Benedikt and Lauren Taschen List Restored 1956 Beverly Hills Home for $25 M.
The ARTnews Top 200 collectors have spent eight years restoring the Adelman Residence, a 5,000-square-foot mid-century modern home designed by Thornton Abell and O'Neil Ford. It has been listed by Carolwood Estates for $25 million.
A Mid-Century Modern Restoration Comes to Market
Benedikt and Lauren Taschen, listed among the ARTnews Top 200 collectors, have put their Beverly Hills home on the market for $25 million. The listing is handled by Carolwood Estates.
The Adelman Residence is a 5,000-square-foot mid-century modern house designed by architects Thornton Abell and O'Neil Ford in 1956. The Taschens bought the property in 2018, when it was listed for $13,900, and have spent the past eight years restoring it in detail.
What the Restoration Covered
The work extended across the property. The tennis court, original to the site from when it was part of Charlie Chaplin's estate, was refurbished, along with the pool, the gardens and the guest house. Interior architectural details were also restored: cork floors, sliding Shoji screens and a small wood-paneled elevator.
The Taschens purchased the Adelman Residence from the daughter of its original owners, Lucy and Isadore B. Adelman.
Benedikt Taschen founded Taschen Books in 1980. It is now one of the best-known publishers of coffee table-style art and design books, with the tag line "books for optimists."
A Collector's Eye in the Listing Photos
As a collector, Taschen owns works by many artists of his own generation, among them Tom of Finland, Albert Oehlen, Jeff Koons and Martin Kippenberger. The house's listing photos, however, show several large colorful paintings by Grace Weaver, an American artist in her '30s. One, of a woman's head in profile, appears in the entryway; a triptych is hung above the headboard in a bedroom; and another large-scale painting of a striding figure is in the living room.
Preserving a Piece of Hollywood History
Taschen told the New York Times that others who bid on the property in 2018 intended to tear it down and rebuild. "All they loved was the beautiful site to build another spec monster," he recounted in an email. Taschen ended up buying the home, which is across the street from the colonial revival estate he has lived in since 2017, from the daughter of its original owners.
"We wanted to preserve a piece of history in ground zero of the golden age of Hollywood," Taschen told the Times.
The listing photographs are by Nils Timm.
