 Madeline Stuart brings age-old grace to a brand new Spanish Colonial home in Los Angeles This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of Architectural Digest. For better or worse, red tile roofs and white stucco walls are as much a part of the iconography of Southern California as palm trees and convertibles. If the area's earliest examples of Spanish-style architecture, with their courtyards and trickling fountains, poetically evoke its Hispanic past, some later manifestations—fast-food restaurants, McMansions—would confound the conquistadors. It's not every day, in other words, that one comes across a new house as romantic and refined as its early-20th-century predecessors. Let alone a house that goes its forebears one better. “I'd always loved the great homes by Wallace Neff and George Washington Smith and Reginald Johnson,” says Michael Rosenfeld, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur whose enthusiasm for Spanish Colonial architecture is perhaps rivaled only by his devotion to golf. Several years ago Rosenfeld acquired a choice piece of Santa Monica real estate that overlooked a eucalyptus-shaded fairway—but did not happen to come with a house by Neff or Smith or Johnson (the lot was vacant). So he found his way to two contemporary experts in the genre: architect Kevin A. Clark and interior designer Madeline Stuart, both based in L.A. Their collaboration on an Andalusian-inflected residence in Bel Air for musician Lindsey Buckingham won Rosenfeld over. “They share my passion for doing things right,” he says, “and for honoring the kind of workmanship that's so often lost today.” A great home of any vintage deserves a name, and El Sueño (the Dream) is Rosenfeld's fanciful designation for his. El Sueño may be firmly rooted in tradition, but there's nothing hidebound about it, beginning with its siting. Located toward the back of a deep rectangular lot, the dwelling sits at a quirky angle to its formal front gardens, its asymmetrical façade and weathered-looking shutters as unassuming as a farmhouse in Seville. “The idea was to create more presence for a long, conventional property,” Clark explains. “The house feels less blocky this way.” It is also less gloomy than its 1920s prototypes. “When people think of the Spanish style, they generally associate it with a dark, fortressy feel,” says Clark. “I wanted to make a home that had considerable natural light.” The architect designed the public rooms around a sunny courtyard with a mosaic-tile fountain right out of the Alhambra. A second courtyard and a loggia along the rear of the house reinforce the indoor-outdoor connection. El Sueño makes room for a few tricked-out spaces—theater, gym, putting green—that are very much of their time and place. But if the building is generously sized, at around 20,000 square feet, its rooms retain both the intimate proportions and the intricate details of another era. A crew of virtuoso craftsmen created all the millwork and grillwork; adzed, stenciled, and hand-painted numerous coffered ceilings; and forged every piece of hardware in the house. Decorative painter Jean Horihata devoted six months to the powder room alone, simulating ancient Islamic tilework by stenciling patterns over gessoed plaster, then glazing the walls like actual tiles. “Every project we collaborate on, Jean and I push each other a little further,” observes Stuart. “This time, I think I pushed her to the point of a nervous breakdown.” The antique stone soap dish in the powder room was the designer's very first acquisition for the house; the hand soap that sits in it followed. Stuart scoured the country for one-of-a-kind pieces—she acquired more than 250 antique and vintage light fixtures alone—without being slavish to the Spanish aesthetic. A circa-third-century Roman mosaic panel serves as a tabletop in the living room, where it joins an antique Bakhtiari rug and an Italian carved-stone fireplace worthy of San Simeon. In the library, a cozy room with a hand-painted ceiling frieze, a Jules Leleu table of mahogany, gilt bronze, and steel looks perfectly at home with a pair of 1890 Swedish black leather wing chairs. An 18th-century Italian handblown-glass chandelier illuminates the entry's star-motif marble floor (inspired by Palladio's Il Redentore church in Venice), Italian walnut commode, and moody abstract painting by John Virtue. “Anyone else might have hung a tapestry there,” says Stuart, “but the Virtue sends a message that this house is more than a mere reinterpretation of another time.” And Rosenfeld hardly treats the place like a museum. One of his hangouts of choice these days is a mahogany-paneled “clubhouse,” where he can be found playing poker with friends—when he's not out practicing his golf swing. He shares the home with his three children, who themselves are partial to the movie theater. So the present is essential here, but the past is never lost. As Stuart says, “What Michael really wanted was an old house, so this is a new old house in every way.” LEARN MORE AND VIEW GALLERY 