Crown Jewel of Mansions Wallows in Modern Limbo

For 10 years now, the Greystone Mansion has sat empty, a Beverly Hills colossus of 55 rooms and 46,054 square feet, perched on 18 acres of hillside near Trousdale Estates. And no one seems to know what to do with it.

The majestic Tudor-style mansion--considered the crown jewel in a landscape of fabled homes--is owned by the city, which so far has found no public use for it. Time after time, grand schemes have fizzled. Some activists have hoped to turn Greystone into a museum, an idea that drew enthusiastic interest from renowned modern art collectors Joseph Hirschhorn and Frederick R. Weisman.

Yet deals with the two collectors went the way of all other proposals--nowhere. All have collapsed amid community squabbles over traffic, lease contracts and even matters of taste: whether, for example, modern art is desirable in a city better suited, some say, to the Old Masters.

With phase one of a new, $40,000 study expected this month, efforts are under way to resolve the issue of Greystone Mansion and its lavish gardens once and for all. Skeptics abound. Such studies, committee meetings and proposals go back so far that most participants have lost count. No matter what the recommendation--dance theater, think tank, museum of art, sorcery or ornithology--Greystone has remained no more than a hulking civic enigma.

“It’s totally a white elephant . . . it’s a disgrace,” said Frederick Nicholas, former president of the Greystone Foundation, a citizens committee established six years ago to find a use for the mansion. “They’ve had at least 25 proposed uses and nothing has come of it. It’s a valuable asset being permitted to rot.”

Nicholas, now chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, is a Beverly Hills resident who has lived next door to Greystone Mansion for 18 years. In bitterness and frustration, he resigned from the foundation a few years ago, giving way to a new president, Donald DeWitt, who is less cynical about the mansion.

Still, DeWitt is not expecting a quick solution either.

“I don’t think it’ll settle anything,” DeWitt said of the pending study by the planning and consulting firm of Pannell Kerr Forster. “It may give a little insight into some other options . . . maybe eliminate some things. We’ve all been frustrated to some degree or another.”

The latest struggle over Greystone comes amid rising concern about the fate of many mansions erected during the movie industry’s golden age. The razing of Pickfair this year to make room for a new home for singer-actress Pia Zadora and her husband focused attention on the demise of a generation of extravagant mansions constructed from 1900 to 1930.

Every year more are lost and many surviving structures are growing old and worn. Those in jeopardy include the Joseph Nicolosi estate in Bel-Air, designed by Paul Williams, and several homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, most notably the 1924 Ennis-Brown house, according to Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that strives to protect and refurbish homes of historic and architectural significance.

“There are others--some not as famous--that really have been allowed to fall apart, and they’re in great danger of what we call ‘demolition by neglect,’ ” Rounds said. “Tear-downs are pretty constant right now. It’s certainly an area we’re very concerned about.”

Greystone itself is not dilapidated, but much of the interior is tattered and the structure needs $3.5 million in restoration and remodeling--including new fixtures and handicapped-access ramps--to meet requirements for use as a public building.

For sheer size and architectural quality, however, “Greystone really is in a class by itself,” Rounds said.

The new Greystone study is expected to explore multiple-use ideas: a limited-hours museum, for example, that could double as a corporate conference center or a reception site for visiting foreign dignitaries. A supporter of the concept, former Beverly Hills Councilwoman Charlotte Spadaro, noted that Beverly Hills’ sister city of Cannes, France, has such a mansion, the elegant Villa Domergue.

But foundation members say the mixed-use plan may draw criticism from anti- and pro-museum forces alike. No compromise so far has succeeded, after all, and competing opinions ensnarl the vast home like thick old vines. Some neighbors, fearful of additional traffic or trams roaring past their multimillion-dollar homes, hope to keep Greystone empty--or nearly so.

Because of the strong neighborhood lobby, picnicking and playing ball are forbidden on the mansion grounds, which are a public park.

“I would like to see them sell it to a private individual who would live in it,” said Alan E. Berlin, president of the 535-member Trousdale Homeowners Assn. “A Donald Trump or whatever. It’s zoned (residential) and we believe it should be used as a dwelling. I frankly wouldn’t care if it were subdivided.”

Museum advocates, meanwhile, want a showcase with educational programs for schoolchildren. They point out that Beverly Hills is without a single museum, concert hall, sports arena or civic auditorium.

“What cultural thing exists in all of Beverly Hills?” foundation member Ellen Byrens asked. “Nothing!”

Residents talk of a memorable public hearing where one resident argued that Greystone should be razed, while his wife sat on the opposite side of the room, joining the chorus for preservation.

“I suggested they offer it to the homeless,” one frustrated activist said. “That certainly shook everyone up.”

Preservationists point to the mansion’s rich history in making their arguments.

