BUSINESS
Tour 14 landmark Orange County homes
Tour 14 landmark Orange County homes
By MARILYN KALFUS |
[email protected] | Orange County Register PUBLISHED: November 23, 2014 at 9:40 pm | UPDATED: April 13, 2017 at 4:15 pm
0 COMMENTS
This story and slideshow originally was published in August 2013; it is being repaired because of technical issues. The status on some properties has since changed. ——————————– Some Orange County residences tell compelling stories that transcend the topic of real estate. They are part of the rich fabric of this place and its changing fortunes. The landmark homes featured here couldn’t be more different. At the county’s southernmost point, the secluded retreat of former President Richard Nixon is steeped in history and is now owned by a medical industry mogul. On the opposite end of the coast, another home shaped like a water tank is a funky roadside attraction, so high-profile that it sits atop a tower overlooking a bustling highway. Some of the architects, celebrities and entrepreneurs behind these iconic homes wanted to make waves. Others came to Orange County seeking refuge. A few of these one-of-a-kind private properties sit hidden beyond gates. You can see them, anyway, though. Sit back. Let us drive. Here’s a real estate tour of some remarkable Orange County homes. “Rock house” South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach The landmark Laguna Beach “rock house” is a cutting-edge home wedged into a large, oceanfront boulder. Designed by Orange County architect Brion Jeannette for a software entrepreneur with a wild streak, the 3,000-square-foot, steel-andglass residence has a reinforced concrete roof that sustains the weight of the original rock. Aliso Rock was broken apart and excavated for the home’s construction in the mid-1990s. Then parts of the rock, topsoil and vegetation were reassembled and replanted. Inside, the two-bedroom house on South Coast Highway boasts striking, custom designs, including a creek running through the interior, a round kitchen with black terrazzo floors inlaid with abalone shells, a floating ceiling cove around the living room skylight, an interior concrete hallway crafted to resemble the exterior rock, and handmade glass tiles evoking a mermaid’s fins. Beachfront terraces include a heated spa and a separate cold plunge set against a rocky waterfall, as well as a firepit and built-in barbecue and bar. Nine teak steps lead down to the sand. The house, which took shape after years of meetings with city officials, drew widespread attention even before it was completed in 1996. In the early ’90s, a Russian newspaper published a front-page story on it under the headline, “Only in America.” Dennis Morin, an innovative industrial-software magnate, commissioned Jeannette to build the residence. Morin died in 2012 after battling cancer. Annie Speck, Morin’s fiancée and an interior designer, has lived in the house for more than six years. “He brought a lot of the wildness to it,” she said of Morin’s impact on the home’s appearance. Morin founded Wonderware, a high-profile leader in the growing 1980s software industry. Speck said they met years later at the Sapphire Laguna restaurant, when he was recovering from hip surgery and she offered him her seat at the bar. “I live in the rock house,” he told her. PCH water tower home Anderson, Seal Beach Gerald Wallace, a retired fire chief for South Pasadena, bought this quirky house in 1995. It’s a water-tank replica sitting atop an 87-foot-high tower. The house has appeared on “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” Wallace tried to sell the property, bordering Sunset Beach and Seal Beach along Pacific Coast Highway, in the late 1990s for $3.5 million. He tried again in 2004 for $5 million, and in 2008 for $4.5 million. No one ever bought it. In recent years, he has rented out the big, brown water tank as a spot for vacations or parties. A commercial-grade elevator leads to the 2,800-square-foot, three-bedroom house and its 360-degree views, from the Pacific Ocean to the mountains. Stories about the home described its 145-gallon curved aquarium and, at the center of the “party room,” a fire pit that could double as a table – or be mechanically lifted to the ceiling to make way for a dance floor. The old tower held 75,000 gallons, or more than 300 tons, of water decades earlier. The tank sat empty in the late 1970s and early ’80s, until a pair of investors decided to save the landmark and replicate its look. They later sold it to Wallace. Wallace once told the Register: “With its spiral staircases, it’s not a littlekid-friendly house. And kids tend to use the elevator as a toy and throw ice cubes from the balcony at people on the sidewalk.” The Western White House Calle Isabella, San Clemente President Richard Nixon bought the sprawling estate on a secluded coastal bluff at the southern end of San Clemente in 1969. He dubbed it La Casa Pacifica. Nixon said he liked watching surfers during long walks on the beach. When the president resigned from office, he returned to the seaside retreat to write his memoirs. Nixon moved to New York in 1980 and sold the home and 26 acres to Gavin S. Herbert, who had founded Allergan Pharmaceuticals with his father in 1950, and developers George Argyros and Donald Koll. Herbert is now chairman emeritus of Allergan, the company that grew from making eye drops to