![]() ![]() The early automaton appeared in the 1934 movie “The Gay Divorcee,” starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. In her dressing room, outside the master bathroom, her personal silver brush and comb set sits next to a small silver perfume flask with her first name engraved on the front.Īt the end of a long galleria is a 19th-century gilt-metal birdcage with four taxidermied iridescent hummingbirds that sing, moving their heads and beaks, when a key is wound up on the side. There is Virginia’s bedroom, where one of her petite dresses is displayed on a mannequin. The living room features a Chickering baby grand piano, couches covered in gold-colored fabric, heavy drapes and crystal chandeliers. Joshua Johnston//Courtesy of Virginia Robinson Gardens The living room inside the Robinson mansion. “And we have to make sure all the artifacts inside are preserved.” ![]() There is constant upkeep,” says Diane Sipos, superintendent of the Virginia Robinson Gardens. ![]() “As you can imagine, there is a lot of upkeep involved in maintaining such a historic building…the pool pavilion and other structures. Fundraising efforts by the Friends of Robinson Gardens, which has about 135 members, has contributed as much as $320,000 a year for various maintenance, restoration and educational projects. The county, under the Department of Parks and Recreation, spends about $1 million a year to maintain the gardens with the help of five full-time gardeners, and to tend to the mansion, which is preserved as it was in 1977. “Not only is it the first estate built in Beverly Hills before it was a city, but also because Virginia donated her estate as an as-is museum that shows exactly what it was like to live during the golden era of the early 20th century.” “This is such a treasure,” says Phil Savenick, president of the Beverly Hills Historical Society. When Virginia died in 1977, at the age of 99 and childless, she willed the historic estate to Los Angeles County, which has been operating it for decades as a historic site open for paid tours ($15 for adults) and free student educational programs. Thirteen years later, at the other side of their great lawn that can accommodate up to 450 people, they added a 3,000-square-foot Italianate pool pavilion with a billiard room, bathrooms and a second-floor card room, because Virginia was an avid card player. The Italian garden at the Virginia Robinson Gardens. ![]()
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