Playboy Mansion
The Playboy Mansion, also known as the Playboy Mansion West, is the former home of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who lived there from 1971 until his death in 2017. Barbi Benton convinced Hefner to buy the home located in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, near Beverly Hills. From the 1970s onward, the mansion became the location of lavish parties held by Hefner which were often attended by celebrities and socialites. It is currently owned by Daren Metropoulos, the son of billionaire investor Dean Metropoulos, and is used for corporate activities. It also serves as a location for television production, magazine photography, charitable events, and civic functions.
Hefner established the original Playboy Mansion in 1959. It was a brick and limestone residence in Chicago's Gold Coast, which had been built in 1899. Hefner had founded Playboy in Chicago in 1953. After he permanently relocated to California in 1975, his company eventually leased the mansion for a nominal rent to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then donated it to the school outright. The school later sold the mansion, which was then redeveloped for luxury condominiums.
History
The house is described as being in the "Gothic-Tudor" style of architecture by Forbes magazine, and sits on. It was designed by Arthur R. Kelly in 1927 as Holmby House for Arthur Letts Jr., son of The Broadway department store founder Arthur Letts.The estate was acquired by Playboy Enterprises in 1971 for $1.05 million. Its previous owner was Louis D. Statham, a foundational biomedical engineer and prominent chess aficionado who had acquired the estate in 1961 before implementing a two-year renovation program and thence divesting the property in the broader context of the 1965 death of his first wife, Anne, a socially prominent figure known for her membership in the Southern California Symphony Association and past presidencies of the Beverly Hills Women's Club and the Beverly Hills Garden Club. As Statham had largely relocated to the rural Owens Valley enclave of Lone Pine, California in the wake of her death, the estate was primarily utilized throughout the late 1960s by the Les Dames de Champagne hospitality group, composed of socialites who served as a "welcoming committee" for visiting dignitaries in Los Angeles; Statham sang a selection from The Magic Flute at one of the group's annual masked balls during this period. In early 2011, it was valued at $54 million. It sits close to the northwestern corner of the Los Angeles Country Club, near the University of California, Los Angeles and the Bel-Air Country Club. Following the company's acquisition of the property, $15 million was invested in renovation and expansion. Although greatly augmented, much of the Statham-era staff was retained by Playboy Enterprises, often for decades.
During Hefner's 46 years in residence, the main house encompassed 29 rooms, including five guest bedrooms ; the two-story Great Hall ; a catering kitchen, butler's pantry, Regency era-inspired dining room and adjacent, breakfast-oriented Mediterranean Room ; a wine cellar ; a library ; and a living room with a built-in pipe organ that increasingly functioned as a dedicated screening room throughout Playboy's era of ownership. The house also contained six full bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, some of which were en suite in Hefner's bedroom and the other guest bedrooms. The servants' quarters in the west wing were reconfigured to house various administrative offices, including several on the second floor that were occupied by longtime Hefner majordomo Mary O'Connor, social secretary/former Playmate Joni Mattis and other key members of Hefner's personal staff.
In addition, the estate featured several outbuildings and external amenities, including an aviary derived from the property's original trio of greenhouses ; one of the only private licensed zoos in the United States ; a four-room guest house that was initially decorated by Barbi Benton in an early Americana motif ; a Hefner-stipulated sunken tennis court with a stone-adorned, chaise longue-suffused bar/lounge area and then-atypical wind-minimizing landscaping ; the backyard's celebrated waterfall/swimming pool area. Extensive landscaping shielded the property from the adjacent Los Angeles Country Club and was exemplified by the likes of a large koi pond with an artificial stream, a small citrus orchard and two well-established forests of tree ferns and redwoods.
Initially coterminous with the main bedroom and bathroom, Hefner's personal suite retained the Queen Anne style furniture and floridly verdant color schemes effectuated by Anne Statham during much of his "bicoastal" period; however, it was gradually redecorated in a more masculine style and had been outfitted with large CRT projector televisions by early 1975. A finished attic added thousands of square feet of personal office and storage space in the half-decade thereafter, culminating in the addition of an extensive and painstakingly developed carved-oak decor in the office and bedroom installed circa 1980. Otherwise, the mansion proper was maintained in its original Gothic Revival furnishings for the most part. The pipe organ was extensively restored in the last decade. These features and others have been shown on television.