producing Botox and breast implants. He also owns Roger’s Gardens, the lavish garden center in Corona del Mar. The Western White House remains a historic property, even after a large part of the estate’s acreage was divvied up into lots for private residences. In 2009, Herbert entered into a 10-year preservation agreement on the home with the city of San Clemente in exchange for a tax break. “We’ve always regarded it as a historic property,” Herbert told the City Council. “It’s like owning a big boat on the ocean. It gets a little rusted. We have projects going on literally every month to keep the property in order.” Herbert noted that 17 heads of state visited the estate during the Nixon era. But the property’s historical past goes back well before then. Hamilton Cotton, a financial partner of San Clemente founder Ole Hanson, built the home in 1926. Cotton was a Democratic Party supporter who entertained President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the residence. The pair, the story goes, played poker there. Portabello Estate Brighton Road, Corona del Mar The Portabello Estate straddles a triple oceanfront lot in the Cameo Shores neighborhood, home to some of Orange County’s wealthiest residents, including Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli. Newport Beach architect Brion Jeannette, who designed the Portabello Estate in consultation with then-owner Frank W. Pritt III, said Pritt gave the home its name because the curving white roof resembled a portobello mushroom. The founder of Seattle software-maker Attachmate Corp. and avid car collector, Pritt bought the three adjacent beachfront lots for less than $12.5 million and consolidated them into a single tract in 1998. With 22,000 square feet of living space, the home boasts 10 bedrooms, a twostory grotto, three swimming pools, two spas, a bowling alley, a vintage movie theater complete with a ticket booth, a soda shop, jewelry store, gymnasium and car museum. The mansion has appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Pritt, who once offered the home for $75 million, later dropped the price to $49.6 million. The estate was sold in October 2010 to entrepreneur and philanthropist Fariborz Maseeh, who said he traded an ocean-view corner lot on Pelican Point Drive plus cash for the home. The total value of the deal was $34.1 million, he said. Maseeh runs an investment firm, Picoco, in Newport Beach. Mariona South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach The construction of “Mariona,” a sprawling, oceanfront Laguna Beach estate overlooking a private cove, began nearly 100 years ago. The gated, Mediterranean Revival-style compound on a picturesque bluff on South Coast Highway has a storied past. It was built by Frank Augustus Miller, developer of the Mission Inn in Riverside. The Laguna house was a wedding gift to his second wife, Marion. The secluded estate, which for many years also was known as Villa Rockledge, sits on a half acre amid lush gardens and winding pathways. The main house, including two villas, and four villas in another building occupy 8,065 square feet of living space. At the back of the property, a staircase descends to a 120-foot-long sandy beach and crashing waves. The 12-bedroom, 11-bathroom manse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is qualified for the Mills Act, which offers the owner a significant tax break for maintaining the home’s appearance. That contrasts dramatically with the way the home was constructed, beginning in 1918. Neither power tools nor electricity were used. The entire compound, except for an upper guest villa, was built by hand, according to a former owner, Roger Jones, who has written a book about the estate. The house looks so unlike a modern property as to have the ambience of a movie set, with its cigar loft, heavy, wooden, carved doors, wrought iron accents and cloistered windows. In its heyday, the estate drew Hollywood royalty. Actress Bette Davis met her third husband, William Grant Sherry, there in the mid-1940s. Actor Erroll Flynn also was known to visit. As of mid-November, the house was listed at $30 million. John Lautner (“Jaws”) house South Bayfront, Newport Beach Famed architect John Lautner designed this unconventional residence, which neighbors nicknamed the “Jaws” house because it reminded them of a great white shark. The late architect’s legacy includes soaring spaceship-shaped creations such as the octagonal Chemosphere House in the Hollywood Hills, and the 25,000-square-foot futuristic Casa Marbrisa on a hilltop overlooking Acapulco Bay. Lautner’s Balboa Island project, with its round, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, was the residence of late philanthropists Robert and Marjorie Rawlins. The couple’s gifts helped bring classical concerts to Orange County from around the globe; they paid for music scholarships and gave the UC Irvine’s School of Arts its first endowed chair. After the Rawlinses died, Michael LaFetra, a film producer and preservationist who restores architecture, bought the 2,100-squarefoot house. In 2010, he put it up for sale at $5,495,000, with price drops before it was taken off the market. “This house holds a special place in his heart,” real estate agent Cory Weiss said of LaFetra. “He wants someone who appreciates the house. If someone wants that cookie-cutter Cape Cod, that’s not the right buyer.” William