HOMES – 1920s

This what Mary Astor wrote in My Story about this house: ” I must have been making a good deal of money by then, for it was in the early months of 1925 that Daddy bought the home on Temple Hill Drive. The houses were all unhappily Moorish in design….I think it was about this time [1934] that the break with Mother and Daddy came. The fact was that they were living in a mansion with two cars and three servants while we lived very modestly, with only the servants we had to have to care for the house because I was working. And whenever we spent anything we had an argument with Mother and Daddy.  I finally screwed up my courage and went to Daddy to have a talk with him. I told him that I would give up my one-third right to the property, and they could have free and clear title to it—it was worth about seventy-five thousand dollars then. They could sell it, find a little business of some sort, live modestly, or do whatever they wished. But from now on they would receive no more money from me.   Daddy was tragedy itself. It was out of the question for him to think of selling “his” home. Surely I would pay for the projects that he had started; the grading had been begun for another driveway at the side, and what about the swimming pool that he had planned? I simply repeated my declaration: “No more money.”  Daddy mournfully put the house up for public auction, possibly under the delusion that he could get more for it that way, and it went down at twenty-five thousand dollars.

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