Wayne Manor from TV’s ‘Batman’ lists for $32 million in Pasadena
A piece of iconic Los Angeles architecture and one of pop culture’s most recognizable exteriors is on display as the Pasadena home featured as Wayne Manor in TV’s original “Batman” hits the market this month for $32 million — less than a year after it was last sold.
The seven-bedroom, 11-bathroom Jacobean Tudor Revival home on 5 acres of gated land was built in 1928 by the L.A.-based architectural firm Morgan, Walls & Clements. This is the same firm responsible for some of L.A.’s most fantastical and beloved architectural creations including the Wiltern, El Capitan and Mayan theaters. It’s located at 380 S. San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena, in a lush, wooded area above the Arroyo Seco near the Rose Bowl.
The home, which features a stately mahogany main staircase and a genuine butler’s pantry worthy of Alfred Pennyworth, was made famous by the “Batman” TV series, which originally aired on ABC from 1966-68. During that time a man named Norman Preston van Valkenburgh lived there with his family. Film crews shot at the home for three days in 1966, but only external shots ended up being used as stock footage for Wayne Manor.
Over the years fans began to confuse the mansion with another nearby estate — the work of one of the city’s most prominent Africa American architects Paul R. Williams . The home, which The Times cheekily called an “imposter” in a 1989 article, burned down in 2005 while being renovated by its owner, Michael Hammer, grandson of the late oil tycoon Armand Hammer. At that time, crowds of “Batman” fans gathered before the smoldering ashes lamenting the loss only to discover they had the wrong house.
If the real Wayne Manor sells for its $32 million asking price it will break its own record for a residential sale in Pasadena. That record was set only last year when the current owner bought it for $20.5 million.
It will take just one super fan with Bruce Wayne-deep pockets to snap up this dreamy estate. Spoiler alert: There is no Bat Cave, but there is a pickleball court, a resort-style pool, a private theater and an Architectural Digest pedigree.
I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt counting the money in my swear jar and dreaming big. This is your arts and culture news for the week.
The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY
Jeff LeBeau, left, and Tim Cummings in the West Coast premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville” at the Ruskin Group Theatre Arts Center, directed by John Perrin Flynn.
(John Perrin Flynn)
Grangeville
The West Coast premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s two-hander about a pair of estranged brothers concludes its acclaimed run at the Ruskin next weekend. In his review, Times theater critic Charles McNulty wrote that the playwright “turns his characters inside out in a play that powerfully illuminates a subject that has rarely been treated onstage with such unflinching honesty and sensitivity: How does one integrate a past that took everything to escape?”
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 2. Ruskin Group Theatre, 2800 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. app.arts-people.com
Sounds of LA County
Country music in Sylmar and Quartz Hill; disco, soul and R&B in South L.A.; regional Mexican music in Florence-Graham and La Puente; deep house, Afrobeats, hip-hop and funk in East Compton; global acoustic in Willowbrook; and live salsa in East L.A. are this week’s offerings in the free summer series from LA County Parks and Nextfest LA. The program continues through August.
6-9 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Thursday. Check website for exact days and locations. soundsoflacounty.com
SATURDAY
Joe Hisaishi presents Music Future
Coming off three nights at the Hollywood Bowl, the Japanese composer moves to a more intimate setting to celebrate the work of contemporary composers, including Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and Max Richter, with the LA Phil New Music Group.
8 p.m. The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East theford.com
The Hour of the Star
Brazilian actor Bruna Fachetti stars in the world premiere of a stage adaptation of the novella by Clarice Lispector about an impoverished woman dreaming of a better life in Rio de Janeiro. The limited, five-performance engagement was conceived and will be directed by Alex Tietre from the English translation by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Lispector biographer Benjamin Moser.
7 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, Thursday, July 31 and Aug. 1. The Broadwater Black Box Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. eventbrite.com
SUNDAY
Boris Brejcha performs during the 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival .
(Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for Coachella)
Boris Brejcha with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
The masked German DJ makes his global orchestral debut. The techno DJ duo Frieder & Jakob open the show. Be prepared to dance.
7 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com
Murder on the Orient Express
Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of the Agatha Christie mystery, adapted by Paul Dehn, earned six Oscar nominations. Alfred Finney, nominated for leading actor, stars as the meticulous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigating a killing aboard the famous train. Also starring Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam and Ingrid Bergman, who won the Oscar for supporting actress. Part of the Oscar Sundays series.
2 p.m. Academy Museum, David Geffen Theater, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
TUESDAY
Rhapsody in Blue & Shostakovich
Marin Alsop conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Anna Clyne’s “Masquerade,” Gershwin’s soaring American classic (with pianist Conrad Tao) and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com
THURSDAY
Peter Finch in ‘Network.’
(TCM)
Network
“I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” shouts Peter Finch as news anchor Howard Beale in this 1976 satire directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning four: leading actor, posthumously, for Finch, leading actress for Faye Dunaway, supporting actress for Beatrice Straight, and original screenplay. Fifty years later, it feels as prescient as ever.