Lyon’s estate Coto de Caza Drive, Coto de Caza Homebuilder William Lyon developed his Coto de Caza estate on a 137-acre parcel, complete with a helipad. Built in the late 1980s, the 19,500-square-foot home and its complex of structures is one of the largest homes in the county. Lyon developed communities across the Southwest and put up more than 100,000 homes. “The General,” as he is called, once was chief of the Air Force Reserve and is known for his philanthropy. The company he co-founded, William Lyon Homes, saw staggering losses in the recent housing crash, but later emerged from bankruptcy reorganization in 2012 – and returned to trading on the stock market again this year. Lyon’s private estate stands out even in upscale Coto de Caza. County building records show these features: a 2,000-square-foot game room, a 1,700-square-foot basement, a 3,500-square-foot garage and a 15,000-square-foot showroom with a revolving floor for prized cars in Lyon’s collection. Other amenities includ an entry bridge, 1,200-square-foot employee quarters and three swimming pools. Bette Davis house Ocean Way, Laguna Beach Bette Davis lived in this English Tudor-style house in the 1940s. The oceanfront home, built in 1929, overlooks Wood’s Cove. The 4,503-square-foot, four-bedroom house last sold for $13.5 million in 2004, according to real estate website Redfin. It sits on a 7,918-square-foot lot. It was here that Davis apparently read the script for one of her most acclaimed movies, “All About Eve,” according to a story in Laguna Beach Magazine. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film. When Davis died in 1989, a longtime Laguna Beach resident arranged a sundown gathering of remembrances for friends, acquaintances and fans of the actress below the cliff where the home stands. “In an interview on the Johnny Carson show,” local resident Harry Moon told the Los Angeles Times, “she once referred to the Laguna Beach residence as her favorite and still thought of it as home.” Lovell Beach House West Oceanfront, Newport Beach At first glance, the Lovell Beach House on the Balboa Peninsula looks like another big, boxy residence, as kids on skateboards, runners and their dogs cruise past it along a beachfront path. The home, however, is a historic landmark designed by legendary architect Rudolf Schindler, an early disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. This innovative concrete house, raised above the street and constructed to withstand an earthquake, was built in 1926. “It was one of the first places where European Modernism was introduced to America. People from all over the world still come to see it,” said Chris Jepsen, an Orange County historian. The architecture website Archinect describes it this way: “Lovell Beach House, one of the pioneering monuments to modern houses in Southern California, sits there on the corner lot in Newport Beach, still the most radically configured architecture on the block and … one of the most important examples of what would later become known as California International Style.” Table Rock house Seacliff Drive, Laguna Beach This house is famous for its jaw-dropping location. Set atop a massive rock jutting out into the Pacific Ocean, the 4,806square-foot home has been dubbed the Table Rock house. A listing for the house, once offered for $18 million, touted a 20foot saltwater aquarium on a balcony, a shoe closet in the master suite, 300-degree panoramic views and a private beach. “One of South Laguna’s most famed scenic homes,” the listing said. The residence also has been available for rent – at $45,000 a month. At one point, Realtor Jeana Keough, a former cast member of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” represented the property. Eventually, the house fell into default. Investor Pawan Seth of Irvine bought the house at a foreclosure auction in May 2011 for $9.55 million, county records show. Maharajah house North Heliotrope Drive, Santa Ana The maharajah of Indore, considered one of the richest men in the world, made headlines when he built his “$50,000 castle” in Santa Ana in the late 1930s. “Fortress Home of Santa Ana, Calif., a Haven for Princess of 5,” read a headline in The New York Times on April 8, 1939. “The wealthy Majarajah … once had an income of $70 million a year and reportedly could wade around in emeralds up to the snapper of his garters,” said a 1943 wire service story. The maharajah was Indianborn Yeshwar Rao Holkar, who had been educated at Oxford before finding his way to Orange County. He built the home as a sanctuary for his family as World War II approached. Santa Ana residents apparently expected a version of the Taj Mahal. Instead, the home was designed in the Art Moderne style with horizontal lines and a flat roof. Quynh and Chan Kieu, physicians at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, bought the home in 1988. This year the couple petitioned the city’s Historic Resources Commission to have the house removed from the city’s list of historic properties. The Kieus cited difficulties complying with the criteria for repair work. “We are ready to maintain the look of it,” Quynh Kieu said. “But this is not a museum…. It should be a home where we can live.” But the couple lost that battle. The city voted to keep the home on the list. “The good of the community has to sometimes take the place of the owners’ rights,” said