Built in 1925

Reimagined in 2022

In the 1920’s as the areas around Los Angeles were changing from sprawling ranchos to the dense metropolis we now know, construction began on a castle overlooking it all.  Sylvestre Dupuy, who had become wealthy in Los Angeles by farming and raising sheep, had a dream to recreate the castles of his youth spent in the Pyrenees mountains of France.

The house was completed in 1925 and the Dupuy family, led by Sylvestre and his wife Anna Candelot, moved in with their 4 children. Extended family from both the US and Europe soon followed.  The Dupuy family called their home “the house on the hill,” and in those early days the laughter of children could be heard coming from the turrets, and the fragrance of homemade wine wafted from the cellar. 

The Dupuy’s were a private family, which led to rumors of the castle being a hide out for gangsters and ghosts.  The Dupuys and Candelots stayed in the house a until after Sylvestre’s death in 1937, when the house was sold to be turned into apartments.  With the children having grown up and moved out Anna Candelot stayed in the house, in the room that became her apartment, until her death in 1949.

The Pyrenees Apartments flourished for a time then fell to abandonment for several years, until being purchased in the early 1980s by a businessman who began the task of renovating the property back into one stately home. The job was bigger than expected and the bank foreclosed in 1990. The castle sat empty again for nearly a decade until it was purchased by music producer Phil Spector in 1999. Spector lived in the house until his incarceration in 2007 for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson. The house stayed in the Spector family until his death in prison in 2021.

Plunged into an uncertain future yet again, the house sat and waited for signs of life, and this time it didn’t have to wait long.  In early 2022 we toured the property, and a new dream was sparked. 

What if this nearly 100-year-old house on the hill, this Pyrenees castle, this run-down mess, was again filled with laughter and children and wine? What if the pain and the beauty and the history and the possibility came together for couples, and families, and friends - to stay in this bonafide piece of L.A.’s golden age and to celebrate life. What if we honored the past, while dancing into the future?  

What if there was a renewal.  A rebirth.

And so, Wrensmoor was born.

We invite you to help us write the next chapter of history for this Southern California castle on a hill.