Building Los Angeles: urban housing in the suburban metropolis, 1900-1936

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BUILDING LOS ANGELES:

URBAN HOUSING IN THE SUBURBAN METROPOLIS, 1900-1936

by

Todd Douglas Gish

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(PLANNING)

August 2007

Copyright 2007 Todd Douglas Gish
ii
Acknowledgments

There is a long, long list of people whose help, guidance and inspiration made this
project and its completion not only possible but enjoyable. My sincere appreciation
extends to so many that to attempt an exhaustive list would make this dissertation
substantially longer than it is already. Consequently, this is a short list of those most
affected by it.
During the course of this work, my committee members William Baer,
Martin Krieger and Steve Ross, were faithful, responsive, encouraging, and patient.
David Sloane has been all of the above as well as a friend and (for lack of a better
term) coach. And Greg Hise has gone above and beyond the call of duty in being an
exemplary dissertation chair, acting also as instructor, advisor, co-author, mentor,
counselor, critic, shepherd, and friend.
My long-suffering employers Steve Tomko and Ed Woll deserve mention for
their generosity and good humor. Jonathan Smith, Bruce Whipple and Kathy
Kolnick listened to me talk about apartments and planning, stress and anxiety far
longer than they had to. Ben Spain and Rex Gish demonstrated that this elusive
thing called a completed doctorate was possible. Ben Cortez has had to put up with
my dissertation longer than just about anyone, and has never stopped cheering me
on. Finally, Colette and Devon Gish have been my constant champions since day
one, literally. To them I owe my biggest debt of gratitude.
iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

List of Tables vi

List of Figures vii

Abstract x

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Other Los Angeles 1
Which Los Angeles? 5
Urban Growth and Its Machinery 17
The (Growth) Machine in the Garden 21
Growth & the Political Economy of Housing 24
Transient Urbanism & Housing the Tourist City 50
Competing Discourses About Housing: External vs. Internal 57
Project Overview 72

Chapter 2. Filling in the “Metropolitan Mosaic”: Multi-family Housing 76
and the Residential Landscape of Los Angeles, 1900-1930s
Introduction 76
Scrutinizing the “City of Homes” 79
Complicating the Residential Landscape 83
Size, Scale & Density 87
Urban Location 105
How Much Housing? 117

Chapter 3. Apartments in Disguise: A Case Study of Suburban Densification 126
in Southwest Los Angeles, 1900-1950
Methods and Sources 127
The Early Residential Landscape 133
Reed Terrace to 1914 135
Van Buren Place 149
The 1920s 156
By Midcentury 166
After a Century 171
Residents: Part of the Majority 174
Restricted Rentiers 177
Findings 184
Representativeness 187

iv
Chapter 4. Building a City of Apartments? A Case Study of the 199
Wilshire-Ambassador District, 1910-1951
Methods & Areas of Study 201
The Early Landscape 204
Wilshire Boulevard I: Origins and Mansions 207
1910 Landscape: Growing Suburb 214
Wilshire Boulevard II: Houses, Hotels and Apartments 218
1922 Landscape: A New Neighbor, Poised for Change 224
Wilshire Boulevard III: Apartment District 227
Growth on the Ground, 1925-1931 241
City-Building and City Builders 253
1951 Landscape: From Edge to Center 261
2005 Landscape: Crowded and Cosmopolitan 266
Findings & Conclusions 271

Chapter 5. Building Boomtown: The Apartment Market in 1920s Los Angeles 278
Introduction 278
Packin’ ‘em into Paradise 280
Building? Or Overbuilding? 282
The Supply-side Fuels the Fire 293
“The Monstrous, Unhomelike Thing Next Door to Me,” or 299
Apartments and Urban Structure
Winding Down, Cooling Off 302

Chapter 6. Planning, Zoning and Housing: The Problem of Apartments in 305
a “City of Homes”
Introduction 305
City in Flux, Housing in Demand 307
Visioning Los Angeles: “One Vast Suburb,” a “City of Homes” 310
Planning I: Private Controls by the Market 317
Planning II: Districting by the Local State 319
Planning III: Zoning by a New Commission 322
A New Vision? Planning a City of Apartments 329
Residential Paradise, or Paradox? 336
Planning IV: Fixing Zoning, Finding More “Homes” 346
Making a Place For Apartments 352
From “Hope Zone” to Home Zone: Apartment Thoroughfares 363
Conclusions 372

Chapter 7. Conclusion: Just Another American City? 382

Bibliography 391

v
Bibliography by Source 411
vi
List of Tables

Table 1. Development principals’ work on case study block and elsewhere 254
during the 1920s

Table 2. Percentage of dwelling units in 1930, by structure type in selected 385
cities
vii
List of Figures

Figure 1. Brochure from the All-Year Club of Southern California, 1934 44

Figure 2. Promotional Brochure, circa 1915 61

Figure 3. Shacks in Los Angeles, in this case at 910 South Central Avenue, 82
circa 1930

Figure 4. A double-decker duplex in Leimert Park, circa 1930 90

Figure 5. A four-family flat, or apartment-in-disguise, circa 1910s 92

Figure 6. A house court of probably self-built shacks, circa 1914 95

Figure 7. A bungalow court of small cottages lining a central landscaped 98
space, built circa 1910s

Figure 8. Ponet Square Apartments, built circa 1907, view and floor plan 100

Figure 9. Map of Los Angeles, circa 1935, indicating case study areas and 107
other major districts

Figure 10. New residential construction by type, 1900-1930 123

Figure 11. Dwelling units by type, 1924 125

Figure 12. Schematic map of Southwest Los Angeles case study, indicating 129
areas sampled and/or studied in various primary sources

Figure 13. Master sketch-map of Southwest Los Angeles case study 130

Figure 14. Sanborn map dated 1907 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the 141
Reed Terrace subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3

Figure 15. Brochure promoting the Reed Terrace subdivision (Site 2), 148
circa 1914

Figure 16. Axonometric model of the 2900 block of Van Buren Place (Site 1) 150

Figure 17. Sanborn map dated 1922 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the Reed 161
Terrace subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3

viii
Figure 18. Sanborn map dated 1950 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the Reed 168
Terrace subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3

Figure 19. Panoramic view looking north on the 2900 block of Van Buren 172
Place (Site 1) in 2005

Figure 20. Schematic map of Wilshire-Ambassador district case study 202

Figure 21. Map of early Wilshire district(s) 209

Figure 22. Map of early Ambassador district and environs, 1910 215

Figure 23. Sanborn map dated 1922 indicating the western half of Site A 226
(the Ambassador Hotel property) along the right

Figure 24. Real estate advertisement for the Barcelona Apartments, 1921 231

Figure 25. Aerial view of the Wilshire-Ambassador district in 1924, looking 236
southeast

Figure 26. Axonometric model of the 700 block of South Normandie Avenue 243
(Site 1)

Figure 27. View looking south on the 700 block of South Normandie Avenue 246
(Site 1) in 2005

Figure 28. Sanborn map dated 1951, indicating the proliferation of 263
multi-family housing in this district in the three decades
since the previous mapping

Figure 29. Normandie Avenue case study block in 1931 276

Figure 30. Multi-family housing as a share of all new housing in the City of 284
Los Angeles

Figure 31. Diagram of zoning “pyramid” of cumulative land-use categories as 327
outlined in the 1921 Los Angeles ordinance

Figure 32. Portion of Los Angeles zoning map, Wilshire-Ambassador district 331

Figure 33. Illustration of new zoning ordinance’s graduated residential 333
classifications, 1930

ix
Figure 34. Application of new zoning system, 1932 355

Figure 35. Community plan, 1931 360

x
Abstract

Multi-family housing played an important role—thus far unacknowledged—in the
urbanization of Los Angeles from the beginning of the twentieth century. This fact
challenges a persistent myth of early 1900s Los Angeles as a city of little else but
handsome single-family bungalows on landscaped suburban lots, stretching from the
mountains to the ocean.
As the City of Angels expanded dramatically between 1900 and the 1930s,
booster elites engineered a successful “growth machine” of coordinated place
promotion, pushing the powerful image of attractive houses available for purchase
by all classes, all in the service of creating an industrial metropolis. Yet the need for
conventionally urban rental housing found in many older US cities was also present
in Los Angeles, emanating from predictable sectors of a booming populace: families,
workers, young single people, and retirees. Moreover, southern California’s growing
tourism industry drove a huge, additional demand for convenient shelter among a
long-term visiting population.
Thousands of apartments, flats, duplexes, and bungalow courts were the
result. By the mid-1920s, about half of the city’s housing stock was in multi-family
units, and their design, construction, sale and operation became a major force in the
local economy. Further, local policymakers had no choice but to address the
proliferation of housing and related urban development as Los Angeles grew from
town to city to metropolis in just a few brief, frenetic decades. Innovative zoning
ordinances were just one outcome of these planning activities.
xi
Los Angeles is regularly cited as the capital of suburban sprawl, and current
discussions about this phenomenon—a problem to some, merely a market outcome
to others—will benefit from a new, more accurate understanding of how this city has
grown.

1
Chapter 1

Introduction: The Other Los Angeles

Los Angeles … is at once the most widely written about and
least understood city in the United States…. A major obstacle
to understanding this fascinating community lies in a body of
widely held popular stereotypes about it.
1

—Stephan Thernstrom

Everyone thinks they know Los Angeles. Cars, freeways. Sunshine, palm trees.
Smog, earthquakes. Valley girls, homeboys. Looking backward in time, the list
lengthens to include bungalows and suburban subdivisions, ranchos and orange
groves, Spanish missions and padres. These types of people, places and things are
well known, serving as shorthand in the popular imagination for the City of Angels.
And understandably so: the city and region have had them all, in quantity. But when
certain attributes of a place achieve emblematic status over time via the cultural
reproduction process, other, equally important attributes are overlooked as a result.
And knowledge and understanding suffer.
My objective in this dissertation is to expose and explain a significant but
long-ignored aspect of urbanization in Los Angeles. Multi-family housing has been
an important component of that city’s dwelling stock since the turn of the twentieth
century. But this story is about more than just apartments. Rental housing in
multiple dwellings large and small was essential to urban growth and development—
an integral component of the city’s larger landscape as well as its economic

2
workings, political affairs and social formation. Not just landlords and tenants but
realtors, bankers, architects, builders, tradespeople, planners, politicians, reformers,
businesspeople, and even home-owners all had a stake in this unexplored part of
modern Los Angeles.
This historical reality has been obscured in a few powerful, durable and
overlapping tropes with a residential theme or subtext. For some observers, Los
Angeles is or was an “anti-city,” or “a collection of suburbs in search of a city.”
2

According to others, Los Angeles was in fact a city, but either “a city without a
center”
3
or a “city of homes”—the single-family detached kind.
4
Still others assert
city-hood to the point of metropolitan stature; again, though, with a paradoxical
qualifier. Los Angeles was a “reluctant,” “fragmented,” or “uncrowded”
metropolis—not the standard, apparently deliberate, cohesive and congested kind. In
a particularly acute identity crisis, Los Angeles was a “suburban metropolis,”—a
both-and, neither-nor contradiction in terms, large and complex but somehow
lacking in conventional urban traits.
5

1
Stephan Thernstrom, “The Growth of Los Angeles in Historical Perspective,” in Los
Angeles: Viability and Prospects for Metropolitan Leadership, ed. Werner Z. Hirsch (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1971), 3-19; quote, 3-4.
2
Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (New York: Deull,
Sloane and Pearce, 1946; reprint, Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1973), 235.
3
Ibid., 234.
4
Los Angeles: Metropolis of the West (Los Angeles: Frank L. Meline, Inc., 1929), 12.
5
William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles
(Point Arena CA: Solano Press Books, 1997); Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los
Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967; reprinted 1993); Leo Grebler,
Profile of the Los Angeles Metropolis: Its People and Its Homes: Part I: Metropolitan Contrasts (Los
Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Business Administration, 1963);
Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987),
Chapter 6, “Los Angeles: Suburban Metropolis.”

3
These variations on a theme have been woven into an enduring domestic
mythology, perpetuated actively by boosters in the early 1900s and passively by
historians, journalists and policymakers since then. This residential reputation
placed “houses, the most important of LA building types”
6
on a local pedestal, then
set that atop a second, national pedestal already romanticizing suburban home-
ownership. For Los Angeles, single-family detached houses—small and affordable
ones for workers, solid and commodious ones for the middle-class, and big,
luxurious ones for moguls and magnates—constituted the central element of not only
an idyllic setting but also an idealized lifestyle. (The private, landscaped lot amid
more of the same is an all-important corollary.) Apartments do have a place in this
story—as an oddity, an occasional reminder, a curious exception proving the rule in
“a city based on the single-family home.”
7

But apartments and other multiple dwellings were increasingly common in
Los Angeles. Mentions of flats appeared as early as 1895; by 1911, so many
apartment houses were going up that the city’s chief building official pleaded for
funds to hire an inspector dedicated to that type; by 1924, multi-family structures
reportedly contained almost half of the city’s dwelling units. In 1940—even after
several years during which new multi-family unit construction dropped sharply while
that of new single-family units climbed—multiples still accounted for about 48

6
William Alexander McClung, Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 59.
7
Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias, 155, 181. Fishman states that this residential ideal was
unsustainable as Los Angeles urbanized; he mistakenly asserts not only its viability but also its
unadulterated success (meaning, little if any multi-family housing) until the 1950s.

4
percent of the housing stock.
8
This large, diverse part of the shelter inventory was
important to how the city and region grew and functioned. Apartments, flats,
duplexes, and bungalow courts accommodated not only thousands upon thousands of
Angelenos but also droves of temporary residents: long-stay tourists visiting from all
over the United States. Even newcomers bent on owning a bungalow frequently
rented an apartment for a time while they got their local bearings. Development of
multiple dwellings of one kind or another also provided investment opportunities up
and down the socio-economic scale, from lower middle-class white and minority
single-lot-owners on up to real estate tycoons and everywhere in between.
Moreover, as land deals then construction projects and finally rent-collecting
establishments, multi-family housing gave a wide range of employment to
professionals, managers, and laborers.
This subject is important. The story of a booming Los Angeles in the early
twentieth century—bursting at the seams with residents, immigrants, tourists and
visitors—is also the tale of many other cities in the United States at present.
Planners and developers worry over how and where to shelter increasing
multitudes—even as official rhetoric maintains the importance of “protecting”
single-family housing at all costs. Policymakers need to recognize this problem as a

8
City of Los Angeles Superintendent of Buildings, Annual Reports, 1895; 1899; Los Angeles
Times, February 2, 1895, 9; “August After July’s Record,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1911, VI1,
with the subheading “Hotels, Apartments and Flats Rising Everywhere”; “This City at Head of List,”
Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1911, VI1; City of Los Angeles Chief Building Inspector, Annual
Report, 1912; one report totaled some “700 hotels and apartment houses representing an investment of
$30,000,000 or more,” Los Angeles Times Annual Midwinter, January 1, 1913, 142; Eberle and
Riggleman Economic Service, Newsletter, November 30, 1925; United States Bureau of the Census,
16
th
Census of the United States: 1940. Housing: General Characteristics, 1941.

5
continuing one—one that has already received intense, creative energies and
solutions coming from both the private and public sectors for a century.

WHICH LOS ANGELES?
A phenomenon as supposedly alien as apartments in a well-known “city of
homes” suggests what some scholars have called an other, or second Los Angeles.
9

This posits an alternative place to the one we know. Such is a rhetorical
construction, of course, not some separate entity. Still, this concept of counter-
narrative helps frame the study of unfamiliar facets of a place whose storied past
approaches mythology—forceful enough in collective memory to generate its own
gravitational field in urban historiography. (Just the myths about Los Angeles and
Southern California have spawned an entire literature.
10
) Authors challenging
aspects of the conventional wisdom wonder “why particular stories have dominated
popular and academic discourse about southern California[.] What do specific

9
See Robert Fishman’s introduction to the 1993 reprint of Fogleson’s Fragemented
Metropolis, xxv; Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 89; Robert Alan Phelps, “Dangerous Class on the Plains of Id:
Ideology and Home Ownership in Southern California, 1880-1920,” (PhD Diss., University of
California, Riverside, 1996), 93, on Fogelson’s implicit employment of the concept.
Different authors use the “other” in different ways. For example, Fishman’s other Los
Angeles is an ideal, progressive one not pursued by city-builders; Starr’s “second” Los Angeles is the
publicized one in booster literature. My meaning is the opposite of Starr’s: the mythical Los Angeles
so widely advertised and recounted in various histories is the baseline; the “other” Los Angeles is, in a
sense, the real, complicated one which defies simplified stories.
10
See, for example, W.W. Robinson, “Myth-Making in the Los Angeles Area,” Historical
Society of Southern California Quarterly 45 (March 1963), 83-94; David Reid, ed., Sex, Death and
God in LA (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Clark Davis, “From Oasis to Metropolis:
Southern California and the Changing Context of American Leisure,” Pacific Historical Review 61
(August 1992), 357-386; Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure
of Memory (New York: Verso, 1997); McClung, Landscapes of Desire; Greg Hise, “Sixty Stories in
Search of a City,” California History 83 (2006), 8-26, 62-64.

6
stories highlight, what do they diminish, and how has this changed over time?”
11
In
this line of questioning, newer scholarship does seem to be reporting on some other
city we do not know—or, one we are discovering only a piece at a time.
The oft-told story of a modern urban ascendancy accomplished by an Anglo
populace of well-off transplants from middle America
12
has been debunked by some
who ask simply: “who built the city: the houses, the aqueduct, the port, the
transportation network, and the subdivisions in which these upper and middle class
[white American] immigrants thrived?”
13
Foreign immigrants and American blacks,
at least in part, say scholars Ricardo Romo, George Sanchez, and Douglas
Flamming, among others.
14
These social historians have found and told stories of
working-class (and some middle-class) minorities who inhabited the lesser-known
other Los Angeles but staffed the famous one. Though constituting a smaller
percentage of the local population than their counterparts in New York, Boston, or
Chicago, these minority communities were active and important, and frequently
subjected to the same kinds of prejudice and segregation perpetrated by the Anglo
majorities in those places. Moreover, scholars Fred Viehe, Becky Nicolaides, and
Nancy Quam-Wickham have collectively uncovered a substantial white working-
class. These laborers and their families may have shared ethnic origins with the

11
Hise, “Sixty Stories,” 8, 11.
12
See, for example, Boyle Workman, The City That Grew, As Told to Caroline Walker (Los
Angeles: Southland Publishing, 1935); McWilliams, Southern California; Fogelson, Fragmented
Metropolis.
13
Phelps, “Dangerous Class,” 35, emphasis added.
14
Ricardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1983); George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican America: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano

7
bourgeoisie and elite, but they occupied a more liminal social position: better-off
than local blacks, Asians and Mexicans due to racial dominance, but in many ways
subservient to the Anglo upper crust so thoroughly eulogized in the standard
history.
15

Another chestnut of local lore is a heavenly combination of mild climate and
beautiful scenery. Between the late 1880s and early 1930s, Angeleno boosters used
this environmental one-two punch to pummel frozen Americans back east in millions
of advertisements. Promoters described a paradise found—and accessible by rail.
16

Potential visitors in Buffalo, Boston and Baltimore heard ad nauseum about “a land
of sunny countenance … and salubrious clime” where “verdant gardens, fertile fields
and luxuriant orchards, unequaled in variety and quantity.”
17
Southern California’s
dramatic, sustained growth in both tourism and population in those decades was at
least partially due to such rhetoric, widely and relentlessly circulated. But recent
research has exposed the region’s fragile ecosystem, unstable geography, and

Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Douglas Flamming, Bound For
Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
15
Fred Viehe, “Black Gold Suburbs: The Influence of the Extractive Industry on the
Suburbanization of Los Angeles, 1890-1930,” Journal of Urban History 8 (1981), 3-26; Becky
Nicolaides: My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Nancy Quam-Wickham, “Another World: Work,
Home, and Autonomy in Blue-Collar Suburbs,” in Tom Sitton and William Deverell, eds., Metropolis
in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 123-141;
see also Phelps, “Dangerous Class,” Chapter 2. On elites in Los Angeles, see Fredric Cople Jaher,
The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago and Los Angeles
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982), Chapter 6.
16
For example, All-Year Club of Southern California, “Southern California: Year ‘Round
Vacation Land Supreme,” 1928, a brochure “compiled for the benefit of the intending … visitor.”
17
Meline, Metropolis of the West, 28. Such descriptions were commonplace in booster
publicity.

8
damage caused by not-infrequent bouts of bad weather.
18
Revisionists describe the
other Los Angeles as an unattractive, precarious, even dangerous place: barren
hillsides set ablaze during dry and windy autumns, or made muddy and mobile by
torrential downpours and earthquakes; summer days and weeks when both gardens
and people wilt under the scorching sun; frosty winter nights during which
plummeting temperatures ruin entire crops of all-important citrus; beaches and
residential subdivisions overwhelmed by towering oil derricks rising from gooey,
petroleum-soaked soil; and rivers and streams overflowing their shallow beds to
flood farms and industries.
What about the shape and landscape of an alternative City of Angels?
Conventional wisdom describes a landed gentry of real estate land barons and
“developers, who … transformed southern California’s vast countryside into Los
Angeles’ sprawling suburbs.”
19
This narrative portrays an exceptional region that
somehow passed from boundless tracts in agricultural production to an unchecked
sprawl of middle-class subdivisions with neither centralized commerce, industrial
development, nor official oversight to mar or complicate the transformation. Several
scholars have rejected the myth of a center-less, non-urban Los Angeles in the early
twentieth century. Richard Longstreth has demonstrated the commercial dominance

18
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York:
Metropolitan Books, 1998); Jared Orsi, Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los
Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and essays in William Deverell and Greg
Hise, eds., Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). Carey McWilliams, in Southern California, may have been the
first biographer of the region to pull back the environmental curtain. As a longtime Angeleno, he
knew firsthand that booster descriptions were full of half-truths.
19
Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 145.

9
and functional importance of an expanding downtown to the city and region—even
as peripheral development increasingly challenged its primacy.
20
Greg Hise has
found an emerging industrial Los Angeles taking shape east of downtown as early as
the 1890s, decades earlier than the date most historians use to mark this activity’s
onset.
21
Hise also finds portions of a walking city as late as the automobile-crazed
1920s, when considerable numbers of laborers still resided within walking distance
of their workplaces.
22
These and many other working-class residential zones were
frequently made up of jerrybuilt shacks and derelict house courts jammed onto dirt
lots alongside factories and warehouses. Becky Nicolaides and others have found
similarly drab (if less crowded) conditions in outlying suburbs.
23
Such dreary,
jumbled landscapes housed many of the working-class white and minority families
noted earlier, and constituted a gritty City of Angels nothing like the picturesque and
prestigious one of tree-lined streets, spacious lawns and handsome bungalows.
Was any of this urbanization—either the famous suburban plains or the more
traditional forms of some other Los Angeles—subject to planning and regulation?
The standard account indicates not, and credits “private enterprise … and not public

20
Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, The Automobile, and
Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997). Also, Scott L. Bottles, Los
Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987) debunks the myth of a benevolent public transportation industry dismantled by a devious
automotive industry.
21
Greg Hise, “Industry and Imaginative Geographies,” in Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis
in the Making, 13-44; Phelps, “Dangerous Class,” also makes the case for an earlier industrial city,
citing the proliferation of plants processing and shipping the region’s bounty of agricultural products.
Chapter 6 in Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, provides a good background on assumptions about
later industrialization.
22
Hise, “Imaginative Geographies,” and Quam-Wickam, “Another World,” both in Sitton and
Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making.

10
officials” with “the decisive role in urban expansion.”
24
To be sure, businesspeople
and real estate entrepreneurs operated with much more freedom in the early 1900s
than they would in subsequent decades.
25
As the city expanded outward, a lack of
public or private coordination among land subdividers resulted in an increasingly
disjointed hodgepodge of unaligned streets, odd-shaped blocks and lots of every size
and description. But the developers-gone-wild scenario “seriously underestimates
the role of the local state and of public actors, particularly bureaucrats, in shaping
Los Angeles’s development” beginning in the Progressive era, according to Steven
Erie.
26
Recent scholarship does not deny significant influence wielded by an
economic elite, but complicates the picture by chronicling an increasingly active and
independent municipal government.
27
In addition to the building of massive public
works such as the harbor and Owens Valley aqueduct, city agencies made relatively
early and numerous advancements in land-use districting, dating from 1904,

23
Viehe, “Black Gold Suburbs”; Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven; Quam-Wickham, “Another
World”; Phelps, “Dangerous Class.”
24
Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 42, does recount Progressive political reform in the early
1900s, dwelling on electoral implications and the introduction of civil service to municipal
government. But the activities of citizen commissions and civil servants working to control rapid
urban development are left undescribed.
25
See Fogleson, Fragmented Metropolis, Chapter 7; Jaher, Urban Establishment; William Issel,
“‘Citizens Outside the Government’: Business and Urban Policy in San Francisco and Los Angeles,
1890-1932,” Pacific Historical Review 57 (May 1988), 117-145.
26
Steven P. Erie, “How the Urban West Was Won: The Local State and Economic Growth in
Los Angeles, 1880-1932,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 27 (June 1992), 519-554. Erie focuses not on
public regulation of private development but on public expenditures for infrastructure improvements,
raised via bond issues and approved by voters. Another expression of the rise of the local state was
regulatory boards and commissions, however. Erie’s scholarship is part of a trend reestablishing the
role of governments in historical discourse after a period de-emphasizing state activities; see Peter B.
Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New Ymarxork:
Cambridge University Press, 1985).
27
Erie notes: “The crucial distinction between entrepreneurial and statist growth regimes is a
relative one, not absolute.” Ibid., 521. See also Tom Sitton, “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall
in 1920s Los Angeles?” in Sitton and Deverell, eds, Metropolis in the Making, 302-318.

11
challenging the popular notion of an unregulated property market. A reform-minded
housing commission was constituted in 1906 to attack the city’s slum problem,
setting new restrictions. And the establishment of the city planning commission and
department in 1920 and 1925, respectively, represented only milestones in a long
process of public administration and legislation aimed at guiding growth in the
metropolis.
28
Not all of the many planning and regulatory efforts were borne out in
the built environment; but the myth of developers riding roughshod over an
unplanned city is incorrect.

This dissertation’s contribution to the deepening counter-narrative of Los Angeles
history is situated at the point where two robust legends converge to prop up the
meta-myth of a city like no other. First, I argue that multi-family rental housing of
many types made up a significant portion of a dwelling stock and metropolitan
landscape supposedly dominated by owner-occupied single-family residences.
Moreover, the urban political economy was strongly affected by this shelter
diversity. Second, I join the band of scholars explicating a growing local state, and I

28
Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry
and Urban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), especially Chapters 3 and 4;
Greg Hise and Todd Gish, “City Planning in Los Angeles,” in Tom Sitton, ed., The Evolution of Los
Angeles City Government: An Institutional Memory (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Historical Society,
forthcoming); Greg Hise and William Deverell, Eden By Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew
Plan for the Los Angeles Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Mark S. Foster, in
“The Decentralization of Los Angeles During the 1920s (Ph.D. Diss., University of Southern
California, 1971), finds planners in place by 1920, but argues that their work was largely ineffective
against the forces of private real estate interests. For national context, see Jon Teaford, The
Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984) and Keith Revell, Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public Policy in New York City,
1898-1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

12
contend that Angeleno officials and bureaucrats stayed busy trying to impose some
kind of physical order on the expanding metropolis. Building- and land-use
regulations mounted in this allegedly unplanned city of rogue developers, and
multiple dwellings made up one important focus of this work.
In this project, I explore the construction of Los Angeles between 1900 and
the early 1930s—at least, its residential development. There, tourists (staying for
months on end) occupied small apartments in big buildings that were erected by
major contracting firms, owned by ambitious rentiers, and operated by sometimes-
(but not always-) efficient managers. Elsewhere—across town or even next door—
local families rented more “homelike” accommodations in one of thousands of four-
flats or bungalow courts that were put up by smaller builders, then bought and
operated by entrepreneurial mom-and-pop landlords. And these are just a couple of
the many scenarios making up domestic life in the City of Angels. Multi-family
rental housing sheltered all kinds of people (visitors, residents, newcomers, old-
timers, elites, proletarians, whites, blacks) in a range of building types (from very
small to very large) in many locations (downtown, outlying sub-centers, busy
boulevards, and low-density areas in-between). All of this housing was critical to a
diversifying and expanding urban economy, and a staple of the real estate business.
Further, this significant share of the shelter inventory posed particular challenges to
public officials and planners, who set about making a place for apartments, courts,
flats and duplexes among single-family dwellings, as well as stores, offices and
factories.

