It is the second most photographed home in the United States. (Behind the White House and inexplicably ahead of Graceland) despite the fact that the house has been vacant for years. This house located on Dilling Drive in the Studio City section of Los Angeles served as the external shot for the home of televisions “The Brady Bunch”. The show only ran five seasons (1969-1974) but in 1975 the show went into syndication and has never gone off the air since.
The house was a private residence and despite all my research, I have never been able to uncover exactly why this house was chosen. It does look like somewhere a prominent architect like Mike Brady might live though. The owner of the home sold it for just sixty thousand dollars in 1973 (while the show was still running). For the new tenants though, the house was anything but Idyllic. People who stop and take pictures often trespassing into the yard and the neighbors complained about all the cars driving around day and night. As the show began to grow in popularity over the years the visitors became worse,
When the owners decided to sell, they asked for 1.6 million, Many of the potential buyers were disappointed to discover the house’s interior was nothing like the set on the show. (Much like the “Cheers Bar” in Boston, the interior was fictionalized and not based on an actual layout of the property.) I always had a fantasy of buying the house (with my fantasy lottery money of course) and design the inside of the house to actually match the set from the mythical “Brady House.”
Lo and behold, someone “stole’ my idea. The American television network HGTV has actually bought the house and with the help of the surviving cast members (which is sadly just ‘the kids’ ) rebuilt the interior to match the show. They went to painstaking lengths to match everything exactly as it appeared on the show. I’m not sure what their plans are now, but it would make a very nice type of museum. Or what about an Air B&B? Wouldn’t it be cool to say you stayed in Greg’s bedroom?
