Inside the Unexpected $2.5 Million Sale of a Secret Frank Gehry Masterpiece

The sale of the Sirmai-Peterson House was not supposed to happen this way.

There was no splashy launch, no curated unveiling celebration, and no carefully timed market debut designed to stir competition among architecture collectors.

In fact, the storied Frank Gehry-designed Los Angeles residence, which was completed in 1988 and is widely regarded as one of the more significant examples of the icon's early residential work, never even made it to market—yet it still sold for $100,000 over its intended asking price.

“This was a highly unusual transaction,” says Brian Linder, AIA, an architecture broker with Compass who represented the property alongside Rick Grahn. "The property never formally entered the market—there was no public rollout."

While off-market sales are nothing new, the agent explained that he had every intention of marketing the Thousand Oaks property publicly, with an asking price of $2.35 million, but said he never even got the chance to post a listing before an irresistible offer was made.

The buyer, a local architectural enthusiast and a longtime fan of Gehry's work, had heard whispers about its impending arrival on the market and decided to undercut a potential bidding war by making "an offer the seller couldn't refuse," slipping in before listing photography was completed.

The offer in question? $2.45 million, a full $100,000 over the price tag that Linder had planned to put on the 3,600-square-foot home.

"The buyer encountered the house the day before photography and made an offer the seller couldn’t refuse," Linder reveals. "It speaks to how these properties can move outside conventional channels.”

Of course, the property in question is no ordinary home—but rather a shining example of Gehry's talents and one of the first to become available since the architect's death in December 2025.

“This is a rare example of Frank Gehry working at the scale of a house, at a moment when his ideas were still being developed in built form,” Linder explains. “You can see him testing concepts here that later become more widely known in his institutional work.”

Commissioned in 1983 and completed five years later, the Sirmai-Peterson House occupies a pivotal moment in Gehry’s career. It arrived after the experimental edge of his 1970s work, but before the global recognition that would define him in the 1990s and beyond.

What makes the dwelling that much more special is its under-the-radar appeal, with Linder explaining to the New York Post—the first outlet to report the sale—that is was very much "hidden in plain sight," largely due to the very private lives of its owners, who had lived there since it was built.

"Nobody knew about this house really," he told the publication. "It was published in the late ’80s, but then the owners have lived in it since then and are just very private people … it was kind of hiding in plain sight out there."

The home was completed in the same year that the Pritzker-winning architect was first called upon to design the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a building that is arguably one of his most famous but which would not open to the public until the early 2000s.

Yet even before his more dramatic works took shape, Gehry was refining ideas that would later reshape contemporary architecture—concepts like fragmentation, material honesty, and a resistance to traditional architectural unity.

“What makes the house unusual is that it’s not conceived as a single object,” Linder says. “It’s a collection of independent volumes—almost a small village—where living happens between buildings as much as within them.”

Arranged around a central courtyard, these structures create a kind of architectural choreography. Movement between rooms and spaces requires stepping outside, engaging with the environment, and experiencing the property as a sequence rather than a container. Southern California's gentle climate accommodates this.

“Most houses prioritize enclosure and continuity,” Linder adds. “Here, Gehry breaks that apart. You move through the site, between structures, always aware of the landscape. It changes how you experience domestic space.”

The display of the materials used also diverges from the traditional paths most residential architects take.

Gehry’s style was unapologetically direct and unrefined. He used smooth stucco, galvanized metal, and concrete block on the exterior, with interiors that expose framing, drywall, and plywood. Nothing is concealed for the sake of polish and a gleaming "finished" look.

“At a time when a lot of architecture is driven by image, this house is grounded in ideas,” Linder says. “It’s less about how it looks in a photograph and more about how it’s experienced over time.”

Those qualities help explain why the property appealed so strongly to the eventual buyer, someone who was appreciative not just of aesthetics, but also of architectural intent.

Over time, the property evolved, most notably with the addition of a guesthouse designed by Brian Murphy of BAM, a former member of Gehry’s office. Rather than imitating the original structures, Murphy approached the project with an effort to harmonize.

“The guesthouse by Brian Murphy doesn’t try to replicate Gehry’s work,” Linder says. “It’s more restrained, but it operates within the same logic—independent, carefully sited, and in dialogue with the original composition.”

Sellers agents Linder and Grahn were originally connected to the property through an indirect route.

"My business partner and I were selling architect Donald Wexler's home in Palm Springs when a friend of the Sirmai-Peterson family visited the property," Linder shares. "He realized we specialize in architectural properties and recommended us for the Frank Gehry house."

Soon after, Linder and Grahn came on board to represent the sellers of the Gehry-built residence in Thousand Oaks

Meanwhile, an observant neighbor noticed that that there was something going on at the property, which had been sitting quietly and seemingly unattended for some time.

It seems that the original owners, who raised their family in the home, had not been in residence for quite some time.

Barbara Sirmai passed away in 2025, and her husband, Mark Peterson, had been facing health issues. The couple had primarily been living in Minneapolis until their home there sold, after which Peterson relocated to a nearby single-level residence; he no longer wanted to navigate stairs, making the Gehry-designed compound less practical for daily life.

He decided it was time to put the home in shape so he could turn the stewardship of it over to someone else who would appreciate it and care for it.

“With architect-designed homes, especially ones of this caliber, the conversation is less about ownership and more about stewardship,” Linder notes. “The goal is continuity—carrying forward the original intent."

The sales prep efforts did not go unnoticed.

“I saw the contractors in the driveway and Mark being helped into a car and put two and two together,” the buyer says.

She immediately contacted her agent, Cindi Gortner of Pinnacle Estate Properties, who had heard about the property through an even more informal channel: “the window washer.”

The buyer and the agent hurried over to the property, arriving as architectural photographer Cameron Carruthers was preparing to shoot listing photos. Before the photos were even processed, Linder and Grahn received a phone call from the agent, with the $2.45 million offer.

Why go through the time and expense of officially listing the property when an excellent offer, from someone who truly realized and appreciated the home's architectural value, had already been extended?

To understand why a buyer would watch a driveway, make a call, and submit an above-asking offer before the listing photographer had processed the film, you have to know who Gehry was, and what it means to own something he created.

Born Frank Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, Gehry was a Canadian-American architect known for his postmodern designs and use of unconventional forms and materials. He died on Dec. 5, 2025, at the age of 96, leaving behind a built legacy that reshaped how the world thinks about what a building can be.

He rose to prominence in the 1970s with a distinctive style that blended everyday materials with complex, dynamic structures. Corrugated steel, chain-link fencing, exposed plywood—all deployed with an intelligence and wit that initially baffled critics and neighbors alike before winning over the greater architectural world.

His most famous works include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris — buildings characterized by their sculptural, often undulating exteriors and innovative use of materials such as titanium and stainless steel.

He was awarded every major prize that architecture has to offer, including the field's top honor, the Pritzker Prize, as well as the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal and his native country's highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

What made Gehry singular was not simply the shapes, but the thinking behind them. He stated his own philosophy plainly: "I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit."

The Sirmai-Peterson House belongs to that lineage of experimentation. It reflects a moment before Gehry’s style became globally recognizable—when his architecture was less about iconic silhouettes and more conceptual.

“There are very few Gehry-designed residences, and even fewer that come to market,” Linder says. “Properties like this tend to trade quietly, often between buyers who already understand their significance.”

Even so, this sale came as a fortuitous surprise. Everyone is happy, everyone wins, and it's believed that Gehry would be pleased.