Harold Lloyd Estate
Encyclopedia
The Harold Lloyd Estate, also known as Greenacres, is a large mansion and landscaped estate located in the Benedict Canyon section of Beverly Hills, California
. Built in the latter 1920s by silent film
star Harold Lloyd
, it remained Lloyd's home until his death in 1971. The estate originally consisted of a 44-room mansion, golf course, outbuildings, and 900 feet (274.3 m) canoe run on 15 acres (60,702.9 m²). Greenacres has been called "the most impressive movie star's estate ever created." After Lloyd died, the estate was subdivided into multiple lots, though the mansion remains and was added to the National Register of Historic Places
in 1984.
In 1923, Lloyd purchased a historic home site from P.E. Benedict at the mouth of Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills, California
. The land had been owned by the Benedict family for more than sixty years and was close to the spot where Mary Pickford
and Douglas Fairbanks
had built their famed Pickfair
estate.
In 1925, Lloyd hired architect Sumner Spaulding of the firm Webber, Staunton & Spaulding, after an introduction by A.E. Hanson, to design a house on the property. He also hired landscape architect, A.E. Hanson, to landscape the 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) grounds.
The final plans for the house were not completed until July 1927, at which time the Los Angeles Times published the architectural drawing. The home was designed in the Italian Renaissance Mediterranean Revival style: modeled after the Villa Palmieri
near Florence. Construction of the mansion began in July 1927 and was completed in 1928.
The 44-room, 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) house and estate was said to have cost $2 million.
and Villa Medici
as inspiration in Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Revival style motifs. The Los Angeles Times
published a full-page illustrated article describing it as a "gorgeous fairyland playground" and a "Modern Eden of groves and gardens." The elaborated design of the grounds' landscape and gardens included the following elements:
So massive was the landscaping project that 3,500 tons of sandstone were taken from quarries in Chatsworth and trucked to the site for use in building the steps, terraces, and waterfalls.
One of the unusual features was the separate fairyland estate that Lloyd and A.E. Hanson designed for Lloyd's four-year-old daughter, Mildred Gloria. The play village had its own private gate with a sign reading, "Come into my garden and play." The fairyland estate included a four-room miniature old English house, a miniature old English stable with a pony and cart, Great Dane
dogs, a wishing well with water for the daughter's garden, a slide, acrobatic devices and a swing. The miniature house had electricity and a kitchen and bath with running water, where the Lloyds' daughter played with friends, including Shirley Temple
.
Some views of the exterior of the main house and its gardens can be seen in the 1924 Lloyd film,Girl Shy
, where the residence played the part of the "Buckingham" estate. In 1937, Mrs. Lloyd hosted a bridal shower at the estate for Jeanette MacDonald
attended by Hollywood's elite, including Ginger Rogers
, Mary Pickford
, Irene Dunne
, Fay Wray
, Norma Shearer
, Dolores del Río
, Loretta Young
, Irving Thalberg
, Mervyn LeRoy
, Ernst Lubitsch
, Hal Roach
and Darryl Zanuck.
By the 1940s, Lloyd's movie career was at end, and he had difficulty affording the upkeep of the enormous estate. He petitioned the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in 1943 to reduce his property assessment, claiming he would like to continue living there, but the high taxes were, "eating them out of house and home." The Board refused to reduce the $58,730 assessed valuation of the 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) of land, but did reduce the $119,840 valuation of the improvements to $100,000. Lloyd was forced to reduce the staff working at the estate, and parts of the estate began to deteriorate out of neglect.
In his later years, Lloyd lived a private life at his estate, jogging around the estate each day following a swim in the pool. He was also said to have developed an, "addiction to stereo that shook the mansion at 3 a.m. with the force of 10 speakers in unison," causing the gold leaf to fall from the ornate living room ceiling.
Lloyd lived at the estate until he died of cancer in 1971, at age 77. One of Lloyd's longtime staff reported that he had a superstition about never allowing himself to be driven around the Italian fountain in the estate's front court, always making his chauffeur back up rather than circling the fountain. According to the longtime worker, "The only time he ever went around that fountain was the night he died."
