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Altadena’s ‘Neff Honeymoon Cottage’ finds a buyer 11 days after it listed

February 21, 2026

The meandering path that leads to the curved front porch. (Photo by Susan Pickering)

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The meandering path that leads to the curved front porch. (Photo by Susan Pickering)

It took 11 days for an Altadena home designed and built by lauded architect Wallace Neff for his bride, Louise Up de Graff, to find its buyer. Who are the soon-to-be-owners of the so-called Neff Honeymoon Cottage?

You’d be right if you guessed a pair of newlyweds.

That couple, whose names remain undisclosed, toured the Spanish Colonial Revival house with more than 400 other potential buyers. They were one of five offers made on the property, which hit the market on Feb. 6 for $1.6 million.

The seller, whose late husband show purchased the house in September 2002 for $775,007, accepted the couple’s offer made Feb. 17, and the property went into escrow two days later.

Within the next month, the newlyweds will move into the nearly identical 2,340-square-foot floor plan the Neffs originally inhabited for several years.

Completed in 1923, the house features three bedrooms and three bathrooms and sits on a third-acre lot behind mature hedges with a lawn and framed by eucalyptus trees, according to the listing.

A meandering path leads to the curved front porch.

The front door opens into the living room with a heavy beamed ceiling, terracotta floors and thick, hand troweled plaster walls.

A fireplace anchors the space were architectural details abound, including arched doorways and windows, interior wood shutters and ironwork in the form of sconces, vent grilles and the railing of the staircase.

The interior also includes a formal dining room next to the kitchen, which the owner remodeled. It features a marble top center island, decorative tiles and hand-painted accents.

An enclosed sunroom, originally a covered porch, offers a view of the central walled garden with a fountain.

The primary bedroom, which has a corner fireplace, offers direct access to a balcony that overlooks the lawn.

Matt McIntyre of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties has the listing.

In a career spanning over six decades, Neff not only designed grand period revival houses for the region’s rich and famous but made a lasting impact on California architecture. His work includes the transformation of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair mansion into a mock Tudor style, numerous homes in the Pasadena area and innovative dome-shaped bubble houses, which he promoted as a solution to the housing crisis of the 1940s and ’50s.

In June 2025, the house he built for his brother in Pasadena in 1946 sold for $1.675 million.

Neff died in 1982 at 87.

Altadena’s ‘Neff Honeymoon Cottage’ finds a buyer 11 days after it listed Orange County Register

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Altadena’s ‘Neff Honeymoon Cottage’ finds a buyer 11 days after it listed

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