Inside Paul Williams's own house in Lafayette Square
Just West Adams · Historic Homes
The architect to the stars built one house for himself, in a West Adams enclave that had barred him four years earlier. In 2026 it set a neighborhood record.
The Paul Williams house at a glance
Who designed the Paul Williams house in Lafayette Square?
Paul R. Williams designed it for himself in 1952, at 1690 South Victoria Avenue in Lafayette Square, a semi-gated enclave inside the greater West Adams district. Williams was the first licensed Black architect west of the Mississippi and the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects. The International style home is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 170, and in 2026 it sold for $4,200,000, a reported Lafayette Square record.
Paul Williams designed nearly 2,000 homes across Los Angeles, for Frank Sinatra, for Lucille Ball, for a backlot of studio names. He built exactly one for himself. He chose Lafayette Square, a 1912 enclave of broad lawns and a palm-lined median at the northern edge of West Adams, and he chose it deliberately. Four years before he broke ground, a Black architect could not have legally bought a house on that street. The restrictive covenants that kept Lafayette Square white were struck down by the Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948. Williams built in 1952, on a street that had just been opened to him by law, a house that announced he belonged there.
That house, at 1690 South Victoria Avenue, sold in 2026 for $4.2 million. It was the highest price ever reported for a home in Lafayette Square, and it arrived after a six-year restoration, an Architectural Digest feature, and the news that the Getty, LACMA, and USC would mount a Paul Williams exhibition the same year. For a West Adams homeowner, that sale is worth understanding, because it says something specific about what historic architecture is worth in this part of Los Angeles. Debbie Pisaro covers these homes for Just West Adams, and this is the one she points people to first.
What makes the house architecturally significant
The house is the clearest built statement of Williams's own taste, unfiltered by a client. It is International style on the outside, a 4,225-square-foot, four-bedroom plan with a second-story terrace that cantilevers over a curved lanai, and the back of the house opens to the garden the way mid-century Los Angeles was learning to live. Inside, Williams kept the Hollywood Regency he was famous for: a sweeping curved staircase, a wrought-iron railing set with cast brass gazelles, a green marble hearth, oval rooms, reverse curves. The restraint outside and the drama inside are the same architect arguing with himself, and winning both ways.
It was designated Historic-Cultural Monument No. 170 in 1976, four years before Williams died in the house in 1980. It stayed in his family until 2018. The current owner spent six years on a restoration led by the architecture firm Escher GuneWardena, with interiors by Billy Cotton and Leyden Lewis, reviving original millwork and built-ins and even several pieces of furniture Williams designed for the rooms they sit in. That is the detail most people miss: the restoration did not modernize the house away from Williams. It moved it closer to him.
Williams is woven through West Adams far past this one address. He lived in the district for decades and studied nearby at USC. His commercial work shaped the wider Los Angeles he worked in, but his most-photographed local landmark is the Golden State Mutual building at Adams and Western, which the city chose as its milestone Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1000. When institutions spend 2026 honoring Paul Williams, they are, by extension, honoring the district he called home.
What a six-year restoration actually involved
A restoration that runs six years on a 4,225-square-foot house is not a renovation, it is a recovery. The work on the Williams residence was led by the architecture firm Escher GuneWardena, a practice known for conserving significant Los Angeles modernism rather than updating it away, with interiors by Billy Cotton and Leyden Lewis and landscape by Scott Shrader. The brief was not to make a 1952 house feel current. It was to make it feel like Williams had just stepped out of the room.
That meant reviving original millwork and built-ins by hand, returning the St. Charles kitchen cabinetry to service, and restoring several pieces of furniture Williams designed for specific rooms, so the objects sit where he meant them to sit. Modern systems, whole-house water and air filtration, a discreet HVAC, a working chef's kitchen, were threaded into the historic envelope quietly enough that they do not announce themselves. The wrought-iron staircase railing with its cast brass gazelles was conserved rather than replaced. The green marble hearth stayed.
The lesson for a West Adams owner is in the restraint. The market did not reward a gut renovation. It rewarded the opposite: a house brought back to its own design intent, with the century of life carefully removed and the architecture left to speak. Debbie Pisaro makes this point with sellers often, because the instinct to modernize a historic home before listing is exactly the instinct that erases its value.