Located on the north side of the property, the game house outbuilding was added by the Stathams as a playhouse for their grandchildren before serving as Statham's office by the late 1960s. It was favored by many Mansion West visitors and habitués, often functioning as a relatively isolate oasis of sexual ribaldry and drug use among "Rabbit Pack" or "Gang List" affiliates during protracted formal events and Hefner family visits. There were two sidewalks from the fountain in front of the main entrance, running past a wishing well. A path on the right led to the game house and ran past a duplicate Hollywood Walk of Fame star of Hefner. Its front entrance opened to a game room with a pool table in the center. Ostensibly patterned after the Chicago Mansion's game room, it contained vintage and modern arcade games and pinball machines in addition to a player piano, jukebox, television, stereo, and couch. The remainder of the outbuilding was devoted to several small bedrooms which frequently hosted impromptu sexual encounters. The left wing contained a sexually propitious "alcove room" reportedly customized circa 1979 with a television, en suite bathroom and a soft-cushioned floor surrounded by unabashedly voyeuristic wall-to-wall mirrors. The right wing of the game house has a smaller restroom and entrance to a bedroom. This bedroom was connected to another bedroom, which had an exit that faced a rear yard maintained with lounge chairs and gates on both sides.
In 2006, Hefner's former girlfriend, Izabella St. James, wrote in her memoir, Bunny Tales, that the main house had been severely neglected in the decades since Playboy Enterprises's halcyon years in the publishing, hospitality and gambling industries and required extensive renovations: "Everything in the Mansion felt old and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general scent of decay." She also observed: "Each bedroom had mismatched, random pieces of furniture. It was as if someone had gone to a charity shop and bought the basics for each room", and that: "The mattresses on our beds were disgusting – old, worn and stained. The sheets were past their best, too."
During Hefner's marriage to Kimberly Conrad, the Mansion adopted a more conservative atmosphere, with many lingerie-foregrounded events transitioning to a black tie dress code for the duration of their relationship.
The mansion next door is a mirror image of the Playboy Mansion layout, only smaller, and was purchased by Hefner in 1996, which would eventually serve as the home for Conrad and their children, Marston and Cooper, when she and Hefner separated. Hefner and Conrad married in 1989 and separated in 1998. In March 2009, Hefner and Conrad put the property up for sale for the asking price of $28 million. In August 2009, the property was purchased by Daren Metropoulos for $18 million.
In 2002, Hefner purchased a house across and down the street from the mansion for use by Playmates and other guests who would prefer to stay further from the busy activity of the Mansion proper. That residence was commonly referred to as the Bunny House. In April 2013, the Bunny House was listed for sale for the asking price of $11 million. In September 2017, the property was sold to an unidentified buyer for $17.25 million. In February 2019, 2 episodes of Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles aired which documented an attempt to purchase the Bunny House & the neighboring Mommie Dearest Home by a developer with the goal of forming a large compound/development. In the episode the sale went through and it is suspected that this was the sale referenced in New York Post based on 2/3 of the same real estates mentioned being involved in the on-screen sale.
Sale of Playboy Mansion
In January 2016, the Playboy Mansion was listed for sale by Playboy Enterprises, Inc. for the asking price of $200 million, subject to the condition Hefner be allowed to continue to rent the mansion for life. In August 2016, the Playboy Mansion was bought for $100 million by Daren Metropoulos, the co-owner of Hostess Brands and a principal in the investment firm C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. Metropoulos intends to renovate and restore the mansion to its original form.In 2009, Metropoulos bought the mansion next door to the Playboy Mansion from Hefner and his ex-wife Kimberly Conrad, and ultimately now wants to join the two properties. The Playboy Mansion and the mansion next door owned by Metropoulos were both designed by American architect Arthur Rolland Kelly and each estate has a common boundary with the Los Angeles Country Club.
In May 2016, Eugena Washington was the last Playmate of the Year to be announced by Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.