to ring, he had decided to take a year off, live off his savings and follow his curiosity. His first step would be to buy a house, preferably near the beach. Knowing nothing about architecture, he began looking for a conventional Calfornia salt-box cottage. His realtor, perhaps wanting to push him a little, dropped off a pile of architecture magazines, one of which was an Architectural Digest featuring Pierre Koenig’s newly renovated 1958 Case Study House #21. This, unexpectedly, was LaFetra’s epiphany. To use his words, “it leaped off the page.”

But the house was not available, so he went instead for a fairly nondescript one at Broad Beach, in Malibu. Two months later, his realtor called to say that the Koenig house had just come onto the market and they went to see it. “As we walked in,” he says, “they were playing Frank Sinatra, and I immediately knew I had to buy it.” Thus, began his induction into the world of L.A. modernism.
Within a week or two of moving into Case Study #21, LaFetra received an unexpected phone message, from Mr. Koenig himself: “This is Pierre, your architect. Call me if you need anything.” LaFetra invited him over, and seized the opportunity to ask him if anything had been left unfinished in renovations Koenig had undertaken for previous owners. There were a few things, as it turned out, and LaFetra found himself enjoying the experience of working with “his architect” to complete the restoration process, including the pools and interior fountain, repainting and planting and pushing the house through the nomination process for Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument status.

By this time, LaFetra was developing a deeper interest in modernist architecture. “The era of modernism was an era of optimism with no cynicism or irony,” says LaFetra. “There is an excess of irony today. We are also overly obsessed with square footage, which, if a structure is well-designed, is not terribly important. I don’t personally need a “chef’s kitchen” and I don’t think most people do. Good architecture approaches the divine; there is something deeply spiritual in inhabiting these houses.”

He bought the Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles by David Gebhard and Robert Winter, and spent months driving around the city, familiarizing himself with houses and compiling a list of his personal favorites. Over two years, this swelled to more than 35 homes, including LaFetra’s “top five,” four of which he eventually acquired. These included Rudolf Schindler’s How House (1925) in the Marino Highlands, John Lautner’s Stevens House (1967) in Malibu and his Wolff House (1961) in West Hollywood and Ray Kappe’s Gould/LaFetra House (1967) in Brentwood. The fifth house on the list is Schindler’s Lovell Beach House (1926).

He also purchased Schindler’s 1938 Wolff House (which he no longer owns); Thorton-Abell’s Rich House (1967); the Volk House (1949) by A. Quincy Jones; the Skinner House (1981) by Robert Skinner and a Richard Neutra addition to his 1937 Kaufmann House in Hollywood (which he has also since sold).

“Whenever I walked into a house by Schindler or Lautner,” recalls LaFetra, now a producer at Foundation Films, which he founded in 2005, “I saw something magical going on.” He felt this when he first visited the How House in 2004, which was then owned by Lionel March, a professor in the UCLA architecture department. Overwhelmed by the interiors, LaFetra said to March, “If you ever decide to sell, be sure not to let it pass into the wrong hands.” March promised to keep LaFetra in mind; six months later, March retired, returned to the United Kingdom and sold his house to LaFetra.

Located near Silverlake, the How residence was designed by Schindler for Dr. James Eads How, a psychiatrist from St. Louis. It is placed at the crest of a steep slope with a view east to the San Gabriel Mountains. With its interlocking volumes it recalls the work of the early-1920s Neo-plastic movement in Europe. (According to Gebhard