Palos Verdes celebrates 100 at the Vanderlip’s
Vicki Mack, Don Christy, Narcissa Vanderlip, Kelvin Vanderlip Jr. and his wife Michelle. Photo by David Rosenfeld
The grandchildren of Frank Vanderlip helped celebrate the PalosVerdesPeninsula’s 100th anniversary last weekend on the grounds where their grandfather built the first home on the Peninsula.
Kelvin Vanderlip Jr. said when he was a child growing up in the 1950s on the property that became part of the Portuguese Bend Community, he can remember the duck pond full of water, a horse stable and several wooden bird cages with teams of exotic species.
“What I saw here as a kid was the house up here with a foreground of this formal garden and the columns and this nice white house,” he said. “And there was this view of Portuguese Bend down below that was all farms and hadn’t been developed yet.”
In 1913 Frank Vanderlip along with 49 other investors, including JP Morgan, bought 16,000 acres of the PalosVerdesPeninsula for $2.5 million. That translated to $150 per acre and steal compared to today’s prices.
By 1922 he convinced his wife Narcissa, who was well connected in New York at the time, to visit the Peninsula and the sole cottage he had built in the territory. The home is undergoing renovation but still stands today.
“The last thing she wanted to do was come out to Palos Verdes,” Kelvin said. “They were truly in the middle of nowhere.”
The 100th Anniversary party was organized by Don Christy, stepson of Frank Vanderlip Jr., who wrote a book last year about his childhood called Up Around the Bend. The party also coincided with the release of a new book called “Frank Vanderlip: The Banker Who Changed America” by Vicki Mack. Mack spent the past seven months writing the book and said she feels like she’s been living with the man. Mack said she was most surprised at what a good person he appeared to be from the records.
“People say that bankers were so bad,” she said. “In this case he was a very good man.”
For all his notoriety and fame, little had been officially written about the former president of one of the largest banks in America – at the time National City Bank, now CitiBank. As a boy growing up in Illinois, his family farm was repossessed after the death of his father.
“He realized he didn’t just want to depend on the stock market to make money,” Mack said. “He thought he’d like to build something and make something real so he bought other large pieces of land and started cities there.”
But none promised the hope and possibilities as the majestic Peninsula in southern California, where future Vanderlip generations would eventually call their permanent home. Much of the initial development on the Peninsula Vanderlip would commission himself. He built garages for cars, servants quarters, guest homes and a gas station to fuel the couple’s Model A and a collection of other cars, like several on display at the party last weekend.
“The first time he came over the hill and looked out and saw what he had bought he said it was like a blank sheet to be written upon with loving care,” Mack said. “That’s something for us all to remember when we think or do anything in Palos Verdes, to do it with the same loving care that he put into it.” ER