13
I am not the first to find multi-family housing in historic Los Angeles; others
have offered important early impressions. Usually, these take one of two forms:
either a recognition of the undeniable presence of big artifacts (large apartment
buildings, sometimes in discernible concentrations); or a thorough examination of a
particular type’s physical characteristics. In other words, to the very limited extent
that Los Angeles multiple dwellings have been documented, it has been by those
observing their material form—as bricks and mortar (or studs and stucco) on the
street (or in old photographs), interesting either for their clustering or their individual
aesthetic properties. Starr and Fogelson have each recognized the obvious density of
big apartment buildings in the Hollywood and Wilshire districts from the 1920s. But
while Starr makes the (extremely rare) finding that “apartment living was arriving in
full force”

before he quickly moves on, Fogelson reinforces the residential myth—
dismissing these as anomalous and “an extremely small fraction of all housing in Los
Angeles.”
29
Starr is correct, though I will argue for an earlier date and a broader
definition.
30
A few scholars have analyzed a particular type in rich detail, such as
Craftsman bungalow courts from the 1910s, Spanish-revival courtyard buildings
from the 1920s and ‘30s, and “dingbat” stucco-box apartments from the 1960s.
31
It

29
Starr, Material Dreams, 214; Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 151.
30
Contemporaries recognized the growing impact of apartment housing on Los Angeles’s
residential environment. See Olmsted Brothers and Bartholomew and Associates, Parks, Playgrounds
and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, 1930),
21, reprinted in Hise and Deverell, Eden By Design.
31
On the bungalow court, see Laura Chase, “Eden in the Orange Groves: Bungalow and
Courtyard Houses of Los Angeles,” Landscape 25 (1981), 29-36; Robert Winter, “Arthur S. and
Alfred Heineman,” 137-148; Edward R. Bosley, “Sylvanus B. Marston,” 169-180; and David
Gebhard, “Irving J. Gill,” 201-208; all in Robert Winter, ed., Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts
& Crafts Architects of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). On Spanish

14
is no coincidence that these accounts have focused on the artifacts themselves.
Practitioners and historians of art and architecture are trained to look at the landscape
and its pieces, then describe carefully what they see. Larger questions of why and
how call for a larger, urban-historical field of inquiry, to include: development
economics, the housing market, public policy, and cultural attitudes.
With few exceptions, no such work has been done to document the extent of
this residential sector in Los Angeles and draw connections to the city’s expansion,
politics and economy.
32
To a degree, this is understandable, given an allegedly
purebred residential pedigree of private homes repeated so loudly, by so many, so
often, and for so long. But the time is past due to dig into the archives and give this
place’s other housing its historical due: an integral component of urbanization in the
“suburban metropolis.”

revival courtyard buildings, Stefanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood, and James Tice, Courtyard
Housing in Los Angeles: A Typolocical Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) ; on
the stucco box “dingbat,” Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (New
York: Penguin Press, 1971); Edward Ruscha, Los Angeles Apartments, 1965 (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1990); and John Chase with John Beach, “The Stucco Box,” in John
Chase, Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular
City (New York: Verso, 2000). On a variety of multiple dwellings designed by famous architects, see
Lynn F. Jones, “The Multi-Unit Housing of Irving Gill, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra”
(PhD Diss., University of Oregon, 1998).
32
One example is Richard Longstreth’s wide-reaching examination of the city’s commercial
development; see City Center to Regional Mall, in which he finds and makes several brief
connections between retail architecture and urban housing. Another case is recent research on the
proliferation and problem of house courts between 1900 and the 1920s. This work draws on annual
reports of the Progressive-reformist Los Angeles Housing Commission, and does make links to larger
urban socio-economic forces at work in the creation of this mostly slum housing. See Dana Cuff, The
Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
2000), especially Chapter 21; and Jennifer Lisa Koslow, “Eden’s Underbelly: Female Reformers and
Public Health in Los Angeles, 1889-1932 (PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001),
Chapter 2. It should be noted that some scholars focusing on a particular building type do attempt to
situate their object of study in a larger context.

15
In addition to providing a case study of one city’s residential development,
this dissertation also fits into a larger literature on American shelter and urbanization.
Paralleling research on Los Angeles, study of housing in the United States has
focused overwhelmingly on single-family dwellings and their ownership. “Long
ignored by scholars … the apartment house … [has] become the subject of
considerable interest” at last.
33
Multiple dwellings (and their tenants) have begun to
receive some examination by academics, mostly at the very ends of the social
spectrum. A large body of knowledge exists on congested urban tenement districts
and the public housing complexes that replaced them. That work explores either
policy interventions by public agencies or sociological conditions of the poor and
working-class people who lived therein.
34
At the top of the economic ladder, a
literature has emerged describing luxurious apartment buildings for the rich and
famous in eastern American cities, mainly Manhattan.
35
A cavernous gap in

33
Richard Longstreth, “Architecture and the City,” in Howard Gillette, Jr. and Zane L. Miller,
eds., American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 155-
194; quotation, 163.
34
Robert De Forest and Lawrence Veiller, eds., The Tenement House Problem (New York:
Arno Press, 1970 [c. 1903]); Edith Abbott, The Tenements of Chicago, 1908-1935 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1936); Roy Lubove, The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House
Reform in New York City, 1890-1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962). More recent
work includes Anthony Jackson, A Place Called Home: A History of Low-Cost Housing in Manhattan
(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1976); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, Race and Housing
in Chicago, 1940-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Lawrence J. Vale, From the
Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 2000).
35
Andrew Alpern, Apartments for the Affluent: A Historical Survey of Buildings in New York
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975); Robert A.M. Stern, New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and
Urbanism, 1890-1915 (New York: Rizzoli, 1983) and New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism
Between Two World Wars (New York: Rizzoli, 1987); James M. Goode, Best Addresses: A Century
of Washington’s Distinguised Apartment Houses (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1988); Elizabeth Hawes, New York, New York: How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of
the City, 1869-1930 (New York: AA Knopf, 1993).

16
understanding separates these two extremes. Rental apartments of many types have
served as desirable shelter for middle-class people for a long time. This is true for
Los Angeles and most American cities, notwithstanding variations in timing,
quantity, architectural form and urban location. Fortunately, a few scholars have
begun to stake out this uncharted terrain, most focusing on eastern US cities. John
Hancock and Gwendolyn Wright introduced the general topic from a national
standpoint; Richard Plunz and Elizabeth Cromley have each written histories of
apartment housing in New York City.
36
Also significant are the social implications
of multi-family housing and its tenancy. Here, Elizabeth Blackmar has written on
the complex, overlapping transformation of economic structure, property relations
and cultural norms that actually gestated the rental housing market in 1800s
Manhattan. Looking at west coast cities, Paul Groth has shed considerable light on
two common and important urban housing types all but invisible in the
historiography: the residential hotel, and the accretive “packed lot” holding multiple,
miscellaneous residential structures.
37
All of this important work—scrutinizing

36
John Hancock, “The Apartment House in Urban America,” in Buildings and Society: Essays
on the Social Development of the Built Environment, ed. Anthony D. King (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1980), 158-179; Gwendolyn Wright, “The Advantages of Apartment Life,” Chap. In
Building the Dream: The Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1981),
135-151; Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change
in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Elizabeth Cromley, Alone
Together: A History of New York’s Early Apartments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). See
also Michael Doucet and John Weaver, “The North American Apartment Building as a Matter of
Business and an Expression of Culture: A Survey and Case Study, 1900s-1980s,” Chap. in Housing
the North American City (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), 388-419.
37
Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and “Rooming and Boarding in West Oakland,” in
Sights and Sounds: Essays in Celebration of West Oakland (Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma
State University Academic Foundation, 1997), 85-112.

17
different facets of mainstream multi-family housing for rent by a large and diverse
population—provides another crucial footing necessary for my scholarship.

URBAN GROWTH AND ITS MACHINERY
For all the myths embedded in the historiography of Los Angeles, its
remarkable growth in the early twentieth century is undisputed. In 1900, the small
city of barely 100,000 people (ranked 36
th
in the United States, behind Fall River,
Massachusetts and St. Joseph, Missouri) occupied 43 square miles of area—a
compact, bustling downtown edged in a few directions with suburban subdivisions,
largely surrounded by open acreage planted in beans, barley, and citrus, through
which a few country roads passed on their way to outlying towns. Culturally and
politically far behind its rival San Francisco to the north, its economic standing was
also minor: 215,000 tons passed through the city’s port that year. By 1930, a
thriving, still-growing metropolis of over 1.2 million people (ranked 5
th
in the nation)
was spread over 440 square miles—a congested downtown, several growing urban
sub-centers, myriad residential districts, industrial zones—all still surrounded by
even more and larger agricultural areas. The hub of an even bigger urban region,
Los Angeles was now a major economic center: for example, 28,213,000 tons passed
through its port that year.
38

Such astonishing expansion was not merely the natural and inevitable result
of a good climate and cheap land made accessible by railroad. Visitors and settlers

18
had to be coaxed, their money lured. But, of course, civic boosting is nothing new.
Urban elites have promoted their cities for centuries, if not millennia. Modern
boosterism is often caricatured as charlatan real estate salesmen hyping the fictional
qualities of some far-off property for sale, or as businessmen exaggerating their
town’s importance of for personal profit. However, some scholars have placed
booster efforts, or place promotion, in a larger social and economic context.
39

Sociologists John Logan and Harvey Molotch term the larger, overarching process in
which boosterism operates “the political economy of place.”
40
In this view, urban
growth, particularly the land market, is governed as much by power and social
relations as by supply and demand. This theory rejects the neo-classical economic
view of urbanization as merely a laissez-faire distribution of population according to
a freely operating land market. The political economy perspective situates place
promotion as a critical factor driving such markets.
41

If all of this seems to be merely a story about local real estate, look again, say
these scholars: “the market in land and buildings orders urban phenomena and

38
On population and area, http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0027/. On
the port’s throughput, Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 119.
39
See Gerry Kearns and Chris Philo, eds., Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past
and Present (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993); John R. Gold and Stephen V. Ward, eds., Place
Promotion: The Use of Publicity and Marketing to Sell Towns and Regions (Chichester UK: John
Wiley & Sons, 1994); and Stephen V. Ward, Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns
and Cities, 1850-2000 (London: E&FN Spon, 1998).
40
John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
41
Current urban regime theory identifies such aggressively pro-growth, land-based policy
networks as a development regime, one of four types. The others are caretaker (limited mostly to
service provision), progressive (stressing middle-class civic activism and public participation), and
opportunity (emphasizing employment and ownership opportunities for a wider population). Karen
Mossberger and Gerry Stoker, “The Evolution of Urban Regime Theory,” Urban Affairs Review 36
(July 2001), 810-835.

19
determines what city life can be.”
42
In the city-building process, the allowable uses,
changes in value, and relative proximities of real property are both fundamental and
far-reaching. Most importantly, they are alterable: good location can be created, and
myriad efforts to do so constitute a basic, organizing force in capitalist
urbanization.
43
Place and its commodification is the sine qua non in this way of
understanding cities: location, location, location, for sale or lease. Logan and
Molotch label the protagonists in this business of growth “modern urban rentiers” or
“place entrepreneurs, the people directly involved in the exchange of places and
collection of rents.”
44

Politicians, land owners, building developers, financiers, industrialists,
merchants, media outlets, local institutions and civic organizations are all potential
participants in the political economy of place.
45
Such groups of place entrepreneurs
—dubbed “growth elites”—have historically been active in the complicated
processes of city-building, each hoping to advance the interests of its particular
constituents as its city grows. These associations and their members may differ on
many issues. However, as place promoters, they share one core value, that of
growth: an expanding city consistently attracting capital, development, and
population is their goal. Importantly, the political-economy emphasis accommodates
both cooperation and contention among participating camps that may differ on the

42
Ibid., 17.
43
David Harvey, The Urban Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
44
Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 29.
45
Logan and Molotch do not dwell on petit rentiers, but small landlords eager to amass
personal wealth would also have participated in the civic culture of urban growth.

20
details. “Cleavages…can nevertheless develop, and internal disagreements
sometimes break into the open. But even then…disagreements are allowable and do
not challenge the belief in growth itself.”
46
Unanimity among interest groups is not
necessary to successfully pursue urban growth.
The profit motive is central to any discussion of place promotion: the rise in
property values for land-owners (seen in booster caricatures), but also an increase in
overall capital accumulation by urban elites in general. This view permeates Mike
Davis’s account of Los Angeles’s development in the early twentieth century, in
which “a syndicate of developers, bankers and transport magnates led by [Los
Angeles Times editors Harrison Gray] Otis and … Harry Chandler, set out to sell
Los Angeles—as no city has ever been sold.”
47
However, many others had an
abiding interest in a growing Los Angeles, not just its aristocracy. Bureaucrats,
small business owners and even ordinary citizens bought into boosterism, and did
their part to promote their city and county to outsiders. Other scholars have
recognized boosterism as a widespread urban phenomenon transcending real estate.
One reports: “Place selling is not simply a specific area of urban policy or action. It
is rather a broad entrepreneurial ethos or ideology which…has permeated the
common affairs of particular places.”
48
In other words, place promotion and its

46
Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 64-65.
47
Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990;
Vintage Books, 1992), 25.
48
Ward, Selling Places, 3.

21
emphasis on growth becomes embedded in local culture; its values order and
rationalize the entire range of urban activities and processes.
49

Place promotion at its most evolved, elaborate, and entrenched is termed a
“growth machine” by Logan and Molotch.
50
This designation unequivocally fits Los
Angeles in the early twentieth century. Local rentiers working in the apartment
housing market were full participants; at the dawn of the booming 1920s, their trade
association urged them to “let the watchword[s] for 1920 be—Boost and
Cooperation.”
51

THE (GROWTH) MACHINE IN THE GARDEN
52

The … Chamber of Commerce is a highly organized machine
which the people of Los Angeles and vicinity have created …
to gather and concentrate the otherwise scattered force of
public opinion and direct it toward the accomplishment of
public objects with the full power of organized effort[.] Every
person, resident of Southern California, having a dollar at
stake … is interested in its success.
53

—Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce report in 1900

49
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922) is often cited as a good fictional
description of local booster culture, set in the early 1900s.
50
In Urban Fortunes, the authors elaborate on the original theory set out in Harvey Molotch,
“The City as A Growth Machine,” American Journal of Sociology 82 (1976), 309-330. The growth
machine concept has its critics as well as proponents; see essays in Andrew E.G. Jonas and David
Wilson, eds., The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives Two Decades Later (Albany: State
University of New York, 1999).
51
C.R. Desmond, “Concerning New Year’s Resolutions,” Apartment House Trade Journal
(January 1920), 3, emphasis original.
52
In Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), the complex relationship between the ostensibly
competing themes of capitalistic progress and pristine nature is discussed. This paradox is pertinent
in thinking about the use of myths and images evoking untouched nature to further urban
development.
53
“What the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Does for Southern California” (March 1900),
n.p.

22
Los Angeles’s original boosters were Spanish colonial officials in Mexico City,
working to coax farmers and ranchers north to help settle the new outpost pueblo in
the 1780s. More intensive place promotion did not begin for another century, when
the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Pacific Railroad began
blanketing eastern US cities with newspaper advertisements and pamphlets in the
late 1880s.
54
By the 1890s, the city was commonly referred to as the best advertised
in the nation, and boosterism reached its apogee between this time and the 1930s.
Many urban historians have been fascinated with the hubris and avarice of local
growth elites advertising their American city, and this topic of Los Angeles history
has its own mythology.
It is tempting to portray Angeleno elites as monolithic in their pursuit of
some coordinated strategy for the accumulation of power and wealth. A typical
account describes “a cartel … set into motion, very deliberately, by a small group of
visionary (and greedy) business leaders who … set out to exploit [the region’s]
potential allure.”
55
Certainly, there existed an identifiable group of very rich and
powerful men who held significant influence over politics and growth. Harry
Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and other figures manning (literally)
the Chamber of Commerce and other elite organizations were very prominent, and
often in cahoots on one deal or another. Mike Davis’s depiction of “a de facto

54
For a concise and illustrated history of place promotional imagery in American Los Angeles
up to the 1910s, see Judith W. Elias, Los Angeles: Dream to Reality, 1885-1915 (Northridge CA:
Santa Susana Press, 1983).
55
Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis, 7.

23
dictatorship of the Times”
56
publishing clan agrees with McWilliams’ assertion that
“the Times, the M[erchants] and M[anufacturers Association] and their allies …
ruled Southern California with an iron hand” in this period.
57
These
characterizations suggest a cabal of the city’s capitalists meeting in the same smoke-
filled back room every week, acting in lockstep on matters of urban development.
Indeed, Davis sees no room for dissent from “the Chandlerian power structure” by
other Los Angeles business leaders and associations out to further their own
interests.
But control and influence are different things, and the myth of a unified,
smoothly running growth machine is contradicted by the historical reality that
various booster elites often held different interests, approaches and opinions.
Sitton’s work on Los Angeles’s “informal oligarchy” finds that “while it cannot be
denied that this particular slice of the upper economic and social strata exerted
tremendous influence in politics and regional development, its hegemony was
consistently challenged.”
58
The usefulness of the political economy perspective is
that it takes into full account both collective power and individual action, both
authority and dissent. Yes, scheming and power-grabbing by a core elite did occur,
but this was by no means smoothly accomplished, unopposed, or, for that matter,
always triumphant. In their assessment of the mighty Chamber of Commerce in this
period, Hise and Deverell concur, arguing that “it is incorrect to assume that other

56
Davis, City of Quartz, 114.
57
McWilliams, Southern California, 290.
58
Sitton, “Ruling Class,” 302.

24
institutions and … the voting public were solely a supporting cast” helpless to resist
elites’ various machinations.
59

Again, even though growth-at-all-costs was promoted and popularized to the
extent that it seemed to be the very air people breathed, things were not simple. The
fact that these disciplined, top-flight booster groups were led by the city’s aristocracy
did not shield them from funding shortfalls, intense criticism or outright opposition
from other civic groups, government agencies, and ordinary citizens. Place
promotion’s work—both external and internal—was never done.
60

GROWTH & THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HOUSING
The Bubble That Never Broke—
I’m going to tell you about a bubble that never broke,
about the most beautiful bubble in all the world. … It is called
Los Angeles. … Let us begin … with scattered groups of palm
and eucalyptus trees, with dry soil and a sun that smiled down
warmly on a land that God had blessed. … There were dark-
eyed senoritas with pulses that fluttered like doves as they
flirted with gay caballeros. …And, even as Columbus was
criticized and ridiculed, so were those imaginative pioneers of
early Los Angeles who boosted extravagantly[.]
61

The musings of “radio philosopher” G. Allison Phelps, relayed to a broad audience,
were not unusual in 1926. The heaping of cliché onto cliché to promote places,

59
Hise and Deverell, Eden By Design, 51.
60
An interesting project on both successes and failures in local boosterism is Allene Symons,
“Boosting the Boom, Taming the Backlash: How the Los Angeles Times Influenced Westward
Migration in the 1920s” (MA Thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 2002); also Gish, “Selling
Los Angeles.”
61
G. Allison Phelps, “The Bubble That Never Broke,” Apartment House Journal (April 1926),
6-7.

25
events, and products had been commonplace for decades. Boosters and their work
were everywhere, and Los Angeles was a hotbed of hot air.
62

But why was this breathless tribute reprinted in a trade publication for
landlords like the Apartment House Journal? The ideology of “growth for growth’s
sake” was powerful and pervasive; the local trade press was full of essays written by
members of various civic and business organizations (and self-identified “experts”),
all in the spirit of cooperation and encouragement. Like many psalms-to-the-palms
about southern California, Phelps’s tale revealed a clear instrumentality about urban
development—something landlords and other good growth machine members would
find of interest. For him, Los Angeles was not only a “land of enchantment,” it was
also “a perfect setting for an industrial center.” The “bubble whose walls were made
of the gold of ambition and the elasticity of imagination” was also “supported by the
glistening rails of many lines of transportation.” Aimed at both eastern capitalists as
well as at local business people eager to see their city (hence, customer base) expand,
this was naked place promotion at its syrupy best. Phelps admitted as much: “Ah,
friends! It is great to be a part of the building of a great city.”
63

Residential development was inextricably linked to urbanization (and all
efforts to hurry it along). If a city was to grow, it needed places to shelter all those
who came. Plus, of course, housing production was itself economic expansion. This

62
The bubble metaphor was also familiar, used to describe an economic boom that might
continue to grow, or might burst at any time without warning; it continues to appear in writing about
business. See, for example, Andy Serwer, “This Is Not Your Father’s Steel Bubble,” Fortune
(January 26, 2004), 53.
63
Phelps, “Bubble.”

26
included the swelling local market in multiple dwellings, enlarging with the
metropolis itself. Those in the business depended upon a booster press for moral and
material support. Two months after Phelps’ essay, another Journal contributor
reinforced the importance of the print media to rentier interests represented by
groups like the Apartment House Association: “Newspapers should continue to
promote the city, its land, [and] buildings[.]”
64

Many organizations and institutions participated in Los Angeles’s public-private
growth regime, though only some were directly involved with housing and
residential development. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was the
granddaddy of regional booster groups.
65
Founded in 1888, its purview was all
things commercial: real estate, agriculture, trade, merchandising, and manufacturing.
Growing the City of Angels into one of Industry was a key objective. The Chamber
sent publicity and advertisements all over the nation by the railroad carload, seeking

64
A.C. Smithers, “The Apartment House Situation in Los Angeles,” Apartment House Journal
9 (June 1926), 3.
65
For a brief corporate biography, see Marco R. Newmark, “A Short History of the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 27 (March
1945), 57-80.
Worried Angeleno businessmen founded the organization the year that the region’s famous
land boom deflated and population began declining precipitously. The assignment was to grow Los
Angeles beyond a frontier town. The Chamber’s leadership took this charge seriously, and was not
known for its reserve: directors thought big, discussing potential statehood for southern California and
possible annexation of Baja California by the United States. See Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,
“Facts and Figures Concerning Southern California and Los Angeles City and County,” (1888).
When the 1900 federal census threatened to peg the city’s population just short of the
hundred-thousand-mark that place promoters coveted so intensely, these boosters got busy. Their
work was lauded at the next annual banquet: “the Chamber of Commerce … succeeded in obtaining
the names of 3,700 residents who had not been enrolled by … census takers.” Los Angeles Chamber
of Commerce, Members’ Annual, 1901, 11. No inept pollsters were going to stand in the way of

27
to attract both manufacturers for their capital, and workers for their labor.
66
Housing
was critical in this: single-family home-ownership for all—not just the middle-class
and above—was one focus of this campaign. Business elites considered a happy
laboring class, residing in one-family houses (however modest) instead of in
congested tenement slums, the best hope for avoiding labor unrest. An economic
climate with no union stranglehold was the objective of “open shop” ideologues, and
the small private cottage was its symbol. Leaders in other cities tried this “lawns for
the pawns” strategy, but Angeleno boosters thought that they might actually make it
work.
67
Promotional publications sent back East by the tens of thousands made
routine claims of the desirable living conditions in southern California—targeting
capitalists with a wanderlust to be sure, but also playing to the large quantity of
potential employees so necessary for large-scale industrial production. In 1914, both

these serious place promoters: the official population count inched into six figures, with a lot of help
and perhaps questionable methods.
66
On the Chamber’s use of images and photography, see Tom Zimmerman, “Paradise
Promoted: Boosterism and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,” California History 64 (Winter
1985), 22-33, 73-75.
67
The Chamber’s saw its mission as publicizing Los Angeles as an ideal site for investment in
new manufacturing facilities. Part of the strategy was to cast their city as a leading example of
“industrial freedom”—contrasting with cities like San Francisco and Chicago, where unions had
significant membership and the ability to severely threaten the local economy with work stoppages.
The Los Angeles Times’ Harrison Gray Otis and other civic leaders worked hard to cultivate the
reputation for an “open shop”—a place supposedly free from the labor strife so disruptive, even
crippling to business interests in so many American cities in the late nineteenth century.
Chamber members were told “that the rented room of the unattached industrial worker is a
potential habitat of political disorder and ferment, but … for this type of workman to own his home[,]
raise a … garden and become a taxpayer with property rights, he becomes a convert to law and order
and the customary processes of industrial production[.]” The Chamber’s took credit for the putative
link between owned worker housing and the growing manufacturing sector. “This is one of the
remarkable things that has taken place … in Los Angeles[.] It [home ownership] has, in fact, been
largely responsible for much of the industrial expansion that has made the city so well known
throughout the world. Employees upon whom fell the brunt of production have been made efficient
and contented by reason of ownership of homes[.]” For quotes, see Marc N. Goodnow, “Be It Ever
So Humble…” Southern California Business (January 1929), 20.

28
bosses and workers reading advertisements issued by the growth machine were told:
“In Los Angeles labor reaches its highest efficiency and its maximum contentment[.]
Workmen live in modest and comfortable bungalows, invariably with lawns and
flowers[.]”
68
These claims were greatly exaggerated, and constituted far more a
rhetorical campaign than a reliable description of working and living conditions.
69

Apartments and residential hotels constituted the city’s other housing stock—
clearly a separate and secondary category in the minds of Angeleno boosters (and
most of bourgeois America at this time). Still, this supposedly subordinate tier
served interests close to the hearts and wallets of Chamber members and others in
real estate. The hotel trade was the focus of one of the Chamber’s fifteen standing
committees, and a tourist housing committee was set up by the late 1910s.
70
Both
working groups recognized the fundamental need to provide rental shelter for rising
numbers of visitors and newcomers arriving daily—not to mention the profitability
for proprietors. The city’s considerable supply of apartment buildings also fit into
this category, and in this way, multi-family housing found its way into Chamber

68
Pamphlet. “Los Angeles: Where Nature Helps Industry Most,” n.d., ca. 1914, 4, 21.
69
Though many working-class families did in fact occupy detached houses, often the dwellings
were rented, not owned. Furthermore, the quality of construction was often substandard at best. Los
Angeles had a “shack problem,” according to many observers: a large number of the city’s single-
family dwellings did not come close to the attractive ones falsely described at “typical” in so much
booster literature. Apparently, much of this housing stock was self-built by amateur owners. One
observer wrote of the “all-too-prevalent shacks on narrow lots here,” Eberle Economic Service
Newsletter, July 18, 1927, 173. For a growth elite response to this problem, and the trouble it posed
for place promotion, see Luther T. Mayo, “Why the Land Owner or Subdivider Should Avoid Cheap
Building,” Los Angeles Realtor 4 (June 1925), 15.
70
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Executive Committee meeting minutes, October 31,
1888. Among the other original standing committees: commerce; manufacturing; immigration; land,
irrigation and agriculture; mining; statistics and publishing; parks and boulevards; legislation; money,
loans and capital; and entertainment. On the tourist housing committee, see Los Angeles Chamber of
Commerce, Members’ Annual, 1920.

29
discourse: either as domestic infrastructure for the region’s all-important tourism
industry, or as financial investments for rentiers.
71
These establishments were not
discussed in terms of housing per se; tenants and occupants never made it into these
discussions.

The ownership, subdivision, sale, finance, transfer, and development of land and
buildings composed a mainstay of southern California’s economy from the late
1880s through the 1920s.
72
In a growing region as large as Los Angeles,
opportunities were plentiful for those working in these various aspects, at all scales,
in residential, business, industrial, and agricultural property. The Los Angeles
Realty Board (LARB) was founded in 1903 to unify many in this burgeoning yet
fragmented business.
73
The Realty Board, alongside the Chamber of Commerce, is
another textbook example of a growth elite organization. Subdividers, brokers and
builders joined up, as well as banks, transit providers, insurance companies and

71
See, for example, the full-page advertisement in the Chamber’s official publication, Southern
California Business (September 1922), 20, for Sil-O-Cel building insulation. All of the projects
illustrated in the ad are multi-family or commercial housing: duplexes, flats and hotels. A coupon
form was included to allow the reader to send for more information; it reads: “I expect to build [check
boxes are provided] a residence; double dwelling; apartment; flat; hotel; school[.]” This
advertisement was the only mention of multi-family housing in the first several editions of the
magazine, and clearly it was aimed at developers, not tenants.
72
Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (San Marino: Huntington
Library. 1963), especially chapters 5 and 15. See also Starr, Material Dreams, 68-78.
73
The LARB’s founding was part of a national movement to reform a busy new profession
considered by the public to be unscrupulous at worst and incompetent at best; see Janet Pearl Davies,
Real Estate in American History (Washington DC, Public Affairs Press, 1958) Chapters 2 and 4.
Realty Board members hoped that new regulation would bolster investor confidence by discouraging
“the unethical practices and dishonesty of some real estate operators [who] were a disgrace … and
most nauseating to other members of the profession” in Los Angeles; Los Angeles Realtor 1 (June
1922), 10.

