101 California Avenue #PH, Santa Monica, CA 90403

The elevator doors open and there is no hallway, no shared landing, no neighbor's door across the way. There is only light, and past it, the Pacific. This is the top of 101 California: the sole residence on the roof, a true one-of-one penthouse standing at Ocean Avenue and the California Incline, an intersection so photographed it has become shorthand for the California coast itself. Approximately 3,000 square feet sit above the coastline, three bedrooms and two baths, and every room faces the water. Not most of them. Every one. The residence is composed of distinct rooms rather than one long open plan, and each has been given its own piece of the view, so the ocean finds you wherever you happen to be standing. Morning light comes in clean off the water. By afternoon the sailboats are out past the Pier. At six the western wall turns amber, and after dark the coastline runs north toward Malibu in a thin necklace of light while the basin behind you switches on all at once. But the...