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Mansion Where Cultists Died Is Sold at Bargain Price
Mansion Where Cultists Died Is Sold at Bargain Price
Mansion Where Cultists Died Is Sold at Bargain Price Sept. 11, 1999 The mansion in which 39 members of a religious cult committed suicide 2 1/2 years ago has quietly been sold for what an official called the bargain price of $668,000, it was disclosed Friday.According to records in the San Diego County assessor's office, the property was sold in June to a local developer, William Strong.Gary Fairbanks, division chief in the assessor's office, said the land alone had been assessed at $1.4 million. "But . . . if at any time you have a stigma on the property, it will affect the value," he said.Along with their leader, Marshall Applewhite, members of the Heaven's Gate cult took their lives by swallowing a mixture of barbiturates and vodka in March 1997. They left a video indicating that their suicides were an attempt to shed their earthly "containers" so they could reach a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.The nine-bedroom, seven-bathroom house is on 3.1 acres amid what is considered some of the most expensive real estate in the country.Fairbanks called the selling price a bargain. "It's a sweeping site," he said. "You can see all the way to the ocean. If the site were by itself, we believe it would be worth every bit of $1.4 million."The man who rented the mansion to Heaven's Gate, local businessman Sam Koutchesfahani, was sent to prison last year for conspiracy and tax evasion. Seattle-based Washington Mutual took the property over through foreclosure and sold it to Strong.
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Knock Against Hollow Door Has Merit
Knock Against Hollow Door Has Merit
Question: I live in an 11-unit apartment complex.
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Rocking and Renovating
Rocking and Renovating
Rocking and Renovating Feb. 21, 1999 Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has put a Hollywood Hills home that she owns on the market at $829,000.The pop star marked her 55th birthday in November at an Atlanta concert with another Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Bob Dylan. She also starred in the fall in her first TV special since 1980 and cut the album "Taming the Tiger."Mitchell was ready to give up music two years ago, but then she met her daughter, Toronto model Kilauren Gibb, for the first time since giving her up for adoption in 1965. Mitchell has credited much of her new enthusiasm for music to her renewed relationship with her daughter.The Hollywood Hills home that Mitchell is selling was purchased about two years ago as an investment. She gutted the house, built in the '70s, and turned it into a mix of country and contemporary styles with open beams and city views.Behind gates and up a private drive, the home has three bedrooms, a family room and a bonus room in about 2,500 square feet. On the half-acre grounds are winding tree-lined paths, a fountain and patios. The master suite has a balcony and a wood-burning pot-bellied stove.Mitchell remodeled and expanded the house but never lived in it herself. She has a home in the L.A. area, where she has lived for 25 years.Jay Leslie Hofstadter, who has offices in the Agoura area, has the listing.*Supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who held a major fund-raiser for President Clinton in 1996 and traveled with him and the Rev. Jesse Jackson on their 12-day trip to Africa in March, has purchased a nearly completed 50,000-square-foot house in La Jolla for close to $20 million.Burkle, who last year merged his Fred Meyer chain (including Ralphs and Food 4 Less) with Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. in a $13-billion deal, is expected to maintain his residence at Greenacres, the late silent movie star Harold Lloyd's former Beverly Hills-area estate.Burkle, 46, regularly uses Greenacres, site of the '96 fund-raiser, for events that "span the political spectrum," he has said, but he is known as a major contributor to Democratic campaigns and entertained Clinton as a house guest in 1997.The La Jolla house, expected to take as much as $7 million more and a year to finish, was sold by Harry Eberlin, founder of the nationwide Super Shops Automotive Performance Centers. Eberlin owned the 5.5-acre bluff overlooking the ocean since 1991. He spent years getting permits to build; later, he decided not to complete the house for himself.The La Jolla house, the largest single-family home ever built with a steel frame, has five family bedrooms, four guest suites, a maid's apartment and a caretaker's house. It also has a tennis court, wine cellar, billiard and video rooms, a gym and an 8,000-square-foot 30-car subterranean garage.The sale is the costliest for a single-family home in the San Diego area. The asking price was $25 million. Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills represented the seller; Bob Dyson of Dyson & Dyson in La Jolla represented Burkle.*Actor Steve McQueen's former ranch near the Santa Paula airport in Ventura County has come on the market at $1 million. The ranch was his home when he died at 50 in November 1980.McQueen had purchased the ranch, which is more than 15 acres, in the late 1970s. He spent months working on it before he and his third wife, model Barbara Minty, moved there. They had lived at the ranch for about a year when he died."He had just gotten it the way he wanted it when he got sick," said actress-director Christina Stevens, who owns the ranch now. McQueen had restored the three-bedroom 100-year-old Victorian farmhouse and built a 4,200-square-foot barn for his motorcycles and antique cars.Stevens bought the property from Chad McQueen, the actor's son, a couple of years after his father died. Stevens, a pilot, also owns a small plane that had been Steve McQueen's.She decided to sell the ranch because she is focusing on a one-woman show, which she wrote based on a film she made about Mother Teresa. The show will debut on April 3 at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colo. "I can't do that and have time and energy for the ranch," she said.As did the McQueens, she keeps several horses on the ranch, which has four corrals, a swimming pond and fruit trees. "What suited Steve was that the ranch was reclusive and private," Stevens said. "Yet it is a short walk to two golf courses."Janet McNamara of Coldwell Banker Town and Country in Ventura has the listing.*A 12,000-square-foot house on 1.4 acres in Brentwood has been purchased for close to its $6.5-million asking price. The house, in the Hilton family's gated development of Brentwood Country Estates, was bought by an entertainment executive.The seven-bedroom house has a 32-foot-high ceiling in the entry, an art gallery, a lagoon with a fountain and a circular drive in the front. The Moroccan-Mediterranean style house was designed by architect Gus Duffy of Studio City.Rodrigo Iglesias, a Coldwell Banker Previews director in Brentwood, and Rick Hilton, of Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills, shared the listing. The selling agents were Paul Glascall and Linda Starey of Fred Sands' Brentwood office.*Writer-producer Miranda Craig, daughter of the late actress Nancy Walker and the late singing instructor-to-the stars David Craig, has listed her Sunset Strip-area home at $495,000. (Walker played Rhoda's mother on "Rhoda" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show.")Craig is planning to buy a larger home in the Hollywood Hills. Her current home, which has city views, has three bedrooms in about 2,000 square feet. The house is listed with Rick Chimienti of DBL Realtors, Beverly Hills.
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L.A.'s Hilltop Oasis
L.A.'s Hilltop Oasis
Affluent View Park neighborhood attracts black professionals who say they enjoy the location and strong sense of community.
