For decades, fans made the pilgrimage to a quiet street in Studio City just to stand in front of it.
No tours, no tickets, no access, just a sidewalk and a fence and the unmistakable peaked roof that millions of Americans watched every week from 1969 to 1974.
The Brady Bunch house was always more than a filming location. Wednesday, Los Angeles made that official.
The LA City Council voted 13-0 to designate the property at 11222 Dilling Street as a historic-cultural monument, granting it landmark protections that will follow the home for as long as it stands.
It is now, officially, part of Los Angeles history.
What Is The Brady Bunch House And Where Is It Located?
The house sits in Studio City in the San Fernando Valley, a two-story shingle-and-stone home with a peaked roof that was built in 1959 and designed by architect Harry Londelius Jr.
Producers selected it for exterior establishing shots during The Brady Bunch’s five-season run largely because of its proximity to Paramount Studios and its distinctive mid-century design.
The thinking was simple: it looked exactly like the kind of house a successful architect named Mike Brady would live in.
What most viewers never knew was that the interior scenes, the kitchen, the living room, the staircase, were filmed entirely on a soundstage.
The sets bore almost no resemblance to the actual home.
The house America fell in love with was largely a facade. But that facade became one of the most recognized images in television history, and it pulled fans to that Studio City street long after the show left the air.
How HGTV Saved The Brady Bunch House From Being Sold
The moment the house nearly disappeared came in 2018 when it went on the market.
What happened next turned into a television story of its own. HGTV entered a bidding war that drove the price to $3.5 million, a staggering $1.6 million over the listing price for what was then a 2,400-square-foot home that hadn’t been updated to match the show’s interior in decades.
HGTV purchased it specifically to renovate the interior to match what viewers had seen on screen, a project documented in the four-part miniseries A Very Brady Renovation, which brought back all six of the original Brady kids to work on the house together.
The renovation turned the facade into a fully realized version of the home fans had imagined for fifty years.
HGTV eventually sold the property to Tina Trahan, wife of former HBO chief executive Chris Albrecht, for $3.2 million.
Trahan has described herself as a historic house enthusiast, and under her ownership the home was opened to the public for the first time late last year as part of a three-day charity fundraiser called The Brady Experience.
What Brady Bunch Landmark Status Means In Los Angeles
The status protects the home from demolition or major renovations without going through a design review process.
If the current or any future owner decides to make substantial changes, the Cultural Heritage Commission has the authority to delay the process and explore preservation solutions first.
In practical terms, it means no future owner can simply decide to tear it down or gut it beyond recognition.
The house that exists today is now the version Los Angeles has committed to protecting.
The LA Conservancy, which pushed for the landmark designation, was vocal about what it means.
Adrian Scott Fine, the organization’s president and CEO, said the vote was a long time coming.
“Few places capture the joy and optimism of mid-century family life quite like the Brady Bunch house,” Fine said. “For millions around the world that tuned in, it was simply a TV set — but here in the Valley, it stands as a real home, a pop-culture landmark, and a place where make-believe met real Los Angeles suburbia.”
Fine added:
“If you watched the Brady Bunch, you knew this house. People make a pilgrimage to see it. To have it designated like this, it makes it all the sweeter.”
The Brady Bunch House History: From TV Set To Cultural Icon
The show ran for just five seasons on ABC, premiering September 26, 1969 and ending in 1974.
Syndication gave it a second life that stretched across generations, which is why the house became a landmark in the cultural sense long before Wednesday’s vote made it official in the legal one.
The property appeared again in the 1995 big-screen film The Brady Bunch Movie and its sequel, and fans marked the show’s 55th anniversary in 2024 with a tour of the Studio City house.
The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission had unanimously recommended landmark status at its January 15 meeting, determining the designation met the criteria under the Los Angeles Administrative Code. Wednesday’s 13-0 city council vote was the final step.
For the generations of Americans who grew up with the Bradys, the house on Dilling Street was never just a house. Los Angeles just caught up with what they already knew.
