A Hint of original Grand Vision
Photo Caption: The Vanderlip Cottage
What is the stuff of dreams? For some it may be trip to an exotic land, for others it may be a beautiful home. For Frank A. Vanderlip, New York Bank President, financier and pioneer developer of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it was an idyllic Mediterranean-style community in the Portuguese Bend area of the Peninsula that would feature rambling villas, a country club, tennis courts, a polo field, terraced gardens, peacocks and coastal views reminiscent of those that he had admired on trips to Italy. In 1914 to facilitate the realization of his grand vision, Vanderlip hired the brothers John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to draw up preliminary plans for the seaside development. He also brought a climatologist on board to identify the optimal hillside zone for a complex of gardens in the Mediterranean style of coastal Italy. He selected a spot about 700 ft. above the sea, above most of the fog but protected from the windy summit of the hills. At the time of the garden’s installation, Vanderlip started plans for a magnificent mansion on the property, modeled on an Italian villa built by Pope Julius II in the 15th century.
While these plans were being set in motion, the Vanderlip family needed a place to live. In 1916 Mr. 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, a Hudson River Craftsman design, was copied from their vacation house in Shrub Oak, New York.For today’s visitors touring this Portuguese Bend estate is 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. We enter 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.
