Lush Landscaping Provokes Neighborhood Feud
Actor Patrick Bauchau says that the architecture police can’t see the forest for the trees.
Not so, retort those patrolling the street in front of his Hollywood home. They can’t see Bauchau’s house because of the trees.
That describes the brouhaha over the thicket of trellises and trees in Bauchau’s yard that has neighbors choosing sides in the Whitley Heights section of the Hollywood Hills.
The star of the television series “The Pretender” has been ordered to remove landscaping and latticework that block the view of his 78-year-old Mediterranean-style house from passersby.
The edict has come from the keen-eyed protectors of the Whitley Heights Historical Preservation Zone, the regulatory group that for seven years has jealously guarded the architectural purity of the area’s 196 homes.
Too jealously, according to some who live in the hilltop community southeast of the Hollywood Bowl.
Want to repaint your house, add a room or install security bars on your windows? Don’t make a move without the board’s OK. Residents who don’t follow the rules run the risk of being hauled into court by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.
That’s where Bauchau seemed to be headed after warm spring weather caused the 3,000 plants in his front-yard garden to sprout dramatically this year.
Vegetable plants blossomed next to redwood lattice panels scattered over Bauchau’s steeply sloping yard. Wisteria vines began snaking up wood-framed gazebos he had built. The leafy branches of fruit trees and dense shrubs shot skyward.
The growth was soon starting to hide the ornate front of the villa-like house, built in 1921 and considered one of Whitley Heights’ most prominent structures.
The review board ordered Bauchau to do some pruning. Bauchau was outraged. He had planted the garden and built the trellises for privacy, he said. And for the enjoyment of his ailing wife, Mijanou Bauchau, who is the sister of actress Brigitte Bardot.
“This assemblage is totally in keeping with the era of the house. The fountains, the arbor, the trellises. This is an authentic Tuscan garden--early Renaissance, late Gothic,” the Belgian-born actor protested.
In a showdown meeting in the street in front of Bauchau’s house, preservationists persisted. They produced a faded photograph of the house taken decades ago. It showed a ground-hugging expanse of ivy covering the front yard. They told Bauchau that was the look they were seeking.
The issue was not whether the garden he had planted was authentically Italian, but whether it is authentic Whitley Heights, they said.
According to Los Angeles city law, that’s an important distinction.
A municipal ordinance authorizes the review board to force owners of the hilltop’s remaining 164 original homes to preserve them in their original condition.
Developed beginning in the 1920s, Whitley Heights was Los Angeles’ first celebrity neighborhood.
Builder Hobart J. Whitley--whose previous developments had ranged from townships in Chickasha and Oklahoma City, Okla. to the subdivisions of Canoga Park and Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley--envisioned the hilltop to be a miniature Mediterranean village of tile-topped stucco homes built among winding streets and graceful palm trees.
The neighborhood quickly attracted Hollywood’s biggest movie names. At one time or another, such stars as Rudolph Valentino, Jean Harlow, Francis X. Bushman, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Harold Lloyd, Carmen Miranda, Gloria Swanson and Tyrone Power lived in estates there. Actors George Sanders, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Louise Brooks are said to have been residents of Bauchau’s home.
Recognizing the uniqueness of the hilltop that is bisected by the Hollywood Freeway, homeowners lobbied the Los Angeles City Council to designate it a historic preservation zone in 1992. The architectural board was created at the same time to review any remodeling.
Bauchau’s garden has galvanized the hill like no hammer and nail construction project ever has.
The garden’s supporters contend the landscape crackdown illustrates the zeal of the architecture police.
“If you do something they don’t like, you go to war on it,” said Caroline Pinkey, a comedian who tangled with the review committee when she set out to relocate a door on her 78-year-old home.
Entertainment writer Michael Szymanski, who has butted heads with the architectural squad over the color of flower boxes and texture coat paint he applied to his house, said: “To live in a neighborhood where people walk around with note pads and then go tattle about what’s in front of your house is absurd.”
Others, however, say the preservation law’s strength is in the consistency of its enforcement.
“I’m actually a friend of Patrick and I like his garden. But the front of his house is one of the nicest in the neighborhood. It’s a pity his house is screened the way it is,” said neighbor Annie Kelly, an interior designer who favors removal of the landscaping.
Whitley Heights property owner Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, a writer whose husband is a member of the review board, said Bauchau’s garden detracts from “a beautiful home that’s on a key street” in the neighborhood.
“If people don’t take a stand in this city the whole thing will be one big parking lot or one big boxy apartment house,” she said.
City officials say that Whitley Heights’ historical zone is one of nine in Los Angeles. Homeowners who are unhappy with review board rulings can appeal them to the cultural affairs and planning commissions and ultimately to the City Council.
“We believe they have been a real success story. They really offer the only tool that exists for homes to retain the unique flavor of these cherished historic neighborhoods,” Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, said of the zones.
Jay Oren, the city’s historic preservation officer, said Whitley Heights is lucky. “There are so many neighborhoods that have been lost because they lack the protection of a historic preservation overlay zone,” he said.
As for Bauchau’s garden, the head of Whitley Height’s review board is optimistic it can be trimmed back so the house is not hidden. He said the home’s owner, who leases it to Bauchau, has agreed to cooperate.
“We try to be sensitive. We don’t want people angry,” said Michael Mekeel, a West Hollywood architect who specializes in preservation work and was appointed by the city to the Whitley Heights board seven years ago.
Bauchau, who is visiting France with his wife, has yet to comment on the pruning plan. But his personal manager, Christine McDougall, said no settlement has been reached.
So those in Whitley Heights are waiting to see what happens next.
“I wouldn’t want to adjudicate this one,” said neighbor Phillip Noyce, a movie director who has worked with Bauchau. “I understand the architectural integrity of the neighborhood. But I can’t help but admire Patrick’s garden and his determination.”
