Edward Norton's House

Edward Norton broke out in Primal Fear in 1996 and went on to play the unnamed narrator of Fight Club. He has 4 Oscar nominations, the latest for playing Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown.

Norton bought this John Lautner house in 2017. His other homes at the time included a smaller place at Big Rock Beach elsewhere in Malibu, a house in Los Angeles, and a Manhattan penthouse.

Lautner finished the house on the sand in 1968. The Pacific Coast Architecture Database describes a form meant to shield it from the ocean's constant force, with woodwork borrowed from California's Craftsman houses.

The facade is 2 half-catenary concrete curves facing opposite directions, shaped to read as crashing waves. By 2017 it had been fully restored, with cork floors, Douglas fir sliding doors, and solar power.

The house went up for the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The Federal Register logged the nomination that September as reference 09000802, one of a batch the Park Service received before August 29.

A 2014 City of Malibu environmental report found only 2 National Register buildings in its study area: this one and the Adamson House, the tiled 1929 home of May Rindge's daughter, Rhoda, listed in 1977.

The county assessor's legal description for this parcel still begins with the Land of Matthew Keller in the Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit. It fixes the lot by feet and bearings from a surveyor's station.

Keller took the rancho by quitclaim deed for $1,400 and won his claim in federal court in 1864. His son Henry sold it in 1892 to Frederick Rindge, a Boston transplant, for $10 an acre.

May Rindge began leasing this strip of beach in 1926 to cover her legal bills. Tenants paid $30 a month on 10-year leases for 30-foot lots, and every building had to be easy to remove.