Scrolling through Instagram can be a mindless time suck. But it can also lead to new discoveries in the way of filming locations. A recent perusal of my feed introduced me to a stunningly beautiful and historically significant shooting spot I was not previously aware of – the towering Victorian in Monrovia known as Idlewild.
A 2019 listing for the remarkable home describes it as an “architectural statement piece” and that is not hyperbole. The property is an exquisitely preserved example of late 19th Century Victorian design, the likes of which isn’t often seen in today’s world of constant tear-downs, rebuilds and reimaginings.
The stately residence, which is set far back from the road on a palm tree-lined plot at 255 N. Mayflower Ave., was commissioned by General William Anderson Pile, an Indiana native who followed a rather unique career path. Initially a minister, he joined the Union Army as a chaplain during the Civil War and was ultimately promoted to brevet Major General. Upon leaving the army following the end of the war, he served as a St. Louis congressman, governor of New Mexico and Minister to Venezuela before ultimately relocating to Monrovia, where he helped incorporate the city and eventually became its second mayor. In 1887, William and his wife, Hannah Cain Pile, purchased a 10-acre plot of land on the corner of W. Hillcrest Blvd. and N. Mayflower Ave. and commissioned brothers Joseph Cather Newsom and Samuel Newsom to design a large Queen Anne-style residence for them to call home. Of choosing to settle in the small San Gabriel Valley town, reporter T.M. Hotchkiss wrote in an 1888 The Monrovia Planet article, “For some time previous to coming here, he and his wife had traveled extensively over this coast in search of a spot for a home, and nowhere did he find a location that suited his fancy so well as this spot.”
The couple’s new dwelling, which they dubbed “Idlewild” after the upstate New York residence of their friend, author/editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, was completed in 1888 for $12,000.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The grand two-story abode counts four bedrooms and two bathrooms in 3,384 square feet, cloaked by an ornamented shingled façade with a towering cornice, an expansive columned wraparound porch and a sunburst-themed sign reading “Idlewild.”
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The dramatic double-doored entry is reset in a wood-clad enclave and capped by a transom window designed by General Pile himself featuring more than one thousand pieces of glass and semi-precious stones.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Just past the threshold stands the reception room, which offers striking views of the sun-speckled front door transom as well as access to the elegantly carved Spanish Cedar and orange wood stairwell. Overlooking the glorious span is an etched window made of ruby glass and framed in curly redwood. The four-foot wainscotting that lines the entry is also fashioned from curly redwood.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The reception room opens to two adjoining parlors, both measuring 300 square feet and bisected by an ornate spindlework arch. The rear parlor features an original fireplace (one of a total of five on the premises!) with a mahogany mantle. The front parlor initially boasted a fireplace with a mantle shaped from California onyx, which T.M. Hotchkiss noted in his Planet article was “an exceedingly artistic piece of workmanship and considered by the General to be the finest thing in the house.” Sadly, it was removed by a later owner and a piano now stands in its place.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The ground floor, which is capped by 12-foot ceilings and lined with Douglas Fir flooring throughout, is made complete by an enclosed porch that serves as a sitting room, a formal dining room, a sunroom, a laundry room and a semi-updated eat-in kitchen with a butler’s pantry.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com All four bedrooms can be found upstairs, along with the original oversized linen closet which now serves as a custom walk-in closet. Also upstairs is the home’s main claim to fame – the original Juliet balcony, long since enclosed, overlooking the front yard. In grand Monrovian lore, it is there that Theodore Roosevelt is once said to have made a speech to his supporters during his bid for the 1901 Vice Presidency.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Outside, the property is surrounded by a spacious 0.38-acre double lot with mature foliage, grassy expanses, pathways, a children’s playhouse and a detached six-car garage with a whopping 1,000 square feet of storage space.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com General Pile’s tenure on the premises was short. He passed away in 1889 upon contracting pneumonia, just a little over a year after moving in. Hannah remained living at the residence for the next 17 years, at which point it was put up for sale and the vast majority of its ten acres subdivided.
The incredible pad, which is a City of Monrovia Historic Landmark and a Mills Act property, most recently sold in July 2019 for $1.7 million. The listing marked the first time the place had been on the market in nearly 50 years! Today, one of the rooms is currently being offered as a vacation rental for $120 a night. The property is also, of course, used for filming.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com In the season two episode of “Highway to Heaven” titled “Keep Smiling,” which aired in 1986, Idlewild portrayed the former earthly home of Jonathon Smith (Michael Landon), where he lived before becoming an angel and where he is sent on his latest assignment to help his widow, Jane Thompson (Dorothy McGuire), find happiness again.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com While the residence’s interior is featured significantly throughout the episode, a limited portion of the exterior is only shown briefly at the end.
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Image Credit: ABC “Highway to Heaven” is not the home’s only onscreen cameo. The pad also portrayed the supposed Salinas-area residence of Adam Trask (Timothy Bottoms) in the final third of the 1981 miniseries “East of Eden.” Only the interior of the property appeared in the production. Exteriors were filmed elsewhere.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com And it played the home of the Stackpool siblings in 1996’s “Head of the Family” (currently available for streaming on Tubi). The ridiculously-premised black comedy/horror film tells the story of a set of evil quadruplets born with various physical powers. As explained by Myron Stackpool (J.W. Perra), the “intelligent” brother who boasts an extremely large head on a tiny body and uses his brain to control his three siblings, the foursome represents “a unique biological phenomenon – four genetically linked beings, each endowed with a share of normal abilities enhanced to almost supernatural proportions.”
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The interior of the home is featured in the film, as well, and, as evidenced by the MLS images, at the time of the 2019 sale it still looked exactly as it did onscreen 23 years prior.
Per a former owner, Idlewild was also featured in episodes of “Party of Five” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” as well as in some “Freddy Krueger movies.”
Disclaimer: Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.