30
merchants.
74
The membership roster boasted the names of local real estate legends
such as William Garland, D.F. McGarry, Harry Culver, Harold and Edwin Janss, and
Henry Huntington. The LARB tended to work on behalf of larger, established firms
well connected to the greater business community.
75

From the start, the LARB was active in civic affairs and instrumental in the
formulation of local land-use regulation. The design and implementation of private
deed restrictions (governing property improvements) was one key strategy employed
by realtors to guide new development.
76
Board members also lobbied heavily for
new municipal planning and zoning legislation. The city’s landmark ordinances
establishing separate use-districts for residence and industry in 1908 and the creation
of a city planning commission in 1920 were only two milestones in this public-
private interplay (see Chapter 6). These and other activities—many in support of
new single-family housing on individual lots—“clearly reflected a strong push by the

74
In 1924, the Realty Board listed approximately 1800 members, both individual and
corporate. Most came from inside the real estate business, but some were from outside (but related)
fields such as insurance, media, hotels, banks and manufacturing. Within the field, thirty-two
different sub-specialties of local real estate were listed, including: acreage; apartment houses & hotel
leases; apartment house sites; business property; builders; dairy; farm & ranch; flats; fruit & vineyard
lands; harbor; houses & lots; insurance; investments; leases; loans; mortgages; mountain & canyon;
Mexican lands; oil leases; rentals; residence property; and subdivisions. “Complete Roster of
Membership,” Los Angeles Realtor 3 (January 1924), 14 and following. It should be noted that the
previous year saw a peak in the city-building activities of land subdivision and building construction
in Los Angeles, and so the membership numbers may not have been typical.
75
“[F]or all its political power, economic resources, and media access, the Los Angeles Realty
Board represented the interests of only a small minority of all the economic and political actors within
the real estate business…. Real estate sales, however, was a highly competitive field with very easy
entry and huge numbers of participants, especially in Los Angeles during the 1920s.” Weiss, Rise of
the Community Builders, 98.
Thousands of realtors did not belong to the LARB, however; these were apt to be
independent brokers working from tiny offices. Such small-scale operators were often opposed to the
imposition of either new professional standards or new kinds of land-use regulation, since added
controls limited the maneuverability available to free agents working in the unpredictable Los
Angeles land market.

31
Los Angeles Realty Board to reassure prospective lenders and purchasers that the
city would continue to be a spacious residential paradise of fine homes,” according
to Marc Weiss.
77

The prominence of the private, freestanding dwelling in this housing market
was real: Fogelson’s claim that “Americans came to Los Angeles with a conception
of the good community ... embodied in single-family houses, located on large lots”
was true for many newcomers (though by no means all).
78
But this prominence was
as much rhetorical as material, and was far from the inevitable condition historians
typically describe. Aspiring realtors in the booming 1920s were told as much: house
and home were desirable ideals, but this by itself was no guarantee of sales.
Established professionals instructed students that they could not count on newcomers
to provide an automatic market for spots in suburban subdivisions: “we must bear in
mind that they will not buy real estate simply because we want them to. It must be
proved to them that their best interests lie in home ownership.”
79
Many of these
entrepreneurs were up to the challenge, and did their bit to justify rhetoric of a “city
of homes” and try for a profit in doing so.
80

76
Davies, Real Estate, 65-68.
77
Weiss, Community Builders, 86-101; quotation, 86.
78
Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 144.
79
University of Southern California, Correspondence Study Department syllabus. “Lesson 3:
Residential Property and Subdivisions,” 12-13. New realtors were educated in both the residential
ideal and the reality in Los Angeles. “Though the desire for home ownership is deeply planted in the
breast of civilized man, not everyone is so situated as to make it possible ... [and] they form the renter
class.” Further, these students were informed: “Apartment houses cater quite definitely to a more or
less transient population and hence are usually found close to business centers where accessibility is a
prime consideration.”
80
Despite how crowded the real estate field had become in Los Angeles, it continued to attract
beginners. The first local professional training program was begun in the College of Commerce and

32
In October 1921, the Los Angeles Realtor—trade journal and mouthpiece of
the LARB—was launched to educate and encourage this simultaneously thriving and
risky business.
81
Articles illustrated the Board’s positions on housing after almost
two decades of organized effort. A report from the national real estate convention in
Chicago excerpted Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover’s speech on the national
need for more single-family dwelling construction. The same edition praised the
new city planning commission’s decision to classify duplexes with flats and
apartments, thereby reserving the new, purely “residential” zone category for single,
detached dwellings. Subsequent Realtor editions sustained this esteem. Real estate
tycoon Harry Culver (at various times president of the LARB and its national
counterpart) announced his priorities relative to dwelling type in 1924: “Whenever
you can take a family out of an apartment house … and place that family … in a
home of its own … you are rendering a service to the community and a service to
humanity.”
82
And a director of the Los Angeles Railway congratulated his industry
for doing its part: “Los Angeles has become a city of homes instead of a city of
tenants, because the arteries of transportation were opened from the heart of the city

Business Administration at the University of Southern California in about 1920, attracting 130
students in its first year; in 1927 over 1200 were enrolled, coming from all lines of previous work.
See Hugh Evans, “Real Estate is Interesting to Other Trades,” Southern California Business (October
1927), 30. Prominent members of the Los Angeles Realty Board lectured or prepared materials for
many of the courses. “Real Estate Course Makes Good Progress,” Los Angeles Realtor 1/7 (April
1922), 20.
81
During one high peak of activity, the Chamber of Commerce reported: “Enough land has
been sub-divided in Los Angeles County in the last year to make two cities the size of St. Louis”; see
“Laying Out a Complete New City,” Southern California Business (May 1923), 21. And the number
of realtors seemed to keep up: in 1921 alone, the state of California issued licenses to more than
27,000 brokers and salesmen; “Highlights of the Recent National Convention,” Los Angeles Realtor 1

33
to the outlying districts[.]”
83
Many in the real estate industry shared this strategy-
cum-ideology; from the federal government on down, single-family home-ownership
was elevated to iconic status in the national conversation.
But urban populations kept increasing, and the demand for affordable,
efficient rental housing units kept apace. In Los Angeles, plenty of place
entrepreneurs were willing to overlook philosophy for economics, happy to help
supply multi-family housing for rent to the mounting numbers of tourists,
newcomers, and residents disinterested in (or incapable of) a bungalow purchase. In
a 1924 LARB directory, 71 of the approximately 900 realtor listings, or eight
percent, specialized in “flats” or apartment properties. This proportion reaches
twenty percent if the categories of “rentals” and “income property” are included.
84

For example, the Lyon Realty Company built four-family flats; Joe Toplitzky’s firm
specialized in big apartment properties; and the huge Frank Meline Company
maintained thirty branch offices and a department dedicated to hotels and apartment
houses.
85
Other evidence abounds of professional participation in a diversified
shelter market. A roster in the Realtor, boasting of new construction in the city,
described a 13-floor “class-A apartment house in the heart of Hollywood” costing

(June 1922), 10. That same year, some 33,000 licensed brokers were operating in Los Angeles in
more than 1,200 real estate offices; see Weiss, Community Builders, 98.
82
Harry H. Culver, “Selling Sub-Divisions,” Los Angeles Realtor 3 (July 1924), 29.
83
J.G. Jeffery, “The Street Railway as a City Builder,” Los Angeles Realtor 5 (January 1926),
17.
84
Though some in the “rental” and “income” categories may have involved non-residential
properties, a sufficient number of realtors cross-advertising under “flats” and “apartments” suggests
that most in those two categories were multi-family residential.

34
one million dollars and designed by a prestigious local architecture firm.
86
Monthly
accounts of local construction activity often mentioned increases in multi-family
housing: one noted “a pleasing fact that the grand total for dwellings, apartment
houses and flat buildings is past the $5,000,000 mark.”
87
Frequently, the Realtor
published a feature highlighting some type of residential income property. One
described how “A Four-Family Dwelling Escapes the Odium of the ‘Tenement,’”
while another highlighted the qualities of the bungalow court.
88
Yet another
conveyed how “a program of apartment house construction along ultra modern lines
was begun in Los Angeles in 1922 … maintain[ing] a position of increasing
importance in the city’s building activity.”
89
Moreover, even after the planning
commission was established and hard at work, both the Realty Board and the
Chamber remained involved in making urban land policy (see Chapter 6). Many
realtors, LARB members and not, vigorously petitioned for the zoning of large
territories to allow income-producing development such as apartments, stores and
offices. Multi-family housing large and small was an appreciable and appreciated
sector of Los Angeles real estate.

85
Advertisement in Los Angeles Realtor (February 1922), 20; Joe Toplitzky, “Los Angeles
Increase in Apartment Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor (September 1924), 11; “Among World’s
Foremost Realtors,” Pacific Coast Record (September 1923), 17.
86
Heber W. Waters, “Immense 1924 Building Program for Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Realtor
3/9 (June 1924), 36.
87
Los Angeles Realtor 1 (May 1922), 38.
88
Ernest Irving Freese, “A Four-Family Dwelling Escapes the Odium of the ‘Tenement,’” Los
Angeles Realtor 5 (May 1926), 18; Ernest Irving Freese, “Eight Units of Income,” Los Angeles
Realtor 5 (August 1926), 18.
89
Joe Toplitzky, “Los Angeles Progress in Apartment Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor 3
(September 1924), 11.

35
This lively residential sector on such open display in the contemporaneous
local discourse is nothing like the one-dimensional milieu so widely reported by
historians. First, no innate, self-perpetuating market for suburban bungalows was
just waiting for realtors and developers to supply. To be sure, a substantial segment
of Angelenos wanted this domestic arrangement and were willing to pay for it. But
many buyers had to be courted and coaxed out to the urban edge, where they might
or might not find paved streets or sewer connections, but where often-steep mortgage
payments would be waiting regardless. Second: flats and apartment buildings were
anything but exceptional, and were the scene of much ordinary urban activity:
lenders lending, builders building, managers managing, and renters renting.

One of this project’s contributions to understanding urbanization in Los Angeles is
the exposure of a heterogeneous historical dialogue about residential development
there—in this case, by adding the voices of those involved in multiple-dwelling
production and regulation to the until-now lone voice of those responsible for single-
family housing. (Sometimes, these sets of actors overlapped.) By about 1910, the
multi-family shelter market in Los Angeles was thriving. Long-stay tourists,
newcomers, and longtime Angelenos all contributed to the demand for more and
more rental units, and realtors and builders responded by developing more and larger
apartment buildings.
90
This segment of residential Los Angeles was quickly

90
“Sixty Miles of New Houses,” Los Angeles Times, December 29, 1912, V1; Frederick
Jennings, “Los Angeles the Home of Many High Class Apartment Houses,” Architect and Engineer
34 (September 1913), 65-75.

36
expanding with the rest of the city, and regulators needed help. The chief building
inspector requisitioned funds from the city council in 1910 to hire “an inspector who
is an expert on the arrangement and construction of apartment houses … on account
of the erection of an extraordinary [sic] large number” of them.
91

But public officials were not the only ones trying to keep up with the rental
housing boom: owners themselves needed assistance. The Apartment House
Association of Los Angeles (AHA) was established in 1917 after several years of
various organization attempts by local landlords.
92
The Association resembled trade
groups then forming all over the country, in all lines of business (like real estate and
hotels): concerned with coordinating and professionalizing what had become a big
but disorganized business conducted as much by inexperienced amateurs as by
knowledgeable veterans.
93
AHA members were owners and managers of larger
apartment buildings with complex operations involving multiple staff and services;
owners of small income properties such as bungalow courts or four-family flats did
not belong to the Association, because of the relative simplicity of keeping up just a

91
Los Angeles Building Department, Annual Report, 1911, n.p.
92
“Apartment House Association History,” Apartment House Journal, October 1926, 3-4. On
February 17, 1912, an organization known as the Southern California Apartment House Association
was formed. In March 1917, the Co-Operative Apartment House Association was founded; it
eventually absorbed the first association. On November 10, 1920, the Co-Operative Apartment House
Association was incorporated with the state of California under the new name of the Apartment House
Association of Los Angeles County. The current name is the Apartment Association of Greater Los
Angeles.
In addition to the AHA, other similar trade associations continued to form and function. In
1934, a total of eight organizations dedicated to apartment and hotel properties and operations were
listed in that year’s “Directory of Associations and Trade Organizations” compiled by the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
93
Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of
Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976); Doucet and Weaver, “North American
Apartment Building.”

37
few units. The AHA had a high proportion of women in its membership, both as
managers and owners of apartment property.
94
Though precise numbers are not
available, by 1934 the Association claimed that half of the owners of Los Angeles
County’s approximately 7,800 apartment houses were members.
95
The AHA was
not a primary civic organization on the order of the Chamber or Realty Board, but
was a staunch supporter of both.
96
Yet the Association was an active cog in the
growth machine. The 1926 reprint for landlord readers of the booster “bubble”
essay—which makes no mention of housing—illustrates the commonplace linkages
across sectors of the local economy in aggressive place promotion.
In 1919 the Apartment House Journal began publication as the official organ
of the AHA.
97
This was where members, eager see their investments improve, went
for a wide range of advice and wisdom. Such was provided by seasoned landlords
and managers, as well as others in the growth coalition related to the shelter
industry—lawyers, bankers and realtors. A multi-year review of the Journal shows

94
For example, in 1934, fourteen of eighteen AHA’s Managers’ Division governors were
women; “Our Board of Governors,” Apartment Journal (March 1934), 10-11. Women’s names
appear frequently throughout journal, as members of both the manager and owner categories. The
vast majority of names are preceded by “Mrs.”, indicating married women and widows were quite
active in the apartment business. This was a common phenomenon in the shelter industry. Women
frequently owned and ran lodging- and boarding houses, or managed residential hotels or motels. See
Groth, Living Downtown, Chapter 6; and John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle, Jefferson S. Rodgers, The
Motel in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Chapter 3.
95
Frank H. Partridge, in “Cooperation or Regulation?” Apartment Journal (May 1934), 9,
claimed this 50 percent figure. “County Housing Census,” Apartment Journal (December 1933), 9,
recounts statistical data released by the county assessor: 7841 apartment houses in the county, 5100 in
the city of Los Angeles.
96
“Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Working to Bring Additional Industries to City,”
Apartment House Trade Journal (December 1923), 4; P.E. Woods, “Who’s Who in Housing,”
Apartment Journal (July 1934), 12; Don Thomas, “Let’s All Carry On,” and Harry L. Harper, “One
Out of Many,” Apartment Journal (August 1934), 13.

38
that rental housing concerns in Los Angeles reflected those of cities around the
nation. It covered issues that landlords faced most everywhere: vacancy rates;
excessive speculation in property acquisition and resale; increasing state regulation;
pricing of rentals; dishonest and destructive tenants; and cutthroat competition for
tenants.
98

While some Association members may have been wealthy, sophisticated
rentiers, it appears that many were not. Much of the Apartment House Journal’s
content during the 1920s and ‘30s does not read as nuanced counsel to an
experienced audience, but as basic instruction for nervous amateurs. In Los Angeles
and cities all over the US, organizations and publications were established to educate
this largely unschooled, growing crowd of aspiring landlords.
99
Apartments in
southern California attracted all kinds of newcomers: renters looking for housing,
and owners looking for a business opportunity. Some of the latter had been
landlords elsewhere, but may have been overconfident about prospects in the City of
Angels. AHA editors noted “a great many people coming in here from the East and
North who think they can make money out of [apartment houses] just like they do in
their home towns, but they find it impossible[. M]any of them are sadly

97
Titled variously Apartment House Trade Journal, Apartment House Journal, and Apartment
Journal.
98
Doucet and Weaver, “North American Apartment Building,” provides a very helpful
overview of the culture and business of apartment house production, from the late nineteenth century
forward.
99
Ibid.; for contemporaneous books written by apartment managers and operators, see James
R. McGonagle, Apartment House Rental, Investment and Management (New York: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1937); Grace Perego, Apartment House Ownership and Management (Rochester NY: Rochester
Alliance Press, 1934); and Violet Rose Widder, Apartment and Apartment Hotel Management (Los
Angeles: Haynes Corporation, 1934).

39
disappointed[.]”
100
Others in this enterprise were utter novices, and assumed that
operating an apartment building was no different than running a large household.
“The mistaken idea seems to exist in the minds of many people that anybody can run
an apartment house,”
101
however, the “Association has educated its members … [and
they have] learned whether or not they have been conducting their business
properly.”
102
If beginners thought that paradise would promote itself, and that
grateful tenants would simply line up to pay rent, they had a surprise awaiting them.
Competition for renters was keen: from other residential types, from the growing
number of new apartment houses, even from fellow AHA members. The
Association’s constantly reiterated theme of cooperation indicates an insecure
industry, one cultivating self-control among members in the midst of anxiety and
uncertainty.
103

The cultural emphasis on single-family home-ownership was strong enough
in the local (and national) political economy to affect even an active multiple-
dwelling market. Apartment rentiers were openly ambivalent. On one hand, any
other dwelling type gave unwanted competition to landlords trying to fill apartments.

100
T.C. Smith, “The Sales,” Apartment House Trade Journal (September 1919), 13.
101
“Join Our Association,” Apartment House Journal (May 1926), 3-5.
102
“Great Achievements of the Association,” Apartment House Trade Journal (July 1921), 3-5.
103
Many neophyte landlords saw this enterprise as promising—possibly by virtue of its apparent
ease of operations. Compared to better-known ventures undertaken by the archetypal middle-class,
middle-aged Mid-westerners and others pouring into southern California at this time—such as
oranges or oil—running an apartment house probably looked far less difficult or risky. But many
needed guidance, not only in the essentials of multifamily housing operations, but in how to
successfully capitalize on the growing number of people coming to their city. For comparison on the
difficulties and expense of entering the local citrus-growing business, see Ronald Tobey and Charles
Wetherell, “The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California,
1887-1944,” California History 74 (Spring 1995), 6-19.

40
Worried about aggressive real estate promotions targeting tenants, the AHA
complained that “brokers and speculative builders have been singing a song to the …
‘poor, down-trodden rent payer’ … entitled [sic] ‘Own Your Own Home.’”
104

Organized rentiers chose their battles, and knew enough not to denigrate such a
widely held social ideal, no matter how inconvenient it was for them. But when
social critics disparaged the very propriety of multi-family dwellings, landlords
fought back. The keynote speaker at the 1926 California Apartment House
Association meeting, held in Los Angeles, asked the rhetorical question: “Is an
apartment house a home?” Calling the apartment a “misunderstood … go-between,
between a detached house and a hotel,” the speaker concluded, “Yes! Bricks and
mortar cannot make a home; home is where people live and love, regardless of
whether it is an apartment or a shack[.]”
105
This spirited defense responded to
common criticism leveled against multi-family rental housing in general, issued by
national home-ownership advocates and court opinions supporting more aggressive
land-use regulation.
106

104
“Paying Rent vs. Own-Your-Own,” Apartment House Journal (February 1926), 5-7.
105
John J. Fitzpatrick, ‘Is An Apartment House A Home?” Apartment House Journal (July
1926), 6, emphasis added.
106
A large historical literature exists on the complicated American relationship with the triad of
the single-family dwelling type, the tenure of ownership, and urban location at the periphery. The
standard is Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985). See also Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias; Clifford Edward Clark, Jr.,
The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986);
Matthew Edel, Elliot D. Sclar and Daniel Luria, Shaky Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility
in Boston’s Suburbanization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); David P. Handlin, The
American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815-1915 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979);
Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900 to 1950 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Pres, 1996); Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century
Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press, 1997); Gail Radford, Modern Housing for
America: Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Wright,

41
On the other hand, the freestanding cottage on its own landscaped lot was a
cornerstone of growth machine strategy in Los Angeles, not to mention a key
component of the built landscape. Many landlords were themselves home-owners.
Rentiers acknowledged the sovereignty of the single-family dwelling in the market,
and recognized it as a benefactor as well as a rival. A prime example is visible in the
local zoning debate starting in the 1920s, centered on a supposed surplus of territory
allowing multi-family development to the exclusion of enough land restricted to
single-family use (see Chapter 6). The topic was a hot one for several years, and an
article in the Journal explained the problem. The concern was that “unscrupulous
speculators” were erecting apartment houses on cheaper land in outlying areas of Los
Angeles, thereby “spoiling” attractive, low-scale, one-family dwelling
neighborhoods. Citing (somewhat surprisingly) “the various evils that result to the
residential property by … the intrusion of the apartment house in a [single-family]
home district,” the essay admonished landlords and developers to restrain
themselves. As in many burgeoning industries, leaders urged self-regulation in an
attempt to forestall formal rules imposed by government. AHA members were
exhorted to lobby for zoning restrictions on where they themselves might build: “It
is high time that … owners realized this situation and initiated a constructive
movement to curtail the construction of apartment house units in areas now devoted
largely to home uses. This movement would protect the residential character of Los
Angeles and would at the same time protect … the investments which have been

Building the Dream, and idem, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural

42
made in apartment houses.”
107
The expanding metropolis had plenty of space and
finances for all kinds of housing. The AHA leadership saw this, and knew that
success for the apartment rental business rested on overall growth and prosperity for
the region; this, in turn hinged on preservation and propagation of the suburban ideal
embodied in the private, detached bungalow.

The All-Year Club of Southern California (AYC) was another significant growth-
machine organization influencing housing and residential development in the Los
Angeles region. The Club was founded in 1921 in response to a non-existent
summer tourism season. Tourists had flocked to the region for extended winters
since the 1870s, creating a robust seasonal economy for local businesses and
railroads. But the summer season went begging due to fears about excessive heat,
causing many establishments to close down from May to September. Club founders
understood that the area’s longstanding but uneven and erratic tourist trade held huge
potential benefits for all sectors of the urban economy. The Club took on the
systematic and professional promotion of the city and region as a year-round
vacation paradise.
108
Success came rapidly, and by the mid 1920s the Club’s mission

Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
107
W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers,” Apartment Journal, (July 1934), 8-9, emphasis added.
108
Since the 1880s, railroads had been utilizing increasingly professional methods to promote
their expanding resort developments to American pleasure travelers as passengers, but most
municipalities remained somewhat provincial in their work to attract this sector of traveler. Even in
Los Angeles, tourism for a long time was far less a coherent industry than a large but disorganized set
of intensely competing shelter providers, eating establishments, far-flung attractions, and
transportation concerns. Travel advertising was often inefficient and uncoordinated. See Clark
Davis, “From Oasis to Metropolis”; Melinda Elizabeth Kashuba, “Tourist Landscapes of Los Angeles
County, California” (PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1986; and Todd Gish, “Selling

43
expanded to nothing less than “the up-building of all Southern California and its
various counties and communities.”
109

The AYC became the ultimate growth-machine institution; see Figure 1 for a
particularly apt self-caricature. Though it arrived comparatively late to the growth
coalition, its founders were already stalwarts of longstanding.
110
Where a typical
business-booster group curried the support of individual constituents in one line of
business, the Club’s uber-boosters drew from these already established organizations
(such as the Chamber, the Realty Board, and the Apartment House Association,
among many others). It also depended upon local county governments for much of
its revenue, making it a true public-private entity. Always seeking subscription
funds, Club directors constantly assured prospects that their money would not be
wasted. “[T]he All-Year Club is in a strategic position to bring together the
organizations concerned in a way that will enable Southern California to cash in …
in a larger way than heretofore[.]”
111
Part of the strategy was geographic and
expansionist; these place promoters knew the value of creating a thriving hinterland
surrounding their city. AYC members were told: “It is important to Los Angeles that

Los Angeles: Media and Marketing for Fun and Profit, 1921-1941,” Critical Planning 10 (Summer
2003), 29-46.
109
All-Year Club of Southern California, Organizational by-laws, adopted June 14, 1921.
110
Ibid. Founders included Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, attorney Henry
O’Melveny, University of California regent and newspaper publisher Edward Dickson, and Dr. Frank
Barham.
111
All-Year Club of Southern California, Memorandum to executive committee, January 8,
1926, emphasis added.

44

Figure 1. Brochure from the All-Year Club of Southern California, 1934.

The self-representation of this uber-booster organization gives new meaning to the term “growth
machine.” As indicated, local businesses (including rental housing) all stood to benefit from a
booming tourism industry and the multiple-thousands of long-term visitors it attracted annually. This
image was part of a locally-targeted advertising campaign, however, aimed at attracting subscription
funds from local businesses; it illustrates the complex internal discourse of Los Angeles’s
urbanization. (All-Year Club of Southern California materials at the Urban Archives Center,
California State University, Northridge.)

45
the rest of Southern California increases in wealth and population.”
112
Thinking big
was nothing new in the booming metropolis, and the Club’s wider reach made
perfect sense to many.
The AYC claimed credit for every last tourist—and these were considerable
numbers: in 1928, some 825,000 visitors; in 1929, over 1,066,000; in 1930, over
1,087,000.
113
Aside from expected cash outlays for amusements, attractions and
local transportation, the Eberle consulting firm estimated that these temporary
Angelenos spent tens of millions of dollars per year, for shelter, utilities,
automobiles, clothing, groceries, and personal and professional services in just the
city limits. For the larger ten-county southern California region in 1928, Eberle
calculated the grand total to be in excess of $208 million. Tourism had become
essential to the larger economy.
Anything that brought so many prospective customers to Los Angeles was
clearly good in the minds of AYC subscribers. So, as major conveyors of people to
Los Angeles, the All-Year Club and the Chamber of Commerce were favorites of
subscriber-member groups like the Realty Board and Apartment House Association.
For example, a 1925 essay in Los Angeles Realtor encouraged readers to support the

112
All-Year Club of Southern California, Memorandum to executive committee, February 9,
1926.
113
All-Year Club of Southern California, Newsletter, December 1931, citing several years of
research commissioned of the Eberle Economic Service, Inc. It is important to acknowledge that the
All-Year Club—an organization with an agenda which benefitted from high numbers—is the source
of much of the statistical reporting on the region’s tourism industry. In the 1920s and ‘30s, Club
reports touted the use more scientific methods of calculating numbers of tourists and the money they
spent—including work by consultants like the Eberle firm and pollster George Gallup. Still,
triangulation of sources is difficult, so that the numbers cited in Club documents might very well be
inflated. See the project overview section at this chapter’s closing on the use of booster sources.

46
Club’s work. The article reminded members that it was the tourists of yore who had
fired up the business in the first place. “Bang, into land went their surplus money”
114

once they had gotten off the train, looked around, and seen the area’s charms.
Another contributor wrote, “every man interested in real estate … in Los Angeles …
can find no way of making money faster than to get behind the All-Year Club.”
115

The AYC favored no specific residential form over another, despite the
Club’s rumored genesis amid concerns over the rental housing business.
116
But the
nature of tourism in the early twentieth century, and by extension the Club’s
activities, had important implications for housing.
117
Tourist travel was counted in
months, not weeks, and extended domestic arrangements were as much part of the

114
William C. Garner, “The Importance of Tourist Travel to Los Angeles Real Estate Men,”
Los Angeles Realtor 4 (April 1925), 14, emphasis added.
115
Harry M. Haldeman, “All Year Campaign A Big Help,” Los Angeles Realtor 1 (October
1921), 4.
116
As legend has it, a local landlady, fed up with the seasonal feast-or-famine of full “houses”
during the winter then empty ones during summer, stormed into the office of Los Angeles Times
owner and publisher Harry Chandler and demanded he do something about it. Other Angeleno
entrepreneurs were already concerned, and business elites decided once again to do what they did
best: organize, strategize and publicize. See, for example, McWilliams, Southern California, 136.
117
American tourist travel between the 1880s and 1920s differed in two ways from how we now
practice it. First, it long-term; and, as such, it was a relative luxury beyond the reach of the poor and
working classes. One historian maintains that “Tourism … allowed white, native-born, middle- and
upper-class Americans to escape the social and cultural confines of everyday life[.]” See Marguerite
S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 (Washington DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 5. This was chiefly due to the time and expense involved. The
custom of “wintering” in warmer climes by wealthy Easterners and Mid-westerners is part of this
tradition. But even for others less affluent, a trip even half-way across the United States by railroad,
the fastest mode available, took several days at best; a round-trip bracketing even a comparatively
short stay approached a month away from home. And, often, the great distances involved would
propel tourists to make the most of their travels and take in as many sights and destinations as
possible while on the road. All of this means that tourist trips were counted in months, not in days or
weeks as we do now. Not until the widespread advent of automobile travel in the 1920s, and the two-
week vacation in the1930s, would short-term tourism by a majority of Americans be a common
reality. See John Jakle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1985); Catherine Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism
in the United States, 1850-1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

47
process as transportation and amusement; this subject of tourist housing is discussed
in a later section.

The public sector also played an important part in the political economy of
residential development, of course. The Los Angeles Housing Commission (LAHC),
established as a quasi-municipal body in 1906, was the first local organization
dedicated to multi-family housing. Constituted to address the growing concern about
deplorable slum conditions in the fast-growing city, the LAHC was similar to other
reform-oriented institutions of the time.
118
Its dedicated staff of elite citizen-experts
was inspired by earlier visits to Los Angeles by Progressive stalwarts like Jane
Addams of Chicago and Jacob Riis of New York City.
119

Single-family housing ideology informed the work of Angeleno reformers,
who agreed with open-shop boosters (at least on this question) in 1910: “The
Housing Commission, ever since its formation, has furthered the idea of individual
homes for even the very poor[.]”
120
The ideal of a private, detached cottage for
every family drove national and local ideology, and pushed multi-family housing to
the cultural margins. The city’s growing number of derelict house courts provided
commissioners with both a villain and hero in their work, much of which was
rhetorical in nature. The typical house court was comprised of a single lot crowded

118
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Reports, 1908; 1910; 1910; 1913. Housing
reformers in Los Angeles had connections to counterparts at higher levels, in the California
Commission of Immigration and Housing and the National Housing Association. See Groth, Living
Downtown, Chapter 8; and Issel, “Citizens Outside Government.”
119
Koslow, “Eden’s Underbelly,” Chapter 2.

