Last time, my daughter, son, grandkids and I went to Forest Lawn Cemetery to sprinkle their Dad and Papaw’s ashes and spent the afternoon at Paramount Studio Tour and evening at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
This day my sister, her fellow, my brother and I started out to the Greystone Mansion that we tried but failed to see the first day (closed after 5 p.m.).
Greystone is in Beverly Hills and it was beautiful drive up rolling hills with huge homes and estates all around. The mansion is set on top of a hill with a spectacular view of Los Angeles (photo above from the front terrace of Greystone). The parking was next to the formal English garden. The gardens are used I’m sure as a backdrop to engagement, wedding, and senior photos regularly. While we were there a group with camera, lights and beautifully dressed folks set up a photo shoot.
My brother Mark is a lover of architecture and especially of mansions built by the ultra rich, beautifully designed with magnificent craftsmanship. We walked the grounds and peered through windows into the Tudor Revival mansion (it’s only open on certain days and special occasions).
The house has long been an iconic location for motion picture and television shoots — Greystone has been featured in dozens of films, including The Big Lebowski, Spider-Man, The Social Network, and There Will Be Blood.
The first thing you see after winding up the path from the formal gardens is this courtyard which is stunning.
An oil tycoon Edward Doheny built Greystone mansion in 1928 for his son Ned and his family with five kids. Google the Doheny murder-suicide in 1929 — an intriguing tragic story. The city of Beverly Hills owns the mansion and it became a city park in 1971 (on the National Register of Historic Places). And of course they say it’s haunted.
On the way back from Greystone we stopped at the LaBrea Tar Pits (another place we had tried to see earlier in the week).
It’s an active paleontological research site in downtown Los Angeles.
These tar pits which seep asphalt to this day (you can smell it the minute you park your car) have a museum with bones from pre-historic animals that were stuck in the tar from ten thousand years ago. Giant mammoth skeletons are on display as well as the dire wolves that got stuck too trying to dine on the mammoths. Also giant sloths, saber tooted cats, and others who are all extinct now. They have a light from behind display case of 400 jaw bones from dire wolves on the back wall – very impressive. This museum has the largest collections of Ice Age fossils in the world. They have a statue of a 10 ft. tall giant short-faced bear— his remains were found in the tar pits too.
Paula at Griffith Park Observatory.
We went back to the AirBnB for dinner and then headed to the Griffith Observatory. It’s a long drive up a huge hill and parking is nearly impossible, but we finally found a spot. Trick is come before dark, with easier parking and bring a picnic lunch. We walked inside and all around the observatory and enjoyed the million lights from the city spread out below. The line to the telescopes was so long we decided not to even try – maybe another trip.
Next time: Part 5 — New Academy Museum.
