Walk through one of L.A’s most glamorous, storied homes – on market for $40 million
The beautiful and iconic Paramour Estate in the tony Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles has hit the open market for the first time — with a price tag of $39.995 million.
Also known as the Canfield-Moreno Estate, the mansion is perched high on a 3.4-acre lot with views of the Pacific Ocean, downtown Los Angeles and San Gabriel Mountains. The walled, four-story, 22,000-square-foot home comes with 15 bedrooms and 15 baths.
Designed by renowned architect Robert D. Farquhar, creator of the Hollywood-famous Owlwood Estate, the residence includes ceiling beams painted to match the colors in the home’s fabrics, a bar covered in zebra skin, a grand ballroom with a 25-foot-high ceiling, gilded mirrors, bold colors, crystal chandeliers, an 11-foot-deep marble-hand-tiled pool and sunroom.
There are staff quarters and four guest cottages, two guest suites, lush landscaping with rose gardens. Parking can accommodate 50 cars.
“Enter the walled compound through ornate iron gates and be welcomed by a dramatic driveway that ascends to a circular motor court adorned with a garden of roses,” according to the official listing for the property, located at 1923 Micheltorena St., Los Angeles, California.
The history behind the $40 million estate is epic.
“Paramour played host to lavish celebrity parties and was ultimately dubbed by the tabloids as ‘The Most Beautiful Home in Hollywood,’” according to the website TopTenRealEstateDeals.com.
Silent film star Antonio Moreno and his wife, socialite and petroleum heiress Daisy Canfield Moreno, commissioned Farquhar to build the place in 1923.
“Daisy hired the most famous architect of the time to design and build a monument-mansion where she could overlook Hollywood from the highest ridge in the Los Angeles basin,” reported TopTenRealEstateDeals.com. “It was the most opulent mansion of the era and like many of the old L.A. mansions, was full of celebrity connections and intrigue.”
Canfield’s home doubled as a boarding school for orphaned girls.
Shortly after she separated from Moreno in 1933, Daisy Canfield was killed when her chauffeur drove her car off a 300-foot cliff along Mulholland Drive while returning home from a party. After her death, the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception purchased the estate, using it as a convent and a boarding school, while sheltering orphans during the Great Depression.
The sisters sold the run-down property to Hollywood designer Dana Hollister for $2.25 million in 1998. She set out on a course to restore the nearly 100-year-old main building and guest houses to their glorious prime.
Hollister described the huge restoration process to Forbes magazine.
“The opulent gilded mirrors, crystal chandeliers, allegorical artwork, chinoiserie, taxidermy and silk upholstered settees ... set a feeling of environmental submersion or time travel,” she told Forbes. “I removed a lot of Formica, linoleum, and red wall-to-wall carpeting to reveal the wood countertops and the walnut, travertine, and pink marble floors.”
In the process, she discovered hidden cabinets where alcohol was stored during the Prohibition years, according to Forbes.
The listing agent is Sally Forster Jones of the SFJ Group at Compass.
Paramour Estate “transports you to another world with the most beautiful grounds, greenery and surrounding, jaw-dropping views,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
This story was originally published April 8, 2021 at 11:04 AM.
