2337 Benedict Canyon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA

George R.Kress House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The George R. Kress House is eligible for listing in die National Register of Historic Places under both Criterion B, for its association wide an individual who made a noteworthy contribution to local history drought his skills as an engineer, and Criterion C, for its exemplification of a building type associated wide a particular era in regional architectural development, die period revival house of the 1920s and 1930s. A "house-mover" by trade for over a half of a century, Kress was president of his own Los Angeles based company. His professional achievements during tilt time, moving literally hundreds of buildings, made a significant impact on die-built landscape of the Los Angeles region during an era of tremendous growth. When die engineering experts of die day concluded diet certain structures could not be raised or transported, Kress followed his own instincts and invented medoids and devices to accomplish what popular wisdom said could not be done. This 1931 residence is the most personal statement of Kress, a self-made and largely self-educated man who worked with architect Harry J. Muck on the design A Tudor Revival retreat in then undeveloped Benedict Canyon above Beverly Hills, the Kress House represents a late flowering of die revivalist tradition in architecture which peaked in Los Angeles during the boom years just prior to the stock market crash in 1929. The period of significance for die Kress House under Criterion B corresponds to the Kress association with die property, the years 1931 to 1940. The date of construction, 1931, marks the period of significance under Criterion C.

Historical Context
The George R. Kress House was built in 1931, twenty-five years after the founding of Beverly Hills a few miles to die south. Initial development in the new town was desultory, picking up some momentum with the construction of die Beverly Hills Hotel in 1911. It was not until 1920, when screen idols Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford moved into a Tudor styled hunting lodge in Benedict Canyon, that the association with the Hollywood community really began and the legend of Beverly Hills was born. During die next two decades, intense development of die area north of Santa Monica Boulevard included a high proportion of homes built for and lived in by Hollywood notables. Although die official city limits of Beverly Hills are about two miles down Benedict Canyon from the Kress House, die common perception of Beverly Hills included die hills and canyons of die Santa Monica Mountains above it. In fact, several of die estates most often publicized as being in Beverly Hills-Thomas Ince’s "Dias Dorados", Rudolf Valentino’s "Falcon’s Lair", and John Barrymore’s "Belle Vista" to name a few-were actually outside die Beverly Hills borders, but, like the Kress House, share Beverly Hills addresses.

The presence of such luminaries not withstanding, Benedict Canyon remained a rural area, with isolated homes scattered among die eucalyptus trees and native oaks. In October, 1930, George R. Kress purchased six acres of undeveloped property on the west side of Benedict Canyon from F. B. Yoakum and Ediel Yoakum, members of die family of one of die principal land owners in die area. The deed contained the condition that the acreage would be used for die construction of a single-family residence costing not less than $10,000. In November die property was surveyed by die C. W. Cook Company. Seven months later, on June 23, 1931, Kress applied for a building permit to construct a "two story, eleven room residence and garage" at 2337 Benedict Canyon Road [sic]. The permit described a frame building which would have a stucco and brick veneer and would cost an estimated $20,000. On the permit, Kress was shown as both owner and contractor. No architect was specified, although die permit was signed by Harry Muck, who prepared die plans. A second permit, this one for a woodshed, was obtained later that year, on October 3, 1931; again, Kress was itemized as die owner and builder, while Blaine Notice signed as die Civil Engineer.

Following completion of the house on November 12, 1931, Kress and his wife, Wanda Cooper Taylor Kress, moved in, decorating it with furnishings purchased from Los Angeles’s premier retailers of die period. Barker Bros, and W. J. Sloane. In 1935 their daughter, Wanda Dianne Kress ("Dianne"), was born. The Kresses lived in die house, joined occasionally by various family members and retainers, until 1940, when business reverses resulted in die loss of die house and die Kresses were compelled to move.

In 1940, orchestra leader and M.G.M. musical director, George ("Georgie") Stoll purchased die house and its six-acre parcel, augmenting die property later with an adjoining six acre lot, and began a residency that lasted until 1965. Stoll and his wife, Merian Davis ("Dallas") Stoll, essentially left die house as it was, making only interior cosmetic changes. When die Stolls moved out of die area in 1965, die property was sold to a subdivider. Eight lots were created, including a one acre parcel conuiining die Kress House. Television director Claudio Guzman and his wife, singer and actress Anna Maria Albeghetti, bought die house in 1966 and moved in.

They installed the swimming pool in 1975 and made some changes to die butler’s pantry and breakfast room. Albeghetti, sold the house in 1992 to die current owners, designer Rodney Kemerer and United Artists Pictures President Lindsay Doran Kemerer, making diem only the fourth occupants of the house in sixty-one years.

