On a quiet rise at Franklin and Bronson, just below the Hollywood Hills, stands a building that looks as if it drifted in from the banks of the Seine: steep slate roofs, tall chimneys, dormer windows, and stone tracery that suggest a transplanted French château. For nearly a century, the Château Élysée at 5930 Franklin Avenue has watched Hollywood change around it—first as an elite residence for movie royalty, later as a faded landmark, and today as one of the city’s most controversial and carefully preserved monuments.
By Allan R. Ellenberger for The Hollywoodland Revue
A Widow’s Monument to the Movies
The Château Élysée was the brainchild of Elinor “Nell” Kershaw Ince, a former silent film actress and the widow of pioneering producer-director Thomas H. Ince, who died in 1924 under circumstances that have fueled rumor and speculation ever since. Around 1927, Mrs. Ince commissioned architect Arthur E. Harvey and contractor Luther T. Mayo to design a grand apartment hotel that would cater specifically to the film industry’s stars and power players.
Harvey conceived a seven-story fantasy in the Châteauesque / French Normandy style, a deliberate re-creation of a 17th-century château transplanted to the hills above Hollywood Boulevard. Clad in cream-colored stucco with steeply pitched roofs and elaborate stonework, the building sprawled across more than 86,000 square feet and contained seventy-seven luxurious suites, each outfitted for long-term residency rather than transient hotel guests.
Construction began in 1927; by the time the Château Élysée opened its doors at the end of the decade—sources variously cite 1928 or 1929—Hollywood itself was in transition. The Jazz Singer had introduced synchronized sound, and a new wave of actors, writers, and directors was arriving daily to chase the talkie boom. For them, Mrs. Ince offered something rare: a home that was both exclusive and steeped in cinematic glamour.
A Castle for the Stars
From the moment it opened, the Chateau was marketed as a residential apartment house and long-term hotel for the Hollywood and international elite, with daily housekeeping, fine dining, and a staff trained to cater to studio schedules. The grounds boasted formal gardens, tennis courts, a moat-like reflecting pool, and rooftop and patio spaces where residents could entertain beneath the California sky.
It quickly became one of the most coveted addresses in town. Over the 1930s and 1940s, the guest register read like a studio casting list: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, George Gershwin, Gracie Allen and George Burns, and columnist Ed Sullivan all stayed or lived there at various times.
For writers and musicians, the Château offered both seclusion and proximity. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were steered there during a lecture tour in the mid-1930s, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, took an apartment on an upper floor. The hotel’s lounges and dining rooms buzzed with studio gossip, impromptu auditions, and late-night story conferences. Deals were struck over cocktails in the paneled bar; affairs, both romantic and professional, unfolded behind its heavy doors.
The atmosphere combined European elegance with Hollywood improvisation. Guests might stroll through a formal garden, then bump into a director pacing the courtyard with a script in his hands or hear Gershwin working out a melody on a lobby piano. At a time when many performers still lived in modest bungalows, the Château Élysée offered them a temporary taste of aristocratic life.
From Movie Castle to Retirement Home
As the studio system evolved after World War II, the long-term apartment hotel concept began to lose its luster. In 1943 Mrs. Ince sold the property; by 1951 it had been converted into a retirement residence known as Fifield Manor, catering largely to elderly actors and industry veterans.
The building’s bones were still magnificent, but decades of hard use and limited budgets took their toll. The once-sparkling château slipped into genteel decline. By the early 1970s, with maintenance deferred and Hollywood itself in a period of urban malaise, the Château Élysée was considered a white elephant. Demolition was seriously discussed.
Saved by a New Faith
The building’s next chapter came from an unexpected quarter. In the late 1960s, the Church of Scientology began using parts of the property for its newly created Celebrity Centre, an outreach arm aimed at entertainers and public figures. In 1973 the Church purchased the Château Élysée—reportedly for around $1–1.5 million—and gradually took over the entire building.
The Château Élysée at 5930 Franklin Avenue
HOLLYWOOD LORE? The Château Élysée was the grand vision of Elinor “Nell” Kershaw Ince, widow of pioneering producer-director Thomas H. Ince, who commissioned the lavish French-style residence in 1927 as both an investment and a tribute to the refined world she and her husband once inhabited. Yet Hollywood being Hollywood, whispers soon circulated that Elinor had not built the château alone. According to long-standing rumor, William Randolph Hearst—whose yacht had been the site of Thomas Ince’s mysterious final days—quietly financed the property as a gesture of guilt or hush money. Though no evidence has ever confirmed Hearst’s involvement, the speculation clings to the Château Élysée like a shadow, adding a touch of intrigue to a building already steeped in Hollywood legend.
During the 1990s, Scientology undertook a comprehensive restoration, repairing the stonework, refurbishing public rooms, and recreating much of the original furniture based on old photographs. The overall complex—now encompassing addresses on Franklin, Yucca, and Tamarind—was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 329 in 1987, formally recognizing its architectural and historical significance.
Today, the building operates as Celebrity Centre International, while several floors function as The Manor Hotel, primarily serving Scientologists and their guests. Public tours of the historic rooms and gardens are periodically offered, and for years the on-site Renaissance Restaurant drew curious diners, though it is now generally limited to church members and invitees.
Architecture as Time Capsule
Even with its changing uses, the Château Élysée remains a textbook example of Los Angeles’ 1920s fascination with European revival styles. Harvey’s design belongs to the Châteauesque tradition, descended from the Loire Valley châteaux and filtered through American Beaux-Arts training: tall, clustered chimneys; elaborate dormers; and a vertical emphasis that makes the building seem taller than its seven stories.
At the same time, the structure speaks fluently of Hollywood’s golden years. Its grand lobby, winding staircases, and leafy courtyards recall a time when studios were located just down the hill and actors thought nothing of walking home from a wrap party in evening clothes. The surrounding Franklin Village neighborhood—with its other Harvey-designed landmark, Villa Carlotta, a Spanish Colonial apartment house a short walk away—preserves a pocket of that interwar glamour.
A Living, Complicated Landmark
Like much of Hollywood history, the story of the Château Élysée is layered and sometimes contradictory. It is at once a widow’s memorial to her husband, a rumored hush-gift from a publishing titan, a hotel where movie legends once paced the halls, a retirement home for aging performers, a near-miss demolition story, and finally the flagship property of a controversial modern religion.
For nearly a hundred years, the château has stood watch over Franklin Avenue, its slate roofs and stone gables catching the afternoon light as cars stream past below. Whatever one thinks of its current occupants, the building itself remains one of Hollywood’s most evocative survivors—a rare place where you can still, if you squint a little, imagine Bette Davis hurrying through the lobby or Clark Gable leaning against a balcony rail, a cigarette glowing in the dusk.
In a city that so often tears down its past, the Château Élysée endures: a French fantasy on a Hollywood hill, carrying within its walls the layered stories of the people—and the industry—that once called it home.
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