Confession – when I first saw “Heat” in the theatre in 1995, I spent the first half of the movie believing LAPD Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and career thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) were the same person, a dirty cop/double agent playing both sides. It wasn’t until the two characters finally sat down together mid-movie (in the seminal scene that marked the mega-stars’ first-ever shared onscreen appearance) that I became aware of my admittedly asinine gaffe.
The realization should have dawned much sooner considering (among other things) that McCauley and Hanna returned home to starkly disparate residences each night – Neil to a sleek contemporary property featuring walls of glass overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Vincent to an avant-garde dwelling he famously declares “a dead tech, post-modernistic bullshit house,” where he lives with his third wife, Justine (Diane Venora), and step-daughter, Lauren Gustafson (Natalie Portman).
While McCauley’s home can be found on the beach in Malibu, Hanna’s pad, known as the Sixth Street Residence in real life, is located in Santa Monica’s Ocean Park neighborhood. The three-level property was originally built as a duplex in 1947 but was transformed by renowned architect Thom Mayne, FAIA, of the Morphosis architecture firm, into a two-story house and one-story apartment in 1987. The project won the AIA Los Angeles Honor Award that same year.
The house portion of the property, which makes up the top two levels and features two bedrooms and two baths in 1,993 square feet, served as Thom’s family home for the next thirty years.
When the Maynes moved to a new house in 2017 – another dwelling built by the architect on the site of Ray Bradbury’s former Cheviot Hills abode – the Sixth Street Residence was listed for rent (at a cool $7,600 a month), finally offering fans a glimpse at its striking interior via MLS images.