Item E-2 Agenda Report — Beverly Hills City Council, June 21, 2022 (part 4 of 4)

Universal Hilton Historic Resources Technical Report and Environmental Impacts Report for 555 W Universal Terrace Parkway, Los Angeles, CA. Senior Architectural Historian. The Universal Hilton Hotel was designed by master architect, William L. Pereira in 1983 in the Postmodern style. As one of Pereira’s final commissions, the hotel building was originally part of a master plan and was designed to accommodate visitors to the expanding Universal Theme Parks.

Alison conducted in-depth architect and postmodern style research, and evaluated the property for historic significance as part of the Historic Resources Technical Report.

Los Cerritos Wetlands Restoration Plan Program, Cultural Resource Assessment, Seal Beach, CA. Senior Architectural Historian. The Los Cerritos Wetlands Restoration EIR project will reinstate historic wetlands to a previously developed oil rig/production site that has been in operation since the early 20th century. As part of the larger restoration plan program, ESA was hired to conduct a cultural resources study to observe, document, and prepare preliminary mitigation measures related to identified built environment resources. Alison collaborated with the archeology team during a field visit to identify potential sites for later investigative studies. She reviewed historic aerial photographs, and conducted research to determine the companies and general ages of oil-industry related infrastructure including oil rigs, operations sheds, and decommissioned tank farms. Mitigation recommendations presented for the structures included Historic Resource Assessment reports to be conducted in the future. 3325 Monterey Road CEQA Impacts Analysis and Design Review, San Marino, California. Senior Architectural Historian. A two-story Art Deco style single-family residence, constructed in 1927 in San Marino, California was determined to be a historic resource. Proposed modifications to the residence included a two-story rear addition and building rehabilitation. Alison assisted with preservation design consultation and conducted a plan review for conformance with the SOI Standards for the proposed project. She coordinated with the project architect to better convey preservation components of the proposed work into the drawing set for city review. The review required a character-defining features analysis to determine the level of significance of the remaining features.

Golden Gate Village Historic Resource Evaluation, Marin City, CA. Architectural Historian. The highly-intact Golden Gate Village low-income housing complex was constructed in 1958 to house many of the former Marinship workers and their families. Designed by prominent mid-century designers including Aaron G. Green, John Carl Warnecke, and Lawrence Halprin, the property serves as an example of a well-designed housing complex, significant as a product of post-war urban development and for its prominent mid-century designers. Alison performed the site visit and conducted research through local and private archival repositories, plan analysis, and interviews, to produce the report narrative and historic evaluation for the property. Today, the property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

McDonnell Hall/Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel Historic Structure Report, San Jose, CA. Architectural Historian. Constructed as a parish church in 1914, the building moved to its current location in 1953. Here, the building served as a Alison Garcia Kellar, M.S.

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newly formed Catholic Mission, the Center of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The property is associated with civil rights activist and labor rights leader Cesar Chavez, and the mid-20th century Mexican American civil rights movement. Alison assisted with the research, production, and design recommendations, including bringing the building back to its appearance during its period of significance, which required a meticulous analysis of the building’s historic integrity. The property today is listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Historic YMCA Hotel Preservation Consulting in the Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA. Senior Architectural Historian, Project Manager. Built in the early 20th century, the building was formerly a YMCA hotel used by young navy men and is currently a hotel along the waterfront with an adjacent YMCA recreational center. The hotel was proposing modifications which included rehabilitation work and reconfiguring the interior lobby space. Alison researched and documented the interior evolution by reviewing old plans, movies filmed on-location, post cards, and existing fabric. She established the building’s construction chronology with a focus on the building’s public spaces at the interior, overseeing the entire production of the report and created recommendations to update the client’s proposed plans which included acceptable sensitive modifications to historic features and recommendations for potential future demolition.

Palo Alto History Museum Historic Preservation Consulting, Palo Alto, CA.

Architectural Historian. The Spanish Revival style Roth Building was the original location of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. The former medical building is undergoing a conversion into a local history museum with gallery space, interpretive areas, and archival and study rooms. Alison assisted with secondary research efforts of both the medical foundation and the building, upon modifications to the museum’s scope of work. She conducted a Part 2 Federal historic rehabilitation tax credit application review which included recommendation to best comply with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation.

Half Moon Bay Barn and Jail Museum Historic Resource Evaluation and Preservation Consulting, Half Moon Bay, CA. Senior Architectural Historian. The City of Half Moon Bay was working with a local historical society to implement a history museum at the site of its early 20th century jail and adjacent barn. Alison conducted an in-depth historic resource assessment then reviewed proposed plans for buildings and site modifications to accommodate gallery space, offices, and archival storage. Coordinating with project architects, she assisted with the creation of recommendations for project compliance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation.

Toscano Hotel Preservation Consulting, Sonoma State Historic Park, Sonoma, CA. Senior Architectural Historian. The two-story wood framed Toscano Hotel was constructed in the 1850s and is a contributing resource to the Sonoma Plaza National Historic Landmark District and the Sonoma Plaza National Register Historic District. Alison conducted a Secretary of the Interior’s Standards reviews of proposed changes to the interior of the building. Proposed changes included the conversion of a portion of the building from a hotel saloon museum display area into a retail concession area for the California State Parks. Project recommendations included sensitive design solutions to maintain original features.

Attachment B
"The Street Where They Lived" (1999)
O

THE NEIGHBORHOOD
The Street Where They Lived
Lucille Ball handed out candy on Halloween at No. 1000, Jimmy Stewart grew sweet corn at No. 918, and at No. 1019 Rosemary Clooney and José Ferrer’s kids sold lemonade to tourists. With the Ira Gershwins, Jack Bennys, and Oscar Levants, they made Roxbury Drive the starriest street in Beverly Hills—and a true American neighborhood.

BY TODD PURDUM | APRIL 1999
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ne ordinary evening when the world was still young, the telephone rang at 1000 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, just as the family who lived there was sitting down to dinner. It was the next-door neighbor, wondering if the family was home, and asking the man of the house to leave the back door open.

A few minutes later, the unmistakable creaky sounds of America’s most famous bad violinist came floating through the big white Colonial house, and Jack Benny strolled into the dining room in his trademark Gypsy scarf. The hostess, a redhead by the name of Lucille Ball, collapsed in laughter, and her husband, Gary Morton, offered the perennial 39-year-old a tip.

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“Which he took, of course—totally straight-faced,” Ball’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, recalls, laughing all over again at the retelling, nearly 40 years later. “And he runs out the front door, because he knows just how long he has before the next tour bus to get home. And the next thing we hear is this voice yelling, ‘Mary … oh, Maaaaaaaary,’ because he’s locked out. And the next bus comes up, and imagine what those people must have thought: Jack Benny locked out of his own house with his Gypsy violin.” Subscribe
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It sounds like an episode of I Love Lucy or The Jack Benny Show, and it could have been. But it was just a regular real-life moment in the days when Beverly Hills still seemed more like Bedford Falls, and the twoblock stretch of Roxbury Drive north of Sunset Boulevard was perhaps the starriest street in that small town. Ball and Benny were only the beginning of the gang that, at one time or another from the mid-30s through the 90s, lived the highest version of the California dream in this stately neighborhood, where the streets have the names of old English towns.

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Just across Lexington Road from Lucy, on the same side of the street, the Jimmy Stewarts lived at No. 918, and across from them, on the west side of Roxbury, lived the Oscar Levants. Up from them were José Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, who lived next to Ira and Leonore “Lee” Gershwin, who lived next to Agnes Moorehead, who played Stewart’s mother in The Stratton Story. She was just down the way from Thomas Mitchell, who played Stewart’s befuddled Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful Life. Eddie Cantor, Jack Haley, Hedy Lamarr, and Polly Bergen all lived on Roxbury, and so did Pandro Berman, the producer of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO. Diane Keaton, Peter Falk, and Clooney live there still.

It’s almost impossible to scratch the surface of Hollywood history without revealing a ribbon of Roxbury underneath. It’s the street where Russ Columbo, the 30s crooner who was Bing Crosby’s only rival, was accidentally shot with an antique dueling pistol, in the house where George Gershwin wrote “Love Is Here to Stay”—the same house where George Clooney began his career as a gofer and driver for his aunt 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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Rosemary. (Rosemary says that in the 50s, when she used to record radio shows with Crosby in the house, he never wanted to set foot in the den, where Columbo had been shot.) It’s the street where Citizen Kane’s mother and Cyrano de Bergerac lived on either side of the man who wrote “The Man That Got Away,” whose goddaughter, Liza Minnelli, named for another of his lyrics, celebrated her earliest birthdays in his elegant backyard. It’s the street where James Stewart grew sweet corn and tomatoes for the neighbors and walked the golden retrievers named for his twin daughters, Kelly and Judy.
“We had these Chinese people for our help,” Lucie Arnaz recalls, “and one day Mr. Stewart came by with fresh corn and cabbages at the back door. And he got the cook yelling, ‘She no home, she no home! No veg-e-table! We got veg-e-table man, come all the time!’ and she slammed the door in his face and wouldn’t take his present, and he had to go home and call and say, ‘W-w-w-aaaaaal, L-l-l-ucy … ’” rt often imitated life. The Stewarts repeatedly played themselves on Benny’s television show.

