Exploring suburban Beverly Hills
The array of buildings in surrounding neighbourhoods offers peaceful respite too. A stroll down famous palm tree-lined Canon Drive is worth one tourist shot while you’re in town, and as we look around, it’s clear to see money really is no option here. It’s not unusual to see homes that range from Southern Antebellum style to the popular Spanish Mission style so prevalent in LA (I even manage to convince my guide to take me towards “Casa Walsh”, the Spanish style home of Brenda and Brandon Walsh from Beverly Hills 90210).
Some were purely bonkers. Like the mansion with a blue roof shaped like crashing waves. Further along is “The Witch’s House” a spooky Beverly Hills landmark that’s had its own cameo in the 1995 film Clueless.
Grand homes are a great way to understand the city’s cultural and historic wealth. One must-visit is the Greystone Mansion — a 55-room Tudor-style estate, a gift from oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny to his son Ned Doheny and his family. Added to the National Register of Historic Places, the mansion for hire has featured in everything from The
Bodyguard to Mariah Carey music videos.
If your curiosity teeters on the morbid, a look through the guest bedroom in the east wing of the mansion is worthwhile. Here is where Ned was found dead in 1929, four short months after the family moved in, alongside his long-time friend and hired assistant, Hugh Plunkett. Was it suicide? Was it due to unlawful business dealings? Were Hugh and Ned actually lovers? Rumours have swirled in the decades since, only adding to the mansion’s tragic glamour.
A seven-minute Uber ride west, and I find myself at another estate, albeit one with a less grisly past — the Virginia Robinson Gardens. Built in 1911, it was once the residence of retail giants Virginia and Harry Robinson and the first luxury estate built in Beverly Hills, sitting on six acres of lush plantation. Inside the mansion, the home has been faithfully maintained with much of the Robinsons’ original furnishings intact.
Home to the biggest plantation of King Palm trees outside Queensland, the gardens offer respite and calm away from the glitz of Rodeo Drive, and have a starry history of their own — Marlene Dietrich stayed the night and Charlie Chaplin often played on the famous tennis court surrounded by vibrant bougainvillea. Standing in the spot where Tinseltown’s icons once played was a surreal moment I’ll never forget.