48
with one-story wood or tarpaper shacks, either joined or freestanding; sanitary
facilities were minimal, drainage was poor, and provision of light and ventilation
was irregular at best. In 1913, the LAHC estimated that nearly 10,000 people, both
citizens and immigrants, white and racial minority, were jammed into courts; two
years later, that number had grown to 16,000. Commissioners passed the city’s first
housing ordinance in 1907 aimed at improving minimum standards in house court
construction.
121

As bad as poorly built courts were, the LAHC approved of them in concept.
Given the actuality of high population growth and often-low wages, this residential
paradigm—if properly executed—offered what many thought was a good
compromise between the reality of urban density and the vaunted ideal of private
domesticity. “[T]hough the Housing Commission has succeeded in eradicating many
house courts in bad condition … it has encouraged the house court plan as eminently
suited to our climate as an ideal substitute for tenements,” on report noted.
122
The
result was a set of policies encouraging the development of what we now call
bungalow courts—purpose-built, well constructed (if modest) freestanding cottages
bounding a central open space. The city’s stock of apartments and tenements was
largely ignored in early LAHC materials, except as fodder for Progressive discourse.

120
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report, 1910, 12.
121
City of Los Angeles, Ordinance no. 14113, 1907.
122
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report, 1913, 13.

49
As the 1910s wore on, the Housing Commission’s duties incorporated inspection and
licensing of tenements and boarding houses.
123

The local state’s work to regulate housing could only accomplish so much,
however, and during the 1910s both officials and real estate leaders agitated for more
influence over land-use decisions as a way to guide residential development. The
Los Angeles City Planning Commission (LACPC) was established in 1920 as a
direct result—and not a moment too soon for all those anxious to control
development. The Chamber of Commerce, the Realty Board, and other Angeleno
place entrepreneurs and rentier elites were all deeply concerned about maintaining an
attractive and functional urban and suburban landscape, and this concern included
housing of all kinds. Planning is the subject of Chapter 6, but as an introduction, it
should be noted that one significant part of planners’ initial work was the ongoing re-
classification of residential development. The creation and insulation of districts
reserved for one-family detached dwellings remained paramount in the process—and
this fixation caused problems. Municipal officials’ first try at zoning resulted in an
unwieldy, impractical binary of single-family housing and everything else. As the
city grew, and as legally acceptable uses of property regulation expanded, planners
devised finer distinctions to create a hierarchy of multiple dwelling types. I will
argue that one of planners’ most effective tools in shaping the metropolitan structure
between 1900 and the 1930s was its evolving multi-family housing taxonomy.

123
For a case study of slum housing in Los Angeles, see Sophie Spalding, “The Myth of the
Classic Slum: Contradictory Perceptions of Boyle Heights Flats, 1900-1991,” Journal of Architectural
Education 45 (February 1992), 107-119.

50
TRANSIENT URBANISM & HOUSING THE TOURIST CITY
This dissertation argues that the residential landscape in early twentieth-
century Los Angeles was a hodgepodge of types and sub-markets; as such, it
probably showed more similarities than differences to that in other US cities. One
similarity was a single-family dwelling market neither straightforward nor surefire
but conditional and in need of constant effort; another resemblance was a thriving
rental market in apartments and flats. Yet one aspect of housing in Los Angeles was
highly unusual: the huge impact of tourism.
124
After seeing this relationship prosper
for years, the All-Year Club’s president made the point to landlords in no uncertain
terms: “Tourist traffic is [a] godsend to [the] apartment industry.”
125

Though not part of many cities’ development tactics or economic sectors,
tourism became a major gear in Los Angeles’s growth machine.
126
The custom of

124
McWilliams acknowledged the broad significance of tourism to the region’s urbanization
from the 1870s on, and that “the tourist hotel was an important institution in early Southern
California,” where its proliferation in rural and suburban locations left an imprint in patterns of both
social and physical development. McWilliams, Southern California, 143-150, quotation on 143. Still,
however, this did not make Los Angeles unique. Cities like Miami, New Orleans, Santa Fe, San
Francisco, San Diego, and Pasadena each owes a share of its urbanization and development to its
particular qualities as a tourist destination.
125
Adison B. Day, “Our Pot of Gold,” Apartment Journal (January 1934), 13. See also “It Pays
to Advertise Southern California,”Apartment House Trade Journal (November 1923), 4.
126
This fact derived from several conditions: heavy advertising of an unusually mild climate
and an attractive and varied set of natural landscape features; and relatively late urbanization and
industrialization, leading city boosters in the late 1800s to promote the region’s only real qualities—
the aforementioned weather and setting. Place promotion of Los Angeles to tourists extended an
already successful program underway by the national railroads. In the west, for example, the
Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe had branched out into the tourism business, promoting the region’s
natural scenery, lobbying the government for the creation of national parks, and even building and
operating large resort hotels—all with the aim of increasing ridership over new lines in the nationwide
network via pleasure travel and new population. See Shaffer, See America First, Chapter 2.
From the 1870s forward, tourism became increasingly important to Los Angeles’s economy
and population growth. Aggressive place promoters blanketed Eastern and Mid-western cities with
increasingly alluring images and descriptions of Los Angeles and southern California as an earthly
paradise. And Americans responded, by the tens and hundreds of thousands, every year. See

51
long-term pleasure travel, combined with large numbers of travelers in the city at any
given time, created an unofficial but inescapable demographic category and
urbanization force. In 1915, one account stated: “Year by year tourists flock to Los
Angeles in greater numbers [while] her permanent population increases by leaps and
bounds, both classes called hither” by the region’s charms.
127
Frequent mentions of
a “temporary,” “floating” or “non-permanent” population—estimated to be as high
as ten to thirteen percent of Los Angeles’s total population in 1925—were common
in the first decades of the twentieth century in southern California.
128
Tourists from
the East and Midwest arrived daily by the hundreds to stay for extended periods,
enjoy the climate and visit the many well-publicized attractions. To be clear, this

McWilliams, Southern California, Chapter 8; and Elias, Dream to Reality. By the late 1920s, tourism
was listed as the city’s third most important industry, behind manufacturing and oil production. In
1929 for the entire southern California region, reportedly over a million visitors—“equal [to] the
combined population of Kansas City, Dallas, Akron [and] Omaha”—spent an estimated $418 million
dollars. Don Thomas, “What a Visitor Means to Southern California,” n.d., ca. 1930. The great
majority of these visitors would have spent at least some time in Los Angeles.
127
Booklet, North American Press Association, “Handbook of Southern California…” 1915, 1,
emphasis added.
128
As early as 1886, local descriptions noted that “the population of Los Angeles city is about
45,000 regular and 5,000 floating,” pamphlet, “Annual and Guide to California,” 1886, 7. In 1910,
boosters noted: “Los Angeles, speaking of its size, has, minus tourists, over 300,000 people.” See
pamphlet, “A Summer Tourist in Southern California,” 1910, 7, emphasis added. In 1923, the
Chamber of Commerce reported that “Los Angeles now has a population of 850,000, not including
tourists[.]” “Los Angeles Climbs to Fifth Place,” Southern California Business 2/1 (February 1923),
9, emphasis added. And by 1925, one survey calculated that the proportion of “non-permanents”
ranged between ten and thirteen percent of the city’s total population; see Eberle and Riggleman
Economic Service, Letter, July 27, 1925.
Santa Monica and Long Beach were other local cities with stocks of multi-family housing
depending on the tourist trade. “Long Beach, City by the Sea,” reprinted in Out West (June 1903),
16-19, notes a “permanent population of nearly 7,000” that “becomes the temporary home, at least, of
not less than thirty or forty thousand”; and “The Port That Never Found Its Sea-Legs,” Southern
California Business 11 (January 1932), 10, described Santa Monica as “a city of 37,198 persons
(1930 federal census) … with a floating population of perhaps 10,000 more[.]”

52
was chiefly white American travelers—single people and families—with sufficient
means for passage and several months’ accommodations.
129

Long-stay tourism was in fact temporary relocation. A report by the Eberle
Economic Service found that “[m]any of the tourists living in residences bring
children with them and therefore have the regular family budget for clothing. In fact
… records of the Los Angeles Board of Education show that many non-permanents
and tourists have their children in the schools here some time during the school
year.”
130
As part of this transitory tenure, some visitors would buy an automobile for
their stay, drive it several hundred miles per month, and then sell it before returning
home by train. The difficulty of classifying large numbers of people moving through
the booming metropolis was apparent in a 1929 Eberle report: “Some of these non-
permanent residents are tourists, and some are those who are employed here, or
residing here, and have not definitely made up their minds as to whether they are

129
It is important to clarify that the transient-tourist population being pursued by boosters,
studied by their consultants, and depicted in publicity materials, was Anglo-American of the middle-
class and above. Occasional ad copy acknowledged the presence of other ethnic or racial groups in
Los Angeles, but always in ways geared to alleviate the fears of “desirable” white visitors. Mexicans
became “Spanish-Americans,” and Chinese and Japanese were described as being small in number
and lending local “color” to the metropolitan mosaic. African-Americans were barely mentioned at
all, but were occasionally seen in images fulfilling their assigned roles in courteous service to
contented white travelers. All of this belies the reality of a parallel population of migrant laborers
from Mexico, Japan, the Philippines and other nations. Many of these long-term transient workers
and their families would have been relegated to residential hotels, house courts and boarding houses
in the undesirable parts of the city. African American tourists did travel to southern California, and
also stayed in hotels, boarding houses, apartments, houses, and with friends and family. The
experiences of these tourists paralleled that of local minority residents, and were marked by
segregation in shelter and recreational opportunities as well as discrimination in services and
transportation. See Flamming, Bound for Freedom.
130
Eberle Economic Service, “Tourist Survey of Southern California for the All-Year Club of
Southern California,”1929, 70.

53
going to remain or not.”
131
This research estimated that some twenty percent of
those in the floating population had been temporarily “staying” in Los Angeles for
over three years.
The hotel industry flourished in a place so hugely popular as a travel
destination, understandably. A wide array of hostelries offered accommodations
ranging from the bare to the baroque, in locations varying from central to rural.
132

Boarding houses, tent cities and automobile campsites also catered to travelers in
droves, and some tourists chose to stay with friends or relatives already living in Los
Angeles. But a trade publication stated in 1932 that “the hotel index itself cannot be
taken as a conclusive indication of general tourist activity” and that “tourists are
scattered through practically all types of housing.”
133

As in most cities, so-called “permanent” residents generated most of the
demand for dwellings. But Los Angeles’s housing market also accommodated
thousands upon thousands of tourists, year after year. Many of these visitors desiring
a more private, domestic environment for their three- to six-month stay sought out
apartments, bungalow courts, and even single-family houses for rent. Promotional
literature in this period regularly listed apartments and courts alongside hotels as part
and parcel of the tourist shelter supply. Indeed, the All-Year Club and Apartment

131
Ibid., 64.
132
All-Year Club of Southern California, “Important Hotels of Los Angeles and Southern
California,” 1930, shows a range of accommodations in Los Angeles city. The modest Cecil offered
rooms with bath starting at $2.50 per night; the higher end was the luxurious Biltmore, where rates
started at $5.00. This represents the middle range; at the extremes would be automobile courts and
tent cities offering little more than a fabric roof over one’s head, all the way up to suites at resorts like
the Ambassador with all meals and services included—affordable only by the super-rich.
133
All-Year Club of Southern California, News Bulletin, (April 1932), n.p.

54
House Association referred to the tourist trade as “Our pot of gold.”
134
Advertising
aimed at Americans in Chicago, Cleveland and Cincinnati informed them that
“While many visitors … live at hotels during the entire period of their stay in this
region, there are also many who plan an extended visit, and who wish the ‘home’
atmosphere afforded by furnished apartments or bungalows, where they may do their
own housekeeping.”
135
In fact, a high percentage of multi-family dwelling units
were rented fully furnished, right down to the silverware.
136
This facilitated easy
move-ins for a floating population traveling without a full complement of household
goods.
Given Los Angeles’s standing as a metropolis catering to huge numbers of
long-term visitors, a strong link between its housing stock and tourist trade is
perfectly logical. A 1929 report estimated that fifteen percent—more than one in
seven—of dwelling units in the city’s houses, duplexes, four-family flats, bungalow
courts and apartments was rented by a tourist household. In 1931, analysts
calculated over a two-year period that in all of southern California’s ten counties
(Los Angeles included), tourists spent $47 million dollars at hotels and $37 million
in rentals of other lodgings. That placed forty-five percent of all tourist housing
dollars into ostensibly “permanent” dwelling types in this period.
137

134
Addison B. Day, “Our Pot of Gold,” Apartment Journal (January 1934), 13.
135
All-Year Club of Southern California, “Southern California: Year ‘Round Vacation Land
Supreme,” 1928, 33.
136
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Newlsetter, November 30, 1925, n.p. According
to this survey, 98 percent of all apartments in Los Angeles were furnished in the mid-1920s.
137
Eberle Economic Service, “Tourist Survey of Southern California for the All-Year Club of
Southern California,”1929. Part of this $37 million would have been spent at campsites and lodging
houses.

55
Temporary residency fostered by long-stay tourism influenced all aspects of
life in Los Angeles and southern California—its social relations, culture, politics and
economy. Carey McWilliams was an early observer of this, including its
manifestation in the built environment. At the small scale, he reported: “Blocks of
four-family flats were built for the accommodation of winter tourists” starting just
after 1900.
138
One sample of this residential landscape is visible in the city’s
Southwest district, developed mostly in the 1910s. There, single-family
development was increasingly joined by duplexes, flats and bungalow courts
sheltering not only growing numbers of tourists but also residents (see Chapter 3).
On a much larger scale, the dense development of the Wilshire district with mid-rise
hotels and apartment buildings in the 1920s had much to do with that decade’s
growing tourist population, combined with the remarkable success of the
Ambassador Hotel nearby. Thousands of rental units were built to house only some
of the waves of visitors relocating to southern California for the fall, winter or
summer; these apartments also sheltered “permanent” Angelenos wanting to reside
along the notable Wilshire corridor near offices, theaters, shops, restaurants, and
public transportation (see Chapter 4).
Use of the descriptors “temporary” and “permanent” to classify housing (or
population) suggests mutually exclusive categories. In reality, shelter occupancy
occurred more along a continuum than in some kind of binary. Longtime residents
might rent in a bungalow court or apartment building for years, and vacationers from

138
McWilliams, Southern California, 130.

56
out-of-town might reside in a single-family house for a three-month trip. Urban
elites might purchase a luxury apartment in a cooperatively-owned building, or lease
a suite in a swanky hotel; working-class suburbanites might build their own cottage
on a dirt lot without plumbing, then raise chickens to supplement household income.
Such a mixed and malleable housing situation was not unusual to Los
Angeles, but actually a commonplace of urbanism in general.
139
In reviewing urban
historiography in the United States, Eric Monkkonen found a “world of astonishing
residential fluidity” where “residential relocation has been the norm in US cities” of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
140
This complicates notions of visitor as
well as resident: even among a city’s longtime populace, “[p]eople who stayed in the
same house, apartment or room were the exception, not the rule.”
141
Importantly,
such persistent mobility did not necessarily negate reports of high home-ownership
rates and large numbers of single-family houses. Both are possible in the same
place, up to certain point.
142
This mix would have characterized Los Angeles to a
large extent. There, what complicated matters even further was a significantly larger
number of long-term visitors-cum-short-term residents. Multiply this transience

139
Thernstrom, “Historical Perspective,” 6-7; 10-11.
140
Eric Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of US Cities and Towns,
1780-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 195-196.
141
Ibid.
142
“High rates of residential movement … seem inconsistent with the relatively high rates of
single family housing and home ownership. But we must consider that neither the rate of ownership
nor that of residential departures was so high as to cancel out the other[.] If nothing else, a society
with [both] high home ownership and mobility must have supported a vigorous business in real estate
transactions [where] much activity was concerned with rental rather than sales[.]” Monkkonen, 196-
197.

57
factor by a full range of socio-economic ranks, add a responsive real estate industry,
and a vast inventory of dwelling types of every description makes perfect sense.

COMPETING DISCOURSES ABOUT HOUSING: EXTERNAL VS. INTERNAL
As should be apparent by this point, residential complexity in the City of
Angels has long been obscured by mythmaking and inattention. In describing real
estate and planning in early twentieth-century California, policy historian Marc
Weiss writes of “the longstanding Los Angeles love affair with single-family
housing set in beautiful surroundings.”
143
The metaphor is apt, and suggestive.
Boosters declared this passion at every opportunity, but, importantly, did not shirk a
kind of dutiful matrimony to all other forms of shelter making the city function. But,
in this part of the LA story, love is blind; historians and journalists have wedded
themselves to the renowned portion of the residential stock, forsaking all others.
I argue in this project that two discourses emerged in and about Los Angeles
in the heady booster period between 1900 and the 1930s. First, an external
discourse—rhetorical in nature, intending to attract population and capital—was
broadcast to a national audience and portrayed the city in only positive terms. This
growth-oriented discourse boosted Los Angeles as a city of single-family homes and
relegated the status of multi-family rental housing (where mentioning it at all) to
temporary shelter for transients and tourists. Second, an internal discourse—
essentially the part of the local public sphere addressing urban development—

58
reflected more fully the complex reality of urbanization in Los Angeles, and was
bursting with debate. This discourse recognized a wide range of multiple dwellings
as part of a diverse housing stock for both visitors and residents. Where the external
discourse was a kind of carefully scripted monologue, the internal discourse was an
intricate and fluid dialogue. These two lines of communication were not mutually
exclusive. Instead, they paralleled one another and often overlapped, but in only one
direction: the positive spin of external rhetoric urged by growth machine logic
suffused and often dominated—but, importantly, never suppressed—disagreement
and dissent visible in the internal, local conversation.
These mixed and overlapping discourses have already been on prominent
display in this chapter. The point of this closing section is to emphasize the
distinctions between them, since I argue that these differences in purpose, production
and audience have played an important part in historiographic bias.
The external discourse of Los Angeles emerged as a result of increasingly
focused, carefully crafted, and widely disseminated place promotion endeavors
carried out by stalwarts of the growth regime—such as the Realty Board, Chamber
of Commerce, and All-Year Club. Essentially this strain of the discourse was one-
directional rhetoric, broadcast to the rest of the nation. The various forms were
speeches and lectures delivered both locally and remotely, as well as marketing copy
in the transparent form of brochures and advertisements, or thinly masquerading as
journalism in newspapers and magazines. The storyline was one of sunshine and

143
Weiss, Community Builders, 105.

59
palm trees, snow-capped mountains and orange groves, mission arches and ocean
beaches. Graphic imagery was part of this body of communication.
144
I call this
particular discourse external because its overall goal was to shape opinion of Los
Angeles to an external, national (even international) audience. This discourse
incorporated the substantial body of booster literature produced locally and sent to
all points north, east, and south. It also encompassed (primarily elite) local
discussion and debate about those materials—how they were to be created, whom
they should target, where they should appear, and the specific messages they should
convey. The unifying theme of the external discourse is summed up in one word,
directed to out-of-towners: “Come!”
“Housing” in the external discourse meant the one-family, detached type.
The Los Angeles Realty Board educated local realtors that “[t]he word ‘home’ as
used by the [United States] Department of Commerce applies only to dwellings
occupied by a single family, and not to flats or apartments.”
145
Home meant house.
This nomenclature led a national housing expert to define the sixty-four percent of
Los Angeles households renting their shelter as “homeless” in 1924.
146

144
For catalogs of typical booster images, see Elias, Dream to Reality; and K.D. Kurutz and
Gary F. Kurutz, California Calls You: The Art of Promoting the Golden State, 1870-1940 (Sausalito:
Windgate Press, 2000).
145
“Own Your Home,” Los Angeles Realtor 1 (December 1921), 35.
146
Siegfried Goetze, “The Housing Situation in Los Angeles,” National Municipal Review
(April 1924), 199. The mistaken conflation of the single-family dwelling type with the tenure type of
ownership or purchase was a rhetorical commonplace. In Goetze’s definition, even a family renting a
private bungalow was “homeless.”

60
A 1907 pamphlet told Americans living elsewhere that the “homes of Los
Angeles are its principal charm.”
147
Potential visitors were informed: “A remarkable
thing is the number of … laborers who own their own vine-covered, flower-
bedecked cottages.”
148
The photographic image of a line of detached houses (always
on landscaped lots), either modest or substantial, was a staple of booster publicity;
see Figure 2 for a good example. A typical caption from the 1910s read: “Los
Angeles is the home of the Bungalow and here may be found bungalows of the
greatest variety and beauty surrounded by palms, lawns and flowers throughout the
year.”
149
In 1927, a Chamber brochure told prospects back east: “Miles upon miles
of beautiful homes stretch throughout the suburban districts.”
150
Emphasis on this
dwelling type, its frequent mention, and use of rhetoric was not unusual in booster
literature from other cities in this period, and drew heavily on the national discussion
promoting home-ownership ideology. And though updated for current urban
conditions, this theme in the Angel City’s publicity endures up to the present day.
151

147
Pamphlet, “Los Angeles, California,” 1907, n.p.
148
Pamphlet, “A Summer Tourist in Los Angeles,” 1910, 20.
149
Brochure, “Wonderful California,” n.d., ca. 1915, n.p.
150
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, “America’s Playground … Los Angeles County…”
1927, n.p.
151
As late as the 1960s, a major regional institution declared, “Los Angeles is the home-
building-est, home-owning-est city in the nation.” Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,
“Los Angeles: Headquarters City—Dynamic Center of the New West,” n.d., ca. 1961, 19.
And as recently as 1997, a planning report stated that “the ‘strong’ image exhibited by the
City’s single-family residential neighborhoods has distinguished Los Angeles from other metropolitan
areas.” Los Angeles City Planning Department, “The Citywide General Plan Framework,” 1997, 3-2.
This rhetoric is particularly interesting because the report also makes frequent mention of the city’s
need for more and better multi-family housing. The apparent conflict is resolved by the plan to
“protect” only some existing areas of single-family dwellings while opening up many other areas to
apartment buildings of different types and scales.

61

Figure 2. Promotional Brochure, circa 1915.

This classic example of Los Angeles’s place promotional imagery, and ones just like it, were sent
back east by the tens of thousands (in advertisements, newspapers, and publicity brochures) every
year for decades. The archetypal photo features supposedly typical single-family bungalows on green
lawns, all beneath a uniquely sunny southern California landscape of mountains and palm trees.
Whereas Figure 1 illustrates the city’s complicated “internal discourse,” this figure portrays the more
simplified and outwardly targeted external discourse. (From “Wonderful California,” n.d., ca. 1915.
Seaver Center for Western Historical Research)

62
The growth machine trumpeted Los Angeles’s houses, but needed its
apartments every bit as much. Consequently, multi-family housing was also visible
in the external discourse; yet it was characterized in one of two ways, neither of
which was conventionally residential.
152
First, multiples for rent were portrayed as
the ideal shelter for long-stay tourists. The Chamber of Commerce reported that
“[m]any visitors enjoy the more spacious accommodations for light housekeeping
afforded by the apartment house[.]”
153
Typical brochures sent back east by the tens
of thousands, describing the region’s various charms, routinely classified the housing
stock into “beautiful homes” and the inseparable “hotels and apartments.” Rare if
any mention was made that residents also made homes in the latter; instead, the
overwhelming emphasis was on the suitability for transient tenants: “Apartment
houses here … affording the visitor his choice … range from the pretentious
‘skyscraper’ type close to the downtown district, to the more modest ones scattered
throughout the County.”
154
Bungalow courts and flats were also suggested for
tourists. Second, the growing stock of multi-family structures was offered as
evidence of economic vitality and stability in the metropolis. The same brochure
touting miles of beautiful bungalows for sale also noted: “In the close-in districts,

152
See Kenneth Baar, “Explaining Crises in Rental Housing Construction: Myth and
Schizophrenia In Policy Analysis” (PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1989). Baar
chronicles the differing ways in which twentieth-century multi-family housing production was
characterized in US media and public policy discussions on the national front, depending upon which
particular cultural, political, and economic views were in favor at which time. Though not explaining
the narrative on apartment housing in the way I do, Baar’s work is analogous and important in its
finding of a consciously manipulated discourse intended to shape opinion about multiple dwellings as
a category subordinate to single dwellings.
153
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, “Los Angeles County, California … Today,” 1931, 60-
61, emphasis added.

63
modern apartment houses … are being erected at a rapid rate.”
155
Such were
classified as accommodations for visitors or investments for rentiers, not as
residences for the citizenry. The external discourse was also aimed at capitalists
considering the Angel City for a new branch plant but worried about a possibly
restive labor force. Where these booster materials did reference multi-story, multi-
family housing—it was also to point out the supposed nonexistence of more
“dangerous” types. In claiming, “Los Angeles County is a worker’s paradise,”
boosters guaranteed out-of-town businessmen “an entire absence of slum districts”
and “an utter absence of tenements.”
156
Both claims were false. Slum districts did
exist there, but were far likelier to be jammed with squalid one-story house courts
than taller tenements made infamous in New York City.
157

A second branch of discourse issued from the myriad urban activity in and
about Los Angeles. What I term the internal discourse might also be called the local
public sphere as described in communication theory.
158
Where the externally
directed monologue was fairly unified and focused, the internal dialogue was not—
as already seen in coverage of the Realty Board, Apartment House Association and
other groups. Though not cohesive, this native back-and-forth did have a central

154
Pamphlet, “Los Angeles City and County,’ n.d., ca. 1929, 18.
155
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, “America’s Playground … Los Angeles County…”
1927, n.p.
156
Pamphlet, “The Factor of Climate in the Location of Industrial Plants,” n.d., ca. 1916, n.p.;
R.D. Sanger, “Yes, We Have No Smokestacks,” Southern California Business 11 (August 1932), 12-
13.
157
For example, Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New
York (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1890; Dover, 1971).
158
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1991).

64
thread, addressed to fellow Angelenos: “Grow!” Discussion and debate about local
and regional development took place in many forms (journals, newsletters, speeches,
newspapers) and venues (board meetings, professional conferences, public hearings)
targeting a range of local audiences (elites, civic organizations, businesspeople,
voters, ordinary citizens). All housing types were visible in this discourse. For
example, a planning survey made by nationally known consultants for the Chamber
of Commerce noted in the late 1920s: “Los Angeles is a city of single-family
detached houses, but in certain urban areas apartments are gradually taking their
place.”
159
Participants in this internal discourse include all the organizations noted
above as well as others not necessarily belonging to a professional body: realtors
dealing in multi-family properties; landlords concerned about vacancies; economists
advising on real estate sub-markets; developers stirring up interest in new projects;
lenders hoping to attract borrowers; and public officials trying to somehow guide all
the new development.
This hometown conversation was where civic dirty laundry was aired
alongside congratulatory editorials. Disagreements and rivalry were common among
interest groups and individuals who agreed on the overall need for growth, but not on
much else. For example, the Apartment House Association leadership spent much of
its time admonishing landlord members not to “slash each other’s throats” by

159
Olmsted Brothers and Bartholomew and Associates, Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the
Los Angeles Region (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, 1930), 22.

65
undercutting one another with lower rents and free services.
160
From outside the
business, landlords as a class were vilified in late the 1910s and early 1920s, seen as
exploiting housing shortages by charging excessive rents (“throat-slashers” aside).
Possibly-cheated tourists warned their neighbors back in Denver, Des Moines and
Duluth about profiteering Angeleno landlords, and subsequent calls for a tourist
boycott alarmed boosters in the Angel City. Business leaders (including the
Chamber of Commerce and regional railroads) dependent upon a large visiting
population chastised apartment owners and boarding-house operators, claiming the
“city’s future as a tourist center is threatened by the shameless landlord
profiteering.”
161
Some of these critics agitated for a rent control ordinance to quiet
the bad publicity.
Newspapers were also important cogs in the growth machine. As local
businesses, they had a stake in attracting population and subscribers; as media
outlets, they and their editors aided and abetted the efforts of growth coalition
counterparts. The AHA praised both the Times and Examiner, noting that “the
apartment industry looks with favor” on them, for their “efforts to stabilize” the

160
Mrs. Marshall Moore, “Co-Operation,” Apartment House Trade Journal (October 1919), 3;
C.R. Desmond, “Over the Back Rail,” Apartment House Trade Journal (December 1919), 3.
161
“Railroads Begin Fight to Bring Rents Down,” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 1920, V1;
“City Attorney Fails to Find Law to Curb Profiteers,” Apartment House Trade Journal (March 1920),
8.
“Renters Tell Why Rates Are Lofty,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1920, V2. See also the
Chamber’s discussion, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors meeting minutes,
October 14, 1920, in which meetings were set with the city council, building inspectors, and the
Realty Board to tackle the problem.