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Manifest Dustiny
Manifest Dustiny
Manifest Dustiny Dec. 27, 1998 Actor Dustin Hoffman has just finished landscaping the most recent addition to his Brentwood estate.In July, he bought the house next door to his home for more than $2 million, sources estimate. In November, he razed the house.Now he has landscaped the site to match the rest of his property, which is hidden behind dense evergreens and bottle-brush bushes covering a chain-link fence."I'd call it privacy landscaping," said a neighbor, who also observed, "Few people buy a house, bulldoze it and then keep the lot as part of their garden."Hoffman razed a Southern Plantation-style house built in 1941 with three bedrooms in 4,000 square feet.It isn't the first time that he has torn down a neighboring house. Before he built his seven-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot house two years ago, he bought an adjacent house, razed it and built a tennis court in its place. He played tennis there for months before his house was completed.Now the Oscar-winning actor's contemporary-yet-country-style home sits on at least two acres in a prime area.Hoffman, 61, and his wife, Lisa, have four children, and he has two grown children from his first marriage.The two-time Oscar winner will receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in February. He starred most recently in "Sphere" and "Wag the Dog."*Fashion designer to the stars Richard Tyler and his wife and business partner, Lisa Trafficante, have purchased a South Pasadena home from developer Robert Maguire for $2.8 million, say realty sources not involved in the deal.Tyler, 52, has dressed such well-known Hollywood clients as Julia Roberts, Sigourney Weaver, Anjelica Huston and Ashley Judd. Maguire, 63, is chairman of Maguire Thomas Partners, one of Southern California's most prominent real estate development companies.Tyler and Trafficante moved to South Pasadena from a Hollywood Hills home that once belonged to actress Dolores Del Rio. They also have a 37-room home in New York.Designed by architect Reginald Johnson and built in 1917, the six-bedroom, 7,400-square-foot house in South Pasadena was renovated in 1998. It has an outdoor glass-enclosed spa with built-in stereo and telephone and an outdoor stainless steel kitchen with a wood-burning oven.Boyd Smith and Maggie Navarro of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Pasadena, represented the buyers, and Steve Davis of Fred Sands Estates, Pasadena, and Geoffrey C. Lands of Bel-Air Holmby Properties had the listing.*Mike Werb, who co-wrote the screenplay for "Face/Off" (1997) and wrote the screenplay for "The Mask" (1994), has purchased a Sunset Strip-area home for about $2 million.The house has three bedrooms in about 4,000 square feet and was built in 1935. It also has a pool, spa and city views.Werb, in his late 30s, was living in a smaller West Hollywood home, which he will rent out.Jonathan Seltzer of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, represented Werb in his purchase.*A Glendale home designed by Vienna-born architect Rudolph Schindler has come on the market at $590,000.The house was built in 1941 and was known as "the Rodriguez House" for its original owner, concert pianist and radio commentator Richard Rodriguez.The four-bedroom, 2,400-square-foot house has been owned for the past 12 years by Joel Polachek, CEO of the Pacific Design Center, and his wife, sound editor Caron Allen, who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary "The Long Way Home."Rodriguez's sister was a metal-work artist, and she designed a copper fireplace and other metal artwork that is part of the house.Schindler, who died in Los Angeles in 1953, worked for Frank Lloyd Wright before establishing his own practice in L.A. in 1921.Schindler viewed the garden as an integral part of the house, and the Rodriguez House has 58 windows looking out on a landscaped half-acre. Schindler also designed a house as a series of private rooms and areas; the Rodriguez House has a wine cellar, two sleeping porches and a workshop.Jackie Smith, the late Times columnist Jack Smith's daughter-in-law, has the listing at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Glendale.
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'Xena' Star Relocates to Studio City
'Xena' Star Relocates to Studio City
'Xena' Star Relocates to Studio City Nov. 26, 1998 Lucy Lawless, star of the syndicated "Xena: Warrior Princess," and her husband, Rob Tapert, the show's executive producer, have purchased a Studio City home for $1.5 million.Lawless, 30, and Tapert, 43, were married in March. They also have a home in her native New Zealand, where her series is filmed. Lawless previously appeared on "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," which Taper also produces.Their new home, built in 1951, has two master suites, maid's quarters, a two-story guest house, a gym and an office. It had been owned since the '70s by singing teacher-to-the-stars David Craig and his wife, Nancy Walker, best known as Rhoda's mother on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda." Craig died in August; Walker, in 1992. They are survived by their daughter, writer-producer Miranda Craig.Rick Chimienti of DBL Estates, Beverly Hills, had the listing; Helen Walker of Fred Sands Estates, Studio City, represented the buyers.*Orson Bean, who played the storekeeper in "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," and his wife, actress Alley Mills, have added a fourth house to their Venice compound. Mills played the mother on "The Wonder Years."The four houses, all built in the '20s, are about 2,400 square feet in size."I bought the first one 20 years ago for $113,000; the others went for about $400,000. Most people would rip them down. We restore them," he said.Bean, 70, was a Broadway actor before moving to Venice in 1984. He and Mills, 47, were married 5 1/2 years ago, after he had bought the second house. The couple built a glass walkway between the houses before Mills bought the third house for guests and the fourth house as a buffer against development.Bean co-stars with Cameron Diaz and John Cusack in the upcoming movie "Being John Malkovich," and he plays Scrooge in his adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," produced by Mills, at the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, from Friday through Jan. 3.*Kim Cattrall, co-star of the HBO comedy series "Sex and the City," has listed her Brentwood house at $849,000. She moved to New York, where the series is filmed, and she bought an apartment in the city and a house in the Hamptons, where she was married in September.The actress, 42, played Mr. Spock's protege in "Star Trek VI" (1991) and Andrew McCarthy's love interest in "Mannequin" (1987).She has owned her Brentwood home for 11 years. Built in 1940 and recently remodeled, it has two bedrooms, a guest room, a fireplace and a pool. Valerie Fitzgerald of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, has the listing. Hot Property is published Thursdays in SoCal Living and Sundays in Real Estate.
MORERogers' House a Chatsworth Landmark
Rogers' House a Chatsworth Landmark
Renovation: Roy and Dale lived there about 10 years. New owner has kept home 'pretty much original.'
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Making History a Home
Making History a Home
Making History a Home March 16, 1998 Before they moved back West, Keith and Tammy Coburn lived in a modest, ranch-style house near Alabama's Gulf Coast.She, 34, did the weather for a nearby television station. He, 32, worked as a golf pro. Their new home in this agricultural Santa Clara Valley town is eight times the size of their former dwelling, an opulent monument to the Victorian Era.Their electric and water bills have increased to $1,000 and $1,500 a month. And they have had to assume far more responsibility than the average homeowner, whose duties center on putting out the trash and mowing the lawn.They are guardians of a 14-room historical trove and serve as modern links to a colorful century marked by religious fundamentalism and gilded age excess.They are the fourth owners of the 107-year-old Piru Mansion.The landmark estate on nine acres in Ventura County, just west of Los Angeles County, most recently belonged to the renowned Santa Clarita newspaper barons Scott and Ruth Newhall, who moved there in 1968.When the irreverent Scott Newhall, former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and Newhall Signal, and a descendant of Santa Clarita Valley pioneers, died in 1992, his widow put the house on the market.The Coburns bought it last fall for $2.47 million raised through personal savings and help from family and other sources. They quit their jobs and moved in Dec. 15.Why was this couple handpicked to carry the torch, rather than the Hollywood celebrities and wealthy businesspeople who flirted with buying the mansion?"They had the money," Ruth Newhall said dryly from her new home in Valencia. Turning serious, she added, "They seemed to be very interested in carrying on the tradition of having community events there."Keith Coburn, who grew up in Calabasas, agreed. "The Newhall family looked for people who would maintain the integrity and history of the house," he said.