Pickfair

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Aerial view of Pickfair

Pickfair is the name of a property in Beverly Hills , California in the United States . The building was built in 1919 by the Californian architect Wallace Neff (1895–1982) and is located at 1143 Summit Drive. After 1988 the building was largely demolished and replaced by a new building.

Surname

Pickfair is a suitcase word from the surnames of the two first owners Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks . The original building was built in 1919 and was often a meeting place of high society of Hollywood . Mary Pickford had given the Hollywood film business a social order and ruled through her judgments of taste and decency; their property was therefore also called the "second White House".

history

The two silent film actors bought the property and a house from Diane Mouse, great-granddaughter of owner Lee Philips, in 1919 for $ 35,000 and had it converted into a 22-room villa with a pool and roof terrace. The architect Wallace Neff took over the planning. Ceiling paintings and other forms of art were represented inside . The size of the property at that time was 60,000 m². Pickfair became the scene of many festivals to which some personalities were invited. These included Albert Einstein , HG Wells , George Bernard Shaw , Amelia Earhart , the Duke and Duchess of Windsor , Lord and Lady Mountbatten and Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin , Tom Mix and Rudolph Valentino . An invitation to Pickfair was a sign of social acceptance in Hollywood. Jeanine Basinger writes in Silent Stars : "Everything that Doug and Mary did in Pickfair was not only legendary, it was extremely important (hard-core important) in this business."

In the 1930s, Pickfair was expanded by two wings. Wallace Neff took over the planning here as well. The villa now had 42 rooms. When Pickford and Fairbanks divorced in 1936, Pickfair remained in the possession of Mary Pickford, who married Charles Rogers . Pickford died in 1979. The property stood empty for several years. Pickford's widower Rogers sold Pickfair for $ 5.4 million to Jerry Buss, owner of the LA Lakers .

In 1988 the property was up for sale again. It was acquired by businessman Meshulam Riklis and his wife Pia Zadora for $ 6.7 million. According to Zadora, the main pillars of the house were infested with termites , so that a demolition was necessary and only the pool, the entrance gate and the north wing remained of the "old Pickfair". The couple was publicly criticized for this, including by Douglas Fairbanks junior . In 2012, Zedora revised the claim that there were termites in the house and justified the demolition with the appearance of ghosts in the house.

After the divorce of Riklis and Zadora, the property with the newly built house was sold to Unicom International, Inc., a subsidiary of the IT company Unicom Global, for around 17.7 million US dollars. In 2008, the property was put up for sale by Unicom owner and CEO Corry Hong for $ 60 million.

literature

  • Eileen Whitfield: Pickford - The Woman Who Made Hollywood . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1997, ISBN 0-8131-2045-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eileen Whitfield: Pickford - The Woman Who Made Hollywood . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1997, p. 226.
  2. ↑ Sidney Skolski: Hollywood then and now in Liberty , Winter 1973, p. 54
  3. ^ Jeanine Basinger: Silent Stars . Wesleyan University Press, 2000, ISBN 0819564516 , page 56 [1]
  4. ↑ Will Wright: Famous Houses: Pickfair - A History of Beverly Hills' First Mansion . ( April 13, 2008 memento on the Internet Archive ) Associated Content, May 16, 2007
  5. ↑ Pickfair Was An Iconic Hollywood Mansion - Until It Was Destroyed Due To 'Paranormal Activity'. December 19, 2019, accessed August 14, 2020 (American English).
  6. ^ The legendary Pickfair estate . eden.com, accessed March 14, 2018
  7. ↑ PickFair Hits the Market at a High Price. Vanity Fair, September 9, 2008

Coordinates: 34 ° 5 ′ 25.3 "  N , 118 ° 25 ′ 10.7"  W.