Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 14, 2014

It took me 40 years of living in Los Angeles to finally investigate that barn sitting next to the parking lot across Highland Avenue from the Hollywood Bowl. I’m sure glad I did. The Lasky-DeMille Barn is truly one of the ur-sites of Los Angeles history: the earliest surviving structure from the beginnings of the Hollywood movie biz, and the place where the first feature-length Hollywood film was shot. And yet its significance extends beyond that. This barn is connected to some of the pioneering citizens of Hollywood, and now serves as a museum that documents the city’s history.

The Opening Credits 

In the 1880s, wealthy folks from the midwest and east coast started pouring into Southern California, lured by the promise of abundant sunshine and land for development. The couple we care about are Harvey and Daeida Wilcox, who moved from Topeka in 1886. Harvey was a shoemaker-turned-politician-turned-real-estate-investor; Daeida was a cultured daughter of a wealthy farmer and landowner. They were both deeply devout Christians and staunchly anti-alcohol.

The Wilcoxes purchased 120 acres of farmland in the bucolic Cahuenga Valley, stretching roughly from Whitley Avenue on the west, Franklin Avenue on the north, Sunset Boulevard on the south and Vine Street on the east. It wasn’t the only tract of land the Wilcoxes owned – they also bought a parcel around the newly-constructed USC campus, among others. But they’re forever associated with Hollywood (doesn’t hurt that there’s a street named after them, which runs right through their land). It’s even said that Daeida came up with the name “Hollywood.”

Harvey spent much of his time subdividing and selling off his holdings. He brought in a rail line to make it easier for potential buyers to check out his stuff. For her part, Daeida had a major impact on the social and cultural growth of Hollywood. After Harvey died in 1891, Daeida and her new husband, Philo Beveridge (great name for a teetotaler right?), did a lot to build up the social and cultural community in Hollywood, donating land to schools and churches, and attracting affluent new residents to the area.

In 1901, a plot of land just south of Hollywood Boulevard at Vine was purchased by Colonel Robert Northam, a “gentleman farmer” keenly interested in horse breeding. That same year Northam built the famous barn, just across from his property, at the southeast corner of Selma and Vine. By 1904, Hollywood had incorporated as a city (an alcohol-free one!), and its population was in the midst of a four-fold growth spurt, from 500 to 2000 residents. Northam’s property (including the barn) was purchased by real estate entrepreneur Jacob Stern. His firm still operates today, as Oppenheim Real Estate.

The Film Industry Heads West

The earliest film pioneers in the LA area were based in and around downtown. But they soon recognized the need for new environs, with more space and more varied scenery. Hollywood provided just what the fledgling movie business was looking for. The population was just 4000 by 1911, with plenty of land for purchase in between the estates of wealthy residents. By that time Hollywood had begrudgingly been annexed to Los Angeles, which solved its water access problem, and also loosened the hooch restriction.

In the fall of 1912, a young filmmaker named Harry Revier and his business partner LL Burns (founder of Western Costume Co.) leased the horse barn on Selma and Vine from Jacob Stern, added some interior walls and converted it into a film studio and lab. The following year another set of Hollywood transplants – stage director/playwright Cecil B. DeMille, producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later Samuel Goldywn) – formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, and rented the barn from Revier and Burns to shoot a silent film called The Squaw Man. They signed the lease on December 24, 1913 and began shooting just five days later. During the shoot, the barn was still being used for horses and carriages. Actors got dressed in unused horse stalls. 

The Squaw Man was the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood (DW Griffith’s In Old California preceded it by four years, but it was a 17-minute short). It was also DeMille’s directorial debut. He was still very green. In the panoramic shot above, you can see co-director Oscar Apfel up on the stage at the right with his right hand aloft, seemingly conducting the action; DeMille is in the middle in boots and a light suit, surrounded by cast members. It’s unclear how much of the directing work each did. But The Squaw Man was an incredible success, making back its budget five times over, launching DeMille’s career, and the Lasky Company’s too. 

The Lasky Company grew quickly after The Squaw Man. DeMille bought the barn from Revier and Burns in February 1914, then purchased the rest of the block from Jacob Stern by the end of the year. Within a few years, the Lasky Company had merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players (home to actress Mary Pickford) and bought the distribution company Paramount Pictures.