66
rental housing business.
162
But journalists also editorialized about all aspeects of
urban development, and principal players sometimes clashed. After suffering bad
press about problems with zoning implementation, the City Planning Commission
considered “getting in touch with Mr. Harry Chandler” of the Times to ask him to
ease off the criticism and “not to break down or destroy all the work done” to
improve the urban landscape with land-use regulation.
163

Internal discussion about local housing was all over the map, literally and
figuratively. In one case, the alleged oversupply of land zoned to allow multi-family
housing was controversial on several fronts. Some apartment developers were
pleased with the freedom this allowed them in locating new projects; others in the
business (such as the AHA leadership) urged builders to stay out of established, low-
density residential areas.
164
Home-owners in adjacent single-family zones were also
split on the issue. Those interested in preserving the use value of their property
implored the planning commission not to up-zone their street or neighborhood for
denser development. Others, eager to cash in on their lot’s exchange value,
petitioned planners for multi-family re-zoning.
165
On the topic of escalating
multiple-dwelling production in the booming 1920s, the local conversation was also

162
George Stiller, “The Metropolitan Daily Press,” Apartment Journal (March 1934), 13; (April
1934), 15.
163
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Meeting minutes, July 5, 1928.
164
See Chapter 5 on multi-family housing production and Chapter 6 on planning and zoning.
On the AHA’s admonition to speculators, see W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers,” Apartment Journal,
(July 1934), 8-9.
165
For a discussion on use value versus exchange value, see Logan and Molotch. On the
debates between advocates for each side in Los Angeles City Planning Commission, see (all
references herein): Zoning Hearing minutes, February 16, 1926; Regular Meeting minutes, January

67
split. Aggressive apartment speculators rejected any talk of “overbuilding” as
pessimistic, and kept on erecting new and larger buildings despite sometimes-high
vacancy rates. Others—both landlords and developers—warned that construction of
so many small rental-housing units without a guaranteed long-term demand for them
would result in the next generation of slum housing.
166
Those on this conservative
side of the issue took speculators to task for “spreading propaganda” in the local
media, and claimed low apartment vacancies.
167

Resident Angelenos, and not just tourists, occupied all kinds of multiple
dwellings. Though virtually ignored in external publicity, this fact regularly
appeared in the local discourse. The Realty Board reported on heavy residential
sales in 1921: “Thousands of the older established residents who had formerly
owned their homes sold them during the past two years and have been living in
rented … homes, flats and apartments.”
168
Although the Chamber’s tourist housing
committee was formed to aid visitors, it also “rendered considerable assistance to the
local residents” in finding rental “houses, apartments, flats [and] housekeeping
rooms.”
169
And despite the importance of tourism to the rental shelter industry, the
Eberle Economics Service calculated in 1932 that, of the approximately 300,000
people residing in apartments, only 85,000 were tourists.
170

26, 1928; Zoning Committee meeting minutes, January 5, 1929; Building Lines committee meeting
minutes, October 7, 1929; Zoning Committee meeting minutes, February 27, 1930.
166
See Chapter 5.
167
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Newsletter, October 19, 1925, n.p.
168
Los Angeles Realtor (February 1924), 16.
169
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Members’ Annual, 1919, 46.
170
Eberle Economic Service, Newsletter, April 4, 1932, 55.

68
Ambivalence often characterized the (artificial) single-multiple dichotomy in
the local housing discourse. The varied residential landscape in Los Angeles
included all manner of multiple dwellings, but its renowned single-family housing
stock held more than its share of embarrassments. Despite rhetoric touting so many
flower-bedecked workers’ cottages, many one-family dwellings were in fact cheap,
poorly constructed (often self-built) shacks.
171
This was pointed out by housing
reformers
172
and would have been obvious to anyone riding around many areas of
town. Yet the Realty Board managed a positive spin in the best booster fashion:
“While it is undoubtedly true that many of these … are put together hastily and at a
… small cost, it must always be remembered that they are nevertheless homes[.
T]hat collection of boards and nails is a home—a home in Los Angeles.”
173
In
another venue, planners working hard to implement the city’s first comprehensive
zoning ordinance assured the city council: “We hold it to be our first duty to protect
the homes of the city”
174
—again, one-family houses. But when the booming real
estate market of the 1920s unexpectedly resulted in large numbers of big new
apartment houses, the usual black-and-white rhetorical distinction between singles
and multiples acquired a new shade of gray for planners and other observers. The
new crop of hulking structures often dwarfed not only nearby bungalows but also
duplexes and four-flats. Rapidly, these smaller multiples took on a more desirable

171
See Quam-Wickham, “Another World”; Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven.
172
The Los Angeles Housing Commission recommended “that regulations be enacted which
will control the ramshackle single houses which are unfit for habitation.” Excerpted in California
Commission of Immigration and Housing, Annual Report, 1916, 198.
173
Los Angeles Realtor (December 1923), 14, emphasis added.

69
status among officials and others seeking ways to make room for more and more
people without sacrificing a low-density image. The powerful Times opined that
“Los Angeles must remain a city of homes, but it cannot do so unless it gives to
these [two- to four-unit] homes the degree of protection necessary[.]”
175
The
planning commission soon gave this sort its own separate zoning classification (see
Chapter 6).
Despite the regional popularity and familiarity of multi-family rentals, the
national cultural bias endorsing single-family home-ownership—suffusing external
booster promotions—also shaped the internal housing discourse. The Eberle firm
easily observed “an appropriate demand for apartment[s] in any large city like Los
Angeles.” Yet, these units were usually characterized as suitable only for particular
groups: “the young couple with insufficient means” to meet a mortgage, “the elderly
or aged couple” finished with theirs, and “the sterile couple” with ostensibly no need
for multiple bedrooms or a yard. As for everyone else in apartments, “many families
must use this type of housing temporarily” until the “time to select the district[,] type
and style of dwelling they ultimately will require.” Even the smaller bungalow
courts and duplexes were seen as “temporary substitutes for single-family houses.”
176

The idea that families with the choice would opt to rent an apartment or flat rather

174
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Meeting minutes, August 27, 1925.
175
“Zone Discrepancy Shown,” Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1929, E1, emphasis added.
176
This and all preceding quotations this paragraph: Eberle Economic Service, Newsletter, July
18, 1927, 173; Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Newsletter, October 19, 1925, n.p.

70
than purchase a house had little currency among most experts.
177
Multi-family
housing clearly had a legitimate place in the affairs and structure of Los Angeles, but
this place was subordinate. Such ranking was evident as growth elites both
trumpeted the benefits of a huge temporary population for the metropolitan
economy, all the while downplaying the specter of a tenant population and what the
Chamber termed “landlordism.”
178
Similarly, the Realty Board assured its members,
“in a city blessed with so many visitors the idea that it is a transient city can be
dispelled by hard cold figures” on reportedly robust home ownership rates.
179

The internal-historical discourse reveals the other Los Angeles—the motley,
sometimes messy metropolis bearing plenty of similarities to Chicago, Detroit,
Miami, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and other American cities. The ongoing debate
would have been noisy and, one would think, difficult to miss; certainly local
rentiers, businesspeople and public officials knew about it. Their “divergent stories
underscore a truism of … urban history and related fields: at any moment in time

177
The Eberle Economic Service was probably the keenest observer and reporter of residential
development of all kinds in Los Angeles. Its analysis of the diverse and growing multi-family market
was elaborate and nuanced. Still, though, these consultants thought in terms of primary and
secondary housing types: “the ideal single family dwelling has such advantages as home ownership,
privacy and spaciousness, while the multiple family dwelling meets the demand of those who with to
be relieved of or wish to avoid, the duties and responsibilities of a single family home, and is ideal for
the tourist, for those seeking temporary housing, or for the young couple.” Eberle Economic Service,
Newsletter, July 18, 1927, 169. This set of preconceptions was grounded in larger, longstanding
cultural norms promoted on the national stage.
178
Southern California Business 1 (May 1922), 9. The Chamber publication noted with
concern: “We are gradually drifting into a deeper condition of landlordism,” and it is “estimated that
58% of our people are renters, drifters—shifting about without any place or plan in the fabric of social
life.”
179
Los Angeles Realtor (February 1924), 16, emphasis added.

71
there are multiple stories about a place in play.”
180
So, why have we not heard more
about this unknown City of Angels, with its bursting stock of apartments and its
vibrant rental housing market?
The answer is found in the longstanding favor granted to the external
discourse emphasizing single-family home ownership (alongside sunshine, palm
trees, and other emblematic images)—shown clearly by booster-minded Angelenos
back then but also by historians since. Exceptionalism makes a good story, and this
packaged discourse-for-broadcast has perpetuated the mythology of the famous Los
Angeles, unique and apparently ideal compared to other cities. Yet, multiple
discourses of a given place are and were common. Most cities had boosters trying to
project a particular image about their town; behind the scenes, they would have had
to work hard to bring along the necessary players and capital to make it happen.
What set Los Angeles apart was quantity, not quality. So much publicity, produced
for so long, going so far and to so many people, drumming incessantly about a few
aspects elevated to iconic status (single-family housing, nice weather, lush
landscape, white middle-class citizenry) to the exclusion of other features (rental
apartments, floods and fires, barren hills, immigrants and ethnic workers) left a
lasting impression on generations of Americans, some who made the trip to see the
reality, and many more who did not and consequently had nothing to contradict the
hype.
181

180
Hise, “Sixty Stories,” 14.
181
The volume of promotional publicity sent all over the nation was a frequent topic in
materials targeting local supporters—an effort to justify membership dues, among other things. In the

72
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The geographic boundaries of this investigation are the Los Angeles city
limits. These changed significantly over time, of course. Yet this areal definition
allows for both the use of housing statistics and the analysis of municipal land-use
policy relative to residential development. The period of this study is bracketed on
the early end by the turn of the twentieth century, when the US census showed Los
Angeles to be barely into a six-figure population. This was about the time when
mentions of multi-family housing—flats, courts, and apartment buildings—began
making regular appearances in newspaper accounts and public agencies’ reports.
The close of the study period is a bit less precise. The housing census of 1940 gives
useful statistics on the complexity of the local housing market. Yet the structural,
politico-economic portion of the story ends earlier, in the mid-1930s. The federal

Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural year, it ordered several thousand copies of local newspapers
(themselves, singing the region’s praises) shipped to east coast cities, via railroad; Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce, Executive Committee meeting minutes, December 10, 1888. In 1893, the
Chamber and associated boosters issued a reported 152,000 pamphlets, circulars, and documents, not
including newspaper ads. Approximately half of them were distributed at the World’s Fair in
Chicago; Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report, 1894. And the stakes and volume
only rose higher. On just one Sunday in April 1928, the All-Year Club claimed that more than six
million advertisements, or “invitations to visit Southern California,” were inserted in nearly two dozen
metropolitan newspapers across the country; All-Year Club of Southern California, Newsletter, May
1, 1928. Over the next year, 260 million ads—“nearly two for each person in the United States and
Canada”—were published across the continent; All-Year Club of Southern California, “We Spend
88.7% for Advertising Southern California,” 1930; reprinted in Advertising and Selling, August 6,
1930. Reflecting back on its first dozen years in operation (1921-1933), the AYC reportedly placed
more than two billion advertisements in front of readers of national magazines and newspapers; “New
Sales Appeal for an Old Product,” Western Advertising (April 1933), n.p.
These self-reported statistics may be overblown, given their instrumentalist nature. Still, we
do know that a tremendous amount of advertising was generated by growth machine organizations
and others. Even if, say, cut in half, the numbers are substantial. The few, basic messages and key
visual images repeated year in and year out for decades were occasionally updated and modified, but
remained true to original themes. They could not have helped but shape and sustain the nation’s and
world’s image of Los Angeles as a place of sunshine, attractive landscape, and single-family
dwellings.

73
Wagner-Steagall Act was passed in 1937; this and associated activities before and
after launched new public housing programs—these, almost always for multi-family
projects.
182
This sea-change forever altered the discourse, politics, economics and
landscape of residential development in most American cities, including Los
Angeles.
Traditional documentary analysis of private papers, public records, trade
publications, and popular media allows the recreation (however limited) of the
political, economic and cultural milieu in which principals and other participants
operated and interacted. Yet this subject requires more. Longstreth, in his work on
commercial landscapes in Los Angeles, writes: “Too often, sweeping cultural
generalizations are offered without a solid grasp of the actual places that both shape
and are shaped by human values.”
183
To meet this challenge, I have developed case
studies of two specific districts to demonstrate this shaping of physical place by so
much human activity, both individual and collective. Field observation and
documentation—augmented with historical maps, surveys, photographs and property
records—enable the historical modeling of urban landscape segments for
examination of land subdivision, building stock, personal occupancy, financial
obligation, and regulatory controls.
Over-reliance on booster publications (and sources derived from them) has, I
believe, resulted in historians’ failure to recognize the full diversity of Los Angeles’s

182
Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of
Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
183
Longstreth, City Center, xvii.

74
urban housing stock and its significance on the city’s development. Still, these
resources are very helpful, if used judiciously and balanced with competing
accounts. This project employs a range of primary materials, some produced by
growth machine organizations—groups clearly with reason to exaggerate (what they
saw as) good news while downplaying (if not outright ignoring) bad news. I have
tried to minimize problems of bias and reliability by limiting their use to: essentially
neutral data which original authors would have had little or no reason to color (dates,
names, locations); and content that can be taken at face value (rhetoric, hyperbole,
opinion, ideology). Where other factual information is sought from promotional
literature, I have made every effort to verify such data in other sources.
As for the narrative: Chapter 2 tells about the city’s residential landscape in
general. I identify and describe prominent and popular multiple dwelling types, and
begin to quantify the amount of multi-family housing relative to single-family.
Chapters 3 and 4 are empirical case studies of actual places as they developed in the
decades after 1900. First is a portion of the Southwest district, next is part of the
Wilshire district. Both areas began the twentieth century in gradual transition from
farmed acreage to residential subdivisions of single-family housing. But where the
Southwest sample densified with small multiple dwellings, the Wilshire sample was
much more aggressively developed with large apartment buildings. Part of my
analysis provides explanation for differences between the two cases: who built what,
when, and why.

75
Most US cities saw a dramatic escalation of multi-family housing
construction in the 1920s, and Los Angeles was no exception. Issues of production
are the subject of Chapter 5, focusing on this tumultuous decade when market forces
converged to both drive up supply of apartments and drive down that of detached
dwellings. Chapter 6 describes the many and varied efforts of both private and
public actors to control residential development in Los Angeles. The diverse range
of multi-family housing types offered planners (and developers) a land-use tool kit in
their unending (and ultimately futile) attempt to somehow facilitate the sheltering of
an always-increasing population while simultaneously disguising this urban reality.

The conclusion in Chapter 7 puts Los Angeles in its rightful place as one of several
American cities with lots of apartments working hard to be thought of instead as a
city of private houses—important knowledge for a more accurate understanding of
serious issues such as affordable housing and the “sprawl” of cities and regions.

76
Chapter 2

Filling in the “Metropolitan Mosaic”: Multi-family Housing and the Residential
Landscape of Los Angeles, 1900-1930s

INTRODUCTION

In a community experiencing so rapid a development as ours,
there can be no more potent means of realizing … a well
devised plan than by fitting into it … the many subdivisions
… graphically referred to as the blocks in the Metropolitan
Mosaic.
—Los Angeles City Planning Commission
1

In January of 1927, architect William Bruce wrote to the Los Angeles Board of
Building and Safety Commissioners asking permission to exceed the city’s 150-foot
(twelve- to thirteen-story) height limit. He was proposing a new apartment building
for a site on Hollywood Boulevard. Bruce had designed the project with suites
ranging from one to eight rooms, to accommodate anyone from visiting tourists to
resident families. One noteworthy amenity was that “[a]ny person driving in from
the street can use the elevators, riding in their car to any floor in the building.”
2
His
petition argued the efficiency and financial soundness of his plan, and included data
on costs for land frontage, building square footage, and anticipated rents. Across
town and two years earlier, after some local debate, the municipal height limit had
been relaxed for a different, exceptional project. If any structure had deserved
exemption from the rule capping the city’s vertical growth, it had been the
monumental new city hall downtown. Nearing completion at the time of Bruce’s

1
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report, 1927-28, 13.

77
petition, the striking city hall structure surpassed the height limit by a factor of three:
at 452 feet, it reached twenty-eight stories—the city’s tallest building for the next
three decades.
3
Architect Bruce’s project, a skyscraping forty-three story tower more
than 500 feet tall, would have well outdone city hall had he prevailed.
It was no surprise that someone wanted to build higher than thirteen stories in
urban Los Angeles. The city council had received numerous such petitions ever
since the restriction was enacted in 1906.
4
Many developers hoped to build taller,
prime downtown office space—especially in the booming real estate market of the
1920s. But architect Bruce was interested in “the increase in the height of
apartments … in the outlying districts of the City,” as one official put it.
5
Despite
the petition’s failure, the fact that a developer had taken the time to design a structure
so large and so far from downtown, and for residential use, is noteworthy to us now
because it was not noteworthy then. Though the scale showed rare hubris, no one
was shocked at a proposal to construct a huge apartment building at the urban edge at
this time. By the mid-1920s, after many years of significant population growth and
areal expansion, Los Angeles was no stranger to several kinds of multi-family
housing—from small flats nestled among single-family houses in suburban

2
Letter from William Bruce to Los Angeles Board of Building and Safety Commissioners,
January 14, 1927. Los Angeles City Council file no. 456.
3
Paul Gleye, The Architecture of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Rosebud Books, 1981), 101-104
4
On the height limit, see “History of the Building and Safety Department,” Los Angeles
Board of Building and Safety Commissioners, Annual Report, 1930-31, 56-57. On attempts to build
over the limit, see, for example, “City Council Holds Down Proposed Tall Buildings,” Los Angeles
Times, December 21, 1910, II2; “More Anent Los Angeles Skyscrapers,” The Architect and Engineer,
(March 1911), 102-03
5
Transmittal letter from the Board of Building and Safety Commissioners to the City Council,
January 18, 1927. File no. 456; emphasis added.

78
subdivisions to high-rise apartment towers in a few sub-centers miles from the
central city.

One image many Americans held of Los Angeles in the early twentieth century was
of a vast collection of palm-tree-lined suburbs stretching from glamorous Hollywood
to the Pacific shore. Yet the city’s residential landscape was extraordinarily diverse.
Walking down a typical street in 1915 one might find houses, a bungalow court, a
four-family flat, and a three-story apartment building all on one block. But that’s not
all. Between or alongside the different kinds of residences might be a small store or
office, a funeral parlor, a laundry, a horse stable, a lumberyard, or any combination
thereof. All of this urban residential variety has been obscured by a narrow focus—
of boosters back then, and historians since—on the city’s single-family homes. Even
the more recent, revisionist strain in the historiography challenging other myths
about Los Angeles has continued to dwell on dwellings of the detached variety.
6

Such a phenomenon illustrates the power and longevity of the city’s publicity-driven
external discourse. This chapter’s work is to help shift the focus to the city’s other
housing by looking at the more complicated, less-known internal discourse, and at
the city itself.

6
Marc Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and
Urban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), Chapters 1-3; Greg Hise,
Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth Century Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997); Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-
Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

79
SCRUTINIZING THE “CITY OF HOMES”
Los Angeles was similar to most cities in its often-jumbled mix of housing
types and conditions. How it was less like other places was its higher proportion of
single-family dwellings in that mix. This statistical fact was the cause for much civic
self-congratulation, and was seized upon by local place promoters looking for
ammunition in the battle with other cities competing for growth and status. Elites
steering the local “growth machine” coalition—visible in the activities of the
Chamber of Commerce and Los Angeles Realty Board, among other organizations—
began with this numerical dominance, and rhetorically ran from there. The single-
family dwelling on its own lot was made into an icon, symbolizing the region’s
potential for providing a particular definition of the good life for all who ventured so
far west.
7

This dissertation’s focus is the multi-family component of the residential
landscape, but it is worth noting that the celebrated single-family sector was far from
a uniformly high quality. This was true in most cities. But most other cities did not
have such a well-coordinated promotional apparatus as Los Angeles (see Chapter 1).
Real estate-minded growth elites managed—through carefully crafted imagery,
relentlessly disseminated over a period of decades—to foster the impression that the
large bungalow situated in a spacious, well-tended garden on a tree-lined street was
the Angel city’s common residential condition; see Figure 2. Such attractive and

7
Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967) Chapter 7; Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and

80
photogenic neighborhoods certainly existed, but their characterization as “typical”
belied the frequency of much more ordinary residential development. Houses ran the
gamut from mansion to hovel, and neighborhoods varied in appearance from the lush
and edenic to the nearly barren and haphazard.
With rapid population growth, widespread development, embryonic building
codes, and the frequency of poor construction, some worried that the hovels were
taking over. As late as 1924, analysts of local residential real estate reported that
“many very cheap structures are being erected.”
8
The reform-minded California
Commission on Immigration and Housing (CCIH), like its counterparts in eastern
US cities, was accustomed to surveying the deleterious conditions of substandard
multi-family housing. In the late 1910s, the commission was initially encouraged on
finding that two-thirds of households in a sweeping survey of Los Angeles’s “foreign
districts” occupied single-family units. But closer inspection of the actual
environment—shanties often crowded cheek-by-jowl with factories—dampened the
enthusiasm. “At first this seems ideal[.] But after looking at some of the shacks …
which read well as ‘one-family dwellings’ … the condition did not seem so ideal.”
9

The CCIH recognized that proliferation of the preferred dwelling type did not
automatically bring preferable dwelling conditions for poor Angelenos, noting “that

Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987), Chapter 6; Merry Ovnick, Los Angeles: The End of
the Rainbow (Los Angeles: Balcony Press, 1994).
8
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, September 1, 1924, n.p.
9
California Commission on Immigration and Housing, A Community Survey, n.d., ca. 1919,
70. It should be noted that these districts were home to many native-born Americans as well, despite
the commission’s characterizations of a mostly foreign-born population.

81
there is just as serious a housing problem in connection with single family dwellings
as with tenements.”
10
Bad houses were as problematic as bad apartments.
Not all of the inferior houses were in the industrial areas of the city. Becky
Nicolaides has documented that “the propensity for cheap self-building” was
common in outlying locations as well, done by working-class families relocating to
southern California in search of greater economic independence. Most often, this
improved self-reliance began with a family buying a cheap lot, then constructing a
dwelling, however humble, in a suburban subdivision with few services and little
infrastructure.
11
This lifestyle often included the keeping of small animals, the
raising of poultry and growing of produce for the family table as well as for sale. All
of this “created a rough-and-tumble suburban environment, yielding a gritty rural
reality more than a dreamy rural ideal.”
12

Some in the booster camp occasionally acknowledged that part of the local
housing stock was less than impressive; see Figure 3. The most typical concession
was to the plethora of small, cheaply built houses in scattered subdivisions described
by Nicolaides. As described in Chapter 1, these were collectively lauded by anti-
union forces among Los Angeles’s business elite as evidence of a petit bourgeoisie.
“[W]orkers live in their own little bungalows, surrounded by plenty of land for fruits,
vegetables and flowers, and where children romp and play,” reported the Chamber of

10
California Commission on Immigration and Housing, Annual Report, 1916, 198.
11
Nicolaides, Chapter 1.
12
Ibid., 19.

82

Figure 3. Shacks in Los Angeles, in this case at 910 South Central Avenue, circa
1930s. (From the Bancroft Library via the Online Archive of California.)

83
Commerce in describing “the home of contented labor.”
13
Such gloss made these
modest dwellings sound like the “typical” full-blown suburban retreat, only in
landscaped miniature.
Even the worst of the city’s “shack problem” could be given a rosy glow by
promoters ruthless in their optimism. In 1923, at the peak of that decade’s real estate
boom, editors of the Los Angeles Realty Board’s official publication told readers, in
essence, that it was not quality, but category that counted. “While it is undoubtedly
true that many of these homes are put together hastily and at a … small cost, it must
be remembered that they are nevertheless homes. [T]hat collection of boards and
nails is a home—a home in Los Angeles.”
14
This spin by one of the most important
players in the region’s growth machine is not surprising, and again illustrates the
strong link between ideologies promoting home-ownership and the open-shop
cultivated by Angeleno elites.

COMPLICATING THE RESIDENTIAL LANDSCAPE
The political economy of urban development in Los Angeles, from the 1880s
on, produced a distinctly bifurcated discourse on housing—though the split was by
no means equal (see Chapter 1). By far, dominance belonged to support for single-
family home ownership, due to the wide intended audience of capitalists, middle-

13
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, “Facts About Industrial Los Angeles County: Nature’s
Workshop,” (1929), 10.
14
Los Angeles Realtor (December 1923), 14; emphasis added.

84
managers and laborers, both locals and newcomers.
15
Multi-family rental housing
came in a distant second, and appeared because of the importance of long-term
tourism to economic growth in the region. Both sides of the residential coin targeted
white American citizens: working-class and above for residents, middle-class and
above for tourists.
16
The single-multiple binary reflected and intensified an ideology
shaping the larger national culture, whereby the private family house was glorified
over the merely tolerated rental apartment.
17
In 1921, the Los Angeles Realtor noted
with approval that “[t]he word ‘home’ as used by the Department of Commerce
applies only to dwellings occupied by a single family, and not to flats or
apartments.”
18

This dichotomy was overly simplistic, and completely ignored many housing
situations occurring between the two simplified extremes. Every residential situation
is affected by many factors.
19
Some combination of these factors characterizes each
dwelling and its inhabitation, and includes: relative size and density (number of
dwelling units is one measurement), age, quality (of construction and maintenance);
the level of amenity provided (the private unit’s space, and services to it); and
relative location. Occupancy and tenure of those residing therein is a sixth, critical

15
Fogelson, Chapter 4.
16
Ibid.; Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City:
Peregrine Smith Books, [1946] 1973).
17
See Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985), Chapter 3.
18
“Los Angeles is Among Leaders—The Shortage of Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor
(December 1921), 35.
19
This conception of residential diversity expands and revises one suggested by Eric
Monkkonen, who states that “three major issues dominate the history of urban housing: tenure, cost,

85
aspect. Though each factor merits thorough investigation, this chapter is limited to a
consideration of density and location.
From a twenty-first century perspective, it may seem that some combinations
of these variables are mutually exclusive. For example: age of construction. Brand-
new housing is now considered desirable and assumed to be of good quality, even if
produced as affordable housing for low-income groups. A century ago, however,
building code provisions now taken for granted were not yet in existence, and
unevenly enforced. Plenty of new construction was inferior; a new “single-family
residence” permitted by the Building Department in 1910 was just as likely to be a
tar-paper shack as a Craftsman bungalow. Another example: relative density. Many
imagine tall apartment buildings crowded cheek-by jowl on hearing “high density.”
But the house court was Los Angeles’s single-story version of New York’s crowded
tenement. Intense congestion (if not as extreme as Manhattan’s) could be achieved
horizontally when small two-room shacks or barracks structures were efficiently
jammed onto a single lot with little open space. Even otherwise adequate single-
family housing could reach densities uncomfortably high (compared to conventional
real estate wisdom) in subdivisions of small, narrow lots. Location is another
slippery factor. A continuum of large urban apartment buildings gradually stepping
down in scale to freestanding suburban cottages is only one part of the story.
Developers continued to build single-family houses near the central city and
apartment buildings in peripheral locations, sometimes alongside bungalows.

and quality.” See America Becomes Urban: The Development of US Cities and Towns, 1780-1980

86
Heterogeneity and irregularity were inescapable in the residential landscape
of Los Angeles in the early twentieth century—the scourge of place promoters, and
the target of city planning advocates. Occasionally, someone pointed out that the
booster rhetoric claiming consistently high quality overlooked reality. The Eberle
Economic Service, a consulting research firm, recognized glaring disparities between
poor examples of the “approved” type and good examples of the secondary type. An
Eberle publication devoted to the complex workings of the city’s real estate market
noted that “the all-too-prevalent shacks on narrow lots cannot compare with the
living conditions in many multi-family structures.”
20
This acknowledgement that
some “homes” were inferior to some apartments exposed the Realty Board’s
hyperbole (noted above) for what it was, and demonstrates again that points on the
numerous axes of residential variation—a building’s age, quality, density, amenity,
location, or its occupancy—could overlap or criss-cross with ease.
Such candor exposed the double duty of growth machine operations:
carefully crafted publicity for export, and conflict management among insiders over
problems at home.
21
The occasional unvarnished urban glimpse that contradicted
booster orthodoxy was treated with concern in the local discourse. In 1921, an
Angeleno banker was concerned that many of the “[t]housands of the older
established residents of Los Angeles who had formerly owned their homes sold them
during the past two years, and have been living in rented … flats and apartments.”

