The Greystone Estate

The storied house in question is Greystone, the largest family estate ever built in Beverly Hills. Situated on a hill above famed Sunset Boulevard, the majestic yet mysterious manor was a gift from real-life oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny to his son and daughter-in-law, Edward "Ned" and Lucy Doheny, during the Roaring Twenties. Built on a 429-acre estate, the mansion became an imposing icon of wealth and power in California's early oil-rich days. "Of all the lavish gifts Edward Doheny gave his beloved son, the fifty-five room baronial castle was, by far, the most extraordinary, considered to be the most luxurious residence south of William Randolph Hearst's spectacular estate at San Simeon, California," says Margaret Leslie Davis in her Doheny biography, Dark Side of Fortune (University of California Press, 1998 and 2001).

As to who would design the mansion, the elder Doheny held a competition between prominent architects Wallace Neff and Gordon Kaufmann, and the latter won the coveted commission. Known for his Art Deco-style work on the Los Angeles Times building and the Hoover Dam, the London-born American architect designed the mansion in the English-Gothic Revival style. While Spanish Colonial Revival architecture was all the rage in Southern California at the time, the Dohenys preferred the Tudor designs of many old-money estates in Philadelphia, Chicago and upstate New York. Construction began in 1927 and ended the following year. Greystone and its gardens cost $3.1 million to build — inflation would set that figure at perhaps $50 million today, although it would be nearly impossible to duplicate the mansion in terms of the land, materials and workmanship. The 46,000-square-foot home with 67 rooms — 55 of them livable — had all the trappings of wealth and every accoutrement that a young couple with five children could possibly want.

Tragically, the 35-year-old Doheny heir lived in the stately home for only a few months, as his life was cut short in 1929. In one of the City of Angels' most oft-debated murder cases, he and his secretary, Hugh Plunkett, were found dead in a first-floor guest bedroom, the result of a possible murder-suicide — a mystery that remains to this day. In 1932, Lucy married investment banker Leigh M. Battson, and she continued to live with her family in Greystone until 1955.