*The Coburns seem unlikely keepers of the flame when compared with the home's worldly and wealthy previous owners.The welcome mat at their side door reads, "A golfer and a normal person live here." They do not display the no-price-too-high eccentricity that prompted religious-book publisher and original owner David C. Cook to plant exotic biblical fruit trees in the backyard, and later led Scott Newhall to import rare replicas of lampposts created for Queen Elizabeth's 1952 coronation.The pair, who are expecting their first child in June, are amiable and upbeat as they sit in the mansion's imposing dining room discussing their new livelihood--the charity events, weddings and photo shoots they hold at the house, many for a fee.A cordless phone rings almost incessantly, with most callers inquiring about the home's availability.Ruth Newhall acknowledges the Coburns' right to make a living off the house, but notes that that was never the goal of previous owners."We never made a cent out of it," she said. "It was our home and that was it."The Coburns concede they had not exactly been in the market for a multimillion-dollar home.Then, last spring, Tammy Coburn was sitting in her newsroom in Mobile, Ala., recalling the long commute she took years before, along California 126, from her home in Sylmar to her job as a meteorologist at KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara. Punctuating her daydreams was that mansion on the hill.The couple soon discovered the home was on the market and figured they could buy the property and make a go of it with long hours and hard work.Kim Hocking, Ventura County's staff consultant to the Cultural Heritage Board, said more and more owners of historically significant homes are exploring profit-making uses for them as a means of preservation."It's the same thing they had in England with all of their mansions and castles," Hocking said. As the structures grow older, costs to maintain them rise--often beyond the means of even wealthy owners.When asked about the couple's finances, Tammy Coburn responded with examples: She and Keith, not a cleaning service, scrub the house from floor to ceiling once a week. They do the interior decorating themselves.Finding the right furniture is just one of the tasks involved in keeping up the mansion's individually themed rooms, many of which feature redwood and mahogany paneling, intricately patterned stained-glass windows and colored tile.Cook hired well-known West Coast architects Sam and Joseph Newsom to design the Queen Anne-style house for $50,000--a lot of money then. Construction lasted from 1886 to 1891.The mansion contains a multitude of flourishes illustrating the period's melding of classicism with modernism. Although the building materials--dark woods, sandstone, copper--suggest 19th century formality, whimsical wood carvings and asymmetrical lines add a decidedly offbeat flair."The color schemes are incredible," Tammy Coburn said. "You can put the most unlikely combinations together--and they work."Under any circumstances, the ornate house would inspire awe, sitting as it does on a rolling hillside and offering sweeping valley views. Knowing that it burned to the ground in 1981 only adds to its aura.A worker using a torch to peel paint on the third floor forgot to turn off the torch, and the structure soon was enveloped by roaring flames. All that remained were the round front towers and thousands of pieces of tile.After surveying the devastation, the Newhalls instantly decided to rebuild. Relying on photographs and interviews with people who knew the mansion well, they reconstructed it, right down to the tiny initial "Cs" carved into the wood by Cook.Today, a few scorched floor tiles are the only evidence of the blaze.Tammy Coburn is well-versed in the history of the place, often launching into anecdotes about past owners while giving a tour. Her husband is enthusiastic but less sponge-like in his quest for knowledge, remarking that his wife is the type to "stop and read every sign on the way down a trail in the Grand Canyon. I'd be at the bottom and she'd be halfway there."She learned on the Internet, for example, that Cook claimed the peaceful lifestyle in Piru helped cure him of tuberculosis. By walking the grounds, she found that when he tried replicating the Garden of Eden in the backyard, he somehow forgot to plant an apple tree.Having once lived nearby, she also knew of the Newhalls, whose adventurous spirit and crusading journalism helped shape the Santa Clarita Valley.During the Newhalls' residence, the Piru Mansion acquired the nickname "The Poor Man's Hearst Castle," in reference to Scott Newhall's career and his personalized touches, which are evident throughout the house. He memorialized his love of the ocean with a teak bathtub that sports pressure gauges from a boat, as well as a sea horse logo worked into the copper and brass railing that wraps around the house.As did their predecessors, the new owners plan to open the house for occasional events and fund-raisers benefiting Piru, a dusty, time-challenged burg whose post office could fit in the mansion's living room. Schoolchildren will tour the grounds. Charities will stage benefits.Amid that presumably constant activity, the Coburns hope to settle in and convert the third floor into a "living suite" with modern amenities."That'll be our little retreat," Tammy Coburn said, surveying a living room filled with antique furniture and a grand piano from a bygone era. "Besides, I don't think our big-screen TV will work down here."
MOREEl Capitan Courageous
El Capitan Courageous
Faith, Money Rescue a Gem From the '20s in Hollywood
MORERapper Takes Hit on Mansion Sale
Rapper Takes Hit on Mansion Sale
Rapper Takes Hit on Mansion Sale Aug. 31, 1997 Rap singer M.C. HAMMER has sold his mansion in the Fremont foothills overlooking San Francisco for $5.3 million, sources say.The buyer was identified as a television producer from Singapore, who paid cash and took title in the name of a corporation.Hammer, 34, built the home six years ago on 12 acres with a view of the bay from the Oakland side. The home has six bedrooms in 11,000 square feet plus two pools, a pool house, guardhouse, exercise room and two saunas.Assessor's records value the home at $9.4 million. It was listed in May at $6.8 million. Hammer's manager said then that the singer would be happy to sell because he was "letting go of the old," marking "a new beginning."Hammer filed for bankruptcy in 1996 with debts of nearly $14 million and assets of $9.6 million. He was estimated to have earned $33 million in 1991, the year he built his Fremont home, but he also is said to have had such expenses as a racehorse that ran in the Kentucky Derby, a 17-car collection, a Boeing 727 and a large staff for his record label, Bust It Productions.Hammer and his wife, Stephanie, and young daughter have scaled down but are still living in Northern California, sources say. Hammer's new album, "A Family Affair," is due in October, and earlier this month, he starred in the Showtime movie "Right Connections."Elaine Young of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Beverly Hills, and Faye Carlson of the firm's Fremont office shared the listing.*KCBS-TV anchor MICHAEL TUCK has sold his Bel-Air home of four years for close to $1.8 million and is leasing a penthouse in Beverly Hills, sources say.He wanted to be more centrally located, within walking distance of restaurants and other services, and he didn't need such a large home, a source said.Completely refurbished in 1990, the Bel-Air home has four bedrooms and four baths in about 4,000 square feet. It also has a pool and city and ocean views.A former anchor in San Diego, Tuck, who has won a dozen Emmy Awards, was hired by KCBS in 1990 and now co-anchors the CBS 2 news at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. with Ann Martin. Tuck, about 50, is originally from Houston.Ron Carlton and Rick Hilton, both with Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills, represented Tuck in selling his house.*Academy Award-winning film producers RICHARD D. and LILI FINI ZANUCK have listed a two-acre site, adjacent to their Beverly Hills-area estate, at just under $3 million.They have owned the site, with city and canyon views, since buying their four-acre estate, where they built their 17,000-square-foot house eight years ago, a source said. The site to be sold is across the street from a home that actress Barbra Streisand sold in June for nearly $4.9 million.The Zanucks produced "Mulholland Falls" (1996), "Wild Bill" (1995), "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989), "Cocoon: The Return" (1988) and "Cocoon" (1985). In the '70s, he produced "Jaws" and "Jaws 2."Paul Czako of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, has the listing.*Model-actress KELLY HARMON, in her 17th year as the spokesperson for the breath mint Tic Tac, and her husband, publishing magnate BOB MILLER, have purchased a five-acre Malibu home for just under $3 million, sources say.Harmon, the sister of actor Mark Harmon, and Miller, whose partnership publishes Spin and Vibe magazines, bought a beach house with room for her horses, a source said.The couple also owns a home, which she redesigned, in the Hamptons town of Sagaponack, N.Y., and they have a Cliff May-designed ranch-style house in Los Angeles.Since she married Miller in 1984, Harmon has redecorated several of their homes and recently established her own Kelly Harmon Interiors & Design.*A Brentwood home owned by the late art director and set designer HENRY C. LICKEL has been listed at $1.2 million. Lickel created sets for "All in the Family," "Family Feud," "Password" and "Jeopardy!"He designed his home, built in 1987, in an Old World European style, surrounded by a 7-foot-high wall. The 2,900-square-foot house also has three bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling fireplaces, a fountain and a pool. The house is listed by Sabine Krueger & Associates, Valencia.*The Witch's Cottage, built by set designer Henry Oliver in 1921 as a film production office in Culver City and moved five years later to become a Beverly Hills home, has been listed again, this time at about $1.4 million.Oliver, who also designed the famous Van DeKamp bakery windmills, designed the house to resemble the home of the fairy-tale witch who tried to eat Hansel and Gretel. The four-bedroom, nearly 3,800-square-foot house has an empty moat, waterwheel and drawbridge. Some windows were designed to look as if they are covered in cobwebs.The house has been on and off the market several times, although it has been owned by the same owner for more than 30 years. She and her husband purchased it in the mid-1960s from the woman who bought and relocated it with her husband in 1926. It was once listed at $2.9 million.Martin Geimer of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, has the current listing.*CORRECTION: The Malibu home listed at $29.5 million (Hot Property, Aug. 17) is on about 16 acres and has more than 20,000 square feet under roof, in several buildings.
