Cool Ranch: The Perfect Southern California Pool Is Behind a Midcentury in the Valley

Jessica and Art Martinez knew when they moved to Van Nuys that one day they would have a pool. Architect Kenneth Lind had designed their 1953 ranch home to embrace the backyard of the nearly quarter-acre lot, but unlike many of the neighbors, previous owners never put in a pool. By the time the couple bought the house, what might once have been a lush rear garden was, to put it bluntly, a wreck. "It was dirt, dying plants, and a small collection of sad citrus trees competing for light underneath a giant walnut tree," Jessica recalls. Adds Art, "And because we’d demoed the rotting skeleton of the old fence, we could see right into our neighbor’s kitchen. It was like, ‘Oh, John’s making dinner.’"

Jessica, who teaches gender and women’s studies, and Art, a podcaster, had hired designer Jared Frank to restore and update the house with an eye to its history and had happily settled in with their dog, Mabel. But every day, the joyless specter of the backyard was visible through the living room’s glass sliders.