A Bel-Air Home that Blends Modern and Historic Elements Asks $31.5m
Architect Mark Rios and his husband, Dr. Guy Ringler, spent 18 months renovating the house, which was originally designed by John Elgin Woolf.
2 min
In Los Angeles, a home with a rare combination of historic and contemporary architectural pedigree is coming on the market for $31.5 million.
The circa-1949 house in Bel-Air was originally designed, and later owned, by architect John Elgin Woolf, known for his Hollywood Regency-style. More recently, it was renovated and restored by the architect and landscape guru Mark Rios and his husband, reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Guy Ringler. Rios, one of the architects behind the renovation of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, has designed homes for entertainment heavyweights like Clive Davis and television producer Darren Star.
Rios and Ringler paid $12 million for the roughly 8,400-square-foot, five-bedroom property in 2021 and embarked on an 18-month renovation. They moved into the house in 2023.
“We wanted to make it contemporary, but still not change the spirit and iconic quality of the architecture,” Rios said. “I kept on thinking, ‘If Jack Woolf were alive today, what would he do?’ And then also, ‘What would Mark Rios do?’”
When they purchased the property, Rios said, the home had fallen into disrepair. The layout was a relic of decades past, with servants’ quarters and separate primary-bedroom suites. A prior owner had installed an elevator from the kitchen to her dressing room to facilitate mid-party wardrobe changes.
The couple revamped the layout, converting a library into a media room with bright red walls. The new centerpiece of the home is a lounge with a fireplace and bar.
Outside, the couple aimed to make the pool area a more social setting for entertaining. They turned a pool pavilion into a Moroccan-style sitting area, which they jokingly refer to it as “the drug room” because of the psychedelic colors, Rios said.
For a recent dinner party, the couple re-created the menu from a New Year’s Eve party thrown at the house in the 1960s, serving beef wellington and “some kind of seafood mousse,” Rios said. They even hired a musician to impersonate the 1960s trumpeter and pianist Herb Alpert.
They are selling because they are spending more time at their home in Montecito, Calif., Rios said. The property is listed by Linda May of Carolwood, an affiliate of Forbes Global Properties.
Bel-Air, which was largely unaffected by the recent Los Angeles wildfires, has seen a handful of deals close at $30 million or more over the past year, Zillow shows. A nearby estate with an addition by architect Paul Williams sold for $39 million in November.
Write to Katherine Clarke at Katherine.Clarke@wsj.com
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
Two coming 2027 models – the first of the “Neue Klasse” cars coming to the U.S. early next year – have been revealed.
A&K Sanctuary unveils Kitirua Plains Lodge, a sustainability-focused luxury property shaped by landscape, local craft and contemporary safari architecture.
After half a century in the same hands, The Palladium blends Art Deco heritage, cinematic history and beachfront living in one extraordinary offering.
3 min
In Sydney’s Northern Beaches, there are plenty of homes with a multimillion-dollar view and an enviable position close to the sand.
This unique listing has all that, but it has also earned its page in the local history books.
After 50 years in the same hands, The Palladium in Palm Beach—once a famed dance hall, then a restaurant, a private residence, and an artists’ studio—is now back on the market with a price hopes of $13.5 million through BJ Edwards and David Edwards of LJ Hooker Palm Beach.
Positioned in a rare corner spot where Ocean Rd meets Palm Beach Rd, The Palladium has been front and centre observing the famous sandy stretch for almost a century.
Built in the early 1930s, the Art Deco building was originally conceived as a vibrant community dance hall; the “it” place to be for young folk during Sydney’s thriving interwar period.
Often the dances were held to raise money for the Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club, and newspaper reports of the time told of rowdy parties lasting until the early hours, bootleg liquor arrests, and where shorts and sandals—or even pyjamas—were scandalously worn by “both sexes”.
Over the decades, The Palladium has worn many hats.
By 1943, the original owner, Joseph Henry Graham, had defaulted on his loan, and a mortgagee sale reportedly sold the building for £1550, which translates to about $137,000 today. It later became a dining space and a general store run by the Milton family. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the property was also home to the Blue Pacific Restaurant.
The current owners acquired the keys in 1976 when it began its next chapter as a creative hub. One of today’s vendors, filmmaker David Elfick, who has been a filmmaker and producer on such films as Newsfront and Rabbit-Proof Fence, has told stories of a free-spirited creative hub that has been used for film sets, to store numerous movie props, as editing rooms, to hold countless parties and has even hosted visiting members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
From its famed beachside soirees to its grassroots film club nights, the venue has become woven into the cultural fabric of Palm Beach.
Today, that rich history has been reimagined into a coastal home that honours its past while embracing contemporary beachside living.
Built in a unique architectural style known as streamline moderne, the aeroplane hangar-like building reflects the era’s fascination with air travel, mass transport, and modernity. The facade is defined by a sweeping curved roofline and subtle nautical cues.
The main residence features a vast central living space framed by a number of bedrooms and sunrooms, as well as a front dining room and kitchen. In total, there are four to five bedrooms, three bathrooms and a powder room adjoining an upstairs loft space.
Big, broad windows draw in loads of natural light and provide iconic views, plus the sounds of the beach just across the road.
Many of the original elements remain, most fittingly the polished floors of the former dance hall. In the additional building at the back of the block, there is a separate, self-contained studio with its own bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and laundry. From its elevated deck, the outlook stretches across the full sweep of Palm Beach.
Outside, the expansive 1151sq m land parcel also features established gardens with veggie patches and standalone decks for quiet contemplation.
Sitting just across the road from the beach, the property is also within walking distance of local cafes and the surf club. Palm Beach Rock Pool is at one end of the beach, with the Palm Beach Golf Club and the water airport at the other end of the peninsula.
The Palladium and Palm Beach Studio at 16 Ocean Rd, Palm Beach are listed with BJ Edwards and David Edwards of LJ Hooker Palm Beach via a private treaty campaign with a price guide of $13.5 million.
The era of the gorgeous golden retriever is over. Today’s most coveted pooches have frightful faces bred to tug at our hearts.
From gorilla encounters in Uganda to a reimagined Okavango retreat, Abercrombie & Kent elevates its African journeys with two spectacular lodge transformations.
