Greta Garbo's Hollywood Home Becomes a Sensualist's Escape

Nicole Sassaman has transformed Garbo’s 2,000-square-foot-hideaway into a glamourous living space, in love with its environment. Sassaman doubled the space to 5,500 square feet by erecting a second story and pushing the house out into the view. See Sassaman’s website for before and after photos.

If Garbo only sought the life of a recluse in this dark and dingy “cave”, the new mood is a polar opposite.

Greta Garbo’s house becomes an open-air refuge.“We added as much glass as city code would permit, and this tactic transformed the home from dark and secluded to open and airy.” But perhaps the greatest addition came with the surreal infinity pool. “Because the home is positioned on the edge of a hillside, the pool had to be built on the hill slope in order to create the illusion that the house was sitting on water,” says Sassaman. “The pool was much more difficult to do than the home itself; yet when the infinity knife-edge pool appears to drop off into the city—wow!” Amen! Anne