Benny and Ball appeared as guests of each other’s, Ferrer and Cantor as guests of Levant’s.

Benny began his 1951 television season with a tour bus driving through Beverly Hills. As the announcer calls out the stars’ homes, the camera cuts to scenes of the stars themselves, until finally, 30 seconds before the show ends, the driver announces Benny’s home and Benny himself pipes up from the back, “Driver, I get off here.” In one 1955 episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel bound off a tour bus and head toward what is supposed to be Richard Widmark’s house for the episode in which Lucy winds up in a bearskin rug, but the second-unit shot is of Ball’s own house. “When I first visited Los Angeles before moving here, and took the obligatory movie-stars tour, I was struck by the fact that so many of the celebrities they mentioned were deceased,” says Michael Feinstein, the pianist and cabaret singer, who arrived from Columbus, Ohio, in 1976 as a piano salesman but soon found himself working as Ira Gershwin’s musical secretary. “And I realized that those tours really traded on nostalgia and memory, because that sort of glamour was long gone. Except, as it turned out, on Roxbury Drive, because such a collection of celebrities still lived there.” “It was an amazing two blocks,” says Joan Benny, who grew up in the brick Georgian house that her parents built in 1937, complete with a mosaic octopus in the swimming pool, and who still dreams about “every inch of it. Jack Haley Jr. used to push me out of my carriage. He was a little brat. But then, so was I.”
Some of the most famous faces in show business lived side by side on Roxbury—without fear—amid the constant rumble of groaning buses filled with tourists, who called to them and rang their doorbells. The Bennys kept 8-by-10 glossies in a drawer of the hall table, “and if my father happened to be in the vicinity, he’d answer the door,” Joan Benny recalls. Kelly Stewart Harcourt remembers that to the end of her life her mother, Gloria, referred to the ritzy shopping area of Rodeo Drive just blocks away as “the village.” 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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ow friendly people were,” Benny says, “and how open everything was.” People left their doors unlocked, and the worst worry was being stopped, as Clooney and Ferrer once were, for violating the Beverly Hills curfew by walking home from a party at the Bennys’ without ID. Lucy, dressed in full witch regalia with blacked-out teeth, handed out candy at her front door on Halloween, with a Desilu studio guard standing by, and Lee Gershwin made a daily pilgrimage to Nate ’n’ Al’s delicatessen in her Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Once, late in life, Mrs. G., as she was known to the Beverly Hills police, forgot where she’d parked, and a patrolman squired her around till she found the car.
“It was a rather small area, in which you lived very close to all of your friends,” says Fred DeCordova, who was a producer of Benny’s show and later of Johnny Carson’s, and who at 88 is still a special consultant to The Tonight Show. “I know there are great stars and all of that today, but in those days it was a much more tightly knit community.”
“It was an absolutely great time,” says the composer David Raksin, 86, who came to Hollywood in 1935 to help Charlie Chaplin write the score for Modern Times, and who knew the Gershwins and Levants. “There was an aliveness which was wonderful. There was not the situation one finds now, where you never see your colleagues unless there’s a board meeting.”
Today, many of the biggest stars live in gated enclaves or on private streets without sidewalks in Pacific Palisades, with security cameras and bodyguards and phalanxes of functionaries to fend off stray fans and stalkers.
“You know, they’re all, like, living in Attica,” says the screenwriter Leonard Gershe, 76, who regularly had Christmas dinner at the Stewarts’, was a pallbearer at Benny’s funeral, and played poker at the Gershwins’ with Angie Dickinson and director Richard Brooks. “I mean, Jimmy and Gloria, they never had a problem.

People did come to their door, but it was all very friendly. I don’t think, well, Leonardo DiCaprio is going to get away with that. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
f the street has a psychic center, it is the big Spanish-style pile at No. 1019, and the warmhearted woman who lives there is the neighborhood’s emotional guardian and oral historian. Rosemary Clooney moved into the house in 1953, just after her marriage to José Ferrer, and through two divorces from him, drug dependence, and a 1968 nervous breakdown, it has been her anchor. Today she lives there with Dante DiPaolo, a former Hollywood hoofer whom she married in 1997 after 24 years as his “roommate,” and the sprawling five-bedroom house still rings with visits from her five children with Ferrer, and their children.
“I never expected to live in a house like this,” says Clooney, who grew up in Kentucky and started out as a band singer with Tony Pastor, and whose sunken living room is filled with affectionately autographed pictures from friends such as John F. Kennedy and Dean Martin. “This was the first house I ever had. I’d lived with relatives and in apartments.”
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No. 1019 is central to Roxbury lore because it’s the place that George and Ira Gershwin rented when they came to Hollywood in 1936 to write the score for Shall We Dance?, with Astaire and Rogers. “They All Laughed,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” and “Love Walked In” all came to life in that sunken living room, as did the last song George wrote before his death from a brain tumor in 1937, “Love Is Here to Stay.” For the urban-bred Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths of the era—from the Gershwins to Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Harold Arlen, who lived nearby—the land of lemon trees and swimming pools was an unexpected paradise, and to this day nightblooming jasmine planted for the Gershwins at 1019 by Fanny Brice still thrives. “It was like Dorothy landing in Munchkinland,” says Ernie Harburg, the son of Arlen’s Wizard of Oz writing partner E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, who came from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills as a child in the mid-30s to visit his father. “Ira had a tennis court and swimming pool, and we used to go over there, and Yip and Ira and Harold and George all used to work at night. During the day, they would play golf or go to the beach, and then at night they would sit down and get serious. Living in that environment, you see, and playing and partying, helped create that kind of incredible collaborative process. They played the scores that they wrote for each other, and you couldn’t come up with crappy stuff, because they’d throw you out. It was competitive, but it was also incredibly cooperative at the same time.” s it happened, the woman who owned the house next door, No. 1021, was an elderly invalid who would lie awake at night and take pleasure in hearing George picking out tunes. After George’s death, Ira was disconsolate and reluctant to leave the neighborhood, so the woman sold him her house for $25,500, and he lived there until the end of his life.

For Clooney, an acknowledged master of the American popular song, the two houses are a living link with her life’s work. “You know what I feel an architectural connection with?” she asks over cocktails in her cozy den. “‘A Foggy Day,’ because I once played a tape of it that I’d done on a television show for Ira, and he said he was working in the living room one night, and their piano was in the same place where mine is now, and George came bounding in from a dinner party that he’d left early, dropped his coat, and said, ‘Ira! It can’t be “a foggy day in London.” It’s gotta be “a foggy day in London town!” ’ And now that’s with me every time I sing that song: he thought of it in the middle of a dinner party and didn’t even stay to finish the dinner.”
When the lights were on in the front of 1021, it was the sign that the Ferrers and a handful of other neighbors and friends were free to drop in for a drink or a game of poker with Ira and Lee, sometimes with Judy Garland singing and, later, Angie Dickinson acting as bartender. “And you know, my God, just to have her walk around was a pretty good idea,” Clooney says. “I walked in there once in my first maternity clothes. I was really happy—you know, ‘La, la, la, la, I’m pregnant,’” Clooney continues. “And Humphrey Bogart was there, and he said, ‘Oh, look at Miss Clowney.

