Raymond Chandler in La Cañada

The crime novelist Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep”) set most of his stories in Los Angeles during the 1930s and ’40s. In a short story of his called “Nevada Gas,”the subjects of the story make a foray to an abandoned house in La Cañada just after the big New Year’s Flood of 1934. Here’s an edited version of that section of the story:

“The big car slid noiselessly through Glendale and up the grade towards Montrose. From Montrose over to the Sunland Highway and across that into the almost deserted flood area of La Crescenta. They found Castle Road and followed it towards the mountains. In a few minutes they came to the stone house.

“It stood back from the road, across a wide space which might have once been lawn but was now packed sand, small stones and a few large boulders. The road made a square turn just before they came to it. Beyond, the road ended in a clean edge of concrete chewed off by the flood of New Years Day, 1934. Beyond the edge was the main wash of the flood. Bushes grew in it and there were many huge stones. On the very edge a tree grew with half its roots in the air eight feet above the bed of the wash.

“At the back of the house was what had been a chicken house. A piece of rusted junk in a squashed garage was all that remained of the family sedan. The back door was nailed up like the windows. De Ruse stood silent in the rain, wondering why the front door was open. Then he remembered there had been another flood a few months before, not such a bad one. There might have been enough water to break open the door on the side towards the mountains. Two stucco houses, both abandoned, stood on adjoining lots. Farther away from the wash on a bit of higher ground, there was a lighted window. It was the only light in the range of De Ruse’s vision.

“He went back to the front of the house and slipped through the open door, stood inside it and listened. After quite a long time he snapped the flash on. The house didn’t smell like a house. It smelled like the out of doors. There was nothing in the front room but sand, a few pieces of smashed furniture, some marks on the walls, above the dark line of the flood water where pictures had hung. De Ruse went through a dark hall and into a kitchen that had a hole in the floor where the sink had been, and rusty gas stove stuck in the hole. From the kitchen he went into a bedroom. The bedroom was square and stark. A carpet stiff with mud was plastered to the floor. There was a metal bed with a rusted spring, and a water stained mattress over part of the spring.”

The story continues, a classic detective tale of that era with dead bodies, tough guys, double-dealing dames and gun-toting gangsters. But the section of the story that takes place in La Cañada is accurate in that the house described actually existed on Castle Road on the edge of the Hall-Beckley Canyon flood area. Not only that, but the house is still there!

The stone house described in the Raymond Chandler story is at 5026 Castle Road. It was built in 1932. Very recently it has been lovingly restored, even to the point of removing all the stonework and putting it back up with new grout, along with many other historically sensitive improvements. I was made aware of this by the architect on the project Marc Reusser of Reusser Bergstrom Associates in Pasadena, who contacted me to give me info on the house and the references to Raymond Chandler.

The house is worth a drive by (but of course don’t bug the owners). This home is a real beauty. And it’s fun to think about the famous mystery writer Raymond Chandler touring the flood zone in 1934 and remembering this one house to be featured in his story.