2 p.m. Vidiots, Eagle Theatre, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org
Arts anywhere
André De Shields, left, Reeve Carney, center, and the cast of Hadestown perform onstage during the 2019 Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall.
(Theo Wargo / Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
Hadestown: The Musical
The hit Broadway show, winner of eight Tonys and a Grammy, comes to movie theaters for a special five-day engagement. “The show travels to the underworld and back again with liquified grace,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty. “Unfurling like a dream, ‘Hadestown’ speaks most eloquently through its sultry jazz score.” With Reeve Carney as Orpheus André De Shields as Hermes, Amber Gray as Persephone, Eva Noblezada as Eurydice and Patrick Page as Hades.
Friday through Wednesday, theaters everywhere. bleeckerstreetmedia.com
— Kevin Crust
Culture news and the SoCal scene
The Hollywood Bowl during a summer concert.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Hollywood Bowl recently debuted its biggest sound system upgrade in decades (featuring AI-powered vocal isolation and immersive, surround-sound), and Times classical music critic Mark Swed weighed in on why audiences should be careful of what they wish for. Still, the jury is out: “It is far too soon to say what ways the fabulous new Bowl sound system, which happens to be AI-endowed, might become friend and/or foe. In the first two L.A. Phil classical concerts, the white speakers brought out wonders and caused problems. But the minimal Bowl rehearsal time allows little opportunity to fine-tune,” Swed writes.
Swed also attended a showing of two of Yoko Ono’s famous performance pieces at REDCAT (in collaboration with the Broad, which is currently showing a major Ono retrospective). Titled “Sky Piece” and “Cut Piece” the music-driven works featured compositions by Ono’s friend and collaborator John Cage (Swed writes about the pair’s complicated relationship in New York during the 1960s). Swed also extols “Cut Piece” as performed bythe artist known as MPA, who sat stoically as the audience lined up to cut patches of her clothing off piece by piece.
Sean Luc Rogers and James Tupper in “F— Strangers” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
Times theater critic Charles McNulty headed to Echo Theater Company to see playwright Erik Patterson’s “F— Strangers,” directed by Echo Theater Company founding artistic director Chris Fields. McNulty found the show, which features scene after scene of intimate encounters, “intriguing and frustrating in equal measure.”
“It’s over 8 feet tall, nearly 11 feet wide and travels by 53-foot semitrailer. It’s covered in more than 20,000 beads and weighs almost 1 ton — or about 2,000 pounds,” writes The Times’ Eloise Rollins-Fife in her charming profile of “Gillian,” the chandelier featured in “Phantom of the Opera’s” current North American tour.” “And eight times a week, it’s dropped atop the heads of people who pay for the privilege — just a few feet short of actually hitting anyone.” “Phantom” is currently playing the Hollywood Pantages Theatre before it moves on to Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.
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Kihun Yoon, Michael J. Hawk, Nicholas Brownlee and Salmir Pirgu, from left, perform during an L.A. Opera dress rehearsal for Barrie Kosky’s “La Bohéme” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Sept. 12, 2019.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Bernard A. Greenberg, a founding board member and former chairman of L.A. Opera, has died at 95. Throughout his life Greenberg was a devoted opera fan and a champion of establishing a dedicated opera company in the city, which ultimately led to the 1986 creation of L.A. Opera. As a philanthropist, civic leader and arts advocate, Greenberg dedicated more than seven decades to steering L.A. Opera and creating the renowned company that it is today. He served on the board of directors for 40 years and held almost every major leadership position during that time. He and his wife, Lenore, also founded the Bernard A. and Lenore S. Greenberg Opera Fund — an endowment that continues to support some of the company’s most vital work.
“If anyone could be called the founder of LA Opera, it is Bernie Greenberg,” said Keith R. Leonard, Jr., Chairman of LA Opera’s Board of Directors in a statement about Greenberg’s death. “For more than 70 years, he devoted his extraordinary wisdom, leadership and generosity to building this company into the institution that serves our audiences today. Bernie believed deeply that opera could enrich lives and strengthen our community, and he worked tirelessly to make that vision a reality. His legacy is woven into every chapter of our history, and all of us at LA Opera are profoundly grateful for his friendship, his guidance and his unwavering commitment to this company.”
IAMA Theatre Company has announced its 2026-2027 season, including three world premieres, as well as its ninth New Works Festival, featuring a variety of new plays by fresh talent. The season kicks off with “Bobby Robotowitz” by Matt Schatz and directed by Casey Stangl, which will be performed from Oct. 15-Nov. 23 in two secret venues — one on the Westside in October and one on the Eastside in November. (When you buy a ticket you find out the location.) The season will end with IAMA’s first collaboration with Geffen Playhouse: the world premiere of “Closing Costs” by Grace McLeod, which was originally developed during IAMA’s 2024-2025 Emerging Playwrights Lab. For the full season lineup, and to buy tickets, click here.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
This adventurous family of four is raffling off their $2 million home just outside of London in order to travel the world. I tip my hat to them because this is something I would think of doing but never actually do. Instead, I think I’ll buy a ticket or two.
