No. 230 - Villa Maria

Villa Maria
1908 – F.L. Roehrig
2425 South Western Avenue – map
Declared: 6/12/80

William Edmund Ramsay, born the son of Scottish immigrants in Quebec in 1855, made his fortune in the lumber business in Saginaw, Michigan, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 1906, Ramsay moved to Los Angeles with his family and bought up three parcels of land between Western Avenue and Adams Place (the latter renamed St Andrews Place in 1914) in West Adams Heights. Included in the mix were more than two and a half acres Ramsay purchased from Mira Hershey. Ramsay then hired architect Frederick L. Roehrig (1857 – 1948) to design this 9,000 square foot, forty-room mansion. Completed in the summer of 1908, the estate wouldn’t remain Ramsay’s home for long, as he died of “heart trouble” in early February the next year.

In that summer of ‘08, the L.A. Times wrote of Ramsay’s 225 x 500 foot property, “Probably no more entertaining spot could be found in all Los Angeles on which to build a handsome home.” Roehrig and the building contractors, the Barber-Bradley Construction Co., created for the Ramsays a three-story, Tudor Revival masterpiece made of stone and half timber, plaster finish, and topped with a slate roof.

See! The grand entrance hall, ceiling-beamed and wainscoted in mahogany.

Behold! The former living room/library. Originally, the room sported electric fixtures made of brass with Tiffany shades. Like with the rest of the first floor, this section of the home featured leaded windows.

Witness! The very splendid dining room, also in mahogany.

Observe! The kitchen.

View! Other pictures.

Art glass, from the inside and out.

The second floor contained five bedrooms, each finished in white enamel and given its own bathroom. The showcase of the Ramsay’s third floor was a 25 x 90 foot assembly hall/ballroom. That floor also had four bedrooms as part of its servants’ quarters.

Going back outside, F.L. Roehrig was also in charge of the estate’s landscaping. Here’s the old pergola, sans the original lily pond.

On the lot’s northwest corner stands the two-and-half-story carriage house with chauffeur’s quarters.

The home originally did have a tennis court, but probably not a basketball court.

Back in 2001, historian Cecilia Rasmussen wrote the Ramsay estate – after William’s death – became the site of “lavish parties, quarrels, a shooting and a suicide – of which no details survive.” (Rasmussen claims scenes from a Charlie Chaplin film were shot on the lawn – anyone have any idea which movie?) Ramsay’s widow, Katherine, by the way, passed away in July 1916.

Owners #2. William Durfee and Nellie McGaughey were each thirty-two-years old when they met; she was a filthy rich society dame, Durfee was “her mother’s horse trainer, a harness racing driver, a gambler, married and the father of two.” Soon after Nellie’s mom died in 1911, the couple wed, living in the South Figueroa Street mansion that had been the home of Nellie’s mother and her husband, banker Nicola Bonfilio. In 1924, a year after Bonfilio’s death, the Durfees bought the Ramsay estate for $105,000.

The north (top) and west facades.

Unfortunately, William Durfee died three years later after eating some poisoned fish on a trip to the Columbia River. Nellie didn’t take Durfee’s demise all that well, giving a go at suicide on a few occasions. While none of those attempts was successful, the poor woman grew to be an eccentric kook who, among other things, preserved her home in a museum-like fashion as kind of a shrine to her late husband – you know, keeping his clothes in his closet, his booze in the wine cellar, and the key to his bedroom around her neck. This lasted until she finally passed away in February 1976, a few months short of turning 100.

Owners #3. In the spring of 1978, the Brothers of St John of God, who, in the 1960s, demolished a turn-of-the-century mansion next door to the Ramsay-Durfee estate to make room for their nursing hospital, bought the seventy-year-old mansion for $470,000. The Brothers auctioned off much of the original furniture, fixtures, and Nellie’s seventy oriental rugs.

I should point out the Brothers have apparently been excellent stewards of the property. It was during their ownership the mansion was declared a Historic-Cultural Landmark as Villa Maria, and they were gracious to open up the house as part of a neighborhood tour put on by the West Adams Heritage Association last June. That’s when these pictures were taken.

The way in and out toward Western Avenue.

In addition to the aforementioned, unidentified Chaplin film, the Villa Maria has been the location for a few movies, including True Confessions and Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.

