Meryl Streep and Don Gummer have picked up a retreat in a quiet section of Pasadena. The couple purchased the property for $3.6 million against an asking price of $4.25 million. The home had been on the market for about three months at the time of the sale.

The house is a midcentury modern design, three-and-three and 3,100 square feet, dating to 1959. It’s the work of architectural firm Smith and Williams, which was based in Pasadena, and designed several notable modern-style homes in the area during the decade. The architects, like many of the era, were influenced by Eastern design philosophies, and favored natural light, interior/exterior flow and accessibility, and a blend of hard geometric forms and natural beauty.

Those design elements are in Streep and Gummer’s new residential acquisition, in spades. A long, sylvan driveway acts as a prologue to the home. Japanese-influenced landscaping and garden design surrounds the home, with the classic exterior transition boardwalk giving a sense of natural flow and interrelationship between exterior and interior. Extended eves on the home, and a huge amount of glass, enhance the indoor/outdoor blurring effect.

Inside, the home is open, with a terrific sense of proportion, and a huge amount of natural light. Louvered glass panels, masonry accent walls, exposed steel beams, tongue-in-groove ceilings, Japanese lantern fixtures, and period terrazzo all make for a heady time-capsule effect. Apparently, the home had not been offered for sale for close to fifty years, and looks nearly untouched by renovation.

The property extends to nearly two acres, and its hilltop location allows for panoramic views which include the San Gabriel Mountains.

Streep stars in Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Post’; the film, which looks at publication of the ‘Pentagon Papers’ leaked by RAND Corp. employee Daniel Ellsberg, will be in wide release next month. See it to be reminded of what journalism in America once was, in an increasingly mythological present-tense context.