She’s pregnant. She’s got her clothes on.’ And so he said, ‘Look, I’ve never won a bet with a pregnant woman in my life, so what kind of kid do you want, a boy or a girl?’ I said, ‘I’d like to have a boy,’ and he said, ‘All right, I bet you have a girl.’ So the first flowers that I got were from Bogie, and he said, ‘O.K., you 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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win. Love, Bogie.’ And then came the letter with the check: ‘Dear Miguel, Your parents are rich. They don’t need the 50 bucks. Put it in the bank and let it stay there until you need it. Bogart.’” here was remarkably little competitiveness, and Clooney recalls no one comparing grosses or percentage deals. But there were a few neighborly tensions. Agnes Moorehead once infuriated Ira Gershwin by proposing to cut down the eucalyptus trees that abutted his yard, and Lee Gershwin complained about the bare lightbulb on the Ferrer family’s garage. Clooney’s daughter Monsita Botwick recalls how Lee would “send the cops over, saying, ‘The music’s too loud. Turn it down.’ Compliments of Mrs. Gershwin. Thanks so much!”
“She used to yell at your father because he played tennis before he went to work,” Clooney tells her. “He had to be on the set at 7:30, so he’d be hitting the tennis ball as soon as it would be daylight, and she’d say, ‘I’m tired of that plup, plup, plup.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know what you can do about that.’” Ira Gershwin’s love for loud music was as great as his wife’s loathing of it. When Clooney’s daughter-inlaw Debbie Boone came back from Japan with one of the first Walkmans, Clooney gave it to Michael Feinstein to give to Ira, “so he could crank it in his ears, you know. And he said, ‘This is absolutely wonderful!’ And he called his broker and bought Sony stock!” he Gershwins were indirectly responsible for the presence of the street’s celebrated misanthrope, Oscar Levant, the pianist, composer, and manic-depressive wit. As a young composer in the 30s, Levant idolized George Gershwin, and he would often come to visit from his quarters on the less flossy south end of Roxbury Drive. In the late 1940s, when he finally settled in Hollywood for good, Levant bought the house at No. 905, just a block away from 1019. For the rest of his life, though, when visiting Ira at 1021, he would drive the long way around Lexington Road and Benedict Canyon rather than pass the scene of George’s final illness. “He clung on to so many phobias that as time progressed he became worse and worse, until his brain was so cluttered with fears and things to avoid that he just couldn’t function,” says Feinstein, who met the Gershwins because he had helped Levant’s widow, June, catalogue his records. “He would not drive past a place that gave him a bad memory, so when he drove around town he would always make you turn here and turn there. It took him forever to get anywhere.”
Levant’s youngest daughter, Amanda Carmel, recalled recently discussing her childhood with a neighborhood friend, who fondly remembered meeting Liza Minnelli and Fred Astaire at Levant-family parties. “And I said, ‘But it was so crazy and chaotic,’” Carmel said. “And she said, ‘We never thought of you guys as crazy.’”
Though Levant wrote the haunting melody for “Blame It on My Youth,” in 1934, and became one of the leading interpreters of Gershwin’s piano works, he was overcome with grief and survivor guilt after George’s death. He stopped composing and, eventually, even playing. Once, David Raksin dropped by to play part of his new dramatic score for Force of Evil, only to be greeted with a farrago of invective and 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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abuse. Raksin recalls, “That night he called and said, ‘I don’t apologize, but I’m apologizing tonight. You made me think of what I should have been doing with my life.’” A legendary wit (he once said he “knew Doris Day before she became a virgin”) who essentially played himself in such movies as The Band Wagon and An American in Paris, Levant, who was addicted to an arsenal of prescription drugs and subject to violent outbursts, eventually became so desperate and depressed that he’d pay a doctor to shoot him up with phenobarbital or Demerol in a car parked on Roxbury Drive in the middle of the night. “He drank 40 cups of coffee a day, smoked—I don’t know—four or five packs of cigarettes a day, and he was always trying to kill June,” recalled the late Marcella Rabwin, who had lived on Roxbury and who, as David O. Selznick’s executive assistant and the wife of a prominent doctor, had been one of the doyennes of Beverly Hills civic life. “But he really depended on her.” n 1949, Jimmy Stewart ended his long run as one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors and married Gloria Hatrick McLean, an elegant onetime model who was divorced from the socialite Edward McLean Jr., whose mother, Evelyn Walsh McLean, owned the Hope diamond. Stewart, who majored in architecture at Princeton before being drawn by the theatrical lure of the school’s Triangle Club, had wanted to design a home in Pacific Palisades, but Gloria decided that such a hilly neighborhood was no place to raise children, and by then she already had two sons from her first marriage. So the newlyweds bought a big Tudor-style house at 918 North Roxbury, which had been built by the director King Vidor and which Stewart described as “belonging to a style of Mediterranean Ugly.” The Stewarts made the big house into a comfortable home, and soon twin daughters arrived. From the beginning, Gloria Stewart was determined to raise her children as far as possible from the head-turning customs of Hollywood. The girls had a French-speaking governess and spent a year at school in Switzerland, while the boys boarded at Black Fox, a military academy in Los Angeles. Summers were spent on family ranches—first near Elko, Nevada, then in the Santa Ynez Valley north of Santa Barbara— and later on African safaris.
“I never had the feeling growing up that this was a really wow, super-duper place to live,” says Kelly Stewart Harcourt, who went on to study gorillas with Dian Fossey and is now a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis. “It was just our home. I remember once reading an article somewhere, and our house was described as a mansion, and it struck me as ridiculous.” One day Stewart came home from work early to find a sight-seeing bus stopped in front of the house. The young twins were in their double stroller, and their nurse was “giving the spiel” to the tourists for money, Harcourt recalls.
“Every so often, my sister and I would be walking by, and we would answer the door instead of the housekeeper,” Harcourt continues. “And usually it would be ‘Mr. Stewart is resting,’ or ‘Mr. Stewart is away.’ But other times—and this happened very rarely—people were just, you know, they’d come all the way from Iowa and they were so sweet and seemed so innocent, and Judy and I would take the piece of 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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paper and get Dad and just beg him to sign it. And if he was having a nap, I must admit, and you probably shouldn’t write this down, a couple of times I forged his signature.” he Ferrer children were more frankly mercenary, running a lemonade stand and retailing Clooney’s head shots to the tourist trade. “My son Gabri used to take my pictures, that I paid like, maybe, 35 cents apiece for, and he’d sell them for a dime. I’m paying more than he’s selling them for! And he’d steal them from the house and take them to my daughter Maria, who had a little seat behind a bush somewhere, and she had my signature down perfectly. They cleaned up.” Desi Arnaz Jr. also had a lemonade stand, but added an even more enterprising twist after his family, tired of the trafficky commute to the studio from their ranch in Chatsworth, in the San Fernando Valley, moved to Roxbury in 1955. “Desi used to take advantage of the fact that those movie-star maps are not very accurate,” Lucie Arnaz recalls. “He must have been 10 or 11 at the time, and he would lean in the car to hand the lemonade and cookies, and he’d say, ‘Oh, I see you’ve got the map. A lot of those people have moved. I can show you who does live here.’ And he’d charge a buck and get into the car with these people and tell them a bunch of stuff that was completely made up. My mother never knew till years later.” The tourists could be so pesky that the family who lived at No. 1000 before the Arnazes felt compelled to put up a big sign, with an arrow pointing to No. 1002: jack benny does not live here. he lives there. manda Levant Carmel remembers making faces and throwing leaves at the tour buses, which were unrelenting—“every five minutes in the summer, stopping at whatever was owned by somebody, used to be owned by somebody, used to be owned by somebody who knew somebody,” according to Lucie Arnaz—and the announcers’ drone was inescapable. Clooney had just come back from the hospital with her son Gabriel, who was born prematurely; she was resting with the upstairs windows open when she heard a person on a loudspeaker saying, “‘Yes, Rosemary’s home from the hospital and she’s fine, but the baby—we don’t really know yet. It was four pounds at birth. He’s a little boy, but he’s still in the hospital at St. John’s, and Joe and Rosemary go down and see him.’ The story of my life’s going by on a loudspeaker and I’m thinking, Shut up!” Even Albert Hoxie, 86, a retired U.C.L.A. history professor who has lived in the house just south of Stewart’s since 1929, had to contend with the sound of announcers declaring when they reached his front yard, “And no one lives there!”
The city of Beverly Hills banned big tour buses in favor of minivans in 1984, but not before one especially presumptuous group of tourists sat down and spread out their lunch on the Stewart lawn. “They wouldn’t do this to their next-door neighbors at home,” Clooney says, “but they put down a cloth and a basket and had a picnic. And Jimmy just turned on the sprinklers.” In part to create a refuge from such shenanigans, in the late 60s Stewart bought the corner house next to his, just across from Ball’s, tore it down, and built a brick-walled garden, where he grew vegetables. At a 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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buffet lawn party at the Stewarts’ shortly after it was finished, Leonard Gershe found Ball’s place card next to his at the table, but no sign of the star during cocktails or the beginning of dinner. “She finally arrived, gave kind of a cursory greeting to everybody, and then sat down next to me and kissed me, and I said, ‘Why are you so late? You live right across the street.’ She said, ‘I wasn’t going to come at all. I’m so furious with the Stewarts!’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘When they tore that house down next door, all the rats came running over to my house, and I’ve been with exterminators for three weeks!’ She finally relaxed, and they never even knew, but it cracked me up.” n 1965, Jack Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone, decided to sell the Roxbury house, decamping first to a penthouse apartment in Century City and later to the house in Holmby Hills where Benny died in 1974. In Sunday Nights at Seven, her 1990 memoir, Joan Benny recalled that her father missed the house and the old friends terribly, and for the rest of his life, “in a sweet, kind of melancholy way,” would ask Mary, “Doll, why did we have to sell that house?” Joan Benny herself had hoped to buy it, but couldn’t afford to, and her parents, despite their initial promise to help her with a second mortgage so that she could, ultimately decided against it because Livingstone had spent so much on decorating the new penthouse. Joan got the word from her father’s lawyer. “For years it was something I couldn’t think about or talk about,” Benny wrote. “It would just make me cry. For a very long time I couldn’t even drive by the house. I would go out of my way, rather than pass 1002 North Roxbury. Sometimes when I glance at a digital clock or wristwatch and it says 10:02, I feel it— not a pang, not even a twinge anymore, but it’s there.” (The house, for which Benny paid $250,000 in 1937, was recently put on the market for $7.5 million.) Levant descended deeper into depression and addiction, emerging most famously for a party that Walter and Carol Matthau held in honor of Charlie Chaplin when he won his special Academy Award in the spring of 1972. Candice Bergen, then moonlighting as a journalist and photographer, began a profile of him for Esquire. In their interview, Levant spewed epigrams, fretted when she did not take notes at all times, and finally sat down at the piano and began playing and softly singing the third verse of the Gershwins’ “But Not for Me,” which goes: “It all began so well / But what an end / This is the time a fell- / Er needs a friend.”
“I don’t think there’s ever been anything to equal it,” Bergen recalls of that moment in a life full of rich moments. “It was him in his pajamas and slippers, and he was really the most neurasthenic-looking man I’d ever seen. His ankles were a road map of veins, and he was so fiercely urban, you could tell it was a real principle of his never to expose himself to the daylight hours. He really had almost a pale-blue tinge.” A few days later, when Bergen arrived for a follow-up interview on August 15, she learned that he had just died.