What is Lafayette Square known for?
Lafayette Square is a semi-gated residential enclave of about 250 homes inside West Adams, developed in 1912 by banker George L. Crenshaw as the last and grandest of his ten Los Angeles tracts. It was built as an elegant residential park around St. Charles Place, a wide palm-lined avenue with a landscaped median, and it remains one of the most intact early-twentieth-century streetscapes in the city. After the 1948 covenant ruling, it became home to many of the city's most prominent Black professionals.
The architecture runs from period revivals to Williams's own International statement, and the neighborhood's character is protected: Lafayette Square is a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, so the streetscape a buyer sees today is the streetscape that holds. West Adams more broadly is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, built out largely between 1880 and 1925, and it carries the city's largest concentration of Victorian and Craftsman homes. Just West Adams documents these blocks and the homes on them, from the Phyllis Wheatley House to the Carolyn Bumiller Hickey House, and the wider district sweeps east toward Leimert Park, where the Olmsted Brothers master plan and the Life Magazine House tell a parallel story, traced in full in the history of Leimert Park. The full West Adams overview maps how the pieces fit.
All things architectural
Debbie Pisaro keeps a list for people who care about Los Angeles architecture: named-architect homes, designation news, and what is coming to market. Join it.
Get the architectural list or call (310) 362-6429The street Williams helped shape
Williams did not build in a vacuum on Victoria Avenue. His own house influenced the homes that went up around it: the city's own Lafayette Square preservation plan notes that his architectural choices shaped the designs of a number of other houses on the street as builders and architects working in the enclave expanded their repertoire for prominent clients. The result is a streetscape where a 1952 International statement sits comfortably among period revivals, all of it held together by the HPOZ that governs the district today.
That coherence is the point. Lafayette Square reads as a single designed place because it was one, planned in 1912 around the landscaped median of St. Charles Place and protected since as a contributing historic district. For a buyer, the value is not just the house, it is the certainty that the block will still look like this in twenty years. Debbie Pisaro walks buyers through what that protection means in practice, because the streetscape is part of what they are buying.
Does historic designation affect home value in West Adams?
The Williams sale is the cleanest local evidence that designation does not cap value. The house carried Historic-Cultural Monument status, sat inside an HPOZ with its exterior changes subject to review, and still sold for a reported neighborhood record at nearly double its 2018 price. Designation did not suppress the number. Documented provenance, a faithful restoration, and a buyer pool that understood the architecture produced it.
This is the part a West Adams seller should sit with, because the worry is common and the evidence runs the other way. Sellers of designated homes tend to assume the landmark status will narrow the buyer pool and cap the price. What the Williams sale shows, and what Debbie Pisaro sees across the district, is that the homes which sell at a premium are the ones whose history is documented, whose designation is understood, and whose marketing leads with the story rather than apologizing for it. A stripped Craftsman with a gray flip kitchen loses the exact thing a West Adams buyer is paying for. An intact one, well told, is the product.
The mechanics matter too. The standard appraisal compares square footage and bedroom counts, which is precisely where architectural value gets lost, so a record architectural sale in the district is the kind of context that belongs in front of an appraiser before the number comes back. Los Feliz Living covers this question in depth for that neighborhood, and the logic carries: see how designation affects home value in Los Feliz and the companion piece on selling a Mills Act home.
See it before it lists
Significant West Adams homes often trade quietly, the way the Williams house did. Debbie Pisaro's pocket-listings list is how design-literate buyers hear first.
Join pocket listingsWhat the Mills Act does, and where it stands in 2026
The Mills Act is a California program that lets the owner of a designated historic property trade a binding preservation commitment for a reassessed, usually lower, property tax bill. For years it was the standard sweetener on a landmark sale, and a home that already carries a contract holds something genuinely scarce. As of 2026 the City of Los Angeles program is effectively paused under the fee structure adopted earlier in the year, while unincorporated Los Angeles County and Long Beach continue to run active programs. A West Adams seller needs current answers here, not the old pitch, because a buyer will ask.
For the full mechanics, the city's own Mills Act program page and Historic-Cultural Monuments program are the primary sources, and Debbie's network covers the practical side: a plain-language guide to HCMs and the Mills Act. The programs are citywide, so the process reads the same whether the home is in Los Feliz or West Adams.
