LOVE SPELL

FOR HER GROOVY PLEASURE PALACE IN HOLLYWOOD, MUSICIAN SCOUT WILLIS BRINGS FANTASY TO LIFE

- HANNAH MARTIN

I want people to come to this house and fall in love," says musician Scout Willis wistfully, imagining the parties that will surely unfold in the charming storybook house in Hollywood that her friends have nicknamed "the Chapel of Love."

"I want people to meet each other here and make out," she says, nostalgic for the sort of in-person encounters that take place in her recent music video "It Ain't Nothing," where she and costar Thomas Doherty lock eyes and graze fingertips amid revelers in a sprawling mansion.

For Willis, though, this time it's the house itself she fell for. "I walked in and saw this ceiling," she says over FaceTime, showing off the home's groin-vaulted entryway, still sporting its original colored plaster.

LEFT THE COLORFUL KITCHEN SPORTS WATERWORKS FITTINGS, A CHECKERED BACKSPLASH OF TILE BY MALIBU CERAMIC WORKS, GREEN COUNTERS FROM CONCRETE COLLABORATIVE, AND MARMOLEUM LINOLEUM FLOORS.

"And I immediately felt it." The quaint, Normandystyle cottage, built by architect Frederick A. Hanson (best known for his contributions to the Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery) in the 1920s had been hardly touched since, its yard anchored by an enormous eucalyptus tree. A self-professed "nerd for LA history," Willis jumped at the opportunity to serve as a custodian for such a unique piece of the city.

As the house is a designated historical landmark, its petite footprint and signature façade could not be significantly altered. Not that she wished to do so. Still, Willis wanted to make it her own, so she called on Roman Alonso, of the AD100 firm Commune Design, who she's known for more than a decade, to help her recalibrate the place for herself and her rescue pup, Grandma.