Hugh Hefner & Playboy Mansion's House (former)

Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine in 1953 and edited it for the rest of his life, spinning it into clubs, TV shows, and the rabbit-head logo. He died in 2017, aged 91.

Architects Joseph Estep and Arthur Rolland Kelly built the Elizabethan revival house in 1927 for the son of Broadway store founder Arthur Letts. Louis Statham owned it after World War II, and Hefner bought it in 1971.

Arthur Letts named Holmby Hills for Holdenby, the English village of his birth, and his family laid it out on the old Wolfskill Ranch. His son’s estate spanned this house and its neighbor, 7.3 acres in all.

Hefner sold in 2016 to Daren Metropoulos, owner of the 1929 sister house next door, and stayed on until his death in September 2017. In 2018 Metropoulos signed a city covenant barring demolition of this house.

The county assessor still dates the house to 1927 and values its 5 acres of ground at more than 12 times the building standing on them. In Holmby Hills, the land carries the price, not the house.

In June 2022, a Los Angeles County civil jury found that Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the mansion in 1975. It awarded her $500,000 in damages.

The estate borders the Los Angeles Country Club near its 14th hole, and at the 2023 US Open the licensed zoo’s squirrel monkeys and peacocks were audible from the course. Metropoulos kept the animals through his renovation.