Silverlake Hilltop
- linnieaikensartist
- Feb 20
- 9 min read
Updated: Feb 24
This post is a bit of Silver Lake history for you nostalgia buffs. First of all, it was written Silverlake for most of our lives, so I am sticking with that, since it took its name from the adjacent Silver Lake Reservoir, which sounded kind of redundant to many of the early homeowners, then and now, especially since it wasn't technically a lake! The neighborhood was originally called Ivanhoe, after the classic novel of the same title, but the name changed to Silver Lake when Herman Silver commissioned the building of the large city reservoir, which was named Silver Lake, in 1907, named after himself of course. William Mulholland was the designer, the same man who also designed the Los Angeles Aquaduct ("L.A. River"), and for whom the Griffith Park fountain memorialized.
For over 30 years our family claimed the highest point in Silverlake, a neighborhood in Los Angeles that was then, and even more so now, an upscale artistic and somewhat bohemian community. My great grandparents, Daniel Webster and Elizabeth Lott, lived in their Ivanhoe home near a small lake and swimming hole on what would be the north end of the reservoir to come. Daniel Webster, a retired World Featherweight Boxing Champion, was the first "playground director" at the L.A. Coliseum when in its earliest days was used as a large physical education arena. He also coached in Los Angeles the Olympic Games hopefuls in swimming. In 1932 he was to referee the USA Olympic swimming when he was killed in a tragic auto accident that same year.
Their daughter and son-in-law Aikens later purchased a home on the top of hill which looked down on the Lott home and into the reservoir in what would be called Silver Lake. Grandpa, the corporate attorney for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler at the time, was friends with Walt Disney, who had one of his first studios on Hyperion Ave., at the bottom of the hill. Mid-Century renown architect, John Lautner, built his famous "Silvertop" home right next door and slightly below the Aikens home. The home was three or four blocks straight up from what we'd called the "Laurel & Hardy Stairs," the moniker inspired by the 1930's black and white short-film comedy, "The Music Box," where they attempted to carry a piano up four flights of those concrete stairs. As kids walking to and from Ivanhoe School, we used to pretend to re-enact these scenes while laughing our heads off!
The 3300 sq. ft. Aikens house stood tall and stately, a large traditional Colonial at the very top of Silverlake Hill at 2150 Micheltorena Street. It's strange how certain addresses stay with you for a lifetime. My dad and his siblings grew up there, and later, we lived there for a number of years as well to help my grandmother. I spent a great many hours in that house and yard during my childhood and teens. It had been home to three generations of Aikens'.
`Originally, Mr. Van de Kamp had the house built for his family in 1939 but soon thereafter sold it to my grandfather that same year— Mr. Van de Kamp of Vande Kamp’s Holland Bakery Goods (c. 1915-1990). Van de Kamp had a bakery and a large restaurant and carhop restaurant on the border of Los Angeles and Glendale, most recognizable for its huge Dutch windmill above the establishment. It was one of our favorite places to eat as kids, most memorable to us for the sarsaparilla candy sticks near the front entrance. But I digress.
Today, this $6.5 million colonial home boasts a lovely large pool up on top of what was then a vacant lot of dead grass, also owned by the family, from which two generations of Aikens children lorded it over the neighbor kids in childhood war games. Next door was architect, John Lautner’s famous “Silvertop” home. When Silvertop was being built, a surveyor had determined that our wall was two inches onto their property and made us move the whole wall, and then they put up barbed wire on the property line. Needless to say, neighborly relations were strained from the start, not that the architect was to blame. From our angle, looking somewhat like a concrete parking lot ramp, everyone in the family at the time would exclaim that the house was “hideous.” Now, he is considered a genius architect of that era. He was like the Picasso in architecture; one who dared to build outside the box for the first time, scoffed at originally and proven genius later. These responses are what every artist aspires to I believe… shake up the viewer, challenge his current beliefs then bring him around to a new perspective. Who says artists aren’t movers and shakers?!]
I can remember for years counting those 81 steps up from the garage and street to the house, both as a child visiting my grandparents, and also as a young person living there. The tiny wooden garage on the street seemed so incongruent with the large stately manor on the top of the ridge. I think there was talk at some point of putting in some kind of mechanized conveyance to at least get luggage and groceries up and down, but it never happened in my lifetime. There were plenty of kids in both generations to do the lugging, however the local "Hub Market" delivered most of my grandmother's groceries to her doorstep. They must have hated that job!
As a child, I had loved twirling in the large foyer. It had its own bathroom, a fireplace, and of course, opulent staircase that ascended from it and wrapped into a mezzanine paralleling three sides of the home. Covering the walls were framed pictures. Most of them were of my dad, aunts and uncle riding horses, jumping horses, and receiving equestrian awards. Each rider wore the requisite Western riding cowboy hat and fringed clothes. My favorites were the ones of Daddy trick-riding, standing up riding four horses at once or bull-riding. Other pictures were of my grandparents in beautiful evening clothes, jewelry and fur coats and stoles. On each visit to my grandparents’ house, I enjoyed looking at my grandma in her many beautiful evening gowns and jewelry. Sometimes she’d let me wear her tiara from when she'd been Queen of the Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the 1950’s.
