They say that a red door has many meanings. It is said to be a symbol of welcome and serves as protection against ghosts and evil spirits.
The Porte Rouge has stood in Los Angeles for decades. In the 1950s, Porte Rouge began as a bed and breakfast, catering to budding stars and starlets. The building was built in 1948 by Étienne Chevalier, a second-generation French immigrant. Étienne had, himself, wanted to make his break in the film industry, but found it difficult and decided on fame by association instead. He wanted to attract the best and most talented to his place and for a while, he achieved his secondary dream.
However, throughout the years, there were some
incidents that occurred under his roof. Minor celebrities would come and go, but the one who would make his bed and breakfast famous was Clara Lamont. Clara was a nineteen-year-old ingenue, making waves on the Silver Screen and she was staying at Étienne Chevalier's bed and breakfast. Clara's indiscretions with men were hardly a secret in the Porte Rouge. The others in the house were all well aware of her
habits and hungers and they said nothing when she brought different men home a few nights a week. One of her conquests, a married gentleman who had an actress wife, found himself in quite the predicament when a jealous Clara demanded that he leave his wife to be with her. The argument occurred late one night in Clara's room and ended with three gunshots. Clara's lover had shot her and then himself in what the papers called "a crime of passion". This was but the first black mark on the Porte Rouge's reputation.
The residents of the Porte Rouge grew increasingly strange the longer they remained. People went missing and they did strange and cruel things. Ultimately, the bad press had emptied the Porte Rouge, which broke Étienne Chevalier because he couldn't afford to keep his dream home. His own wife, whom he had married around the time of Clara Lamont's stay, had been one of the unfortunate victims of the house. The couple had been childless and so, in 1969, Étienne died without an heir. It was printed in the papers as a heart-attack, but those who had previously been in residence there knew better. Few who had lived at the Porte Rouge for an extended period of time escaped with their life and even fewer escaped with their sanity.
With the event of Étienne Chevalier's death, the Porte Rouge fell in the custody of the city until it was purchased again in 1980 by Dr. Frederick Rose and his wife, Eva, a school-teacher. The couple renovated the home and lived in it as a private residence. They intended to have many children and Eva was pregnant upon purchase of the home. However, shortly after the child's birth, both mother and baby died mysteriously, leaving Dr. Rose alone and utterly depressed. In 1981, he sold the home to Vincent Wallis, who purchased the Porte Rouge with intentions of restoring it to the place Étienne Chevalier imagined. Not surprisingly, the place had carried it's reputation with it, drawing in few new residents -- generally those too naive or too poor to realize where they were living. History repeated and after a series of unexplained phenomena, Wallis decided to move on and shut down the Porte Rouge for good.
In 1999, the Porte Rouge underwent yet another restoration; one in which the new owner hoped would reinvent the building's reputation. This time, the Porte Rouge was to become an apartment building for struggling artists, actors, and musicians. However, the house may have other ideas. . .
This message was last edited by the user at 19:21, Mon 04 Aug 2014.
