HOME DESIGN : WHEN A MAN’S HOME IS A CASTLE
High on a hillside overlooking San Juan Capistrano, a massive gray castle rises up out of the earth like a figment from a Grimm’s fairy tale.
With its steep pitched roof, fanciful turrets, imposing stone facade and towering chimneys, the castle bespeaks of medieval times, of knights on white horses and damsels in distress. One half expects to see Rapunzel reposing in one of the towers.
Dubbed the Wish Chateau after its owners, Bob and Erin Wish, the castle stands out as an extravagant example of Old World architecture imported into the very new world of Orange County: the French chateau.
Never mind that this is Southern California, not the hinterlands of France, or that the year is 1989, not 1789. To those who can afford it, a man’s home truly is his castle.
In upscale neighborhoods such as Peppertree Bend in San Juan Capistrano and Nellie Gail Ranch in Laguna Hills, they’re building mansions that are the stuff of storybooks.
“It’s the kind of house you fantasize about when you’re a child, and when you can afford the ultimate,” says Marsh Burns, a real estate broker who lives and sells homes in Nellie Gail.
While most buyers of larger homes favor Mediterranean-style mansions, architects and real estate agents say an occasional client wants a home fit for a king. They want the towers, the spirals, the moldings and all the castle trimmings.
“A lot of people want something that stands out and looks different,” says Susan Forrest, a real estate agent in South County who has sold several French chateaus in the Nellie Gail area.
The chateaus have proven most popular with her clients from the East Coast, where the French-country style is found only in sprawling, multimillion-dollar estates, Forrest says. In Southern California, where there are few sprawling areas left, they can buy a mini-castle in the $800,000- to $1-million range.
“I’ve even found a couple of tract areas in Laguna Niguel that have taken on the French Normandy look,” Forrest says.
Few homes so closely resemble a storybook castle as the Wish Chateau.
“We wanted a French chateau with a castle look,” Erin Wish says. “Everyone has the (Mediterranean-style) villa. This is unique. It’s not the same old thing.”
The 15,000-square-foot mansion has everything but a drawbridge and a moat filled with alligators (instead there are two electronically controlled security gates and mounted video cameras).
“It’s fantasy land,” says Duncan DeLapp, president of DeLapp Development Corp. in Laguna Hills, which built the chateau.
Those admitted through the iron gates and up the winding drive will find themselves at the door of Orange County’s other magic kingdom.
Guests walk up stone steps flanked on either side by man-made ponds that surround the front and back of the castle. Once through the stone archway and double mahogany doors, they find an entryway laid with cream-colored marble and a dual staircase with hand-carved oak railings glazed and polished to look like walnut.
Atop the stairs, dangling from one of the castle domes, is a brass chandelier from which cherubs look down--a piece that once hung in the bedroom of Evita Peron. If only angels could speak.
The castle has 10 bedrooms and 13 baths, including a master suite with adjoining turret that has built-in bookshelves, a wet bar and a fireplace adorned with a marble carving of a swan. The master bath features a round Roman tub accented by Grecian columns and a shower that has a marble ledge that could comfortably seat six.
Everything here is built to epic proportions. The “great room,” so named because of its size, can accommodate 200 guests for a sit-down dinner--a setting fit for King Arthur and his court. There is a fireplace large enough to stand in, a bar carved out of oak and heavy wood beams that fan out across the ceiling. The Wishes have used the room for entertaining large groups, including about 200 people who attended a black-tie Christmas party.
Hand-carved crown molding and display niches adorn the walls of each room in the Wish Chateau.
Old World trinkets have been placed throughout the house: a gilded antique clock, candelabra purchased at a Paris flea market and a medieval-style fresco by Laguna Beach artist Marianna Redwine.
The Wishes, owners and co-owners of several development companies, oversaw the development of the castle--which they believe is worth $7.5 million today--and Duncan DeLapp’s company spent two years building it.
“It was quite a challenge,” DeLapp says. “Not too many people know how to build a castle.”
A company in Chicago designed and carved the crown moldings that border the upper walls of the rooms. A Los Angeles firm made the oak bookshelves in the library, the railings along the stairs and the master suite’s oak bed, which has a swan carved into each post. The gray slate used on the castle roof had to be imported from China and took six months to reach the site.