(Berkeley: University of California, 1988); quote, 183.
20
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, July 18, 1927, 173.

87
But he took solace that “there is now … a general movement on the part of these
people to seek [single-family] homes of their own” once again.
22
Others concurred:
“it is believed that … a large number of duplexes … and bungalow courts … are
being used as temporary substitutes for single-family houses.”
23
The notion that
“permanent” residents might actually choose apartment renting over house
ownership (or, more accurately, purchase) was a fact of life in the booming
metropolis. But it did not fit the promoted ideal. Instead, the rhetorical playing field
of residential choice was forcefully slanted toward single-family home ownership;
any other preference was cast as merely a temporary stop on the way to the
inevitable, best option.
24

SIZE, SCALE & DENSITY
One of the best ways to think about scale and density is by looking at
dwelling types.
25
This section’s focus is the examination of several popular forms of
multi-family housing filling out Los Angeles’s residential landscape.
As pointed out already, the category of “single-family dwelling” was
considerably more miscellaneous than boosters let on. Complicating it further was

21
Todd Gish, “Selling Los Angeles: Media and Marketing for Fun and Profit, 1921-1941,”
Critical Planning 10 (2003), 29-46.
22
M.N. Avery, “Building Loans in Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Realtor 1 (October 1921), 3.
23
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, October 15, 1925, n.p.; emphasis
added.
24
See Constance Perin, Everything In Its Place: Social Order and Land Use in America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), Chapter 2, “The Ladder of Life.”
25
Such a focus does not offer an overall, aggregate measure of residential density, of course.
Only the counting of dwelling units of all types over a large geographic area will yield this
conventional measurement.

88
the popular practice of converting one-family properties to multi-family. This
process often accompanied an overall neighborhood trend in which property values
were in decline due to increased commercial activity nearby, or the moving in of
large numbers of lower-income groups (especially immigrants), or both. This
transformation is sometimes called “filtering,” referring to the passing “down” of the
housing stock from occupancy by one socio-economic level to new occupants of a
lower rank.
26
Architecturally, filtering was accomplished in a few ways: subdivision
of an existing dwelling into more and smaller units; construction of new, additional
dwellings on a given lot (usually behind the existing front house); and some
combination of the two.
27
Though the architectural expression of such a process may
be regionally specific (see the discussion of house courts below), the larger socio-
economic process was the same one fostering the division of row houses in
Manhattan or Boston into flats. A sociologist performing a neighborhood study in
Los Angeles’s changing Southwest district in the late 1920s observed this
phenomenon. She noted the prevalence of “the building of rear houses and the
remodeling of the single house for more than one family” in response to the housing
shortage following World War I.
28
A comparison of Sanborn maps showing the

26
For a good discussion of the filtering concept, see William C. Baer and Christopher B.
Williamson, “The Filtering of Households and Housing Units,” Journal of Planning Literature 3
(Spring 1988), 127-152.
27
Filtering refers to conversion of existing housing stock, and does not include wholesale
building demolition then replacement at a higher density. Such would be termed “redevelopment.”
28
Bessie Averne McLenahan, The Changing Urban Neighborhood: From Neighbor to Nigh-
Dweller (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1929), 15-16. McLenahan calculated that
13% of owners and 20% of renters resided in converted single-family houses in her study area of 649
households.

89
same properties from different decades reveals the occurrence of these kinds of
conversions in other parts of the city as well.

Two-family dwellings, now called duplexes, were quite common in Los Angeles,
and took several forms.
29
The “double bungalow” was a single-story structure
divided down the middle, forming two units side-by-side. These buildings were
often perfectly symmetrical in plan and front elevation. The “double house” was a
two-story version of this, essentially a pair of adjoining row houses, with living
rooms and kitchens below and bedrooms above. The “two-flat” was a two-story
building with a unit on each floor—a double-decker, in other words.
30
An
architecturally elaborate form of the two-flat became popular in the 1920s and ‘30s,
characterized by stylized accents such as wrought iron grilles, Spanish tile roofs, and
ceramic tile panels. Most noticeable in this version was a prominent exterior stair
ascending to the second-floor unit’s entrance from a small patio outside the lower
unit’s entry; see Figure 4.
Duplexes of different kinds were built in large numbers for decades, and were
classified as a distinct dwelling type by the Building Department well in to the
1920s. Many of these, of course, would have been as modest as their humble one-
family counterparts. Double bungalows appear to have been the most popular, likely

29
Aside from these doubled-up forms, a very common occurrence was two detached houses on
a single lot.
30
University of Southern California Correspondence Study Department, “Real Estate Lesson 3:
Residential Property and Subdivisions,” 1928, 3.

90

Figure 4. A double-decker duplex in Leimert Park, circa 1930.

The scale is still that of a large single residence, but the elaborate stair and entry announces the double
occupancy in an elegant architectural turn. (From the Los Angeles Public Library collection.)

91
due to their more affordable single-story construction. The double-house (row-house
pair) was comparatively rare. As with all forms of housing, some builders might
develop an entire street or even subdivision with a particular type. For example, the
rather elegant stairway-double-deckers appear for several blocks along certain
thoroughfares, and are still visible along Crescent Heights Boulevard.

Flats appeared in Los Angeles as early as 1895, though this term seems to be have
been fairly elastic in its usage. “Flat” was employed variously to describe both units
within small multi-family structures and the structures themselves; the latter use was
most common. Flats were numerous enough to be recognized as a separate
residential classification by the Building Department in 1899.
31
By the 1910s the
term had become shorthand for the four-family flat, a well-defined, extremely
popular small building type that has been ignored in the city’s architectural
historiography.
32
The typical four-flat was symmetrical in plan and façade, and
consisted of a pair of units on each of two floors. Perhaps its most notable feature
was its design to obscure the four separate entrance doors behind a single, large front
porch or entry portal—creating the impression of a large single-family dwelling; see
Figure 5.

31
City of Los Angeles Superintendent of Buildings, Annual Report, 1895, 1899.
32
A rare exception is Stefanos Polyzoides, “The Bungalow, the Street, and the Court:
Traditional Elements of a California Architecture and Urbanism,” Old House Journal (May/June
2002), pp? This article refers to four-flats as “quadruplexes,” a term not used at that time.

92

Figure 5. A four-family flat, or apartment-in-disguise, circa 1910s.

Designed to masquerade as a large private dwelling, the building’s large entry portal concealed four
separate front doors, one serving each of two units on each floor. (From the Los Angeles Times.)

93
These apartments-in-disguise had a long tradition in southern California, and
other places as well. In 1901, the Los Angeles Times praised “apartment houses that
resemble residences.”
33
The newspaper was even more complimentary a dozen
years later, when an article titled “Making Flats Homelike” stated that “attractive
four-suite structures have [the] appearance of large private residences,” making
“objections overcome.”
34
Objections were those raised by neighboring home-owners
to large apartment houses and tenants “invading” the serene setting supposedly
inherent to streets of detached bungalows. Such commonplace opposition helped to
shape the four-flat in this way, and the type caught on as a result. Well into the
1920s, the city council (via the city planning commission) frequently limited those
petitioning to develop income property in otherwise single-family districts to a four-
unit building, which “must have the appearance of a single family structure.”
35

Though the notion of trying to deceive observers via architectural sleight-of-
hand may seem odd or naive, this is historically one of the architecture profession’s
most basic tasks.
36
And, in this case, it often worked. Even today, many people who
see these structures are fooled just as their designers originally intended, believing
that a large old house was later subdivided into four identical apartments. And it
may be that the proliferation of this type and its outward disguise is one reason that

33
“Doings of Builders and Architects,” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1901, A1.
34
“Making Flats Homelike,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1913, V1.
35
Memorandum from the Board of City Planning Commissioners to the Los Angeles City
Council, dated January 18, 1927. Council file no.534.
36
A similar practice is the centuries-old British architectural technique of designing a “terrace”
of row houses as a unified composition resembling a single, large mansion or palace. See, for
example, Stefan Muthesius, The English Terraced House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

94
Los Angeles managed to keep its reputation as a “city of homes” despite its
considerable stock of multi-family dwellings.

The house court was Los Angeles’s most common version of slum housing. Though
it is not clear just when this type became common, enough of them existed by 1906
to bring into existence the city’s first housing commission.
37
Forerunner of the later
and better-known bungalow court, the “house court” was another broadly applied
term. Several forms existed, and their descriptions vaguely parallel those of the first
tenements in New York City decades earlier. Sociologist and urban reformer Emory
Bogardus catalogued the different types of courts in 1916: first were large old
houses—in some cases, old adobes from the Mexican era that had more recently
been subdivided for multi-unit occupancy. After the interior spaces were claimed,
the courtyards around which the adobes had been built were often infilled with new
one-story shacks to accommodate more families. Once the city’s supply of old
houses for conversion was exhausted, new habitations were built on vacant lots.
Eventually, enterprising builders devised barracks-type structures of several one- to
four-room habitations, sometimes in rows facing one another across a linear court.
More often, though, shacks, shanties and tent-houses were the forms jerry-built
individually or collectively, on small or large lots.
38
See Figure 6.

37
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report, (1906-08).
38
Emory Bogardus, “The House Court Problem,” American Journal of Sociology 22
(November 1916), 392-396.

95

Figure 6. A house court of probably self-built shacks, circa 1914.

Mexicans and other immigrants often lived in such places, but Progressive housing reformers just as
frequently found poor white Americans in residence. Thousands of dwelling units were in these kinds
of developments by the 1910s. (From the Los Angeles Housing Commission.)

96
House courts comprised the concentrated form of the larger shack problem.
Where the proliferation and spread of shacks, counted as single-family dwellings,
was enabled by the relatively low-cost and wide availability of lots all over the
region, courts tended to be located in already-developed portions of the city. The
most common sites were in congested (and frequently polluted) industrial districts,
where the proximity of cheap rental housing to manufacturing jobs was convenient
for employee and employer alike. Here, it was the high price of urban land that gave
house courts their high density, the cramming of more and more units into the
available space. The region’s famously mild climate also shaped the house court.
The very cheapest of construction sufficed as basic shelter from the elements, but
was plainly unable to support vertical expansion. Thin boards and gunny sacks
might keep out some wind and occasional rain, but they would not support the
weight of another shanty above. This combination of usually mild weather,
expensive land close to factories and warehouses, demand for cheap labor, and a
surplus of both citizens and immigrants willing to supply that labor, gave Los
Angeles its own identifiable, horizontal slum type.
The very word “court” acquired pejorative connotations in Los Angeles akin
to “tenement” in Manhattan. But not everyone opposed it, at least in concept. Many
progressive reformers approved of grouping together small and affordable detached
dwellings for rent by working-class families: “though the Housing Commission has
succeeded in eradicating many house courts in bad condition … it has encouraged
the house court plan as eminently suited to our climate as an ideal substitute for

97
tenements.”
39
The problem was one of quality. A competition was planned in 1914
for the best design of a model court but, just as with Manhattan’s model tenements,
the proposals proved too expensive a solution: meager rents affordable by poor
families failed to provide enough of a return on investment for developers of such
ventures.
40

This was hardly the end for this type, however. Rather, it gave birth to what
became known as the bungalow court—a better-built, better-known offspring. In
this, we are reminded of the bungalow court’s half-breed origins. Frequently touted
as purely the invention of clever Craftsman architects out to devise new lodgings for
long-term tourists, this type originated around 1908 as both a bottom-up
improvement to the problematic house court, and a top-down, more affordable
variant of the rental cottage. This new and improved court became quite popular
with tourists and residents who could afford a higher rent.
41

The bungalow court evolved as a symmetrical grouping of freestanding,
single-story rental cottages bounding a central landscaped court; see Figure 7. These
were fully equipped residences, with kitchens. The typical court had between six and
a dozen units, and the density depended upon how many lots the collection occupied.

39
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report, 1913, 13.
40
Los Angeles Department of Health (Bureau of Housing Commission), Annual Report, 1914.
41
See, for example: Robert Winter, “Arthur S. and Alfred Heineman,” 137-148; Edward R.
Bosley, “Sylvanus B. Marston,” 169-180; and David Gebhard, “Irving J. Gill,” 201-208; (all in)
Robert Winter, ed., Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Several authors, including Winter, acknowledge
architect Gill’s keen interest (and ultimate failure) in providing affordable worker housing in
bungalow courts, but miss the connection to the often squalid house courts in Los Angeles.

98

Figure 7. A bungalow court of small cottages lining a central landscaped space, built
circa 1910s. (From Paul Gleye, The Architecture of Los Angeles.)

99
Just a single house-lot meant a narrow central space and tight yards between
tiny cottages; in the densest configuration, spaces between adjacent houses would be
eliminated, so that the central space was flanked by two linear buildings divided
essentially into small row-dwellings. At times, a developer might build on two or
more lots tied together, for larger structures and more open space. The “bungalow”
in the name came from the popularity of the Craftsman architectural style in the
1910s, popularized by architects Greene and Greene and Alfred Heinemann, among
others, in and around Pasadena. Though some courts were so designed, many were
not: a bungalow court might just as easily appear in Spanish Colonial or some other
style.
All of these multi-family housing types—duplexes, four-flats, courts—were
fairly small in scale. Larger buildings appeared early on as well, but in fewer
numbers until the 1920s, when a combination of astonishingly rapid population
growth, successful tourism, and availability of investment capital drove an apartment
construction boom in Los Angeles that dramatically altered parts of the city.

Apartment buildings of several floors began appearing soon after the turn of the
twentieth century in Los Angeles. The Ponet Apartments was a four-story structure
located at Pico and Grand Avenues, with three floors of suites over a ground floor of
shops; see Figure 8. The Burlington Apartments, at Ninth and Burlington, was five
stories high, containing 64 two- and three-room units. According to its developer, it

100

Figure 8. Ponet Square Apartments, built circa 1907, view and floor plan.

Ponet Square, located south of downtown Los Angeles at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Grand
Avenue, held three floors of single- and double apartments over ground floor retail space. (From A.L.
Haley, Modern Apartments.)

101
was “centrally situated in one of the choicest residential portions of the city, within a
few minutes’ walk of the shopping district, theaters, clubs and churches.”
42
Both
projects were built around 1907. Apartment units at this time were normally
comprised of the following spaces: small kitchen; small bathroom; and one (“a
single”), two (“a double”), or sometimes three rooms. The rooms were actually
multi-purpose spaces for sitting, dining, and/or sleeping, depending upon the number
of occupants and time of day (or night): adjoining closets holding a fold-down bed
were standard equipment in most rooms. Some layouts included connecting doors
between suites, converting a single to a double, or a double to a three-room
apartment, with the turn of a key.
43
Such flexibility was essential in a shelter market
catering to a population with a large transient segment, ranging from single people to
entire families.
Larger multi-family structures gained in popularity with both landlords and
tenants, even as new duplexes, flats and bungalow courts continued to be built. By
1911, the escalation of multiple-dwelling production prompted the chief building
inspector to ask the city council for help: Due to “the erection of an extraordinary
[sic] large number of fine apartment buildings … it is very necessary that I be given
an inspector who is an expert on the arrangement and construction of apartment

42
A.L. Haley, “Modern Apartments” (Published privately, n.d., [ca. 1910]), 6, 12.
43
This description is gleaned from a survey of more than a dozen of architect A.L. Haley’s
floor plans published in his promotional booklet. Though a wider sampling is needed to check for
representativeness, Haley’s plans appear to jibe with other written descriptions and floor plans in real
estate materials of the era.

102
houses[.]”
44
Even a wartime economic slump did not halt (though it did slow) the
trend. In the first few weeks of 1918, for example, permits were issued for several
projects: a four-story brick apartment hotel on Ninth and Alvarado, another on Fifth
and Alvarado, and two 3-story brick apartment buildings in the San Pedro district
near the port.
In addition to the larger and medium-sized projects, those for several small
apartment buildings were recorded—for sites all over the city and county, including
Hollywood, Long Beach, and Gardena.
45
This latter type became extremely
common. The comparative affordability of wood frame construction and the ability
to pack as many units onto a lot as possible (eschewing the more conservative
aspirations for four-flats) made the two-story frame apartment building a particularly
attractive investment for both novice and seasoned developers. As many as a dozen
or more two- and three-room units could be fit into this simple type, greatly
increasing the potential rate of return relative to outlay for construction.
As in many cities, a tremendous variety emerged in the sizes, shapes, and
styles of apartment buildings. By the 1920s, all kinds could be found in many parts
of Los Angeles and neighboring towns. Smaller structures continued to proliferate,
and new types were introduced. Two-story courtyard complexes—extravagantly
detailed inside and out with rich materials in Spanish or Moorish revival styles—

44
Los Angeles Building Department, Annual Report (1910-1911), n.p.
45
Southwest Builder and Contractor (January 4, 1918; January 11, 1918; February 1, 1918;
March 15, 1918).

103
appeared in Hollywood and West Hollywood.
46
Such elaborate expressions and
romantic associations with exotic locales had a long history in southern California,
especially in its residential architecture. Moreover, the creative energies of the
nearby film industry probably further encouraged this almost stagecraft approach to
domestic design.
47

The watershed of Los Angeles multi-family housing in the 1920s came in the
form of huge, high-rise apartment blocks and towers; see Chapter 4 for a case study.
If quaint little courtyard buildings harkened back to old Barcelona, then the new lot-
filling, four- to thirteen-story hulks springing up in the Wilshire district and
Hollywood gave observers a glimpse of New York City. This decade’s infamous
real estate boom—normally associated with innumerable single-family
subdivisions—easily found its way into the multi-family housing market, as aspiring
rentiers with larger ambitions met financiers with more capital to lend.
48
Added to
this well-oiled machinery for supplying rental units was rising demand. Newcomers,
both tourists and residents, were arriving by trainloads every day, year in and year
out. Any acknowledgment of apartments in the historiography normally refers to
this period of (literally) high-profile construction; usually, however, it is cast as the

46
Stefanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood and James Tice, Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles:
A Typological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
47
Ovnick, Chapter 10.
48
Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago
(Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995), Part II. Though the author’s subject is office
buildings elsewhere, her discussion of the effects of capital flows and urban growth on real estate
speculation in the 1920s is useful for considering housing in Los Angeles.

104
beginning of multiple-unit development rather than as another moment in a longer
story.
49

The 150-foot municipal height-limit prevented these big structures from
scraping the sky. Yet, in comparison with the generally very low-rise development
in most of the city, these buildings stood out. In some instances, they were built
among low-scale neighbors—stores, offices, or smaller apartment buildings. In a
few places, concentrations of these many-storied blocks sent the neighborhood’s
residential density soaring exponentially. These structures usually had conventional
I-, T-, U-, and H-shaped floor-plans. In the years before setback regulations, some
developers built to the front and side lot lines, maximizing lot coverage and, hence,
rentable units. On the occasion that many neighboring builders chose to do this, the
overall effect was of a continuous street wall fifty feet high or more. In dense
concentrations, such as near the Ambassador Hotel, this kind of residential
development worried planners, and led to a 1934 ordinance requiring yards on all
sides of residential buildings.
50

Some of these buildings were touted in the press not only for their
architectural design, but for the carefree lifestyle that fashionable apartment living
afforded. The Gaylord, the Asbury, the Los Altos, the Talmadge—owned or built by
notables and home to (supposed) sophisticates—these new kinds of “houses” gave
Los Angeles more of a skyline physically and a higher profile economically and

49
This is how Fogelson characterizes apartments. See also Kevin Starr, Material Dreams:
Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 214-217.
50
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report (1935).

105
culturally, as civic leaders across the nation competed for status in whatever way
they could.
51
These dwellings became institutions of sorts, and reflected well on the
city. Even “homebound” boosters accepted the silver lining they provided to the
city’s image, all the while reminding that single-family bungalows constituted the
normal residence. After a raft of such development over several years, William
Bruce’s proposal for Hollywood Boulevard probably seemed only a bigger and better
version of what was already appearing in actively growing sub-centers of the region.

URBAN LOCATION
The location of housing can be considered in a number of ways. Both big-
picture overviews and close-up inspections are useful. A macro-level, metropolitan
view illustrates physical placement relative to center and periphery. Of course, this
is does not necessarily mean a smooth descent in scale—large apartments in the
central city, smaller multiples around downtown, suburban bungalows further out,
and, finally, farm houses in the agricultural hinterland.
52
For one thing, the urban
edge was constantly being pushed further outward, transforming previously outlying
locations to somewhere in the middle of things within a few years. Also, nodes or
sub-centers sometimes developed, such as the districts of Hollywood, Wilshire, San

51
Kevin Roderick and J. Eric Lynxwiler, Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los
Angeles (Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 2005).
52
On the standard concentric-ring model, whereby mere distance from the central business
district is thought to strongly affect residential occupancy by class and dwelling type, see Robert Park,
Ernest W. Burgess and Roderick D. McKenzie, The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1925). See Homer Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities
(Washington DC: General Printing Office, 1939) for a complication of that model, whereby

106
Pedro and Van Nuys; see map in Figure 9. Such areas tended to acquire a diverse,
more complete set of urban functions, and sometimes showed higher population
densities than other, less-developed places an equal distance from the central city.
53

At the micro-level, examination of the surroundings of a given site reveals
information invisible from high above but no less useful. This includes neighboring
land uses, both similar and contrasting, as well as proximity to topographic and
infrastructural elements.
Housing in downtown Los Angeles in the decades on either side of 1900
reflected the conditions visible in many cities. The familiar pattern of aging single-
family dwellings converted to multi-family use certainly appeared as the city grew in
population and its economy diversified. Once-fashionable residential areas became
denser as new structures were added and existing ones were subdivided to create
flats, lodging houses and residential hotels. Most of these were built or renovated
amid or alongside escalating commercial- and industrial development, rendering the
remaining housing more likely to shelter transients, workers, and immigrants than
the original, middle-class occupants. Most of the more fortunate Angelenos had
already moved to new houses at the southern and western fringes of downtown. In
the 1880s, Bunker Hill had become the city’s elite residence district—close enough

residential locations and situations are also affected by proximity to lines of transport radiating from
the CBD.
53
Chauncy D. Harris, “ Suburbs,” American Journal of Sociology 49 (July 1943), 1-13, offers
an alternative spatial model to Park et al and Hoyt: multiple urban nuclei, or sub-centers, which may
be located relatively independent of the CBD or major transport lines.

107

Figure 9. Map of Los Angeles, circa 1935, indicating case study areas and other
major districts (from UCLA Department of Special Collections via Online Archive
of California).

108
for commuting by business leaders, but remote enough (due to topography and
limited transit) to maintain exclusivity for a time.
54

Not surprisingly, economic pressures on downtown business interests to
expand ultimately affected, then transformed Bunker Hill, beginning in the early
1900s. Over the next few decades, the familiar cycle which had brought the elegant
neighborhood into existence eventually changed it further: encroaching commercial
uses drove up property values, making the existing housing stock ripe for conversion
into more units affordable to more people who desired close proximity to that
commercial activity. Gradually, space in larger houses and former mansions was cut
up for apartments and rooms to rent. Just as years before in the central city, the
once-private one-family housing stock was divided up and “filtered down” to
workers and others in need of affordable shelter with easy access to downtown’s
employment and other opportunities.
55
Other dwellings were demolished then
replaced by new apartment buildings of a larger size and heavier construction than
the smaller, wood-frame flat buildings that constituted the city’s first multi-family
structures.
Even as its landscape densified over the years, Bunker Hill remained mostly
residential in comparison with downtown’s heterogeneous mix of housing with
commercial and industrial structures. By the early 1920s, downtown’s intensifying
development and solidification as the region’s commercial core meant that its

54
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Gail Sansbury, “Lost Streets of Bunker Hill,” California
History 74 (Winter 1995-96), 394-407.

109
housing—even the multi-family variety—was being squeezed out. In 1923, a local
real estate journal profiled “one of the few close-in, well-located apartment house[s]
left in the city. Many of the others have been destroyed to make way for new
buildings.”
56
It would be some time before dwellings virtually disappeared from the
CBD, but their outward momentum was already well underway.

As early as 1895 the Los Angeles Times remarked that “the rapid extension of the
city … has led to a demand for flats … and this demand is rapidly being supplied.”
57

No doubt that as development proceeded and spread, what was once suburban
quickly became centrally located. Around 1910, architect A.L. Haley, who
specialized in multi-family dwelling design, reported that “the opportunities for
building … apartment houses … on the outskirts of the city were never more
opportune.”
58

Detailed reports by the Los Angeles Housing Commission enable us to look
at decentralization of at least one segment of the city’s multi-family housing stock—
the most troublesome, according to reformers. Enough house courts in 1914 were
located in the far-flung harbor communities of San Pedro and Wilmington that
officials worried about the cost of providing (street-) carfare for inspectors to get

55
Clark Davis, Company Men: White Collar Life & Corporate Cultures in Los Angeles, 1892-
1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 84-90.
56
“Alhambra Hotel Annex Sold to Lincoln Investment Company,” Pacific Coast Record 14
(April 1923), 9.
57
Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1895, 9.
58
Haley, “Modern Apartments,” 5.

110
down there and back as often as necessary.
59
Three years later, the commission—by
then responsible for inspection of not only courts, but flats, tenements and lodging
houses—observed enough such dwellings in the harbor area that it requested funding
for a full-time local inspector there.
60
By 1919, enough multiple dwellings had
appeared in other places along the fringe for commissioners to complain, “it has been
impossible to spare any more inspectors from the city work to attend to the outlying
sections of Van Nuys [and] Sawtelle [West Los Angeles].”
61
Such development was
increasingly viable due to the ongoing expansion of both personal and public
transportation systems, in tandem with the decentralization of some employment
sectors. This rendered commutes easier for those shuttling back and forth from
downtown, and unnecessary for those both living and working in suburbs.
62

The appearance of larger multi-family buildings in outlying locations
continued to receive frequent mention in both popular and trade publications.
Aspiring landlords did their best to cash in on the Angel City’s phenomenal growth
and corresponding housing shortage. Yet many in the real estate industry worried
that maintaining a garden city of freestanding bungalows—or at least its
perception—was impossible in the face of so much urban housing construction. One
critic editorialized: “There is hardly any district in Los Angeles city, except in the

59
Los Angeles Department of Health, Bureau of Housing Commission, (1914).
60
Los Angeles Department of Health, Bureau of Housing Commission, (1917).
61
Los Angeles Department of Health, Bureau of Housing Commission, (1919); emphasis
added.
62
See, for example, Nancy Quam-Wickham, “‘Another World’: Work, Home, and Autonomy
in Working –Class Suburbs,” in Tom Sitton and William Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making:
Los Angeles in the 1920s ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 123-141.

111
mountains … where a man may build … and feel certain that his high-class
residence will not be spoiled or destroyed by the erection of apartment-houses …
immediately adjacent to his property.”
63
All of this helps puts to rest any notion of a
uniform decrease in residential density from downtown skyscrapers to Valley
farmsteads.

Multi-family properties were developed at Los Angeles’s periphery and other less
conventionally urban locations—but not without conflict. Closer inspection of some
apartment buildings in suburban areas shows considerable conflict. Before the new
zoning ordinance of 1921 would become widely implemented later in the 1920s, the
“invasion” of a neighborhood of single-family houses by a tall, lot-covering multi-
family structure was common, and cause for complaints to the city council. Real
estate speculators hoped to benefit from erecting their new apartment buildings in
otherwise low-density districts already landscaped and provided with public
services.
64
Neighboring home-owners fought such developments at every turn,
terming the offender a “dog in a manger” or “pig in a parlor.”
65
This kind of
commonplace land-use conflict—whereby a new project is considered acceptable by
folks only if located someplace else—is still prevalent in urban life under the battle
cry “Not In My Backyard!”

63
“Urge Zoning Correction by Civic Groups Here,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1929, E1.
64
See, for example, W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers,” Apartment Journal (July 1934), 8-9.
65
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report (1927-28).

112
On the other hand, some multi-family buildings appeared in large
concentrations—as we have seen already. One cause for this was a piece of land
being held off the real estate market for a number of years, as the surrounding area
slowly developed in one-family dwellings. The undeveloped parcel rose in value as
it gradually came to be precious, available property in a now-built-up area. Once
finally subdivided and released for sale, land prices were sufficiently high that more
intense development—in flats or apartments, for example—made perfect economic
sense. Several blocks of mostly four-flats developed in just this way in the
Southwest district of Los Angeles between about 1908 and 1920; see Chapter 3. In
the Wilshire district, just west of the Ambassador Hotel, multi-story apartment
buildings quickly rose side-by-side on Normandie and Mariposa Avenues, once a
late-selling parcel was subdivided and at last placed onto the market in 1923.
66
At
the height of an extraordinary real estate craze and population boom, it took only five
short years to practically cover a few dozen lots—bordered by older, much smaller
dwellings—with tall, dense housing stock; see Chapter 4.

