Talmadge Street · Los Feliz architecture
Five recorded sales in forty years, no designation of any kind, and it is still almost exactly the house Raphael Soriano drew in 1939.
What is the Gogol House?
The Gogol House at a glance
The Gogol House at 2190 Talmadge Street in Los Feliz is a 1939 International Style residence by Raphael Soriano, built for the surgeon Louis J. Gogol. It has never been designated, and it has changed hands five times on the public record since 1981.
Most of the advice on buying a mid century modern home what to know is written for somewhere else. It comes from Phoenix, from Atlanta, from the Midwest, and it assumes a tract house on a flat lot with a homeowners association and a paint chart. None of that describes what happens on a Los Feliz hillside, where the houses that matter were one-off commissions and the thing you are actually buying is a piece of a very short list.
Here is the short list. Raphael Soriano drew roughly 151 projects and built about thirty-one of them. Around a dozen are still standing. One of those dozen is on Talmadge Street in Franklin Hills, it went up in 1939, and unlike most of the survivors it has been bought and sold repeatedly in living memory. That makes it the most useful house in his entire surviving body of work for anyone trying to understand what owning one of these is actually like.
Soriano trained under Richard Neutra and came up alongside the generation that included R.M. Schindler. He is the one people forget, partly because he built so little and lost so much of it. A Los Feliz realtor who has never heard the name is not unusual. That is precisely the gap worth knowing about, because the market prices what it recognises.
The Los Feliz list
Debbie Pisaro writes Los Feliz Living, on the neighborhood, its architecture, and its market. One email, nothing else.
Join the list or call (310) 362-6429Why a surgeon hired Soriano in 1939
The house was designed for Louis J. Gogol and his wife. Soriano was about thirty-five, three years past his first commission, and had not yet built anything in steel. What he had was an argument: that a house should be composed of a frame and a skin, and that the walls between them were free to be glass wherever the site made glass worth having.
Talmadge Street made it worth having. The lot falls away to the south and the house is arranged over multiple levels to take that fall rather than fight it, which is why it reads as small from the street and opens completely on the garden side. The county record puts it at 2,138 square feet, the listing history at 2,779. Both figures are in circulation and the difference is almost certainly the lower level, which is the kind of discrepancy an owner should settle before a buyer finds it.
What the house does not do is announce itself. There is no gesture at the curb, and someone driving up Talmadge on the way to Griffith Park would pass it without a second look. That is entirely consistent with the rest of his prewar work, and it is why so little of it was ever nominated for anything.
It also sits inside a cluster almost nobody has noticed. Between 1936 and 1939 Soriano built five houses within roughly a mile of each other on the eastside: the Lipetz House and the small Priver House facing each other across Dillon Street in Silver Lake, the Ross House on Valentine in Echo Park, the Austrian House on Landa, the Meyers House on Angelus, and this one. That is most of his prewar residential output, concentrated in a few hillside blocks. The Priver House was demolished in the nineteen forties and the rest are still there.
What five sales actually show
This is the part no other Soriano can offer, because the others almost never trade. The public record carries five sales on Talmadge Street: 250,000 dollars in October 1981, 505,000 in July 1988, 915,000 in July 2003, 1,238,000 in June 2011, and 3,500,000 in November 2021 against a 3,495,000 asking price set that September. It went to contract in a month.
Read that sequence carefully, because it does not say what people usually want it to say. The house did not appreciate because it was a Soriano. For thirty years it tracked its street. The step change arrives between 2011 and 2021, and in that window the house was restored and modernised by an owner who worked in design, and the wider market finally learned the vocabulary. Documentation and recognition arrived together, and the number followed them rather than leading.
That is the honest lesson for anyone weighing whether these houses are worth what they cost. The premium is not automatic and it is not architectural. It attaches to houses whose history is assembled, whose condition is real, and whose architect the buyer has actually heard of. The rest of the market sorts them as ordinary hillside inventory, which is exactly how this house was priced in 2003.
Los Feliz, off the market
Some of the best Los Feliz homes trade before they reach the open market. Debbie Pisaro sees them first.
See pocket listingsNothing protects this house
Six Soriano buildings carry Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument status, which is twice what most published accounts report. The Gogol House is not among them. It has never been nominated, it does not appear on the Los Feliz Improvement Association's own monument inventory, and Los Feliz has no historic preservation overlay zone to fall back on, so there is no district-level protection either.
Los Feliz has exactly two Soriano houses and neither one is designated. The other is the Schrage House on North Commonwealth Avenue, the steel and glass one from 1952. A neighborhood that keeps a long and careful record of its monuments and covers them one house at a time holds both houses by the first architect in California to frame a house in steel, and protects neither.
Buyer's note
An undesignated house has exactly as much protection as its current owner decides to give it. That cuts both ways. There is no review on alterations, which some buyers want, and no Mills Act path, which is the tax relief that makes a designated house cheaper to hold. What designation does to a home's value is worth understanding before you need the answer.
The Gogol House survived intact for eighty-seven years because five successive owners chose to keep it that way. Nothing required them to. That is a fragile arrangement to rest a piece of architectural history on, and it is the strongest argument anyone could make for nominating it.
All things architectural
Architects, monuments, and the houses worth knowing about across Los Angeles. Debbie Pisaro keeps the record.
