La Venta Inn celebrates 100 years as Palos Verdes Peninsula icon

The historic La Venta Inn was designed by famous architect brothers and frequented by celebrities.

It was the summer of 1923.

The Walt Disney Company had yet to be born. And the Hollywoodland sign was not yet a gleaming icon in the Los Angeles skyline.

But the La Venta Inn, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, was born.

The Spanish-style villa, perched high above the Pacific Ocean, is an icon in its own right, having been a celebrity getaway, an actor’s primary home, a lookout during World War II, and the site of countless weddings and other special events for generations of South Bay families over the past century.

It’s also overcome some troubles in recent years. The Palos Verdes Estates event space has recoverd from bankruptcy, for example, and has survived a squabble with neighbors over noise and traffic issues.

And now, the La Venta Inn is celebrating 100 years of business.

The inn will cap off its centennial year on Dec. 3, a Sunday, with “A Very La Venta Holiday” event, which will include food; fresh wreath, cookie and ornament decorating; and professional photography sessions.

Families have gathered at La Venta since the first wedding there in 1924, said Meg Walker, who, along with her catering company, Made by Meg, is the inn’s current operator.

The property, Walker said, is the sort of place elders bring their grandchildren to show them where they got married all those years ago. La Venta, she added, is a symbol of tradition for so many that it is almost like a “living, breathing organism” in its own right.

“There’s so few places that have that longevity of history in California,” Walker said. “But I’m just carrying on a legacy and I just love it.”

Walker has operated the inn since 2021, shortly after the storied event space entered bankruptcy.

Early history

La Venta Inn is considered one of the first buildings constructed on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

In 1989, it was nominated by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as a state point of historical interest. The following year, it was designated as a California Historic Resource by the state’s Office of Historic Preservation.

And, according to real estate agent and Palos Verdes Historical Society board President Dana Graham, the venerable inn is probably the most iconic building on the Peninsula.

La Venta Inn, in fact, served as the first real estate office on the hill, as part of the Palos Verdes Project, formed to “develop the Peninsula into an exclusive enclave,” Graham said.

In 1921, magazine publisher E.G. Lewis bought La Venta’s three acres from Frank Vanderlip, banker and founder of the four cities on the Peninsula.

That initial purchase was part of a much larger land transaction that eventually led to the city of Palos Verdes Estates, said Vanderlip’s grandson, Kelvin Vanderlip.

La Venta Inn, which was completed in 1923, was designed by architects Walter Swindell Davis and Francis Pierpont Davis.

The brothers became known for the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, in Los Angeles. That church, completed in 1925, is one of the city’s most “most monumental examples of Romanesque Revival architecture,” according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.

La Venta Inn, meanwhile, was initially named Clubhouse 764, since it was located at 764 Via Del Monte. But a year after opening, its name was changed to La Venta, meaning “the sale” in Spanish. (The address is now 796 Via Del Monte.)

In those early days, La Venta Inn was, literally, an inn, Graham said. People would come to the Peninsula from Beverly Hills, he said.

“In those days, it was a schlep to get down here ,” Graham said. “They would put them up overnight (at La Venta).”

Hollywood history

It was during the latter part of the 1920s and into the 1930s that La Venta Inn became a getaway for the Hollywood elite.

The inn was owned by Jay Lawyer, of the Palos Verdes Project, and restaurant manager Reba Willis. Lawyer was one of the builders of the La Venta and had been the general manager of the Palos Verdes Project and a representative for Frank Vanderlip.

The inn became a hotspot for A-listers, according to various reports, including in publications now owned by the Southern California News Group. La Venta became a respite for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Bob Hope, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn and Betty Grable.

The 1926 silent feature “The Girl from Montmartre,” starring Barbara La Marr and Lewis Stone, was filmed at La Venta. La Marr died soon after filming, on Jan. 30, 1926, from tuberculosis-related complications.

Then, in 1941, actor Frank Conroy bought La Venta Inn and used it as his principal place of residence.

Conroy was a British actor, according to the Internet Movie Database (better known as IMDB), having roles in  classics such as “Grand Hotel,” featuring an all-star cast that included Garbo and Joan Crawford, in 1932; “The Ox-Bow Incident,” starring Henry Fonda, in 1943; and “The Snake Pit,” with Olivia de Havilland, in 1948.

In 1957, Conroy won a Tony Award for best supporting actor for his performance in Graham Greene’s “The Potting Shed.”

Conroy’s great-grandson, Redondo Beach resident Jason Conroy, said his forebearer came to Hollywood and signed a contract with MGM.

“He fell in love with Palos Verdes,” the younger Conroy said, “because it reminded him of Europe.

“I’m not sure how he ended up purchasing the La Venta Inn,” he added, “but I believe he was the first person to purchase it as a residence.”

Frank Conroy’s only son, Richard Conroy, spend his teenage years on the hill.

Richard “Dick” Conroy was raised in France and Switzerland until he was 12 years old, when he moved to Palos Verdes Estates to live with his father. He attended Malaga Cove School, according an SCNG obituary, which was reprinted on Legacy.com.

“They didn’t have a high school up there,” Jason Conroy said of his grandfather, “so he actually would ride a motorcycle down to Redondo Union High School and that’s how he got to school every day.”

After serving in the United States Coast Guard, Richard Conroy joined the PVE Police Department, eventually becoming chief. He retired in 1972 and moved to Nevada, where he died in 2010 at 89 years old.

The fixer-upper years

But long before Conroy left for Nevada, though, the inn he once called home was in need of some work.

After the Great Depression and World War II, the La Venta Inn went into “severe decline,” said Graham, the historical society president.

