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Pickfair was a Hollywood mansion
Mansion

A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives from the Latin word mansio In the Roman Empire, a mansio was an official stopping place on a Roman road, or via, where cities sprang up, and where the villas of provincial officials came to be placed....
 designed by California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 architect
Architect

An architect is trained and licenced in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e....
 Wallace Neff
Wallace Neff

Wallace Neff was an architect based in Southern California and was largely responsible for developing the region's distinct architectural style referred to as "California" style....
 and named as an amalgamation of the names of its original residents, silent film
Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made possible in the late 1920s with the introduction of the Vitaphone system....
 actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
s Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., was an United States actor, screenwriter, film director and film producer, who was best known for his Swashbuckler films roles in Silent film films such as The Thief of Bagdad , Robin Hood , and The Mark of Zorro ....
 and Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was an Academy Award-winning Canada film actor, as well as a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences....
.

Located at 1143 Summit Drive, in the San Ysidro Canyon near Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is the largest city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles is rated as a beta global city, has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California....
, the property was a hunting lodge when purchased by Fairbanks and Pickford in 1919.

They renovated extensively to transform the lodge into a 22 room mansion luxuriously decorated with ceiling frescos and the highest quality art and furnishings available.






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Pickfair was a Hollywood mansion
Mansion

A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives from the Latin word mansio In the Roman Empire, a mansio was an official stopping place on a Roman road, or via, where cities sprang up, and where the villas of provincial officials came to be placed....
 designed by California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 architect
Architect

An architect is trained and licenced in planning and designing buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, itself derived from the Greek arkhitekton , i.e....
 Wallace Neff
Wallace Neff

Wallace Neff was an architect based in Southern California and was largely responsible for developing the region's distinct architectural style referred to as "California" style....
 and named as an amalgamation of the names of its original residents, silent film
Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made possible in the late 1920s with the introduction of the Vitaphone system....
 actor
Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
s Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., was an United States actor, screenwriter, film director and film producer, who was best known for his Swashbuckler films roles in Silent film films such as The Thief of Bagdad , Robin Hood , and The Mark of Zorro ....
 and Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was an Academy Award-winning Canada film actor, as well as a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences....
.

Located at 1143 Summit Drive, in the San Ysidro Canyon near Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is the largest city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles is rated as a beta global city, has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over in Southern California....
, the property was a hunting lodge when purchased by Fairbanks and Pickford in 1919.

They renovated extensively to transform the lodge into a 22 room mansion luxuriously decorated with ceiling frescos and the highest quality art and furnishings available. The property was said to have been the first private property in the Los Angeles area to include a swimming pool
Swimming pool

A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is an artificially enclosed body of water intended for swimming or water-based recreation....
 (set in a large formal garden
Garden

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials....
).

During the 1920s the house became the focal point for social activities, and the couple became famous for entertaining there. An invitation to Pickfair was a sign of social acceptance into the closed Hollywood community, and European
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 royalty was also accommodated and entertained at the mansion. Dinners at Pickfair were legendary; guests included Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. Order of the British Empire , better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an Academy Award-winning England comedy film actor and filmmaker....
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
, Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a Germany-born theoretical physics. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass?energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2....
, Elinor Glyn
Elinor Glyn

Elinor Glyn , born Elinor Sutherland, was a United Kingdom novelist and scriptwriter who pioneered mass-market women's erotic fiction. She coined the use of It as a euphemism for sex appeal....
, Helen Keller
Helen Keller

Helen Keller was an United States author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblindness person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
, H.G. Wells, Lord Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer; one of the most famous violinists of his day.He is noted for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing....
, Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earhart ; was a noted United States aviation pioneer, and author. Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross , awarded for becoming the first aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean....
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an United States writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself....
, Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce , for which she won the Academy Award for Academy Award for Best Actress....
, Noel Coward
Noël Coward

Sir No?l Peirce Coward was an English people playwright, composer, Theatre director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"....
, Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt

Max Reinhardt may refer to:*Max Reinhardt , Austrian theatre and film director*Max Reinhardt , British publisher...
, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, Deputy Lieutenant was a Scotland author most noted for his stories about the Detective fiction Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger....
, Austen Chamberlain
Austen Chamberlain

Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain, Order of the Garter was a British statesman, Politics, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize....
, and Sir Harry Lauder
Harry Lauder

Sir Henry Lauder , known professionally as Harry Lauder, was a notable Scotland entertainer, described by Sir Winston Churchill as "Scotland's greatest ever ambassador!"...
. Lauder's nephew, Matt Lauder Jr., a professional golfer whose family had a property at Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California
Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California

Eagle Rock is an artistic and affluent hilly neighborhood in northeastern Los Angeles, California, California, United States. It is bordered by the city of Glendale, California on the north and west, Highland Park, Los Angeles, California on the south, and the cities of Pasadena, California and South Pasadena on the east....
, taught Fairbanks to play golf.

Fairbanks and Pickford were divorced in January 1936, and Pickford resided in the mansion with her third husband, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, until her death in 1979. A recluse in her later years, Pickford received few visitors and the house was neglected.

It stood empty for several years after Pickford's death and was sold to Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers are a National Basketball Association team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers play their home games at Staples Center, which they share with their fellow NBA rival, the Los Angeles Clippers, and their sister team, the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association....
 owner, Dr. Jerry Buss
Jerry Buss

Gerald Hatten Buss is an American professional basketball team owner....
, before being purchased by actress Pia Zadora
Pia Zadora

Pia Zadora is an United States actor and singing. After work as a child actress on Broadway, in regional theater and in the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, she came to national attention in 1981 when, following her starring role in the critically lambasted Butterfly , she won a Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year....
 and her husband Meshulam Riklis
Meshulam Riklis

Meshulam Riklis is an Israelis businessman. He was married to Pia Zadora in 1977 and helped launch her film career. He and Zadora bought and demolished the Los Angeles landmark home Pickfair to build their own larger home on the site....
. They announced they were planning renovations to the famous building but later revealed that the house had in fact been demolished and a new larger mansion constructed in its place.

Faced with public criticism, Zadora defended her family's actions, stating that the house was in a poor state of repair, and was infested by termite
Termite

The termites are a group of social insects usually classified at the Taxonomy of Order Isoptera . As truly social animals, they are termed eusocial along with the ants and some bees and wasps which are all placed in the separate Order Hymenoptera....
s.

The only remaining artifacts from the original Pickfair are the gates to the estate with their prominent P motif.

Pickfair is now owned by UNICOM Systems, Inc. as of April, 2005.

It was listed in the MLS
Multiple Listing Service

A Multiple Listing Service is a suite of services that enables brokers to establish contractual offers of compensation ; facilitates cooperation with other broker participants; accumulates and disseminates information to enable appraisals; is a facility for the orderly correlation and dissemination of listing information to better serve...
 for $60 million on Sept. 8th, 2008.

In popular culture

Zadora's purchase and subsequent demolition of Pickfair is referenced in Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop's
Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop, born James Newell ?sterberg, Jr. on April 21, 1947, is an American Rock music singer, songwriter, and occasional actor. Although he has had only limited mainstream success, Iggy Pop is considered an innovator of punk rock, garage rock, and other related rock music....
 cover version of "Well Did You Evah!". Pop claims he was invited to Pia Zadora's house but didn't go, later saying "I hear they dismantled Pickfair... wasn't elegant enough", to which Harry replies "probably full of termites".

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