(Aug 25, 2026)
Lee Jester grew up in the Portuguese Bend area until he was 8 when the family moved to Spain for his father Ralph Jester’s work in films. He returned to Palos Verdes after college and began a career in landscape nursery and park administration. After further studies, he began a career in residential development. Now retired, he enjoys music, art and architecture.
His father, actor Ralph Jester, met the Frank Vanderlip family in Scarborough, New York, in the early 1920s while studying at Yale University. He saw architectural models at the Vanderlip home for proposed development in the Portuguese Bend area of Palos Verdes, although some of these were never built due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression. (Many years later, Ken Dyda crated those models there and shipped them to Palos Verdes for historical display.)
JJ Hegarty was born in London in 1860 and immigrated to the US in 1887. He came to Los Angeles in 1905, acquired a clothing store, and built 2 houses, on West Adams in Los Angeles, and on Ocean Blvd in Long Beach. In 1927 he bought a 5-lot area in Malaga Cove in Palos Verdes. In 1928 he completed a 15,000 square-foot 30-room Italian Renaissance Revival house there, with 10 bedrooms and 8 baths (half of them for caretaker and maids). The home was sold in 1931, and again in 1935, due to financial stress during the Depression. This property was eventually bought by the Neighborhood Church in 1950 for $60,000. This church building still maintains much of its original charm with olive trees, seaside walkways, a private pier, and Pacific breeze.