Engineering Achievements of George R. Kress, Jr
More than anything else, the house appears to be the expression of the achievements of its original owner, George Kress, a man without formal education and a self-taught engineer who delighted in solving problems that others said were impossible. George Richard Kress, Jr. was born in Pittsburgh in 1882, the son of George Richard Kress, Sr. and Martha Lowrie Kress. At the age of 14, George Jr. left his father’s home to live and work with his older brother, Alfred. Alfred was the proprietor of the Kress House Moving Company of Pittsburg [sic]. Pa., whose motto was "If we had room to work, we could move the world." The company advertised that it "raised, lowered, moved, shored, or underpinned" buildings of all kinds, regardless of materials of construction, size, or weight in their brochure, several of its projects were pictured, including passenger stations for die Pittsburg & Lake Erie Company and the Pennsylvania R. R. Company, a church, a Carnegie Steel Company building, several schools, and numerous houses. One brick residence was moved on water for die H. J. Heinz Company; it was the building in which the company had been founded.

In 1913, George Kress, Jr. decided, for reasons of health, to move to California. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, he acquired an established house moving firm, the D. R. Tripp Company at 755 Maple Avenue, and renamed it the Kress House Moving Company of Los Angeles. The business of moving buildings was thriving in the Los Angeles region, particularly as the city expanded in all directions from die historic core. Over a half dozen moving firms were consistency listed in the Los Angeles City Directory Classifieds during the first several decades of die twentieth century. The frequency of building moves led one newspaper reporter to write, tongue-in-cheek:

"Reports from southern and eastern cities tell of cyclones that vary their demolishing habit by literally and bodily removing buildings from die countryside. Humph. They’ve nothing on Los Angeles. And we don’t wait-for a cyclone to move our buildings. So restless has become this hurry-scurry age that large hotels, apparently tiring of the spots they have occupied for years, have been inoculated with die moving germ.

"They say, diose wise ones, that there’s nothing new under die sun. But I discovered recently that a new business has been built up in Los Angeles, assuming greater proportions here during die last few months than anywhere else in the country-that of moving houses. Every kind of structure is being moved here intact--frame, brick, concrete.

"Yesterday I saw a postman standing forlornly before a vacant lot on Hollywood Boulevard. "Now, where in die dickens has it gone to?" he scratched his red thatch thoughtfully. "There was a house here yesterday. It’s getting so now a feller never knows when he starts out on his route how many houses he’ll find at home.'"

"Los Angeles has long ranked near the top among American cities in construction of buildings, but probably few people realize it has an equally high place in the conservation of buildings. In this conservation of structures, it has developed an important industrial factor-the house moving industry-an industry that has grown steadily, quietly, usefully yet largely unnoticed and that, probably, because it is mostly prosecuted in the hours when a majority of the population is wrapped in the arms of Morpheus."

There were several reasons for the boom in building relocations, not the least of which was the evolution of residential areas into commercial zones. Interviewed for a widely reprinted, 1925 newspaper article, George Kress observed:

"For one thing, the growth of business districts is overlapping even the more recently established residential districts. On the main traffic arteries one- and two-story stores and office buildings have supplanted homes. In many instances the onrush of business demands the departure of fine modem houses. Owners have found it highly profitable to sell the lots for business purposes, move their homes which have been built exactly to their desires, purchase sites in outlying sections and in many instances have enough funds left over from the sale to renovate and repair their houses.

A related phenomenon, the establishment of zoning that transformed low density property to higher density uses, provided Kress with the opportunity to reposition buildings on lots to make way for new construction or even to raise existing structures to enable the erection of new ground floors. In addition, Kress provided seismic and geologic stabilization assistance to property owners; for example, after a 1921 earth quake, Kress was credited with saving Inglewood property owners "no less than half a million dollars by his expert advice as to the restoration of business buildings" when Los Angeles architects had recommended demolition."

By 1925, Kress could claim that he had moved more than $1 million worth of buildings-over 350 structures-during the previous’ Judging by the high visibility of many of his projects, an impressive clientele, the amount of newspaper coverage devoted to his accomplishments, and the sheer quantity of his jobs, Kress had emerged, in the decade since he relocated to Los Angeles, as a leader in the house moving industry. Over the course of a distinguished career, many of Kress’s projects were documented in photographs that were preserved by his family and have now been returned to the Benedict Canyon house.

Kress also derived quite a bit of business from the street widenings that accompanied the emergence of the automobile as the primary mode of transportation. When roads were already built up, owners often chose to push back their structures instead of demolishing them to build anew. This was the case with the 1929 expansion of Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena; Kress either moved or cut a slice from die middle of at least three buildings, die Dobbins Budding at 53 West Colorado, die Stanton Building at the comer of Colorado and Raymond, and 316-326 West Colorado. In an illustrated brochure documenting die removal of a twelve-foot section of the W.C.T.U. building at the comer of Temple and Broadway in Los Angeles, Kress claimed that "The advantage in using this method of altering buildings for die widening of streets are many: die out-standing points being that the alteration is made in about half die time required to tear down and rebuild die wall, die architecture of the building is preserved and considerable saving of money is possible to the owner.

