Elevation

760 m

Cubist modernism and old Hollywood pedigree on one of the enclave’s most architectural streets.

The Montalbán House

Number 1423 Oriole Drive—the Montalbán House—was the former home of actor Ricardo Montalbán. The original cubist-modern residence was designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. Irish developer Paddy McKillen later replaced it with a Paul McClean spec home that, in 2012, sold for $38,980,000—setting a Hollywood Hills sales record and signaling the enclave's turn toward trophy modernism. Oriole Drive's generous lots and gentle grade have made it a favored address for design-forward estates.

The Sale House & Number 1401

1455 Oriole Drive—the Sale House—is a 1949 Mid-Century Modern by the firm Smith & Williams, one of the earliest Case Study-era residences in the enclave. 1401 Oriole Drive has passed through a remarkable line of owners: formerly the home of Lionel Richie and later Grant Cardone, it is now owned by a Walmart heiress—a single address that distills four decades of the street's celebrity and financial pedigree.

A Promontory Above the City

Nearby, 9133 Oriole Way—marketed as the “Mockingbird Estate”—sits at the end of a private cul-de-sac on one of the largest view promontories in Los Angeles, listed at $34,995,000. The street's western flank borders the Trousdale Estates, tying Oriole to two of the Hills' most prestigious pockets.

Three Orioles, and the First Names on the Hill

Oriole is the only bird on the hill to have been given three separate roads. Oriole Drive, Oriole Way and Oriole Lane all appear among the nineteen bird-named streets on an early Renie atlas held in the Los Angeles Public Library's Central Library collection, which places them among the original cohort rather than the later additions — the naming programme began in 1924 and continued into the 1960s, when Blue Jay Way was finally added. The Bullock's Oriole that gives the Drive its name is a western bird of the open sycamore and cottonwood canopy, orange-and-black and sharply marked; the Hooded Oriole on Oriole Way is its flashier golden cousin. Having the earliest name and the widest promontories is most of the reason this is the street the enclave's record sales keep landing on.

The Trousdale Edge

Oriole's western boundary runs up against Trousdale Estates, and that line has a history. The land below it belonged to the Doheny family: Edward L. Doheny gave a sixteen-acre estate to his son Edward “Ned” Doheny Jr., who built Greystone there — a 46,000-square-foot, 55-room house that cost $3 million in 1928, four months after which Ned was shot dead by his secretary Theodore Hugh Plunkett, who then killed himself. Lucy Doheny sold the house to Henry Crown in 1955; the developer Paul Trousdale bought the surrounding estate and subdivided it into the tract that now carries his name. Beverly Hills bought Greystone itself in 1965, opened the grounds as a public park in 1971, and saw it added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Standing on the western edge of Oriole Drive, that whole sequence is within sight.

What Can Be Built Here

Anything built new here falls under the City of Los Angeles Baseline Hillside Ordinance, which governs residential construction in the city's designated Hillside Areas. Rather than one flat cap on size, the ordinance sizes a house by slope: a surveyor maps how much of the lot sits in each slope band, each band carries its own floor-area ratio, and the permitted floor area is the sum of those bands — so the steeper the parcel, the less house it yields. Height is measured as an envelope that follows the grade, stepping with the hill rather than rising from one flat plane, and grading permitted by right is capped at a share of lot size plus a fixed allowance before a discretionary review is required. This is the quiet reason a view lot above the Strip trades at a premium to its square footage: the ridge supplies the sightline, and the ordinance limits how much can be put in front of it.

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