A 1960s L.A. Home With Epic Views Across the San Fernando Valley

In the early 1960s, a comedian named Thomas Young commissioned architect William E. Mader, then just in his mid-30s, to design a modestly sized modern home in the Studio City area of Los Angeles, on a steep slope along a sleepy, serpentine street just off famed Mulholland Drive with epic views over a huge swathe of the San Fernando Valley.

Mader, a USC graduate who in 1965 became the principal architect for the Irvine Company, a prolific real estate developer responsible for…