The Playboy Mansion West | |
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General information | |
Type | House |
Architectural style |
Gothic Revival Tudor Revival |
Location | 10236 Charing Cross Road, Los Angeles, California |
Construction started | 1927 |
Owner | Daren Metropoulos |
Technical details | |
Floor area | 21,987 sq ft (2,042.7 m2) |
Design and construction | |
Architect | Arthur R. Kelly |
Other information | |
Number of rooms | 29 |
The Playboy Mansion (also known as the Playboy Mansion West) is the home of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. In Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, near Beverly Hills, the mansion became famous during the 1960s through media reports of Hefner's lavish parties.
Owned by Daren Metropoulos, the mansion is also used for various corporate activities and serves as a valuable location for television production, magazine photography, charitable events, and civic functions.
The 21,987-square-foot (2,042.7 m2) house is described as in the "Gothic-Tudor" style by Forbes magazine, and sits on 5.3 acres (2.1 ha). It was designed by Arthur R. Kelly in 1927 for Arthur Letts, Jr., son of the Broadway department store founder Arthur Letts and acquired by Playboy from Louis D. Statham (1908–1983), an engineer, inventor and chess aficionado, in 1971 for $1.1 million. In early 2011, it was valued at $54 million. It sits close to the northwestern corner of the Los Angeles Country Club, near University of California, Los Angeles and the Bel-Air Country Club. $15 million has been invested in renovation and expansion.
The mansion has 22 rooms including a wine cellar (with a Prohibition-era secret door), a screening room with built-in pipe organ, a game room, three zoo/aviary buildings (and related pet cemetery), a tennis/basketball court, a waterfall and a swimming pool area (including a patio and barbecue area, a grotto, a basement gym with sauna below the bathhouse). Landscaping includes a large koi pond with artificial stream, a small citrus orchard and two well-established forests of tree ferns and redwoods. The west wing (originally servants wing) houses the Editorial offices of Playboy. The main Aviary building is the original greenhouse, with four guestrooms adjoining. The Master's suite occupies several rooms on the second and third floors, and is the most heavily renovated area of the Mansion proper, with an extensive carved-oak decor dating to the 1970s. Otherwise, the Mansion proper is maintained in its original Gothic-revival furnishings for the most part. The pipe organ was extensively restored in the last decade. There is also an outdoor kitchen to serve party events. These features and others have been shown on television.