Malcolm McDowell lives in Ojai, a small town in the hills of Ventura County, California, about ninety minutes north-west of Los Angeles. The house is not the sort of property that turns up in celebrity listing galleries: it is a 2,800-square-foot house built in 1928 to a design by the local architect Austen Pierpont, bought by his wife Kelley in 2000 and restored, slowly and carefully, about a decade later.
The most interesting thing about it is that it represents a deliberate downsize. The McDowells previously lived in a house of around 10,000 square feet that they designed and built themselves, and which was widely photographed for its folk-art collection. They swapped it for something roughly a quarter of the size and considerably older. This guide covers both properties, what the restoration involved, and which of the figures circulating online about his home are supportable.
Who is Malcolm McDowell?
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor, born in Leeds in 1943, who came out of the Royal Shakespeare Company and into film through Lindsay Anderson’s If…. in 1968. He is most widely known for playing Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971, and has worked continuously since across film, television and voice work, including O Lucky Man!, Time After Time, Star Trek Generations and Heroes.
He has lived in California for decades. His wife, Kelley McDowell, is a designer and painter, and she is the driving force behind both of the houses discussed here: she bought the Ojai property and directed its restoration, and the couple’s collecting is a joint enterprise.
The house before: 10,000 square feet of folk art
The McDowells’ earlier home was one they designed and built themselves in the hills north of Los Angeles. Its architectural reference point was unusual and personal: a Victorian painter’s studio in London that McDowell had once lived in.
What made it well known in design circles was what was in it. The couple are serious collectors of American and English folk art and primitive antiques, and the house was filled with mechanical toys, miniature carousel animals, antique shop signs, carved wooden figures and quilts. It was photographed for Architectural Digest, which is how most people who know the property know it.
Some design blogs describe the couple’s land as running to around a hundred acres, with three guest cabins and a garage also given over to the collection. Those accounts date from around 2010 and are not corroborated by any property record or mainstream report, so the acreage figure should be treated as unverified rather than repeated as fact.
The 1928 Ojai house
Kelley McDowell bought the Ojai house in 2000. It was designed in 1928 by Austen Pierpont, an architect closely associated with the Ojai valley, and it had reached the point where its systems were outdated and its condition poor. She did not rush at it: the serious restoration did not begin for roughly a decade after the purchase.
The work, when it came, was thorough and unusually concerned with age rather than newness. Interior walls were hand-plastered. Beams were sandblasted. New hardwood floors went in. The mid-century roof was removed and replaced with 200-year-old French tile, specifically so the house would read as old rather than restored. Outside, fifty mature olive trees were brought in and the stonework was coordinated to match, again with the aim of making the setting look established rather than newly landscaped.
The finished interior is white-washed, deliberately, so that the collections carry the colour. Those collections have expanded well beyond American primitives: a Cole Bros. Circus flag, a gilded Coney Island gorilla, forty Mexican lucha libre masks hung as wall art, Ranchero chandeliers, layered Navajo and Moroccan rugs, pottery and textiles. Outside there is an above-ground pool built to resemble a European antique cistern, with stone animal figures around it.
Restoring an architect-designed house of this period, rather than replacing it, puts the McDowells in a small category. The same instinct is visible in the treatment of Steve McQueen’s Palm Springs house and in the preservation arguments around properties such as the Walter Netsch house in Chicago.
Prices and valuations: what is not established
No purchase price for the Ojai house has been published in a reliable source, and neither has the cost of the restoration.
Two figures circulate and neither should be relied on. One is a claim that the property sold for $950,000 in August 2011; the other is an estimate that it is worth between $5 million and $7 million. These are not compatible with each other, neither is attributed to a deed or a listing, and both come from aggregator sites. Ojai is an expensive market and a restored Pierpont house would be a desirable property in it, but that is context rather than a valuation.
The property details that can be relied on are the ones the McDowells and their designers have described directly in magazine features: the 1928 date, the architect, the 2,800 square feet, the 2000 purchase and the nature of the restoration.
Where does Malcolm McDowell live now?
In Ojai, California, in the restored 1928 house.
This is well supported by the standards that matter for a private residence. The property has been the subject of first-hand features in regional and design magazines in which the couple discuss living in it, describe the restoration decisions they made, and are photographed among their collections. There is no reporting of a sale, a listing or a move.
The one thing worth noting is that these features do not carry dates in the way a property transaction does, so the most accurate statement is that Ojai has been his home for many years and remains so on the most recent available evidence. Anyone offering a current market value for the house, or an address, is going beyond what has actually been published.
Sources
- Santa Barbara Magazine on the 1928 Austen Pierpont house, the 2000 purchase, the restoration, the 2,800-square-foot size and the collections.
- Departures on the McDowells’ life in Ojai.
- The Interior Archive for photography of the couple’s California home and its folk-art collection.