Sources:

“English Domestic Architecture Employed in Designing Handsome West Adams Heights Home.” The Los Angeles Times; Sep 27 1908, p. V1

“Catholic Order Purchases Historic Durfee Mansion for Headquarters” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 12, 1978, p. I25

Rasmussen, Cecilia “West Adams Mansion: If Only These Walls Could Talk” The Los Angeles Times; Jul 8, 2001, p. B3

Up next: El Greco Apartments

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No. 214 - (Site of) Mt Carmel High School Building

(Site of) Mt Carmel High School Building
1934 – Barker & Ott
7011 South Hoover Street – map
Declared: 6/6/79

Construction began in the late spring of 1934 on this two-story, late Spanish Colonial Revival school building, designed by Merl Lee Barker and G. Lawrence Ott for the Missionary Society of Our Lady of Mount Carmel of the Carmelite Order of New York. It’s been gone going on nearly thirty years now, so if there are any Mt Carmel graduates out there, it’d be great to hear from you.

The thirty-four room structure, constructed of reinforced concrete, was the first school in Los Angeles built to new seismic standards following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Laurence J. Waller was the structural engineer, W.W. Petley got the general contracting gig, and the F.D. Reed Company handled the plumbing. The school’s size was 13,920 square feet, and it sported a stucco exterior.

The $85,000 to $100,000 building was dedicated on January 6, 1935. Rt Rev. John J. Cantwell, bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles and San Diego, laid the cornerstone and gave the dedicatory address. Father Flannagan gets credited with the school’s founding.

The Reverend Niles J. Gillen announced in April 1976 the all-boys school, operated by the Catholic Fathers of the Order of Mt Carmel, would close due to decreasing enrollment, down to 276 from more than 600 in the early 1960s. A group of parents organized a petition drive to convince the Chicago-based Carmelites to change their minds but to no avail. Plans even called for asking Pope Paul VI to intervene. And hopes the L.A. Archdiocese would take over the school never panned out. Mt Carmel shut down with the end of the school year on May 26.

As part of its Historic-Cultural landmarking, South Central’s Mt Carmel High School was called by the city, “an excellent example of Mission architecture housing a school which has made a significant contribution to the community.” It looks like the 1979 monumental status was conferred primarily to ward off the school’s destruction by the Parks and Recreation Department which had owned the building by that time.

I’ll admit I’m more than a bit sketchy about how the landmark eventually met its demise. The gym remained until a fire brought it down in 1983. By this time, though, the school building had already been demolished, maybe the previous year? Perhaps it had served as a senior center in its post-school years? In any event, the city’s Office of Historic Resources has no record of any demolition permit being issued. If you know anything, fill us in, please.

The sole picture is from the L.A. Department of City Panning’s website.

Sources:

“School Constructions Ready To Be Launched” The Los Angeles Times; May 20, 1934, p. 21

“Catholics Today Will Dedicate New High School” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 6, 1935, p. 15

“Mt. Carmel High School to Close Doors in June” The Los Angeles Times; Apr 3, 1976, p. A27

Fanucchi, Kenneth “’It’s Too Late’ To Save School” The Los Angeles Times; Apr 18, 1976, p. CS1

Fanucchi, Kenneth “Parents Fight Mt. Carmel Closing” The Los Angeles Times; Apr 22, 1976, p. CS1

Up next: Bob’s Market

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No. 212 - Stimson Residence

Stimson Residence
1891 – Carroll H. Brown
2421 South Figueroa Street – map
Declared: 5/16/79

Historic-Cultural Monument No. 212 is the sole remaining mansion on what was, a hundred years ago, a long stretch of stately homes known as “Millionaire Row” on South Figueroa Street. If there could be only one left standing, though, I reckon it should be this one, a home the Los Angeles Times once called “the costliest and most beautiful private residence in Los Angeles.” The city says it’s the only example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture remaining in Los Angeles.

Thomas Douglas Stimson was born in French Mills, Canada. He left his childhood home in New York at the age of fourteen, later working as a trader in a Muskegon, Michigan, lumber camp. He went on to further his fortune in Chicago before retiring to Our Fair City in 1890. Here he quickly set to hiring to design this three-and-a-half-story, thirty-room mansion on the eastern edge of West Adams a young architect by the name of Carroll H. Brown.

