The Wattles Estate, originally known as Jualita, is a historic house and park in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was built in 1907 by wealthy Omaha, Nebraska, banker Gurdon Wattles as a winter home. Next to the Wattles Mansion are Wattles Park and Wattles Gardens, now administered by the City of Los Angeles and open to the public.
The estate has been recognized as "the only remaining intact example of the once plentiful Hollywood estates from the period preceding the film industry, when Hollywood was primarily agricultural and was a wintering home for wealthy Easterners and Midwesterners." According to the City of Los Angeles, "'Jualita' is one of the few remaining landscapes reminiscent of another era and tradition, possessing a genuine integrity of setting, design, workmanship, and association."
History
Noted local architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey designed the Mission Revival residence in 1907 with grounds featuring a Japanese garden, an Italian rose garden, a formal Spanish garden, a palm court, and orchards. It was one of Hollywood's first tourist attractions. Wattles was responsible for gradually transforming of agricultural land into orchards, thematic gardens and naturalistic landscapes based on his trips to Japan and Mexico.
Prior to permanent residence in Los Angeles, Wattles headed the streetcar company in Omaha. His strike-breaking efforts contributed to four days of violence in the city in 1909. The attempt to unionize failed and many of the strikers had to seek work elsewhere, but the incident damaged Wattles' social standing and worsened relations between the city's rich and the general citizenry. A jury's refusal in 1906 to convict career criminal Pat Crowe for the kidnapping of Omaha packing house scion Edward Cudahy was widely seen as an expression of contempt for the city's ruling elite. Several millionaires fled the city, including the Cudahy family. With his civic reputation damaged, Wattles himself began to spend more time in Los Angeles after the strike and permanently relocated in 1920.
After Wattles' death in 1932, his wife, Julia Vance Wattles, and his son continued to live on the property. Gurdon Wallace Wattles Jr. negotiated the sale of the residence to the City of Los Angeles in 1965. In March of that year, the City of Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commission adopted Resolution 5135, designating the Wattles estate as an acquisition area, and purchased the property for $1,917,000 in June 1968.
Hollywood Heritage, a private nonprofit preservation organization, began restoration efforts in 1983, and the estate served as their headquarters until May 22, 2009, when control of the property reverted to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. Over the first decade, volunteers with the Hollywood Heritage organization removed several feet of mud from the garden, replanted landscaping, and repainted and refinished the interior woodwork. Through their dedicated efforts, the Wattles Mansion was returned to its original state.
In 1993, the Wattles Mansion was designated as City of Los Angeles Cultural Monument No. 579. In 2000, the J. Paul Getty Trust donated $75,000 toward a Preserve L.A. planning project designed to further the site's preservation.
Wattles Mansion
The home is two stories with a full basement. The first-floor rooms include a paneled library, a formal dining room, a large living room with a picture window to the south gardens, two large bathrooms off the entrance hall, a servant's dining hall, and a kitchen and pantry. Five bedrooms and three baths are on the second floor.
Some of the original features in the Wattles Mansion include a black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor in the foyer, and intricately carved walnut bookcases and a hand-painted ceiling in the library. Hardwood moldings, white stucco walls, wood-beamed ceilings, and hardwood floors with Oriental carpets are found throughout the house. There is a terracotta tile terrace and a wide, sloping lawn. Brick landings on a wide stairway go down toward landscaped terraces on each side, with a Spanish balustraded patio overlooking of formal gardens.
Wattles Farm
Once the avocado and fruit orchard of the Wattles Mansion, in 1975 a group of local residents converted a section of the then-neglected Wattles estate into a community garden. Today, this members-only organic garden is among the oldest community gardens in Los Angeles. It is run by a nonprofit organization called the Wattles Farm and Neighborhood Gardeners Inc. in partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.