The Hills: Arts Colony Refuge From Hectic Hollywood : Despite the isolation, creative types prefer the European feel and being close to nature.

When a New York friend of a Los Angeles screenwriter came to visit, the cabdriver who picked him up at Los Angeles International Airport didn’t want to know where the New Yorker was going.

Instead the cabbie said, “Tell me what your friend does for a living and I’ll tell you where he lives.” “OK,” said the New Yorker, a little put out by the cabdriver’s conceit. “He’s a screenwriter.”

“Ah,” said the cabbie as he started driving out of the airport. “He must live in the Hollywood Hills.” Startled, the New Yorker said: “That’s right! How did you know?”

“Oh, it’s a high-percentage call,” the cabbie chuckled. “Those hills are full of artists and writers.”

The cabdriver was exaggerating, of course, but only a little. Since the turn of the century, the hills of Hollywood have provided a conducive working environment for all sorts of creative types.

Steep, Tortuous Roads

Today, the Hollywood Hills still provide refuge for a substantial arts colony as well as for the hundreds of others who live on its often steep, tortuous roads. Refuge from the crazy streets of Hollywood, refuge from crowded freeways, refuge from tract-home living.

Refuge that carries a price. Last year’s boom that inflated housing prices throughout the city raised the median price of a typical 1920s 2-bedroom, Spanish-style house in the Hills to $500,000. The same house in Hollywood’s flatlands would cost some $300,000 less. Current multiple listings for the area shows a range from $243,500 for an 834-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bath house to $4.5 million for a six-bedroom, six-bath mansion on a hilltop 3 1/2-acre site.

Husband and wife Patrick Walshe and Ros Mason-Jones found refuge at a “reasonable” price. The British couple--he’s an artist, she’s a clothing designer--moved to Los Angeles in 1986 from New York, buying a condominium in Santa Monica.

“We decided we wanted a house, but couldn’t afford anything in Santa Monica, so we started going across the city, eliminating areas,” Walshe, 36, said. “We came across the Whitley-Camrose area by chance.”

The High Tower

Walshe and Mason-Jones had stumbled into one of the many pocket areas that give the Hills their charm. Located just south of the Hollywood Bowl, the Whitley-Camrose area--better known as Whitley Heights--was planned in the early 1920s by H. J. Whitley, a man infatuated with European architecture.

The neighborhood is best known for the High Tower, a whimsical five-story shaft with elevator that rises from the end of Hightower Drive and is modeled after structures in Bologna, Italy. Silent screen heartthrob Rudolph Valentino lived there on Wedgewood Place with his second wife, Natacha Rambova.

Walshe and Mason-Jones purchased a two-bedroom, two-bath house for $360,000. The Italian-style house was built in 1922 and “consistently improved.” They have just completed “major renovation on the downstairs” and expect to begin work on the upstairs soon.

One of Walshe’s pleasures is in the “great variety in the Hills. If you took a photograph of this street, it wouldn’t say ‘California’--it looks like Italy.”

Grace Baldwin, a neighbor of Walshe and Mason-Jones, was also drawn to the European look of the area. “It reminded me of the Italian Riviera,” the caterer and gift-shop owner said. “There’s a Mediterranean feeling, a little mix of different countries.”

Baldwin bought her house 13 years ago, after living in the Hills since 1960. Built the same year as the Walshe/Mason-Jones house, Baldwin describes it as a “typical Whitley house of Italian/Spanish stucco with greenhouse windows and French country kitchen.”

She entertains a lot in the two-bedroom, one-bath 1,500-square-foot house and loves the “very neighborly feel to the area--people are really friendly.”

Elias and Sharon Davis are also Hills old-timers. The couple, in their late 40s, raised their two children in the Spanish-style Hollywoodland area house they purchased in 1969.

(Hollywoodland may be the most famous of the Hollywood Hills communities. Built on the lower slopes of Mt. Lee, the subdivision was advertised by the famous Hollywood Sign, originally reading Hollywoodland ).

