The Holmby Hills property—only a few houses from the Playboy Mansion—was built in the 1930s to resemble an English country house

A circa-1930s estate just a few houses from the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles is coming on the market for $49.5 million. 

The roughly 8,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom estate was the longtime home of the late inventor Ronald and his wife, Madelyn Katz. Ronald was best known for a series of patents that revolutionized automated customer service and telephones, and for making breakthroughs in credit-card technology, according to his son Todd Katz. 

Built around the same time as the Playboy Mansion, the Katz home resembles an English country house. With a tennis court and pool, it sits on roughly 1½ acres in Holmby Hills overlooking the Los Angeles Country Club. On Mapleton Drive, one of L.A.’s most storied streets, it is also adjacent to the former Aaron Spelling mansion. 

It was the prestigious location that drew Ronald to the property in the 1970s, his son said. A real-estate hobbyist who enjoyed fixing up and reselling homes, his father perused the real-estate pages in the newspaper every week, Todd said.

The Katzes spent years renovating the estate before moving in, said Todd, who was leaving for college around the same time. They gutted the interior, choosing finishes in keeping with the storybook aesthetic of the exterior: wood paneling, a grand mahogany staircase and carved fireplaces. 

Frequent travelers, the couple filled the home with art and collectibles from around the world. A game room includes an antique billiards table and vintage arcade games. 

Also on display was Madelyn’s vast collection of pigs—stuffed animals, ornaments, sculptures and paintings. The collection started with just a few pigs—“she liked them just fine,” her son said—but it grew to become “her thing” as her friends and family kept adding to the troupe of hogs, Todd said. 

The family plans to auction much of the home’s contents, he said, but will keep a few of the pigs for sentimental reasons.

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