Some 25 years ago, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen doled out $20 million for a rather legendary Wallace Neff-designed house perched along a prominent ridge in the mountains high above Beverly Hills. Built in the 1920s, the Spanish Colonial-style structure — previously owned by screenwriter Frances Marion and her silent screen star husband Fred Thomson — had 20 rooms, and was surrounded by horse stables with mahogany floors, a 100-foot pool, tennis courts, Italian gardens and an aviary.
The tech billionaire subsequently — and controversially — razed the entire estate, reportedly because he wanted to build an extravagant compound of his own design. For whatever reason, those plans never came to fruition, and the estate remains vacant to this day. Allen died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2018, at age 65, leaving the place up for grabs along with several other enormous properties, including his palatial multimillion-dollar estate in the mountains high above Beverly Hills.
Originally listed for $150 million and later dropped to $110 million, the vacant property is one of the largest private estates in Los Angeles, spanning a full 120 acres. Long known as “Enchanted Hill,” the prized property almost sold in early 2020, when Jeff Bezos made a $90 million offer, but the Amazon chieftain abruptly cancelled escrow at the last minute.
The spread was soon relisted at $95 million, and trophy property afficionado Eric Schmidt has now added the place to his collection. As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the former Google CEO and prolific real estate investor paid the discounted, but still huge, sum of $65 million.
Accessible via a private 1-mile driveway, just minutes from the Beverly Hills Hotel and Rodeo Drive, the sprawling development site consists of five separate lots, including a 4-acre parcel that could accommodate a megamansion-sized main house. All the lots are blessed with sweeping city, ocean, mountain and canyon…