Shriver’s Peninsula Paradiso

The rear of the Shrivers residence shows architraves or moulding around the iwndows characteristic of Italianate design.

Peninsula paradiso

Charles and Jean Shriver waited four years to hear from a sealed

Jean and Charles Shriver in the home they’ve owned for over three decades.

bid they submitted in 1980 for a sprawling, Portuguese Bend compound. They came across the property on a class tour for new appraisers. The house was not for sale. The class was there to learn how to appraise. A friend of Jean’s had invited her to join the class for the day, so she could see the secluded home. Neither she nor her husband were in real estate. Jean was a Manhattan Beach librarian and Charles an engineer. They were living on Paseo Del Mar in Lunada Bay.

Four years after the tour, the property owner, Seymour “Skip” Warner and his wife Virginia unexpectedly accepted the Shriver’s offer. The time was serendipitous. The Shriver’s were about to begin a remodel of their residence. Instead, they moved into what Jean describes as her “dream family farmstead.”

The Italianate residence was built for E. Douglas Levinson, the attorney for Peninsula’s founder   Frank Vanderlip. Levinson’s wife never visited the property because it required taking a train from Los Angeles, then the Red Car to Redondo Beach and then a mule over the hill to the residence.  

In 1931, Levinson hired architect Gordon Kaufmann, who at the

Back in the early 1930s Frank Vanderlip’s attorney E.D. Levinson walked on these now worn paver stones leading to the front yard gardens and courtyard.

time, was also working on the Hoover Dam. Kaufman’s other notable works include the Doheny Greystone Mansion, the Los Angeles Times building, Scripps College and the Santa Anita Park Clubhouse.

Charles and Jean met in the late 1940s when he attended the then all male Princeton and she attended the then all female Vassar. Albert Einstein lived in Jean’s neighborhood, where he attended the Institute of Advanced studies, along with Robert Oppenheimer, the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” Einstein planned to return to Germany but it was wartime, and his summer home had been taken over by the Nazis, so he stayed in the United States.

One of the two living rooms with a wood burning fireplace and original furnishings passed down from both sides of the Shriver family.

“Einstein was a regular figure amongst us,” Jean said. “But  I never spoke to him because what do you say to someone of such a grandiose, mathematical mind.” The town of Princeton was small at the time, with only about 10,000 residents. “Everybody knew each other,” said Jean, who authored a book about her famous neighbor,” The Einstein Solution.” She also wrote a novel, “Mayflower Man,” about a teenage boy’s efforts to save the family farm.

The Shriver’s two story, 4,900 square foot, sprawling, Italian farmstead has seven bedrooms, two kitchens, two offices, two livingrooms, four bathrooms, an attic and a basement. As you travel up the private, gravel road you hear the shrill screams of peacocks and the neighs of horses. The sweeping courtyard is flanked by Roman columns. During the holiday season, the courtyard is the venue for the annual Portuguese Bend Arty Party, which attracts hundreds of residents for wine and cheese and to enjoy local artisans’ wares. Horse stalls line the back of the courtyard. The Shriver’s son Steve, an accomplished artist, recalled that during the filming of “Rumor has it,” starring Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston, ”The set painters had so many tricks up their sleeves that they were able to transform objects in an instant to create a point in time.” They worked with paint and muddled graphite over conduit to make the bars in the stable appear rusted. During the filming of “A Walk in the Clouds,” starring Keanu Reeves and Debra Messing, Jean said, “The set designers spent 10 days preparing the property, including installing a pool in the courtyard and seven days doing the actual filming. “We were thrilled. Anthony Quinn was here. He was old and funny.”

The cornerstone of the home with the initials of the first owner, E.D. Levinson, dating back to 1931.

Although it was exciting having celebrities on their property, “none of the movies were any good,” Jean said, candidly.

Both Jean and Charles keep offices by the stables, each with an exterior entrance. Jean’s office has floor to ceiling shelves, teeming with books of every genre. Above her desk is a trap door leading to an attic with old, fabric and leather bound books, some with gold leaf letters.

A old crank pencil sharpener in Charles’s office, next to a 1930s photograph of the peninsula, in which the Shriver home is pictured.

The family’s furnishings have been passed down from both sides of the families. Jean said that they have purchased maybe two pieces of furniture. Everything else is an heirloom with a provenance. A bathroom has the original, small teal tiles from the 1930s. There is a nod to history everywhere, including old photographs of the Peninsula, classic automobiles, renaissance style art of a medallion with the the Virgin Mary and Jesus (original to the exterior of the house) and even an old crank pencil sharpener affixed to the wall in Charles’s office.

The courtyard entry to the Shriver home is flanked by columns. Projected eaves along the roofline are supported by corbels, common in Italianate architecture.

But not everything evokes the past.

Steve Shriver with a self portrait in his studio.

In Steve’s studio there is a large oil on canvas self portrait. “It’s not a typical self portrait,”  he said. The portrait shows  him under a freeway overpass, juggling eggs, naked.

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