A SECRET HISTORY

ON A STORIED PLOT IN SILVER LAKE, ARCHITECT TAKASHI YANAI FASHIONS A BOLD NEW HOUSE WHILE THE LANDSCAPE MAESTROS AT TERREMOTO REVIVE THE HISTORIC GARDEN

- FRED A. BERNSTEIN

A ONETIME POOL LINED WITH BRICK SALVAGED FROM THE HISTORIC GARDEN IS NOW FILLED WITH YARROW AND CALIFORNIA POPPIES. A 1920s STATUE BY CHARLES GIBBS ADAMS STANDS AGAINST A WALL AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRCASE. OPPOSITE HOMEOWNERS SCOTT BOXENBAUM AND RUTH PIERICH IN THE GARDEN. A STEEPLY SLOPING BED IS PLANTED WITH PRIDE OF MADEIRA, CLEVELAND SAGE, YARROW, DWARF CITRUS TREES, WILD RYE, AND SYCAMORE. THE PATH IS LINED WITH DEL RIO GRAVEL.

IN JAM-PACKED LOS ANGELES, it's rare to find a plot of land that doesn't have some history. But one half-acre parcel overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir is particularly redolent of the past. It once belonged to Julian Eltinge, a vaudeville performer who usually played womenso convincingly that audiences were often shocked when he revealed himself to be a man. Starring in musical comedies like The Fascinating Widow, The Crinoline Girl, and Cousin Lucy (all title roles written for him), Eltinge went on to become one of the highest paid movie stars of the 1920s.

One prominent critic cleverly dubbed him "ambisexstrous." Whatever his sexuality, his story has been folded into the LGBTQ history of the Silver Lake neighborhood, where the early gay rights group the Mattachine Society was founded in 1950 and where queers protested against police brutality at the Black Cat Tavern in 1967, two years before Stonewall.

In 1918 Eltinge built a castle-like, Spanish Revival house atop a steep hill.

Below it, he installed a formal "Andalusian garden." Water flowed from an octagonal fountain into a long, rectangular pool that ended near a pergola of classical columns.