About Just Silver Lake

Why this site exists

I come to most places through their houses, and few neighborhoods in Los Angeles have as many remarkable ones packed into so few hills as Silver Lake. My office at 160 Glendale Boulevard is in Echo Park, a few minutes from the reservoir, so these are streets I know well.

Silver Lake is one of the great laboratories of California modernism. Rudolph Schindler built the How House on Silver Ridge Avenue in 1925. Richard Neutra built his own home and studio, the VDL Research House, on Silver Lake Boulevard in 1932; after a fire in 1963 he and his son Dion rebuilt it, and it is now a National Historic Landmark. The Neutra houses that gathered near it on the east shore are known as the Neutra Colony. Raphael Soriano’s first house, the Lipetz House on Dillon Street, followed in 1936, and Harwell Hamilton Harris’s Hawk House in 1939.

After the war, Gregory Ain designed the Avenel cooperative houses, built in 1947 for ten families who pooled their resources, and John Lautner spent years on Silvertop, the curved concrete house on a hilltop above the reservoir. Before all of them came the reservoir itself, built by William Mulholland in 1907 and named for water commissioner Herman Silver. The Spanish Revival, Craftsman and mid-century homes on the surrounding streets are a big part of what people buy and sell here today.

Just Silver Lake is where I keep that record: the architects, the streets and the houses, written plainly and specifically, so that when you’re ready to buy or sell, you already know the story.

Who I am

I’m Debbie Pisaro, a California real estate agent. I’ve spent 24 years helping people buy and sell homes in this state, and I’ve been recognized as an Inman Luxury Leader. My office is in Echo Park, next door to Silver Lake, and my work takes me up and down the coast.

I founded Coastline 840, named for the 840 miles of California coastline, because I’ve never wanted to be confined to one zip code. California’s architecture is what keeps me in love with this work: Spanish Colonial Revival, Craftsman, post-and-beam, the early modern houses of the 1920s and 1930s, mid-century modern, and the historic homes that still carry the names of the people who designed them.

My architectural homes practice, bio and full contact details are at debbiepisaro.com/about.

Where I work

I represent buyers and sellers throughout Silver Lake and across California.

• Silver Lake. The hills around the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe reservoirs, the Moreno Highlands, the Silver Lake Hills, and the flatter streets toward Sunset Junction and Sunset Boulevard.
• The neighbors. Los Feliz has its own guide at Los Feliz Living. Echo Park, Angelino Heights and Elysian Heights are covered by Just Echo Park, and Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Mount Washington, Atwater Village and the rest of Northeast LA by Just NELA.
• California. Clients whose search crosses neighborhood or county lines, up and down the coast.

For my architectural homes practice, see debbiepisaro.com. For statewide California, see Coastline 840.

Working with me

If you’re reading this and thinking about buying or selling in Silver Lake, I’d be glad to help. You can reach me through the contact page, by email at debbie@coastline840.com, or by phone at (310) 362-6429.

For the rest of California, see Coastline 840.