A prominent perch on Santa Catalina
The ocean seems to fill each room of this airy three-story 1928 home in Avalon that’s as much a landmark on Santa Catalina Island as the nearby casino and yacht club. Floor-to-ceiling arched windows and sliding glass doors that wrap the main floor of this Spanish Colonial Revival capitalize on views of sky, water and island cliffs.
“You can see anything and everything going on in Avalon,” says Kathleen Elliott, 48, of Glendale, who as a young girl spent summers at the house nicknamed La Casa Gaviota, or Sea Gull House, that her family bought in 1972.
Architect Elmer Grey — who designed the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Pasadena Playhouse, and partnered with Myron Hunt to build railroad baron Henry Huntington’s mansion in San Marino (now part of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens) — designed the house as a place to entertain, according to 1926 blueprints kept by the family. A second set of plans dated a year later adds some refinements from interior designers Albert Walker and Percy Eisen, according to research from building biographer Tim Gregory.
The house is just steps from the beach at Maiden Lane and Crescent Avenue, the main seaside walkway that becomes thick with visitors in summer, yet feels off the beaten track.
A gently curved staircase leads to the front of the house: a cobalt blue door on the main, or second, level. The main floor has 12-foot ceilings, a living room, a den, a dining area and harbor views. A large fireplace decorated with blue-and-white tiles and a metal cover added in the 1950s dominates the living room. Paintings of blue and gold flowers adorn arches over the windows. The kitchen walls are covered with hand-painted sea creatures. Floors throughout most of the house are the original quarter-sawn oak.
The top floor has two en suite bedrooms — one with a balcony — and two bedrooms that share a bath.
The ground level includes what was once considered the maids’ quarters. Rooms are smaller and ceilings lower; the three bedrooms on this level share one bath.
Elliott says she and her siblings no longer have time to manage or rent the property and are ready to sell. Memories of her summers on the island are indelibly linked to the Fourth of July, when the family would decorate the house in anticipation of the festivities capped by the USC marching band and the annual dinghy parade. “I still have the original decorations my grandmother used,” she says.
To submit a candidate for Home of the Week, send high-resolution color photos on a CD, caption information, the name of the photographer and a description of the house to Lauren Beale, Business, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Questions may be sent to homeoftheweek@latimes.com.
