As we proceed with our Behind the Scenes series this month, today we are thinking about set designers. Before the interior designs are done, the production team needs to find the perfect home for our television friends.

Did you ever daydream about places you might want to live in, even if you never would actually consider leaving your home?  Perhaps it’s a small rose-covered cottage in the English countryside, maybe a ski chalet in the Swiss alps, or a house on the Maine coast with green shutters and a widow’s walk. I’ve thought about all of these places, but now I have another one to consider. It’s an historic neighborhood where some of my favorite television friends lived. Today we learn a bit about the Columbia Ranch.

Now called Warner Brothers Ranch, the former Columbia Ranch was in Burbank, CA. In addition to dozens of television shows, it was the setting for many movies as well such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, High Noon, and Lost Horizon. The neighborhood interiors were typically shot at other studio locations.

In 1934, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, purchased 40 acres in Burbank. In 1948, Columbia got into the television business under Screen Gems.

During the 1950s, Captain Midnight, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and Dennis the Menace were filmed here. By the 1960s, the ranch was used continuously for television and movies. The set was about six blocks but looked much larger on camera shots. Shows during the 1960s included My Sister Eileen, Hazel, Our Man Higgins, The Farmer’s Daughter, Bewitched, Gidget, I Dream of Jeannie, The Monkees, and The Flying Nun.

In 1970, a fire destroyed a quarter of the neighborhood, including many buildings on Blondie Street. After rebuilding, taping continued on the set. During the next three decades, shows included The Partridge Family, Bridget Loves Bernie, Apples Way, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Life Goes On.

In 1971, Columbia and Warner Brothers combined their companies and merged into The Burbank Studios. The Ranch then was relegated to a back backlot.

When Columbia Pictures moved its production facilities to Culver City in 1990, Warner Brothers gained ownership of the Ranch.

It’s continued to be a busy spot for filming. The fountain in the park was the one shown in the opening credits in Friends.

Nearby is also a swimming pool used on a variety of shows, including The Partridge Family.

The most famous street in the Ranch was Blondie Street. Blondie Street was named for Blondie Bumstead because the Blondie movies of the 1940s were filmed here. Walking down Blondie Street reveals homes that we were all familiar with growing up in the sixties and seventies.

It’s a curved residential street with twelve different houses, surrounding a large, central park. There is also a brick church and paved sidewalks. Three of the buildings—the Lindsay House, the Little Egbert House, and the Oliver House—were original to the 1935 set production.

The Blondie House

This set, constructed in 1941, was the home for Major Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace, and the Andersons on Father Knows Best, in addition to the Blondie movies. Later it housed the operations office for the Warner Ranch. Of course, Jeannie’s house was not here, it was a Jim Beam decanter that was sold during Christmas of 1964.

The Corner Church

When thePartridge Family drives off for a show in their bus, you can often spot the church which is just down the road from their home, across from The Stephens’ home on Bewitched. It was moved here in 1953. When any of the series needed a church, this was the one. It can be seen on an episode of Hazel when the family attends church.

The Deeds Home

Originally built for Frank Capra’s movie, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936, the house is only seen briefly in the movie. The Three Stooges filmed there in the thirties and forties. In the sixties it was seen in Batman. Both Gidget and The Partridge Family used the house as the high school and Bewitched used it as a civic building. In 1989, the original house was demolished. In its place, The Chester House and the Griswold House were built. The Griswold House was built for National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

The Lindsay House

Constructed in 1936, this house was best known as the Baxter home on Hazel. It also served as the Lawrence home on Gidget.

The Higgins House

This structure was constructed for the show Our Man Higgins in 1962. It was later the home of Darrin and Samantha Stephens on Bewitched from 1964-1972. On I Dream of Jeannie, it was the home of Alfred and Amanda Bellows.

For Bewitched, the interior and backyard scenes were filmed on a sound stage. The stairs ended in a hallway, but the doors only led to small closets, not the master bedroom.  A modular first floor served as a setting for all the rooms. The den doubled as the nursery. A fake wall was put up to hide the view to the kitchen. When the den was needed, brown paneling was put over the nursery walls and the window was covered with a wall near the fireplace.

If you look closely, you’ll notice the avocado and gold flowered sofa in the Stephens’ living room was the same one used by Alfred and Amanda Bellows in their living room. But the shows shared well.  On one episode of Bewitched, Louise and Larry Tate are seen at their kitchen table, but the kitchen looks identical to Major Nelsons’s. Roger Healey’s bedroom eerily resembled Darrin and Samantha’s.

I guess I was too busy crying to notice that this house was also Brian Piccolo’s home in Brian’s Song.

The Partridge Family House

The house across the street from the Stephens’ house was home to Abner and Gladys Kravitz. During the filming of Dennis the Menace, it was Mrs. Elkins’ house. It was also the home of The Partridge Family. In 1989 it became the Thatcher home on Life Goes On.

The home was built in 1953, modeled after a Sears, Roebuck & Co. plan. The modest two-story home was a perfect fit for the Partridges with its white, picket fence. The interiors were filmed at the Ranch as well. Located next door to the Blondie House, there were shrubs between the homes that were featured several times on the Partridge Family. In an episode where Keith shoots a movie, Shirley is clipping the hedges and begins dancing for the film, not realizing her neighbor is watching her. We see the hedges again when Keith moves into the room above the garage next door and gets free rent in return for yard work.

Because they were filming the show when the infamous fire broke out, some of the structure had to be rebuilt for the remainder of the series. From season 1 to 2, Danny and Keith’s bedrooms switch back and forth a couple times, and I wonder if this is the reason.

The Oliver House

Constructed in 1935 for a movie, the Oliver house was moved to Blondie Street for the home of the Stone family in The Donna Reed Show. It was also the Mitchell home where Dennis resided with his parents.

The Little Egbert House

Technically, Little Egbert is not on Blondie Street but on its own, Little Egbert Street, basically an alley. Fortunately, the 1970 fire did not damage any of the original structure. The house was also used in Minding the Mint and as The Shaggy Dog, the hangout for Gidget and her friends.

For sentimental reasons, I would choose the Partridge Family home to live in. However, I would have to remodel the kitchen. I could live with the red breakfast table set. The avocado and gold flowered wall paper may have been very chic in its day, but even I am not that sentimental!