Like father, like son: Frederick and Roderick Burnham built neighboring hilltop homes in Hollywoodland in 1926.
The family compound combined several lots above Durand Drive, on the same peak as Castillo del Lago (far left in above photo), purchased with Frederick’s new fortune from striking oil in the Dominguez Hills, about twenty-five miles away from where the Burnhams were living in Pasadena. Until the age of 62, he had only been rich in fame as an American frontiersman turned British military assassin whose exploits inspired the international Boy Scouts.
Roderick, a geologist and World War I veteran, worked with Hollywoodland architect John DeLario for his Spanish-Italianate mansion, while Frederick commissioned a complementary design from his brother-in-law Joseph J. Blick, a prominent Pasadena architect.
Both masterpieces were prominently featured in a 1927 Hollywoodland brochure, with a colorful illustration of Roderick’s four-bedroom home on the cover.
Access to the hilltop property was originally via an elevator adjacent to Roderick’s three-car garage and a two-story structure for Frederick’s two-story garage/servants’ quarters (today, both homes have individual driveways; not sure who gets the elevator).
The doors opened into an arcade with tiled walkways to either residence—and across the lawn, a magnificent view of Lake Hollywood!
“Never shall I forget the sight as we stepped out of the elevator,” marveled Mildred L. Woodruff, sister of Hollywoodland developer S. H. Woodruff, in 1930. “It was so beautiful that it hurt. Lake Hollywood appeared more exquisite than ever before and the surrounding hills greener and more charming. It was almost too wonderful to be real!”
Frederick’s half-acre of land featured terraced gardens, rose-bordered paths, and an extensive putting green that he put to good use. Inside the 4,869-square-foot home, he spent much of his time in the library where he displayed trophies from his adventures. One wall was devoted entirely to portraits of all the great people he had met along the way.
In 1936, the 75-year-old narrowly survived when his vehicle plunged down a cliff on Heather Drive, only 500 yards from home. Coincidentally the day before, he had filed a permit to build a new residence at 3575 Griffith Park Boulevard. By then, Roderick had also moved away from Durand Drive (and Hollywood) after divorcing his wife of 30 years.
Frederick’s life had all the makings of a Hollywood story. In 1958, a decade after his death, Ernest Hemingway acquired the film rights to his memoir, Scouting on Two Continents, yet died before the start of production. So did Cecil B. DeMille, whose biopic On My Honor focused on the scouting movement spearheaded by Frederick’s dear friend Lord Robert Baden-Powell. In 2001, producers revisited Jesse Lasky Jr.’s original script, but nothing came of it.
Most recently in 2014, Brett Rather and Ed Norton optioned “American Hippopotamus,” an article written by Jon Mooallem for Atavist.com, about Frederick’s failed attempt to fix the 1910 national meat shortage by convincing Congress to import the animal for consumption. Like the other Major Frederick Russell Burnham projects before it, a film adaptation unfortunately never happened.
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