Anna May Wong's Moongate
- KP
- May 26
- 3 min read
Anna May Wong’s home was “just as I dreamed it”: modern Chinese furniture, traditional moon gates, and a blue roof like the ones she had seen in Peking.
After spending years traveling between Europe and the U.S., in 1938 the Chinese-American actress purchased a Santa Monica estate on San Vicente Boulevard within walking distance of the beach. Inspired by her recent first-ever trip to China, Wong commissioned architect R. M. Schindler to remodel the Spanish ranch known as “Mater Dolorosa” (Mother of Sorrows) into “Moongate,” a multi-family compound for her widowed father and younger siblings.
Each of the four apartments opened onto a garden courtyard, where Wong nurtured geraniums, azaleas, ginger plants, Chinese honeysuckle, and peonies. The focal point was a dragon fountain painted blue to match the roof. Silk lanterns illuminated the space at night. And it was all accessible by a hexagonal moon gate.
Wong’s own suite was done in a color scheme of bamboo and black, decorated with a mix of antiques and modern furniture designed by Paramount art director Robert Usher, who worked with Wong on the 1934 crime drama Limehouse Blues, partly set in Chinatown.
In the living room, he installed a U-shaped couch upholstered in a honey-beige teddy bear fabric and backed on all three sides with pine bookshelves.
In keeping with Chinese culture, Wong took her time streamlining the furnishings, like a pale amber rug, lacquered chest, lamp made of candlesticks, hand-carved teak tables, and a series of antique panels hanging in her office. Two years in, she still was not done. The actress likened the pieces to friends she had to get to know better.
“We allow our lives to be cluttered up with useless things,” Wong explained to journalist Alice L. Tildesley. “This, for example, is the first home I have ever had of my own—the first time I’ve ever had a real home since I left my family when I was very young. I’ve always traveled in a trunk, lived with articles that belonged to others; yet I’ve accumulated a great many useless things in that time… When my furniture arrives and my house is finished, I intend to go through everything and give away all the things that have no present use.”
One of Wong’s hobbies was flower arranging and she filled her apartment with unique bouquets, which she showed off in the September 1941 issue of Better Homes & Gardens.
Atop the dining room highboy, an upright celadon-green pillow vase contained coral gladiolus. In the living room, Wong placed purple iris and green leaves in a bamboo container by the window and a horizontal collection of daisies to enjoy with a cup of tea. On a console table, she arranged waterlilies in a deep blue glazed pillow vase.
By 1950, only Wong’s youngest brother Richard was still living at Moongate, along with longtime tenant Conrad Doerr, who rented a furnished room over the garages.
After two decades the actress downsized, moving with Richard to a nearby home (where she died in 1961 of a heart attack). Moongate was torn down in 1955 for a new apartment building that pays its respects to Wong’s former home… all 17 units look out to a landscaped courtyard.
Shame it was torn down. Bet it was gorgeous.