Falcon Lair
- Architect
- Wallace Neff
- Year
- 1924
- Style
- Spanish Colonial Revival
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
Falcon Lair is a Spanish Colonial Revival estate above Benedict Canyon, designed by Wallace Neff and built in 1924 for developer George Read. Silent-film star Rudolph Valentino bought the 4-acre property in 1925 for $175,000, naming it after The Hooded Falcon, an unfinished film he had tried to produce with his wife, Natacha Rambova.
the building
Valentino's stable and parties. Valentino filled the house with antiques and European furnishings gathered on his travels, hosted extravagant parties, and kept horses in the estate's stable, even after his divorce from Rambova shortly following the purchase.
the style
Neff's Spanish Colonial Revival design gave Valentino a Mediterranean-style hillside retreat, a form Neff helped popularize among Hollywood's silent-era elite.
More on Spanish Colonial Revivalthe architect
Wallace Neff was a Southern California architect known for shaping the region's Spanish Colonial Revival estates for Hollywood clients; Falcon Lair is among his documented 1920s commissions.
significance
Valentino died suddenly of peritonitis in 1926, and the estate was auctioned to settle his debts. After passing through several owners, it was bought in 1965 by tobacco heiress Doris Duke, who lived there until her death in 1993; it sold again in 1998 for $2,294,000 before a restoration began in 2003.
nearby
- Sheats Goldstein Residence
- Harold Lloyd Estate
- Beverly Hills Women's Club
- Case Study House #16
- Beverly Hills Hotel
- Royce Hall