Class on Class : UCLA Extension Course Takes Students Behind Scenes in Beverly Hills
The rich are different from you and me.
They have valet parking at the post office--at least they do at one branch in Beverly Hills.
One of the most affluent communities in the world, Beverly Hills is filled with some of the most beautiful, as well as some of the most pretentious, structures money can buy.
The distinctive look of Beverly Hills is the subject of a course being offered this summer by UCLA Extension. Taught by architectural historian David Greenberg, the course will consider Beverly Hills from its beginnings as a planned community to its present and probable future as an internationally coveted address.
Beverly Hills isn’t attractive by accident, Greenberg said. “It was designed to be nice.”
Local historian Phyllis Lerner explained that early in the 20th Century, Burton E. Green, Max Whittier and their partners in the Rodeo Land & Water Co. hired Wilbur David Cook Jr., who had worked with the great planner Frederick Law Olmsted, to design the new community. (Lerner, who is assisting with the course, is president of the Beverly Hills Historical Society.) Instead of planning a purely residential area for the rich, Cook conceived of Beverly Hills as a community with shops and even a small industrial area, as well as neighborhoods (albeit separate and unequal) for the wealthy, the comfortable and the rest.
In the original plan, the commercial district was between Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards. This triangle was destined to contain the shops that would cater to the residents of the new town.
Small working-class houses were located south of Wilshire. The four blocks between Santa Monica and Sunset featured increasingly large lots intended for the well-to-do. North of Sunset, in the foothills, were the vast estates of the really rich. Parks, curving streets in the wealthier neighborhoods and thousands of trees--different species on different streets--were part of the grand plan.
In 1906, according to Charles Lockwood and Jeff Hyland, authors of “The Estates of Beverly Hills,” lots in the “500” blocks just north of Santa Monica Boulevard cost $900, with discounts for payment in cash and building sooner rather than later. Greenberg said the same lots sell today for $1.7 million, whether or not the existing house is to be torn down.
One of the perks that wealth can sometimes buy is privacy. As the late architectural critic Reyner Banham observed, much of the loveliest architecture of the Westside is hidden from the street and prying eyes by “occluding boscage.” Greenberg plans to take his students behind the greenery and the gates to see examples of the grand estates of Beverly Hills, such as the Robinson Mansion on Elden Way, whose exotic gardens are now open to the public.
The class will also visit choice examples of modern Beverly Hills, probably including a futuristic residence on Angelo View Drive designed by architect John Lautner. The house includes port-hole windows in the master bedroom that provide underwater views of the pool.
The course is being given at the Extension Design Center, 1918 Main St., Santa Monica. Classes meet Tuesday afternoons from 4 to 7 p.m. through Sept. 12. The cost is $150.
Greenberg describes himself as non-judgmental. He finds things to applaud even in what others might decry as visual hodgepodge and architectural excess. He likes the Angeleno tendency to personalize one’s residence, outside as well as inside.
“Los Angeles,” he said, “is a place where you can see people’s truths. You can see what they like, what they believe in. You can’t see that in New York.”
Big Houses on Small Lots
Greenberg says there are more examples of good modern architecture in Beverly Hills than ever before. But he is not put off by the fact that many contemporary residents are building imitative mansions on lots that were intended for much smaller, more modest structures. “Mansionization,” he maintains, has created a new work force and a new market for fine building materials, such as marble. “It’s also bringing back man-made ornamentation--that’s great,” he said.
Greenberg said “mansionization” is now taking place in other cities, such as Vancouver, British Columbia, and is an example of “the Los Angeles-zation of the world.”
The architectural historian also plans to take his students to Beverly Park--a 325-acre tract of recently built estates just south of Mulholland Drive. Like the mansions of an earlier generation, the homes of Beverly Park have swimming pools, tennis courts and guest houses. The new estates sell for more than $6 million, even though the construction of 80 mansions on a single tract, even a 325-acre one, has resulted in at least one home with a tennis court in the front yard.
Beverly Park also boasts what Realtor Hyland describes as “the world’s most expensive brochure.” Its developers financed the publication of the second edition of “The Estates of Beverly Hills,” a coffee-table book on the grand houses of the past that retails for $100 and includes a section on Beverly Park.
Although some observers are put off by Beverly Park, Greenberg is fascinated by it. “I never thought of a development for mansions until I saw that,” he said. “It’s an incredible concept.” Greenberg said the development influenced him, as an architect and urban planner, in a project of his own near Malibu.
Hotel on Itinerary
The Beverly Hills Hotel will also be on the class itinerary.
Greenberg, who grew up in Los Angeles, remembers going as a boy to bar mitzvahs at the venerable pink and green hotel. It still has a kosher kitchen, although its current owner is the Muslim sultan of Brunei.
Built by the Rodeo Land & Water Co. in 1912, the hotel helped Beverly Hills rise from the bean fields (the local baseball team was called the Bean-Eaters). Prospective residents stayed there, and for years its dining room was the only restaurant in town.
“I love the Beverly Hills Hotel,” said Greenberg, who describes it as “almost the quintessential example of Mission Revival.”
Like Beverly Hills itself, the hotel is perhaps best known for its legends. Among the most outlandish is that Errol Flynn held a wake for John Barrymore in one of the hotel’s suites attended by the departed himself, whose body Flynn had abducted from the mortuary.
