Homes Tour Extraordinaire 2012

PORTUGUESE BEND HOMES HIGHLIGHT ANNUAL PALOS VERDES HOMES TOUR

     Portuguese Bend, with its stunning ocean views, tree-shaded roads and decidedly rural feel, is showcased in this year’s Homes Tour Extraordinaire from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday April 13-14 , 10:00am – 4:00pm.      

   Sponsored by The Circle, this annual fundraiser for the Palos Verdes Art Center / Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education, features an artist’s home, a container home and the Vanderlip cottage - three distinct homes full of ideas and inspiration. Each ticket includes a tour of these three homes, a delicious luncheon, and the opportunity to shop at a variety of boutiques, including The Circle’s own Classy Collectibles booth, with its trove of fabulous gently used treasures.

      This year’s homes tour will again have buses, shuttling guests from the Abalone Cove parking lot to the homes. The luncheon and boutique will be held at the Palos Verdes Art Center, Promenade on the Peninsula. Pre-sale tickets are $40 for Art Center members and $45 for non-members. The days of the event tickets will be $50 for all. For more information, call the Art Center at 310-541-2479 or visit www.pvartcenter.org

       Among the houses on the 2012 tour is the home of artist, Tom Redfield. Art and personality abound in this delightful home. Artist Tom Redfield, a member of the Portuguese Bend Artist Colony, took an “almost derelict” cottage and created a dazzling retreat surrounded by manicured lawns and mature plantings framing dramatic cliff and ocean vistas. Built in 1949 by a San Pedro shipbuilder, the 2,000 sq. ft Cape Cod featured rotting decks, rusted farm equipment in the yard and gaping holes and raccoons in the guest house when Redfield purchased it in 1994. Now an artistic eye, talented friends and sweat equity have transformed neglected into noteworthy.

      Cozy Containers - three 40-foot metal shipping containers (albeit with mahogany floors) plus tons of salvaged materials and lots of sweat equity have created a unique and cozy home – the second home on the tour.  With the help of his father, the owner has built the 3,600 sq. ft. home himself in the late 1970s while still an engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Purchasing a burned-out house allowed him to design a compact new space rather than attempting to retrofit a standard ranch to meet landslide area requirements. Three shipping containers placed in a triangle and joined at the corners provide the basic stability needed, although continuing land movement means the house (which weighs about 100 tons, including a 17-ton wood floor on the upper level) must be re-leveled every few years using hydraulic lifts, half railroad ties and scrap wood. A must see!

In 1916 Frank Vanderlip built the first home in the nascent Portuguese Bend Colony, a handsome residence that he named “The Old Ranch Cottage” after the Spanish land grant ranches that had previously occupied the area. The house was later nicknamed “The Cottage” and served as a summer home for the family for several years. The home - the third home on the tour - a Hudson River Craftsman design, was copied from their vacation house in Shrub Oak, New York. When touring this Portuguese Bend estate it’s like stepping back in time to a period in American history, before World War I and the Great Depression, when optimism and a spirit of adventure prevailed. Here the visitor enters into the earliest and most personal part of Frank Vanderlip’s dream.  Although the great mansion was never built, the Cottage, with its Mediterranean landscape and breathtaking ocean views, still whispers a hint of the original, grand vision.

            The Palos Verdes Art Center and Community School of Art, celebrating 81 years in the community, is a non-profit community organization serving southwestern Los Angeles County with visual arts exhibition, education and outreach programs. For more information about any of its many activities, exhibitions art classes or volunteer support groups please visit www.pvartcenter.org or call 310-541-2479.