These days, Brentwood is better known for glitzy new mansions and flashy celebrity residents like Travis Scott, Arnold Schwarzenegger and LeBron James, but the area still has plenty of historic charm — provided you know where to look. Witness this magnificent Spanish Colonial Revival estate, now nearly 100 years old and still well-preserved. Built in 1927, the sprawling home is known as El Sueno, or more commonly as the Milton Sills Residence in honor of its first occupant, 1920s Hollywood film actor Milton Sills (“The Sea Hawk”). In addition to his acting work, Sills was one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
According to archived records, the property was designed by Hollywood set designer Stephen Goosson, a good friend of Sills. Goosson is also probably one of the only practicing architects to have ever won an Academy Award; at the 1937 Oscars, he took home the Best Art Direction trophy for his Streamline Moderne set designs in the film “Lost Horizon.”
Sills, whose mother was a multimillionaire banking heiress, lived at El Sueno with his wife, silent film actress Doris Kenyon, the couple’s young son and Kenyon’s elderly mother, plus five live-in household employees — two full-time gardeners, one Finnish cook, one butler and a secretary, according to 1930 census data. At that time, the Brentwood estate was valued at $300,000, a huge amount of money in those days.
Unfortunately, Sills didn’t enjoy his lavish lifestyle for very long. In late 1930, the Chicago native died on El Sueno’s tennis court after suffering a sudden heart attack, barely three years after the house was completed. Over the past 90-odd years, the property has changed hands only a handful of times. The most recent sale occurred in the late 1950s, when the house was acquired by Evis Coda, a prominent child psychiatrist, and his wife Rosemary, a nurse.
The Codas raised their 13 children at El Sueno, and the entire family was