No. 52 - Sessions House

Sessions House
1889 – Joseph Cather Newsom
1330 Carroll Avenue – map
Declared: 5/24/67

Joseph Cather Newsom, whom we met as the architect of HCM No. 39, the Lewis House, designed this home for dairyman Charles Sessions. As with the Lewis property, Newsom’s goal here was to create a “California House”. Today it stands as one of the more popular homes on Carroll Avenue.

Merry Ovnick, in the excellent 1994 book, Los Angeles: The End of the Rainbow (with photos by Carol Monteverde), has lots to say regarding the Sessions House. Here are three things about the exterior:

• “Originally, the downstairs wing on the right was not enclosed; it was a wrap-around piazza for northern and eastern exposures.” (The good news is the porch was re-opened shortly after this was written. Click here for a shot with that piazza closed in. There can’t be too many homeowners who would opt to lose living space for the sake of aesthetics and historical accuracy like that, although the same thing happened with the Foy House. On a side note, wouldn’t that be a western exposure if the front faces north?)
• “The Chinese touches of porch-guarding lions (normally facing each other) and the circular moon-gate openings are overshadowed by the architect’s conscious attempt at “Moorish” imagery.”
• “The cut-out side of the house forms a keyhole arch, which is Islamic, “Moorish” in Newsom’s terminology.” (You can see that a bit two pictures down.)
  

Note the "porch-guarding lions".

In the 1987 brochure Picture Album of Historic Angelino Heights, the Carroll Avenue Restoration Foundation drew attention to a couple of interior attractions:

The hallway and dining room contain Lincrusta-Walton wainscoting, and the interiors are trimmed in redwood. The most spectacular part of the house, the main staircase, features three large panels of leaded colored glass.

Of course, reading this lead me to ask, “What the hell is Lincrusta-Walton wainscoting?”

Well, according to a website called Historic New England, Lincrusta-Walton coverings were named for linoleum-inventor Fredrick Walton.

[The coverings] were an offshoot of the linoleum industry and were made of wood pulp and linseed oil. The mixture was hardened to a semi-rigid state and then roller-embossed to create designs in shallow relief. The pliable coverings were then backed with jute and decorated either at the manufacturing plant or after installation.

Around 1890.

Oh! Remember in my March 27 post on the nearby Foy House where I mentioned the Irey House, another Carroll Avenue HCM, was going to be put up for sale sometime this summer? It looks like that’s still the plan. However, the asking price in March was $1.6 million. It’s now standing at $1.75 million. I hope it goes on sale soon or I won't be able to afford it.

The Irey House

One last shot of the Sessions House:

Up next: (Old) St Peter’s Episcopal Church and Harbor View Cemetery

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No. 51 - Phillips House

Phillips House
1887
1300 Carroll Avenue – map
Declared: 5/10/67

This Victorian home was the first house on Carroll Avenue declared a Los Angeles landmark (No. 8, the Foy House, now nearby, got its designation while at its penultimate site, 633 South Witmer Street).

Named for merchant Aaron P. Phillips, the Eastlake/Queen Anne structure was built when Angelino Heights was still wet behind the ears.

An even century later (1987), the Carroll Avenue Restoration Foundation published a brochure called Picture Album of Historic Angelino Heights, offering an overview of “the first suburb of Los Angeles”. Regarding 1300, it reads:

The interior has unusually large rooms connected by massive sliding doors, beautiful mantels with Victorian ceramic tiles, brass hardware throughout, and a generous staircase in the large entry hall.

For what it’s worth, as I’m looking at these pictures: if you’re just a schmo with a camera and want to get decent shots of Carroll Avenue’s southside homes in July, don’t go around mid-afternoon ‘cause that sun’ll kill you and bleach your pictures. Clearly.

The Phillips House is another addition to the handful of Victorian homes – the Houses Foy, Hale, Lewis, and Mooers – on the roster of L.A. landmarks so far. They’ve proven to be some of the more popular entries both here and on the Big Orange Landmarks Flickr page. There are many more such homes on the HCM list, most notably a Carroll Avenue stretch in the 70s (October) and then an Alvarado Terrace run in the 80s (November). So lots of spindles, shingles, and turrets on the way.

Up next: Sessions House

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No. 50 - Mission Wells and the Settling Basin

Mission Wells and the Settling Basin
Havana and Bleeker Streets, Sylmar – map
Declared: 5/10/67

Oh, man. If you thought the last landmark was Dullsville, you may want to click here for something more interesting and get away from No. 50 as soon as possible.

In the late 1700s, Padre Fermín Francisco de Lasuén and his brethren were trying to figure out where they wanted to build Mission San Fernando Rey de España (the San Fernando Mission). The discovery of natural swamplands in what is now this area in Sylmar is one of the things that helped push the decision to build the mission on the nearby conveniently named San Fernando Mission Boulevard.

If you go there today, you’ll find the site is owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has the remaining landmarked well (there could be others, I guess) fenced off. When I went, I asked a DWP worker if I could sneak in a few feet to get a shot of the plaque by the well visible through the chain-link fence. He asked his nearby supervisor who mustered a shake of the head, indicating ‘no’.

And don’t ask me what area the ‘Settling Basin’ encompasses specifically, because I don’t know.

