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Ask Silver Lake - The History of the Garbutt House

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“Ask Silver Lake” is dedicated to exploring the history and insights of our community. If you have questions or ideas you’d like us to consider, please drop a comment or send them to outreach@silverlakenc.org. This edition is about the Garbutt House, as suggested by a reader.


The Garbutt House as seen from the south dam (Source: Eric Brightwell)
The Garbutt House as seen from the south dam (Source: Eric Brightwell)

The Silver Lake skyline is punctuated by several striking hill-top homes, such as Crestmount, Silvertop, Villa Capistrano, Villa del Lago, and Villa Monaco. Perhaps the most striking is the gargantuan Garbutt House, a hulking citadel built in the 1920s by and for wealthy capitalist, Frank Garbutt. Located as it is within a gated community, most Silver Lakers have never been granted access to it. The best view, for most of us, is from across the Silver Lake Reservoir or atop the reservoir’s south dam. 


Frank Alderman Garbutt
Frank Alderman Garbutt

Frank Alderman Garbutt was born on 5 April 1869, in Mason City, Illinois, to Mary Emma Alderman and Frank Clarkson Garbutt. In 1871, the couple and their young son relocated to Colorado. In 1882, they moved to California where the elder Frank Garbutt invested in real estate. Mary Alderman, meanwhile, was active in women’s suffrage and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1920, she ran for State Assembly as a Socialist.


Fourteen-year-old Frank Alderman was admitted to the private, exclusive Los Angeles Athletic Club, which also counted his father as a member. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, he enrolled at Stanford University, but dropped out after his first year. In 1889, he married Emilie Laurine Edouart, daughter of French artist, Auguste Édouart. They had three children: Melodile, Theodora, and Frank Edouart Garbutt. 


The Garbutt Family
The Garbutt Family

Frank made a massive fortune in oil, inventing and securing the patents on drilling tools. He owned oil wells. He was a founder and treasurer of the Union Oil Company. The “millionaire oil king” then devoted much of his energy and wealth to a life of leisure and to expanding his business interests.


Garbutt co-founded the Automobile Club of Southern California. He raced cars at Ascot Park. He partnered with Frederick Moskovics on the Los Angeles Motordrome in 1910. He headed the Union Steamship Company and the ferry service, the San Pedro Transportation Company. He owned interests in the boat-building business, Garbutt-Walsh Inc. He raced boats like his Miss Los Angeles and owned a schooner named Skidbaldnir. 


In 1916, he helped form The Famous Players–Lasky Corporation, which evolved into Paramount Pictures. In 1917, he invested in aviation pioneer Glenn Martin's aircraft business, the Glenn L. Martin Company, which evolved into Lockheed-Martin. In the 1920s, Garbutt served as a director of Citizen's National Trust and Bank Company. 


A house on Dunnigan Hill, c. 1905 (Source: Los Angeles Public Library)
A house on Dunnigan Hill, c. 1905 (Source: Los Angeles Public Library)

In 1923, Frank and his son-in-law, shipbuilder Charles Hathaway, purchased a 36-acre parcel atop one of the highest prominences. The hill was then known as Dunnigan’s Hill, after Helen Dunnigan, whose home was there. So, too, was the home of lumberman and Downey-founder, Caleb T. Crowell, and his family. 


After the existing homes were razed, Garbutt set about building three for his family. The first, built with a copper roof, was for his son and daughter-in-law, Princess Thayer. A second home was constructed for Melodile and Charles. The final home – the largest of the three and the only one still standing – was built for Frank, Emilie, and Theodora. It was and is an imposing and strange structure. The three-story, twenty-room mansion is made almost entirely of concrete and steel. Even its roof is concrete. Its bunker-like appearance includes elements of both Tudor Revival and Richardsonian Romanesque. It was, most likely, designed by Frank Garbutt himself. Construction began in 1926 and was completed in ‘28.


Concrete homes were promoted in the early 20th century by Thomas Edison as more sanitary than traditional homes and sanitation may’ve been on Garbutt’s mind. The home’s seven bathrooms were equipped with the expected showers, bathtubs, and sinks – but also dedicated bidets. Garbutt was also, reportedly, afraid of fires and, perhaps, not just their ability to bring injury or death – but their way of erasing one’s legacy, and the Garbutt House was meant to be a monument to its owner. Garbutt’s famed Motordrome burned to the ground after only three years. His concrete and steel mansion includes no fireplaces. It did, however, include many other atypical features like a dumb-waiter, elevator, and ten-car garage – as well as details like bronze window frames, hand-carved teak, marble floors, and a travertine limestone ground floor. 


Garbutt was not just a businessman but also an opinionated man of letters. Luckily for him, his old friend Harry Chandler owned a publication called The Los Angeles Times, which provided Garbutt a daily soap box that he used, primarily, to attack its perceived enemies – a long list that included Democrats, Communists, pedestrians, immigrants, “scrub stock,” labor unions, and haters. Illustrative titles included “Rules for Pedestrians,” “Rich and Poor,” “The Crime Against Chrysler,” and “Union Inconsistency.”


Emilie died on 25 September 1934 at the age of 69. Frank’s columns made no mention of his loss. On the 26th, he published a “do your own research” think-piece titled “Political Advice.” The day of Emilie’s funeral, the Times carried a piece titled, “210 Words,” about the importance of verbal economy. It was followed by a column titled, “Success.” Garbutt’s columns, although succint, were also petty and platitudinous. The plug was pulled on Garbutt’s column in December 1936. 


