How long does it take?       9am – 6pm.

How far is it?                         Malibu and El Segundo

How much $$?                     Malibu Mansion Guided Tour is $8,   Old Town Music Hall $6.  Add another $6 for lunch.

Popularly called the “Malibu Mansion” by Southern California denizens, the Adamson House is a National Historical Site and is also a California Landmark.  The Adamson family created the world-famous Malibu Tile at the Malibu Potteries between 1926-1932 and built their summer vacation house (now known as the Adamson House) using this very special tile in 1929.  The Adamson House is a fine example of the Malibu Tile that cannot be reproduced today.

The house was built in a Moorish-Spanish Colonial Revival Style with a lot of the Malibu Tile used throughout the inside and outside.  It also features hand-carved teakwood doors, hand-painted murals, molded ceilings, hand-wrought filigree ironwork, and lead-framed bottle glass windows.  Plus, the house sits right on the beach!

We are given a tour of the fabulous, fully restored house and grounds by docents that know the history and story behind the Adamson House and the Adamson family.  The restoration that was done is so good that it seems that the Adamson family just stepped out and will return home at any moment.  Furniture, tableware, bed linens, clothes, and knickknacks decorate the house and really give it that lived-in feeling.   For more information about the Malibu Mansion, refer to http://www.cal-parks.ca.gov/parkpages/park_page.asp?lvl_id=315

After wandering the grounds, we head for the beach where we all sit down on the sand for lunch.  Seagulls fly overhead looking for scraps of food so it is a good idea not to feed the hungry critters or else they won’t leave you alone!

The Adamson House is only part one of the day’s adventure.  The next stop is the nearby Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo.

  Keeping with the 1920s theme started at the Adamson House, the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo features movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood.  This small theater features a mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, very rare these days with only a few people that know how to play them.

We watch whatever is playing that day which could be anything from a musical like As the Clouds Roll By to a comedy like Honolulu.  The theater is really very small!  Nowhere near the size of today’s mega-plexes.  But the Old Town Music Hall definitely has character and a special uniqueness that is all it’s own.

Before the movie starts we are treated to a performance on the mighty Wurlitzer with tunes that maybe only our grandparents would remember.  The lyrics are projected onto a screen and the audience is welcome to sing along with the music.  Everybody sings, even if it is out of tune and off key.

The little theater is really very special.  You love it after only one visit and everyone agrees that it’s got a special something.  It certainly isn’t something we’d experience everyday.  It is like stepping back in time to when movies had no speaking words and someone played the music on an organ.  For many us, we can only imagine what that must have been like.  But with the Old Town Music Hall, imagining what that time must have been like isn’t too hard because that is still how things are in this very special little theater.  For more information or to check the schedule refer to http://www.nswest.com/organ/98-1.html.