san Vicente Courtyard Apartments
Santa Monica, California

In 2016, Chattel prepared Mills Act contract applications for a total of six courtyard apartment complexes for a single owner. The properties are all contributors to the then recently City-designated San Vicente Courtyard Apartments Historic District. Uniquely, each building is organized around a courtyard recessed from the street. Two properties were previously identified in the City Historic Resource Inventory as separately eligible for local designation, including 212 San Vicente, a Streamline Moderne half-court designed by architect William E. Foster and completed in 1937, and 614-618 San Vicente, an American Colonial Revival style full-court designed by architect Edith Northman and completed in 1948. Northman was one of the first women to be licensed to practice architecture in California.

The building at 234 San Vicente designed by architect M.L. Riesenberg and completed in 1953 features steel stairways modeled after Marcel Breuer’s 1950 Stillman House in Litchfiled, Connecticut. It was the first of the group of six to progress through the Certificate of Appropriateness process with the Landmarks Commission. Chattel collaborated with architect Corsini Stark and landscape architect KSA Design Studio to re-imagine the interior courtyard, rehabilitate original aluminum sash casement windows, identify appropriate stacked aluminum awning windows to replace jalousie windows, paint and landscape the property to reflect its Mid-Century Modern style aesthetic. A new cabana was constructed to support a remodeled pool area.

In 2019, Chattel prepared a Mills Act contract for the Sea Cliff Apartments at 451 San Vicente, growing the number of Mills Act contracts in the historic district to more than a quarter of the 26 contributing apartment complexes.