Ira Gershwin, immersed in memories of his late brother, worked less and less, and grew prematurely frail.

His last public outing was for the wedding of Angie Dickinson and Burt Bachrach in the 1960s, and 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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eventually even his walks around the neighborhood stopped completely. He did draw pleasure from his work with the young Feinstein, who helped him organize decades of music and memorabilia, much of which is now preserved in the Library of Congress, and he continued to receive a handful of visitors, such as Angie Dickinson, who took him exquisite silk flowers, because he kept the drapes in his bedroom closed and real plants could not live there.

Finally, one morning in 1983, Clooney saw an ambulance in Gershwin’s driveway and later called Feinstein to tell him the worst. Fred Astaire, arriving to pay his respects, wandered into Clooney’s foyer by mistake, remembering his visits to 1019 a half-century earlier. Lee Gershwin ordered Feinstein upstairs to kiss the corpse, and then made him play the slow movement of George’s Piano Concerto in F as the undertakers carried Ira’s body out. Feinstein recalls, “As they were going through the living room, I turned my head, and Lee said, ‘Don’t look!’ So I turned my head back to the piano and finished playing.

And that was the end of the golden days at what Ira always called the Gershwin plantation.” fter years of feuding over Desi’s drinking and philandering, Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, and Clooney and Ferrer split up for good in 1964. “We’d laugh about our troubles until it got not so happy for both of us, you know,” Clooney says. “I said to little Lucie once, ‘There wasn’t a chance on this block.’ We had a Cuban on one end and a Puerto Rican on the other, for God’s sake. But Desi was funny, and fine, you know, and Lucy really respected the way he handled the business part of it.” Ball married Gary Morton, a former nightclub comic, and carried on with two other successful “Lucy” series. But her retirement years were restless and lonely, and she was deeply hurt by the failure of a 1986 comeback attempt, Life with Lucy, which was canceled after eight episodes. She died in 1989, and a few years later the house’s new owners, tired of nosy tourists, rebuilt the façade of the house with a new Italianate stucco overlay so as to make it almost unrecognizable.

Meantime, to Clooney’s chagrin, house after house on the street was remodeled or demolished in favor of bigger, ritzier mansions. Stewart’s double lot, with its towering pine trees and graceful silver birches, remained an island of calm as he aged into America’s most beloved movie hero, recipient of countless awards and tributes. But he, too, grew increasingly frail, and after Gloria’s death from cancer in 1994, he rarely left his house. He died at home on July 2, 1997, and Kelly Stewart Harcourt, borrowing a line from It’s a Wonderful Life, eulogized him as “the richest man in town.” he following spring, Stewart’s children, none of whom lives in L.A. any longer, sold the house for $5.6 million to Steven Wallace, the founder of Pacific Brokerage Services, an on-line discount brokerage, who pronounced it “just a dump” and tore it down last summer to build what he calls “kind of an Italian villa—it’ll look old, but be new.”
Kelly Stewart Harcourt found herself unable to cut the cord to Beverly Hills entirely. She took a small apartment in an old courtyard building near the Beverly Wilshire hotel to use on visits, installing some of her parents’ leftover furniture, including the bar, complete with Princeton highball glasses. 3 ARTICLES LEFT Subscribe Sign In

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“For a while, I thought I’d rather have it torn down than drive past it and have somebody else in it,” she says. “That actually isn’t true. Once it was down, I realized I wished it were still there, just so I could drive by and see it, because it was so much a part of that street. I have a best friend in Mandeville Canyon, and when I’m coming back at night from visiting her I always turn left on Roxbury by mistake, still. “I miss it. I remember, right before it was completely torn down, I went past and it was just ground zero, practically. I mean, all dirt, and everything had been ripped up, and the only thing left was the hallway— the front door and the walls of the hallway, still with their wallpaper. So in the midst of all this dust and destruction there was this familiar wallpaper, this little patch in what looked like a battlefield, this poignant image I just can’t get rid of.”
Todd S. Purdum is *Vanity Fair’*s national editor.
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Attachment C
"A Transitional Beverly Hills
Residence with an Old Hollywood Feel"
(2015)
< BACK TO ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN < HOME TOURS
A Transitional Beverly Hills Residence with an Old
Hollywood Feel
ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN

HOME TOURS

PRODUCTS
SHOPS + SHOWROOMS
KITCHEN + BATH

ARTISANS
JUNE 2, 2015
In a nod to the nearby Polo Lounge restaurant in the Beverly Hills Hotel, a black-and-white Perennials stripe was used liberally in the loggia. A custom cocktail table by Murray’s Iron Works complements clean-lined furnishings by McKinnon and Harris, purchased at Janus et Cie. The light fixtures are from Charles Edwards in London. Windows and doors throughout the home are from Old English Milling in Valencia.
“T
Interior Designer
Mark Rios, FAIA, FASLA, Rios Clementi Hale Studios
Architect
Mark Rios, FAIA, FASLA, Rios Clementi Hale Studios
Home Builder
George Peper, Fort Hill Construction
Landscape Architect
Mark Rios, FAIA, FASLA, Rios Clementi Hale Studios
Photography
Dominique Vorillon
his house evokes the glamour of Old Hollywood,” says David Bohnett of the Beverly Hills residence he shares with his partner, Tom Gregory. But, when the couple purchased the1930s Paul Williams-style structure, it hadn’t quite reached its full star-studded potential. “The previous owner had done a major remodel about 20 years ago,” says philanthropist and technology entrepreneur Bohnett.
“So it was in need of a makeover.” And looking to the cinematic pedigree of the storied neighborhood—screen legends such as Lucille Ball and Jimmy Stewart once called it home—Bohnett knew what direction to take. “I wanted people to walk in the house and have the sense that Joan Crawford was going to come down the stairs and say, ‘Let’s have a cocktail!’”

HOUSE DETAILS
To carry out that glamorous vision, Bohnett called on his longtime friend and frequent collaborator, architect Mark Rios, principal of the interdisciplinary firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios in Los Angeles. “It was a beautifully proportioned, elegant house,” says Rios, whose firm handled the architecture, interiors and landscaping, “but none of the details were particularly spectacular. David wanted to make it unique.” Beginning with the architecture, Rios worked with associates Leslie Barrett and Casey Nagel to make subtle but important changes.

The kitchen was modernized, baths and powder rooms rebuilt, and a large terrace was added along the second-floor master bedroom. “The house was visually in good condition,” says LA-based general contractor George Peper, president of Fort Hill Construction, “but that view was a bit misleading.” Peper notes that, while the design changes were made, the house was also brought up to current structural standards.

As the architecture was put in order, so were its surroundings. With firm colleague John Fishback, Rios created grounds that felt “as large and stately as possible” by choosing “very few plant types and repeating them over and over.” In the back yard, the two encircled an existing pond and pool with large-leaf plantings to contrast with the expansive lawns, and they lowered boxwood hedges by several feet to let in light and offer a feeling of openness. “Our goal for the landscape was to simplify it and make it feel more grand,” says Rios.

While the structure and landscaping were kept classic and tailored, Rios, along with design associate Daniel Torres, set out to make an impact with the interiors. “We wanted to take appropriate risks,” says Rios. “So that, when you walk in, you’re bowled over by some of the moves.” To start, they selected colors and patterns that become more intense as one progresses through the house.

The liv- ing room, with its linen-covered walls and subdued gold and cream tones, “engages you in the conversation,” says Rios. A sectional sofa in the family room was upholstered with a deep rust-colored fabric, while chocolate-hued leather walls build drama in the dining room. The kitchen and adjoining TV room are energized with lemon-patterned wallpaper, and the palette reaches a crescendo in the game room, where existing paneling was lacquered a rich tomato-soup red. “We tried to exaggerate the experience of each room,” says Rios.

Though the backdrops of the rooms shift, the approach to the furnishings was kept consistent. “It was important to me that the furniture have an eclectic mix of styles,” says Bohnett. “I didn’t want it to feel gimmicky.” Rios agreed and also made a point to find pieces that would work with the house’s traditional sensibility while referencing the couple’s affinity for modernism. “I think filling the house with traditional furniture would have been expected,” says Rios, who hunted down mid-century finds by designers such as Piero Fornasetti, Giò Ponti and Charles Hollis Jones. “The great thing about these pieces is that they have classic roots and proportions but are made in a sculptural and modern way.” That unexpected quality is part of the home’s success. “It has a quiet approach,” says Rios, “but, as you walk inside, it surprises you. It’s like a story; as you move through, you get to know the characters, and they become a little more eccentric.