Another important way to understand multi-family housing is via its social place in
the metropolis.
67
Various dwelling types were home to the poor, and to racial and

66
“Valuable Property Sold,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1923, V9.
67
See, for example, Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos
to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979), Chapter 9; Jacqueline Leavitt, “Charlotta A. Bass, the California Eagle, and
Black Settlement in Los Angeles,” in June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf, eds., Urban
Planning and the African American Community (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 1997), 167-
186.

113
ethnic minorities in Los Angeles. Some such housing was scattered across the basin,
but more often it was concentrated in particular areas circumscribed by formal or
informal means, or both. Also, the socio-cultural ranking of the rented multiple-unit
below the owned house—visible in the larger US culture and in emerging urban
policy—certainly figured into the social map of housing in Los Angeles. Yet the
local political economy and high rate of transient population rendered multi-family
accommodations commonplace, if not as respectable as detached abodes.
By 1900, dense slum housing had become a major concern for Progressive
reformers in most American cities, largely due to the high proportion of foreign
immigrants residing therein.
68
Los Angeles was no exception, and social activists set
their sights on house courts; indeed, courts were the object of the municipality’s first
housing code (see Chapter 1). Because Mexicans and Mexican-Americans
comprised the region’s largest and most visible racial minority, and since many such
families occupied house court units, the ethnic origin of one was often conflated with
the visibly negative conditions of the other. This phenomenon was displayed in the
common and even official usage of the term “Cholo court”
69
to broadbrush the type,
as well as the appellation “Sonoratown” for the Plaza area north of downtown where
a large concentration of Mexicans resided.
70
This practice “attests to the importance

68
Roy Lubove, The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City,
1890-1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), Chapters 4-8; Paul Boyer, Urban
Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978),
179-180, 234-235.
69
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report, 1908, 8. “Cholo” was slang for
Mexican.
70
George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano
Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 72-74.

114
of place in the making of a system of racial classification,” according to cultural
geographer Kay Anderson.
71
Such pejoratives ignored the reality that many
nationalities could be found in courts—the dominant group being white Americans.
72

House courts were usually developed by landlords trying to profit from the
great demand for easily reached housing for low-wage labor; as a result, many were
located in or near industrial districts. It was not unusual for small shacks and
cottages to be crammed onto a lot itself sandwiched between factories or other
manufacturing establishments. At the citywide scale, many such places were near
railroad lines, the Los Angeles River, and the harbor in San Pedro.
In addition to its official acceptance of certain racist terminology, the local
state played a larger role in keeping residential space segregated. The use of racially
restrictive covenants in land deeds was increasing among subdividers and building
developers in Los Angeles, as it was in many places.
73
Though technically part of a
private contract, such deed restrictions depended on all levels of government for their
enforcement. So, racial segregation begun by the informal, private practices of

71
Kay J. Anderson, “The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in
the Making of a Racial Category,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (December
1987), 594; emphasis added. The author develops a case study of Vancouver, B.C.’s Chinatown to
examine the relationship between Anglo state power and the spatial marginalization of a racial
minority.
72
Surveys of house courts found residents of Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Slavic
descent, as well as Mexicans and, mostly, Americans. See Emory Bogardus, “The House Court
Problem,” American Journal of Sociology 22, (November 1916), 398; Los Angeles Housing
Commission, Annual Report, 1910, 18.
73
On the general and specific uses of private deed restrictions, see Helen C. Monchow, The
Use of Deed Restrictions in Subdivision Development (Chicago: Institute for Land Economics and
Public Utilities, 1928).

115
property owners choosing on their own not to sell or rent to a Mexican, Chinese, or
black American family was given formal sanction by the legal system.
Before the 1910s, the relatively small numbers of black Angelenos were not
excluded from residing in most parts of the city. But as more arrived from other
parts of the nation, whites’ resistance to the mobility of black families grew. The
already familiar legal instrument of racial deed restrictions was applied with greater
vigor and coverage by the region’s real estate apparatus, and by the early 1920s most
portions of the city were closed to blacks.
74
A few areas were left available,
including the Central Avenue area south of downtown. For some, single-family
home ownership within these districts remained viable. Over time, as the city’s
black population continued to grow, the new arrivals were forced into the limited
space of these unrestricted neighborhoods.
75
Families took in boarders, and single-
family houses were sometimes converted to rooming houses or apartments to
accommodate the influx. Concomitant with this residential densification was a
decline in quality and upkeep, since credit was often unavailable to blacks due to
racist lending policies. As a result, much-needed repairs and maintenance on a
prematurely aging housing stock in these areas often went undone.

74
Lawrence DeGraaf, “The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto,
1890-1930,” Pacific Historical Review 39 (1970), 323-352; and Lonnie G. Bunche III, “A Past Not
Necessarily Prologue: The Afro-American in Los Angeles Since 1900,” in Norman M. Klein and
Martin J. Schiesl, eds., 20
th
Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict (Claremont
CA: Regina Books, 1990), 101-130.
75
Rick Moss, “Not Quite Paradise: The Development of the African American Community in
Los Angeles Through 1950,” California History 75 (Fall 1996), 222-235.

116
Glimmers of hope were visible, however. African-American dentist and real
estate entrepreneur J.H. Somerville developed the Hotel Somerville (now Dunbar
Hotel) on South Central Avenue; it opened in 1928. The large hostelry quickly
became a critical component of the black community in social, material, and
symbolic ways. It gave a wide range of black society, from prominent entertainers
and middle-class tourists to “transient travelers and railroad workers … who prefer
the hotel to private or rooming houses,”
76
a new shelter option unavailable elsewhere
in the city. That same year, Dr. Somerville also made plans to build a three-story,
27-unit apartment building just a few blocks from the hotel, on Vernon Avenue.
This project would undoubtedly offer even more domestic-type amenities for long-
term housekeeping than the hotel. In the same area south of downtown, J.H. Sykes,
another black rentier, was leasing units in his newly completed four-flat—his second
one that year.
77
Such newly-built multiple dwellings were welcome alternatives to
the more common single-family house conversions so common in segregated areas
of the city. Not until racial covenants were declared unconstitutional in 1948 would
the barriers begin to lift on African American residential space in Los Angeles,
finally easing the intense pressure on an overloaded dwelling inventory.
78

Small multiple-unit dwellings were also found outside of the South Central
area, in the Southwest district about two miles west. Single-family houses,
conversions and rear house additions, as well as duplexes and flats, could be found in

76
California Eagle, December 23, 1927, 1.
77
Ibid.
78
Moss, 234-25.

117
this area noted as a “colored district” on Sanborn fire insurance maps. These maps
showed several blocks on both sides of the “color line” from 1922 and 1950.
Generally speaking, development on both sides of the line (here, Normandie Avenue
at Jefferson Boulevard) appeared quite similar at both moments in time—at least in
terms of dwelling types. Most of the multi-family stock was built after 1922, as the
entire area grew in population—whites east of Normandie, blacks west.

HOW MUCH HOUSING?
Los Angeles’s stock of multi-family housing in the first part of the twentieth
century has been undercounted, leading to an underestimation of its significance in
the city’s urbanization. Quantification methods for this task, to the extent they have
been employed, are very basic; they include brief examination of census data,
comparison of land-use patterns, and the aggregating of building permit information.
Each has its limitations, but may still shed light on the relative distribution of the
city’s dwelling types.
79

Aside from the normal difficulties of manipulating disparate data into
comparable form, circular reasoning may have led historians thus far to settle for
simplified measurements. The apparent prevalence of the single-family dwelling,

79
The enumeration of buildings (more precisely, building permits) rather than the number of
dwelling units therein can be a problem. In this measurement, a single-family house scores the same
value as a 40-unit apartment building. Such a technique is understandable because it utilizes data as it
appears in the sources; but it is not terribly useful in amassing a comparison of housing types.
Another measure of dubious value is the amount of land zoned for different residential uses. Such is
often the subject of published planning reports, and is interesting for a variety of reasons. But since it
does not measure actual, built dwellings, it is limited for our purposes here.

118
both in the landscape and in the historiography, may have caused anyone trying to
quantify Los Angeles’s “other” housing not to look very far. Following this, the
resulting undercount could have reinforced the “dominance” of the detached house
once more. The few attempts to uncover multi-family housing in Los Angeles are all
the more important (and misleading) in their rarity, for they have become the
accepted “proof” that the city’s apartments and flats were few and, by extension, not
so important.
In The Fragmented Metropolis, Robert Fogelson, to his credit, does discuss
multi-family housing in Los Angeles—mainly, the sharp increase in apartment
construction during the 1920s. But his reliance on one basic statistic leads to
limitations. He cites the 1930 federal census, which showed 3.8 percent of Los
Angeles (city) households residing in duplexes, and 2.4 percent of households in
multiple-dwellings (of three or more units); this left almost 94 percent in single-
family housing.
80
Unfortunately, the census examined only “permanent” residence
situations,
81
and ignored the region’s legions of “temporary” residents occupying
their considerable share of the housing stock.
82
In all likelihood, thousands of
individuals and families renting apartments, flats and bungalow courts in Los
Angeles listed their “residence” as one dwelling type or another back in Buffalo,

80
Fogelson, 146.
81
U.S. Department of Commerce, Twenty Censuses: Population and Housing Questions, 1790-
1980 (Washington D.C., U.S. General Printing Office, 1978), 50. Census workers were instructed to
apply the “usual place of abode” criteria, enumerating only households in “the place where [such]
persons may be said to live or belong, or the place which is their home[.]” The average duration of
most tourist visits to Los Angeles was about three months.

119
Cincinnati, St. Louis, or Wichita.
83
By depending solely on the enumeration of full-
time Angelenos, this method missed a whole segment of the shelter inventory largely
dedicated to transient population.
At one point, Fogelson narrowly sums up the residential preferences of white
“native Americans” in Los Angeles this way: “Not for them multi-family
dwellings[.]”
84
Of course, a great many such folks did in fact choose a house instead
of an apartment. Yet not all, and in one stroke, he sweeps aside the housing choice
made by many Angelenos who found renting a flat, apartment, or even a room in a
lodging house the better option at the time. Research by both Clark Davis and Gail
Sansbury has shown that young, white women and men, in white-collar jobs in and
around downtown, commonly occupied such shelter from the 1920s into the 1950s.
85

In another attempt to show the disparity between sectors of housing, Robert
Fishman in Bourgeois Utopias quotes a 1941 report showing that “31 percent of the
city’s land was devoted to single family houses, with only 2 percent to multiple
family dwellings.”
86
He uses this statistic to support his narrative of “the quest for a
city based on the single family home.”
87
And, while it is somewhat informative to

82
The Eberle firm calculated that about one in seven “dwellings” (houses, duplexes, flats,
courts and apartments) was occupied by a tourist household in 1928. Eberle Economic Service,
Tourist Survey of Southern California for The All-Year Club of Southern California (1929).
83
These “guest” households in Los Angeles, probably not enumerated there, were likeliest to
rent a room or flat than a house. This would help explain the extremely low percentage of multi-
family occupancy reported.
84
Fogelson, 145.
85
Davis, Chapter 3; Gail Sansbury, “Journeys to Work: Gender, Work Landscapes, and Urban
Form,” (PhD Thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 2000).
86
Fishman, 177, cites: County of Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission, “A
Comprehensive Report on the Master Plan of Highways” (1941), 23.
87
Fishman, 181.

120
sample one planning proposal at one point in time, these numbers are misleading.
Measurement of area—even if limited to land actually occupied by the designated
use—provides a skewed assessment of housing. If finding the number of dwelling
units in various building types is useful—and I believe it is—then land area
comparison is as limited in its explanatory power as the census. Just as with the
counting of building permits, comparing an acre of single-family property to one of
multi-family ignores the question of density. Complicating this further is the fact of
different lot sizes. Though sizes varied considerably across the metropolis, lots in
the central city (likelier to hold apartment buildings of many units) may have tended
to be smaller than lots in peripheral subdivisions (likelier to hold a single
dwelling).
88
This could tilt a land-use contrast even more.

This criticism of past scholarship is offered carefully, however, and has less to do
with the (reasonable) use of available sources than with the sometimes-broad
conclusions drawn from those sources. The failure to dig deeper than the 1930
census summary leads Fogelson to call “apartment houses … an extremely small
fraction of all housing in Los Angeles.”
89
Yet, just a few years before the census, the
Eberle firm of economic researchers had already found that “[a]bout half of our
family accommodations [dwelling units] are in single-family houses, while the other

88
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report, 1925, on subdivisions and lots…
89
Fogelson, 151; emphasis added.

121
half are in multiple-family houses with apartments as the most important type.”
90

Contra Fogelson, for many of them multi-family dwellings.
Aside from this 1924 report, the attempt at quantification is a fascinating yet
frustrating trudge through the archives, characterized by often overlapping or unclear
definitions, and partial or incongruent counting methods. Building permit data offers
probably the most available source for description of the housing stock in some level
of detail.
Individual dwelling units (termed “family capacities”) were not separately
enumerated on building permit applications until 1914.
91
For earlier periods,
declared valuations—estimates of the cost to construct—can be substituted.
92
One
way to gauge new multi-family housing is to calculate its proportion of total new
residential development, using valuations. In 1900, 4.9 percent of valuations for all
new (permitted) residential construction was in flats and apartments; 95.1 percent
was in single-family dwellings. In 1901, the multi-family share was 9.3 percent; in
1903, 21.2 percent; in 1904, 18.3 percent.
93
In 1920, this proportion was 23.4

90
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, November 1925, n.p.; emphasis
added.
91
Observed in a spot survey of microfilmed permit applications at the Department of Building
and Safety. An actual count of every permit application from sample years 1910 and 1915 is
anticipated to help fill the wide gap between 1904 and 1920, before and after which departmental
reports offer select aggregated data.
92
Building permit valuation data is a fairly standard proxy for quantification of new
development, but it is not without its problems. First, not all projects permitted actually get built, or
built that same year. Second, valuations are usually declared by the applicant-developer, who might
have reason to underestimate (to avoid higher permit fees based on percentage of valuation) or
overestimate (to meet deed restrictions’ minimum requirements with cheaper construction). Beyond
these factors, not all builders obtain permits. No reliable method is known to correct for these
limitations.
93
Los Angeles Superintendent of Buildings, Annual Reports (1900; 1901; 1903; 1904). These
figures include flats and apartments; duplexes are not separately enumerated.

122
percent of all new residential construction. During the following decade, speculation
in all kinds of multiple-unit housing would soar, but especially in large apartment
buildings—even as single-family house construction declined. In 1926, multiples
constituted a huge 40.9 percent; in 1928, an all-time high of 58.2 percent; and in
1930, just under half, at 49.1 percent.
94
Again, these numbers refer to new
construction (dollars budgeted) each year, and do not include the accumulated,
existing housing stock. Still, they offer insight into the growing popularity of multi-
family accommodations; see Figure 10.
Building department statistics did not mention or enumerate house- or
bungalow courts. This is mysterious, and may be due to the housing commission’s
separate jurisdiction over this type. And even though the commission’s charge was
deleterious multi-family housing, it is highly probable that, as time went by, the
more substantially built bungalow courts were included in this category—if only,
perhaps, for demonstrating progress. The first housing survey in 1906 found 68
courts; in 1910, 260 courts; in 1913, 621 courts; and in 1915, 1,202 courts were
counted. These statistics did not specify numbers of individual units, but
occasionally indicated total occupancy. Nearly ten thousand people inhabited the
621 courts in 1913, and over sixteen thousand the 1,202 courts two years later.
95

94
Los Angeles Building and Safety Commission, Annual Reports (1919-1920; 1926; 1928;
1930). These figures include duplexes, flats and apartments.
95
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Reports (1908), 10; (1910), 4, 18; (1913), 19;
Bogardus, 399.

123

Figure 10. New residential construction by type, 1900-1930 (intermittent).

This sampling (sporadic due to limited availability of data) of projected costs noted on new building
permits is another indication of a significant proportion of Los Angeles’s housing units in multiple
dwellings, especially as the city grew during the early twentieth century. (Annual reports of the Los
Angeles Superintendent of Buildings and Building and Safety Commission.)

124
This proliferation prompted commissioners to note with concern that courts “spring
up as rapidly as other California products.”
96

As already mentioned, statistics calculating the total housing stock in the city
are very hard to come by. Fortunately, the Eberle firm did massive amounts of real
estate and housing research in the 1920s, offering a snapshot of the big picture.
97

Their 1924 report broke down the city’s approximately 328,816 housing units into
types as shown in Figure 11.
Though quantification is a real challenge, it is plainly worth pursuing. Even
without numbers, a close read of popular- and trade publications and municipal
records covering various aspects of urban development supports the claim that multi-
family housing was an important part of the city’s political, economic, and social
fabric. New statistics only confirm this, and demonstrate that this housing sector
also became significant in the built environment as well.

96
Los Angeles Housing Commission, Annual Report (1913), 10.
97
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, November 1, 1924, n.p.

125

Figure 11. Dwelling units by type, 1924.

This calculation of the city of Los Angeles’s housing stock by the Eberle Economics firm quickly
shatters the notion of a city of single-family houses. (Eberle Economics Service, newsletter.)

126
Chapter 3

Apartments in Disguise: A Case Study of Suburban Densification
in Southwest Los Angeles, 1900-1950

“We have lived here twenty years … and of course I have seen many
changes in the neighborhood. They are the changes you would get
when the country changes to the city, and this is just what has
happened.”
1

—A resident of southwest Los Angeles in 1928

By the mid-1920s, nearly half of the housing units in the city of Los Angeles were in
multi-family dwellings.
2
Civic promoters maintained (as they had for years, and
have since) that their city was a residential paradise of single-family homes set in
spacious gardens. Part of this claim was sheer boosterism, but part seemed to be
borne out in an expansive urban landscape of detached houses on individual lots.
But while single-family development did characterize much of the local shelter
market, small multiple dwellings came to constitute a substantial and growing
segment as well. The physical similarity of these duplexes, four-flats, and bungalow
courts to private houses was intentional, and their construction in large numbers
helped to maintain the image of a “city of homes” while permitting a higher
residential density befitting a growing metropolis.
Southwest Los Angeles was one place of many experiencing a gradual
transformation—from single- to small multi-family homes as early inner-ring

1
Bessie Averne McLenahan, The Changing Urban Neighborhood: From Neighbor to Nigh-
Dweller (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1929), 57, interview no. 323.
2
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, November 30, 1925. The
consulting firm calculated that 48.17% of units were in various forms of multiple dwellings: duplexes,
flats, bungalow courts and apartment buildings.

127
suburbs densified between 1910 and the 1930s. This area did contain an unusual
component, however: a sizable subdivision that became an island of small apartment
buildings (disguised as large houses) before its surroundings began the more
common long-term, piecemeal transition to such housing. Architectural ingenuity
partially blurred the distinctions between this neighborhood (with its heavy
concentration of flats and duplexes) and its those around it; by 1950, any visible
differences that might have existed were gone, as these dwelling types had been built
in ever greater numbers, nearby and all over the region. What is the story behind this
part of Los Angeles? And does it help us understand the city’s urbanization in
general?

METHODS AND SOURCES
The aim of this case study is to describe the housing stock and its process of
development in a sample section of Los Angeles built between 1900 and the 1930s.
The focus is on (primarily new) multi-family structures. The overall character of the
selected area went from crops to houses to apartments in the first half of the
twentieth century—with one portion skipping the intermediate step. Though this and
a few other aspects of this case are unusual, steps have been taken to render it
sufficiently representative to offer general lessons about multi-family housing
development in the city at large. (Issues of representativeness are discussed at end of
the chapter.)

128
I employ a vernacular landscape approach for this work, whereby ordinary
built environments are mined for data not found in traditional sources. “Within
cultural landscape methods, the primacy of visual and spatial information is a central
theme,” according to one of this technique’s leading champions.
3
Field observation
of extant conditions is another important part of this method, used in conjunction
with available graphic depictions of the territorial specimen—usually, maps and
historic photographs. Such data is put to work alongside conventional documentary
materials. This augmentation of a wide array of textual evidence with the city itself,
in person and in visual representations, makes for a more fully explicated historical
model to scrutinize.
4

My case study is observable at multiple scales, and explored in three sections
decreasing in size while increasing in detail; see Figures 12 and 13. The largest is
about a half square-mile which began the twentieth century as an ostensibly “typical”
new suburb of single-family residential development at the southwest edge of the
city, just west of the new University of Southern California (established 1888).

3
Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study,” in Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi,
eds., Understanding Ordinary Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1-21; quotation
page 15.
4
In “Landscape and Archives as Texts,” in Groth and Bressi, 44-55, Deryck W. Holdsworth
argues for aggressive work to synthesize the visual with the textual in analyzing ordinary residential
environments. “Relying on landscape evidence alone for work on … housing would be” limiting,
“but it is work on issues like land and property markets and … regulations like zoning that provides a
firmer arena for understanding,” 47.

129

Figure 12. Schematic map of Southwest Los Angeles case study, indicating areas
sampled and/or studied in various primary sources. (By author.)

130

Figure 13. Master sketch-map of Southwest Los Angeles case study. (Drawn by
author on map from William G. Baist, Baist Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Los
Angeles, California, 1910.)

131
On the accompanying maps, Sites 3 and 4 together mark this sample area, which is
generally bounded by Vermont Avenue on the east, Adams Street on the north,
Dalton and Normandie Avenues on the west, and Exposition Boulevard on the south.
Site 3 is described in Sanborn fire insurance maps from 1907, 1922 and 1950, which
show the building stock at a remarkable level of detail, including footprints, heights,
construction type, functions, and dwelling-unit counts; see Figures 14, 17 and 18.
5

The Baist Real Estate Atlas from 1910, less detailed than Sanborn maps,
nevertheless adds data about recent construction at a crucial moment in the area’s
development.
6
Site 4 is the domain of analysis in a detailed sociological study
researched in 1927-28, which provides helpful statistics on its shelter inventory and
occupancy. Moreover, its ethnographic methodology adds a wealth of information
about residents’ practices and perceptions vis-a-vis multi-family housing.
7
As a
result, this source is heavily drawn from herein.
8

5
Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5 and 6 (1907; 1922;
1950).
6
William G. Baist, Baist Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Los Angeles, California, (1910).
7
The study area in McClenahan’s 1928 sociology dissertation (published 1929) is bounded by
Jefferson Boulevard on the north, Normandie Avenue on the West, and Vermont Avenue on the east.
The southern boundary street is not listed by name, but noted as “a railroad”; this can only mean
Exposition Boulevard. The northeast quadrant of this square was elided from her survey because of
its growing non-white population. McLenahan described the housing stock in her area (Site 4),
though in much less physical detail than is visible in insurance- and real estate maps. In addition, via
extensive interviews with residents, she provides contemporaneous commentary on both the demand
for new rental apartments (by renters for shelter, and by landlords for income) as well as reactions to
these developments by neighbors.
8
My case study benefits from McLenahan’s in multiple ways. First, her site, roughly a half-
mile square, is adjacent to the Reed Terrace subdivision. Second, both areas underwent development
from acreage into town lots and buildings during the same period. And, though focusing on societal
relationships in a rapidly changing city, her project includes data on the history, development, housing
stock, and population of her site and its wider surroundings.

132
The second section I analyze is a subdivision (Site 2) that became occupied
by mostly small multiple dwellings well before neighboring areas did. Reed Terrace
is a 35-acre parcel that developed differently than its immediate environs (in Sites 3
and 4) at first, due to speculation and chicanery in local real estate. Over time, as the
city grew in this direction, the surrounding single-family housing inventory came to
resemble the denser forms inside this tract. Sanborn maps tell us about this unusual
neighborhood’s building stock; and a sales brochure from 1914 sheds more light on
its types and timing compared to competing real estate ventures nearby.
9

My third area of study is one block of Van Buren Place (Site 1), straddling
the boundary between Reed Terrace (Site 2) and its surroundings (Site 3). This
choice allows a focused look at the two basic forms of residential densification—
initial, wherein multiple dwellings are the first structures built (unusual in this early
period on a large scale) versus transitional, where multiples are second-stage re-
development in already occupied neighborhoods (commonplace). This difference is
visible at eye level, though not pronounced due to the outward likeness of building
types. One side of this street was occupied by small multiples, the other by houses.
Significantly, this split became blurred over time: the “house” side eventually
received three multi-family dwellings, as did thousands of city blocks as urban
development intensified with population growth. For this site, investigation at the
lot- and building level is called for: the searching out of individual owners’
circumstances and decisions on how, when, and what to build on their piece of Van

9
Brochure, “Reed Terrace,” n.d., ca. 1914. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Collection,

133
Buren Place. Building permit data guides us here, disclosing the particulars of each
property’s owner, architect, and builder (sometimes one and the same person), as
well as information about actual (and sometimes only proposed) structures.
A fourth area (Site 5) is also of interest. It is part of one of the city’s few
“colored districts” open to blacks and other segregated minorities (beginning in the
late 1910s), located in one corner of the Sanborn sample (Site 3). Inclusion of this
zone allows for a limited comparison of racially restricted versus unrestricted multi-
family residential development, as small areas from other unrestricted parts of the
city are also sampled.

THE EARLY RESIDENTIAL LANDSCAPE
Much of this part of Los Angeles County was sold off in large tracts in the
1870s by owners of vast former rancho lands. Many new owners turned around and
sold off sizeable pieces of these tracts in acreage for farming.
10
This part of Los
Angeles, along with many others, received a major boost in sales as a result of the
booms in population and real estate in the late 1880s.
11
One account reports that, by
1886, “portents of the modern southwestern expansion [of the city] became more and
more evident. Barren lands in the vicinity of the University … rose to $1,000 per

Southern California Regional History Collection.
10
McLenahan, 11-12, reports that the territory home to her study area was a federal grant to
Mary Newman, made in 1875.
11
Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (San Marino CA: The
Huntingon Library, 1963), Chapters 3-5 especially.

134
acre[.]”
12
Cultural institutions have often acted as magnets for urban development,
and USC proved no exception. Yet this trajectory of growth offered settlers even
more: both escape from more intensive industrial development to the southeast of
downtown as well as better proximity to coastal recreational opportunities to the
west.
Eventually, the Southwest district was annexed by the municipality in two
sections, in 1896 and 1899.
13
Much of the farmland was further subdivided into
house lots between 1887 and 1903, with the first decade after 1900 being the
heaviest period of actual housing construction.
14
These accounts jibe with detailed
maps from 1907 and 1910 of Reed Terrace and environs—which include the
northern portion of McLenahan’s study zone (Sites 3, 4, and 5).
So, shortly after 1900, the Southwest district of Los Angeles was on its way
to a reputation as a desirable residential section. Adams Street was beginning to
stretch westward as a thoroughfare of large and stately mansions on spacious lots.
South of Adams and west of Vermont Avenue, myriad subdivisions ranging in size
from one to several square blocks were filling out in single-family houses on town
lots. Both houses and lots varied in size and configuration (and, presumably,
quality), but the general effect supported boosters’ contention of a “city of homes”—
“home” being synonymous with detached, one-family dwelling.

12
Dumke, 44.
13
Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967; 1993), 226.
14
McLenahan, 11.

135
Urbanization would not take very long. One area resident would later recall
that, in about 1903, “this place was considered out in the country.”
15
Another
recalled his first trip years earlier, via horse and buggy, to see his future purchase: “I
thought we would never get here.”
16
One remarked that “by about 1910, the area
was fairly well built-up,”
17
though “the streets beyond were barley fields.”
18
By the
time McLenahan surveyed these neighbors in the late 1920s, this part of the
Southwest district was described as “desirable for dwelling purposes, especially for
people seeking to live close-in.”
19
In barely a quarter-century, the perception of the
area (for some, at least) had gone from rural hinterland to thriving, downtown-
adjacent suburb.

REED TERRACE TO 1914
Reed Terrace was purchased by Isaac N. Reed in 1879 for $8,000. The
(originally) 40-acre tract was one of multiple thousands of comparatively small units
within the grid of the federal rectangular survey—this one, part of township 2 south,
range 14 west, section 1 as designated under the US Public Land Survey System.
20

The Los Angeles region had been surveyed in the 1850s and ‘60s, and the resulting
section- and quarter-section lines would heavily influence much of the city’s

15
McLenahan, 22, interview no. 166.
16
Ibid., 41, interview no. 77.
17
Ibid., 11.
18
Ibid., 37, interview no. 484, emphasis added.
19
Ibid., 6.
20
“Real Estate Transfers,” LAT November 15, 1891, 14.

