Garbutt House

About this property

Garbutt House is a 20-room mansion in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles built from 1926 to 1928 as the residence of Frank A. Garbutt. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. Frank A. Garbutt, an inventor, industrialist and movie pioneer, was one of the most prominent citizens of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th Century. He invented and secured patents on certain oil drilling tools in the late 1880s that were the initial source of his wealth. Garbutt became involved in other businesses. He owned oil wells and was one of the original investors in aviation pioneer Glenn Martin's aircraft business, later to become Martin Marietta. He owned interests in a boatbuilding business, Garbutt-Walsh Inc., and a business operating ferries from San Pedro to Terminal Island. He played a role in the founding of Famous Players–Lasky, later Paramount Studios, Union Oil Company and the Automobile Club of Southern California. == Garbutt House and the Garbutt-Hathaway Estate == In 1923, Garbutt acquired a 37-acre (150,000 m2) hilltop site overlooking the Silver Lake reservoir with views of the Pacific Ocean, the Santa Monica and Verdugo Mountains and the downtown skyline. Garbutt and his family built three houses on the site, which came to be known as the Garbutt-Hathaway Estate. Garbutt lived in the 20-room mansion built between 1926 and 1928 that came to be known as Garbutt House. The house has nearly 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) of space, rises 228 feet (69 m) to its crest and was built like a citadel out of concrete to survive earthquakes and floods, but mostly due to Garbutt's fear of fire. His daughter Melodile later recalled that the entire first floor was poured in one pouring, that took two days and one night of steady pouring with three shifts of workers. Due to an intense fear of fire, Garbutt even had the roof and walls built of concrete, installed steel-reinforced doors and allowed no fireplaces in the home. A subsequent owner noted that the concrete construction was "comparable to any of the finest bunkers." The house had bronze window frames, hand carved teak and marble floors. The first floor was entirely travertine, and Garbutt hired an artist who spent several months painting the beams in the living room. Garbutt worked at his inventions at the Silver Lake mansion, building race cars, inventing a soapless detergent, and trying to invent a superior chewing gum. == Preservation battles and residential development == Garbutt died in 1947, but his son and two daughters continued to live at the estate after his death. One of his daughters never married and lived at Garbutt House until 1960, when the estate was sold. Daughter Melodile recalled that they sold the estate after her brother and husband had died, and her sister did not want to live by herself in the big house.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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