Beachwood Canyon: Stairways to Heaven?

Madonna, and cloistered nuns; the world’s most famous sign, and hidden stone staircases (for hidden assignations?); Humphrey Bogart, who played gangsters, and Bugsy Siegel, who was one--what do they all have in common? Location, location, location.

Bogart, Siegel, and Madonna once called it home; the cloistered nuns, the tucked-away stairs, and, of course, the Hollywood sign still do. And if ever there were a community which captures the Irene Cara “Baby remember my name Greta Garbo” I want to be left alone” dichotomy which is Hollywood, it is Beachwood Canyon

Built from the top down, what is today the community of Beachwood Canyon began, in 1923, as an exclusive hillside enclave. It was intended by its builder, S.H. Woodruff, to become “one of the showplaces of the world". Its earliest homes were a mix of English Tudor mansions, French garden cottages, and Spanish haciendas on spacious tree-and hedge-screened acres. Its more recent homes are clinging to perpendicular hillsides on stilts, or overwhelming lots too small for them.

The original residents had their own private shopping area in a Spanish-themed retail building which housed a grocery and drugstore, as well as some smaller clothing, jewelry, and gift shops. That same building serves the community today; in fact, the Beachwood Market, with its own butcher, has a reputation for being the sort of friendly place where you can shop in your pajamas, should the need arise. The Village Coffee Shop, where the Beachwood Canyon elite meet to eat--or drink the chocolate shakes--is also there.

And the cloistered nuns? Since 1925, and the earliest days of Beachwood Canyon’s development, a community of Dominican sisters have been living in the Monastery of the Angels at 1977 Carmen Avenue, in the lower regions of the canyon. The reclusive nuns, in keeping with the private/public standards of their surroundings, bake and sell some very well-known pumpkin bread, and make hand-dipped chocolates which are so much in demand that the sisters, because they can’t keep their existing customers satisfied, are no longer taking orders for them.

In what some might term a theological paradox, the Dominicans of Beachwood Canyon could have raised their eyes to the heavens, in the 1990s, and been looking in the direction of a Madonna, but not of the religious icon sort. During that period, rock star Madonna owned the most prominent estate in Beachwood, the Castillo del Lago, built in 1923 for tycoon Patrick Longden and situated just below the Hollywood sign.

One of the most interesting things about the Castillo del Lago is that, of its twenty thousand square feet, twelve thousand were devoted to staircases--a popular feature, it seems, in Beachwood Canyon. Another very interesting thing is that, before the Dominican sisters raised their eyes toward Madonna, they were raising them toward gangster Bugsy Siegel, who bought the home in 1939 to use as a gambling den.

Bugsy left Beachwood Canyon and came to a bad end; Madonna came to Beachwood Canyon and was driven away by a stalker; and the Dominican nuns, who arrived well before either of them, remain there to this day.

It could happen only in Hollywood(land).

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