Harry Bosch’s House from “Bosch”

I contemplated chronicling the best movie and television productions I discovered in 2018 as my first post of the new year.  Had I done so (and I still might later this month), Bosch would have topped the list.  As I mentioned in my recent write-up on Demitasse café, the Grim Cheaper and I started watching the Amazon original series just a few months ago and were immediately hooked.  A police procedural with a sarcastic and fabulously deadpan leading man set in Los Angeles – what more could this crime-obsessed, L.A.-loving stalker ask for?  The locations used are seriously phenomenal, by the way – none more so than the cantilevered hilltop home of titular character Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver).  The pad couldn’t be more quintessentially Los Angeles if it tried.  So I, of course, ran right out to stalk it shortly after viewing the first episode.

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Bosch is based upon a bestselling series of novels by author Michael Connelly.  I have never read any of the books, but have been able to piece together the various info written about Harry’s house in them thanks to a detailed forum on MichaelConnelly.com.  In the novels, Detective Bosch is said to live on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills, though his specific address varies from “next to” 7203 Woodrow Wilson in 2010’s The Reversal to 8620 Woodrow Wilson in 2018’s Dark Sacred Night.  Per a commenter on the forum, Connelly has apparently stated that Harry’s pad doesn’t exist in real life, but that the site where he placed it in his stories is a burnt-out foundation of a former cantilevered residence that the author stumbled upon in 1992.  Additional commenters did some massive legwork on the subject and surmised that the location of said foundation is 7207 Woodrow Wilson Drive.  And they’re right – I came across a video of Connelly showing the exact spot where he imagined the home (a still of which is pictured below) and compared it to Street View imagery of that address (again, pictured below) and, sure enough, it’s the spot!  You can check out some photographs of the foundation and the land it sits on here.

In Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles, a special limited edition DVD released in 2004 in which, as Amazon notes, the author “provides an insider’s tour of the places that give his stories and characters their spark and texture,” a house located at 7143 Woodrow Wilson is shown to be Harry’s and Connelly describes it as such, “Bosch’s home was fourth from the end on the right side.  His home was a wood-frame, one-bedroom cantilever, not much bigger than a Beverly Hills garage.  It hung out over the edge of the hill and was supported by three steel pylons at its mid-point.”

When it came time to start shooting the series in November 2013, producers found an even more perfect embodiment of that Blue Neon Night description at 1870 Blue Heights Drive in Hollywood Hills West.

Sitting high atop a hill, the architectural stunner, which was built in 1958, boasts 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,513 square feet of living space, and a 0.26-acre lot.

Per Zillow, it is currently worth a whopping $2,130,000.

The striking pad first popped up in Bosch’s pilot and has gone on to appear in pretty much every episode since.  It is the rear of the residence – its cantilevered side, which stands on a cliff overlooking the Sunset Strip, Culver City and beyond – that is regularly shown on the series.

The street side of the house, which is much less spectacular than the rear, was featured briefly in Season 4’s “Devil in the House.”

While situated on a private cul-de-sac, that side of the property can be viewed from a portion of Blue Heights Drive that is open to the public – though there is not much to see.

Just west of the home’s front entrance, though, in an area that is also publicly accessible, is an open expanse of land where views matching those of Harry’s pad can be gleaned.

And let me tell you, those views are absolutely incredible!

I mean, come on!

Last one, I promise.

We know – thanks to this video – that the actual interior of the Blue Heights Drive residence was utilized in Bosch’s pilot.  And I am fairly certain that a few additional early episodes were shot on location inside the home, as well (quite possibly all of Season 1).  At some point, though, a set re-creation was built on a studio soundstage that has since been used for all subsequent seasons.

How does a cop afford such a stellar pad, you ask?  Per the storyline of both the books and the series, Paramount made a movie based upon one of Harry’s cases, for which he was paid handsomely.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Harry Bosch’s house from the television series Bosch is located at 1870 Blue Heights Drive in Hollywood Hills West.  The best views of the structure can be seen from the 1600 block of Viewmont Drive and the 8800 block of Hollywood Boulevard.