Built in 1928 by oil baron Edward Laurence Doheny Sr., Greystone was one of the most magnificent estates in California, “surpassed only by Hearst Castle,” according to historian Charles Lockwood. The mansion’s 55 rooms included an 80-seat theater, a two-lane bowling alley and a concealed, Prohibition-era bar. Its fortress-like walls, whose color gives the mansion its name, were set in place even while Doheny was embroiled in Teapot Dome, the federal oil-lease scandal for which he was indicted but later acquitted.

Doheny’s son, Edward Laurence (Ned) Doheny Jr., received the mansion as a gift from his father, but lived there only a year before being found shot to death in a ground-floor bedroom in 1929, along with his male secretary. The sensational crime was never fully explained. Speculation was that the two were lovers. The Times reported then that the secretary had become “suddenly insane” and shot Doheny before killing himself.

Skeptical observers, however, questioned who shot whom, noting that the alleged victim--Doheny--was shot in the left temple, whereas the alleged assassin was shot through the forehead.

In the 1950s, the owner of the Empire State Building bought Greystone, paying $1.5 million. But industrialist Henry Crown never moved in, and a decade later he was preparing to tear down the mansion and subdivide the land. In fact, Crown had obtained a demolition permit by the time his plan became known, recalled foundation member Rudy Cole.

Cole said he rushed to City Hall just before the vote on the permit. An official showed him the file on the property and assured Cole that nothing could be done to forestall the demolition--the paper work was in perfect order. As Cole tells it, the official then walked away, leaving the crucial file--and Cole--alone at the counter.

“I took the file, put it in my briefcase, and walked out,” Cole said with a laugh. “Tuesday, the council had its meeting. The lawyers for Crown were there. They were screaming, ‘What do you mean, you lost the file?’ ”

With the vote postponed, a save-Greystone movement was launched, Cole said, and ultimately Crown yielded to public pressure and agreed to a deal with the city. Beverly Hills bought the mansion for $1.3 million in 1965. The city installed an underground reservoir, which is still used, and planned to devote the mansion to Joseph Hirschhorn’s art, which at the time was without a home.

“It was a tremendous collection,” recalled former Mayor Leonard Horwin, who served on the council until 1966. “Then . . . there was a big song and dance, whether Hirschhorn’s collection was too modern.”

Over that and other issues involving the lease, Hirschhorn abruptly withdrew from negotiations and took his collection to the National Gallery in Washington--a move that is still the subject of finger-pointing among Beverly Hills activists a quarter-century later.

For 11 years, until 1980, Greystone was leased to the nonprofit American Film Institute, which was evicted for failing to maintain the structure and provide community educational programs. Then a long string of proposals came and went, the most promising of which involved Frederick Weisman’s modern art collection.

Weisman was to run his museum at Greystone on an appointment-only basis, like the Getty Museum in Malibu, as a concession to Trousdale homeowners. A 55-year lease was drawn up in 1986, with Weisman committing $8 million toward renovating the mansion. The deal was supported by a City Council majority, and success appeared inevitable.

Then, deja vu. The Beverly Hills Courier, a weekly paper, ran an editorial assailing modern art and touting the works of the Old Masters. (“Where in the hell are all these Old Masters going to come from?” fumed Greystone Foundation member Byrens. “Are we going to bring back Rembrandt?”) At the same time, because of school-funding shortages, a coalition of residents began calling for the sale of Greystone to create an educational endowment.

Weisman, irked over the editorial, feared the school-funding issue would cause him to be looked upon as an enemy of education. “That really set him off,” recalled Robin Green, a spokesman for Weisman’s art foundation. “He said, ‘I simply cannot get involved in a situation like that.’ ”

Weisman backed out, and the citizens committee went back to work. In less than two years, a deal was hatched to create a research center for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. The featured attraction this time was “one of the world’s largest collections of bird’s eggs,” as one newspaper billed it. Not exactly the Louvre, but “at least it was something,” Byrens said.

Once again, however, negotiations broke down.

Despite the stream of disappointments, the city has found good reason for keeping Greystone. The reservoir is there, and film companies frequently rent the mansion for fees that cover maintenance costs. And, of course, as a property investment, the estate has been nonpareil, soaring in value to upward of $40 million. A few years ago, one would-be buyer offered $60 million for it, according to Councilman Bob Tanenbaum.

So far, the city has been content to hang on to Greystone. As Cole sees it, the important victory was to save it. Now it sits, waiting, its enormous doors locked, its vast main hall usually dark. The hidden bar--reached by sliding up a sheet of wall paneling--has not been used for decades. The bowling alley is dismantled.

“It’s empty--so what?” Cole asked. “It may be empty for another 40 years. But some day, in some future generation . . . we will develop a cultural resource there.”