Design lovers might already be familiar with the residence: Los Angeles architectural photographer Julius Shulman, famous for spreading California's midcentury architecture around the world, captured this particular unit in 1964.
Explore this Cerritos Circle property on the market
Today, the four-bedroom garden home is on the market for $1,450,000, offering the opportunity to own a piece of Long Beach’s modernist architectural history. Located on Del Mar Avenue in the Los Cerritos / Virginia Country Club neighbourhood of Long Beach, an area known for its historic homes, the property is one of the 42 post-and-beam residential units designed by Clifton Jones Jr in 1963.
Spanning 2,768 sq ft of living space, the residence is arranged over a single storey as two mirroring side-by-side apartments, each featuring two bedrooms with their own ensuite bathrooms. At the centre of each home is an open-plan kitchen. East-facing dining areas were designed to capture the morning light, while west-facing family rooms receive the afternoon sun. Lofty, 10ft ceilings, sliding doors and monumental glass walls create a sense of spaciousness throughout, with living spaces leading to an entry courtyard and a fenced patio at the back.
The Cerritos Circle was developed on land that previously belonged to the Jones family and had been used for racehorse training. Influenced by his academic background at the USC School of Architecture, where he studied under Edward Killingsworth and Calvin Straub, and inspired the Southern California’s Case Study House programme of experimental homes built between 1945 and 1966, Jones Jr was eager to put his education into practice. His transformation of the site into a residential development reflects the midcentury ambition to rethink the relationship between architecture and contemporary everyday life.
‘This particular unit is being sold by the family of the original architect and developer Clifton Jones Jr. They have held onto it as a rental property since it was built’, says Nate Cold of Modern Californian House, an estate agency dedicated to the preservation of great architecture and design. ‘The side by side units feel more like single family homes, which works well for an owner to live in one and rent the other.’
More than six decades after it was built, the simple structural forms, flexible open-plan layouts and indoor-outdoor harmony of the unit remain a compelling expression of modernist ideals – and a sought-after piece of California’s architectural heritage.
For Sale: Cerritos Circle Duplex, Clifton Jones Jr. (1963), 4175 / 4177 Del Mar Ave., Long Beach CA, $1,450,000, via Modern California House