Victor Girard

Victor Girard Kleinberger (1880–1954) — “Victor Girard” — was a Persian-rug salesman from Kentucky who became one of California’s most audacious land promoters.

In 1922 he bought 2,886 acres at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, cut them into some 6,000 lots, and named the town Girard after himself. He planted 120,000 trees, built ornamental gates, a mosque-like tower, and a business district of false storefronts — facades with nothing behind them — so prospective buyers would see a thriving downtown. The lots sold; the 1929 crash ended the dream, and to avoid bankruptcy he attached liens to buyers’ land without telling them. In 1941 the town was renamed Woodland Hills, for the trees he had planted.

In 1925 he bought 35 acres of Big Sur coast from Joe Barbree — the same Barbree who brokered the Plaskett land to Hearst — and built a redwood-pole mansion on the tableland above Lime Kiln Canyon, packing in a plate-glass window and eighty tons of stone by mule. It burned in 1933. The chimney is still there.