The Return Trip

At first, a significant Los Angeles guesthouse was designed for discerning clients. Then the kids decided to move in.

- BY DAVID NETTO

There are many versions of the dream of living well in Southern California. In 1928, when the house in our story was built, the movie colony was infatuated with historical styles, and Tudor Revival was right up there as coin of the realm. This house was one of the more successful medium-size manifestations of that dream, from a time that produced some very good ones-an image of picturesque life in the Cotswolds, a little instant history brought to a brand new town at the edge of the world. In the east, in Greenwich or in Maryland hunting country, this style would come to be known as Stockbroker Tudor; in the west, Late Silent Movie Star, Old English variety. Marion Davies would have loved it, and may well have visited.

Cut to 2014, and the property-largely unaltered and therefore even more special-was bought by the owners of the much larger estate next door. They absorbed it to spare the building from almost certain demolition in today's climate of bigger is better. (Everybody loves this house. It's the only project of mine my former wife ever wanted to live in.) The new owners conscripted it for use as a guesthouse (this iteration was featured in Architectural Digest in October 2016). A dazzling connecting landscape of grass stairs and oblique views was devised by Deborah Nevins, who had done the gardens next door. I was brought in to decorate, and I have worked on various properties for this family ever since. A very jolly impromptu opening night dinner party was held, with lots of toasts to the project, and I'm not sure the owners didn't spend the night in their own guesthouse.