![]() ![]() Yet, there are many tales and theories about his time in Laurel Canyon, because of his supposed close friendship with Ralf (or Ralph) M. Over the years, historians have struggled to prove Houdini even visited Laurel Canyon while he was in Los Angeles, let alone lived there. Sure, there was a glorious four-story mansion built in 1915 (known as the Walker Estate) at this address at one time, but it burnt down in the great Laurel Canyon Fire of 1959 when it was a run-down boarding house for unemployed actors, and despite a local movement to preserve the property and rebuild, the remaining ruins were removed weeks later, leaving only the stairs at the entrance, the decorative brick walkways, and the rock-work surrounding the gardens.Įven then, in 1959, when local papers covered the fire, they made reference to it as the “Houdini Mansion,” and even then no one was sure why it was called that. My circle of friends and I never questioned whether there was even a house atop that grand stone staircase beyond the overgrown brush, let alone whether Houdini actually ever lived there. I grew up in Laurel Canyon in the 1970’s, and “The Houdini Mansion” was part of our accepted landscape. Second of all, it seems it was never owned by Harry Houdini, the famous magician that for some mysterious reason is linked to this property. First of all, the “Houdini Mansion” is not actually a mansion. Instead of saying, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I say, ‘Go faster!’ ”įor the full story, subscribe now and get the digital edition immediately.The “Houdini Mansion” in Laurel Canyon is one of the most persistent urban legends in Hollywood, despite having two strikes against it. ![]() ![]() My kids ride bikes and scooters through the house. I want my environment to be beautiful and inspiring, but most of all I want it to be comfortable for my family and our friends. “I just like the way it looks,” the designer says, once again erupting into the lilting laughter that peppers her conversation. Lest one be concerned about disturbing the precarious assemblage, Brigette is quick to point out that most of the vessels cost between five and 20 dollars. At one end of the capacious room, a low table practically overflows with a grouping of simple blue-and-white pottery that looks like a contemporary art installation. Furry goat- skin carpets offer a plush arena for wrestling matches between the family’s spunky labradoodles, Roxy and Rufus. Her de-stiffening scheme for the formal dining room involved opening the space to the newly enlarged and modernized kitchen and adding giant arched windows.īrigette’s mix-master skills are exhibited with particular poetry in the vast living room, where Serge Mouille lighting, a Hans Wegner chaise, and African stools are arrayed on a dark-stained floor. ![]() In the entry she traded dark terra-cotta floors for a patchwork of rustic gray-and-white marble tiles plucked from a French château. She banished the home’s ubiquitous black wrought-iron chandeliers and sconces and replaced them with sparkly crystal fixtures, groovy vintage finds, and bold contemporary lighting-more Norma Jean, less Norma Desmond. The Laurel Canyon estate proved the ideal playground for Brigette to exercise her talent for conjuring interiors that blend laid-back California cool with jaunty modern chic. “Mark knows what a chicken I am, so he didn’t mention the haunting thing until after we were settled in.” “A lot of people claim this house is haunted, but I’ve never seen a ghost,” Brigette says, laughing. Architectural pentimenti that survived the fire-chunky stone foundations, secret passageways, garden follies, meandering outdoor stairways with neoclassical balustrades-lend the place a decidedly mysterious, cinematic aura. The original 1925 house that stood on the two rambling acres burned down in a massive conflagration in the ’50s, but the structure was rebuilt a few years later atop the remains of its stately forebear. And then, of course, there’s the residence itself, which is pure magic. Such mythology becomes less far-fetched when one considers the evidence that Houdini did in fact live nearby in the 1920s. “They say that Houdini cooked up his most famous escape acts here, his mistress is buried here, the house has 22 bedrooms-crazy stuff,” Brigette says. Every day, Hollywood tour buses pull up to the imposing mix-and-match Mediterranean-style manse at the top of Laurel Canyon and the amplified voices of clueless cicerones can be heard waxing rhapsodic about the property’s alleged pedigree. First things first: The weird and wonderful Los Angeles home of interior designer Brigette Romanek, her husband, director Mark Romanek, and their two young daughters is not the Harry Houdini estate. ![]()
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