Sean H. Mill, a commission member. “This home is truly a historic and cultural treasure to our city…. This is maybe the most iconic property, if not in Orange County, certainly in our city.” Last month, the city filed misdemeanor charges, saying the owners replaced the home’s steel casement windows without a permit. Sandcastle S. Pacific Coast, Sunset Beach This three-story, oceanfront house evokes a giant sandcastle. The 8,000-square-foot, six-bedroom, limestone mansion boasts parapets, turrets and Gothic arches. The fanciful house first took shape as a sketch on a napkin. Homeowner Rick Graham, a retired chiropractor and medical device entrepreneur, said he didn’t set out to build anything resembling a palace. “I always wanted to build a stone house on the beach,” he said. “I didn’t really think of a castle, I thought of a stone house, a European look.” As he drew, he’d envisioned a turret containing an elevator, then realized he need another turret for balance. Slowly, his work-in-progress turned into a medieval manor. The house is a standout in this laid-back, beach-side enclave that has no mail delivery; residents here still pick up their mail at the post office. Built in 1991, the home has a master suite with a curved picture window, office, dry sauna and large, three-bay, walk-in closet. A pickled white oak, semi-floating spiral staircase is set below a gold-leaf-painted, sky-lit, domed ceiling. The distinct home’s exterior is an attraction for passers-by. “People from all over the world come here and they photograph it and they paint pictures of it,” Graham said. “It turns out, people were over in France and they took pictures of a castle, and it looks just like my house.” Wallace Cunnigham house Avenida Salvador, San Clemente Dramatic angles and sweeping city and ocean views from every room are found in this home designed by renowned architect Wallace Cunningham of San Diego. Architectural Digest and the Robb Report have both named Cunningham one of America’s top designers. The tri-level house, named Sea View, sits on a ridgeline behind its own private contemporary gate by Big Sur artist Gregory Hawthorne. Set on a quarter of an acre, the home, on Avenida Salvador, has three bedrooms, dark hardwood floors and Italian teak doors. A top-of-the-line kitchen includes brushed and honed granite countertops, a Gaggenau cooktop, Sub-Zero refrigerator, Dacor microwave, Miele espresso machine and oven, and sleek, custom cabinetry. Views throughout the home take in a large stretch of the Pacific Ocean, including the famous Cottons Point shoreline and Catalina Island, as well as a ribbon of freeway in the distance, with cars zipping along like small toys. The master suite boasts a cedar-lined, walk-in closet and the step-up, ocean-view tub. Sea View was designed for notable surfing photographer Jeff Divine, said the listing agent, Doug Echelberger of Surterre Properties. Divine subsequently sold it to the current owners. The architect managed to merge two conflicting ideas. “He (Divine) wanted to have a modern house with all glass, (but) he wanted to have it private,” Echelberger said. “The privacy issue is so hard in modern architecture because there’s so much glass.” In the book, “Materializing the Immaterial: The Architecture of Wallace Cunningham,” architectural critic Joseph Giovannini wrote of the house: “Cunningham edits out nearby buildings with shuttering walls that channel the views from the dining room, living room, bedroom and master shower into view corridors focused on a legendary section of the shore called Cottons Point. “The house emerges as a lens through which occupants look at the surrounding landscape,” Giovannini wrote. “Cunningham frames views from the inside, and in their bracketed domain, the occupants enjoy the illusion that they alone possess and occupy the view.” Pearl Street house Pearl Street, Laguna Beach The oldest house in Laguna Beach was built in 1883 with driftwood that floated in from boats and shipwrecks. Five years ago, a group of investors paid $3.8 million to buy the two-story board-and-batten residence, located less than a block from the beach. They wanted to preserve the home’s significance, but also renovate and expand it. The project’s proponents said the work was necessary to make the building safe and livable. But members of Village Laguna, a group dedicated to preserving the community’s character, and other residents took issue with the plans. The city eventually approved the renovations, though the permit expired and was expected to return to the city’s Design Review Board.
Tags: Real Estate
Marilyn Kalfus
Marilyn Kalfus covers news, issues, and trends for The Orange County Register's award-winning Sunday Real Estate section, which in 2015 and 2017 snagged the top prize for best U.S. newspaper real estate section from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. She also writes stories, edits photos and puts together slideshows for our popular Hot Homes feature about iconic, big-ticket and unusual properties on the market. On weekends, she edits Follow Marilyn Kalfus @mkalfus police, breaking news and general assignment reporters.
VIEW COMMENTS
Join the Conversation We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not prescreen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions. If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing
[email protected].