In October 1972, the Los Angeles Times visited the property and noted that it had "the feel of Sunset Boulevard
," bringing to mind the line spoken by the young writer when he first visits Norma Desmond's home: "It was the kind of place that crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s." The house appeared to visitors in the 1970s to be frozen in time at 1929. One writer noted that nothing had been moved or replaced, changed, or modernized, from the books in the library to the appliances in the kitchen and the fixtures in the bathrooms. Noted columnist Jack Smith
visited the estate in 1973 and wrote that "time stood still", as Lloyd's clothes still hung in his closet, and the master bedroom and living room "looked like a set for a movie of the 1930s." A Renaissance tapestry presented to Lloyd as a housewarming gift by Mary Pickford
and Douglas Fairbanks
was still hanging in the hallway.
The house also had Lloyd's permanent Christmas tree loaded with ornaments at the end of a long sitting room. Jack Smith described the tree as follows:
The mansion was preserved on a smaller 5 acres (20,234.3 m²) parcel and sold for $3 million in 1979 to Bernard C. Solomon, the president of Everest Record Group. In 1986, Ted Field
, heir to the Marshall Field
department store chain and head of Interscope films, bought the property for $6.5 million and lived there with his wife Susie and their three children. The Fields extensively updated and renovated the entire home and grounds and added a pool back to the site. The original pool located down closer to Benedict Canyon had been lost in the 1975 subdividing of the property. Restoring everything except the original theater-size forty-rank pipe organ (which remains today behind the walls of the 80 feet (24.4 m) living room), the Field family replaced all the electrical wiring and plumbing and modernized the kitchens and bathrooms before moving into the estate. Susie also added an 80 year old carousel with hand-carved horses to the children's play yard and the same security system used at The White House. Field hosted a gala political fundraiser for Bill Clinton
and Al Gore
at the estate in 1992 where Barbra Streisand performed a concert in the formal garden. In 1993, billionaire and Democratic Party
fundraiser Ron Burkle bought the home for $20 million -- $19 million less than the $39 million asking price (which had included a valuable art collection of old masters paintings in the original asking price) but still among the highest prices paid for a home in the United States in the previous three years.
In 2001, the mansion was estimated to be worth $50–60 million.
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
. Built in the latter 1920s by silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
star Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
, it remained Lloyd's home until his death in 1971. The estate originally consisted of a 44-room mansion, golf course, outbuildings, and 900 feet (274.3 m) canoe run on 15 acres (60,702.9 m²). Greenacres has been called "the most impressive movie star's estate ever created." After Lloyd died, the estate was subdivided into multiple lots, though the mansion remains and was added to the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1984.
Architecture and construction
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
. The land had been owned by the Benedict family for more than sixty years and was close to the spot where Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
and Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
had built their famed Pickfair
Pickfair
Pickfair was a 56 acre estate in the city of Beverly Hills, California designed by architect Wallace Neff for silent film actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Coined "Pickfair" by the press, it was once one of the most celebrated homes in the world...
estate.
In 1925, Lloyd hired architect Sumner Spaulding of the firm Webber, Staunton & Spaulding, after an introduction by A.E. Hanson, to design a house on the property. He also hired landscape architect, A.E. Hanson, to landscape the 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) grounds.
The final plans for the house were not completed until July 1927, at which time the Los Angeles Times published the architectural drawing. The home was designed in the Italian Renaissance Mediterranean Revival style: modeled after the Villa Palmieri
Villa Palmieri, Fiesole
Villa Palmieri is a patrician villa in the Fiesole, central Italy, that overlooks Florence. The villa's gardens on slopes below the piazza S. Domenico of Fiesole are credited with being the paradisal setting for the frame story of Boccaccio's Decameron....
near Florence. Construction of the mansion began in July 1927 and was completed in 1928.
The 44-room, 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) house and estate was said to have cost $2 million.
Landscape architecture - gardens
A.E. Hanson, Lloyd's landscape architect, transformed the 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) site with the Villa LanteVilla Lante
Villa Lante at Bagnaia is a Mannerist garden of surprise near Viterbo, central Italy, attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola).The villa is known as the "Villa Lante"...
and Villa Medici
Villa Medici
The Villa Medici is a mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French...
as inspiration in Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Revival style motifs. The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
published a full-page illustrated article describing it as a "gorgeous fairyland playground" and a "Modern Eden of groves and gardens." The elaborated design of the grounds' landscape and gardens included the following elements:
- A private nine-hole regulation golf course.
