Photo Essay: The Stahl House, from Dusk to Night [Updated for 2025—For Sale]

[Last updated 11/23/25 2:02 PM PT—For the first time ever since it was completed in 1960 for Buck and Carlotta Stahl, the Stahl House (a.k.a. Case Study House #22) is for sale. It's listed at $25 million. 

Buck and Carlotta's children Bruce and Shari posted on Facebook: "This home has been the center of our lives for decades, but as we’ve gotten older, it has become increasingly challenging to care for it with the attention and energy it so richly deserves. The time has come to identify the next steward of Case Study House #22—someone who not only appreciates its architectural significance but also understands its place in the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and beyond."

The house itself is pretty well documented, so in my original blog post (published in 2012, below), I shared my feelings and showed my photos rather than retelling the story. 

Here it is:

This week, almost entirely released from my professional duties, I finally got to visit Pierre Koenig's Stahl House—prior attempts having been thwarted by the fact that you could not go alone, and now that you can go alone, you have to pay the equivalent of admission for two.

If I was ever going to go, I had to find a date. Miraculously, I eventually found one, and an architecture buff to boot (though also a friend of a friend whom I'd never met).

When I got there, I was so excited, I took a constant stream of photos, from dusk to twilight to night. And nearly all of them turned out great.

So I'll show as many as I can here, knowing that there are plenty of other iconic photos of The Stahl House - not the least of which by famous architectural photographer Julius Shulman—with whom I cannot compete.



But maybe I saw a glimpse of something no one else has seen. Or maybe I was able to capture it in an exact moment of light exposure or reflection which no one else has quite yet been able to accomplish.


Or maybe my photos are exact duplicates—or, worse yet, lesser copies—of the canon of Stahl House images, but they are mine, taken with my camera, seen with my eyes.

[Ed. 11/23/25 In 2017, I included the Stahl House in my roundup of "Six Lesser-Known Places to Fall in Love in L.A." for KCET (now PBS SoCal), writing that you could "take in the view as reflected in each other’s eyes." Now, more than 13 years after I visited (and fell in love a little bit with my date, who I'd never met before and have not seen again for years), the Stahl House is still my benchmark for romantic excursions for budding couples. 

I'm hoping whoever buys it will keep it open for tours—because Los Angeles is for lovers, and we need romantic excursions like this in our lives. 

Related Post:
Photo Essay: A Real Fixer-Upper