Frank A. Garbutt died on 19 November 1947 at the age of 78. His son, Frank Edouart Garbutt, had died years earlier, in 1938. Melodile’s husband, Charles, died in 1948, and she moved to Malibu. Not wishing to live on the lonely estate by herself, the unmarried Theodora moved to a beachside home, leaving the old estate abandoned for years. 


Axel Johnson (Source: Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 1967)
Axel Johnson (Source: Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 1967)

In March 1967, Axel E. Johnson and his Downtown Development Corporation proposed a new development for the property, called Park Hill. Designs called for five, eighteen-story towers, each sitting atop three-story parking podiums. The towers would contain 2,250 residential units for an estimated 6,000 residents. 85% of the property would be set aside for open space. The Silver Lake Residents Association, the Silver Lake Homeowners Defense League, and others protested. The design was rejected. Five months later Johnson proposed another design – a six-building four-story garden apartment complex with 936 units and subterranean car storage. It, too, was rejected. Another follow-up, presented in November, called for two, ten-story towers with more than 700 units that would’ve preserved 93% of the property as open space. It was approved by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission but rejected by City Council the following April.


Exterior of the Garbutt House in The Hang Up (1969)
Exterior of the Garbutt House in The Hang Up (1969)

In the meantime, the abandoned estate was used as a filming location for a film titled The Hang Up, released in 1969. In the X-rated movie, the mansion was used to portray a sort of bath house/brothel/secret society where a Vice Squad sergeant is corrupted and framed by a duplicitous, underage girl. It was shown as a double feature in grindhouses and drive-ins alongside the likes of Baby Vickie, Meeting on 69th Street, Notorious Cleopatra, and Sweet Trash.


The entrance to the Garbutt House in The Hang Up (1969)
The entrance to the Garbutt House in The Hang Up (1969)

After Park Hill was abandoned, Cresticon Incorporated (a subsidiary of defense contractor Litton Industries) stepped in with a proposal for 530 condominiums with rooftop gardens designed by architect Joseph Amestoy. It was to have been known as Silverlake Gardens. Amestoy called for the demolition of all three Garbutt-Hathaway homes, in which he saw “no architectural merit,” in order to accommodate automobile traffic. It was estimated that residents of the car-dependent development would require space for 1,400 automobiles making 4,200 weekday trips. This project was supported by both the Garbutt-Hathaway Hill Trust Associates and Silver Lake Residents Association… but was rejected by the city on 6 April 1977. 


Joseph Amestoy’s rendering of Silverlake Gardens (Source: Los Angeles Times, 1975)
Joseph Amestoy’s rendering of Silverlake Gardens (Source: Los Angeles Times, 1975)

Later that year, City Council unanimously approved a 97-lot development known as Hathway Hill Estates. Demolition of the two smaller homes took place in late 1978. Meanwhile, a non-profit called the Trust for Public Culture set about raising money to save the Garbutt Mansion – where they hoped to open a park, cinema, theater, art studio, restaurant, tea garden, and recreational facility in the autumn of 1980. That, obviously, never came to fruition and the Youngway Company (Carl Ljungquist and Gary Conway) bought the mansion in 1980 in order to restore it, which they did over the course of eight months, completing work in 1981. 


The Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981
The Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981

Superstition, a supernatural/haunted house/giallo/slasher hodgepodge of a horror film, was shot at the estate in 1981. The filmmakers seem to have incorporated the then-ongoing restoration of the home into the set design. In it, the cursed “old Sharack place” is owned by the church. Its grizzly history of murder naturally makes it a popular “make out place” with teenagers prone to bad decisions. The film affords lots of interior glimpses of the various rooms of the house as well as its reinforced concrete, the copious use of travertine, and the almost completely tile-covered kitchen. Although released abroad in 1982, the film only received limited release in the US in early 1985.


Interiors of the Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981
Interiors of the Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981
Interiors of the Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981
Interiors of the Garbutt House in Superstition, 1981

W&B Builders’ construction of Hathaway Hill Estates’s 97 cookie-cutter Mock Tudors took place, primarily, between 1983 and ‘85. The subdivision was compared to a village surrounding a castle – albeit a strangely lifeless one without schools, parks, restaurants, workplaces, or businesses of any sort and thus, eerily empty streets and sidewalks. In 1984, City Council District 13 introduced a motion to withdraw the streets from public use. The motion was approved.  A perimeter fence was erected and a guard station was built to protect its villagers from the Silver Lake hordes. On 22 July 1987, the mansion inside was added to the National Register of Historic places.


Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)
Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)
Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)
Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)
Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)
Photos of the Garbutt House taken for its addition to the NRHP (Source: Marvin Rand)

In 2006, Dov Charney, the founder of American Apparel, bought the Garbutt Home for $4.1 million. He was ousted from his company in 2016. He then borrowed at least $20 million in an effort to retake the company, which failed, and a judge ordered him to pay back his creditors. Instead, he filed for bankruptcy. A year later, he was hired to be the CEO of Ye’s clothing company, Yeezy. When a trustee entered the home for a presale walkthrough, he encountered numerous tenants in the home. Charney informed the trustee that there were seven residents, including Ye’s director of political operations, Milo Yiannopoulos, and one of Ye’s muses, Ian Connor. At the time of writing, it seems, the house continues to be in a state of legal limbo but, whatever the outcome, it seems likely to outlive all of us – which, no doubt, is exactly what Garbutt would have wanted.



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 Silver Lake Neighborhood Council.  Created by K. Smith, The Mailroom

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