6300 Grape Place

The way in tells the history. From Cahuenga Boulevard the route climbs Holly Drive and Deep Dell Place onto Weidlake Drive, the street that dead-ends at the south gate of the Mulholland Dam. William Mulholland's concrete arch was finished in December 1924, holding back Lake Hollywood at the top of the canyon, and the Dell filled in on the slopes below it through the twenties boom. The Theosophists had arrived even earlier, laying the cornerstone of their eleven-acre Krotona colony in 1912 on Vista Del Mar Avenue at the neighborhood's lower edge, before decamping to Ojai and leaving their Spanish and Moorish courts to become apartments.

Grape Place branches off Rinconia Drive partway up that climb, a short lane in the fold of hills the Dell's founders kept quiet on purpose.

The assessor dates the house to 1950, a single story of 924 square feet on a 5,269-square-foot hillside lot, parcel 5585-016-019, and the MLS style field reads, simply, Cottage. The description holds up at the curb: board and batten walls, green shutters cut with hearts, a brick porch and brick steps rising from the street under bougainvillea.

Inside, hardwood floors run throughout, a wood-burning fireplace anchors the living room, and the kitchen has been remodeled. Two patios do the outdoor work, the larger one open and bright enough for entertaining, and a short set of stairs beside the house lands at a sitting area up in the treetops.

The listing record shows one line since the midcentury: the house last changed hands in the summer of 2000, and the same stewardship has carried it since, a quarter century of maintenance rather than reinvention. Parking takes at least two cars, and the Hollywood Bowl, Franklin Village, and the freeway are all minutes down the hill.

Now it surfaces again, a Compass coming-soon, the green door waiting at the top of the brick steps.