Most of the homes in Beverly Hills are large grandiose affairs, except for the one on the corner of Walden Drive and Carmelita.It's much smaller than its neighbors and looks like the kind of house Hansel and Gretel might have visited in a Brothers Grimm tale.
In fact, residents in the area often refer to it as "the Witch's House." Its real name is the Spadena home, and it is the creation of Hollywood art director Harry Oliver, who built the home in 1921.
It's a model of Storybook architecture,something author Douglas Keister knows quite a bit about and has documented in his new book, "Storybook Style: America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties."
While there's no strictly defined style for Storybook architecture the way there is for Victorian or Bungalow, Keister says the homes are usually characterized by sloped roofs, artificial aging and a reduced scale.
There's one other way to identify them, says Keister. "When you see it, it makes you smile."
Keister says it's no coincidence that the homes look like what you'd expect to see in an old European village. They sprang up right after World War I, after returning servicemen, influenced by the architecture of the European villages they had seen in war, returned home and some began building sets for Hollywood.
Storybook homescan be found in Long Beach and are concentrated in Beverly Hills and the Hanco*ck Park and Los Feliz neighborhoods of Los Angeles. They can also be found as far away as Oakland and Alameda.
