12421 Deerbrook Lane

The Mutual Housing Association was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1946 by four studio musicians, discharged from the war and shut out of a city that had stopped building houses. Members bought shares rather than lots. The association took land in upper Kenter Canyon and retained Whitney R. Smith, A. Quincy Jones and the structural engineer Edgardo Contini, who worked the job together as Smith, Jones and Contini, Associated Architects.

They drew nine basic plans and a run of variations on them, on a discipline that held across the whole ridge: post-and-beam framing, open plan, exposed material, and no house reading as more than one story from the street. The Federal Housing Administration declined at first to insure mortgages on designs it considered that modern. The association sent a delegation to Washington and came back with the approval. The co-op went on to build a credit union and a nursery school and to give parkland to the city. The nursery school still runs.

This house was built in 1951, on the association's terms. The frame is post-and-beam and carried through the rooms rather than hidden. The lot runs to just over a fifth of an acre and falls away to the west, and the house was pointed at that fall: the ocean is unobstructed and nothing has been built into it since.

One thing has been added. A permitted room went on the street side in 1958, with its own door, and works now as a fourth bedroom or an office you can reach without crossing the house.

The original fabric is largely intact and still legible. Painted Douglas fir plywood paneling with the built-in cabinetry that came with it. Tongue-and-groove redwood plank walls. The frame exposed overhead. The west elevation is plate glass set in original steel frames, and the sliding doors still travel in their original tracks. Floors are parquet and carpet, heating and cooling central forced air.

Outdoors there is a grassy lawn, a concrete patio held toward the water, and a small second office facing the same way. A multi-purpose studio takes the laundry and the storage. The former carport is now a self-contained unit with a kitchenette. Two uncovered spaces sit at the entry, one of them fitted with a level 2 car charger.

The nearest houses on Deerbrook are designated in their own right. The Volk House of 1949, at number 12412, was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument 722 in 2002. The Hamma House of 1951, at number 12401, became Monument 797 in 2005.

On the night of November 6, 1961 the Bel Air fire crossed the Santa Monica Mountains and ran down Kenter. It burned 6,090 acres and 484 houses and killed no one. By the count kept at the association's restored site office, about forty-five of the tract's houses went that night, and thirty of the originals remain standing. This is one of the thirty.

Offered unfurnished on a lease of one year or longer. Available now; the listing carries a date available of August 8, 2026. The security deposit is one month. The converted carport with its kitchenette is fully included in the lease offering. Pets on application.

The stated 1,872 square feet includes that unit and excludes the partly enclosed work studio. Five bedrooms, three baths, on a lot of 8,782 square feet. Listed on MLS 26864675 by Michael D. Phillips of Crosby Doe Associates.

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