At highway speeds, it’s easy to miss: a pseudo-Alpine ski chalet wedged between the concrete canyon of the 2 Freeway and the six-lane expanse of Eagle Rock Boulevard. Flowering vines climb the spear-topped steel security fence, evergreens crowd the eaves, and the oversized roof hides the house beneath it, blending into the parched, tangled dross of roadside Los Angeles.
I stay in the A-frame when I’m in town, thanks to Devin Gallagher, a landscape and interior designer who’s lived here since 2011. In the mornings, the strong—if decidedly subalpine—sun pours through the bathroom skylight, encouraging showers of ethically questionable length. Sudsy and shimmering, I look out across Eagle Rock Boulevard to the Glassell Park rooftops stacked against Mount Washington. My host likes to say that the rush-hour roar “sounds like a river, if you think about it that way.” I do as I’m told, imagining the glistening blacktop and commuter chaos as the confluence of two mighty tributaries.
It was Devin who tipped me off to the chalet’s backstory. “I was…
