Great Estates

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree." Ever since William Randolph Hearst built his own Xanadu at San Simeon, California has laid claim to some of the nation's most ostentatious expressions of wealth. From Lynn Atkinson's "House of the Golden Doorknobs" to David Geffen's self-described "act of grandiosity," Los Angeles' four great estates are all that remain of a time and a place when glamour and grandeur knew no limit. * Bellagio House, Bellagio Road, Bel-Air.

Windsor Castle as ground zero for women's lib? And Downton Abbey a no-go zone for women's rights -- the same stately home where one titled daughter had a hot session of illicit sex, another married the radical chauffeur and the third made out with a farmer? HRH the Duchess of Cambridge -- Kate, nee Middleton -- is pregnant with a child who will, boy or girl, at some time well into this century sit on the British throne. Big deal, you're thinking. A girl in charge. Britain has had two queens regnant in about a half-century: Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. Ah, but here's the rub: If either of those women had had a brother, she would have been throneless.

Christie's wants to sell your mansion along with your Rembrandts. The auction house announced Tuesday that it has acquired Santa Fe, N.M.-based Great Estates, an 8-year-old network of 7,000 brokers in North America, for $500,000, with an agreement to pay up to $2.6 million more, depending on profitability. A $22-million horse ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley and a $13-million, 25-room New York mansion are among the choice properties now for sale through Great Estates.

SAM WATTERS owns a nice chunk of land in Venice, where he recently built a modern house. But he lives most of his mental life in homes of another era -- those built from 1885 to 1935, L.A.'s first golden age. For the last six years, Watters has scoured public and private archives, assembled photos and floor plans, unearthed sagas of love and betrayal, bigotry and greed.

Windsor Castle as ground zero for women's lib? And Downton Abbey a no-go zone for women's rights -- the same stately home where one titled daughter had a hot session of illicit sex, another married the radical chauffeur and the third made out with a farmer? HRH the Duchess of Cambridge -- Kate, nee Middleton -- is pregnant with a child who will, boy or girl, at some time well into this century sit on the British throne. Big deal, you're thinking. A girl in charge. Britain has had two queens regnant in about a half-century: Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. Ah, but here's the rub: If either of those women had had a brother, she would have been throneless.

Even the palatial former Beverly Hills home of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and actress Marion Davies isn't immune to 2010 housing price realities. The lavish compound, which was listed for sale briefly three years ago at $165 million, is back on the market at $95 million (minus almost 3 acres listed last time) nearly a week after its owner, attorney-investor Leonard M. Ross, filed for bankruptcy protection. The 50,000-plus-square-foot mansion sits on 3.7 flat acres on a hilltop above the Beverly Hills Hotel and comes with staff accommodations, a security cottage, a separate two-bedroom apartment and a two-story, four-bedroom gatehouse.

The Mexican hacienda, conceived in the 16th century and condemned in the early 20th, is making a comeback. But this time, instead of crops to reap or minerals to mine, it has rooms to rent. In one such room last month, I dozed off to the sound of crickets and frogs, and woke on a massive bed beneath a slowly circling fan under a 25-foot-high ceiling of rough beams, within four very old, very thick walls.

SAM WATTERS owns a nice chunk of land in Venice, where he recently built a modern house. But he lives most of his mental life in homes of another era -- those built from 1885 to 1935, L.A.'s first golden age. For the last six years, Watters has scoured public and private archives, assembled photos and floor plans, unearthed sagas of love and betrayal, bigotry and greed.

Ending a bitter legal dispute over how to best honor the legacy of New York Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio, city officials have reached an agreement with the late player's estate to rename in his honor a tiny North Beach park where DiMaggio and his brothers played as boys.

PRUNING trees and shrubs to form hedges is as old as gardening. In the great estates of the past, hedges framed views, defined borders and marked transitions to wilderness. In modern Los Angeles, an average lot is a sixth of an acre. A hedge allows homeowners to soften the transition to the street or blot out an eyesore, be it an alley, a McMansion, a crack house, a neighbor's kitchen window, a jalopy or junkyard dog. Increasingly, hedges no longer frame views. They are the view.

Ending a bitter legal dispute over how to best honor the legacy of New York Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio, city officials have reached an agreement with the late player's estate to rename in his honor a tiny North Beach park where DiMaggio and his brothers played as boys.

The Mexican hacienda, conceived in the 16th century and condemned in the early 20th, is making a comeback. But this time, instead of crops to reap or minerals to mine, it has rooms to rent. In one such room last month, I dozed off to the sound of crickets and frogs, and woke on a massive bed beneath a slowly circling fan under a 25-foot-high ceiling of rough beams, within four very old, very thick walls.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree." Ever since William Randolph Hearst built his own Xanadu at San Simeon, California has laid claim to some of the nation's most ostentatious expressions of wealth. From Lynn Atkinson's "House of the Golden Doorknobs" to David Geffen's self-described "act of grandiosity," Los Angeles' four great estates are all that remain of a time and a place when glamour and grandeur knew no limit. * Bellagio House, Bellagio Road, Bel-Air.

Christie's wants to sell your mansion along with your Rembrandts. The auction house announced Tuesday that it has acquired Santa Fe, N.M.-based Great Estates, an 8-year-old network of 7,000 brokers in North America, for $500,000, with an agreement to pay up to $2.6 million more, depending on profitability. A $22-million horse ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley and a $13-million, 25-room New York mansion are among the choice properties now for sale through Great Estates.

The rich might be getting richer, but their lives are hardly trouble-free. In Southern California, there aren't enough servants to go around. Wealthy families need more chefs to prepare their meals, more maids and butlers to serve them, more housekeepers to keep their mansions tidy and more nannies and night nurses to tend their offspring. All this demand is putting Peggy Gardiner in a pretty position. She's a professionally trained cook, good with kids, an expert on laundry.