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Attachment D
Architectural Digest
Translation
From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2022 10:25 AM
To: Margarita Jerabek; Claire Cancilla; [email protected] Subject: FW: 1001 Roxbury AD Article Translation
From: Ryan Gohlich <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2022 3:47 PM
To: Mihlsten, George (LA) <[email protected]>; [email protected]; Timmi Tway <[email protected]>; Mark Odell <[email protected]> Subject: 1001 Roxbury AD Article Translation
All,
Please see below for the main body of the article. I will send one additional email with the pages.

Ryan
The description on the 146 is translated as follows:

The architect Mark Rios helped the Beverly Hills homeowner go back to 1960’s. Text by Dominica Bradbarry, Photography by Richard Powers.

The article translation is below. There was a bit of glare on the top potion of the article which I couldn’t read so I left blanks:

AD Interiors – Decorator Yekaterina Koto…shina decided that gray is most often suitable for the walls of her apartment in the center of Moscow. The English architect Quinlan Terry built a mansion in London, which cannot be distinguished from the true buildings of the XVIII century. Entrepreneur David Bonett and his architect Mark Rios turned the Beverly Hills house into a 1960’s style reserve. A Franco-American family with two children settled in a restored castle of the twenty-first century in France. Architect Olga Freiman showed AD her apartment in Moscow, the interior of which was built up for twelve years.

American architect Stephen Kieran decided to achieve harmony with nature, for which he built an adult version of a children's tree house in Maryland.

The City keeps a copy of all E-mails sent and received for a minimum of 2 years. All retained E-mails will be treated as a Public Record per the California Public Records Act, and may be subject to disclosure pursuant to the terms, and subject to the exemptions, of that Act.
_________________________________
This email may contain material that is confidential, privileged and/or attorney work product for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, disclosure, reliance or distribution by others or forwarding without express permission is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete all copies including any attachments.

Latham & Watkins LLP or any of its affiliates may monitor electronic communications sent or received by our networks in order to protect our business and verify compliance with our policies and relevant legal requirements. Any personal information contained or referred to within this electronic communication will be processed in accordance with the firm's privacy notices and Global Privacy Standards available at www.lw.com.

From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2022 10:26 AM
To: Margarita Jerabek; Claire Cancilla; [email protected] Subject: FW: 1001 Roxbury AD Article Translation 2
From: Ryan Gohlich <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2022 3:52 PM
To: Mihlsten, George (LA) <[email protected]>; [email protected]; Timmi Tway <[email protected]>; Mark Odell <[email protected]> Subject: 1001 Roxbury AD Article Translation 2
Please see the remainder of the translation.

Ryan
Please see below:

There are many errors in the grammar here and misspelled words, but the language above translates to:

A wood-lined fireplace is the first thing that catches the eye. They did not install/stand-up a chimney.

The text above translates to:

Avolkosku
Usually, builders use plywood for draft work. Archduke Claudt believes that this is a universal finishing material. At first he used it in the city, and now he used it in the Moscow region..(incomplete sentence/statement).

The text above uses words that are repeated and misspelled… and it seems that it’s the same language as the first photo with the entrance with the white façade:

A wood-lined fireplace is the first thing that catches the eye. They did not install/stand-up a chimney.

Grammatical errors in this one but seems like they mean:
tomok sculpture by Peter Claudt and one of the founders of the Erman architectural bureau….

This one above seems to be poorly worded and doesn’t make sense. It could be another language besides Russian….

The article below is out of context and the beginning part is missing. - The article is also incomplete…
I designed the house. "The cottage turned out to be modest. The area is only 180 square meters, the facade is sheathed with pine boards. "These are sane people, they understand that there is no need to build mansions in the country," says the author of the project. And he adds that the technical task drawn up by the customers fit on a tiny piece of paper - just a list of necessary requirements. Clients did not interfere with style issues. "I love Frank Lloyd Wright very much, but the pseudo-rightist that everyone is building in the Moscow region has already filled his teeth," Oleg says. "That's why I tried not to copy anything, but to make something of my own - a simpler and more suburban look." As a result, the Wright here is only reminded of the wide railings of the balconies, emphasizing the horizontal of the building. The color scheme in the house is restrained, black and white. "I like bright colors only in the form of small inclusions," Oleg admits. - And then I wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the old Soviet summer houses. Of course, not from the point of view of architecture. But the feeling of colorlessness was also present there." By the way, the atmosphere is not architecture or even a color solution, but a way of life that dictates the interior. In this sense, the house is really old-fashioned. Here, for example, it is not customary to spend time in the kitchen according to a stagnant custom that has passed into a new life. The cooking area is taken out into a walk-through room, where there is nowhere to sit down. And the architect deliberately arranged the dining room at the other end of the house. "I love it when people talk while sitting at the table. But kitchen gatherings are a bad tradition," Oleg believes. The wall against which the dining table stands is covered with tinted oak panels. It seems to be simple, but it is quite time-consuming. There are a lot of custom-made items in the house in general: a fireplace portal, doors, built-in wardrobes. "Handmade in Russia is more expensive than in Europe. But you save on delivery," says Klodt. - And as a result, you get a piece thing for the same money." But saving is saving, and you can't call this interior a penny. Even if you take all the designer furniture out of the house, the feeling of comfort and attention to detail will still remain here. And that in itself is worth a lot. Oleg admits. - And then…
That’s where the article cuts off.

Attachment 11
Publication Verification Memo, Jan Ostashay,
Ostashay and Associates Consulting (OAC)
P.O. Box 542
Long Beach, CA
562.500.9451
1 Ostashay & Associates

CONSULTING
Memorandum
To: Honorable Mayor and City Council Date: 06/16/2022
From: Jan Ostashay, Principal OAC
Re: PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility - 1001 North Roxbury Drive Introduction
At the request of the City of Beverly Hills Community Development Department, Planning Division, Ostashay & Associates Consulting (OAC) conducted additional research into the legitimacy of the two publications discussed at the City Council hearing on April 12, 2022, with regard to the issuance of a Certificate of Ineligibility for the property located at 1001 North Roxbury Drive (subject property).

Background Information
Determining Ineligibility
In determining if a property is ineligible for designation as a landmark in the City of Beverly Hills, an historic assessment should be conducted that demonstrates that the designation criteria, BHMC 10-3- 3212, cannot be met. Therefore, a thorough understanding and accurate evaluation of the designation criteria are necessary.

For a structure to be designated in the City of Beverly Hills without the owner’s consent, the municipal code requires that a set of criteria be reviewed by the Cultural Heritage Commission or the City Council to determine the historic eligibility of a property and for listing on the local register of historic properties. As stipulated in the municipal code, the designation criteria for recognizing potential landmark eligibility consists of two parts, Part A and Part B, each with their own subset of significance criteria. A property must satisfy all four criteria requirements under Part A and must satisfy at least one of the six criteria under Part B. The local City of Beverly Hills Landmark Designation Criteria requirements consist of the following:

A. A landmark must satisfy all of the following requirements:

A1. It is at least 45 years (45) years of age, or is a property of extraordinary significance; A2. It possesses high artistic or aesthetic value, and embodies the distinctive characteristics of an architectural style or architectural type or architectural period; A3. It retains substantial integrity from its period of significance; and A4. It has continued historic value to the community such that its designation as a landmark is reasonable and necessary to promote and further the purposes of this article.

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 2 B. In addition to the requirements set forth in Paragraph A above, a landmark must satisfy at least one of the following requirements:

B1. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; B2. It is an exceptional work by a master architect;
B3. It is an exceptional work that was owned and occupied by a person of great importance, and was directly connected to a momentous event in the person’s endeavors or the history of the nation. For purposes of this paragraph, personal events such as birth, death, marriage, social interaction, and the like shall not be deemed to be momentous;
B4. It is an exceptional property that was owned and occupied by a person of great local prominence;
B5. It is an iconic property; or
B6. The landmark designation procedure is initiated, or expressly agreed to, by the owner(s) of the property.

Certificate of Ineligibility
A Certificate of Ineligibility, pursuant to the City’s Municipal Code 10-3-3221, is a determination made by the Director of Community Development or the Cultural Heritage Commission as to the eligibility of a potentially historic property in the City for local designation and listing in the City’s Register of Historic Properties. The Certificate of Ineligibility process was originally created to offer property owners greater certainty relative to the historic status of their properties in order for improvements or replacement projects to move forward in a more streamlined manner and without further review or evaluation of the potential historic merits of the properties under review.

