Richard Neutra designed several apartment complexes in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, including the Strathmore Apartments, Landfair, Elkay and Kelton, which was completed in 1942. All were built in the prevailing modernist International Style — geometric planar construction, unadorned surfaces, light, open interior spaces and an overall weightless harmony of forms. In 1947 it received an Honor Award from the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and became a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1988. Kelton Apartments are a particular standout in Neutra's extraordinary body of work, modest as they are, as they were built for him and his family to live in and are still owned and occupied by the family today. 

In 1947, Architect and Engineer magazine praised the building, saying: "while the architecture is recognizable as the famous Neutra idiom, rigid intellectual design has been transformed with an ever increasing human quality...Good planning, a cheerful general aspect to the architecture as a whole, plus frequent bits of genuine charm, place these apartments in a class by themselves."