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"View Slideshow\n\nIn 1954 a young real estate developer named Paul Trousdale purchased 410 acres of ranch land above Beverly Hills from the oil-flush Doheny family and set about transforming the chaparral-covered expanse into a glamorous residential enclave. Early ads for the development, known as Trousdale Estates, promised householders \"a life above it all.\" On generous lots with canyon, city and ocean views, the best local architects (Wallace Neff, James E. Dolena, A. Quincy Jones) created modern dream homes for boldfaced names, from Elvis Presley to Richard Nixon. For himself Trousdale reserved a secluded knoll looking out on the Pacific Ocean and commissioned John Elgin Woolf to design a residence in his Hollywood Regency style.\n\nIn recent years the area's reputation as an architectural haven has attracted a new wave of design-minded notables. When Donna Livingston and her husband, Norman Perlmutter, began house hunting a few years ago, the interior designer not only had the savvy to scour Trousdale Estates, she had the luck to score the estate of Paul Trousdale. The property had changed hands only once before, and Woolf's trademark details\u2014mansard roof, Pullman doors, high ceilings, oval windows\u2014were all intact. \"As soon as we walked in, we were sold,\" says Livingston, perched on a tiger-print-upholstered Russian Neoclassical bench in her living room, the last of the day's sunlight slanting through pine trees outside the room's 10-foot-tall wall of glass. \"What's wonderful about this house is that it has grand proportions but it's also intimate. It sort of reminds me of Loretta Young\u2014opening the door and twirling around in her gown?\"\n\n\"As soon as we walked in, we were sold. What's wonderful about this house is that it has grand proportions but it's also intimate.\"\n\nYoung\u2014for television viewers too tender to remember\u2014knew how to make a dramatic first impression. Livingston initially planned to leave well enough alone, spending no more than a few months updating and redecorating. \"But I kept thinking, I'm always going to want to have the Donna Livingston look,\" she relates, \"whatever that is to me in my head.\" In this case, the Donna Livingston look would entail two years of planning and construction. The designer opened up the living room by replacing its picture window with a 21-foot-wide window wall, turned a man's dressing room into a cozy walnut-paneled library, raised the ceiling of the octagonal master bedroom a foot and a half to give it the volume of the other rooms, and added a his-and-her master bath wing. Outside, she reconfigured the curvilinear swimming pool to get rid of its \"Mickey Mouse ears\" and had the grounds formally landscaped.\n\nAs far as the interiors went, says Livingston, \"I grew by living in my own creation. I wanted to have my signature warmth, the color combinations I like, and yet in some ways my overall style changed a bit with the house. I wanted to be a little funkier with certain things.\" Livingston's idea of funk, it should be said, may be a little less funky than yours or mine. Most of the rooms seamlessly mix Neoclassical and Moderne elements with a few breakaway touches. If a pair of George II-style consoles topped with French terra-cotta sphinxes on either side of the living room fireplace set the formal tone, the 1950s neo-Cubist painting above the mantel gently tweaks it. Similarly, an octopus-like 1970s Murano chandelier saves the stately dining room from stuffiness, while a leather wing chair in the paneled library \"looks like it has the personality to just walk away.\"\n\nFor all her efforts, Livingston is satisfied that the residence \"still keeps in the language of a John Woolf house. I'm sure he'd be very proud to see the transformation.\" As was the designer herself. \"I like to do all my projects turnkey, so when the client comes in, it's done, it's wow. The day I moved in, I probably had 100 people coming at the last minute for that frenzy of getting it done\u2014getting the candles going, the fireplaces lit, the champagne in the bucket. And that Loretta Young feeling came to mind. At the end of the day I had my hair blown dry, put an evening gown on, had dinner for two set. And I walked in, and it was just perfect.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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