Los Feliz Gull's Wing & An Unsung Genius
- linnieaikensartist
- Mar 8
- 13 min read
Updated: Mar 9
History of: 4040 Farmouth Drive • Los Feliz • Los Angeles, CA (and its architect/builder)
I want to take some time and honor my mother’s father and mother here. My grandfather, Harry Hammond Keith, was an extraordinary person, who otherwise few people may never know. My beautiful grandmother, Mabel Keith, had immigrated from Scotland in 1913. As an adult, I’d come to learn that my grandfather was one of those unsung creative, engineering, architectural and business geniuses—completely self-taught. He was a humble man from humble beginnings, but was a self-made man of rare vision, and everything he touched appeared to turn to gold. He’d bought up thousands of shares of Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1952 for a pittance upon the opening of the very first stores. This, coupled with investments in other equally successful stocks, made him millions. He’d opened Keith Electric Corporation, which installed the first electricity for large businesses in Los Angeles, such as Monte Santo Hospital in Silverlake, L.A. General Hospital, Cal State L.A., and University of California, Santa Barbara later in the mid-60’s, among many, many others.
It should be noted here, that my immediate family were and are not millionaires, as self-made individuals who lived through the "Leave-it-to Beaver"1950's and "buck the establishment" hippie years of 1960's-70's. We're just your average lower-middle class with the roots of exceptional people, both intellectually and creatively. Caviar roots and back-to-basics, whole foods leaves.
In 1954, Grandpa used some of his stock earnings to buy up the entire knoll at the top of Farmouth Drive which crowned the highest hill in Los Feliz, selling off three parcels to others at a profit, and keeping 7200 sq ft. with which he used to build his own mid-century home and gardens at 4040 Farmouth, wrapping 3 sides of the hilltop. It had a 300º view of Hollywood, to Griffith Park Observatory and the entire Griffith Park, Burbank and Glendale and around to the valley between Los Feliz and Silverlake, where the Aikens’ Home stood on the very top of the Silverlake Hill. It was a low-slung home curving around the knoll of Farmouth Drive, where the street dead-ends at the top of the hill. An architect in his own right, at least of his own home, he had the vision to incorporate elements that the turn-of-the century would later use, such as radiant floor heating, originally conceived of and used 5,000 years earlier in ancient Rome, but later attributed to Franklin Lloyd Wright, who as the first to use it in the U.S.A. about the same time as Grandpa. The entire home had built-in shelving and cupboards all of Honduran Mahogany and Thai teakwood that he’d shipped in from those countries. Speakers and an intercom system had been built into every room, technological advancements all new and very rare for the era. Large, thick plate glass windows wrapped around the house, and several sets of sliding glass doors opened off the long hallway and living room onto gardens and the patio that ran the length of the curved house, nestled in under a wide roof overhang. He had designed and built the home, which he once told me was in the shape of a gull's wing in flight, reflecting his love of deep sea fishing and being on the water. In my mind, I took to later calling the home "Gull's Wing."
A very long hallway ran half the length of the home, each of my aunts' and mother's childhood rooms (and later, ours) to the sides and the grand master suite at the far end. That suite also had mahogany cabinets built-in below a bank of 4 sets of large plate glass windows wrapping around to give way to clear views of the Griffith Park Observatory and Hollywood below us. When my family lived there after my grandmother passed, we girls would use those cabinets as our modeling runway (well, when Mom wasn't looking). We'd also ride our stingray bikes down the steep driveway below those windows, screaming like banshees while the neighbor doctor's boys, across the way threw rotten oranges and kumquats at us from the treehouse at the corner of the coyote populated vacant lot as we zoomed past. We nearly crashed into the guardrail where the street dead-ended at Griffith Park, but that was also part of the fun. Of course, we returned the favor when it was their turn!
The formal dining room had large corner windows with views of Los Feliz below us, Griffith Park, and Glendale and Burbank. As long as I can remember, a large telescope stood before the corner windows. (We saw a lot more than we should have seen!) My grandparents were excellent cooks as well, and Grandpa, the master of the grill, especially of choice cuts of meat, he’d created his own built-in barbeque, rotisserie, and smoker into a brick peninsula that jutted out into the patio from the side of the house, utilizing an extra wide chimney that rose from the living room nearby. He also designed and built an all-teakwood kitchen for my grandma—a cook’s spacious and well-designed dream around a stainless, hooded large stove built into a teak cabinet semi-island, both inventive for the era, as the kitchen island concept wasn’t formally introduced until the 1960’s and stainless appliances were only just introduced. Teakwood lazy susans were built into every corner cabinet and a ventilated steel-lined bread drawer pulled out at an angle from the kitchen island. All of these may seem common now, but in the early 50's, they were each innovative and state-of-the-art. And yet, I can also still remember for years, the glass milk bottles in metal carrying basket, being delivered by the Arden Milk truck to the back door of that kitchen.
