A native of Cheshire, England, Frank Scott Crowhurst immigrated to America in 1913 at the age of 20. He spent his first decade in the states in Chicago and Detroit before making his way in the early 1920s to Los Angeles, then in the throes of a massive building boom.
An artist as well as an architect and builder, Crowhurst had the good fortune to be discovered by animation pioneer Walt Disney, who employed him on a number of projects, including the design of Disney’s personal family residence in Los Feliz and second animation studio in Burbank. It’s not clear how the studio magnate came to be acquainted with Crowhurst, but it’s conceivable that he might have been impressed by the charming cottage the architect built for his own family in Silver Lake, not far from Disney’s original studio. Erected in 1924, four years before Disney’s home, the three-bedroom Storybook Tudor is reminiscent of the half-timbered cottages that populate the countryside of Crowhurst’s homeland.
Located in the hills just northeast of the Silver Lake Reservoir, the cottage is fronted by a small English-style garden. A gabled portico overhangs the multipaned-glass front door, beyond which lies the home’s living room. Suffused with light thanks to numerous casement windows, the room is anchored by a grand fireplace featuring carved plaster helical columns. Next comes the formal dining room with coved ceilings and picture-frame moulding. To one side of the dining room is the sunny but rather jarringly updated kitchen, lined with glossy cabinetry in fire-engine red. It’s also equipped with a built-in breakfast booth.
Two bedrooms and a shared bath are located off the other side of the dining room, with the rear side of the house taken up by a sizable office or family room with en-suite bath and banks of wraparound casement windows framing garden and hillside views. Other highlights include honey-toned hardwood floors, built-in bookshelves and dressers, and a bay window. The home’s backyard space is divvied up between a brick patio shaded by a massive elm tree, and a rectangular expanse of grass.
On the market for the first time in over three decades, the 1,612-square-foot cottage is asking $1.689 million. Compass agent Michael Fenton holds the listing.
