Featured image credit: Afpeach
Los Angeles isn’t known for its castles… but we’ve got them. There’s the Wolf’s Lair, the Hollywoodland storybook castle of Bud Wolf. Not to be confused with the Hollywood Castle where you can rent yourself into the monarchy for a night. Then there’s Glendora’s Rubel Castle, possibly the closest analog to the Los Angeles home we’re highlighting today. So, yeah, you’ll be hard-pressed to find knights in shining armor patrolling the Walk of Fame, but we’ve got castles. And that might have all started with Charles F. Lummis, an author, historian, and activist among many, many other things. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the sprawling 18-room Highland Park castle that he built with his bare hands, colloquially referred to as the Lummis house.
The Charming Eccentricity of Charles F. Lummis
Most people don’t just walk away from Harvard University. Then again, most people aren’t like Charles Lummis. In 1884, he dropped out of the prestigious school and, shortly thereafter, received a job offer from the Los Angeles Times. In those days, LA was a city of roughly 12,000 people, but the offer piqued Lummis’s interest. He accepted the reporter position with a caveat. He needed a bit of time off in advance. Why? Because he’d decided to walk from Cincinnati to Los Angeles. No training. No special equipment. Just a burning desire to tour the country at his leisure.
Lummis may have been alone on his trek. But the country felt like they were along for every step of the nearly 6-month journey. That’s because he documented his jaunt with weekly letters that were published for America to enjoy. People vicariously shared his fascination with the frontier, the daunting moment when he fractured his arm, and his eventual arrival in the rapidly growing city on the other side of the country. The Los Angeles Times greeted him with an offer to serve as the publication’s first-ever City Editor. In 1892, his letters were collected in A Tramp Across the Continent.
The castle that Lummis would build was still a little over a decade away from groundbreaking. In that time, he left the Los Angeles Times, and, following a stroke, left for New Mexico where he built a strong relationship with the Native Americans of the Isleta Pueblo reservation. He also divorced his wife, met a new one, and spent 10 months exploring Peru. When he returned to LA with his second wife (Eva) and daughter (Turbese), he had just enough to purchase a three-acre plot of land at the edge of the Arroyo Seco.
Building the Lummis House from Scratch
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With the majority of his meager savings sunk into the land, Lummis began to pull stones from the Arroyo Seco. These would be instrumental in constructing the facade of what, over a decade later, would be regarded as the Lummis house. Opting for a DIY approach, Lummis inadvertently contributed to the foundation of the popular Arts & Crafts Movement. Last year, we touched on this cultural phenomenon while exploring the Sam Maloof House in Rancho Cucamonga.
While history would remember this structure as the Lummis house, Lummis himself dubbed it El Alisal. It’s a Spanish name meaning “alder grove”; a clear reference to the abundance of alder and sycamore trees growing at that point of the river. Lummis’s designs were reminiscent of various exotic architectural styles while predating the Revival craze that would follow the opening of the Panama Canal. Instead, this influence came to Lummis firsthand in his travels.
In typical Lummis fashion, the eccentric took his time bringing El Alisal to completion. Just as he had strolled from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, he spent 13 years erecting the makeshift castle. In the early years, he shared a simple four-room “camp home” with Eva and Turbese, freeing him up to take his time with the main structure. Eventually, a massive craftsman house blossomed into a 4,000-square-foot castle big enough to hold Lummis’s colossal personality.
A Castle to Fit the Man
Lummis cemented the stones he’d pulled from the Arroyo Seco with concrete to form the castle’s exterior. The concrete theme continued deep into the Lummis house. Lummis loved the simplicity of concrete, particularly how easy it was to clean. After a night in the home’s exhibition hall, entertaining fellow creatives, many of whom were artists, he would dash a bucket of water across the concrete and quickly wipe it down. Lummis referred to these frequent parties as “noises”; an early motion toward bohemian life.
You can see the impression that Lummis’s travels left on him, hinted at in architectural flourishes throughout the home. Arched windows and a stylized bell tower echo Spanish Missions amidst Colonial touches. Telephone poles that serve as rustic exposed roofing beams loom over smooth stucco edifices once adorned with tribal tapestries. The window panes in one room are intersected with photo negatives, often portraits of indigenous people that Lummis took himself. The entire Lummis House features a patio as its axis with every room opening out to nature in at least two directions. This was not a man who could abide containment.
Unrealized Aspects of the Lummis House
But several of Lummis’s ideas for the home didn’t come to fruition. For example, if you visit the Lummis house today, you’ll find a door on the second floor that opens to a steep drop downward. Originally, a balcony was to be built just beyond this door. As an interesting aside, Lummis used a genuine meteor for the doorknob of this passage to oblivion.
Other aborted ideas included a Spanish-style supper room and a home theater. Preservationists even briefly considered adding these rooms in a 1939 renovation but ultimately opted against it. Then, there are the details that have been lost to time. Most notable among them, the Lummis house used to boast a tower made of stone.
Lummis’s Connection to El Alisal
Though Lummis was a man of the world, he seemed to hold a great affinity for the property he dubbed El Alisal. He married his third wife, Gertrude, on its grounds beneath the swaying alders and sycamores. Its pastoral surroundings inspired him to start the Arroyo Seco Foundation in 1905, devoted to conserving and utilizing the natural habitat for leisure. He also founded the Southwest Museum which still stands less than a mile from the home’s front door. When Lummis died in 1928, his ashes were interred in a vault within the walls of El Alisal; perhaps the truest testament to his feelings about the castle he built from scratch.
The Lummis House Today
Unsurprisingly, the Lummis house has earned its place on the list of the National Register of Historic Places and as a designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. For decades, it served as the official headquarters for the Historical Society of Southern California. However, they vacated the premises in 2015 and management of the city-owned Lummis house was assigned to LA’s Recreation and Parks Department.
The Lummis house is open to the public on weekends for self-guided tours. It’s a great way to not only see Lummis’s creative craftsmanship but also his personal collection of historically significant artifacts still furnishing the home. If possible, time your visit for the first Sunday in June. Historically, this is when the Lummis Day Community Foundation holds its annual Lummis Day Festival. Taking place at both El Alisal and Heritage Square Museum, a typical Lummis Day Festival honors the late eccentric with art, poetry, dance, and family fun.
You may notice the official plaque designating the Lummis House as Historical Landmark Number 531. The plaque goes on to describe how Lummis “selected this site in 1895 chiefly because of a mammoth, ancient sycamore (El Alisal) which has since died and been replaced by four saplings.” We can view this as symbolic of Lummis’s influence through activism, innovation, and a rare knack for truly looking beyond the constraints of expectation.
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