MOREProbst Sells Estate for $10 Million
Probst Sells Estate for $10 Million
Property: The reclusive businessman's saga involving Thousand Oaks may be at end. The 16-acre site had once been listed for $18.9 million.
MOREOwners of Stilt Houses Live Above It All
Owners of Stilt Houses Live Above It All
Lifestyles: Views are stunning, but the architectural trend didn't have legs. Only about 1,500 were built.
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Son, Estranged Wife Get Bulk of Harriman Estate
Son, Estranged Wife Get Bulk of Harriman Estate
Pamela Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to France who died earlier this month, bequeathed her only son, Winston S.
MORETHE FOUR GREAT ESTATES
THE FOUR GREAT ESTATES
THE FOUR GREAT ESTATES Dec. 8, 1996 "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree."Ever since William Randolph Hearst built his own Xanadu at San Simeon, California has laid claim to some of the nation's most ostentatious expressions of wealth. From Lynn Atkinson's "House of the Golden Doorknobs" to David Geffen's self-described "act of grandiosity," Los Angeles' four great estates are all that remain of a time and a place when glamour and grandeur knew no limit.*Bellagio House, Bellagio Road, Bel-Air. The former home of hotelier Conrad Hilton last sold in 1980 for $12.4 million to billionaire David H. Murdock, chairman and CEO of Pacific Holding Co. and Dole Food Co. The 64-room, 35,000-square-foot Georgian mansion on 12 acres was the first $10-million-plus sale in Southern California. It has since been the dramatic setting of many a black-tie gala. As the story goes, one party guest was once overheard telling Murdock, "Are you sure it wasn't one of [Hilton's] hotels?" to which the host modestly replied, "It's very comfortable."If the walls of this 1938 house could talk, they'd tell one of Los Angeles' most compelling cautionary tales about the pitfalls of truly wretched excess. Hilda Olsen, a frumpy hospital nurse, in 1920 married a widowed millionaire who was a patient. When he died nine years later, she inherited his fortune and promptly took up with the chauffeur, whom she married. Trying to pass high society's white-glove test, she spent $2 million during the depths of the Depression on her mansion, which included walk-in silver, fur and wine vaults, his and hers master suites, massage rooms, a grand, semicircular staircase, a gallery and fine wood paneling in the living room, dining room and card room. She bought a sterling silver service for 80 and a gold-trimmed tea set that had been made for a czar, hired a dozen house servants and and threw lavish parties. Gambling debts and bad investments drained her fortune after World War II, and she sold the house to Hilton for $225,000 in 1950. Soon after, she lost everything at the racetrack and killed herself.While the current owner's roots are equally humble, Murdock, a high school dropout who once worked as a ditch digger, has fared far better socially and economically. He is a distinguished GOP power broker, horse breeder, arts patron and orchid grower. Some consider Bellagio House to be the finest home west of the Mississippi. At any given time, according to local lore, 40,000 flowers are blooming on the grounds, perched on a hillock overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club.*The Knoll, Schuyler Road, Beverly Hills. Others consider this 35-room Georgian mansion to be the finest home in the West, or at least a close second to Bellagio House. It includes a billiard room, storage vaults, a 48-foot swimming pool and two guest cottages at the front gate--one of which was rented by musician Lionel Ritchie.Billionaire oilman Marvin Davis, who briefly owned Twentieth Century Fox Studios, the Beverly Hills Hotel and just about everything else, paid country singer Kenny Rogers $20.25 million for the estate in 1984--a record that held for just four years. But it was Dino De Laurentiis who made the real killing on this property: He paid a record $2 million for the Knoll in 1976; six years later, Rogers came to visit, looking for decorating ideas for his library. He fell in love with the house and paid $14.5 million for it--also a record at the time. De Laurentiis now makes his home on one of the highest hilltops overlooking Benedict Canyon and Beverly Hills. But Rogers didn't make much, if anything, on the house. After pumping $6 million into it, he sold it to Davis.Lucy Smith Battson created the Knoll in 1955 after she and her second husband tired of the family's outdated Greystone mansion, scene of a mysterious murder-suicide involving her first husband, Ned Doheny, and his secretary. (Greystone, now owned by the City of Beverly Hills, stands vacant.)*The Warner Estate, Angelo Drive, Beverly Hills. The big enchilada at $47.5 million, the most money ever paid for a residence. It also is one of the city's longest-running construction projects; currently the grounds are being redone. Billionaire entertainment mogul David Geffen bought the neoclassical mansion and 10-acre estate in 1990 upon the death of Ann Warner, widow of Warner Bros. studios founder Jack Warner. She, according to legend, once turned down an offered $25 million, saying she'd live there until she died. After her death, Geffen snapped up the hotly coveted mansion by persuading the estate's lawyers to delay putting it on the market for 10 days while he arranged his considerable finances.Geffen, described as "Hollywood's richest man" after he sold his Geffen Records for 10 million shares of MCA stock, auctioned off about $11 million worth of original furnishings, which he deemed too musty and museum-like. But he did keep an imported wood floor--said to be the one upon which Napoleon proposed to Josephine--as well as the paneled walls supposedly carved by a Chippendale.Geffen bought the Warner Estate as an investment and had planned to sell it, but plunging real estate values changed his plans. "This is really an act of grandiosity on my part, but the fact of the matter is that I own it, " Geffen told The Times three years ago. "And it's a privilege to be able to live there."It promises to be one of the grandest homes in the United States, if not the world, when completed.*The Kirkeby Estate, Bel-Air Road, Bel-Air. Also known as home to "The Beverly Hillbillies." Jerry Perenchio, movie producer and former partner of Norman Lear, bought the Kirkeby Estate for $13.6 million in 1986, then bought three adjacent lots for about $9 million, expanding the grounds to 11.5 acres. (The comparatively modest ranch house of former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan is his only remaining neighbor.) Perenchio also reportedly invested another $9 million refurbishing the 18th-century French neoclassical mansion he purchased from the estate of widow Carlotta Kirkeby.Built over five years during the 1930s by millionaire bridge contractor Lynn Atkinson, the house with the copper roof, limestone walls, marble staircase, ballroom and two-story reception hall cost $2 million. An oft-told but disputed story goes: Atkinson had planned to surprise his wife, Berenice, by throwing a massive housewarming party. But, as he expectantly walked her through the house and a band played under the Baccarat crystal chandelier, she sniffed: "Who would ever live in a house like this? It's so grandiose." Atkinson was crushed. They left, and the grand mansion stood empty for years as Berenice Atkinson refused to move there. It sold in 1945 to Arnold Kirkeby for $200,000, though some versions of the story say it really was collateral on an uncollected loan.The estate's facade and gardens are familiar to millions of television viewers as the home of "The Beverly Hillbillies." Later, Carlotta Kirkeby would rue the day she allowed the house to be filmed, as tour buses and looky-loos clogged Nimes and Bel-Air roads.