Upon analysis, the Director will make the determination based on a historic assessment report provided by the applicant and prepared by a consultant selected by the applicant from a preapproved list of qualified consultants; other information regarding the subject property, as may be available; or a combination thereof. The Director may also have the information and material provided by the applicant peer reviewed by the City’s historic consultant for acceptability and soundness of findings. If granted, a Certificate of Ineligibility bars the Cultural Heritage Commission or the City Council from initiating landmark designation proceedings concerning a particular property for a period of seven years from the date of issuance. While a Certificate of Ineligibility is in effect, the subject property cannot be listed on the local inventory, or be subject to the provisions of the municipal code pertaining to designated and/or eligible historic resources in the City.

The Certificate of Ineligibility application submitted for the 1001 North Roxbury Drive property by the applicant as well as an accompanying historic assessment report prepared by ESA (dated October 2021) was peer reviewed by the City’s historic consultant, Jan Ostashay with OAC, prior to its issuance by staff. Upon conducting a peer review of the application and assessment report, OAC in its memo dated January 12, 2022, concluded that the subject property appeared to satisfy all of the “A” Criteria.

However, OAC also concluded that the property did not meet any of significance Criterion under Part “B,” in particular B2: it is an “exceptional work” by a master architect.

The City’s Municipal Code (BHMC 10-3-3202: Definitions) defines “exceptional work” as: A remarkably superior example of architectural work that has been recognized as such by members of PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 3 the architectural community. At a minimum, the work’s exceptional quality shall have been documented by at least one of the following:
a) it was the subject of a major architectural award;
b) it was substantively discussed (i.e. not just mentioned) and photographically depicted in a monograph on a master architect’s career; or c) it was substantively discussed or photographically depicted in at least two (2) publications (e.g. a book, treatise, trade magazine article, film, or set of photographs made available to the public by an institutional archive) authored by acknowledged experts in the field of architecture. A monograph or publication made available to the public solely in electronic form and without any reasonable expectation of compensation to the author, or substantially authored by the architect of the work, shall not count toward this minimum.

While the designer of the subject property, Carlton L. Burgess, is currently included in the City’s List of Local Master Architects, research undertaken for the peer review conducted by OAC, including a review of the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, did not find sufficient evidence that the property was a) the subject of a major architectural award, b) substantively discussed (i.e. not just mentioned) and photographically depicted in a monograph on a master architect’s career, or c) was substantively discussed or photographically depicted in at least two (2) publications (e.g. a book, treatise, trade magazine article, film, or set of photographs made available to the public by an institutional archive) authored by acknowledged experts in the field of architecture.

On March 2, 2022, staff completed the review of the material provided for the processing of the Certificate of Ineligibility application. Based on the documentary evidence provided to staff, including a historic assessment report prepared for the subject property by ESA and the peer review of the assessment report by the City’s historic consultant OAC (Jan Ostashay), it was concluded that the residence did not satisfy the required local landmark criteria for historic designation as outlined in the municipal code. Therefore, a decision granting the certificate to the applicant was issued and then circulated to the City Council.

City Council Hearings
City Council Hearing, March 15, 2022
Following the issuance of the Certificate of Ineligibility for the subject property, Councilmember Mirisch requested that an item be placed on the City Council’s March 15, 2022 agenda to consider a call for review of the Certificate of Ineligibility that was issued to the applicant for the 1001 North Roxbury Drive property. Pursuant to the City’s Municipal Code, Section 1-4-201, et seq., the City Council may order a review of any decision made by any commission, board, or official of the city. The process to initiate this review and set a hearing is specifically set forth in the municipal code.

During the March 15 City Council discussion regarding whether to order a review of the Certificate of Ineligibility, two previously unknown publications, Luxe Interiors + Design and Architectural Digest Russia, with articles that discussed and photographically depicted the 1001 North Roxbury Drive residence were brought forward to the attention of the City Council by the Chair and an another member of the Cultural Heritage Commission. These two newly discovered publications could potentially satisfy the definition of “exceptional work” by a Master Architect in the City’s Municipal PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 4 Code and alter the determination finding under Criterion B2 for local landmark designation (BHMC 10-3-3212). However, due to the insufficient time to review and consider the two newly discovered articles at the March hearing the City Council continued the item to the April 12 Council meeting.

Staff Review – City Historic Consultant Research Efforts and Findings Since the March 15 hearing, both staff and applicant team translated the article in the Architectural Digest Russia magazine. In addition, OAC, at the request of City staff, reviewed the two articles in question in order to determine if they appear to satisfy the criteria for publications as defined under the term “exceptional work” within the municipal code. 1 This work was completed in preparation of the April 12th Council meeting with the following findings.

Based on the fact that the Luxe Interiors + Design magazine article focused primarily on the contemporary interior design work and new backyard improvements completed at the time by architect Mark Rios, FAIA of Rios Clementi Hale Studios for then owner David Bohnett, and did not substantively discuss or photographically depict the exterior of the structure itself (a single photo of the front façade was included), its architectural merits, or the original designer of the residence OAC concluded that the Luxe magazine article did not appear to satisfy the publication requirements that define a property as an “exceptional work” as outlined in the municipal code.2 OAC also questioned the validity of the author of the article as well as the photographer associated with the article as being “acknowledge experts in the field of architecture.3
”
In reviewing the Architectural Digest Russia magazine article written about the subject property, OAC found the copy text of the feature piece upon translation into English repetitive and confusing and the overall article questionable and incomplete because of its irregular formatting and missing pages.

Nonetheless, the gist of the article appeared to highlight the contemporary interior design work and new backyard improvements made to the 1001 North Roxbury Drive property in a similar manner to that discussed in the Luxe Interiors + Design magazine. It also included similar photographs that were set with slightly different views of the same subject matter to showcase the contemporary design work highlighted in the narrative of the article. Authorship credit in the Architectural Digest Russia article was cited as Anastasia Romashkevich with the brief “English Summary” endnotes credited to Dominic Bradbury. The accompanying photographs in the article were credited to Mikhail Stepanov with Richard Powers given credit under the “English Summary” endnotes.

OAC concluded that for similar reasons as found for the Luxe magazine, the Architectural Digest Russia magazine article did not appear to satisfy the publication requirements that define a property as “exceptional work,” per the municipal code. From reading the confusing, repetitive, and incomplete article it was undeterminable if the property is a “remarkably superior example of architectural work” as the exceptional architectural qualities of the property were not substantively discussed or photographically depicted. In addition, the double credit for authorship and photography further confused and questioned the legitimacy of the article.

City Council Hearing, April 12, 2022
At the April 12 City Council hearing, the item, as requested by Councilmember Mirisch, was agendized and formally discussed to consider the merits of the two newly discovered publications, Luxe Interiors 1 BHMC 10-3-3202: Definitions. 2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 5 + Design and Architectural Digest Russia, which were previously brought forward at the March 15 meeting. At the April 12 meeting, City Council also received the staff report and public comment on the item, including the relevant validity of the two publications and the interpretation of the definition of “exceptional work” as outlined in the City’s Municipal Code. The City Council ultimately concluded that additional time and research could help to more conclusively evaluate the publications, and a motion to call up the item for review was passed.

Publication Validation Efforts
Following the April 12 City Council meeting, City staff requested OAC to research the validity of the Architectural Digest Russia magazine. OAC has since determined that the Architectural Digest Russia periodical previously uncovered and brought forward to the City Council hearing in March and also reviewed at the April 12 City Council meeting was a pre-publication mock-up of the magazine with placeholder text and photographs. Hence, the reason for the page numbering cited as “000,” the repetitive text copy, and the missing pages. OAC has subsequently reviewed a legitimate copy of the Architectural Digest Russia magazine dating from November 2009 with the relevant article and photographs of the Roxbury property photocopied for validity and posterity and included herein this memo as reference. In addition, OAC found an online version of the article at the Architectural Digest Russia magazine web site (dated from January 28, 2014). The excerpted online Architectural Digest Russia magazine article with English translation is also included with this memo.

In order to further deduce the validity of the Architectural Digest Russia magazine article, OAC tried to reach out via email to the Architectural Digest Russia magazine office in Moscow, however, the publisher Condé Nast terminated its franchise agreement with Condé Nast Russia, ceased publication of the magazine in Russia, and closed the Moscow office in response to the war against Ukraine. OAC then reached out via email to Dominic Bradbury, whose name appears under the “English Summary” endnotes section of the Architectural Digest Russia article. Dominic Bradbury is a freelance writer, journalist, lecturer and copywriter specializing in architecture, interiors, and design, and has contributed to a number of magazines and newspapers including The Times (UK), House & Garden, World of Interiors, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Dwell, among others. He has also written a number of books on mid-century modern houses.

In conversing with Dominic Bradbury about the subject property and the Architectural Digest Russia and Luxe magazine articles, it turns out that he had written the initial article about the contemporary remodel work of the 1001 North Roxbury Drive property in 2008-2009. He also had Richard Powers, a professional photographer specializing in architecture, interiors, and the built environment take the photographs to accompany his feature article. Bradbury noted that David Bohnett wanted to preserve the classic, historic aspect of the house so not much work was needed to the exterior of the structure as it was in good condition. Instead, he worked with architect Mark Rios to modernize the interior spaces with contemporary 1960s-era furniture, lighting, fixtures, and wall finishes. The backyard was also modernized for social gatherings and to accommodate charitable events, which David Bohnett sponsored often.

