Adobe’s accent is on the eclectic

Actor Christopher Lloyd spent 20 years working on his Hancock Park-area home when he wasn’t making such movies as “Back to the Future.”

With the help of designer Robert De Young, Lloyd turned the small 1923 house into a whimsical, Spanish-style compound filled with installed art pieces, including a ceramic counter resembling the 1920s work of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Another art piece, which winds around the kitchen, features cats and dogs at play. Other eccentric touches are a stairway going nowhere and an aboveground pool spanned by a bridge.

The guesthouse, master-bedroom suite and breakfast room have heavy Spanish Colonial and adobe influences. Among them are molded walls and open spaces where walls don’t reach to the ceilings.

Lloyd sold the compound in 2002 to actor Howard Morris, one of several TV icons who started their careers in the 1950s on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows.”

Morris, also a director and a voice-over artist, was 82 when he bought the property and lived there until his death in 2005.

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About this house: Although not unusual for its Spanish style, the compound’s rustic, distressed and inventive looks stand out. Lloyd and De Young used Brazilian woods, teak and quarried coral in the house, and they planted rare and exotic trees and plants on the grounds.

Asking price: $1,329,000.

Size: There are two bedrooms and 1 3/4 bathrooms in the 2,000-square-foot main house. There is also a guesthouse with one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room.

Features: There is an onyx bathroom in the master-bedroom suite and five adobe fireplaces on the property, including one outside. The guesthouse has a treetop view. There’s also a solarium made of Brazilian teak with glass on top.

Where: Hancock Park adjacent.

Listing agent: Susan Chadney, Prudential John Aaroe, Hancock Park, (323) 769-3311.

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To submit a candidate for Home of the Week, please send color interior and exterior photos on a CD with caption information and a description of the house, including what makes the property unusual, to Ruth Ryon, Real Estate Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Questions can be sent by e-mail to homeoftheweek@latimes.com.