MOREA Romantic Era Ends for Chapel in the Canyon
A Romantic Era Ends for Chapel in the Canyon
Religion: The Chatsworth Christian Church is buying the property. Thousands of couples were wed there, including celebrities.
MORERoom for All Her Friends
Room for All Her Friends
COURTENEY COX, who plays Monica on the hit NBC show "Friends" and portrayed the private eye's girlfriend in Jim Carrey's box-office smash "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," has bought a home in the Brentwood area for slightly more than $2 million and sold her Santa Monica house for $1.1 million, sources say.
MOREUSC Program Eases Faculty Home Buying : Housing: The university offers a $25,000 subsidy to each eligible employee who purchases in target areas near its campuses.
USC Program Eases Faculty Home Buying : Housing: The university offers a $25,000 subsidy to each eligible employee who purchases in target areas near its campuses.
With his salary as coordinator for minority outreach programs at USC's medical school, Carlos Venegas can't afford both a home mortgage and the other costs of supporting his family.
MORETHE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Condo Has Many Gawkers, No Buyers
THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Condo Has Many Gawkers, No Buyers
THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Condo Has Many Gawkers, No Buyers Carla Hall Feb. 9, 1995 It sounds like many overpriced, outsized Brentwood townhouses. Four bedrooms, three fireplaces, a voluptuous 3,400 square feet. "Beautiful Mediterranean villa," exults the small ad in the newspaper.There is no mention of the small flaws--the crumbling plaster in the sky-lit bathroom, the smudge of a child's red crayon in the carpet of one bedroom.And there is no recounting of the extraordinary recent history of the piece of property listed on South Bundy Drive for $795,000. (Also available for lease at $5,100 a month.) So when real estate agent Pauline Walsh Rimp gets a phone call from a broker representing a client who wants to see her Brentwood listing, it becomes her responsibility to have an unusual conversation."I tell them on the phone the minute they call, 'Are you aware that it's Nicole Simpson's condo?' " Rimp said. "Sometimes you hear dead silence. Sometimes they say yes. Sometimes they say 'I'll tell my client and get back to you.' "The house went on the market in mid-October. Since then, Rimp has shown it to a grand total of five people. No one has made a bid. Not one has asked to see it again.Rimp can't even rent it in an area where she says leases are few and coveted since so many were uprooted by the Jan. 17 earthquake."Because of the stigma," explained Rimp, who shares the listing with Jeane McKenna, the realty agent who originally sold the house to Nicole Simpson. "If it weren't for that, it would be gone in an instant. . . . It's probably the prettiest townhome I've ever seen."By any measure, it is one of the most scrutinized, most photographed homes in Los Angeles. Ever since the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found in pools of blood in front of the home, a steady stream of people make pilgrimages, day and night, to the site of the most infamous murders in recent memory. Soon, an entire jury will visit.Everyone wants to look, but who wants to buy?Some houses besmirched by an infamous murder have a magnetic appeal. "I leased the house to Sharon Tate where she was murdered," said real estate agent Elaine Young (who sold O.J. Simpson his Rockingham Avenue house). "Immediately after, people were calling offering double what it was worth. . . . The macabre really interests people."But in the history of real estate tainted by crime, the price sometimes goes down. The Beverly Hills house where the Menendez brothers killed their parents sold in 1991 for $3.6 million--a loss of slightly more than $1 million.So agents handling the Nicole Simpson house must do an intricate dance between keeping out the mere voyeurs and wooing the serious buyer.On one hand, they are rigorously selective. There are no open houses, no caravan tours for real estate agents. Appointments to see it are made strictly broker to broker. The potential buyer must submit a photo I.D. and a credit report."We didn't want people taking chunks of the carpet," said McKenna, who became friends with Nicole Simpson and was representing her when she put the home up for lease shortly before her death. Both McKenna--who has since moved to Albuquerque, N.M.--and Rimp share the listing for John Aaroe & Associates, a purveyor of mostly high-end Westside property.On the other hand, the real estate people are seriously considering letting talk-show host Larry King film a tour of the house for his show."From a marketing standpoint, this house is going to sell to a collector--like the person who offered $100,000 for (Al Cowlings') Bronco," McKenna said. "And if we got on a worldwide show, we would appeal to a Saudi or a Japanese investor maybe--someone who wants to buy the most infamous murder scene in history and still get a nice piece of Brentwood property."Both are unapologetic about asking $170,000 more than the $625,000 Nicole Simpson paid for it a year ago."What we're interested in is the children getting the money," McKenna said.Whether the mystique of the property repels or attracts, realty agents still have to wrestle with other more mundane impediments to a good sale--a soft condo market, a busy street location."It's always possible that we will end up reducing the price," McKenna said. "It hasn't been exposed to the kind of buyer we think is going to buy it."Rimp said she knows little about those who have seen it. One interested person was a plastic surgeon. Another was a divorced woman with two daughters in college. There was a Colorado couple. The most recent showing was Tuesday afternoon. Most are unfailingly polite and tasteful. The woman with the grown children felt the place was too big for her needs, Rimp said.And one, Rimp suspects, was a looky-loo with a good enough real estate agent and credit rating to make it past her screening."I just had a sense that he was maybe having fun and he somehow got in there," Rimp said.Any real prospects can not only see the house, they can talk to Nicole Simpson's long-suffering neighbors. "They said, 'If you ever get anyone who's interested, we'd love to talk to them and let them know how normal we are and how we love the place,' " Rimp said with a chuckle.As keeper of the keys to the condo, Rimp also opens doors and tames the alarm system for prosecutors and police detectives. She's the one the neighbors called when they spotted a tourist who crawled over the locked back gate and opened it for a parade of others. (Her arrival sent them sheepishly off.) She fields requests to film from every local television station and every tabloid television show. "I turn down everybody," she said."There really is not a sense of morbidity," Rimp said about the property. "The first time I went there, I was anxious and a little bit concerned about how I'd feel. But it has a very warm feeling despite the fact that it's cleaned out."Rimp showed off the house earlier this week to prove her point.Hardly the typical condo, the three-story townhouse is airy and large with a graceful curving staircase in the front and another staircase in the back. Patios dot the south side of the house, secluded from neighbors by high walls. The interiors are that typical Brentwood architecture that is either sleekly modern or starkly bland, depending on your taste. A crescent window accents the front wall of the living room. Narrow runners of white paper lie unfurled across the newly cleaned cream carpeting."And if you could have seen it when I got here," said Rimp of the carpeting. "It was black. There was graphite everywhere you looked. Fingerprint dust. And it was tracked everywhere. The place was just trashed."The house has been stripped bare of the furnishings and mementos of Nicole Simpson's life. Rimp gives just bare hints of how the onetime owner filled it. A loft looks out over the first floor. "She had her exercise equipment up here," said Rimp, who met Simpson only once--the Friday before her death. Simpson was looking at lease properties with McKenna and Rimp.A sun deck sits atop the roof. "She had a nice table and chairs up here," Rimp said. On the main floor, Rimp opened the side door of the house onto the tile pavers lining the path that leads to the front gate where Simpson's body was found. The walkway is to Simpson's house alone.The walkway from gate to door is actually short--half the distance it seems on television. The garden in front of the house, adjacent to the walkway, is a tiny patch of dirt."Everyone is so surprised at what a small area it is," Rimp noted. "Everyone thought it was so much bigger."Where Nicole Simpson's body was found, 25 potted plants stand like sentinels, their tall stalks bare and gray, wedged into rows going up the steps from the locked gate.Even early on a Monday morning, there were periodic slow-moving tourists roaming by the house.On her way out, Rimp whipped off the lid of a plastic garbage pail outside the house's garage. "Look in here," she said, glancing in disdainfully at a dozen discarded camera film boxes. "I don't understand it."Nonetheless, Rimp believes occupancy will reduce the number of sightseers. "The fact that it's empty gives people a little more nerve to be intrusive. I think once people move in, that'll go away."
