Original Owner Recalls the Old, Lauds the New at Showplace House
A beautiful sunny day and a renovated estate drew 84-year-old Norma Churchill back home Sunday.
Churchill was the original owner of the 3-acre Tarzana estate now dubbed Cranberry Knoll, the 1988 San Fernando Valley Design House, where public tours began Sunday and will run through April 17.
Churchill, who now lives in Beverly Hills, toured the renovated New England colonial farm house along with everyone else, but, unlike the others, her oohs and aahs were laced with nostalgia.
“I’m at the age where I like to see a little of the old,” she said.
Churchill, a former actress in Laurel and Hardy films, remembered with fondness the barn that housed her six horses and the tavern room that was a replica of one in Alexandria, Va., a favorite watering hole for George Washington. They had been renovated into a restaurant and showpiece pub room, respectively.
Fire Engine in Garage
She also reminisced about the days she kept a fire engine in her four-car garage and operated a fire department on her front lawn during World War II. Churchill had rounded up the few neighbors in the area and together, they all learned to fight fires. The first fire they extinguished was one that threatened to burn then-neighbor John Huston’s house.
Her beloved house has been changed a great deal since those days.
“It was a delightful house,” said the elegant Churchill, who lived there for 10 years. “Now, it’s altogether different.”
But the differences met with her approval, she told owner Gail Claridge, a real estate developer who, with her husband, Joseph, bought the house last year.
“This has been a very wonderful day and I don’t feel a bit depressed or blue,” Churchill said. “It’s very exciting.”
The 6,500-square-foot house is a joint project of the International Society of Interior Designers and the American Cancer Society. Donations from tours will benefit the nonprofit cancer-fighting organization.
Currier, Ives Setting
After the house was chosen for renovation by the two groups, a team of 30 designers were selected to transform the four-bedroom house and gardens into a Currier and Ives-like setting.
Sunday’s visitors strolled across a cobblestone driveway leading to the white clapboard farmhouse amid rolling green lawns. Also decorating the landscape are colorful flower gardens, a meandering stream and a children’s playhouse.
The house, built in 1939, features a huge living room with a walk-in marble fireplace, a slate-floor music room, two garden sitting rooms and a formal dining room with hand-painted ceilings. Features include custom-made stained-glass windows and huge bay windows that offer picturesque views of sycamores and pepper trees, terraced gardens and a cascading waterfall.
The house’s spacious rooms are decorated in green, yellow, blue and, of course, cranberry red. Design styles range from early American and English to country French, designers said. Much of the furniture was crafted expressly for Cranberry Knoll; several pieces were fashioned to look like antiques.
But there were a host of modern conveniences amid the traditional furnishings. The spacious, airy kitchen has a state-of-the art refrigerator/freezer and two dishwashers, and a living room-sized master bathroom boasts a spa tub, television set and two sofas.
Although Claridge owns Cranberry Knoll, she does not live in it and has donated its use to the American Cancer Society for 10 months. After that, she expects to sell it to a well-heeled buyer: The asking price is $3.5 million.
Cranberry Knoll, at 4601 Van Alden Ave., is open for tours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays.
