Rubel Castle

Rubel Castle Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	844 N. Live Oak Ave., Glendora, California
Coordinates	34°9′1″N 117°51′17″W
Built	1959 to 1986
Architectural style	Folk art environment
NRHP reference No.	13000810
Added to NRHP	October 7, 2013

Rubel Castle (also known as Rubelia) was established in Glendora, California, by Michael Clarke Rubel (April 16, 1940 – October 15, 2007) and is owned and operated by the Glendora Historical Society.

In 1959, a teenage Michael Rubel purchased a 1.7 acre plot dominated by an old reservoir and packing house from a recently-defunct citrus orchard. Continuing a childhood passion of building forts and other improvised structures, he and his friends soon embarked on a building program that was only completed in 1986. Rubel Castle was constructed partly out of concrete, as well as nontraditional materials including scrap steel, rocks, bedsprings, coat hangers, bottles, and other repurposed materials that Rubel salvaged from the neighborhood as ranches and barns were giving way to tract houses.

To this day, chickens and other animals are frequently sighted on the grounds.

Background

Michael Rubel on his porch, 2000.

In 1959, Rubel bargained for the defunct Albourne Rancho property and took up residence in the citrus packing house. Rubel's father, Henry "Heinz" Scott Rubel, had been an Episcopal priest and gag writer for Joe Penner, a radio comedian and movie star. In the 1960s, Rubel's mother, one-time Broadway actress and Greenwich Village Follies dancer Dorothy Deuel Rubel, moved into the packing house with her son. She used the venue to throw parties. Guests arrived weekly by the hundreds, arriving inside a tin fruit packing house which had been transformed into a giant dance hall. Inside, surrounded by art and antique furniture remaining from Rubel ancestors, they mingled and danced to a small orchestra. The parties led to the packing house becoming known as "The Tin Palace."

Notable people who visited "The Tin Palace" in that time include Sally Rand, Dwight Eisenhower, Vivian Duncan of the Duncan Sisters, Woody Strode, Beatrice Kay, Harry Townes, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Kid Chissell, Angie Dickinson, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Fellow castle builder "Colonel" Jirayr Zorthian was a supporter and friend involved in the project.

Construction of the castle

Though Rubel slept in one of the giant citrus refrigerators, the walls of thick cork were not sufficient sound insulation to allow him peace from his mother's parties. Beginning in 1968, Rubel began building a small get-away house in the empty 145,000-gallon concrete reservoir, using cement and discarded champagne bottles. The walls of the reservoir provided privacy and a noise barrier while he built the bottle house. The project lasted 20 years, culminating in what is now called the Rubel Castle.

Past 1968, with the help of his friends and close family, the castle grew to be thousands of square feet with towers five stories high. Rubel and his associates built the structure without architectural plans, using salvaged river rock, cement, steel, aluminum, telephone poles and wine bottles. Old motorcycles, tires, sand-filled rubber gloves, a camera, a golf club and a toaster are some of the items that protrude from the castle walls.

A restored 1911 Seth Thomas clock works runs the brass bells and clock that crown one of the high towers, which is 74 feet (23 m) high. In the middle of the property sit a 1940s-era Santa Fe caboose, as well as old trucks and tractors. There is also a cemetery with rejected marble tombstones, but it contains no graves.

Legacy

Huell Howser interviewed Rubel for Videolog in 1990 and, after Michael's death, his nephew Scott, in 2011.

The castle has hosted royalty including Prince Philip. Some other notable guests have been former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, and Governor George Deukmejian.

In March 2005, Rubel donated the Castle to the Glendora Historical Society.

Many television programs, music videos, and movies have been filmed on castle grounds, including NBC's Heroes, Our Flag Means Death, and a Frankenstein commercial by T-mobile.

Rubel Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Gallery

• 
  Clock Tower
• 
  Cannons
• 
  Entrance to Rubelia
• 
  Flag

See also

• Antoni Gaudí, a Catalan architect with a similar style, particularly the Sagrada Família in Barcelona.
• Hermit House, a unique residence located in Herzliya, Israel with intricate mosaics constructed by one man over thirty years.
• Mystery Castle, a house in Phoenix, Arizona built in the 1930s in a similar style.
• Nitt Witt Ridge, a house in Cambria, California constructed in a similar style.
• Ferdinand Cheval, a French postman who constructed an "ideal palace" out of rocks in his spare time.
• Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, another folk art environment built with recycled materials.
• Watts Towers, a famous landmark in Los Angeles built from concrete and discarded materials.
• Lummis House, a historic home built out of river rocks and concrete known as El Alisal, also in Los Angeles County.
• [Abbey San Encino, a unique river rock house and tribute to letterpress printing, built in Highland Park, Los Angeles by Clyde Browne (printer), grandfather of songwriter Jackson Browne.

External links

• John Bartell's Backroads on ABC10
• Video tour with California Through My Lens
• Episode #86: Esotouric's San Gabriel Valley Visionaries
• Fascinating Nouns Interview with Dan Glenn & Scott Rubel
• Hundreds of historic and contemporary images on Flickr
• Glendorahistoricalsociety.org: Rubel Castle tour information
• Huell Howser Videolog: Rubel's Castle
• KCAL News
• The Shriek: A 1970s newsletter of Rubel Castle
• Over 2,000 images from Rubel Castle period of significance from 1968-1986 scanned and hosted at the University of Southern California web site.
• You Asked For It 1981 Interview of Michael Rubel