one of my favourite signs: the electric company's art-deco era neon sign on beverly drive, beverly hills.

the witch's house of beverly hills.

no, not where joan and melissa rivers live. the spadena house--known as "the witch's house"-- sits not on a movie lot, but smack in the heart of beverly hills, at the corner of walden and carmelita.

i had heard various rumours and stories about the origins of this house, everything from it being built for a movie version of "hansel and gretel" to it being the creation of a devout snow white and the seven dwarves fan. it turn out that it was built by harry oliver, an art director and set designer for a silent movie studio in the 1920s; they were used as offices and dressing rooms for the lot, then later moved from its original site in culver city to its current lot in beverly hills.



the house is one of the premier examples of what is known as the storybook style of architecture, which not surprisingly, took its inspiration from hollywood sets of the twenties and thirties. defining characteristics seem to be bent and burned cedar shake roofs, small windows, rough hewn beams, dark rooms, and quirkiness coming out of every stuccoed pore. i think you really need to be some sort of fairy tale fetishist to live in one of these houses.



for years the house was occupied, and sat on the corner lot amidst a rambling english cottage-style garden with a crazy wishing well in the front, but now it sits behind a tarped chain link fence, undergoing reconstruction. the new owner seems to be adding some odd gaudí-esque touches to it, along with a tiny bit of art nouveau-ish flare, which only seems to add to its creepiness oddness "charm." although it's not really my cup of tea, i'm rather glad that someone has taken enough interest in the spadena house to restore it rather than tear it down, and so keeping another bit of happy madness alive in the city.

a few more photos on flickr.