Villa Laurel

Laurel Canyon Boulevard has carried musicians into these hills since Joni Mitchell's day, and Villa Laurel sits back behind clipped boxwood and a vine-covered trellis wall. White stucco, dark wood eaves, glass railings stacked across two floors against the slope. A new build with an old canyon's instincts: quiet from the street, open toward the hills.

Past an entry hung with brass-framed mirrors, a dark wood staircase floats down to the garage; the other side opens into a center-hall plan, a fluted stone fireplace anchoring the family room, a media room fitted with a projection screen and a deep sectional.

Upstairs, the primary suite runs long: a private office, a pair of walk-in closets, a book-matched stone bathroom with a freestanding tub beneath the window, and a balcony overlooking the garden and pool. Three more bedrooms share the floor, each catching its own canyon view, one bath tiled floor to ceiling in a patchwork of charcoal and gold, another anchored by a round porthole window.

Outside, a pool runs the width of the garden, its travertine deck laid in a checkerboard of stone and grass, boxwood and olive trees squaring off the edges. French doors pull the whole ground floor open to it, so a swim and a drink happen in the same afternoon. Laurel Canyon has always been the part of Los Angeles that keeps its own hours, a green half-mile between the Valley and Hollywood. A new house that fits an old canyon without asking it to change.

HSR26-000608