I apologize for not getting any good pictures of this Historic-Cultural landmark. As a salve, I arranged what shots I did get in the order of closest to furthest. This way, you can pretend you’re slowly backing away from the site, just like I did in person.

Oh. Here’s a legitimate shot of the same visible remaining well. It’s from the city’s Department of City Planning website.

Nice neighborhood, by the way.

Up next: Phillips House

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No. 49 - 76 Mature Olive Trees

76 Mature Olive Trees
1893
Lassen Street between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Farralone Avenue, Chatsworth – map
Declared: 5/10/67

So what was up with all designations of tree-related Los Angeles landmarks back in the 1960s? Including the Chavez Ravine Arboretum, a full six of the first forty-nine monuments declared are trees. I’m not sure what percentage that is, but fraction-wise it’s pretty close to 6/49.

According to this website of the Chatsworth Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, these trees were planted in 1893 by N.A. Grey, the Lassen Street property owner. It also claims the trees were begun from the cuttings of olive trees at the San Fernando Mission.

If you’re ever bored on a weekend and feel like driving to Chatsworth to check out these 76 Mature Olive Trees, don’t do so at my urging. First of all, the DAR website says the trees are now down to 49 from the 76 of 1967. And the way they stand and are maintained, the effect of witnessing them in person isn’t all that remarkable. If it were up to me, I’d go to other Chatsworth sites instead.

Up next: Mission Wells & the Settling Basin

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No. 48 - Chavez Ravine Arboretum

Chavez Ravine Arboretum
1893
Elysian Park – map
Declared: 4/26/67

Okay, I’ll admit it. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a cupressus glabra or a cupaniopsis anacardioides if my life depended on it. If anything, this post will make that amply clear.

The Chavez Ravine Arboretum was started up by the Los Angeles Horticultural Society way back in 1893 and stands as the first and oldest arboretum in Southern California. The fact that what amounts to a bunch of trees in the area around Dodger Stadium still being in existence is a bit of a minor miracle. For me, spending a few hours in this Elysian Park enclave helped blur the usual heartwarming images conjured about by the mention of Chavez Ravine (named for landowner Julian Chavez, one of L.A.’s first County Supervisors).

Tipu Tree (tipuana tipu)

Queensland Kauri (agathis robusta)

What a great space it is. I’m sort of surprised there weren’t more Angelinos taking advantage of the arboretum the Sunday afternoon I was there (although, admittedly, there was a Dodgers game going on around the corner, so maybe more forward-thinking folks than I avoided the park that day).

Floss Silk Tree (chorisia speciosa), Ombu (phytolacca dioica)

Aleppo Pine (pinus halepensis)

Tiltius pairashoesia

There’s a lumberyardful of rare trees – some 130 kinds – here, and trees are still planted annually. These pictures really don’t do justice to the arboretum (trees definitely fall into that category of subjects that seem cool when you’re there photographing them but, when you look at the shots later, fall kind of flat – I mean, they’re trees after all).

Chilean Wine Palm (jubaea chilensis), Chinese Fan Palm (livistona chinensis)

Scarlet Oak (quercus coccinea)

While no official tours of the site are given (a twice-a-year guided tour I bet would go over real well), the L.A. Parks website offers a map and reference list to 138 types of trees. However, what the map lacks in accuracy is made up with in illegibility – it’s really tough to read. (Go here for access to the map and list.) A few of the trees are invaluably (or is that valuably?) tagged, but many are not. I figured I could sort out which tree was which once I got back to the BOL offices, but I was mistaken. I even looked up pictures of various varieties on the web, trying to identify trees in photos that way, but it was just no good. Anyway, if any of you more arboreally minded folks out there can identify something here or on the BOL Flickr page, you're welcome to let me know if I snapped a shot of a fraxinus uhdei or a rhapidophyllum hystrix.

Palm Tree Hill

A cluster of Mexican Fan Palms (washingtonia robusta) with a cluster of downtown skyscrapers.

Bald Cypress (taxodium distichum)

Lemon-scented Gum (eucalyptus citriodora)

Above is the Grace E. Simon Lodge, named for the journalist/preservationist/community leader who spearheaded the movement to stop further development of Elysian Park in the 1960s and on. That fight sparked the formation of the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park.

To read a comprehensive review of the Chavez Ravine Arboretum, click here to read a two-year-old L.A. Times article by Lili Singer.

Up next: 76 Mature Olive Trees

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No. 47 - St John's Episcopal Church

St John’s Episcopal Church
1883
1537 Neptune Avenue, Wilmington – map
Declared: 3/15/67

With the support of Mary Hollister Banning, second wife of Wilmington founder Phineas Banning, this frame church was built in 1883 for the Episcopal congregation established seven years earlier. The church originally stood about a mile away at 422 North Avalon Boulevard and was moved to the present site in 1943.

St John's maintains its record of being the oldest building being in continuous use for religious services in the harbor area. It's now home to the St John’s and Holy Child Episcopal Church, part of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church. The Reverend Greg G. Bayaca presides.

The grounds were fenced off pretty tight the Sunday when the Big Orange Landmarks staff was there, so I’ve got shots of the east and south sides only.

Don’t confuse this St John’s Episcopal Church with the one built some forty years later in Exposition Park. That building’s Historic-Cultural Landmark No. 516.

Up next: Chavez Ravine Arboretum

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