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"This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Architectural Digest.\n\nAs romantic legends go, it&amp;#39;s a good one. The scene is a big, rambling, hacienda-style house under construction directly across from the ninth green of Los Angeles&amp;#39;s Wilshire Country Club. Suddenly, the scene is interrupted by a flashy red sports car barreling down the entrance drive and crashing into the ornate wooden gates leading to the motor court. As stunned construction workers look on, a tall, darkly handsome young man, not more than a teenager really, leaps out and declares he must have the house and will buy it \u201Cat any price.\u201D The driver was, according to this particular legend, none other than Howard Hughes, scion of a vast Texas industrial fortune, freshly arrived in California with plans to take Hollywood by storm. Apocryphal though it may be, the story does manage to capture the spirit of what we have come to know about the young Hughes\u2014bold, impetuous, erratic, with a manifest brilliance. He demonstrated early the type of behavior that was to help make him one of the most compelling figures to emerge in the 20th century.\n\nWhile the 19-year-old Hughes&amp;#39;s arrival in Hollywood in 1925 generated little excitement among the film colony as a whole, it created a great deal of consternation within his own family, which was collectively aghast at the boy&amp;#39;s seemingly willful decision to ignore his late parents&amp;#39; wishes that he finish his education. Hughes&amp;#39;s relatives were not alone in their disapproval of his ambitious plans. The general belief around Hollywood was that the young millionaire was about to prove the old adage about a fool and his money. But when his third picture, 1927&amp;#39;s Two Arabian Knights, became an unqualified smash, it made the doubters reassess their initial impression. It also gave Hughes and his wife, Ella, the impetus to leave their bungalow at the Ambassador Hotel for more permanent quarters.\n\nView Slideshow1 / 9The 30-room residence, designed by architect Roland E. Coate, Sr., in 1926 for socialite Eva K. Fudger, was modeled after haciendas built during California&amp;#39;s Spanish and Mexican periods.\n\nEschewing the overtly tony enclaves of Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, the Hugheses settled on the quieter, less ostentatious district of Hancock Park, where they found a beguilingly picturesque estate, a 30-room hacienda that had been built for prominent socialite Eva K. Fudger and designed by Roland E. Coate, Sr., one of the Southland&amp;#39;s foremost architects, with landscape design by the equally redoubtable team of Florence Yoch and Lucile Council.\n\nOstensibly, the Fudger house, with its handsome cantilevered balcony running the length of its central mass, was evocative of the houses of old Monterey. In actuality, however, Coate looked to Southern California for his inspiration, modeling the Fudger house on some of the grand haciendas built around the region during the Spanish and Mexican periods.\n\nThey found a beguilingly picturesque estate with a 30-room hacienda that had been designed by Roland E. Coate, Sr.\n\nAs fine a home as it truly was, however, it is hard not to note the coincidence of its location literally less than a block away from the much smaller home of Hughes&amp;#39;s Uncle Felix. He may have insisted on the far grander Fudger house to ensure that his estranged relatives would have to see physical proof of his material success on a daily basis. Initially renting the estate, beginning in 1928, Hughes later bought the house outright from Fudger for a reported $135,000, and it would remain his principal residence over the tumultuous decade and a half to follow.\n\nBy the time Hughes and his wife were ensconced in their home early in 1928, he was already deeply immersed in the planning of a film project more ambitious than anything he, or anyone else, had yet attempted. The project was Hell&amp;#39;s Angels, a film that combined Hughes&amp;#39;s interest in filmmaking with his growing passion for airplanes. For more than two years Hughes labored on Hell&amp;#39;s Angels, often working 24-and sometimes 36-hour stretches at a time. His constant absences from the house on Muirfield Road proved too much for his wife, who finally left him and returned to Houston in October 1928, filing for divorce the next year.\n\nHughes&amp;#39;s mania for Hell&amp;#39;s Angels became the talk of Hollywood, and, as the budget continued to climb to record numbers, many believed the film might actually break the ambitious young filmmaker. Once again, however, Hughes confounded his doubters. Hell&amp;#39;s Angels became the most heralded film event of 1930, earning laudatory reviews and doing a brisk business at the box office.\n\nThe succ\u00E8s d&amp;#39;estime of Hell&amp;#39;s Angels made Hughes the toast of Hollywood and brought the acceptance that had previously eluded him. Although never comfortable in such settings, Hughes became a much sought-after guest at important Hollywood functions, where he could usually be seen off in a corner with one of the screen&amp;#39;s great beauties. His most enduring romantic liaison during this period was with Katharine Hepburn, with whom he shared a passion for flying and golf, and the pair could often be seen stepping through the gate at the rear of Hughes&amp;#39;s house to play an impromptu round on the adjacent links.\n\nAfter producing a number of other pictures over the next several years, including the now classic The Front Page (1931) and Scarface (1932), Hughes lost interest in films and began devoting his full attention to flying. As he had with his previous ventures, he threw himself into aeronautics in a big way. After winning his first air race in 1934, Hughes set out to break every known record, and in July 1938 he achieved the ultimate prize, shattering the world record for circumnavigating the globe. His aeronautic exploits thrilled the Depression-weary nation, and he was hailed as an American hero, showered with praise and feted with ticker-tape parades in both New York and Los Angeles. It was to be the peak of his popularity, a last cloudless vista before the long nightmarish descent into madness began.\n\nHis constant absences from the house on Muirfield Road proved too much for his wife, who finally left him.\n\nHoward Hughes left his longtime Hancock Park base in 1942, embarking on the nomadic existence that was to characterize the remainder of his increasingly bizarre life. Lovingly maintained by its subsequent owners, the Hughes hacienda is today a treasured local landmark and, perhaps even more important, a physical reminder of Howard Hughes, not as the paranoid, reclusive germaphobe for which he came to be known but as the brilliant young man he once was\u2014the creative genius behind Hell&amp;#39;s Angels; the daring and heroic aviator; the shy, gangly Texan who charmed the screen&amp;#39;s great beauties; and the brash young man in the flashy red sports car.\n\nRelated: See More Celebrity Homes in AD"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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