A Castle Of Our Own

Commissioned by an iconic silent movie star and renovated by husband-and-wife designers to house their family of nine, this 100-year old villa is a castle outside and cosy modern home with tons of personality inside. Asih Jenie finds out more.

- Asih Jenie

Barbara La Marr may not be a familiar name for those of us who aren’t hardcore cinephiles. But Google her name, and you’d recognise her as the iconic face of ’20s Hollywood silent movie siren. At the height of her career, Barbara had a 7,700 sq ft home in Hollywood Hills, California. Occupying a 2,023-sqm land, the three-level villa was fashioned after the French Normandy architectural style and had more bathrooms than bedrooms. It boasted four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and three half bathrooms.

Barbara passed away at just 29 in 1926, and remarkably the home has only changed ownership three times since then. Its current owners are Robert and Courtney Novogratz, a husband and wife design duo with over 20 years of experience designing and developing unique spaces across many typologies. Residing initially in New York City, the couple moved to sunny California with their seven children and bought the 100-year-old villa to renovate as their new home.

The home’s previous three owners had very different tastes, which were apparent in its existing condition when the Novogratz bought it. “There were many small rooms, many types of hardwood flooring, and a nonsensical floor plan. The house felt like a maze with tiny rooms and multiple doorways that led to more doorways and even more tiny rooms,” shares the couple, who decided to gut and renovate all the interiors. “The biggest challenge was to keep the charm and period feel of the house while modernising the entire space,” they say.