Charm in the Design

“It’s the only house we’ve ever owned,” said Elias Davis, a television writer and producer. “There is a lot of charm in the house’s design”--a roomy three-bedroom, four-bath with 3,600 square feet of living space.

The Davises once “talked about moving to Studio City or some other area in the flats, so the kids could walk to stores and maybe have more kids to play with--there was a lot of car-pooling from the Hills, a lot of work,” Elias Davis said.

“But there is a removed kind of feeling here--isolated yet close--and a great view of the canyon. There’s something about having deer to look at from your windows.”

The Davises decided the commute (to the studios for Elias; to UCLA for Sharon, a foreign student adviser) was worth the trouble.

A commute of one sort or another is almost guaranteed for Hills dwellers. There are few stores or restaurants in the area proper. Most shopping trips are into neighboring communities, with Glendale or the Valley preferred over the congestion of Hollywood’s flatlands.

There is also the commute to take the children to school. But, says Ira Sanders of Fred Sands Realty in Los Feliz, an office that handles many Hollywood Hills listings, “schools are not as important a factor for most residents; the area’s other attributes come first. Also, there are not as many families drawn to the area to begin with.”

Another pair of Hills old-timers as well as artists, Yoram and Peggy Kahane moved to their Hollywood Hills hideaway in 1967, according to Yoram, for “three reasons: to be near work, to live in an old Hollywood neighborhood of Spanish-style houses and to be near nature.”

The Kahanes--Yoram a 1959 immigrant from Israel, Peggy from Chicago--who own the Shooting Star photographic agency in Los Angeles, found all three, after Yoram Kahane talked to six real estate agents.

“The one who took me seriously sold me this house on a cul-de-sac,” he said, a 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom late ‘20s gem with arches, tile and wrought iron spread out over three levels. The 1967 price: $42,000.

One problem with the Hollywood Hills is that the precise boundaries are a little hard to pin down, partly the result of real estate agents and home sellers anxious to cash in on the area’s cache.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce draws the community map from Griffith Park on the east extending to Laurel Canyon on the west, from Mulholland Drive on the north to Franklin Avenue on the south.

This area includes most of the Hollywood Hills landmarks, particularly the valuable collection of architecturally interesting works, ranging from public areas like the Hollywood Bowl (with its notable Federal Arts Project gate on Highland Avenue) and the Yamashiro restaurant (a Japanese mountain palace with 600-year-old pagoda at 1999 N. Sycamore) to such private architectural gems as R. M. Schindler’s Fitzpatrick House (8078 Woodrow Wilson Drive) and John Lautner’s 1960 Malin House (776 Torreyson Drive), better known as the “Chemosphere,” which is anchored on a pedestal riveted to the hillside and which gives off the appearance of being a flying saucer.

All of which is part of the Hills’ appeal.

“Hill-dwellers in general are different from those looking for housing in more ‘conforming’ areas,” said Sanders of Fred Sands Realty. “They are concerned about privacy, a natural setting. . . .”

“The artists in particular--many of them in the writing arts, or behind-the-scenes crafts people in the film industry--are attracted to the Hills,” said Sanders’ co-worker Norm MacNeil. “They have a great appreciation for the variety of the architecture, for the integrity of the homes. . . .”

“Most of them are really energetic, people who in their daily lives are really ‘burning’ it and need to get away from the rat race. The Hills are perfect for that.”

AT A GLANCE

Population 1989 estimate: 28,741 1980-89 change: +18.4%

Median age: 40 years

Racial/ethnic mix White: 76.2% Latino: 9.3% Black: 5.7% Other: 8.7%

Annual income Per capita: $32,176 Median household: $42,876

Household distribution Less than $15,000: 17.1% $15,000 - $30,000: 19.0% $30,000 - $50,000: 20.8% $50,000 - $75,000: 16.2% $75,000 +: 26.8%