A Guide to the Best of Southern California : LANDMARKS : Horace Heidt Slept Here

Horace Heidt outdid himself.

In 1940, the big-band leader bought a San Fernando Valley grapefruit orchard in hopes of transforming it into a compound of houses and rehearsal halls where he and his band members could live and play on their days off. Over the years, he turned the 9-acre parcel into his fantasy land.

Today, lawn statues, fountains and pools are sprinkled amid apartment buildings (studios start at $600) and single-family rental homes. Residents can pitch and putt on a golf course patterned on some of the most famous par-3 holes in the world, meditate in the aviary and, on holidays, attend a big-band concert in the clubhouse’s Aloha Room. Elaborate street signs point the way to the Palm Springs section or to the Hawaii section, where a volcano-like waterfall called the Mauna Loa glows red in the dark.

Ed Begley Jr., Tom Scott, Dick Van Patten, Bob Cummings and Barbara Hale all used to live there. Some of the old band members still do. Horace has passed on to a different sort of paradise, but his son, Los Angeles Raiders bandleader Horace Heidt Jr., maintains the property and his dad’s vision. “He loved charming and unique things,” Heidt says as he surveys the magical enclave.

Horace Heidt Estates, 14155 Magnolia Blvd., Sherman Oaks; (818) 995-6827. (The Horace Heidt Orchestra will give a free concert today at 5:30 in Warner Ranch Park, 5800 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Los Angeles.)