suspect Dr. George Hodel. His own son, a retired Los Angeles homicide detective, would later write that Hodel tortured, murdered, and dissected Elizabeth Short inside the house in January 1947. A trained cadaver dog later detected "the scent of human decomposition" in the basement. The LAPD never formally charged Hodel, and the Black Dahlia case remains unsolved. The house has appeared in The Aviator and The Rocketeer. Esotouric + 2

🎬 Film & TV Locations

The Ennis House — 2607 Glendower Ave. (1924) The single most filmed house in Los Angeles. Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, has been used throughout cinema history as a location for more than 80 productions. Its resume includes: House on Haunted Hill (1959) with Vincent Price, Blade Runner (1982), Black Rain (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Grand Canyon (1991), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Finished in 1924 and drawing on ancient Mayan temples, the house was built for Charles Ennis, a wealthy LA clothier. Fans of Blade Runner will recognize it as Rick Deckard's apartment. Wright himself wrote to the Ennises: "The final result is going to stand on that hill a hundred years or more." /Film + 2

Lovell Health House — 4616 Dundee Drive (1929) Designed by Richard Neutra and built between 1927 and 1929 for physician Philip Lovell, it is often described as the first steel frame house in the United States. The house was used in the 1997 film L.A. Confidential as the home of Pierce Morehouse Patchett, and depicted in the 2010 film Beginners as the home of Oliver and his father Hal. Wikipedia Coastline 840

John Marshall High School — 3939 Tracey Ave., Los Feliz (1931)

The most filmed high school in America, and it's not particularly close. John Marshall's striking Collegiate Gothic architecture has been the backdrop for dozens of films, TV series, music videos, and commercials — from Van Halen's 1984 "Hot for Teacher" classroom romp on MTV to beloved nostalgia flicks like Grease and La Bamba. American Cinematheque

The credits are staggering. Even though the school is actually located in Los Angeles, it has the look and feel of a Midwest or East Coast school, leading to its popularity with location scouts and producers. The school's unique doors are usually a dead giveaway that a movie was filmed at John Marshall. Confirmed productions include: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the film), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pretty in Pink, Nightmare on Elm Street, Room 222, Boy Meets World, The Wonder Years, School of Rock, Grosse Pointe Blank, Space Jam, Hannah Montana, Boston Public, iCarly, Kenan & Kel, and Who's the Boss?, among dozens of others. IAMNOTASTALKER Hollywoodfilminglocations

Rebel Without a Cause is the first film listed as being filmed at the school, though mostly interior shots. One of the first major productions to hit the campus was Grease in 1978 — while most of Rydell High's exterior shots used Venice High School, the carnival finale was filmed at John Marshall. LAist

The school's alumni roster matches its screen pedigree. Notable alumni include Julie Newmar (Catwoman), Judge Lance Ito, Heidi Fleiss, and Leonardo DiCaprio — though Leo attended for only one semester before leaving to pursue acting. LAist

🥂 LEGENDARY PARTY HOUSES

The Cedars (aka "The Talmadge Estate") — Los Feliz Hills (1921–26) Already the crown jewel of this section, detailed in the Los Feliz entry above. The short version: since its conception, The Cedars hosted Norma Talmadge, Joseph Schenck (founder of 20th Century Fox Studios), Béla Lugosi, Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, John Phillips, Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones, and Johnny Depp. It went from silent-era estate to Old Hollywood haunt to the most debauched rock palace of the 1960s without ever leaving the same hilltop. The Hype Magazine

The W.C. Fields Estate — 2015 De Mille Drive, Laughlin Park (1920)

The most chaotically customized party house in Laughlin Park's genteel enclave. Though Fields didn't believe in home ownership and rented rather than bought, he moved in in 1940 and immediately made his priorities clear: he added a pool table, a ping-pong table, and bowling lanes set up in the living room — but almost no furniture. A legendary party guy, he had three bars in the house, including a portable bar, and lived there until his death in 1946. He lived next door to Cecil B. DeMille, who had purchased the mansion at the top of the hill in 1916 and lived there with patrician decorum until his own death in 1959. The contrast between the two neighbors — one America's great biblical epic-maker, the other a gin-soaked comedian with bowling lanes where a sofa should be — is a fairly perfect encapsulation of what Laughlin Park contained. e-architect