Overview

Conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), who led symphony orchestras in Cincinnati, New York, Houston, and most notably Philadelphia, collaborated with Santa Barbara landscape architect and architectural designer Lockwood De Forest III (1896-1949) on the design of this Toro Canyon House. Work began in 1934, nearly at the nadir of the Depression, and concluded the following year. Stokowski made a lot of design decisions about the house, and lived here periodically with the actress Greta Garbo after the 1938 dissolution of his marriage to Evangeline Love Brewster Johnson (1897-1990), an heiress to the Johnson and Johnson medical products fortune. The house occupied a 10-acre estate, on which the conductor raised avocados. Stokowski sold the house and its contents for $32,000 in 1953. (See Santa Barbara Independent, "Leopold Stokowski The Renowned Conductor's Santa Barbara Ties," accessed 04/18/2017.)

PCAD id: 21110