While the Wish Chateau has brass sculptures, candelabra and light fixtures to match its French exterior, not all castles have traditional decors.
Mary and Jeff Leonard, a manufacturer of Camaro and vintage auto parts, lord over a 7,500-square-foot chateau in Nellie Gail Ranch that has all the castlelike features on the exterior, but a contemporary look inside. They moved into the chateau about two months ago after buying it for “well over a million,” Mary Leonard said, declining to disclose the exact amount.
Like the Wish mansion, their home has stone facades, turrets, tall chimneys, carved moldings and a fortresslike entrance to the garages.
“We like the castle appearance,” Mary says. “It’s not like every other house on the block.”
The home’s interior, however, bears no traces of its medieval appearance.
“I like a clean look. The medieval castles are kind of dark and dungeony,” Mary says.
The Leonards favor hard and shiny surfaces--black marble on the entryway, a mirrored ceiling in the dining room, marble and mirror fireplaces, black tile on the circular shower and bath. The wood trim around the French windows has been painted with a shiny black enamel. A massive crystal chandelier hangs from a dome above the entryway.
The castle has six bedrooms and seven baths to accommodate the Leonards and their three children (they’re expecting their fourth child).
“To me, it’s not a castle inside,” Mary says. “It feels really homey. We’re pretty down-to-earth.”
For instance, one of the turrets has been converted into a children’s playroom.
“That’s where the kids play Nintendo,” she says.
To be sure, these California castles are not exact replicas of their European counterparts.
“They look castle-ish, but they don’t have moats,” says Steven Phillips, an Irvine architect who serves on the architectural review board that oversees Peppertree Bend.
Authentic castles tend to look like fortresses with tiny slits for windows.
“Here we have to take advantage of the view,” Phillips says. “And as soon as you put up large sheets of glass, the homes look modern.”
Building codes and the high cost of materials also influence the design of modern castles.
David Lawrence Eskridge, building designer with Environmental Concepts in Walnut and designer of the Wish Chateau, found it a challenge to design a castle that did not exceed the local height restriction of 35 feet.
“It’s difficult when you have spires and turrets,” he says.
In some ways the castles are truly make-believe. To achieve a “castle effect,” Eskridge says, builders can use cast molds of fiberglass and concrete for the castle trimmings in place of more expensive marble or stone. Some chateaus even have cast moldings made of Styrofoam and stucco.
“It’s not that you’re copying the French chateau style verbatim,” Eskridge says. “But once you understand the basic style with the pitched roof and the turrets, you can create your own castle.”
John McInnes has done exactly that up and down the state. McInnes, an architect in San Juan Capistrano who designed an Italian villa-style mansion for actor Kevin Costner, has toured all over Europe studying chateaus at the request (and expense) of his clients.
He has built castles in San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Scottsdale, Ariz. He designed a 9,000-square-foot chateau under construction in Anaheim Hills and an 18,000-square-foot castle that will soon go up on Peppertree Bend in San Juan Capistrano.
McInnes incorporates several styles of architecture into his designs. Inspiration for the domed ceilings in the Anaheim Hills chateau came from an old castle he visited in Italy. The small dormer windows that peer out from the castle’s steep roof can be seen on the chateaus of France, while the large windows on the ground floor have Gothic arches.
To arrive at his creations, McInnes taps into his clients’ visions of their dream house.
“The ultimate house comes out of these fantasies,” he says.
When one client confessed to a passion for astronomy, for instance, McInnes designed a secret passageway entered from hidden doors next to the fireplace, which leads up to a private observatory in one of the castle’s turrets.
Real estate broker Burns has found those who aspire to live in a castle to be neither shy or retiring. They don’t want a house that blends in with the neighborhood.
“They’re people who have worked hard and made their own money, and they want the whole wide world to know it,” she says. Many who buy the multimillion-dollar mansions are surprisingly young--in their 30s and 40s.
Still, architects say the chateaus are traditional enough that they are not the sore thumbs of their neighborhoods.
“I hate to be faddish,” Eskridge says. “Buildings of this nature were designed 100 years ago and still look good today. Hopefully, today’s castles will look good 100 years from now.”
