Yamashiro Historic District

Yamashiro is a seven-acre hillside estate above Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. German-born cotton merchants Adolph and Eugene Bernheimer, who collected Asian art, bought the land in 1913 and commissioned New York architect Franklin M. Small to design a villa based on seventeenth-century Japanese traditions. Completed in 1914, it sits within concentric terraced gardens laid out by Adolph Bernheimer and landscaper Andreas C. Orum. The district includes nine contributing resources: the Main House, Garage, Groundskeeper's Cottage, Menagerie House, a hotel complex built in the early 1950s, the gardens, and three garden structures, including a South Gatehouse, Resting Pavilion and a Japanese pagoda over 600 years old. The property was closed to the public during World War II, later used as a boarding school, then converted to a restaurant and hotel after 1948. It was listed for its architecture, as a prominent example of orientalist, fantasy-influenced design in Hollywood, and it retains much of its original character despite alterations.