His wife Mabel, my grandmother from Scotland, was the landscape designer and gardener for the backyard that snuggled into the curve of the entire length of the gull's wing shaped house, the length of two of the houses later built on the other side of the knoll. The third plot that Grandpa had sold off was slightly lower on the hilltop, and a sizable home with ornate security gates had been built there. As kids, we never dared cross those gates, but I remember the avocado green Cadillac Eldorado that lived there! Grandma Keith always seemed very elegant to me. I never once saw her in the daytime where she wasn’t in full makeup, sheathed in a perfectly fitted dress, stockings, sling-back heels, and her bright red curly hair swept up in some elaborately coiffed style. The story goes; her friends often commented that "Mabel would look good even in a $5 Sears wash dress." Grandma Keith’s large yard was magical to me. I’d never seen any dichondra lawn, much less a large one, which was lush and pillowy, like laying on a million tiny lily pads, floating on the water, or so I believed. Bordering the lawn, lined up in front of the long fence, were hundreds of tall gladiolas in every color of the rainbow, all lined up like colorful showgirls dancing, each flower face having a personality of its own. Two very tall fan palms stood to one side by the gate, sentinels overlooking the driveway, announcing any visitors. These were flanked by the dangerous yet exotic birds of paradise. To the other side of the gate, by the garage door leading to the yard, were lush ferns of every size, unfurling their fronds and uncurling their fiddle-heads from a cushiony bed of baby’s tears. Dichondra, baby's tears, gladiolas and gardenias are plants I associate with Grandma Keith to this day. Along the covered patio stood two large camelia bushes and a rubber tree, of all things! By the kitchen door grew the sweetest smelling gardenia bush. My own mother carried this forward with her own gardenia at every house we lived in over the years— bit of her mother always near. This is a terrible little illustration, perspective wise, but I've always been more concerned with feeling than rules, but this sort of conveys the sense of wonder I felt in the garden of "Gull's Wing."
When I was a "wee lass" I found some little white stones in a circle under the ferns one afternoon. At my questioning, my grandma bent to peer under the ferns with me and acted surprised at the sight. She told me there must have been a faerie ring the night before where the faeries and wood sprites would come out to dance. I asked if I could sleep over to see them the following night, but she told me that it would never do because if little children watched or joined in, the faeries would punish them and make them dance in the middle of the ring until they fell down, completely exhausted. If they did, the faeries would leave that place forever. Of course, this is a bit of Scottish folklore passed down to me was to account for the natural phenomenon of little mushrooms growing in a ring in grassy
areas, but I didn't know that then! It fueled my imagination for many such paintings as this through the years.
Gull's Wing Today: Several decades later, the garden area had been converted into a long lap pool, with lovely but minimal landscaping, and the home was used regularly for L.A. celebrity photo shoots by a well-known, successful photographer, who now owned the 2700 sq.ft., $2.9 million dollar home in the 1990's. I don't know who owns the home now. Sadly, at one point in between when Grandpa built it and today, some owner painted all of that beautiful Honduran Mahogany with white paint, having no clue how rare and special it was. There should be a law against people buying unique, artisan-made period homes if they are just going to gut them of what made them special and turn it into some ordinary modern structure. Such is the way of our culture though, isn't it?--little respect for history. It’s a travesty often, in my opinion. Then again, I have great sentimental attachment as my grandfather was both the architect and builder and I remember it's original glory. Unfortunately too, the outside was painted a mustard yellow. Perhaps it was done to deter burglars?!
Well, that and the ivy! I am humored to see that subsequent owners all gave it a valiant attempt to rid the property of that sea of old ivy ground cover that wrapped around the outside bank of the house, right down to the street. I'd swear that 2500 sq ft of the property was that enormous field of ivy. As kids, we'd hated work days spent trimming that back and at times trying to yank it out for good. Rodents, potato bugs, huge spiders and snakes galore, a ground jungle of vines dissuading any would-be burglar, to our way of thinking as kids. Unfortunately, we got TP'd once, and my dad made us kids clean all of that out of the ivy!—not a happy day for us Aikens girls. Never-the-less, it seems that ivy will be here to stay in memoriam. Ivy still gives me the heebie jeebies all these years later!
