Leonis Adobe Museum - Share the Legend

ay back in 1844, six years before Los Angeles was incorporated and California was given statehood, this modest little adobe structure was built as... well, nobody knows for sure. One theory is that it served as a stagecoach stop on the El Camino Real, the King's Highway connecting California's missions.
Around 1880, Miguel Leonis and his wife, Espiritu Chijulla, the daughter of a Chumash chief, moved into their adobe brick house, enlarging and extensively remodeling the building into the gracious Monterey-Style mansion you see today. Leonis was Basque, born in the French Pyrenees. Once in the U.S., amassing huge wealth from real estate, litigation, and dowry, he came to be known as "El Basquo Grande" and "King of Calabasas" and pretty much ruled a huge chunk of the San Fernando Valley. He died in 1889 from injuries suffered in a wagon accident. In order to inherit the estate, Espiritu had to go to court to prove she was Leonis's legal wife. She ultimately did, but only a year before her death in 1906.
Jumping ahead to August 6, 1962, the first day of the Cultural Heritage Board's public business, the Leonis Adobe was literally on the verge of being demolished to make way for an adjacent restaurant's parking lot. Luckily, the board's first action was to declare the site California Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1.

A great deal of research, study, and skillful work has gone into faithfully restoring the Leonis Adobe to the way it is believed to have appeared after Leonis completed enlarging and remodeling it. But there are one or two exceptions. For instance, the present living room was originally two rooms, a parlor and living room, separated by a wall just to the right of the front door. The wall was removed around 1925, and has not been replaced in order to provide a large room for group meetings.
Leonis, in enlarging and remodeling the house, sheathed the outside front of the house, and paneled the interior living room with wood. He walled in the rear and northeast side porches, both upstairs and downstair to add more rooms. He added the Victorian fretwork balcony along the front of the the house, and other enhancing details and features. In the present living room, the family portraits hang on the wall where they always have, but the mirror originally hung where the dining room door now is. This door was cut through in the 1920s. The bright colors that highlight the house were discovered under many layers of paint, and presumably were the ones Leonis had used.
If Miguel Leonis were alive today, he'd certainly ask, "Whose idea was it to put the 101 Freeway in my backyard?" In fact, the barn seen here, built in 1912, had to be moved twice in order to accommodate the 101, which runs just a few feet behind the property.