140 Hollister Ave Unit #3

Horatio West Court is one of the most significant residential buildings in Santa Monica, full stop. Designed by Irving Gill and built in 1919, it stands among the first truly modernist buildings ever constructed, a precursor to the International Style that would define architecture in the decades that followed. In 1977, it became the first building in the City of Santa Monica listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it was designated Santa Monica Historic Landmark No. 10 in 1979. Properties with this pedigree almost never trade.

Gill trained at Adler & Sullivan in Chicago, where he worked for a time under Frank Lloyd Wright, before pursuing a singular vision in Southern California. Horatio West Court was built during his most productive decade, when his style had fully matured, and everything he believed about architecture is here. Concrete construction, flat roofs, unadorned walls, ribbons of casement windows, and simple arches organized into quietly powerful geometric forms. The court arranges its residences symmetrically along a central drive, each a two-story cube with its own entrance porch and walled terrace, private outdoor space and abundant natural light in a plan that architects still study a century later. Richard Neutra photographed the court extensively and published it in his 1930 book Amerika, introducing Gill's work to the European avant-garde. After falling into disrepair by the 1960s, the court was rescued and restored by Gill devotees in the 1970s, and Gill himself is now recognized as a seminal figure in twentieth-century modernism.

The location matches the provenance. Hollister Avenue sits in Ocean Park, two short blocks from the sand and moments from Main Street, the Sunday Farmers Market, the restaurants and coffee shops that give this pocket of Santa Monica its neighborhood feel, with Abbot Kinney and the Venice canals just south. This is walk-to-everything coastal Santa Monica, in a building that belongs to architectural history.

*Represented Buyer