Brown was born in Illinois in 1863. By the time he worked on the Stimson Residence, although he was only twenty-seven-years-old, he was already a prominent SoCal architect, having designed downtown mansions for Louis Shiveley, H.L. MacNeil, and W.A. Clark. He also created a $7,000 monument in Wilmington for Gen. Phineas Banning. Within the next few years, the architect would go on to build the first home for the California Club, Santa Monica’s Keller Block building on Broadway, and T.D.’s six-story Stimson Block at 3rd and Spring, the largest office building in L.A. at the time (demolished in 1963). He was a charter member of the Architectural Association of Southern California, formed in 1892 and which became the Southern California Chapter of the AIA two years later. Brown became its president in 1907. He died in L.A. in 1920.

Brown’s Stimson Block

I know I’ve been including lots of Sanborn fire insurance maps lately, but here’s one more from 1894. Check out the “open cement zanja” running through Stimson’s front yard. And I don’t know when the city removed that big star lying in the middle of the street, but I’m glad they did.

Stimson’s new 12,800 square-foot home (the square footage not including the crenellated tower) covered in red Arizona sandstone cost him anywhere from $130,000 to $200,000, as I’ve seen it pegged at a few different prices (I’d think it were more toward 130 g’s; while that was still a lot of money in those days, 200 grand was a lot of lot of money). This new home of the former lumberman consisted of room after room paneled in an incredible variety of woods, including ash, walnut, sycamore, birch, gumwood, mahogany, oak, and something called monkeypod.

I’m including the following three vintage shots, each for a different reason. The top photo, from the CA State Library, is the earliest of the landmark I could find. It shows the northern side of the building, a view obscured today. The next, from the same source, is from around 1895. What’s extra cool about this one is it shows a glimpse of L.A. City Councilmember Frank Sabichi’s home next door. Frank’s house, like the rest of the mansions along South Fig, is long gone, today the parking lot for St Vincent de Paul’s. Finally, there’s a later picture of the Stimson Residence. This one, from the L.A. Public Library, shows off that zanja running along the front of the property.

The biggest event in the landmark’s 128-year history occurred just about this time of year in 1896 when, at 10:30 p.m. on February 6, someone placed “a stick of giant powder… against the foundation of the building on the south side, just in rear of the front veranda” causing a huge explosion “heard for miles around.” There were no injuries sustained in the dynamiting, and “the stately architectural pile was scarcely even shaken.” It was also reported T.D. came “out of the house… viewed the hole torn in the ground at the side of the house… laughed softly and retired to his castle.”

A month later, private detective Harry L. Coyne was arrested for the crime. The reasoning behind the deed seems the stuff of the better Columbo episodes. Coyne, having escorted Stimson’s son to Mexico City, told T.D he had uncovered a plot against the retired lumberman/financier. Following the dynamiting, Coyne offered to give information regarding the crime to Stimson, but for a price. After offering to police to implicate three men in the crime for sixty dollars, Coyne went back to Stimson and demanded $250. Ultimately, though, Coyne’s knowledge of the crime’s details did him in. He was sentenced to five years in Folsom.

T.D. Stimson died in the house on January 31, 1898, at the age of seventy (“the smoothest pickpocket in the city”, “Mother” McGarey, attended the funeral to practice her vocation, but was thwarted by mourner Police Chief Glass). Stimson’s family remained in the house until 1907 (or maybe 1904) when they sold it to civil engineer Albert Solano. Edward Maier, the owner of both the Maier Brewing Company and Hap Hogan’s Vernon/Venice Tigers of the Pacific Coast League, bought the home in 1918, hosting parties with guests including the likes of Jack Dempsey, Barney Oldfield, and Burbank’s Boilermaker, Jim Jeffries.

The Carriage House

In 1940, USC’s Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity bought the former Stimson estate for a cool $20,000, mere pocket change today. Eight years later, Mrs Edward Doheny, who had been living behind the building and was fed up with the frat-house racket, purchased the house for $70,000. She then bequeathed the home to the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet, an order part of the Roman Catholic Church (while the congregation’s origins go back to 17th-Century France, the Carondelet part comes from a town in Missouri). The Sisters used the home as a convent until 1969. For the next twenty years, the nuns allowed Mount St Mary’s College on Chester Place to use the house as a student residence. After returning to use as a convent, the home required a million-dollar restoration in the mid-90s due to damage sustained in the Northridge earthquake. You can see the landmark pop up in movies and TV shows now and then, including as the funeral home in Pushing Daisies.

