Restored Magnolia Mansion Is Monument to Elegant Past

For years, the once elegant 18-room house in Sherman Oaks was called the “haunted mansion” by neighborhood children. The acre lot and two-story house had become choked with weeds and neglected as they passed from owner to owner.

When Jerry Berns and his wife, T. J., first visited it in 1980, “You couldn’t see the house from the street, the grounds were so overgrown,” he said. “It’s no wonder few people realized what type of house was here.”

The couple were intrigued, however, by the Spanish Colonial Revival style of the 1929 building and by features not commonly seen during their house hunting: outdoor sleeping porches adjoining two of the upstairs bedrooms, an Italian marble fireplace in the living room, a dining room with a doorman’s alcove and bar dating from Prohibition days, stained- and leaded-glass windows, wrought-iron balcony railings and window trim, a chauffeur’s quarters in the four-car detached garage, hand-painted ceiling murals and grounds that included a pool that looks like a lagoon and a cabana.

The place was “in deplorable condition,” Jerry Berns recalled. But they bought it the day they saw it.

Charity Functions

Five years and $250,000 later, the “haunted mansion” regularly serves as a showcase for large fund-raising and charity functions. Restored to the splendor of its Roaring ‘20s roots and the majesty of its name, The Magnolia, the property is one of Los Angeles’ most recently designated historic-cultural monuments.

This is one celebrated mansion not located in Hancock Park or another older, wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood. Rather, it is in an area of the San Fernando Valley more noted for shopping malls, apartment developments and housing subdivisions than for buildings of historic or architectural significance.

The house is believed to be the only owner-occupied, single-family residence in the central Valley to be declared a historic-cultural monument by the Los Angeles City Council, said Ruth Ann Lehrer of the Los Angeles Conservancy. Lehrer said that, although several homes in older Los Angeles neighborhoods have been so designated, the honor is very rare in the Valley.

Built for Millionaire

The Magnolia, named because of its location at 13242 Magnolia Blvd., was built for inventor Theodore B. Hershberg, a millionaire who enjoyed a flashy Hollywood life style, historian W. W. Robinson said.

The four-bedroom house is on one of the few one-acre properties in the central Valley that survived the post-World War II building boom.

Once the site of lavish parties attended by Hollywood luminaries, the property deteriorated under a series of owners after Hershberg sold it in the 1940s, said David Cameron, a history consultant who researched the background of the property.

Jerry Berns, who owns a large real estate company, said he and his wife were in the market for a larger home for their family when they first toured the Magnolia.

“We didn’t say a word to each other as we walked through the house,” T. J. Berns said. “We just looked at each other and nodded. We both knew this was something special. To me, it was a house crying out to be helped.”

Jerry Berns said the house cost $16,000 to build in 1929, when the average home in the area was selling for $5,000. He said he paid $385,000 for the property and the $250,000 for its restoration.

Original Fixtures Found

Previous owners, he said, had good intentions but had never gotten around to restoring the house.

The couple spent six months clearing the grounds and preparing the house for restoration. In an attempt to stay as close to the original architecture and interior decor as possible, the couple did countless hours of research, T. J. Berns said.

They visited various Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles until they found the right artist to restore frescoes on ceilings, she said, and located 85-year-old John Selak, who was responsible for doing the original ironwork.

The couple spent three days in Guadalajara ordering hand-crafted furniture for the house. In all, 36 craftsmen worked on the restoration over six months.

Despite their research, the Bernses said, they didn’t fully appreciate the home’s significance until they met Marsha Broderick, president of Pink Ladies Construction Co. of Northridge, in the course of the restoration. It was Broderick who suggested that the house be nominated as a historic-cultural monument.

“There are pages and pages of guidelines you have to follow to be successful,” Broderick said. “Unknowingly, Jerry and T. J. had adhered to almost all of them.”

Cameron, who did the research required to qualify the house for historic-cultural status, said the Bernses avoided the mistake many people make when restoring old homes.

Urge to Rebuild

“There is this urge to just tear out things and build them over,” Cameron said. “This they didn’t do. They took what was there and made it functional.”

Under the Municipal Code, a structure must have “the distinguishing characteristics of an architectural-type specimen” and be “inherently valuable for a study of a period style or method of construction” to be eligible for historic-cultural designation.

It took Broderick 18 months of oral and written presentations to persuade the Cultural Heritage Commission to vote in April to recommend that the City Council declare the structure Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 293. The council approved the commission’s recommendation June 18.

Permit Required

The city designation means that any alteration of the structure requires a permit from the city. The Bernses will get no tax breaks, however, because they did not get the historic designation until after they completed their work on the house.

The Bernses have allowed charity groups, including Women’s American ORT, the United Jewish Welfare Fund, the City of Hope, and Toys for Tots to use their home for fund-raising events. The Ronald McDonald House Christmas parties for children have been held at the house the past two years.

Benefit, House Tours

The next benefit scheduled there, which will include house tours, is for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation on Sept. 22.

“We really want to share our home with the community,” Jerry Berns said. The couple’s infant daughter and T. J. Berns’ teen-age daughter by a former marriage also live in the home.