MOREVENICE : 25-Unit Low-Income Housing Project Moves Forward Despite Opposition
VENICE : 25-Unit Low-Income Housing Project Moves Forward Despite Opposition
Despite opposition from some residents, housing advocates are welcoming a series of favorable rulings by Los Angeles zoning administrators regarding construction of a 25-unit apartment building for low-income families in Oakwood.
MOREA Tempest Over Trees : Frustrated Home Sellers Cut Back Oak to Avoid Bad Luck
A Tempest Over Trees : Frustrated Home Sellers Cut Back Oak to Avoid Bad Luck
Peter Kao and his wife loved the massive 100-year-old oak tree that stood on their Sierra Madre lawn in front of their main door.
MOREWESTSIDE COVER STORY : Where Life Is Prefab-ulous : Residents Say Mobile Home Parks in Malibu and Pacific Palisades Are the Best-Kept Secret in L.A.; They Offer Housing on Prime Real Estate at Affordable Prices
WESTSIDE COVER STORY : Where Life Is Prefab-ulous : Residents Say Mobile Home Parks in Malibu and Pacific Palisades Are the Best-Kept Secret in L.A.; They Offer Housing on Prime Real Estate at Affordable Prices
The day kick-starts with a rousing game of tennis on a Malibu hilltop court skirted by sinus-clearing Eucalyptus trees and Australian pines.
MOREAT HOME : Young, New Families and Pioneer Residents Make for Charming Mix : Westport Heights: Ocean breezes, "interesting topography" beckons families with children to area with older residents.
AT HOME : Young, New Families and Pioneer Residents Make for Charming Mix : Westport Heights: Ocean breezes, "interesting topography" beckons families with children to area with older residents.
When Dave Cagle and his family moved into their home in the Westport Heights section of Westchester in December, 1991, there were only a handful of kids on their block.
MOREUCLA to Sell Part of Faculty Subdivision : Real estate: Westchester houses will be offered to the public. They were built to lure professors, but few have bought there.
UCLA to Sell Part of Faculty Subdivision : Real estate: Westchester houses will be offered to the public. They were built to lure professors, but few have bought there.
UCLA to Sell Part of Faculty Subdivision : Real estate: Westchester houses will be offered to the public. They were built to lure professors, but few have bought there. Education March 11, 1994 UCLA officials announced Thursday they will allow the public to buy up to two dozen homes in a largely vacant Westchester subdivision originally built exclusively for professors, conceding it was the only way to keep from losing money on the project.The university built the $42-million subdivision of 86 homes--called The Bluffs for its hilltop views of the ocean--to help recruit senior faculty members who might be tempted to turn down job offers because they could not afford a home in Southern California.Conceived during the 1980s real estate boom, the idea was for the school to offer the three- to five-bedroom homes, located about 30 minutes from the Westwood campus, to incoming UCLA faculty at prices as much as 30% below market value. A 1987 housing survey suggested that nearly 60% of faculty recruits would buy such houses and that the mid-$400,000 to high-$600,000 prices would be within the reach of 129 new professors over three years.But by the time the project was completed last fall, UCLA couldn't find a single buyer. Housing prices had taken a 30% nose-dive, wiping out any bargain appeal, and state budget woes forced the university to curtail its hiring.School officials hoped to spur interest by dropping prices an average of $35,000 on each home and offering flooring and landscaping upgrades. But only seven faculty members have purchased homes, said Brad Erickson, UCLA's associate director of real estate. Two others have signed leases with options to buy--one family that was displaced by last fall's Malibu fire and another displaced by the Northridge earthquake.At that rate, it would take UCLA more than three years to sell off all of the homes to its faculty--not fast enough to repay the First Interstate Bank construction loan and recover all the project's costs, Erickson said."We would have a loss and the only way to avoid the loss is to open it up to the public," Erickson said.The original loan agreement requires UCLA to repay the full $42 million to First Interstate in June and obligates Chancellor Charles E. Young to use other campus funds if housing sales fail to cover the debt. But a spokesman for the UC treasurer's office in Oakland said Thursday that the university system is engaged in "positive negotiations" with the bank to restructure UCLA's repayment.After receiving permission from University of California regents in January, Young finally decided Thursday morning to allow the public purchases of the homes, Erickson said."The chancellor clearly, clearly is upset that this is something that has to be done, but he recognizes that it's really a prudent thing to do," Erickson said. "He's not upset simply at the fact that we have to sell a few homes to the public. What's frustrating to him is that it highlights what's happening to the university generally."More than 300 people not affiliated with UCLA have signed up for a chance to buy the homes, he said. They will be allowed to tour selected models, most likely at the end of the month, and will be invited to submit bids that could be unsealed in early April."A lot of these homes on the bluffs are premium homes with premium views, and we want to capture that premium," Erickson said. "We want to at least break even on this project, and the only way to do that is to go out to the public."After selling off the first two dozen, Erickson said UCLA will re-examine its future faculty recruiting plans and may make more homes available to the public."The world has changed and we did not foresee the extent the world would change, in terms of local real estate prices and what has happened to the state and university," Erickson said. "If the university were prospering wildly, a decision might have been made to hold on to this project for its institutional purpose. But the university, like everyone in Southern California, has been suffering and has got to cut its losses."
