Over a sixty-year career, from 1924 to 1984, late and lauded Beverly Hills-based architect Gerard Colcord designed more than 300 homes and estates in and around Los Angeles. Often referred to as “Hollywood’s society architect,” Colcord designed traditional homes in a variety of styles, from stately English Tudor Revivals to “Hansel and Gretel” cottages to Monterey Colonials.
Prized for their hominess, many homes he designed and/or remodeled have been owned at one time or another by a veritable army of entertainment industry movers and shakers: Debbie Reynolds, Bob Newhart, Dean Martin, Nicholas Cage, Reese Witherspoon, James Mangold, Beck, Zooey Deschanel and Jonathan Scott, JoBeth Williams and John Pasquin. A particularly fetching Colcord home long owned by Harrison Ford was sold to media exec Kevin Reilly before it was acquired the current owners, Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel and model-actress Miranda Kerr.
Best known for his relaxed Country Colonial style homes, Colcord’s hallmarks include rustic and homey elements such as asymmetrical rooflines, peg-and-groove wood floors, antique brick and honey-hued fieldstone, exposed and half-timbered beams, and his most signature feature, massive walk-in fireplaces.
Owned by prolific stage, film and TV producers Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon, and newly listed with Alexis Valentin Ramos at Sotheby’s Int’l Realty at just under $8 million, a 1949 Colcord-designed Country Colonial home set on about a third of an acre in L.A.’s tony Brentwood neighborhood has been extensively updated and recently expanded but still retains many of Colcord’s coveted characteristics.
Liddell is a four-time Tony winner whose stage credits include the smash hits “Hadestown” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” and together through Liddel’s LD Entertainment, he and Shilaimon produced “Judy” (2019), which earned Renée Zellweger an Oscar, and “Jackie” (2016), which got Natalie Portman nominated for one. The couple have owned the property since 2014, according to tax records, when they scooped it up for just under $4 million.
Set back from the street behind mature trees and a white picket fence, the almost 5,600-square-foot, five-bedroom, six-bath residence is clad in clapboard and accented with antique brick and black shutters. The asymmetrical rooflines are punctuated by attic-level dormers, and a small cupola is playfully capped with a weathervane.
Inside, gleaming wood floors, fanciful moldings, and rustic beams coexist with modern updates such as in-ceiling speakers and a multizone heating and cooling system. The living and dining rooms have been combined into a single fireplace-anchored space that spills out to the backyard through a wall of French doors; the updated open-plan kitchen showcases one of the gigantic walk-in fireplaces for which Colcord is reknown; an extensive service wing incorporates a spacious prep and catering kitchen, a laundry room, and a staff suite. Just off the kitchen, the boxy, decidedly contemporary family room addition sports two banks of glass that vanish into the wall for easy-going indoor-outdoor entertaining.
One of the guest bedrooms has a brick fireplace and another has a marble bath, while a large room above the two-car garage is outfitted as a fitness room, and the two-room homeowner’s suite encompasses a large sitting room that opens to a slender balcony as well as an up-to-date bathroom that maintains vintage charm with a classic claw-footed bathtub.
The recent additions are a bit more obvious on the back of the house, which wraps itself around a brick courtyard. Beyond, the pancake flat, faux-grassed and foliage surrounded backyard offers a tree-shaded dining terrace, a swimming pool and spa, and a poolside cabana with trellis-covered patio.