The new Famous Players-Lasky Corporation quickly became one of the major players in film. Within its first decade, it produced silent film classics like The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Ten Commandments (the first of two versions directed by DeMille), It and Wings, the first movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Moving Around a Lot

By 1926, Famous Players-Lasky had outgrown its original home at Sunset & Vine. They bought an old studio site on Melrose, between Gower and Van Ness, and started constructing new stages, film labs and facilities. They formally changed their name to Paramount Pictures. But they never forgot about the barn where it all started: 

The barn in which the Lasky organization made its start on the west coast, has been placed in one corner of the studio lot, amid shrubs and plants to serve as a symbol of the tradition behind the organization. The “gray room” as the barn has become known, is being utilized as a meeting room for the actors and actresses. It has been freshly painted and filled out with new furnishings and dedicated to the traditions of the screen.

Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1927

In its new digs on the Paramount lot, the Lasky-Demille Barn had many roles – gymnasium, clubroom, library, locker room, storage area, office, dance hall. It moved around the lot a couple times, first in 1928 to make room for a sound projection facility, then again in 1956 when it was incorporated into Paramount’s western-themed backlot. 

The barn underwent some alterations during its time on the Paramount lot. In the 1940s, a seven ½ foot section was removed so Paramount could erect another building right next to it (the section was restored in the ‘80s, using period photographs). A second story “sun deck” was added in the late ‘30s, and a porch was added to the north facade when the barn stood in as a train station for the 1956 film The Rainmaker. For over a decade, you could see the barn on TV as a regular backdrop for Bonanza. 

The Barn Heads North

In 1979, Paramount donated the Lasky-Demille Barn to the Hollywood Historic Trust, a branch of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce; it was later re-donated to the fledgling Hollywood Heritage organization. The barn was moved to a parking lot just south of the Capitol Records Building, where it waited out a few years as its stewards figured out its fate. It alighted at its current home on Highland in 1983, on a site originally planned for a separate museum that never materialized. 

Since 1985, Hollywood Heritage has operated the Lasky-DeMille Barn as a museum dedicated to Hollywood history, with an emphasis on the golden age. There are movie props and set pieces from classic films, theater memorabilia and terrific vintage photos. They’ve reconstructed Cecil B. DeMille’s office with a number of original artifacts and furniture, including his first royalty checks for his 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, and a trash can that he used as a footstand whenever Jacob Stern’s ranch hands would wash down the floors.

The Hollywood Heritage Museum tells the story of the early days of Hollywood. It also tells the story of the barn itself, by showing it as it was during various phases of its history. The exterior walls and much of the interior are original; the door on the south looks much as it did at the end of the ‘20s, when it became the building’s main entrance; the covered porch on the north and west elevations date from the 1950s, during the barn’s time on the Paramount backlot. 

This humble wooden structure was both a witness and an active participant in Hollywood’s transition from sparsely-populated agricultural land, to growing city, to the center of the global film business. The fact that it has been moved at least five times should tell you how much it meant – and continues to mean – to Los Angeles, 120+ years after it was built. 

Special thanks to Rachel Parham of Hollywood Heritage for the excellent tour of the barn, and Richard Adkins for sending along some of the best historic photos I included here.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Apfel, Oscar & Cecil B. DeMille: Squaw Man (Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, 1914)

+ “Barn Used by Lasky at Start Taken to Studio” (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1927 – via ProQuest)

+ Birchard, Robert S.: “The Squaw Man” (AFI.com, 2014)

+ Feldman, Jack J.: “Early Views of Hollywood (1920+)” (Water and Power Associates) 

+ Kines, Mark Tapio: “Wilcox Avenue” (LA Street Names)

+ McAvoy, Christy: Lasky-Demille Barn’s NRHP nomination form

+ Meares, Hadley: “How one Ohio native became the ‘Mother of Hollywood’” (Curbed LA, February 20, 2014)

+ Morain, Dan: “Homesite Sought for Hollywood Barn Where DeMille Shot 1914 Six-Reel Feature” (Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1982 – via ProQuest)

+ “The Paramount Story” (ParamountStudios.com)