The article by Bradbury was then sent out for syndication using the public relations firm (Julie) Taylor & Company, which architect Mark Rios, FAIA of Rios Clementi Hale Studio, had hired for project publicity and marketing purposes. Taylor & Company specializes in working with creative industry professionals in promoting and placing their clients in a full range of global media outlets to create business growth, branding, marketing, and project profiles. The “by-lined” article was ultimately picked up by Architectural Digest Russia for publication in the fall of 2009, and was editorial adapted PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 6 and translated into Russian by Anastasia Romashkevich, an editor with Architectural Digest Russia.

The photographs were edited for Architectural Digest Russia magazine use by Russian photographer Mikhail Stepanov. The article in Architectural Digest Russia was entitled “A House in the Style of the 1960s.”
Dominic Bradbury’s feature article and accompanying photographs by Richard Powers were also picked up for publication by Belle magazine of Australia in 2010. In later years, Dominic Bradbury included various versions of the original copy text he wrote on the Roxbury property in two of his own books: The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present (published 2012, 2020) and Interior Design Close Up (published 2015), which uses the same photographs as featured in the Architectural Digest Russia magazine.

As a follow-up, Caren Kurlander, who was a features editor/writer with the Luxe Interiors + Design magazine (2009-2018), picked-up the article and adaptively wrote her own feature on the contemporary interior design work and new backyard improvements of the Roxbury property.

Published in Luxe Interiors + Design Winter 2015 Los Angeles region edition of the magazine, as “Hollywood Story” Kurlander’s article was much shorter in word count than the Architectural Digest Russia magazine article, but similar in focus and content. She also had photographer Dominque Vorillon take the photos for her article in a manner very similar to that shot by Richard Powers for the Architectural Digest Russia piece. The Luxe article was also featured on the publication’s website dating to June 2, 2015, with the title “A Transitional Beverly Hills Residence with an Old Hollywood Feel” (https://luxesource.com/a-transitional-beverly-hills-residence-with-an-old/#.YnB2ZofMlaY).

Interestingly, the text and photographs of the Luxe magazine were also adapted and used on the 1st Dibs website (www.1stdibs.com/project/roxbury-residence-beverly-hills/1933/) under the caption “Roxbury Residence” and in the book Neo-Classical Villa Design edited by Jia Song (2013) entitled “Roxbury Renovation.”
As supporting reference, the relevant excerpts of the articles and publications discussed in this memo are included as Attachment A: Publication Exhibits.

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive 7 ATTACHMENT A
Publication Exhibits
Architectural Digest Russia (November 2009)
Including online version (translated)
Luxe Interiors + Design (Los Angeles Region, Winter 2015) Including online version
The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present (2012, 2020)
Neo-Classical Villa Design (2013)
“Roxbury Renovation”
1 st Dibs, “Roxbury Residence”
(online article, no date)
Publication Citations
Bradbury, Dominic. “A House in the Style of the 1960s,” Architectural Digest Russia, ed. Anastasia Romashkevich, November 2009, 146-55.

Bradbury, Dominic. The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Bradbury, Dominic. The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2020.

Kurlander, Caren. “Hollywood Story,” Luxe Interiors + Design, Los Angeles (region), Winter, 2015, 188-99.

Kurlander, Caren. “A Transitional Beverly Hills Residence with an Old Hollywood Feel,” Luxe Interiors + Design, Architecture + Design, June 2, 2015 (online: https://luxesource.com/a-transitional-beverly-hillsresidence -with-an-old/#.YnB2ZofMlaY).

Song, Jia, ed. Neo-Classical Villa Design. Hong Kong: Artpower International Publish Company, Limited, 2013. 1st Dibs (website) “Roxbury Residence,” no date (online: www.1stdibs.com/project/roxburyresidence-beverly-hills/1933/).

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive Publication Exhibit
(excerpt)
Architectural Digest Russia
November 2009
Including online version, January 2014 (translated)

Page | 1

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST RUSSIA
Дом в стиле 1960-х годов | AD Magazine
https://www.admagazine.ru/interior/dom-v-stile-1960-h-godov ДОМА

AT HOME
jan. 28, 2014 (published AD Russia magazine November 2009) Дом в стиле 1960-х годов
A house in the style of the 1960s
Американцу Дэвиду Бонетту очень нравится стиль 1960-х годов, поэтому свой дом он обустроил так, чтобы повернуть время вспять.

American David Bonett really likes the style of the 1960s, so he arranged his house in such a way as to turn back the clock.

Page | 2
Когда предприниматель Дэвид Бонетт купил этот особняк в Беверли-Хиллз, у него уже был дом в Лос-Анджелесе. Вместе со своим партнером, актером и радиоведущим Томом Грегори, он проживал в особняке под названием Cooper House. Этот памятник калифорнийского модернизма был построен в 1950-х годах архитектором Арчибальдом Куинси Джонсом для культового актера Гари Купера. Однако Дэвиду этого было мало – он буквально помешан на недвижимости и подолгу на одном месте не засиживается.

When entrepreneur David Bonett bought this mansion in Beverly Hills he already had a home in Los Angeles. Together with his partner, actor and radio host Tom Gregory, he lived in a mansion called Cooper House. This monument to California modernism was built in the 1950s by architect Archibald Quincy Jones for iconic actor Gary Cooper. However, this was not enough for David - he is literally obsessed with real estate and does not stay in one place for a long time.

Page | 3
Не меняется в его жизни только одно – имя человека, которому он поручает благоустраивать свое жилье. Архитектор Марк Риос оформил для Дэвида уже двенадцать домов и квартир. “Мы с Марком работаем так давно, что понимаем друг друга с полуслова, – рассказывает Бонетт. – Между нами установились такие доверительные отношения, что мы можем себе позволить самые безумные эксперименты”.

Only one thing does not change in his life - the name of the person to whom he entrusts to improve his home. Architect Mark Rios has already designed twelve houses and apartments for David. "Mark and I have been working for so long that we understand each other from a half-word," says Bonett. "We have established such a trusting relationship that we can afford the most insane experiments." Page | 4
Дэвид решил, что прежний дом продавать не станет, а сохранит его для проведения частных вечеринок и благотворительных мероприятий. Новому же особняку была уготована роль настоящего семейного гнезда со множеством уютных комнат, оформленных в любимом им стиле 1960-х годов.

David decided that he would not sell the old house, but would save it for private parties and charity events. The new mansion was destined to be a real family nest with many cozy rooms, decorated in his favorite style of the 1960s.

Page | 5
С точки зрения Бонетта, эти годы олицетворяют собой потерянный рай.

Время, когда краски были ярче, орнаменты смелее, а форма мебели значительно интересней, чем в наши дни. “Мы придумали легенду, как будто в этот дом, построенный в 1930-х годах, въехала голливудская звезда 1960-х и оформила интерьер по последнему крику тогдашней моды”, – рассказывает он.

From Bonett's perspective, these years represent a lost paradise. A time when colors were brighter, ornaments are bolder, and the shape of the furniture is much more interesting than today. "We came up with a legend, as if this house, built in the 1930s, was moved in by a Hollywood star of the 1960s and decorated the interior according to the last cry of fashion of that time," he says.

Page | 6
Особняк достался новым жильцам в очень хорошем состоянии. Прежние владельцы незадолго до продажи сделали ремонт – сменили деревянные полы в комнатах и отреставрировали мрамор в холле. Тем не менее работа над проектом продолжалась три года.

The mansion went to the new tenants in very good condition. The previous owners made repairs shortly before the sale - they changed the wooden floors in the rooms and restored the marble in the hall. Nevertheless, work on the project lasted three years.

Page | 7
Дело в том, что хозяин решил не ограничиваться банальной стилизацией.

Современные реплики мебели середины ХХ века его не удовлетворяли. Он хотел, чтобы в доме все было по-настоящему, и как заведенный бился на всевозможных аукционах за подлинные предметы той эпохи. Времени и сил на это было потрачено много, зато теперь Дэвид может похвастаться тем, что в его коллекции есть несколько по-настоящему ценных вещей. Прежде всего произведения его кумира итальянского художника Пьеро Форназетти.

The fact is that the owner decided not to limit himself to banal stylization.

Modern replicas of furniture of the middle of the twentieth century did not satisfy him. He wanted everything in the house to be real, and as a routine, he fought at all sorts of auctions for authentic items of that era. A lot of time and effort was spent on this, but now David can boast that in his collection there are several truly valuable things. First of all, the works of his idol, the Italian artist Piero Fornazetti.

Page | 8
Марку Риосу надлежало найти всем этим раритетам достойное место. “Нам выпала возможность позабавиться от души, – рассказывает архитектор о том, как шла работа над проектом. – Мы хотели, чтобы дом выглядел жизнерадостно, и решили, что у каждой комнаты будет свой собственный характер и свое назначение. К примеру, библиотеку мы задумали так, чтобы там было приятно проводить тихие семейные вечера у камина. А гостиная – это комната для тусовок и общения с друзьями. Конечно, был риск, что дом станет похожим на “шведский стол”, где можно найти блюда на любой вкус.

