The Schneidman House in Crestwood Hills

The Schneidman House in Crestwood Hills has been nominated as an Historic-Cultural Monument in the City of Los Angeles.

This is how it appeared when purchased by the current owners.

The home is part of a housing cooperative formed by four musicians in 1946. The Mutual Housing Association was originally to be a cooperative in which the members owned the land cooperatively and their homes individually, but the owners from whom they were purchasing the land had a restrictive covenant in their paperwork and would not budge. Therefore, the members of the Mutual Housing Association had to give up one of their ideals (some withdrew from the cooperative) in order to purchase the over 800 acres of land in the hills to the north of Brentwood, but held to most of the remainder of their ideals.

There was also a nursery school--which survives and is operated still, and the architect's office and sales building which has been converted to a private home. They also have a park and a community building built on land donated to the City of Los Angeles. The members began a members-only credit union. There was also to be a service station and grocery store, but building the houses became enough of a challenge and those accessory buildings were never constructed.

The members of the co-op chose A. Quincy Jones and Walter Smith, architects and Edgardo Contini, architect/engineer to be their engineer because he would reconfigure the wooded hillside the least in order to site the homes.



The cover of the Mutual Plans booklet.

The first homes were completed in 1950.

There is no extant portrait of the completed home from 1950. There is, however, a very long shot of it from that time.

The house, in the distance, in 1950
.

Here is a photograph, from the archive, of the home from 1962.



The house in 1962.

A recent photo of the Schneidman House:

  

The Cultural Heritage Commission inspected the home on November 17, 2011 and voted positively on it an HCM on December 1, 2011. It must next go to the Planning and Land Use (PLUM) committee of City Council for a vote.