“By 1944,” he said, “it was definitely a fixer.”

That, however, was also the year Margaret Bates Goddard Schnetzler and her husband, Stanley Schnetzler, bought the La Venta Inn.

Once WWII ended, the couple made it a popular place for various gatherings, according to November 1956 article in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News, another SCNG publication.

“It was the perfect spot for Women’s Club teas, Book Section lectures, Garden Club parties, also musicals and dances,” the article said. “It seemed there was something going on at the Schnetzlers’ all the time.”

The household’s matriarch first visited the area in the 1920s, when her mother took her to La Venta for lunch, according to grandson Mark Matthews.

The Schnetzlers were living in Coronado when her husband, a World War I veteran who re-enlisted during WWII, retired from the Navy because of medical problems.

They wanted to move to the South Bay, Matthews said, so his grandmother contacted a broker and asked to see if La Venta might be for sale.

It was serendipitous.

The broker, Matthews said, told his grandmother that the day before, Frank Conroy had contacted him to say he was thinking of selling the property.

Four days later, Margaret Schnetzler owned the place, her grandson said.

When the Schnetzlers took over, Matthews said, “(La Venta) was in terrible shape.” World War II really took a toll, he said, adding that the inn’s location at the top of the hill served as a lookout tower for Japanese submarines.

“Gasoline was rationed, tires were rationed,” Matthews said. “Nobody wanted to waste their ration tickets buying fuel to drive to Palos Verdes Estates, so the place was in real disrepair. The garden was in terrible shape. The roof had holes in it.”

But, Matthews said, his grandparents went to work.

“When the neighbors found out that somebody was living there, they stopped by and just kind of assumed that it would be open to the public again,” Matthews said. “Mom said that sometimes people would just walk in, sit down and ask to see a menu.”

Margaret Schnetzler would offer them a cup of tea.

His grandmother, Matthews said, would say yes to anyone who wanted to use the place for weddings or church services, a ballet school, or even the Toastmasters Club, which wanted to use the La Venta once a month for its meetings.

The couple received a business license in 1954, with Margaret Schnetzler running La Venta as an event venue for weddings or other celebrations. But in 1955, a year after the La Venta Inn reopened for business, Stanley Schnetzler died.

Despite that, his widow carried on.

“Her eyesight was terrible,” Matthews said. “She had cataracts and she had surgery. But back in the ’60s, cataract surgery is not what it is today. So it didn’t go well. And she was functionally blind for five, six years while she ran it.”

His grandmother knew La Venta backward and forward, Matthews said, and would get around with a cane and “take care of business.”

“But she had to have a live-in bookkeeper and secretary,” Matthews said. “She also had a housekeeper who lived on the property who took care of meals and stuff when the chefs weren’t there. She always had help, but it got to a point where she just didn’t think she could do it any longer.”

Around 1967, Margaret Schnetzler moved out of La Venta and into a nearby apartment. She began leasing the inn to William “Bob” Eskridge.

Not long after, she transferred to a nursing home in Pasadena to be near her daughter.

“Eskridge had such a good deal, renting for 25 years,” Matthews said. “I think because my grandmother was afraid that her children, three daughters, would sell the place, so she wanted to kind of take it out their hands, in my opinion.”

Matthews said his grandmother died around 1968.

Schnetzler’s three daughters — Muriel Hull,  Doris Matthews and Patricia Mewhinney — inherited equal portions of La Venta, Matthews said. Hull was the oldest and the first of the daughters to die, he said, followed by Mewhinney, who was the youngest sister. Matthew’s mother, Doris, died in 2015 at the age of 94.

Matthews and his three sisters inherited their mother’s share — one-third — of La Venta. After the death of his younger sister, Matthews’ nephew inherited part of that share.

When the Eskridge lease was running out in 1992, Matthews said, “it actually went up for sale for about a minute.”

“I started cold calling people to find somebody to lease it,” said Matthews, who was born in 1949.

The New York Food Co., based in Hermosa Beach, took over the lease in 1992, and ran La Venta until filing for bankruptcy in July 2020, shortly after the coronavirus pandemic.

New York Food Co’s lease was set to run out in 2022.

Made by Meg ownership

In came Walker.

Walker, who grew up in Manhattan Beach, started her catering business, Mad by Meg, in 2007.

Made by Meg, based in Redondo Beach, caters 700 to 800 events a year, — with many of those taking place at La Venta.

Taking over the three acres of La Venta, which also has a fully functional kitchen, was a great opportunity, Walker said, especially since she and her family live about six minutes from the property.

But, Matthews said, there were “significant repairs” needed after New York Food left — several hundred thousands of dollars’ worth.

“That’s a very expensive property to keep up,” Matthews said.

But the “high season” for weddings and other events is most of the year, typically from March to November, thanks to outdoor availability and great weather, Walker said.

That popularity, though, has also led to some conflicts with neighbors in recent years, especially following the pandemic.

La Venta is situated in a residential zone and since 1948, based on a city ordinance, it is not supposed to operate as anything other than a hotel and restaurant.

Neighbors voiced their concerns about noise and traffic. But, Walker said, La Venta wants to be “good neighbors” so they were able to come up with “solutions that feels amenable to the neighborhood.”

La Venta received more than 500 letters of support during that time, Walker said.

“It was an outpouring of support,” Walker said. “We were so grateful.”

So after a century as a Peninsula icon, it seems the La Venta Inn is poised to remain a popular destination for years to come.

If you go

What: “A Very La Venta Holiday”

When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3

Where: 796 Via Del Monte, in Palos Verdes Estates

Cost: Tickets are $25- $55, and include meal and holiday activities.

Information: laventa.com