Unique Postmodern Building For Sale in LA Showcases Multifarious Appeal

"Unique" and "one of a kind" are terms often bandied about in commercial real estate. But in the case of Hayden Eaves' latest listing of a Los Angeles property, the cliche may well be true.

"There is literally nothing else like it," Eaves, a principal at the Los Angeles office of brokerage Avison Young, said of the Reges Residence. It's a postmodern landmark in L.A.'s Lincoln Heights neighborhood near downtown that just went on the market.

The more than 11,000-square-foot property at 698 Moulton Ave. has a storied architectural history that includes operating as power plant substation before becoming a home made of found materials and secret passages and an art gallery in an artist commune.

It is now marketed as a possible office space to architects, production studios, entertainment groups, attorneys, and the like. He said there is enough space for a 48,000-square-foot addition. The asking price: $7.3 million.

The property is just a few miles from the downtown L.A. Arts District, where major companies including music streaming firm Spotify and record label giant Warner Music Group have moved in to converted factories and warehouses and sparked a wave of new business and development in the area.

But the Reges property is so idiosyncratic in fact that it's hard to explain succinctly. And in a city that prides itself in its flair for the dramatic, that may be partially why Eaves said it has already gotten interest from some parties working in Burbank, where major studios including Walt Disney Co. are based.

In a 1997 feature, the New York Times' began describing the property by referring to Winston Churchill's description of Russia: "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

To be more specific, the Reges Residence began as a machine shop, built in 1922 by the Edison Electric Company.

In the early 1990s it was converted into a grand single family home and art gallery, by threading a web of scrap metal and reclaimed steel beams in, out and around the industrial building's multistory shell.

The resulting 11,700-square-foot building — a feat of "acrobatic structure and fearful asymmetry" as the Times put it — won the American Institute of Architects' National Design Award in 1998 and is now considered one of Los Angeles' historic homes.

Architect Clark Stevens told CoStar News that the house is a good reflection of the owners at the time, Richard Carlson and the late Kathleen Reges, who commissioned Stevens and Michael Rotondi to turn the vault-like structure into a home. Reges was well-known in Los Angeles' as an art collector. Carlson was the owner of a demolition company.

Together they converted the Pabst brewery nearby into a 16-acre artist colony, now locally famous as the Brewery Art Colony.

Working with them on the house was improvisational, "like jazz" said Stevens, who was a recent architecture graduate at the time. The Reges Residence was the second house of his career.

Rotondi and Stevens used in their design materials Carlson had salvaged, and they were often playing catch up with their very hands-on client who did the work himself, often immediately.

"Our office faced the property and every day I would go by it on my way to work and try to figure out what [Carlson] had done since the day before. From the front it would usually seem OK, but I'd go to our third or fourth floor window and see what he'd done," Stevens said.

Carlson, he said, couldn't go backwards. Instead of tearing the work out and reverting to the specs, they would have to incorporate it in and adjust. Some of the house's most enchanting features came about that way, including its long, mid-air lap pool that stretches from inside the house to the length of an open air terrace.

"Kathy said it would be nice to swim and look at the sunset, except that the view can only be seen at 16 feet off the ground," Rotondi told the Times. Carlson "responded that he could solve the problem with a couple of steel storage gas tanks in the yard: he'd simply cut one in half and lift it in the air to form a long pool. No problem."

The house also has a mezzanine and penthouse bedroom suite with 360 degree views of downtown Los Angeles, substantial and varied gardens, secret passageways, and a koi pond.

Reges and Carlson divorced in the early 2000s, and she lived in the house until her death in 2005. Since then it has been in the care of her companion, Leonard Pate.

Eaves did not identify the seller, but said that he was winding down his business and planning to move onto the next phase of his life.

Eaves is marketing the property as a possible office space. He said there is enough space for a 48,000-square-foot addition, should the new owners need it.

That it has attracted attention because of it offers a completely closed but varied environment, which has become very appealing to those trying to endure the rigors of working through the pandemic.

"People like that they have some control over their environment," Eaves said.

For his part, the Reges Residence is one of his favorite assignments.

"I notice something new every time I go there," he said.