Anyone who’s driven through the Hollywood Hills has marveled at the mansions that dangle off the mountainside, perched on nothing more than spindly support beams and thin air. What voyeurs (and commuters) will have missed, though, is a certain mid-century compound, hidden behind a gate and landscaping, that sits on a miraculous plateau—1.25 acre of nearly flat ground.

The house, which has four bedrooms and four baths spread across approximately 4,500 square feet of living space, was built in 1959 by architect Eugene Kinn Choy. He designed various houses in the style of modernist architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, but distinguished himself by making houses that were quite livable.

This one, intended for a nuclear family (the Branders), was zoned to include a tennis court. The Branders were horticulturally minded though, and instead opted for a very large rose garden.

When photographer Erica Martin’s parents bought the house in 1973, though, her mother, a judge, “was really into tennis,” Martin says, and duly bulldozed the gardens to install a fenced-in court. Her parents also modestly increased the house’s footprint by widening a wing; aside from enlarging the kitchen, they kept things basically the way Choy had envisioned.

“They loved the style of the house,” says Martin. “I don’t think they were thinking of it as architecturally significant—remember, for them, it was a contemporary.”

There was one exception to the house’s clean lines: Martin’s father, a lawyer, installed a “traditional Irish pub in the den,” she says. “There was wood paneling hanging down. It looked like a miniature set for Cheers.”

Her parents lived there for the next 30 years. Over time, as their needs, taste, and styles changed, they made minor interventions, bringing the house farther from its original aesthetic.

Her mother died in 2005 and her father, in 2009.

Nearly a decade later, Martin, who moved in with her own family to take care of her ailing father, has put it on the market with Christie’s International Real Estate, for $9.288 million.

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