Reporting by X Neistat (age 7) and Lua Carson (age 6)
For years, drivers on Route 27 in Topanga have passed the same half-built, graffiti-covered house slumped against the canyon wall. Last weekend, X Neistat and Lua Carson pulled over to see why, suddenly, it was painted white and crawling with construction workers.
“We pulled over on the side of the road, and asked them, and that’s why we are doing this report,” Lua explained.
The kids met the lead contractor, a man named Peter, who has been trying to finish this house for forty years. “Peter is a construction worker,” X said. “His boss’s family owns the house, and he’s hiring him to fix it so he can live there forever. The house can be passed on for generations, and they can live there forever.”
Peter’s boss is Per Christianson, who has placed the property in a trust for his children and grandchildren. “They’re not building it for, like, just one person living in it,” Lua said. “It’s going to be Peter’s boss’s house so his family can live in it for generations. It’s not just a house for one generation.”
The house had come close to being knocked down. “It was going to get demolished,” Lua reported. Instead, the cleanup began. The county required the graffiti be covered, a locked gate installed on a foot-accessible bridge at the entrance, and a fence added to keep squatters out. Peter’s crew has already hauled away seven full trailers of trash — and they aren’t finished.
“We looked under where the elevator is going to be built,” Lua said, “and there’s a bunch of cans and bottles down there, a CD player, a chair, cans and bottles, and rusty pieces of metal.”
The rebuild ahead is long, and the kids ran through it in order: “They’re going to take the floor off there. There’s a big wood floor, and they’re going to take it off and build a new floor, and they’re building a roof, and then they’re going to take out all the trash from underneath the floor, then build the floor back up, then they’re probably going to build the fireplace, then the chimney, then the roof, then the elevator, then the stairs. A lot of stuff’s going on, because the stairs have no railing.”
Two features stood out. “The elevator goes in the middle of the spiral staircase,” X said. “The entrance to the house is going to have a little drawbridge from the driveway.”
They walked the bridge themselves. “We went on it, but Peter said that we had to be careful because there are no railings,” X said. “He said that in six months it will look like it’s a house that someone can live in.”
One detail they want everyone to know: “There’s one bit of graffiti that they’re going to save, because Peter’s boss wanted there to be one thing left so you can still see what it used to be like.”
Editor’s note: The property on Route 27 has long been tied to Topanga rock history. Canned Heat guitarist and vocalist Alan Wilson is said by some locals to have spent time in the canyon before his death there in September 1970.
