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Pickfair
Pickfair is a mansion and estate in the city of Beverly Hills, California. The original Pickfair was an 18-acre (7.3 ha) estate designed by architect Horatio Cogswell for attorney Lee Allen Phillips of Berkeley Square as a country home. Phillips sold the property to actor Douglas Fairbanks in 1918. Dubbed "Pickfair" by the press, it became one of the most celebrated houses in the world. Life described Pickfair as "a gathering place only slightly less important than the White House... and much more fun."
Located at 1143 Summit Drive in San Ysidro Canyon in Beverly Hills, the property was a hunting lodge when purchased by Fairbanks in 1919 for his bride-to-be, Mary Pickford. In the 1920s, the newlyweds extensively renovated the lodge, transforming it into a four-story, 25-room mansion complete with stables, servants quarters, tennis courts, a large guest wing, and garages.
Remodeled by Wallace Neff in a mock Tudor style, it took five years to complete. Ceiling frescos, parquet flooring, wood-paneled halls of fine mahogany and bleached pine, gold leaf, and mirrored decorative niches, all added to the authentic charm of Pickfair. The property was said to have been the first private home in the Los Angeles area to include an in-ground swimming pool, in which Pickford and Fairbanks were famously photographed paddling a canoe.
Pickfair featured a collection of early 18th-century English and French period furniture, decorative arts, and antiques. Notable pieces in the collection included furniture from the Barberini Palace, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts estate in London, and Louis XVI furniture from the Countess Rodezno and Lord Leverhulme collections. The highlight of any visit to Pickfair was a large collection of Chinese objets d'art collected by Fairbanks and Pickford on their many visits to the Orient. The Pickfair art collection was wide and varied and included paintings by Philip Mercier, Guillaume Seignac, George Romney, and Paul de Longpré.
The mansion also featured an Old West-style saloon complete with an ornate burnished mahogany bar obtained from a saloon in Auburn, California, and paintings by Frederic Remington. In the 1970 Volume 2, Number 10 issue of Mankind Magazine it states there were twelve Remingtons from 1907 purchased from the Cosmopolitan Publishing Company that "were Mary Pickford's gift to her husband, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers". The interior of Pickfair was decorated and updated throughout the years by Marilyn Johnson Tucker, Elsie De Wolfe, Marjorie Requa, Tony Duquette, and Kathryn Crawford.
During the 1920s, the house became a focal point for Hollywood's social activities, and the couple became famous for entertaining there. An invitation to Pickfair was a sign of social acceptance into the closed Hollywood community. In 1928, Will Rogers said "My most important duty as mayor of Beverly Hills is directing people to Mary Pickford's house".
Dinners at Pickfair became legendary; guests included Charlie Chaplin (who lived next door), the Duke of Windsor and Duchess of Windsor, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Mildred Harris, Greta Garbo, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Elinor Glyn, Helen Keller, H.G. Wells, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler, Tony Duquette, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Crawford, Noël Coward, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl S. Buck, Charles Lindbergh, Max Reinhardt, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Gloria Swanson, the Duke and Duchess of Alba, the King and Queen of Siam, Austen Chamberlain, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the spiritual teacher Meher Baba, and Sir Harry Lauder. Lauder's nephew, Matt Lauder Jr., a professional golfer whose family had a property at Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California, taught Fairbanks to play golf.
Fairbanks and Pickford divorced in January 1936, but Pickford continued to reside in the mansion with her third husband, actor and musician Charles "Buddy" Rogers, until her death in 1979. Pickford received few visitors in her later years, but continued to open up her grand home for charitable organizations and parties, including an annual Christmas party for blind war veterans, mostly from World War I.
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Pickfair
Pickfair is a mansion and estate in the city of Beverly Hills, California. The original Pickfair was an 18-acre (7.3 ha) estate designed by architect Horatio Cogswell for attorney Lee Allen Phillips of Berkeley Square as a country home. Phillips sold the property to actor Douglas Fairbanks in 1918. Dubbed "Pickfair" by the press, it became one of the most celebrated houses in the world. Life described Pickfair as "a gathering place only slightly less important than the White House... and much more fun."
Located at 1143 Summit Drive in San Ysidro Canyon in Beverly Hills, the property was a hunting lodge when purchased by Fairbanks in 1919 for his bride-to-be, Mary Pickford. In the 1920s, the newlyweds extensively renovated the lodge, transforming it into a four-story, 25-room mansion complete with stables, servants quarters, tennis courts, a large guest wing, and garages.
Remodeled by Wallace Neff in a mock Tudor style, it took five years to complete. Ceiling frescos, parquet flooring, wood-paneled halls of fine mahogany and bleached pine, gold leaf, and mirrored decorative niches, all added to the authentic charm of Pickfair. The property was said to have been the first private home in the Los Angeles area to include an in-ground swimming pool, in which Pickford and Fairbanks were famously photographed paddling a canoe.
Pickfair featured a collection of early 18th-century English and French period furniture, decorative arts, and antiques. Notable pieces in the collection included furniture from the Barberini Palace, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts estate in London, and Louis XVI furniture from the Countess Rodezno and Lord Leverhulme collections. The highlight of any visit to Pickfair was a large collection of Chinese objets d'art collected by Fairbanks and Pickford on their many visits to the Orient. The Pickfair art collection was wide and varied and included paintings by Philip Mercier, Guillaume Seignac, George Romney, and Paul de Longpré.
The mansion also featured an Old West-style saloon complete with an ornate burnished mahogany bar obtained from a saloon in Auburn, California, and paintings by Frederic Remington. In the 1970 Volume 2, Number 10 issue of Mankind Magazine it states there were twelve Remingtons from 1907 purchased from the Cosmopolitan Publishing Company that "were Mary Pickford's gift to her husband, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers". The interior of Pickfair was decorated and updated throughout the years by Marilyn Johnson Tucker, Elsie De Wolfe, Marjorie Requa, Tony Duquette, and Kathryn Crawford.
During the 1920s, the house became a focal point for Hollywood's social activities, and the couple became famous for entertaining there. An invitation to Pickfair was a sign of social acceptance into the closed Hollywood community. In 1928, Will Rogers said "My most important duty as mayor of Beverly Hills is directing people to Mary Pickford's house".
Dinners at Pickfair became legendary; guests included Charlie Chaplin (who lived next door), the Duke of Windsor and Duchess of Windsor, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Mildred Harris, Greta Garbo, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Elinor Glyn, Helen Keller, H.G. Wells, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler, Tony Duquette, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Crawford, Noël Coward, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl S. Buck, Charles Lindbergh, Max Reinhardt, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Gloria Swanson, the Duke and Duchess of Alba, the King and Queen of Siam, Austen Chamberlain, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the spiritual teacher Meher Baba, and Sir Harry Lauder. Lauder's nephew, Matt Lauder Jr., a professional golfer whose family had a property at Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California, taught Fairbanks to play golf.
Fairbanks and Pickford divorced in January 1936, but Pickford continued to reside in the mansion with her third husband, actor and musician Charles "Buddy" Rogers, until her death in 1979. Pickford received few visitors in her later years, but continued to open up her grand home for charitable organizations and parties, including an annual Christmas party for blind war veterans, mostly from World War I.