In part, Kress’s client list read like a Who’s Who of Los Angeles. For John C. Bullock, die founder and president of Bullock’s Department Store, Kress moved a three story, twelve room house and two story, detached garage from 627 South Ardmore Street to 605 South Plymouth Boulevard, a distance of more than a mile, in 1925. About the same time, Marco Heilman, scion of a prominent banking family, commissioned Kress to transport his two and a half story, forty room. Beaux Arts styled mansion three miles to the elite Fremont Square subdivision. A greenhouse was moved to the Westwood estate of Arthur Letts, Jr., heir to the Broadway Department Stores, in 1926. King C. Gillette, die "Razor Blade King," sought Kress’s advice about shoring up his residence. ^ According to newspaper accounts, one large residence, die twenty-four room Howard Verbeck house, was transported from Wilshire and Rampart to 637 South Serrano while die owners and their guests celebrated die occasion inside, undaunted by the move.

Public buildings also received Kress’s attentions. For die County of Los Angeles, Kress moved the Alhambra Hotel, a six-story concrete building, a distance of 110 feet in preparation for its conversion into county offices, freeing the previous site at Temple and Broadway for a new Hall of Justice. Similarly, the Brunswig Drug Company building was turned ninety degrees, moved out of the way of the northerly extension of Spring Street from Temple, and altered for reuse as County offices. An account of this operation, entailing die shifting of a five story, 10,000-ton structure onto 2,000 steel rollers, was published in the Illustrated London News (9/12/31). Several school districts utilized Kress’s services, including die move of the Lankersheim school in North Hollywood, a facility constructed of concrete; projects were also completed at Gardena High School, Compton High School, and Union High School in Orange.

The peripatetic nature of die young film industry in and around Hollywood provided further outlets for Kress’s skills, as studios moved buildings all over die basin. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed in 1924, four stages and two dressing rooms were moved from the Metro Picture Corporation lot in Hollywood twelve miles to die Culver City home of M.G.M. According to Kress, one of the glass stages weighed nearly 200,0(X) tons and was moved without a single crack in any of die glass or die shifting of any of the bolts. A letter of appreciation from M.G.M. was proudly pasted by Kress in his scrapbook. Kress’s interest and involvement with movie production apparently lasted through much of his career; his grandson recounts that Kress was often on die sets of films where die moving of scenery utilized his professional abilities.’ In 1936-1937, Kress raised and buttressed Stage 7 (now Stage 16) at Warner Bros in Burbank, making it, at 92 feet high, one of the tallest soundstages in the world.

No structure, regardless of size, materials, or use, seemed to faze Kress. Commercial and industrial buildings constructed of brick, such as the Patten & Davies Lumber Company on San Pedro Street in Los Angeles, were moved on steel tracks, allowing the office staff to continue working during the process. The Catholic Women’s Club (formerly the Friday Morning Club) was cut into five sections and moved four miles from 940 S. Figueroa Street to the comer of San Marino and Menlo in Los Angeles. A 350-foot wooden ship buried in sand was raised at the Chandler shipyards, a stone arch was moved at the Tropico branch of the Forest Lawn cemetery, and a massive gas tank, long considered an eyesore in Palm Springs, was moved over large boulders and deep ravines to a new location behind a hill.

In terms of national recognition, Kress’s career reached a high point in 1935. In October of that year, Kress successfully cut the Commercial Exchange building into two parts, removed an approximately 8'A foot section from the interior of the 55’ by 168’ by 160’ structure, and reunited the two parts of the building. Located on the southeast comer of Olive and Eighth streets in downtown Los Angeles, the Commercial Exchange building is a thirteen story. Beaux Arts styled office building of reinforced concrete and brick. When it was decided to widen Olive Street in 1930, Kress persuaded the owners, architects, and engineers that removal of a portion of a bay from the Eight Street frontage would not only save the Olive Street facade, the most desirable office spaces at the west end of the building, and the comer store, but would also cost half as much as replacement of the building. The 160-foot cut was made 50 feet back from Olive Street and went through a light court. After bracing each side of the building, an 8’6" section, measuring the full height of the building, was cut out. It was necessary to excavate to a depth of ten feet below the subbasement to accommodate new concrete pilings and the manipulation of jacks, rollers, tracks and other equipment. Without requiring tenants in either portion of the building to vacate the premises, the 5,000-ton western section of the building was moved and re-attached to its mate. The entire operation required seventy days of preparation, nine hours for the actual move, and a crew of seventy-five men. It attracted a great deal of attention both from onlookers and the press; indeed, articles were published in The Los Angeles Times (10/14/35, 10/18/35), the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express (10/17/35), the Los Angeles Examiner (10/18/35), the Southwest Builder and Contractor (10/25/35), the Christian Science Monitor (11/21/35), Buildings and Building Management (December 1935), and Construction Methods (February 1936).

