The Belle of Bel Air

Fresh, radiant color bursts from an Italianate estate, returned to its 1920s grandeur by owner and designer Renvy Graves Pittman.

- Renvy Graves Pittman

A poolside dining terrace, alive with potted kumquats and mandarins

A Chinese fretwork fresco by artist Haleh Atabeigi climbs the entrance hall.

FROM TIME TO TIME, Renvy Graves Pittman turns up horseshoes in her garden, relics from the days when mountain trails traversed the original Bel Air estate in the Santa Monica foothills of Los Angeles. “It was country; there were dirt roads out here," she says.

Built by Marston, Van Pelt & Maybury of Pasadena in 1929, the house was one of the few in Alphonzo Bell's new settlement designed in the Mediterranean Revival style. Cars, which were becoming increasingly popular, made access easier, and Bel Air became a fashionable neighborhood, attracting just the kind of “movie people” the puritanical Mr. Bell had been keen to keep out of his “community of Gentlemen's Estates”; indeed Pittman's house has been home to Tony Curtis, Sonny and Cher, and even Larry Flynt.

Pittman on the home's main loggia, where Italian faux-marbled obelisks (Antonio's Bella Casa) flank a 19th-century sunburst mirror. Convex globe lanterns, Jamb. Console, Dennis & Leen

RIGHT: An olive tree shades the pool terrace, furnished with a stone table and wrought-iron chairs (both by Michael Taylor). Cushion fabric, Perennials