How a Department Store Heiress Turned Her Historic Beverly Hills Estate Into a Must-see Public Garden and Home Tour
By Deborah Belgum
The famed Robinson Department store may be long gone, but the family’s legacy lives on in a six-acre Beverly Hills estate in California that has been open to the public for 45 years.
Known as the Virginia Robinson Gardens, the compound was built in 1911 by Harry and Virginia Robinson, who wed in 1903 and took a long honeymoon to Europe, India and Kashmir, where the newlyweds collected merchandise for the family department store and themselves.
Returning to Los Angeles, California, they were driving one day to the new Los Angeles Country Club when they got lost and ended up on a barren hilltop. What they saw was a view of the Santa Monica Mountains on one side and, on the other side, the plains below that would become the incorporated city of Beverly Hills in 1914