Но мне кажется, нам удалось связать пространство воедино с помощью цвета, тканей и орнаментов. Я рад, что у нас получился настоящий дом, а не ассорти из разношерстных помещений”.

Page | 9
Marc Rios had to find a worthy place for all these rarities. "We had the opportunity to have fun from the heart," says the architect about how the work on the project went. "We wanted the house to look cheerful, and we decided that each room would have its own character and purpose. For example, we conceived the library so that it would be pleasant to spend quiet family evenings by the fireplace. And the living room is a room for hanging out and chatting with friends.

Of course, there was a risk that the house would become like a "buffet", where you can find dishes for every taste. But I think we've managed to tie the space together with color, fabrics, and ornaments. I'm glad we got a real house, not an assortment of motley rooms."
Page | 10
Дэвид с этим полностью согласен. “Марк постарался на славу. Приятно осознавать, что в доме нет мертвых зон. Мы действительно изо дня в день пользуемся всеми этими комнатами”, – говорит он.

David completely agrees. "Mark did his best. It's nice to know that there are no dead zones in the house. We really use all these rooms day in and day out," he says.

Впрочем, несмотря на полный успех проекта, будущее особняка в БеверлиХиллз выглядит туманно. Не успели там справить новоселье, а Дэвид уже купил себе новую квартиру. На этот раз в Нью-Йорке. Как водится, ее оформление он поручил Марку. Какую историю они решат разыграть в интерьере на этот раз, пока не ясно. В любом случае очередной переезд уже не за горами.

Page | 11
However, despite the complete success of the project, the future of the mansion in Beverly Hills looks vague. We did not have time to celebrate a housewarming party there, and David has already bought a new apartment. This time in New York. As usual, he entrusted its design to Mark. What story they decide to play out in the interior this time is not yet clear. In any case, another move is just around the corner.

Page | 12
Текст: Доминик Брэдбери
Фото: РИЧАРД ПАУЭРС
Text: Dominic Bradbury
Photo: RICHARD POWERS
PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive Publication Exhibit
(excerpt)
Luxe Interiors + Design (Los Angeles Region)
Winter 2015
Including online version

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive Publication Exhibit
(excerpt)
The Iconic Interior: 1900 to the Present
Dominic Bradbury, author
(2012, 2020)

PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive Publication Exhibit
(excerpt)
Neo-Classical Villa Design
Jia Song, editor (2013)
PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive PUBLICATION VERIFICATION: Certificate of Ineligibility – 1001 North Roxbury Drive Publication Exhibit
1st Dibs (website), “Roxbury Residence”
Online article, no date

OSTASHAY & ASSOCIATES CONSULTING
PO BOX 542 LONG BEACH, CA 90801 562.500.9451
Attachment 12
Public Comments
1 Minjee Hahm
From: Craig Corman <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2022 8:52 AM
To: Ryan Gohlich
Cc: Mark Odell; Minjee Hahm
Subject: 1001 N. Roxbury
CAUTION: External Sender
Use caution when clicking links or opening attachments
________________________________
Hi Ryan,
Please include the attached article on 1001 Roxbury in the staff report for the June 21 Council meeting. It’s relevant to show the house has retained its integrity and still has value to the community, contrary to the assertions of the owner’s historical consultant.

Thanks.
— Craig
https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/

6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ 6/15/2022 10:51 https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/stubhub-eric-baker-house-beverly-hills-teardown-1203480470/eric8_1080/ Lori Greene Gordon
908 Benedict Canyon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers:

As a 50-plus-year resident of North Beverly Hills, I am deeply concerned about plans to demolish the home at 1001 N. Roxbury Drive. This beautiful estate, located on a street known for its celebrity residences (including the former homes of Lucille Ball and Jimmy Stewart, both of which are no longer there), is an understated gem. The scale and massing and surrounding gardens of 1001 N. Roxbury harken back to an era when Beverly Hills mansions were not just big boxes with massive underground basements and towering heights.

For any BHHS alum from the 1970s, this house was the site of the Senior Mothers’ Tea, an event that, sadly, has been lost to time. Students and their moms would walk the grounds and come to know and love the sprawling estate. In more recent years, this home has been a site of the Robinson Gardens Annual Tour. The magnificent landscape, complete with winding koi pond, was the highlight of the 2019 event—the last significant Garden Tour before the onset of the pandemic.

Clearly, this house has a place in Beverly Hills history. It remains one of only a few places that can tell the stories of our past as a community. By issuing a Certificate of Ineligibility, the city has chosen to ignore the need for homes of this caliber, homes that have weathered the many storms of this neighborhood and stood as representatives of our city’s rich past. At a time when so many of our great estates are simply treated as “land value” to developers looking to trade on the prestige of Beverly Hills, it is more important than ever that you, our City Council, take a stand for history and against the idea that Beverly Hills can be bought and paid for at the right price. Please take action to rescind the Certificate of Ineligibility so that this spectacular home may be preserved for future generations.

Best regards,
Lori Greene Gordon
1 Minjee Hahm
From: Tom Gregory <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2022 4:21 PM
To: City Clerk
Cc: Mark Odell
Subject: Former owner (with Bohnett) of 1001 Roxbury.

CAUTION: External Sender
Use caution when clicking links or opening attachments
I request that you read this out at the city council meeting on June 21st.

It is in reference to 1001 North Roxbury Drive:

The first time I saw 1001 North Roxbury was at 1:30 in the morning in early 1985. I had only moved to LA months before. I was leaving the dinner shift at the restaurant, that in hindsight, that would become the most memorable job of my life - a waiter at JOE ALLEN’s on Third. A colleague asked if I could drop him off at his friend’s place up on Benedict. As an enticement he offered to show me where Lucille Ball lived; we would drive by her home.

As we drove by at a speed that, anywhere else might appear suspiciously slow, I marveled at a lit bedroom window. I imagined the superstar, insomniac, signing photos to fans, writing an autobiography, or just up late at night ruminating over a career that defined my first memories of television and the broader world beyond the simple living room I grew up in Camden NJ.

But then I turned to the other side of the street - to the perfectly beautiful home at 1001 N.

Roxbury. I was in awe. I had never seen such a beautiful home. Set back on that storied street, it was the perfect ratio of home to (front) lawn. That arched upper window, those shutters, a little round window, a brick walk to that glamorous door. The home was a perfection of stateliness that had upstaged the world’s biggest star right across the street.

This was the American Dream. The house inspired me. The house was a home.

I don’t remember the year we bought Roxbury, but I recall the project of remodeling, no, restoring the house. The reimagining of what the original design was despite a remodel or two that deviated from the likely intent of the original architect.

My partner and I, along with a team of designers, turned our minds to America right before Pearl Harbor. We imagined 1939 Hollywood: Casablanca, The Wizard of OZ, The Women, all the best of Hollywood exploding with possibilities, and Joan Crawford. 2 I looked through scores of books of Crawford’s residences. She was the epitome of great taste always presenting the face of a well-groomed star. Her favorite designer was her dear friend, the exiled Billy Haines. Hers was a perceived world of glamor. To me she represented the image of the understated style that might build Roxbury.

From the basement to the attic we installed a tasteful small elevator flocked in bold Salamander wallpaper. The house was full of color with textures representing the best of the age of Hollywood Regency. The powder room was set in black, white and blue translucent stone lit from below and behind. The kitchen was yellow handprinted wallpaper, the lighting fixtures were superb, not a penny was spared. And, of course, the furniture was Billy Haines or something Billy Haines would have wanted to have himself.

There was never a house like 1001 North Roxbury. My bedroom was the grand one in front with that arched window I had admired at 1:30 in the morning. There were many days when I would be delightfully woken up to tourists driving by slowly just as I had all those years before. They were never a burden, they were a blessing. We were maintaining the image of a grand house on a large lot with space to breathe. It was reminiscent of what Hollywood’s first stars must have longed for; it was, and still is, a showpiece.

I can not imagine tearing it down or altering it. I know people want what they want, but this house is more than an expensive home on a marvelous lot. 1001 Roxbury is the thing that makes people want to work harder, strive tougher, and push further to be what they dream. There has to be a house that stands as a monument to perfection of size and design. The best example of the pre-war dream. Eighty years later it might appear understated and not utilizing its large lot, but that is what is taste and beauty.

Sure, there is an appeal in screening rooms and bigger spaces with massive windows or whatever the flavor-of-the-day can imagine, but there has to be a place, a magical spot left to remain on a wonderful street in a idyllic town that beckons people to push themselves from a 1:30AM drive-by waiter, to all they can imagine. 1001 North Roxbury is balanced in design. I can attest that our renovation was without concern for cost, the house is solid and well-executed. I just wish I still lived there.

Beverly Hills City CouncilJune 21, 2022

Beverly Hills City Council
June 21, 2022