GUEST OPINION: A fascinating tale behind Herbert Law's other mansion

By Nancy Lund

The magnificent ruin of a mansion, built for a little girl who never lived in it, stands in the hills of Portola Valley. The little girl was Patricia Law. She was five when her father, Herbert Law, decided to build a new grand house for her on his Lauriston estate.

In addition to playing a major role in the construction of the Fairmont and Sir Francis Drake Hotels in San Francisco, Law had already built in Portola Valley two splendid villas and two fine homes for the superintendent of his properties, as well as numerous buildings for a working farm. He had spent 13 years here, off and on. He was 66 years old, and he was restless. He decided to divide his property into four portions, sell three of them, and build a third mansion on the part of his estate long called the Homestead. It would be Patricia's house.

He began in 1929. His architect was George Schastey, the same man who had designed his other buildings. Plans called for the main residence, garages, stables, formal gardens and two large vaults. The stone used would come from the same quarry used for the great Villa Lauriston. All the work would occur simultaneously.

The new mansion had three levels. On the first floor were the great hall with a high arched ceiling, a formal dining room, kitchen and pantry, a bar and three master suites, one with a solarium. An elevator connected this floor to an outside terrace.

Up the grand staircase was a library which occupied half of the second floor. Two guest bedrooms, a playroom and a sundeck completed this level.

A lower floor, reached by elevator, outside stairway, or inner stairway concealed behind a secret panel, contained a laundry, servants quarters, huge storage vaults with heavy steel doors, a tutor's suite, a classroom, the valet's room, a small gymnasium, and a secret wine cellar accessed through a trap door in the barroom.

By 1932, the exterior walls were finished, the roof was on, the interior framing was done, and then Schastey, the architect, died. A new architect, John Bolles, wanted a few changes if he was to complete the project. A major portion of the roof was removed, mission revival style gables were added, and the roof was finished again. By 1933, all the windows were in place save the splendid ones of stained glass. The building was weather tight; only the individual rooms of the interior awaited completion. And Herbert Law suspended work.

Why? Was he worried by the Depression? Did his advancing age cause him to worry about how his young wife and daughter would manage his vast affairs should he die? Did he lose interest?

During the construction of her mansion, Patricia was growing up a privileged child, largely isolated from the world. In 1926 a newspaper reporter had written about her as a two-year-old child living alone in her own San Francisco penthouse, cared for by servants, while her parents were abroad. She was educated mainly by tutors. The late John Skrabo, who grew up in Portola Valley, used to ride horses with her and remembered her as beautiful and an excellent horsewoman. Not many details of her life have survived.

In 1937, Law sold his Lauriston estate, lock stock and barrel to John Francis Neylan, a UC Regent and attorney for William Randolph Hearst. The Law family moved to San Francisco and then to Atherton. Twenty years later, Mrs. Neylan recalled Patricia as a gentle child who had asked the Neylan daughter Jane to please feed the little mouse that lurked around her room.

Then in 1942, while a student at Stanford, Patricia fell in love with a man her father considered beneath her. Stanford Herzbrun was an Atherton gas station attendant when Patricia met and married him. Her father threatened to disinherit her. Shortly after the marriage, Herzbrun went to the South Pacific with the marines, and Patricia continued her study of French at Stanford. She graduated in 1944. When Herzbrun returned after the war, they divorced.

A month later, on October 4, 1946, her body was found in a closed car in East Palo Alto. It was out of gas and the battery had run down. A garden hose had carried carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe through a partly-opened window into the car. A pink dress had been stuffed into the window to block out air. Two books were at her side. Apparently she had been reading as she waited to be overcome by the fumes. She was 23.

Friends and her ex-husband's family said she had been despondent over the divorce. Yet her will left everything to her parents, nothing to her former husband.

And the house that her father had built for her and which stands in ruin today? Neylan chained off the entrance and paid no attention to it. It became a popular site for unauthorized parties, curiosity seekers and vandals. All the windows were broken, including the beautiful leaded glass in the solarium. Copper drains were torn off. Some thieves had to abandon their heavy loot on the trail to their cars on Alpine or Skyline. Others came with wheelbarrows. Mysterious tales about the house being haunted abounded.

Then on a hot windless night in September 1971, a fire of enormous proportions erupted at the mansion. The stone walls produced a chimney effect. Flames shot 40 feet into the air and were visible for miles. Hundreds of potential spectators gathered along Alpine Road. Forty-five firemen and 12 pieces of equipment could only keep the fire from spreading. The nearest water, except for a limited quantity in tank trucks, was two miles away, near Corte Madera School. As planes stood ready to fight the fire from the air should it spread to the heavily wooded area around the house, it burned itself out.

Fire Chief Stan Larsen could only surmise that a careless or malicious start. The house had no electricity or heating.

And there it stands today, 71 years after it was started and 39 years since it burned. Its ruined splendor is a reminder of a dream that never came true and of a way of life that is mostly gone. When Herbert Law died in 1952 at the age of 89, he asked to be buried next to the crypt of his daughter, Patricia, whose marriage had caused him such distress and for whom he built what might have become his grandest structure.