JOSE MOJICA HACIENDA & GARDENS
When I lived in Los Angeles I was asked by a cellist friend if I could photograph
a concert in a private home in the Santa Monica Canyon. Always happy to work
for free - and to support the arts - I said of course. What followed was love,
infatuation, and an obsessive desire to capture and preserve, not the music,
but the place: the land of my dreams, a true hacienda built in 1929 on an
enclosed acre in a small wooded canyon that even people who lived nearby in
Santa Monica or Pacific Palisades had never heard of. I certainly had not.
The Hacienda, full name, "La Finca de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe", was
commissioned by a Mexican opera singer and film star, Jose Mojica, who
performed for major opera companies in the U.S. and Mexico and in movies in
both countries. He lived there until 1942, when his mother died, after which he
moved to Peru and became a Franciscan priest, after donating his large fortune
to a home for orphaned children in San Miguel de Allende. The property was
designed by Merrill Baird or John Byers (I'm not sure...), the house set amongst
tiled patios, covered walkways, a chapel, surrounded by a canopy of trees above
tropical plants, roses, and walls of flowers so thick I did not know where to look
first. My feeling then, and now, was that if I was told I had to live inside those
walls and never leave I would have asked "when can I start?".
The next owner after Mojica was Anita Loos, a celebrated novelist, screenwriter,
playwright, and actress; in 1912, she became the first woman in Hollywood to have
a staff writing job; in 1925 she wrote the novel "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." The
next owner was the five-time Oscar-winning art director Lyle Wheeler, who worked
on Gone With The Wind and A Star Is Born - and Perry Mason - and 350 sets over
a 40-year career. Both of these folks hosted parties with the likes of Fred Astaire,
Judy Garland, and George Gershwin performing at the piano in the large room
Mojica built just for that sort of thing. Some places carry an emotional or aesthetic
charge as they are, and some provide an extra tingle because of what happened
there; this property had both.
By the time I showed up to photograph my friend's concert, the property was the
home of the La Senora Research Institute, founded by Patricia Nettleship, who had
owned the place for many years. The purpose of the Institute - a going concern - is
to preserve and investigate the history of the Rancho Era in Southern California.
Over the next few years I spent a lot of time there photographing music and events,
and the compound itself in 2008, giving all the images away to musicians and the
Foundation.
While I never forgot the hacienda - it remains my dream home - I did not remember
what I had documented until I stumbled onto these photos, as one does, looking for
something new to put on my website. In this case, something old. I reworked the best
of them for your enjoyment and edification, and my own.