The gates themselves were nearly hidden underneath piles of flowers and handwritten signs of mourning, all of it reminiscent of the makeshift memorials that appeared in London after Princess Diana's death in 1997.
In the shaded front drive between the main house and Neverland's manufactured lake, CNN staffers were scrambling to find a place to set up Larry King for his live show later in the day. A couple of them referred to the talk-show host as "Elvis." As in, What time will Elvis be in the building?
It was another reminder of how much this place, for all its outward debt to J.M. Barrie and Willy Wonka, has in common with Graceland -- and how much speculation we are likely to hear in the coming days about whether the Los Angeles investment firm Colony Capital will ever open Neverland to the public as a shrine to Jackson's life and music. (Colony, having bought Jackson's loan a year ago, controls the property.)
Once I drove out along the train tracks toward the back of the estate, however, an eerie calm took hold -- with the exception of the landscaping crews swarming over the flower beds and the helicopters buzzing overhead.
Back there, the place looked dismantled, which makes sense since Jackson stopped living here following his 2005 trial in Santa Maria. The carousel and the Ferris wheel have been taken down. The monkeys have been removed from their elaborate spired cages, the goats from the petting zoo. A locked tour bus sat under a shed that looked to have been built to keep it shaded.
There are countless signs at Neverland of Jackson's attempts to put his architectural stamp on the estate. Some of them suggest a dedicated interest in architecture -- and the design bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls in Santa Monica was said to be a Jackson favorite -- but there is no coherent theme. Nothing matches. A few switch plates in the main house are decorated with Renaissance-style putti. The frilly gazebos might have been lifted from a Georgia plantation.
And because so many of the buildings Jackson added are essentially architectural follies -- open to the air and quickly constructed -- they feel decidedly impermanent. Those that haven't been kept up have decayed quickly.
Neverland's main house is in very good shape, as is the station, the guesthouse and a good deal of the garden. But elsewhere, the estate has the look of an abandoned amusement park. Its impresario -- who always straddled the line between master of ceremonies and paying customer -- hasn't been here for years, and now he's gone for good.
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christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com
