House of sunshine and dreams selling for $1.6M

On a hill off Citrus Street is the dream of a young girl.

Lush trees and lawn. Sunshine. Mountain views. West Covina is a far cry from the horrors of the ghetto in Vilna, Poland, where Pearl Good, then 12-year-old Perella Esterowicz, was imprisoned in September 1941.

“There wasn’t a blade of grass, not a leaf on a tree, and things were so crowded that she couldn’t even see the sky,” Michael Good remembered his mother telling him. “And so, my mom built this house.”

That house is now on the market for $1.595 million.

Known as the Good Family Residence, the 3,140-squarefoot custom build has four bedrooms, three bathrooms

and a living room with a dropped and centered 360-degree fireplace.

A curved brick wall partially separates the living room from the dining space, with west-facing windows

bowed to capture the sunset.

Glass walls, wood paneling and built-ins add character.

Pearl and her husband, William Z. Good, a Holocaust survivor who ran a medical practice in La Puente, built the light-filled home in 1961 on a 1-acre-plus lot surrounded by rugged hills where cattle grazed. They hired the architectural firm Grillias, Savage, Alves & Associates to draw up the plans for a modern glass home, but the design?

Michael Good, 66, credits his mother for the vision.

Pearl Good borrowed inspiration from The Glass House, a National Trust Historic Site in New Canaan, Connecticut, built by its architect-owner Philip Johnson in the late 1940s, and consumed architectural books and magazines for ideas.

“She had seen these new cutting-edge houses with all the glass that was happening all throughout Southern California, and that’s what

PHOTOS BY GAVIN CATER There is a dropped and centered 360-degree fireplace in the living room of the West Covina residence.

The home also provides a carport.