Glamorous, starry and extremely private: Nine images capturing 100 years of Bel-Air, LA's most exclusive suburb

The brainchild of a rancher-turned-oilman, it has evolved from a 1920s "gentlemen's haven" to a film-star refuge, a 1960s "groovy scene", and a high-end, low-profile enclave. This year the neighbourhood celebrates its centenary.

The Los Angeles neighbourhood of Bel-Air likely brings to mind the '90s TV sitcom with Will Smith as a teenager sent to live with rich relatives. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air left a vague, lingering impression of Bel-Air as extremely affluent, but didn't add much else. It wasn't even shot there. Unlike nearby hot spots like Beverly Hills or Hollywood, the area has no sharply defined image in the public consciousness.

But now a new book celebrating the area, Bel-Air: The Centennial, reveals its fascinating cultural and architectural history, from its founding in 1922, when Los Angeles still had vast empty spaces, to its status today as one of the most upscale places to live in California.

David Silverman, the book's author, tells the BBC, "When people visit LA, the tour buses go around Beverly Hills but they don't typically go to Bel-Air because you can't really see much. A lot of it is behind walls and bushes." It's a sign of the more private, residential character that accounts for the neighbourhood's lower profile.

Bel-Air itself was the brainchild of Alphonzo Bell, a rancher who became wealthy when he struck oil on his land. He bought nearly 18,000 acres then known as the Danziger Ranch, began developing and selling plots, and Bel-Air – meaning Beautiful Air and conveniently including Bell's name – appeared.

When Alphonzo Bell began selling land in Bel-Air he was clear about what the new development would be – a gentlemen's haven. A Los Angeles Times advertisement crowed in 1923: "A Community of Gentlemen's Estates" for "the highest class of homeseekers". That idea sounds ludicrously snobbish, sexist and exclusionary today, but also speaks to the culture of the 1920s.

"Everyone assumed it was the men who were buying the property," Silverman says, and such language "was common in LA for fancy areas". The ad stipulated that new houses built must cost at least $15,000 (£11,300), the equivalent of about $300,000 (£227,000) today. Bell added stables, tennis courts and golf courses as an enticement, and his family moved into the 42-room Danziger mansion, renamed Capo di Monte (Top of the Mountain).

If you couldn't afford to keep a horse, you probably couldn't afford to live in Bel-Air in the 1920s. Bridle trails were everywhere, eventually about 65 miles (100km) of them meandering by the country club, along the golf course, and through many still-rustic areas. In addition to stables, Bell created underpasses along the trails, paths beneath bridges so the horses wouldn't have to cross the street. An article in the Los Angeles Time in 1922 said, "The invitation to visit Bel-Air on horseback is also extended to the general public."

Bel-Air was never a gated community, but it does have gates, or rather entryways known as gates that give it an aura of exclusivity, the illusion of heading into a more rarefied place. In a 1928 photo, the gates to the former Danziger Ranch are still visible but open. That became known as the East Gate. "As Bel-Air expanded west, they decided that the eastern area needed its own gate," Silverman adds. It serves, he says, "just as a monumental, fancy entrance."

"Alphonzo Bell was super religious and thought that people in Hollywood were morally suspect," Silverman says. "And so for the first six years he prevented sales to movie people, as he called them." They got around this restriction by having their lawyers buy properties for them, and when the Depression hit in 1929 and sales slowed, Bell had to relent for economic reasons.

"Movie people" flooded in, including Judy Garland, who used her Wizard of Oz money to buy a house in Bel-Air, and Golden Age actors including William Powell and Carole Lombard. In that era, "in addition to maps to the stars' houses, they sold postcards" of the properties, Silverman says, and stars were often photographed for fan magazines in their homes. Over the years the directors Frank Capra, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock all lived in Bel-Air too.

In 1962 The Beverly Hillbillies premiered, the television series about a backwoods family who find oil on their land and drive their dilapidated vehicle to their new home in, as the theme song has it, "the hills of Beverly". The exterior of the show's house, though, was actually one of Bel-Air's largest, best-known mansions, then called the Kirkeby Estate and built in 1933. "The owners at the time agreed to let them film there with the condition that the address not be released.

Then TV Guide printed the address and everyone started visiting," Silverman says. In this 1980 photo, "You see how the gate is open and the house is so visible that people could just come to the gate," he adds. The house's most recent owner is Lachlan Murdoch, an heir to the Rupert Murdoch fortune, who bought it in 2019 for a reported $150 million, at the time a record high for a California residence.

In the post-World War Two years, modernist architecture began to infuse Bel-Air as taste changed throughout the country. "People didn't want these Spanish houses or Tudor or older Ranch style" which had dominated in Bel-Air, Silverman says. "They wanted [something] more contemporary." Modern architecture, with its spare lines, large windows and open outdoor spaces, was perfectly suited to take advantage of Bel-Air's landscape, offering spectacular views of the surrounding hills and valleys. Silverman says of Bel-Air's geography, "It's unique in that it goes a lot higher than [the adjacent areas of] both Beverly Hills and Holmby Hills, so the views are in most cases better."

Zsa Zsa Gabor and her sister, Eva, were actresses (Eva starred on US TV sitcom Green Acres) but were better known as celebrities, avatars of a kind of flashy glamour and talk-show fame in the 1960s and '70s. "They were like the Kardashians of their day. They married a lot of times, they married well, they got a tonne of publicity," Silverman says. "They were just kind of famous for being famous."

Zsa Zsa lived in Bel-Air for much of her life, and is shown at home in the 1970s in a brightly-coloured posed photo that captures her outsized pop-culture image. "The pool is very LA and the house is Hollywood Regency, that style. And then with her big hair and pink dress – I think it's a very Bel-Air photo," he says.

Sonny and Cher were known as long-haired rebels when they first become pop-music stars, but in 1967 they took their new-found wealth and bought a house in not-so-rebellious Bel-Air. They weren't the only ones. The Bel-Air book reprints an article that Candice Bergen, an aspiring young journalist at the time, wrote for Esquire magazine that year. Called "Is Bel-Air Burning?", it follows some of the young, then-hip musicians moving into the neighbourhood, with John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas among them. Bergen quotes John Phillips, who says, "I think I'll buy some more land in Bel-Air. It's going to be [a] very groovy scene."

In the 1940s, Bell sold some land, including the stables, to a developer who built the Hotel Bel-Air on the property. Since its opening in 1944, the hotel has been a symbol of the kind of privacy and luxury that people go to Bel-Air to find. "It immediately became popular with Hollywood people. It was super private and most of the rooms were those little bungalows, so people had assignations there," Silverman says.

Celebrities including Marilyn Monroe sometimes posed for photographs by the pool. This 1951 photo captures the hotel's sunniness and long cultural history so well that it is on the hotel's website even now. Today, Silverman points out, "People are actually paying thousands of dollars to live in the former stables." In that sense, the Bel-Air story has come full circle.

Bel-Air: The Centennial by David Silverman is published by Rizzoli.

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