Description

FIRST OFFERING - The Leona S. And Rudolph H.T. Mattoni Residence, 1969. Leona and Rudolph (Rudi) Mattoni, partners in life and business, designed this three-level home, incorporating period features like cedar-shake siding, post-and-beam construction, soaring vaulted ceilings, and luminous clerestory windows. Each room prioritizes abundant natural light and an immediate connection to Coldwater Canyon's sylvan setting. Terraced exterior spaces and views of Coast Live Oak and neighboring Norfolk Island Pines stretch the lot lines to appear far beyond their measure.Rudi Mattoni, a renowned lepidopterist, environmentalist, and real estate investor, was a self-taught designer who built several houses, a laboratory, and two apartment complexes, often collaborating with his close friend, Robert Skinner, AIA. For this home, Rudi and Leona crafted a unique hybrid of California Modernism that marries the clean lines of Los Angeles midcentury design with the elegant and angular 1960s rusticity of the Sea Ranch. The garden, home to lush foliage and native wildlife and tended to by Leona, an educator and biologist with a detail-oriented knack for carrying construction and entrepreneurial projects to fruition, still spotlights the Wisteria, Camelias, and Magnolias planted before the completion of the house. The Mattoni Residence was built eight years after the 1961 Bel-Air fires destroyed Rudi's cherished home, an elegantly remodeled French Regency with a mid-century addition previously belonging to the Master Architect, William S. Beckett. That house further exposed Rudi to the modernist aesthetic that would inform the homes, apartments, and furniture he would later design. The quest to build his own dream home took hold when Rudi married Leona in 1968, and they purchased an empty lot in Coldwater Canyon.There, they designed a multi-functional floor plan with options for a den, a family room, a craft room, multiple bedrooms, outdoor spaces for al-fresco dining and stargazing, and an upper-level studio with unparalleled views, a loft, and an en suite bath - a secluded space bursting with creative opportunities. Lovingly preserved, with original finishes intact, and sensitively updated with plumbing and electrical upgrades and seismic retrofitting, this residence represents the best of both worlds, a rare survivor of innovative midcentury architecture ideally suited for the 21st century.