Own a historic West Adams home?
If you own a designated or architecturally significant home and want to know what it is worth in today's market, Debbie Pisaro reads these blocks house by house.
Start the conversationWho buys a house like this
The buyer for the Williams house was not a square-footage shopper. Significant architectural homes increasingly trade to a narrow, design-literate audience that arrives from across Los Angeles and beyond, researches architects by name, and pays for authenticity over newness. The Williams sale closed off market, both sides represented quietly, which is how trophy historic homes increasingly move, the way significant artworks do, between people who already know what they are looking at. Debbie works that same pool through the network's pocket listings channel and the architectural homes index that catalogs Los Angeles work by architect.
Reaching that buyer is not a generic listing job. It is architectural photography, real documentation, and a story told straight. That is the difference between a designated home that lingers and one that sets a record, and it is why the choice of agent matters more on these homes than on almost anything else. Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across West Adams and the surrounding neighborhoods, and her work with historic and architectural homes is documented rather than asserted. The same design-literate demand reaches well beyond the city, as the network's coverage of coastal California buyers shows.
Frequently asked questions
Who designed the Paul Williams house in Lafayette Square?
Paul R. Williams designed it for himself in 1952 at 1690 South Victoria Avenue. He was the first licensed Black architect west of the Mississippi and the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects, and he built the International style house as his own family home in the years after racial covenants in the enclave were struck down.
What did the Paul Williams house sell for?
The house sold in 2026 for $4,200,000, in an off-market transaction with the same brokerage representing buyer and seller. The price was reported as the highest ever paid for a home in Lafayette Square, and it followed a six-year restoration. That was nearly double the roughly $2.29 million the house brought in 2018 when it left the Williams family.
What is Lafayette Square known for?
Lafayette Square is a semi-gated 1912 residential enclave of about 250 homes inside the greater West Adams district, built around a palm-lined median as the last of developer George Crenshaw's ten Los Angeles tracts. It is a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone known for intact early-twentieth-century architecture and for becoming home to many prominent Black Angelenos after 1948.
Does historic designation affect home value in West Adams?
The evidence points to designation supporting value rather than capping it. The Williams house was a Historic-Cultural Monument inside an HPOZ and still set a reported neighborhood record. Homes that lose value are usually ones stripped of original character, not ones that are designated, since documented provenance is exactly what a West Adams buyer pays for.
What is the difference between an HCM and an HPOZ in West Adams?
A Historic-Cultural Monument is an individual landmark designated by the City of Los Angeles for its own significance. A Historic Preservation Overlay Zone is a designated district, like Lafayette Square, where exterior changes to contributing homes go through preservation review. Some West Adams homes are both an HCM and a contributing structure in an HPOZ.
Can I still get a Mills Act contract in Los Angeles in 2026?
The City of Los Angeles Mills Act program is effectively paused in 2026 under the fee structure adopted earlier in the year, so new city contracts are limited. Unincorporated Los Angeles County and Long Beach continue to run active programs. Homes that already hold a contract keep it, which makes those homes notably scarce.
Is the Paul Williams house open to the public?
No. It is a private residence and Historic-Cultural Monument No. 170, not a museum, and it sold privately in 2026. Its restoration was documented in Architectural Digest, and Paul Williams's wider legacy is being honored in a 2026 exhibition involving the Getty, LACMA, and USC, but the house itself is not open for tours.
Who is a good full-service real estate agent in West Adams?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market, founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader who represents buyers and sellers across West Adams and the surrounding neighborhoods. She specializes in architectural and historic homes and documents the district's landmarks on Just West Adams.
Why does an architectural home need a specialist agent?
Architectural and designated homes sell to a narrow, design-literate buyer pool and are routinely undervalued by standard square-footage appraisals. A specialist supplies architectural comps and provenance documentation, markets to the right buyers, and protects the price through escrow, which is the difference between a designated home that lingers and one that sets a record.
Get the West Adams letter from the Coastline 840 West Adams team.
Debbie Pisaro · (310) 362-6429 · debbie@coastline840.com · DRE #01369110
Join the listDebbie Pisaro and the Coastline 840 West Adams team specialize in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across West Adams and California. Debbie is the founder of Coastline 840, a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader (DRE #01369110). Published June 2026.