- A 900 feet (274.3 m) canoe stream stocked with trout and bass, and a 100 feet (30.5 m) waterfall that plummeted into the canoe stream.
- The largest swimming pool in Southern California, measuring 50 feet (15.2 m) by 150 feet (45.7 m), and said to be "one of the finest swimming pools in the west." (The pool was surrounded by a tunnel with underwater windows to view and photograph swimmers.)
- Numerous gardens, including small tropical forests, sunken gardens, formal gardens, rose gardens, Italian gardens, and terraced gardens.
- Stables for horses, cattle and sheep, and a small farm for the estate's fruits and vegetables, including greenhouses for growing flowers.
- An open-air theater and dancing pavilion.
- Tennis courts, an outdoor bowling green, and a handball court. (Lloyd was a national handball champion and reportedly spent many hours there.)
- An automobile entrance court designed as a 120 feet (36.6 m) square, surrounded on two sides by a cloister.
So massive was the landscaping project that 3,500 tons of sandstone were taken from quarries in Chatsworth and trucked to the site for use in building the steps, terraces, and waterfalls.
One of the unusual features was the separate fairyland estate that Lloyd and A.E. Hanson designed for Lloyd's four-year-old daughter, Mildred Gloria. The play village had its own private gate with a sign reading, "Come into my garden and play." The fairyland estate included a four-room miniature old English house, a miniature old English stable with a pony and cart, Great Dane
Great Dane
The Great Dane , also known as German Mastiff or Danish Hound , is a breed of domestic dog known for its giant size...
dogs, a wishing well with water for the daughter's garden, a slide, acrobatic devices and a swing. The miniature house had electricity and a kitchen and bath with running water, where the Lloyds' daughter played with friends, including Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
.
History during Lloyd's lifetime
Lloyd named his estate "Greenacres," and it became a gathering place for the Lloyds' family and friends. Sundays were known as "at home" day at Greenacres:"The 'at home' day at Greenacres was Sunday when 30 or 40 friends would gather in the afternoon, amuse themselves with golf, tennis or handball, swimming, or with leisurely strolls through the gardens. A buffet would be set in the formal dining room and in the evening Lloyd would show a movie. Then he would wave everyone goodnight."
Some views of the exterior of the main house and its gardens can be seen in the 1924 Lloyd film,Girl Shy
Girl Shy
Girl Shy is a 1924 romantic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston. The movie was written by Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan and Ted Wilde and was directed by Fred C...
, where the residence played the part of the "Buckingham" estate. In 1937, Mrs. Lloyd hosted a bridal shower at the estate for Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy...
attended by Hollywood's elite, including Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
, Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...
, Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
, Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
, Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
, Loretta Young
Loretta Young
Loretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953...
, Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
, Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and sometime actor.-Early life:Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake...
, Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
, Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
and Darryl Zanuck.
By the 1940s, Lloyd's movie career was at end, and he had difficulty affording the upkeep of the enormous estate. He petitioned the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors in 1943 to reduce his property assessment, claiming he would like to continue living there, but the high taxes were, "eating them out of house and home." The Board refused to reduce the $58,730 assessed valuation of the 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) of land, but did reduce the $119,840 valuation of the improvements to $100,000. Lloyd was forced to reduce the staff working at the estate, and parts of the estate began to deteriorate out of neglect.
In his later years, Lloyd lived a private life at his estate, jogging around the estate each day following a swim in the pool. He was also said to have developed an, "addiction to stereo that shook the mansion at 3 a.m. with the force of 10 speakers in unison," causing the gold leaf to fall from the ornate living room ceiling.
Lloyd lived at the estate until he died of cancer in 1971, at age 77. One of Lloyd's longtime staff reported that he had a superstition about never allowing himself to be driven around the Italian fountain in the estate's front court, always making his chauffeur back up rather than circling the fountain. According to the longtime worker, "The only time he ever went around that fountain was the night he died."
