It’s No Graceland, but Streisand Estate Has Its High Points
Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand sit like king and queen atop the list of the best-selling solo recording artists. Both have starred in numerous movies and both have devoted cult followings.
From there, though, the way they are splits like a couple at Heartbreak Hotel.
Babs: “Funny Girl.” Elvis: “Girls! Girls! Girls!” Babs: black evening gowns. Elvis: tiger suit.
Babs: alive. Elvis: dead (maybe).
Then there are the places they called home. Elvis ended his life (maybe) at Graceland, a 14-acre estate beside a traffic-congested commercial strip in Memphis, Tenn. Streisand, until she moved a few years back, lived much of the celebrity part of her life in a 22-acre compound tucked down in remote Ramirez Canyon in Malibu.
Kitsch-rich Graceland has the Jungle Room, wall-to-ceiling shag carpet and a faux-plantation style front. Streisand’s five-home compound is a monument to taste centered on the Barn, a rustic lodge with stained glass, singed wood paneling and a slate hot tub. No souvenir pecan logs for sale here.
But perhaps the most remarkable difference between the two homes is their current uses.
An E-ticket to privately owned Graceland, complete with tours of Elvis’ 1956 purple Cadillac convertible, Hound Dog II Lockheed JetStar plane and home movie clips, costs $18.50.
A brief garden tour and peek in the Barn, however, sets you back $30--even though the home is headquarters of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the state agency dedicated to preserving public access to the local wildlands. That makes the property one of the priciest state-owned sites to visit; even Hearst Castle charges only $14 a tour.
Here’s the story of how the $12-million Streisand estate, with its exotic, landscaped grounds, a private gated entrance, colorful architecture and a tennis court with wet bar, wound up as the unlikeliest of government office spaces for about 15 state park bureaucrats.
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In 1993, after trying for more than five years to sell the property at the end of Ramirez Canyon Road, Streisand decided to donate it to the conservancy. At the time, the idea was to make the place a sort of ecological think tank.
Two things stood in the way: money and more money.
First, there was the issue of running the place. Streisand left no funds to maintain her grounds, and the conservancy had promised state officials not to spend any tax money on keeping up the place. That meant the property had to generate $160,000 per year to pay for water, electricity and gardeners.
That’s where the more money comes in.
Ramirez Canyon is the sort of place where people like rock star Don Henley buy land. And the local homeowners association wasn’t too keen on the idea of hordes of people trooping through their isolated splendor.
When combined, those two realities ended any chance of the public or scholars visiting in busloads. And they also killed the think tank.
As a result, the conservancy finds itself with a headquarters that is the envy of other local park agencies.
To get there, you drive down a potholed private road with 11 speed bumps and ford two separate streams. (A reason, at last, to own a sports utility vehicle in Los Angeles.)
The entrance to the compound--open to the public only on Wednesdays--is guarded by a wrought-iron gate fashioned into a pattern of lotus blossoms. If you’ve made your reservation in advance and mailed in your $30 check, you’ll be buzzed in from the gate.
The compound is a startling display of what 39 gold, 25 platinum and 12 multi-platinum albums will buy. How many park headquarters, after all, have had their buildings featured in Architectural Digest?
Five homes dot the lavishly landscaped property. The Peach House looks like a Mediterranean villa done up, of course, in peach. The second floor is Streisand’s screening room, with a kitchen to the side that still has her espresso maker and six-burner catering stove. Most of the rest of her furniture was removed when she left the property.
Then there’s the misnamed Barn. Built by toy makers and wood craftsmen from Northern California (and never used by animals), each piece of wood in the barn was individually singed to give the wood a dark, used feel.
Streisand never lived in the property’s Art Deco house, using it instead for entertaining. It has a pool and a bedroom intercom with buttons to call the bar and the master bath. The home’s color scheme is mauve and black. Even the plants complement it. There are oleander, bougainvillea and cactus with burgundy blooms.
To find the head of the conservancy, Joseph T. Edmiston, you visit the fourth home, Barwood, which Streisand intended as a recording studio. Originally painted lavender with floral-patterned flooring, the home has been restored to its natural Douglas fir. Chunks of recalcitrant purple paint are still visible in the pine knots.
Edmiston’s office is on the second floor, in one of Streisand’s old bedrooms. A stone fireplace sits behind him. Sun streams through leaded glass in a cathedral ceiling.
The fifth home on the property is a former caretaker’s residence where one of the conservancy’s rangers now lives.
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Long-range plans call for more public access to the place. Edmiston would like to build another road into the property and construct a hiking trail to connect with nearby national park land.
Even in the long term, however, the $30 admission cost won’t go down. As long as the center has to pay its own way, conservancy officials simply can’t afford to lower the costs to what a typical tax-supported park would charge.
And that means that, at least for now, the homes of Babs and Elvis also retain this distinction:
Hundreds of thousands of people will continue to visit Graceland.
But Barwood will be lonesome tonight.
