‘Witch’s House’ Won’t Be Leaving Beverly Hills

The “Witch’s House of Beverly Hills” will not be moving to Culver City after all.

Plans to move the pointed-roof, storybook chalet back to Culver City, where it was built, for use as a city historical museum were canceled when its owners decided not to donate the house, Redevelopment Agency Director Jody Hall-Esser said at an agency meeting Monday.

The house has been known as the “Witch’s House” for years because of its storybook architecture.

Carolyn Cole, vice president of the Culver City Historical Society, said owners Martin and Doris Green told her about two weeks ago that because of an illness in the family, they would not give the house to the society.

“This was sad news, a real blow,” said Cole, who is in charge of museum plans for the society. “But we had known there was an illness in the family for a long time and we wish them the best.”

In 1988, the agency earmarked the southeast corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Duquesne Avenue, near the entrance to Culver City Park, as the new site for the house and agreed to pay the estimated $600,000 to move and rehabilitate it.

But plans were put on hold by the Greens, who live in the 12-room house at the corner of Walden Drive and Carmelita Avenue in Beverly Hills, while they decided whether to go through with the donation.

The 3,700-square-foot house was built on Washington Boulevard in 1921 as the Irvin V. Willat Productions Movie Studio by Harold Oliver, an art director who won Oscars for his work on “Seventh Heaven” and “Street Angels.”

But, according to some accounts, so many drivers slowed to stare at the building that it became a traffic hazard, and in 1926 the Culver City Police Department asked that it be moved.

The society had planned to use the house to display photographs, rosaries and jewelry of early Culver City settlers and costumes from “Jumbo,” “Singing in the Rain” and other MGM classics filmed in the city. Now, it will search for another home.

“The bottom line is that the Historical Society needs a museum,” Cole said. “We have a lot of great (artifacts) in storage and they need to be displayed.”