Join the architectural listWhat to check before you buy one
Start with the permit. Los Angeles Building and Safety names the architect of record and settles a question that listing copy only ever asserts. Los Feliz produces confident attributions at a steady rate and a meaningful share of them do not survive the file, which is the single most expensive thing a buyer can fail to check.
Then read the condition against the drawings rather than against taste. On a house like this the original fabric is the asset, and a renovation that replaced it has spent the thing you came for. Ask what was repaired and what was swapped. Glass, framing, and the original plan are where the value sits, and buying an architectural home in Los Feliz is mostly this kind of reading.
Third, price the holding cost honestly. An undesignated house gets no Mills Act relief, and a prewar modernist house on a hillside carries maintenance a tract house does not. The Los Angeles house styles guide sorts the period by appearance, which helps at the front door, and the architects collection carries the record behind it. The Lovell Health House on Dundee Drive and the wider story of Los Feliz architecture are the local context, and over the hill the architectural houses in Studio City behave the same way. Soriano's last aluminum house is one of them.
Finally, understand that these houses move quietly. There are about a dozen Sorianos in existence and their owners bought them deliberately, so a sale is usually a conversation before it is a listing. That is the ground pocket listings and off-market homes in Los Feliz cover, and it is why selling an architectural home here looks nothing like a standard listing. Debbie Pisaro founded Coastline 840 to work that way, and the case for a boutique team is the same case. The full practice sits at debbiepisaro.com.
The Gogol House is a private residence and is not for sale. Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for 2190 Talmadge Street. She represents buyers independently on architectural homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Gogol House?
The Gogol House sits at 2190 Talmadge Street in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California 90027, on the Franklin Hills side of the neighborhood below Griffith Park. Raphael Soriano designed it in 1939 for the surgeon Louis J. Gogol. It is a private residence and it is not on the market.
Who was Raphael Soriano?
A Los Angeles modernist, born on Rhodes and trained at the University of Southern California, who drafted for Richard Neutra before opening his own office. He was the first architect in California to frame a house in steel and the first anywhere to frame one in aluminum. He died in 1988.
Is the Gogol House a Historic-Cultural Monument?
No. It has never been nominated and it does not appear on the Los Feliz Improvement Association's monument inventory. Los Feliz also has no historic preservation overlay zone, so there is no district protection either. The house has survived on the choices of its owners rather than on any legal status.
How much has the Gogol House sold for?
The public record carries five sales: 250,000 dollars in 1981, 505,000 in 1988, 915,000 in 2003, 1,238,000 in 2011, and 3,500,000 in November 2021 against an asking price of 3,495,000. For its first thirty years on record it tracked its street rather than its architect.
How many Soriano houses survive?
About a dozen. Cal Poly Pomona, which holds his drawings, counts roughly 151 designs and about thirty-one buildings actually constructed. The rest went to demolition and redevelopment, which leaves Soriano with one of the lowest survival rates of any major California modernist.
Are there other Sorianos in Los Feliz?
One. The Schrage House on North Commonwealth Avenue, a steel and glass residence occupied in 1952 and widely described as the most nearly original steel Soriano still standing. Neither of the two Los Feliz houses carries a monument number or any other designation.
What should I check before buying an architectural home?
Pull the original building permit, which names the architect of record and settles attribution that listing copy only asserts. Then read the condition against the original drawings, because original fabric is the asset. Then price the holding cost, including whether any tax relief is available at all.
Does a mid century modern house cost more to own?
Often, and the difference lands in maintenance rather than in the purchase price. Single glazing, flat roofs, exposed framing and original steel or aluminum sections all need specialists rather than a standard contractor. An undesignated house also has no Mills Act relief to offset it.
Who is a good real estate agent in Los Feliz?
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market, the founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Feliz. She works the whole market, from designated monuments to ordinary resales, and handles trust and estate sales.
For anyone working through buying a mid century modern home what to know, the Gogol House is the case worth studying: a documented Soriano, five sales deep, restored once and protected never. The Los Feliz realtor worth calling is the one who reads the permit and the drawings before quoting a number, and the best real estate agent in Los Feliz page covers how Debbie Pisaro works. More of the neighborhood is at losfelizliving.com.
Considering a Los Feliz home?
Talk to Debbie
Twenty-four years of Los Angeles real estate, with a specialty in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes.
Debbie Pisaro · (310) 362-6429 · debbie@coastline840.comDRE #01369110 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Reach DebbieDebbie Pisaro, DRE #01369110, is a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles market, the founder of Coastline 840, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across Los Feliz and the surrounding eastside neighborhoods. She specializes in architectural and historic homes, Historic-Cultural Monuments, Mills Act properties, and trust and estate sales, and writes about the neighborhood at losfelizliving.com.
✦ ✦ ✦
Los Feliz. Hyperlocal. Insider voice.
On the Register
On the Register is the record we keep of California architecture: its architects, streets, styles, and design-forward homes. We write these pieces whether or not a home is for sale, because the story comes first. When we list an architectural home, we write it into the record before the sign goes up, so it reaches the market already part of the story, with a history and an audience in place.
© 2026 Debbie Pisaro, Coastline 840 · ontheregister.com