Plans for preservation and a museum
Lloyd left his Benedict Canyon estate to the "benefit of the public at large" with instructions that it be used "as an educational facility and museum for research into the history of the motion picture in the United States." For a few years, the home was opened to public tours, but financial and legal obstacles prevented the estate from creating the motion picture museum that Lloyd had intended. Among other things, neighboring homeowners in the wealthy community were opposed to the creation of a museum hosting parties and attracting busloads of tourists.In October 1972, the Los Angeles Times visited the property and noted that it had "the feel of Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (film)
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett...
," bringing to mind the line spoken by the young writer when he first visits Norma Desmond's home: "It was the kind of place that crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s." The house appeared to visitors in the 1970s to be frozen in time at 1929. One writer noted that nothing had been moved or replaced, changed, or modernized, from the books in the library to the appliances in the kitchen and the fixtures in the bathrooms. Noted columnist Jack Smith
Jack Smith (columnist)
Jack Clifford Smith was a journalist, author, and newspaper columnist who wrote about Los Angeles during its period of greatest growth and increasing influence...
visited the estate in 1973 and wrote that "time stood still", as Lloyd's clothes still hung in his closet, and the master bedroom and living room "looked like a set for a movie of the 1930s." A Renaissance tapestry presented to Lloyd as a housewarming gift by Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
and Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
was still hanging in the hallway.
The house also had Lloyd's permanent Christmas tree loaded with ornaments at the end of a long sitting room. Jack Smith described the tree as follows:
"[A]t the end of the room, dominating it like some great Athena in a Greek temple, stood the most fantastic Christmas tree I had ever seen. It reached the ceiling, a great, bulbous mass of colored glass baubles, some of them as big as pumpkins, clustered together like gaudy jewels in some monstrous piece of costume jewelry."
Sale and subdivision of the estate
Unable to establish the museum, the estate was sold at auction in 1975. The entire property, including grounds and furnishings, was purchased by a retired Iranian businessman, Nasrollah Afshani, for $1.6 million -- $400,000 less than Lloyd had spent to build the estate 50 years earlier. Afshani subdivided the estate into approximately 15 lots in addition to the mansion, with individual lots selling for as much as $1.2 million.The mansion was preserved on a smaller 5 acres (20,234.3 m²) parcel and sold for $3 million in 1979 to Bernard C. Solomon, the president of Everest Record Group. In 1986, Ted Field
Ted Field
Frederick Woodruff "Ted" Field is an American media mogul and entrepreneur and film producer.-Biography:Field was born in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, the son of Katherine Woodruff Fanning, an editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and Marshall Field IV, who owned the Chicago Sun-Times. He is...
, heir to the Marshall Field
Marshall Field
Marshall Field was founder of Marshall Field and Company, the Chicago-based department stores.-Life and career:...
department store chain and head of Interscope films, bought the property for $6.5 million and lived there with his wife Susie and their three children. The Fields extensively updated and renovated the entire home and grounds and added a pool back to the site. The original pool located down closer to Benedict Canyon had been lost in the 1975 subdividing of the property. Restoring everything except the original theater-size forty-rank pipe organ (which remains today behind the walls of the 80 feet (24.4 m) living room), the Field family replaced all the electrical wiring and plumbing and modernized the kitchens and bathrooms before moving into the estate. Susie also added an 80 year old carousel with hand-carved horses to the children's play yard and the same security system used at The White House. Field hosted a gala political fundraiser for Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
at the estate in 1992 where Barbra Streisand performed a concert in the formal garden. In 1993, billionaire and Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
fundraiser Ron Burkle bought the home for $20 million -- $19 million less than the $39 million asking price (which had included a valuable art collection of old masters paintings in the original asking price) but still among the highest prices paid for a home in the United States in the previous three years.
In 2001, the mansion was estimated to be worth $50–60 million.
See also
- Virginia Robinson GardensVirginia Robinson GardensThe Virginia Robinson Gardens are the period landscape, historic mansion, and botanical gardens located at the Virginia Robinson Estate in Beverly Hills, California, United States.-History:...
in Beverly Hills - List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles County, California
Further reading
- "An Arcadian Landscape, The California Gardens of A.E. Hanson;" by David Gebhard and A.E. Hanson; pub: Hennessey & Ingalls Inc.; 1985; ISBN 0-912158-91-3