I always wondered why the Stimson Residence wasn’t one of the first sites landmarked by the Cultural Heritage Board back in the sixties. Turns out it wasn’t for lack of trying. The first attempt at declaring the home an HCM happened in March 1965. The archdiocese resisted monument status to such an extent that it wasn’t until 1975 when the issue was again raised. Again, the archdiocese resisted, citing the designation would produce “undue restrictions on… [the] use and enjoyment of the property.” However, thanks mainly to a guy named Richard Mouck who really lobbied for dedication, the house of Stimson was officially landmarked in May 1979, a year after it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Finally, please see Don Sloper’s Los Angeles’s Chester Place for a bunch of interior photographs (and of this section of West Adams in general).

Sources:

“New Buildings.” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 20, 1885, 0_4

“Dynamite Fiends” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 7, 1896, p. 10

“Last Hope Gone.” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 18, 1897, p. 9

“Stricken Down.” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 1, 1898, p. 11

“Old Mother M’Garey.” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 4, 1898, p. 14

“Famous Figueroa St. Mansion to Be Converted to Convent” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 18, 1948, p. A1

Doherty, Jack “Castle Keep” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 2, 1994, p. 12

Sloper, Don Los Angeles’s Chester Place Arcadia Publishing 2006 Charleston, SC, Chicago, IL, Portsmouth, NH, San Francisco, CA

Cooper, Suzanne Tarbell, Don Lynch, and John G. Kurtz West Adams Arcadia Publishing 2008 Charleston, SC, Chicago, IL, Portsmouth, NH, San Francisco, CA

Up next: S.S. Catalina

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No. 200 - Second Baptist Church Building

Second Baptist Church Building
1925 – Paul R. Williams
2412 Griffith Avenue – map
Declared: 10/18/78

When The Los Angeles Times announced in February 1925 that excavation work had begun for a new house of worship for the Second Baptist Church, the paper made no mention of the building’s architect, Paul R. Williams, who would go on to be one of the city’s premiere builders in the 20th century. The Times did mention, though, the new building would be “conveniently located for the entire Negro population of Los Angeles.”

Founded in 1885 with Rev. S.C. Pierce as pastor, the church was the first black Baptist church in Southern California. Its first building was on Maple Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets. Under the leadership of Dr Thomas Lee Griffith, Sr, pastor from 1921 to 1940, the congregation saw a rapid increase in membership. When church officials decided to build a new home a block west of South Central Avenue, Griffith made sure to employ African-American businesses for the construction. So, not only did he hire Williams, but he saw to it the excavators, carpenters, and brick and cement masons were all there through black owned companies.

At the time of ground-breaking, the church was figuring on spending $125,000 on the brick Romanesque Revival structure, including the Sunday school quarters large enough to hold 1,500 students. The main auditorium today seats 2,200.

The Second Baptist Church Building was dedicated in January 1926 with Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, presenting the dedication sermon.

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King preached here on St Patrick’s Day 1968, three weeks before his assassination. The subject of his sermon was “The Meaning of Hope”.

As home to the city’s oldest African American Baptist Church, the congregation’s 83-year-old landmark is in the final stages of a $5 million restoration and renovation project. Until this is wrapped up, the group is holding its Sunday services in space out on West Florence Avenue in Inglewood. (By the way, when I called the church to get some information about visiting, the woman I talked to invited me back after work is finished, and I really appreciate that.) Since 1987, the congregation’s pastor has been Rev. William S. Epps.

These days, in addition to serving as Second Baptist’s headquarters, the church rents out to other, diverse congregations. I like the fact that, despite the neighborhood’s dramatic shift in make-up since the building was constructed (it’s predominately Latino today), the Second Baptist Church is committed to stay and rehabilitate the historic building rather than move on, even as most of its parishioners today are forced to commute for worshipping.

Sources:

“New Church Started” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 7, 1925, p. A2

“Church Dedication Today” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 3, 1926, p. B3

“Dr. King Urges U.S. to Admit Vietnam War is ‘Mistake’” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 18, 1968, p. 3

Anderson, Susan “Only the Walls Will Change; Steeped in L.A. History, Second Baptist Church is Getting Ready for the Future.” The Los Angeles Times; May 20, 2007, p. M8

“Historic Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles Incorporates a Walkway of Tributes” Sentinel; Los Angeles, CA, Jun 19 – Jun 25, 2008, Vol. 73, Iss. 25, p. C5

Up next: Van Nuys Woman’s Club Building

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