“This House Owns Us”: Inside Richard Neutra’s 1949 Wirin House
Home improvement books often start with a caveat: “Don’t make big changes until you’ve lived in the house.” When the home is a midcentury gem by the legendary modernist Richard Neutra, that advice comes with teeth. “We have to be very careful,” says Alberto Chehebar of his residence, the 1949 Wirin House in Los Feliz, California.
His wife Jocelyne Katz puts it more bluntly: “The house owns us.” This sense of stewardship has been deepened by the recent fires in Los Angeles; many of the city’s other houses, threatened or lost, were built on similar hillside sites.
The couple, longtime collectors of contemporary art who also reside in New York and Madrid, are just the third owners of the house, which Neutra built for A.L. Wirin, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, and his wife Alpha. The photographer Mark Seliger bought it from the Wirin estate in 2004 and undertook an extensive renovation with restoration expert Mark Haddawy. When Chehebar, who has an imports business in his native Colombia, and Katz, a Chilean former model and journalist, bought the home a decade ago, it was in such good shape they had to make only small tweaks, and they hired Haddawy so that any changes would be done under his careful hand. “The house found great custodians,” Haddawy says. “Alberto and Jocelyne have always felt the house should be honored for what it is.”
When they first moved in, Katz was hoping they might do something about the (small) bathrooms and (minimal) closet space. “It’s a man’s house from 1949,” she says. “But little by little I learned how to live that way, and I love it. You have the clothes you really wear. You spend less time in the bathroom getting ready.” The updates they did make range from the invisible (period-appropriate blinds in the bedroom to block the morning sun) to the transformative (red velvet that replaced the beige upholstery on the built-in living room sofas). “It feels warmer and definitely more alive,” Chehebar says. “It really punches.”
The red velvet also picks up the color of the wine-hued linoleum, the brick fireplace, and the redwood ceiling. “This was a period when Neutra used a lot of wood,” Haddawy says. “It feels natural, nestled in trees on the hillside.”
Another color threaded throughout is green, from the upholstery on the dining room’s Gio Ponti Superleggera chairs to the dominant tone in a Rita Ackermann canvas that fills a wall upstairs. The artwork “reproduces the colors of nature in the abstract,” Katz says.
The smaller Scott Kahn painting in the wood-paneled primary bedroom depicts an arched stone recess and a mysterious door, all overgrown with vines. For Katz the grotto imagery is in dialogue with the outdoors. “It feels very intimate, like you have to go inside,” she says.
Carport
The carport of the Wirin House, a 1949 design by Richard Neutra in Los Feliz restored by Mark Hadawy. The car is a Porsche 911 Carrera.
Kitchen
The kitchen retains its original 1940s wood cabinets and linoleum tile but has modern amenities like a SubZero refrigerator.
Garage
Chehebar and Katz turned the garage into a home office. Chair by Eero Saarinen; artwork by Keith Haring.
Primary Bedroom
The primary bedroom’s built-in furniture and sconces are all original. Bedding by Parachute; artwork by Scott Kahn.
Architecture
A vintage Julius Shulman image of the house, which overlooks downtown Los Angeles.
Living Room
A George Condo artwork hangs on the living room’s brick wall. Vintage chair, Philip Arctander; cocktail table by Isamu Noguchi.
Dining Room
A painting by Henry Taylor in the dining room.
Guest Bath
A sculpture by Genesis Belanger is displayed in a guest bath; the terrazzo shower stall is original to the house.
Garden
A Stan Edmondson sculpture in the gardens, which is planted with rare oaks, eucalyptus and jacaranda.
While Seliger kept the house’s decor relatively neutral, with minimal art, Chehebar and Katz’s collecting has taken it in a different direction, embedding it in L.A.’s contemporary art scene as well as its modernist past. The dining room is where they cycle smaller works, hung salon-style. The space currently displays paintings by Henry Taylor and Anna Weyant. “Jocelyne likes to make puzzles, playing around with [the artworks] on the floor” before hanging them, Chehebar says. “This is probably the third or fourth curation of this wall.”
The homeowners also put their stamp on the home’s 2,200-square-foot garage, which has become their office. They furnished it with a George Nelson wall unit, Saarinen Tulip chairs, and a Keith Haring subway drawing of New Yorker covers that Chehebar bought in the 1980s. “The cars sit outside and the art inside,” he says of the garage.
When the couple first moved in, the landscape was lush but overgrown. Now there are paths through the rare oaks, eucalyptus, and jacaranda, along with strategically placed artworks. The finishing touch: a Stan Edmondson ceramic sculpture whose raised arms suggest a cheer directed at downtown L.A. The pocked surface of the black clay mimics the texture of the surrounding upright cacti and creeping blue pickle, and if you squint, the plants also seem to be inspired by the artwork. “There is a little cactus that grew next to it that has two arms up as well,” Katz says. “I imagine him saying, ‘Good morning!’ to the city.” ◾
This story originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBE
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