Elegant Bel Air Home of Entertaining Expert Is Garden-Party Ready

A fifth-generation Angeleno and the great-great-granddaughter of Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis, Stephanie Booth Shafran has long been a pillar of L.A.’s society circuit. The author of a 2020 guide to entertaining titled “You’re Invited,” Booth Shafran has organized myriad charity benefits, galas, fetes, and soireés, many of them at her elegant Bel Air residence.

Tucked away behind formidable hedges on a lot just north of the Hotel Bel-Air, the home was originally designed in 1954 by Raphael Nicolai, an Italian-born, Beaux Arts-trained architect of theaters, commercial buildings, and swanky mansions in Los Feliz, Hancock Park, and Beverly Hills.

In 1972, the property’s then-owner, prominent Beverly Hills physician Montrose Bernstein commissioned architect John Elgin Woolf to do a remodel. Woolf gave the house a Hollywood Regency-style makeover, complete with signature mansard roof, oversized entry, black lacquered double front doors, and oval windows. The house and guest house have both been enlarged and modified since then, but in keeping with Woolf’s gracefully sophisticated aesthetic.

Measuring a commodious 8,445 square feet, the two-story main house contains five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The secondary bedrooms plus a sitting room are on the top floor, while the sprawling primary suite, featuring two full bathrooms, two walk-in closets and a marble-surround fireplace, occupies the first floor. The rest of the main floor is taken up with a living room, formal dining room, restaurant-sized kitchen, library, and bar.

French doors in both the dining room and living room flow out to an expansive covered terrace geared for grand-scale entertaining, appointed with in-ceiling heaters, multiple seating areas, and a handsome outdoor fireplace. Beyond the terrace lies a formal French garden, featuring immaculately sculpted boxwood hedges and crewcut-neat lawns, and a swimming pool with separate spa. Perpendicular to the pool is the four-star-hotel quality guest house, equipped with gym, office and full bath. Elsewhere on the grounds are a vegetable garden, and a “hidden, turfed play area that leads to a quiet knoll under a grove of heritage oaks.”

Booth Shafran has owned the one-acre estate for over 25 years, but since marrying her husband, private equity investor Steve Shafran, divides her time between Los Angeles, New York, and Sun Valley, Idaho. Now it seems a going-away party is in the cards for the Bel Air property, as it’s just hit the market with an asking price of $25.5 million.

The listing is repped by Shane McCoy Fermilia of Carolwood Estates and Andrew Beyer of Douglas Elliman.