by TMUhlmann on Fri May 25, 2007 3:57 am
Hmmm, I'm not sure where to begin jumping in on a movement to save the house that "can't be saved". That notion comes from a conclusion of the owner who had hoped to either integrate the house with the new construction; or move the house to another site. Mind you it was several years ago I read this. But I thought it rather odd that no one could figure out how to move the thing. Maybe they forgot to ask a SeaBee.
I also do not know who the current owner is or what about my take on the matter is accurate and not accurate. NEVERTHELESS, I am not totally without understanding. The suggestion to drop the house on one of the neighboring villas could be something of a bomb if you dropped it on OUR Beadle house. The sorry mess up the hill from 4918 White Gates Dr. is 5202 Saddle Rock Dr., the house I grew up in and came home to for 15 years after graduating from high school. After my mother died the house was sold to (if I am not mistaken) some attorneys. It was a poor time to sell on Camelback and so the once lovely and "pretentious" home was prey to bottom scrapers. And consider the indignities it had suffered. It's original pink and purple splendor (to match the Safari, my father's hotel) was dealt a death blow by the removal of lead from paints. No paint would be able to keep the depth of purple tint that made it so attractive in splendid moments of desert light.
Then I'm sorry to say the second indignity was brought about by my younger brother, a remodel freak who tore down the classy walls of Superlite block (O within a box....would that be [O][O][O]? Well you get the idea...) around the perimeter of the building's roof structure and replaced them with the current stucco, well, um, they look like shear panels. Ick.
Then my dear mom found the whole outside thing WAY too much to deal with, and the tiffgreen lawn, the grapefruit trees, the gorgeous Brahea armata Mexican Blue Palm, the saguaros. It began to look desolate. As it does to this day. Does anybody know what the !*#? is going on? Has the house been abandoned? At Christmastime I drove by and couldn't see anything that made me think anyone lived there.
You know, in one sense I agree with JRichard on the matter of letting them go. Not at all because of the houses not being structures worth living in or preserving because they are great houses. But they aren't the classic Al Beadle houses either. No one would (I hope) dare touch the Driggs house or the Patrick House for a teardown. But look at the neighborhood around our old house. The whole south side of Camelback in that area looks like the town that couldn't zone. Or something. Can't anybody get some building standards and guidelines in place to prevent the deterioration of once classy neighborhoods?
You can draw a straight line from 4918 through 5202 and then cross the street to Walter Bimson's house--and I don't know what the state of the house is there, but the driveway and streetside landscaping is heading south--and end up on the missing Davis house property. And of course up the hill on Cliffside Drive the Mendelson house is long gone. It was nearly identical to 4918. In all fairness there are some homes which are well taken care of and the area is lucky for that. But ever larger homes do not necessarily create enchantment which once was so evident.
[Gasp for breath...]
MrX, thank you for posting the 5202 pics. I will try to drum up some photos of the house when it was really slick. But we just didn't take pics of it for its own sake. I think also there's a Sun Living pic of it, possibly in the "Several Pretentious Homes Under Construction Here" article in the Gazette and that is referenced in "Constructions".
TMUhlmann
Never mind the T, the M is for Mark
Pasadena, California
