“I want people to come to this house and fall in love,” says musician Scout Willis wistfully, imagining the parties that will surely unfold in the charming storybook house in Hollywood that her friends have nicknamed “the Chapel of Love.” “I want people to meet each other here and make out,” she says, nostalgic for the sort of in-person encounters that take place in her recent music video “It Ain’t Nothing,” where she and costar Thomas Doherty lock eyes and graze fingertips amid revelers in a sprawling mansion.
For Willis, though, this time it’s the house itself she fell for. “I walked in and saw this ceiling,” she says over FaceTime, showing off the home’s groin-vaulted entryway, still sporting its original colored plaster. “And I immediately felt it.” The quaint, Normandy-style cottage, built by architect Frederick A. Hanson (best known for his contributions to the Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery) in the 1920s had been hardly touched since, its yard anchored by an enormous eucalyptus tree. A self-professed “nerd for LA history,” Willis jumped at the opportunity to serve as a custodian for such a unique piece of the city.
As the house is a designated historical landmark, its petite footprint and signature façade could not be significantly altered. Not that she wished to do so. Still, Willis wanted to make it her own, so she called on Roman Alonso, of the AD100 firm Commune Design, who she’s known for more than a decade, to help her recalibrate the place for herself and her rescue pup, Grandma. They stripped ceiling beams to reveal original wood, subtly revised windows to create more airflow, and renovated the kitchen and closet (the latter transformed from a second bedroom). But mostly, they honed the vibe. “I wanted it to feel like an adult woman’s home. And at the same time, like an absolute whimsical, sensual child’s playground,” she reflects. In the results, you can sense Commune’s guiding hand behind Willis’s singular, unerring style. “Scout wanted the house to reflect her personality,” explains Alonso. “So it was really about showing her all the options. She chose everything—the tile; the colors. We’d put together palettes and then she’d mix them all up—and it worked!”
