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Charlton Heston’s Midcentury Modern Home Goes on the Market

The ‘Ben-Hur’ star built the Los Angeles home in the late 1950s, and lived there until his death in 2008.

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The longtime home of the late Charlton Heston, which began construction while he was filming the 1959 film “Ben-Hur,” is going on the market for $12.25 million. According to son Fraser C. Heston, the family moved in to the hilltop Los Angeles house after production wrapped. His father “always said it was the house that ‘Ben-Hur’ built,” Mr. Heston said. The Oscar-winning actor lived there until his death in 2008, and the family is putting the home on the market for the first time. The roughly 3½-acre estate is in the Beverly Hills Post Office area, said listing agent Myra Nourmand of Nourmand & Associates, who is listing the home with colleague Howard Stevens. A long, gated private driveway leads to the house, which is located on a promontory above Coldwater Canyon. With four bedrooms plus staff quarters, the main home has mountain views from nearly every room and a two-story library off the master suite, Ms. Nourmand said. A separate building houses a screening room and another bedroom. The property also has a photo studio, a swimming pool, a tennis court and a tennis pavilion with a two-story observation deck. Memorabilia from Mr. Heston’s films—like Star of David door knockers from “Ben-Hur”—is displayed, though it is not for sale. The house remains largely as it was when it was built, Ms. Nourmand said, so it needs “a loving restoration.” Deciding to sell the house was “a difficult decision,” said Fraser Heston, a filmmaker who as a baby played the infant Moses in “The Ten Commandments.” His mother Lydia no longer lives in the house, he added, and the family has decided “it’s the right time” to sell. This article originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.