CELEBRATING 60

PART I

LW began as an unprecedented experiment

The GRF Board of Directors is reviewing its online strategy to better introduce Leisure World to a broader public. This is the first part of an updated Leisure World history to be posted on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that receives nearly one-half billion page views per month. GRF Director William Thompson, a retired University of Louisville professor, applied his academic skills to research our community’s unprecedented and enduring 60-year experiment in cooperative senior living. LW Weekly’s next two editions will complete the story.

by William Thompson GRF director

LEISURE WORLD SEAL BEACH

Leisure World Seal Beach is an active-seniors’ retirement community opened in 1962 that introduced many innovations characterizing later senior property developments. When built, it was the nation’s first mass-marketed housing project, first gated senior community, first all-electric community, and the first to have a health insurance plan and access to an on-site medical center included in its residents’ monthly payments. At its opening, it was the world’s largest housing development for seniors, (1) the United States’ largest cooperative housing development, and the prototype for six other Leisure World communities across the United States (2) built by the Rossmoor Corp., co-founded by developers Ross W. Cortese and his wife, Alona Marlowe Cortese. (3) It is located in Seal Beach, which fronts the Pacific Ocean in Orange County, California. It houses approximately 9,600 residents in 6,608 one- and two-bedroom apartments and condominiums.

HISTORY

While both were taking evening real estate classes at Hollywood High School, Ross W. Cortese, a Depressionera high-school dropout and a part-time contractor flipping homes in Compton, met former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract actress Alona Marlowe (née Ilona L. Goetten). (4) They married in 1948, and capitalizing on her real estate license, organized a corporation under the name Alona Rey Homes, Inc. (5) After building a small development in Culver City, the couple began undertaking larger projects such as Frematic Homes in Anaheim. (6) Frematic Homes employed designer Cliff May’s innovative California Ranch residential concept “that let the outside in,” integrating extensive prefabrication techniques, post-and-beam construction, slab floors, and floor-to-ceiling windows later incorporated into Leisure World. (7) The Frematic development also showcased the Corteses’ emerging public relations sensibility, with Westinghouse spokeswoman and Hollywood actress Betty Furness appearing in newspaper photographs with Ross Cortese in one of Frematic’s “Betty Furness Beautility Kitchens.” (8) The Corteses’ repeated successes led them, along with general contractor Murray Ward, to found Rossmoor Corp. in 1951. (6) From 1955 through 1961, the company built the “Walled City of Rossmoor,” (9) a comprehensive Orange County development the com-