Los Angeles houses – IAMNOTASTALKER

February 23, 2012February 22, 2012

The Milbank Mansion – aka Chapman Academy Preschool from “Daddy Day Care”

A couple of weeks ago, Tony, my friend and fellow stalker who has the fabulous On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream (seriously, it’s amazing – go check it out!), asked me for some help in tracking down the ginormous Mediterranean mansion that stood in for the prestigious Chapman Academy Preschool in the 2003 comedy Daddy Day Care. Tony had informed me that the residence was used regularly for filming and that it had also been featured recently in the Season 10 episode of fave show CSI: Miami titled “By the Book”. So I started doing some research on oft-filmed-at Mediterranean estates in Los Angeles and, amazingly, fairly quickly came across a photograph of a gorgeous Country Club Park property named the Milbank Mansion that, sure enough, was the right spot. So, while Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were out doing some stalking in the area this past Monday morning, we stopped by the place. And I have to say that it is pretty darn incredible in person! Not to mention pretty darn huge!

The Milbank Mansion was originally built in 1913 for prominent local businessman Isaac Milbank and his wife, Virginia. The 12-bedroom, 5-bath, 10,059-square-foot home, which sits on 1.79 acres of land, was designed by G. Laurence Stimson, the very same architect who also gave us the legendary Wrigley Mansion, now the Tournament of Roses House, in Pasadena. The estate is located in the heart of Country Club Park – a historic 250-acre neighborhood situated on the site of the original Los Angeles Country Club, which closed its doors in 1905. The area was developed and subdivided by none other than Isaac Milbank himself, along with a business partner named George Chase, beginning in 1906. The Milbank Mansion, which, according to a June 1988 Los Angeles Times article, is “considered to be the most substantial surviving estate built for a single family in the city of Los Angeles before World War I”, became a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument on December 13, 1989. You can see some interior photographs of the property here.

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In Daddy Day Care, both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the Milbank Mansion were used as the Chapman Academy Preschool.

In the Season 10 Halloween-themed episode of CSI: Miami titled “By the Book”, the mansion stood in for the island estate where a female body that had been entirely drained of blood was found hanging upside down.

The interior of the estate was also used in the episode.

In the 1929 silent film Wrong Again, the exterior of the Milbank Mansion was used as the residence where stable hands Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy mistakenly returned a horse named “Blue Boy” thinking they would be able to collect on some reward money being offered for a missing painting also known as “Blue Boy”.

In the 1975 film noir Farewell, My Lovely, both the interior and the exterior of the Milbank Mansion stood in for the brothel belonging to “L.A.’s famous madam” Francis Amthor (Kate Murtagh). Of the estate, detective Phillip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) says, “It was an old house, built as they once built them and don’t build them anymore. Fitting and proper for housing the world’s oldest profession.”

In 2006’s Running with Scissors, the interior of the mansion stood in for the home where Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) lived with his crazy family – wife Agnes (Jill Clayburgh) and daughters Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood). The property was dressed rather heavily for the production, though, and is virtually unrecognizable onscreen.

As you can see above, for the exterior of Dr. Finch’s mansion a different location was used.

The Milbank Mansion was also supposedly featured in Harold Lloyd’s 1922 silent film Dr. Jack, the 1971 movie Hit Man, and the reality series Beauty and the Geek, but unfortunately I could not find copies of any of those productions to verify that information. And while several websites have stated that the property also appeared in the 2001 biopic Ali, I scanned through the movie yesterday while making screen captures for this post and did not see it anywhere.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Tony for asking me to find this location! You can check out Tony’s FANTASTIC On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Milbank Mansion, aka the Chapman Academy Preschool from Daddy Day Care, is located at 3340 Country Club Drive in the Country Club Park section of Los Angeles.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

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But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

August 17, 2010August 7, 2010

Holly’s Nashua House from “The Office”

Another location from The Office that I stalked recently was the supposed Nashua, New Hampshire-area house that Holly Flax moved into in the Season 5 episode titled “Employee Transfer”. I found this location, yet again, thanks to fellow stalker Owen who went on a mission a while back to try to track down as many Office locales as possible. So, thank you, Owen! Ironically enough, though, I actually didn’t need his help on this one because as soon as I first saw the “Employee Transfer” episode, I was fairly certain that the Nashua house scenes had been filmed either on or near Carroll Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles – an area which boasts the city’s largest concentration of Victorian-era homes. I was already quite familiar with Carroll Avenue and its architecture as the haunted house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and the Halliwell residence from the television series Charmed are both located there. And, sure enough, my stalking instincts were right on! While Holly’s house is not actually located on Carroll Avenue, it can be found just around the corner from it.

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In the “Employee Transfer” episode, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) and Darryl Philbin (aka the hilarious Craig Robinson) move Michael’s girlfriend Holly Flax (aka Amy Ryan) into her new home in Nashua, after she has been transferred back to the Dunder Mifflin branch where she formerly worked.

And I am very happy to report that the residence looks EXACTLY the same in person as it did on the show. Holly’s house is absolutely GORGEOUS and it is not very hard to see why producers chose to film there, although, in my mind at least, it looks far more like a San Francisco-area home than one that would be found in Nashua. I’ve never been to New Hampshire, though, so don’t quote me on that one. 😉

Holly’s Nashua house, which is known as the Jesse Hall Residence in real life, actually has quite a bit of history to it, as do most properties in the neighborhood. The Hall Residence was designed by contractor John M. Skinner in 1887 for $6,000 and it is a carbon copy of the property located directly to the east of it, which is known as the Henry G. Hall Residence. Because the homes are identical in appearance and were both owned by families with the last name of Hall, they are known in architectural circles as “the Hall Twins”. And while the house was originally a single-family dwelling, in 1915 Jesse Hall’s son, Tracey, transformed the property into a duplex and it remains so to this day. The Hall Twins were both designated Historic-Cultural Monuments in June of 1979. You can read more about their history on the Big Orange Landmarks blog here.

On an Office side note – EW Magazine is reporting that Amy Ryan will be back for a whopping eight episodes during the show’s upcoming seventh season. YAY! You can watch a clip of Amy appearing on fave show Chelsea Lately in which she talks about how she landed her recurring role as Michael Scott’s love interest Holly Flax. Apparently, after she was nominated for an Oscar for the movie Gone, Baby, Gone, she told her agent that she wanted to use her newfound Hollywood clout to land a guest spot on The Office, which was her favorite show. She ended up landing the part of Holly and when she arrived on the set the first day and told Rainn Wilson the story of how she booked the role, he told her “You really should aim higher.” LOL I first watched that interview long before I had ever seen an episode of The Office and remember being absolutely fascinated by the fact that Amy loved the show THAT much. But now that I’ve become an Office devotee, I TOTALLY get it. If I was nominated for an Oscar, I, too, would so try to use my clout to land a role on that show. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Holly Flax’s Nashua house from The Office is located at 1347 Kellam Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video is located just around the corner at 1345 Carroll Avenue and the Charmed residence is located at 1329 Carroll Avenue.