In Sunnylands, did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…
…or at least Walter and Leonore Annenberg.
On March 1, 2012, after a $61.5 million renovation, Sunnylands, the former winter residence of Walter and Leonore Annenberg will open to the public. He was the TV Guide publishing magnate, and she was the niece of Columbia Pictures chief, Harry Cohn, who raised her. On 200 acres in the California desert set behind a pink security wall, Walter and Leonore built a 25,000-square-foot house with an art and design collection so unusual that no one seemed able to estimate its value. Sunnylands, which now has a new visitor center and garden, once hosted presidents, princes, and movie stars who played on the private golf course and fished in the stocked lakes.
“Sunnylands’ history reaches back to 1951, when the Annenbergs married and moved to Inwood, an estate outside Philadelphia. Eventually they wanted a second base on the West Coast. At heart, daughter Diane Deshong said, “Mom was a real Californian.”
After Sunnylands was completed in 1966, the couple spent about five months a year there, where they gathered family as well as luminaries that included the power elite (Queen Elizabeth II, Margaret Thatcher and eight presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton) as well as Hollywood royalty (Barbara and Frank Sinatra were married there). All found refuge in pampered privacy.”
Although the preview tours during Palm Springs Modernism Week sold out quickly, Geoffrey Cowan, who is president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, and the curator, Anne Rowe, led a private walk-through of the Rancho Mirage home, which is one of the largest and most historic in Coachella Valley.
“It was their final gift to the nation, in a way,” Cowan said of the Annenbergs’ wish for Sunnylands’ transition from private home to public trust. “It will be used for retreats, a kind of Camp David of the West, for leaders to meet to make a difference.”
In March, the public can take the windy road off Bob Hope Drive to the visitor center designed by Frederick Fisher & Partners, the firm behind the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica. The architecture of the visitor center and the interiors by Michael Smith reflect upon the aesthetics of Jones and Haines in the use of materials and space.
A ride by electric cart takes visitors to the home, a sprawling Modernist structure with a pink pyramidal roof and walls of glass. Although there is over half an acre of space in the house, it was built with just one bedroom. Three guest rooms designed by Jones were added in 1977. Eleven artificial lakes surround the house, as does a nine-hole golf course.
The front doors lead to an atrium with the Auguste Rodin sculpture, “Eve” surrounded by pink bromeliads. Walter Annenberg’s fortune was once estimated, by Forbes, at $4 billion. The world-class collection of Impressionist and Post-Impresionist paintings – by Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne – now exists as a collection of reproductions. The originals were contributed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after Walter’s death, but there remains original sculpture by Jean Arp, Steuben glass, Chinese ceramics and English silver-gilt.
Although the house includes over 3,000 letters from U.S. Presidents and two dozen Christmas cards from the Queen Mother (Walter was ambassador to the United Kingdom under Richard Nixon), the house contains photographs of the Annenberg children and grandchildren, reminding visitors that the house was indeed a home.
Read the L.A. Times article for more information about Sunnylands. The house and grounds will be open for public tours Thursdays through Sundays, although they will be closed during the month of August. Tours must be booked in advance, and the cost is $35.
You can find more information at www.sunnylands.org, and an L.A. Times photogallery of Sunnylands is here.
-Bill at
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