MOREHome on the Range : Rancho Mission Viejo Owners Resist Development Efforts on Their 40,000-Acre Spread
Home on the Range : Rancho Mission Viejo Owners Resist Development Efforts on Their 40,000-Acre Spread
Home on the Range : Rancho Mission Viejo Owners Resist Development Efforts on Their 40,000-Acre Spread Jan. 25, 1994 In a densely populated county where living space is usually measured in small lots and tightly arranged apartments and condominiums, the vast Rancho Mission Viejo might seem a mythical place in a dime Western.The ranch sprawls over 40,000 acres of amber hills and grasslands that is pure cattle country. Since 1882, cowboys have ridden the brand of the Rancho Mission Viejo, repairing fences and rounding up cattle for market.Although the inexorable tide of development wipes out much of Orange County's pioneer heritage, family members say the last roundup at the rancho will not be anytime soon.Patriarch Richard O'Neill Sr. bought the ranch more than a century ago. In recent decades, real estate interests have come to the O'Neills with proposals to build everything from an amusement park to a garbage dump on the ranch property.One of the most influential families in southern Orange County, the O'Neills own the Santa Margarita Co., builder of Rancho Santa Margarita, a planned community.Although a number in the clan are major land developers in the county, when it comes to building on the family ranch, their answer has been a flat "No.""All these people have designs on the land," said Gilbert Aguirre, who runs Rancho Mission Viejo. "Our world is getting smaller, but the family is dedicated to being in the cattle business for the next 110 years."The family also has strong links to the historic mission town of San Juan Capistrano. Dick O'Neill, 70, a grandson of the ranch founder, is trying to buy and redevelop a block of downtown commercial property there. O'Neill, who owns the El Adobe restaurant in town, has been heavily involved with the Orange County Democratic Party over the years. The O'Neill family's wealth was estimated at $500 million by Forbes magazine in 1992. Both the ranch and the city share a rough-and-tumble legacy that lasted through the 1950s, when old-timers say it was not uncommon to see cowboys riding their horses through the saloons."Those were golden times," said Tony Moiso, the grandson of Richard O'Neill who oversees ranch operations. "San Juan Capistrano was so isolated in those days before (Interstate 5) was built in the early '60s. We feel very much tied to the town."At one point, 15,000 head of cattle were raised at the Rancho Mission Viejo. Today, about 6,000 head graze there, still making it the largest cattle operation in Southern California, said local historian Jim Sleeper.But in recent years, development has whittled down the amount of prime grassland available for cattle and even the Rancho Mission Viejo has been forced to buy acreage in northern Nevada, where the herd is sent to feed each winter.Although beef prices have been good for the last few years, "historically, it's not been very profitable to raise cattle for most people," Aguirre said. "You can't control the prices set on your product."To generate income to run the ranch--which is about three times the size of San Francisco--the family, headed by Moiso, began planning the community of Rancho Santa Margarita at the foot of the Saddleback Mountains in 1983.Angered over development of the pristine canyon area, the plans drew heavy criticism from residents and environmentalists. But it was approved, and today 20,000 residents live in the half-completed development. Meanwhile, company officials established a 1,600-acre nature conservancy on the ranch that is open to public tours."We could throw a fence around the place and keep everyone out, but that would be terribly irresponsible," Moiso said. "I feel blessed to be able to develop a portion of the land and remain a rancher on the rest."However, local environmentalist Sherry Meddick is torn about the Santa Margarita Co.'s environmental record."I've always felt so funny that someone could donate incredible resources and also be responsible for the development coming behind it that impacts these preserves," said Meddick, a Silverado Canyon resident who works for Greenpeace in Los Angeles. "They donate the parkland but unfortunately, the flood plain from the (housing) developments flows into the park area."I frankly think Dick and Donna O'Neill have concerns for the land . . . but if the area's ecological integrity is disturbed, I don't see the point of donating" parkland.The family patriarch, Richard O'Neill, was a former butcher who, after arriving in the United States from Ireland, operated a ranch in Merced County. When the 200,000-acre estate of John Forster was put up for sale, O'Neill saw an opportunity he could not pass up.It was truly the big country. Stretching from Oceanside to Aliso Creek in what is now Lake Forest, O'Neill was looking at 359 square miles of prime grazing territory.He found a financier in silver magnate James Flood, who was willing to put up $457,000. In 1882, the men purchased the vast plot of land. O'Neill lived another 24 years, surviving to see the Santa Fe Railroad lay tracks through the ranch, greatly increasing its worth.The ranch passed through the hands of three generations of O'Neills. The immense property was divided in the late 1930s when the Flood heirs decided to leave the cattle business.The O'Neills kept the Orange County portion of the ranch, a decision that soon proved prescient when the federal government in 1942 enacted the War Powers Act and, through its eminent domain powers, took over what became Camp Pendleton, a training base for the Marines.The family started the planned community of Mission Viejo in the mid-1960s, but sold the 10,000-acre development in 1972 to the Phillip Morris Co.Throughout their dealings, the family has been determined to remain in the cattle business.The annual spring roundup, when calves are born and branded, remains a deeply ingrained ranch tradition. The El Viaje de Portola, where several hundred riders re-create the trail of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola in southern Orange County, is another way the family celebrates the area's heritage.
MORECASTLE KEEP : The Grand Stimson House Has Changed Hands Numerous Times, With a Beer Baron and USC Frat Boys Counted Among Its Past Residents. Now, Extensive Renovations and New Tenants--the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet-- Have Given It New Life
CASTLE KEEP : The Grand Stimson House Has Changed Hands Numerous Times, With a Beer Baron and USC Frat Boys Counted Among Its Past Residents. Now, Extensive Renovations and New Tenants--the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet-- Have Given It New Life
CASTLE KEEP : The Grand Stimson House Has Changed Hands Numerous Times, With a Beer Baron and USC Frat Boys Counted Among Its Past Residents. Now, Extensive Renovations and New Tenants--the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet-- Have Given It New Life Architecture and Design Jan. 2, 1994 With an abiding faith as firm as a mighty redwood, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet have once again settled into the house that wood built.The mansion at 2421 S. Figueroa St., built 100 years ago for lumber tycoon Thomas Douglas Stimson when he moved to Los Angeles from Chicago, has changed hands numerous times during its history.Once before, from 1949 to 1969, the house served as a convent for about 30 Carondelet Sisters, an order devoted to teaching, nursing and social work. Between Stimson and the five Carondelet Sisters who moved in this fall, the 30-room mansion also has been home to a civil engineer, a beer baron, a USC fraternity and students from neighboring Mount St. Mary's College who affectionately called it "The Castle."Now with $1 million in renovations and repairs well under way, the house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 212 in Los Angeles, stands ready to accommodate its new occupants, who are already doing good works throughout the city.And thanks to the Sisters' reverence for their new their home and their commitment to the community, local preservationists rejoice that instead of becoming an anachronistic relic, the stately house will once again be a vital part of the neighborhood."This is a grand old mansion and we're still a little in awe of it," said Sister Mary Allen, who oversees the renovation of the house as provincial treasurer for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, who have integrated into the surrounding area by doing community work and plan to open the mansion for small musical productions, selected community events and rent it out to film crews seeking historical backdrops. (Carondelet is the name of the St. Louis suburb where the first Sisters of St. Joseph built a log cabin in 1836. By 1889, the Carondelet Sisters were active in Los Angeles.)From the front, the 3 1/2-story house resembles a medieval castle, with brick chimneys standing guard like sentries along the roof and an ornate four-story crenelated tower on the northeast corner, a noble rook from a massive chess board.A third-floor balcony sits beneath a gabled arch and another stepped gable contains a Palladian window. A porch with carved stone columns encircles the first floor.Excluding the tower, the house totals 12,800 square feet."I've admired the house from the minute I first walked in," said Sister Jill, one of the supervisors for the archdiocese's elementary schools. "The wood, the details on the door hinges, the different shapes of the glass in the windows, the stained glass windows above the stairway that have their own light. I find it fascinating."The grandeur of the house has attracted Hollywood over the years. It has been a setting for, among other things, chamber music performances, television commercials, the movies "House II" and "After Midnight," two miniseries, "Testimony of Two Men" and "Captains and Kings," and an episode of "The Bionic Woman" in which Lindsay Wagner's double jumped off a second-floor porch. That same episode, titled "Black Magic," also featured the late Vincent Price, who liked the spookiness of the house's acoustics so much he returned later to record some productions of his own.Though he amassed a fortune in the lumber business, Stimson built his home out of Arizona red sandstone. He wanted the