As children, we visited every holiday at least, and I spent many overnights staying with my grandmother as I was the eldest of all of the grandchildren. I already knew all of the neighborhood kids since I initially lived at the bottom of the hill on Griffith Park Blvd., and they were in my classes (Ivanhoe, Micheltorena, King & Marshall) and at church. As a side note here, famed architect Richard Nuetra designed Silverlake Presbyterian Church (now called Silverlake Community Church), and my great grandfather, Daniel Webster Lott, ceremonially laid the first cornerstone.
Back to the manor...My favorite spot in the house was the book alcove, a bay-windowed alcove in the living room that overlooked the valley below Silverlake, a vantage point from which I could also see my other grandma's house perched at the very top of the Los Feliz Hills. It was filled floor to ceiling with hardback Time and Life books, and hundreds of National Geographic Magazines since they first came out. I think I read every single one of those books, as I kept an ear to the many conversations that revealed way more than I should have been privy to undoubtedly. Being banished to the book alcove was no punishment at all.
Each of my four aunts had their own rooms on the second story. Two looked out over the Silver Lake Reservoir, another a treehouse view of Lautner's Silvertop home, and the fourth panorama'd a view of the valley between Silver Lake and Los Feliz. That room was a little girl's dream, done all in light yellow, daisies and eyelet white, complete with a lacy canopy bed and dozens of china dolls and equestrian awards. I imagined my aunt sitting up in her window like a princess surveying her kingdom. My dad and uncle had rooms on the first floor, with easy access to the outside, which I understand they'd made full use of sneaking in late at nights. Dad's room was originally the maid's quarters and had it's own fireplace and a bell that rang through from the dining room.
Highly polished hardwood floors predominated throughout, except for the dining room, the only one carpeted, interestingly enough. The maid's bell was under the carpet near where my grandmother would sit. The lower half of the walls throughout featured an unpainted, varnished wooden wainscoting. My second favorite room was the breakfast parlor, in the shape of bay windows on three sides looking out onto the garden and yard. I guess I liked bay windows as a kid!
Grandpa's original intention was to build a full-sized swimming pool on the large vacant lot next door, as my grandmother had been an award-winning swimmer. My grandmother swam and performed in a group with Esther Williams, practicing at both the municipal pool near the entrance to Griffith Park, in the narrow valley between Silverlake and Los Feliz, as well as at the Los Angeles Athletic Club closer to downtown. Williams had popularized the sport through performing it in films as an actress, but Virginia was one of the group swimmers in those flims/movies. Now the sport is called artistic swimming. She stopped performing in 1941, with the birth of her first child, my father. Sadly, my grandfather passed when he was only 50, and the pool was never built on that lot. My aunts' memories of it highlighted my hellion dad as a young boy, staking his sisters out in the dirt as he dangled spiders in front of their faces. My childhood memories of that vacant lot include a large metal swing set in a foxtail field that adequately deterred the neighborhood kids from getting the drop on us in war games.
Still, it was a home filled with children and laughter for two generations, and perhaps three, if you count the Van de Kamps. By the time is was sold when I finished high school, it had fallen to some disrepair, so we moved in a number of years earlier to help my grandmother repair it and prepare it for sale as she could not care for a 7-bedroom home alone anymore. In 1979, it sold for $250,000, and now it is appraised at $6 million. Mind-boggling. Seeing that home go marked the end of an era and still provides an incredible number of memories for all of us.
The home has been sold and resold a number of times since, remodeled each time, but the most recent owners finally returned it to a glory that it once had, the kitchen a modern masterpiece now, but the fireplaces removed, the wainscoting painted, and the two add-on bedrooms converted back to balconies and patios. It is an utterly beautiful home now, but the best part; they finally added in that full-sized swimming pool on the adjacent lot, creating a backyard that it was meant to be. Gone is the large iron "A" on the fireplace, as are the numerous comical garden gnomes that had stood as sentries on the slope in front of the house. I suppose they were a nod to our decidedly Scottish heritage. Memories of them bring me a smile of nostalgia. Strangely, that old wooden garage at the bottom of the 81 steps is still there, like a portal to the past. I can still picture the stacks of crates holding tiny Dr. Pepper bottles perched beside it in my mind's eye.
Perhaps many of us have memories of a childhood home that represent untold stories that shaped our lives. A house is merely an object, of course, and it's the relationships of family and friends that surround that house are the real treasure. Still, I am pleased to see the rebirth of that home and location, and that it didn't get demolished as often happens nowadays. I hope that it provides its current family a lifetime of beautiful memories and sense of community like it did three generations of Aikens.
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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".
I grew up and still live in the area. I remember a Rory Aitkens who lived there and ended up marrying a friend of mine. Was Rory your uncle?