Over die course of his career, Kress worked on buildings created by some of the most respected architects in the region, in many cases enabling the preservation of die buildings. The Bullock House was designed by noted Pasadena architects Arthur and Alfred Heineman and is considered one of die best extant examples of their Craftsman aesthetic outside of their home town.‘“ Across die street from die Bullock House, the Sarah Hall House was also moved to Plymouth Boulevard; Kress apparently worked with the original architects Sumner Hunt and Silas Bums, designers of such noteworthy Los Angeles structures as die Automobile Club of Southern California and the Ebell Club, on the relocation. Walker and Eisen, whose illustrious portfolio included die Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles and die Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, provided architectural services for both the original design of the Commercial Exchange Building and for Kress’s remarkable intervention in 1935.

Kress attributed his successes to an intuitive ability to sense die interior specifications of a building and his study of mechanical stresses and strains. During the course of his career, he invented several new tools and techniques. It was reported in 1925 that Kress had designed a one-of-a-kind truck, made of steel and having 1,000 rollers, which had successfully been used to move several two story, twenty-room residences.'* He filed for and received three U. S. patents, two for "Means and Methods for Moving Large Buildings" (granted 8/6/29 and 11/26/29) and another for Building Wall Moving Devices (1/7/30). Kress often developed specialized devices for individual jobs, as he did with the screw jacks used to move die Commercial Exchange Building.

The Kress House was built when George Kress’s career appeared to be on a continuous spiral of expansion. During the first seventeen years of his residency in Los Angeles, Kress had changed dwellings almost yearly. Divorced in 1924 from his first wife, he lived for two years at die downtown Los Angeles Athletic Club. After another couple of years in rented quarters, he moved into another exclusive downtown facility, the Jonathan Club. On August 15, 1930, he married Wanda Cooper Taylor of San Francisco; the site in Benedict Canyon was purchased a few months later.

Kress chose to build a retreat that reflected current architectural tastes and ensured its longevity with thorough engineering. Possessed of what he himself described as "engineering second sight," Kress apparently was personally involved in die design, making notes and changes on die plans and specifications. At die time, die Kresses were renting a nearby house in the Canyon, so he would have had ample opportunity to supervise die construction at the building site every day. It is the exceptional character of the engineering compared to that found in the majority of Class D residential construction at die time that most clearly reveals Kress’s hand. He had a keen awareness of seismic safety, both as a professional and also in response to his wife’s concerns stemming from her experience in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Several points were made in a recently completed seismic analysis'^ emphasizing the unusual character of the construction:

1. Complete drawings and specifications were used to construct the residence. The 10 pages of drawings and 75 pages of specifications saved by Kress’s daughter, Dianne Kress Franklin, were more typical of commercial construction than residential with regards to the extent of their documentation.

2. The foundation system is reinforced concrete and includes continuous footings which are typically 22" wide.

3. The perimeter wall plates and sills are bolted to a depth of at least 6 inches, according to die specifications, to the continuous foundations. It should be noted that building codes did not require that plates and sills be bolted to foundations until 1933. 4. The exterior brick wall veneer is anchored to the brick frame by means of galvanized iron crimped ties attached to each brick in every fourthly course. The interior finish of plaster over metal lath (instead of the more common wood lath) is also anchored to die frame.

In addition, top quality materials were used throughout the residence, and the specifications stipulated that skilled, experienced workman perform the construction. The result of the exceptional engineering has been the survival of the house intact through several seismic events. (Some damage was sustained by one chimney during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.) Judging by the physical evidence, Kress, the house mover, apparently wanted to ensure that he built a solid, strong house which could not be moved by the hand of man or nature.

Kress’s career as a pre-eminent house-mover in Los Angeles culminated during his residency in tlie Kress House, the first and the only house that he built. The Kress family left Benedict Canyon in 1940. During World War II, George Kress contracted with the Navy, using his engineering skills to launch ships out of Wilmington harbor. After the war, Kress disassembled and moved the entire camp of Manzanar, used for the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans, to assorted military bases.'^ The house moving business continued until the early 1950s, with the participation of additional members of the family. Moving buildings had become progressively more complicated and expensive and consequently less of an everyday occurrence in the years immediately before the war and became even more rare after it. Two projects in the postwar era were typical of the time: bungalows were moved from the site of the new Bullock’s in Pasadena in 1945 and from the property of the Maryland Hotel, also in Pasadena, in the early 1950s. George Kress does not appear to have been as deeply involved in the business during this period, turning his attention instead to real estate development in Orange County. He died in 1972, seven weeks shy of his 90th birthday.