exterior to resemble the brick-and-stone mansions of Chicago's Gold Coast, and handed the task to a young Los Angeles architect, Carroll H. Brown.Brown's architectural design for the Stimson House has been described variously as Richardsonian Romanesque, Victorian Gothic, Romantic Revival and, according to a Times reporter in 1948, a style that reflects "the Mission influence, a bit of Byzantine, something Latin and a little Fort Ticonderoga."A Times music critic reviewing a chamber music performance at the house in 1989 called its architecture "Midwestern Ivanhoe" and said the edifice "proved a good deal more interesting than the music."If Stimson's choice of stone for his home's exterior seems ironic, the interior reflects his true passion. The inside is a shrine to lumber, a museum of wood, a smorgasbord of timber--ash, sycamore, birch, mahogany, walnut, gumwood and oak, all shipped from lumber yards in the Midwest.Richly paneled walls rise up to high coffered, or delicately plastered, ceilings. Each of the rooms on the first floor is finished in a different wood and thick doors made of two kinds of wood, one on each side, match the wood in the room.Other details include inlaid woodwork in the oak floors, stained glass windows along the main stairway, marble fireplaces, engraved door hinges, unique corner china cabinets and a hidden safe in the original family room. "That's where the sisters used to keep their cleaning supplies," Sister Mary Allen revealed.Material prepared for the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission's review of the Stimson house in 1977 called it "architecturally unique in Los Angeles," "the best example of this period of American architecture in Los Angeles" and "one of the most significant structures in the Los Angeles area."Architect Rudolph De Chellis of O'Leary Terasawa Partners, who supervised the renovations, said it was "an honor to work on that building.""You have to respect the craftsmanship and detailing," he said. "You can't find that today. You couldn't duplicate it."At a cost of $130,000, the house, completed in 1893, was the most expensive in Los Angeles up to that time. The price tag if it were built today?"Three or $4 million easy," De Chellis said.Jim Childs, who lives a few blocks from the house and is active on historic preservation matters, is glad to see the nuns breathe new life into it."Visually, certainly it's one of the most important examples of period architecture in Los Angeles," said Childs, who is chairman of a citizens advisory committee that works with the Community Redevelopment Agency."Its location (near a major intersection--Figueroa Street and Adams Boulevard) gives it a high profile and most people can relate to its historical significance because of its size and caliber," he said.What people concerned about historic preservation worry about, Childs said, is that such magnificent structures can overshadow smaller ones that also deserve to be protected and renovated.That's why Childs urges people to learn about the history of their neighborhoods. "Without the historical context, (the Stimson House) is seen as an oddity and a freak rather than part of the neighborhood," he said.Indeed, around the turn of the century, the Stimson House was the anchor of the most prestigious neighborhood in Los Angeles, a description reserved for Bunker Hill and neighborhoods just south of downtown during the 1870s and 1880s, according to architectural historians.The opening of a horse-car line along 23rd Street helped attract many upper-class families to the area and they built mansions around St. James Park and Chester Place, near the Adams Boulevard-Figueroa Street intersection.But by the 1920s, the rich were moving to Hancock Park and Beverly Hills, and by the 1930s several large homes in the area had been replaced by commercial establishments and, in one case, the sprawling Automobile Club of Southern California offices just south of the Stimson House.During that time, "a flurry of subdividing activity indicated that investment considerations were now overshadowing quality of life pursuits . . . Consequently, mansions were broken up into apartments and estates were subdivided for new apartment complexes," according to a 1991 report on historical architecture prepared for the state Department of Transportation.Stimson was one of the city's leading citizens and developers until his death in 1898. His family sold the house in 1907 to Alfred Solano, a civil engineer. In 1918, Edward R. Maier, president of Maier Brewing Co., bought the property. He was said to have stored his wines and liqueurs in the basement, a labyrinth of rooms and arched doorways.In 1940, the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity of USC bought the house for $20,000. The house survived the frat's eight-year tenure, though at least one floor board was broken by a student jumping on a pogo stick, according to an unofficial history of the house put together by the Carondelet Sisters.At one point, the fraternity men hid a banner snatched from the UCLA campus in the mansion's elevator shaft and on another occasion they imprisoned a UCLA student in the basement for two days after he was caught engaging in some mischief at USC, according to the nuns' scrapbook.But Vincent McDonough, a fraternity member who lived in "the Red Castle" in 1947 and 1948 and a son of Gordon L. McDonough, former Los Angeles County supervisor and U. S. congressman, said the high jinks were kept to a minimum. "Despite rumors to the contrary, we were a very studious house," Vincent McDonough said. "All of us were ex-WW II guys darned intent on graduating." McDonough, now 70, graduated in 1948 with a degree in international relations and went on to a long career with General Electric Co."It was a gorgeous, magnificent place," recalled McDonough, a native Angeleno now living in Las Vegas. "It had an austere grandeur all its own."The 30 or so fraternity members living in the house while he was there took good care of it, McDonough said, and often invited professors over for lunch. The students rode to campus and back in an old red fire engine the fraternity owned, often accompanied by their Airedale mascot, George Tirebiter.Of course, the Pi Kappa Alphas did take an occasional break from their studies. "I remember a few Hawaiian luau parties in the basement," McDonough said.Other memories of his days at the house include regular bridge games and a visit from singer Frankie Lane, who was promoting one of his records, McDonough said.During that time, McDonough also met Dorothy Patricia, the woman who would become his wife. They courted at Pi Kappa Alpha parties and were married at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church, next to the house, where they first met at a Mass.But at least one of the neighbors apparently thought the frat was a bit too boisterous. In 1948, Carrie Estelle Doheny, widow of the oil magnate Edward Doheny and a philanthropist in her own right, bought the house for $70,000. The frat moved to 28th Street."She was not happy with the noise from the fraternity," Sister Mary Allen said. "So she bought it and gave it to us (the Carondelet Sisters)."Not surprisingly, the nuns proved to be quiet neighbors. Coincidentally, one of the residents was Sister Alice Marie, the oldest sister of Dorothy Patricia McDonough, whose family lived in nearby St. James Park.From about 1970 until 1989, the nuns let Mount St. Mary's College use the house as a residence for some of its students."We had 27 or 28 students there at one time," said Sister Patricia Zins, former director of residential housing for the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary's College. "They loved being there. The house had a warm kind of aura about it. The students were really able to create a nice family-type spirit while they lived there. Whenever anyone walked into the house they would marvel at how gorgeous it was. The wood is just beautiful."With the college now housing all its residential students on campus, the Carondelet Sisters decided to once again use the house as a residence since some of its convents have closed. Renovations and repairs to the plumbing, the kitchen and the first two floors have been funded by a grant from the Daniel Murphy Foundation and private donations.The sisters hope to raise more money for seismic repairs and work on the third floor including painting, refinishing floors, filling cracks, redoing ceilings and general mending, by renting to film crews interested in using the exterior and parts of the inside for location shots, Sister Mary Allen said. Most of the income from filming, however, will be used for the sisters' retirement fund.*At least seven more nuns are expected to join the five living there now. Meanwhile, the current residents are thoroughly enjoying their old house.Sister Lana, principal of St. Jerome's elementary school, said: "We've each picked responsibility for different rooms. We're always discovering new nooks and crannies."The other residents are Sister Genevieve Marie, a semi-retired nurse, Sister Maria Angela, a campus minister and instructor at Mount St. Mary's College, and Sister Josefa Therese, a cosmetologist who works with retired sisters at the Carondelet Center."We're all involved in different ministries, so when we come home at the end of the day we all have something different to bring to the dinner table," said Sister Lana. "And Sister Genevieve entertains us with tales about the latest projects of the plumbers, the exterminators or the electricians."Sister Mary Allen, who doesn't live in the house but as the daughter of a lumber man clearly enjoys every chance to look around, said the sisters have had little time to add their personal touches to the house."They've been doing what has to be done to live here," she said. "After a while we'll begin looking at what can be done to bring it back to life. It is our home but it's so beautiful we do want to share it."On the CoverThe Stimson House, built a century ago by lumber tycoon Thomas Douglas Stimson, is one of the few remaining South-Central mansions that have passed the test of time.The 30-room mansion, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has served as a convent, a frat house, a dorm and a popular site for film crews. It is now home to five Carondolet Sisters, an order devoted to teaching, nursing and social work.
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