Still, through all of these years, I didn’t know any of Grandpa's genius had created this beautiful mid-century home until I was much older and learned of it from my mother and her sister. I initially remembered Grandpa Keith more for his work as a master boat designer and builder. In the back of “the shop” where he had his electrical business, butting up to the L.A. river, in what was often called “Frog Town,” he usually was building a boat. I say “a” because he built more than one. From scratch, and from his own designs. The first that I can recall, was relatively small, only 3 decks and maybe 40 or 50 feet long, and the latter that I can remember working on, was huge in length and 4-5 decks high, including the engine room on the lowest deck, and more than 80 feet long I think, with a long swordfish plank that dropped down in front, adding another 25 ft. On weekends we’d go down to the shop and help Grandpa caulk every single joint of that boat. It was dreadfully boring, tedious work, but Grandpa was an absolute perfectionist and meticulously checked all of our work, a trait shared by both of my folks, and later, my sisters and myself.
Going out in the Channel (Channel Islands off California) with him deep sea fishing was what made it all worth it, where we’d spend quite a number of weekends in my childhood. Once I finally got my sea legs, I never lost them. We weren’t allowed to be weak and get seasick anyway. I loved those trips, which made all the previous grunt work worth it. The following two paintings express my love for these fishing trips, not that I actually cared about the fishing aspect. It was the time to spend with my grandpa that I especially loved. (Note on the boat name: Doreen was his second wife.)
He eventually did claim his nemesis swordfish, and I can remember old "One Eye" following me from the wall of the formal dining room for years! It creeped me out big time! There we'd be, eating a gourmet dinner with full service place settings, while old "One Eye stared down on us menacingly. I also have a less menacing memory of going on Grandpa's boats and stopping at the sardine bait raft, watching the sardines drop down from the sky (a huge vat with a moveable shoot and pull chain like water used to be delivered to trains in the old days). The bait would cascade out of the shoot into the bait tank, like manna falling from heaven. Grandpa thought it was funny to first put my 6 or 7 year old self in the boat's 5-cubic foot bait tank before he pulled the chain, providing laughter all around. This memory inspired the watercolor painting, “Baited Breath.”
Suffice it to say, Grandpa Keith, self-made man, unknown by most then and now, and was a true visionary, a man using ideas and practices well before his time, a simple man by all appearances, was actually an extraordinary man of genius, innovation, intelligence, with superior skills in a wide range of areas.
I am grateful for knowing the little I do about him, and am too grateful for his legacy of creative excellence and ingenuity passed down to those who came after him. I wish I’d known how important it would have been to me to know him better and learn from him, but I was young, off to college and my own adventures. …another reason I want to pass down the story/stories of our family. My hope is that those who follow me understand the importance of both learning from those who went before us and feeling a sense of belonging to a family heritage. Also, I wanted to preserve a little bit of the Silverlake/Los Feliz history of Los Angeles.
I am reminded of an old reel-to-reel home movie we had as kids that we would play on Friday night movie night now and again. Mom would pop two big bowls of buttered popcorn, and Dad would drag out the film projector. We’d watch him weave the film through all of the portions of the projector, and then we would watch movies of family vacations as we lay on the shag carpet, popcorn bowls balanced on our tummies. We’d especially love watching them again at fast speed or backwards to lots of hoots and hollers. At one point, Mom had the films converted to a VHS video, and it was passed around the daughters so that we could watch it again. I think it only got to 2 or maybe 3 of us before it was lost to time. That was before the video ever got to me, for which I have bemoaned for several decades. It is also one of the reasons I started this book/blog— as a way to preserve some of our stories and those of our ancestors to pass down to our children.
One such scene was of us girls after one of the trips out in the Channel on Grandpa Keith’s fishing boat. We always brought home a lot of fish during those years, mostly tuna, albacore, sea bass, and maybe a shark here and there. In this particular movie clip, four large tunas or albacore were laid out on the driveway at home to drain a bit. Then dad instructed us girls to carry them into the old garage to the big work bench where mom was gutting, skinning and filleting them. We had to have been between seven and three, still in our shorts and straw shell hats that Grandma Aikens had brought back with her from Puerto Rico that year. What ensued was a hilarious manhandling of giant fish by little girls trying to find a way to pick them up, hold and carry them to Mom, without them sliding out of our grip. With the goal of not wanting to lose this priceless image, I decided to paint it from memory, which cartoon-like, is close enough to convey the hilarity my dad watched while originally filming this.
In looking back over the past 65 years, I am thinking that much of life has had the feel of fish wrangling!
Mom? She was and is a chip off the same block. Renaissance people. It has always felt dwarfing in the shadow of Mom’s genius, but now knowing of Grandpa’s genius too, all the more so! This is another one of the stories into which I was born. Mom's inherited intellectual and creative genius I will save for another story!
_______________
I would love it if you would leave a little comment at the end of each blog that you read too. (Scroll way down to the bottom of the blog post under "Recent Posts" to get to the comment section, and/or click the heart button if you liked the post.)
Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".
Comments