Annenberg Community Beach House

[3] Built from designs by Julia Morgan, the complex consisted of five opulently furnished Georgian Revival buildings, including a three-story 110-room mansion where Hearst and Davies lived.

[4] In 1947, Davies sold the estate for $600,000 to hotelier Joseph Drown, who operated it as a luxury hotel and limited-membership beach club.

It was run as a public facility open to event rental and filming until the 1994 Northridge earthquake severely damaged all structures on site.

[2] Developed as a design-build partnership between Frederick Fisher and Partners Architects and Charles Pankow Builders, the Annenberg Community Beach House was conceived as a series of indoor/outdoor recreation and event spaces, both formal and informal, woven through the site.

The primary organizing device is a concrete wall that serves a backbone to the disparate elements of the project and as a sound buffer to the adjacent highway.

After the Santa Monica Pier was built, the mean high tide line has shifted to enlarge the beach by four hundred feet.

The entrance is flanked by the pre-existing "Back on the Beach" restaurant and public restrooms and showers on one side and the reception, ticketing and lifeguard building on the other.

The historic pool and deck area, with restored tile mosaics and stone paving, is within a landscaped enclosure below the beach level.

On the second floor is a glass-enclosed event room and open terrace that overlooks the pool, with views along the coast from the Santa Monica Pier to the Santa Monica Mountains and back to Palisades Park Midway along the boardwalk, at the center line of the old mansion, a second boardwalk facilitates accessibility across the deep beach to the water's edge.

Continuing north, the boardwalk passes beach volleyball courts that maintain the game's presence on the site where it was invented.