136
development pattern.
21
According to a brief history of the parcel, Reed—who
“became rich through the sale of a cheap book on medicine”—held his property off
the market for decades, as surrounding land-owners subdivided and sold off their
land, either in acreage to small farmers or in lots to house-builders. Apparently, “this
method of buying a large block of land near some rapidly-growing city and holding
it until the growth of the busting town reaches out … was a particular hobby of Mr.
Reed, [who] had no less [sic] than four of these tracts” —one each in Denver,
Chicago and New Orleans as well as Los Angeles. This speculative scheme had paid
off, literally, and “made the widow and heirs surpassingly rich.”
22

That the late Isaac Reed’s neighbors did not share his strategy of waiting to
subdivide and sell eventually rendered his parcel all the more valuable: his
considerably large tract stayed vacant as adjacent areas were developed between
1879 and 1906. (An approximately five-acre lot in the parcel’s northeast corner was
improved with two sizable dwellings by 1907, one of them possibly the family
homestead.) Yet not all of those close-by quickly sold off all their land: a few held
on nearly as long. In 1901, sales of two nearby tracts were announced: one of
twenty-five lots just across Normandie Avenue up at Adams Street, and another of
sixty lots a couple of blocks further north.
23
And in 1903, the forty lots in a tract just
two blocks north of the future Reed Terrace came onto the market, and apparently

21
W.W. Robinson, Land In California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948; 1979),
Chapter 15.
22
“Romantic Story of Reed Estate,” LAT, May 26, 1907, V1.
23
“Among Real Estate Owners and Dealers,” LAT, September 15, 1901, A1.

137
sold like hotcakes.
24
So the Reed family’s decision to wait then finally sell was by
no means unheard of, only tardy when compared to most surrounding parcels.
However, the large size of the Reed parcel was unusual, and did warrant scrutiny by
real estate observers: “the new thirty-five-acre subdivision in the Southwest has
aroused much interest among realty holders of the district…. It seems that near-by
property holders have been waiting for the opening of this tract before fixing prices
upon their property, and a general [increase] is expected.”
25

In 1906, the Jones and Ryder Land Company purchased the remaining thirty-
five acres from the Reed estate for a reported $225,000.
26
The new owner
subdivided the property into seven blocks holding 166 lots (Site 2).
27
Twenty-four
of the lots—those fronting along Jefferson Street and its streetcar line—were
advertised for their commercial potential. The remaining 142 lots were dedicated to
residential use, and separated from the commercial lots by a service alley.
28

24
Ibid.; LAT, September 20, 1903.
25
“Real Estate Notes,” LAT May 13, 1906, V1.
26
The parcel was referred to by its legally recorded name, the “Poole and Jones Tract” until
1909, when it was christened “Reed Terrace” by a subsequent owner (possibly the Janss Investment
Company); LAT January 10, 1909, I12.
27
Descriptions of the subdivision vary in minor ways between the 1907 Sanborn map, the
account in the Times, the 1910 Baist map, and the ca. 1914 Reed Terrace brochure. For the purposes
here, the latter document will be referred to. An eighth block, probably part of Reed’s initial forty
acres, was not included in Reed Terrace—except for four lots at its south end. This made for a total
of essentially 7.2 blocks holding the 166 lots. The large remainder of the eighth block (of about five
acres) appears to have been held by the Reed family as part of the original estate and homestead,
eventually subdivided and sold off separately. By 1915, building permit applications show proposed
development on what was probably the subdivided homestead.
28
These functional assignments predated the city’s 1921 zoning ordinance, and would have
been accomplished via private deed restrictions. See Helen C. Monchow, The Use of Deed
Restrictions in Subdivision Development (Chicago: Institute for Research in Land Economics and
Public Utilities, 1928).

138
Reed Terrace’s debut was comparatively late, but there was no question that
it was ideally suited to take its place among the district’s desirable residential
neighborhoods. Jones and Ryder, in the spirit of countless contemporaries,
advertised their new subdivision with enthusiasm. Large and frequent display ads
touted the tract’s accessibility and elegance. Even though Jefferson was still a dirt
road this far out, they pledged, “when the paving is completed [it] will be one of the
most desirable avenues of trade in Los Angeles.”
29
Buyers apparently believed this,
for the two dozen Jefferson lots reportedly sold early. But promotions of Reed
Terrace focused on its 142 “splendid residence lots,” complete with a $3,000
minimum building-cost restriction to ensure that new single-family houses would be
of substantial construction. (In this period before the widespread vertical integration
of residential development, a subdivider’s job was done once the lot was sold; the
buyer typically contracted separately for dwelling construction.) Telephone and
electric service was already installed, the ads promised, and gas and water were on
the way.
30

Everything was in place for swift transactions and development by home-builders.
Certainly this came true in the three nearby, smaller subdivisions already mentioned:
cut up and marketed in 1901 and 1903, most of their residential lots were built with

29
Display advertisement, LAT September 17, 1906, I12.
30
Display advertisement, LAT September 20, 1906, I16.

139
single-family bungalows by 1907.
31
Jones and Ryder apparently had no trouble
selling their lots, either. Newspaper reports had seventy-five—nearly half the total—
sold in the first year; in another two years, all but six had been sold.
32

But despite reportedly robust sales, Reed Terrace would fill in slowly—and,
eventually, mostly with small multiple-unit residences. How come? Though flats
and apartment buildings were becoming increasingly common in Los Angeles, they
were far outnumbered by single-family dwellings. Also, multi-family housing at this
time was much likelier to be found in central urban districts of mixed land uses—
downtown, in other words—than in outlying neighborhoods. So why would Jones
and Ryder’s new subdivision take this unusual turn?

Single-family residential development completely surrounded the new tract,
according to 1907 Sanborn maps.
33
In the sample area (Site 3) extending two to
three blocks in every direction beyond the Reed Terrace boundaries, three-fourths of
the approximately 1,050 lots were already developed. Of those 803 built lots,
ninety-six percent held detached one-family houses, ranging from small to large. Yet
even at this early date in this suburban location, multi-family rental housing was
already visible. Eleven lots held two separate dwellings. Two lots held a total of

31
Sanborns from 1907 show all of the 1901 Prudential Company tract’s 18 residential lots
occupied. The 1901 tract up at Normandie and 22
nd
Street held 60 lots, 52 of which were occupied.
And 21 of the 32 residential lots in the 1903 West Adams Street tract, just north of the Reed property,
were developed. All of the structures were single-family dwellings.
32
“Romantic Story…”; LAT January 10, 1909, I12.
33
Sanborn maps dated 1907 were assembled for an area approximately a half-mile square
centered on Reed Terrace. The surrounding area is comprised of about 1,050 lots encircling the 166

140
four (evidently purpose-built) duplex dwellings, and a two-story commercial
building on Vermont Avenue contained flats on its second story over ground-floor
shops. Eighteen remaining lots were occupied by a range of small business
structures, most located on major streets: one- and two-story store buildings on
Adams, Jefferson (both along streetcar lines) and Vermont. Otherwise these budding
thoroughfares were lined with stretches of vacant lots and single-family houses.
Reed Terrace itself appears on the 1907 map as an empty, quarter-mile-
square hole in this otherwise tight fabric of detached houses; see Figure 14. (The
only speck on this clean slate was a brand new two-story residence built by owner
S.A. Harper on Kenwood Avenue.
34
) Of course, vacancy is not surprising so soon
after sales began. Yet the subdivision would develop only at a snail’s pace,
considering the supposedly high demand for accessible house lots in the attractive
Southwest district. Again, lot sales proceeded somewhat briskly, if newspaper real
estate reporting is any indication. Yet actual construction lagged: four years after the
tract went on sale, only 13 of it 142 residential lots (nine percent) had been built
upon; another four years brought the total only to 41 (twenty-nine percent). In
1914—eight years after coming on line—over a hundred lots were still empty.

in Jones and Ryder’s tract. Corresponding maps were assembled from the 1922 and 1950 volumes for
longitudinal analysis.
34
“At the City’s Gates,” LAT April 8, 1907, I15.

141

Figure 14. Sanborn map dated 1907 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the Reed Terrace
subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3.

Single-family dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange; other structures, purple.
(Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5 and 6, 1907.)

142
What was the problem? Why was this subdivision so slow to fill in with new
houses? And what did this mean for further development? Obviously, Isaac Reed’s
(and heirs’) decision to hold off “[w]hile waiting for the propitious moment” to sell
explains some of the delay.
35
But why did Reed Terrace continue to languish once it
finally went on the market in 1906?
The answer may have been as simple as that chestnut of urban lore: the shady
real estate speculator. Items in the Los Angeles Times refer to unclear title “owing
to the delay in closing up the Reed estate”
36
as well as a point “when the [Jones and
Ryder] company went into financial difficulties” in April 1907.
37
Such stories would
help to explain the absence of construction despite initially respectable lot sales.
Some buyers may have been hesitant to improve their new property for fear that they
might ultimately be unable to prove title. Others may have halted further payment,
letting their lot revert by refusing to throw good money after (possibly) bad. Still
others may have chosen to apply the wait-and-speculate strategy themselves to their
lot(s), hoping for a larger profit further down the line. The relative few who did
build early on may have been unaware of the risk, or unconcerned.
38
Misgivings
about Reed Terrace ultimately subsided, but not before the news got worse about its
subdivider.

35
“Romantic Story…”
36
“Great Tract Sold,” LAT March 24, 1907, V1.
37
“Romantic Story…”
38
Los Angeles Office of the Superintendent of Buildings, Annual Report, 1901, 2. Apparently,
the eagerness to develop sometimes trumped peoples’ judgment, and new construction might be
commenced before land title had been perfected. The city’s chief building inspector reported that, as
part of his duty, “I have insisted that the owner verify [the] property upon which he is about to build

143
Two to three years after Reed Terrace’s debut, the proprietor of the Jones and
Ryder firm scandalized the local real estate scene. L.E. Jones’s company had been
subdividing and selling land in the city’s Southwest district at least since 1904.
39

Overextended but constantly on the lookout for new ventures (and unwitting buyers),
Jones repeatedly failed to keep up with his obligations—operating more on promises
than working capital.
40
Evidently, he was often just a step ahead of discovery of his
“shady dealings.” After fleecing one too many clients, Jones was arrested in
February of 1909. A string of news stories followed over the next few months, in
which he was alleged “to have wronged a very large number of purchasers of city
property, and both lenders and borrowers of realty mortgages.”
41
The Los Angeles
Realty Board—quick to point out that Jones was not a member—mounted an
investigation. Just days after his arrest, he jumped bail and fled the city, supposedly
to Mexico, leaving his bride of six months to field a growing number of angry
inquiries.
42
His car was repossessed and his office furniture sold off. Though he had

… before the permit is issued. By so doing, many mistakes have been avoided.” This rule may not
have been completely enforced.
39
LAT September 18, 1904, D2. The Jones and Ryder Company was listed as the intermediary
in the sale of a lot and house on Budlong Avenue just two blocks north of the future Reed Terrace
subdivision.
40
“The favorite method pursued by Jones in his dealings was to take money from clients in
exchange for mortgages, which he would promise to deliver in a few days. The clients would leave
their money, take receipt for it, and then wait for the mortgage, which never came. Neither could they
secure a return of their money[.] … Jones was able to pull off these deals through the medium of an
escrow department, which he ran in connection with his business.” “Crash Comes with Force,” LAT
February 20, 1909, I13.
41
“Realty Board Serves Public,” LAT June 6, 1909, I13.
42
“Real Estate Jones is Lying Very Low,” LAT February 18, 1909, I12.

144
defenders, the Times reported: “Real estate men generally believe … that Los
Angeles has seen the last of Jones[.]”
43

In 1907, just a year after subdividing Reed Terrace and well before the
scandal hit the papers, the Jones and Ryder Company had sold off the tract to the
trustee of the Reed estate, who now represented an “eastern syndicate” of investors
which continued to sell lots.
44
So, by the time L.E. Jones landed in the hoosegow
then fled, Reed Terrace was no longer under his management. Still, the taint
attached to its original promoter could have greatly hindered further development
until matters were at last settled. After all, Los Angeles real estate was all at once
local obsession, economic engine, and new (and often dubious) profession.
Swindlers came and went, and word traveled fast. Jones had been stringing along
multiple property buyers and sellers for some time; it is not a stretch to imagine that
in the time before his arrest, his reputation had circulated quietly—not widely
enough to completely kill Reed Terrace, but enough to cripple it. And once the
scandal broke, sensational headlines such as “Jones and Ryder Co. Tumbles Into
Chaos” and “Cannot Resurrect Titles to Houses and Lots”—even if applying to other
neighborhoods—could have done nothing to boost confidence in a large tract like
Reed Terrace.
45

It appears that some of Jones’s various dealings may have been legitimate—a
lawful transaction probably depending upon who cashed their check from Jones and

43
“Crash Comes …”
44
“Great Tract Sold,” LAT March 24, 1907, V1.
45
“Badly Smell Dead Deeds,” LAT February 16, 1909, II10.

145
Ryder first. It is not clear whether any victims were buyers in Reed Terrace, but the
large subdivision’s requirement for fluid capital was the firm’s downfall, according
to one source.
46

Why are these tawdry details important? The further delay helps to explain
this neighborhood’s particular residential character. Isaac Reed’s initial, speculative
postponement to 1906 was part of this course of events, but not the whole story. If
Jones and Ryder had been on the up-and-up, its new subdivision might well have
filled up quickly in very few years. In that case, development would probably have
continued to mimic that of its surroundings: block after block of Craftsman-style
bungalows. But the additional time evidently needed for the dust of clouded land
titles to settle at Reed Terrace coincided with a growing demand for small rental
housing units outside the central city. This set of events, occurring on the heels of an
already-late release of the tract for sale, conspired to keep most of Reed Terrace
vacant past the point that the demand for small rental apartments had reached the
suburbs.

By 1912, the remainder of Reed Terrace was owned by the Janss Investment
Company, who continued to promote it for single-family residential development, at

46
According to his attorneys, “Jones went into the hole on the old Jones and Pool[e] tract”—
the legally recorded name of Reed Terrace. Years of robbing Peter to pay Paul in transactions
involving property as far away as Santa Barbara and even Michigan finally caught up with the
developer at a time when much of his cash was tied up in the large Southwestern subdivision. “Crash
Comes with Force,” LAT February 20, 1909, I13.

146
least at first.
47
One advertisement included it as one of the firm’s many tracts of
“high class residence lots … for bungalows, Swiss chalets, or large residences.” The
$3,000 minimum building cost restriction, enacted by Jones and Ryder, was
continued.
But the Janss firm saw an opportunity for something more. The demand for
rental housing units by consumers—renters—was only escalating in Los Angeles.
Many home-owners had taken to increasing their property’s earning power by adding
dwelling units in one form or another. Indeed, McLenahan later observed: “The
building of rear houses and the remodeling of the single house for more than one
family showed faint beginnings in 1914[.]”
48
At the next scale up, small multiple
dwellings of a few units were becoming popular both as forms of affordable housing
to residents and long-term visitors but also as investment property for owners in
many parts of the city. And though some Angelenos objected to apartment buildings
as interlopers intruding upon otherwise quiet “home districts,” architects and builders
had innovated a particular type that resembled a large single-family house and gave
each of the four units a front door on a communal front porch. This form of
apartments-in-disguise would come to be known as a “four-flat,” and became
insinuated into many a neighborhood of single-family houses—welcome by some

47
Not only did building development lag in the tumultuous years between 1906 and 1909-14,
but lot sales seem to have reversed themselves. Real estate reports in the Times stated that 75 lots had
been sold under Jones and Ryder’s watch by 1907, and that all but six lots were sold by early 1909—
the moment that Jones was nabbed. But advertisements by the Janss firm in 1912 listed sixty lots for
sale, or over a third of the subdivision. How was this possible? It may be that the numbers of earlier
sales were greatly exaggerated. Or, many of the earlier sales may have fallen through once Jones’s
crimes became publicized.
48
McLenahan, 16.

147
neighbors, merely tolerated by others. (This phenomenon was not unique to Los
Angeles; see below for examples in other cities. See Chapter 2 for a full discussion
of the four-flat type).
Though not part of the Janss firm’s initial marketing plan, construction of
four-flat apartment buildings was quickly allowed, if not encouraged, in Reed
Terrace. (Such a broadening of allowable construction would have been part of the
new owner’s strategy to speed-up development.) Between 1910 and 1914, nearly
two dozen four-flats were built or under construction there, as were several duplexes.
These forms of small income property were becoming more common in many parts
of the city, and fast became popular in this nearly empty part of the otherwise built-
out Southwest district: only a handful of new houses appeared in Reed Terrace in the
same period.
By 1914, the Janss Investment Company was actively promoting the entire
subdivision—most of its lots sold but still unbuilt—for not only private dwellings
but also “flats with gabled roofs.” (In the previous few years, “flat” more and more
denoted the increasingly popular, house-mimicking four-flat type. However, this
definition was not exclusive, and the “gabled roof” reference would have been used
to keep out other, less attractive, boxy structures to which property owners across the
city frequently objected.) Their new brochure claimed “a splendid close-in location
in beautiful West Adams high-class residence and apartment house district.” (See
Figure 15.) As with many real estate promotions, this was partly true. The adjacent
West Adams district did indeed hold some fine residences, but there is no indication

148

Figure 15. Brochure promoting the Reed Terrace subdivision (Site 2), circa 1914.
(From the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Collection, Archive Research Center,
University of Southern California.)

149
of apartment houses large or small outside of Reed Terrace itself at this time in this
part of Los Angeles. McLenahan noted that “it was not until 1927 that the first
apartment house, built as such, was erected” in her study area.
49

VAN BUREN PLACE
The 2900 block of Van Buren Place (Site 1) runs along a boundary between
subdivisions. The west side of the street lies in Reed Terrace, and in 1910 was
vacant. By 1923, it would hold 8 four-flats and 2 bungalow-court variations. The
east side of the street sits in an adjacent tract, and in 1907 held two 2-story
dwellings, each on a large lot of about one to two acres. These lots were soon
subdivided and their houses demolished or relocated, and by 1923 this side of Van
Buren would hold nine single-family houses, a duplex and a four-flat. One lot would
remain vacant for another decade and a half, when a longtime resident of the block
would build an apartment building there; see Figure 16.
50

The first permit to build on the west (Reed Terrace) side of Van Buren Place
was obtained by E.S. (Edwin) Shapland in 1910.
51
Shapland and his wife Mattie
had relocated to Los Angeles from York, Nebraska in 1901. By 1904 they resided

49
McLenahan, 16.
50
The east side of Van Buren place is part of a five-acre block in what appears to be the
northeast corner of the Reed estate’s original forty acres, withheld from the sale to Jones and Ryder.
51
Though Shapland’s building permit was dated September 29, 1910, it is not clear whether he
built right away, or waited a few years. The Reed Terrace brochure issued by the Janss Investment
Company ca. 1914 made note of existing flats and houses as of its printing. Shapland’s lot indicates
being sold, but no structure is noted. Mrs. Snider’s flat (permitted 1913) at the other end of the block
is indicated.

150

Figure 16. Axonometric model of the 2900 block of Van Buren Place (Site 1).

Single-family dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange. With one exception, all
small rear structures are garages. Also indicated for each property is its initial development
information: year of building permit, name of owner, architect and builder (if supplied), size and
construction type. (By author.)

151
just a few blocks from Reed Terrace, at 1059 West 38
th
Street.
52
Their new lot was
a large corner at Van Buren and 29
th
Street, with a 75-foot width rather than the 50
feet of interior lots. Shapland himself was a builder, with construction contracts for
other new houses in this part of the city at this time. At two-and-a-half stories, more
than three thousand square feet, and a price tag of $4,000, his new house was more
substantial than those he built for others.
53

Shapland constructed a single-family dwelling, as had virtually everyone in
the entire district up to that time. But this would be the only such residence on this
side of Van Buren—and would not even stay a private dwelling for long. The
Shaplands apparently had larger real estate ambitions early on. In 1904, Edwin and
Mattie co-purchased property in San Pedro with another couple; a decade later,
Edwin purchased two lots out in Culver City with the intention of developing them
with new houses.
54

These aspirations found expression on Van Buren Place as well. The
Shaplands would create a residential compound of sorts, adding rental dwelling units
over time to the property. In 1921, Mattie Shapland obtained a permit to add a two-
story two-flat to the side of the house—which itself had already been converted to

52
LAT September 24, 1906, I15.
53
“Building Contracts to Let … Annie K. Jones to E.S. Shapland, five-room cottage, Dabney
Avenue, near Vernon, $1800,” LAT May 11, 1908, I15; “New Contracts Filed … Frank G. Clark to
E.S. Shapland, one-story six-room frame cottage on Ventura Avenue near Budlong Avenue, $2050,”
LAT September 27, 1908, V23.
54
“Real Estate Transfers … Michael McLaughlin and Della McLaughlin to Leavens H.
Donaldson and Edwin S. Shapland –Part lots 13 and 14, block 79, San Pedro,” LAT March 21, 1904,
I4; “Many New Homes,” LAT September 13, 1914, VI1.

152
two units; family member R.E. Shapland was contractor for the project.
55
The
family finally had its four units, built in increments rather than all at once like the
neighbors’. But the compound grew even more. Some time in the later 1920s or
early ‘30s, the Shaplands added a separate, freestanding four-flat to their property,
for a total of eight units.
56
This was made easier by the fact that their lot was fifty
percent larger than most (making more room for additional buildings), and that it
was on a corner (making a “rear” building directly accessible from the side street).
The Shaplands were not unique in the exploitation of their site: other large
corner lots in Reed Terrace showed signs of further subdivision and addition of
dwellings over time—classic signs of “lot-packing.” One owner built 2 new four-
flats at the corner of Kenwood and 30
th
Streets; his next-door neighbor along 30
th

subdivided into three smaller lots, each of which held a modest single-family house.
The record for most dwelling units in a residential compound was ten: by 1950, the
property at Raymond and 30
th
held a two-flat and an eight-unit apartment building.
And this particular strategy was nothing new in Los Angeles: in 1901, the buyer of a
house up at Figueroa and Eleventh Streets decided to move it closer to the front of
the lot, then build flats behind, facing the side street.
57

Mrs. Augusta Snider was the first to develop a “proper” four-flat on this
block of Reed Terrace, obtaining a building permit in 1913. The structure was
imposing, and featured a two-story veranda-like porch extending its full width, with

55
Building permit dated November 16, 1921.
56
A building permit dated March 31, 1938 for the repair of fire damage notes a total of eight
existing units on the property—in two 4-unit structures; no permit for the later four-flat was found.

153
four pairs of neo-classically detailed posts supporting both levels, under a central
pedimented gable. Mrs. Snider’s was another large corner lot, at the south end of the
block where Van Buren intersects 30
th
Street. Unlike at the Shapland’s up the street,
no additional units were ever added to this property, leaving probably the most
spacious yard arrangement possible.
58
Between 1915 and 1919, five more four-flats
were built on the stretch of lots between Shapland’s and Snider’s. The remaining
lots would be developed by the early 1920s.
George Haddad also resided in the area when he bought at 2909 Van Buren
Place—just around the corner at 1468 West 27
th
Street. He acquired the lot next
door to the Shaplands, and began his own modest landlord program in 1919. That
year Haddad took out a permit for a new four-flat for his more common, narrow,
interior lot. The structure was fairly representative of the type: four 5-room
apartments symmetrically arranged on two floors; contractor S.A. Parish was hired to
build it for a total cost of $10,000.
59

This may have not been the family’s first try at landlording. Several years
earlier, a George Haddad was listed as a buyer of property in the Glen Airy Place
subdivision, just a mile or so west of Reed Terrace.
60
(It is not known if this was the
same person, or if the purchase was for development or speculation and resale.)

57
“Among Real Estate Owners and Dealers,” LAT September 15, 1901, A1.
58
Building permit dated March 18, 1913. Though Mrs. Snider’s lot was 25 feet wider than
most of her neighbors’, her building’s width was essentially the same as that of the other flats; this is
why her yard space is so generous. It may be that this was her (or her builder’s) intention. It is just as
likely that a fairly standard building plan—designed for a narrower fifty-foot lot—had simply been
used without modification for the generous site.
59
Building permit dated October 31, 1919.

154
Neither was the four-flat on Van Buren their last bid. The family’s desire for
additional rental units was piqued after only a few years, just as the Shaplands’ was.
But, unlike their next-door neighbors, the Haddads’ smaller lot and large building
footprint would seem to have discouraged expansion: there simply wasn’t room
enough to add. Conversion by interior renovation provided their answer. In 1923
(just after the Shaplands’ first addition), Foteen Haddad (relationship not known, but
probably George’s wife or widow) secured a permit to subdivide the building’s four
existing units into a total of eight smaller apartments—all without adding square
footage.
61
Thus the Haddads managed to grow their residential compound from the
outside in.
62
This was not the family’s last venture into rental housing production,
however: Mrs. Haddad would develop a larger apartment building down the block in
the late 1930s.

Shapland and Haddad built then occupied their properties on Van Buren Place,
where they would serve as landlords-in-residence to their tenants.
63
This was a

60
“Have You Seen Glen Airy Place?” LAT December 31, 1911, V28; “Glen Airy Place Sales,”
LAT February 18, 1912, VI12.
61
Building Permit no. 61595 (December 21, 1923); the application reads “6 present closets to
be bathrooms –4 laundries and two sleeping rooms to be kitchens –two, new enclosed stairways to
second floor rear apts [sic] to be constructed –present living & dining room on second floor to
partitioned off.” The 1950 Sanborn map confirms this conversion, noting “8 Apts” on the same
building footprint denoted “4 Flats” on the 1922 map.
62
This practice of internally subdividing flats was not unique, either. For example, a property
owner in Gardena remodeled “a two-story flat building … into an apartment house [of] eight two
room suites[.]” Southwest Building and Contractor, February 1, 1918, 9.
63
It is not clear just when each family moved into their Van Buren properties—whether right
away, or after some time. Both owners’ initial permits showed home addresses elsewhere, not
surprisingly, since no dwellings yet existed. Mattie Shapland’s 1921 permit to add a two-flat, and
Foteen Haddad’s in 1923 to subdivide into more units, each list their Van Buren address under
“owner’s address.” Later permits, both from 1938 (one for fire damage repair at the Shapland’s, and

155
common practice among petit rentiers in US cities everywhere. Another familiar
method was the integrated design, construction, and sale of multi-family housing by
developers supplying locals like the Haddads and Mrs. Snider, or small investors as
far away as Salt Lake City, Denver, and Kansas City. Portions of Reed Terrace,
including parts of the case study block, came about this way.
H.W. Foster and Harry Gray were two such developers, each with projects in
Reed Terrace as well as other parts of the city.
64
Foster owned the next two lots
down from George Haddad’s, at 2915 and 2919 Van Buren. Acting as his own
contractor in 1916, Foster hired architect E.B. Rust for the design work. (This
commission may have been a stepping-stone in Rust’s early career; by the late
1920s, he was a well-known designer of large apartment buildings in Los Angeles.)
Each lot in Foster’s pair was built with a 2-story, four-flat and detached garage; each
building’s plan and site placement was mirrored with the other’s for a symmetrical
coupling of structures. At the other end of the block, just up from Mrs. Snider’s
corner property, Harry Gray developed the two lots at 2945 and 2951 Van Buren in
the same manner in 1915.
65
Gray did not act as his own builder, though, and

the other for a new apartment building across the street for Mrs. Haddad), indicate that both women
still lived in their respective dwellings on Van Buren after decades.
64
Gray developed flats at 1228 Fourth Avenue and 1207 Third Avenue; LAT August 1, 1915,
V1; LAT January 9, 1916, V1. Foster developed a four-flat on Sunset Place near Wilshire Place;
LAT February 18, 1917, V15.
65
Only one permit appears for Harry Gray, for the four-flat at 2951Van Buren Place. Next
door at 2945, for which no permit was found, is a building and garage of virtually identical size,
design, footprint and placement, mirrored in plan on the site relative to Gray’s flat at 2951. The
frequency of this pairing of flat properties in general, in combination with the fact that Gray had done
the very same thing in the next block down two years earlier, argues persuasively that the flat at 2945
was his as well.

156
employed contractor H.L. Childs for construction; Sam Neighbors was listed as his
architect.
Sanborn maps and field observation make clear that this double-lot scheme of
production was popular in Reed Terrace.
66
By the time Harry Gray built next to Mrs.
Snider in 1916, he had already completed and sold two flats in the next block down
Van Buren.
67
R.N. Lamberth also developed (at least) two pairs of four-flats in Reed
Terrace—one pair also in the next block of Van Buren, and another over on
Raymond Avenue.
68
A block further up Raymond, just over the back fences of the
Haddad and Foster properties, another two pairs of four-flats were built by 1922. Of
course, this strategy of coupling lots was not unique to flat development: back in
1909, on the east side of the case-study block of Van Buren Place, E.R. Bohan had
improved two adjoining lots with virtually identical single-family houses and
garages—the first new dwellings on this block.

THE 1920s
The 1920s was a time of rapid increase in apartment construction of all
types—not just locally but nationally—as well as a drop in the number of new

66
Some pairs were mirrored in plan; others were duplicated in the same layout. For mention of
“two adjoining [flat] buildings of identical plan” further north in the Wilshire district, see LAT
January 21, 1917, V1.
67
LAT August 31, 1913, VI4.
68
“Income Improvements,” LAT April 16, 1916, V14. The article mentions several other
developments of multiple four-flat construction around the city, all permitted inside a two-week
period—suggesting the phenomenon was widespread.

157
single-family houses.
69
Most of Los Angeles, including its Southwest section, fully
participated in this trend. McLenahan’s description of residential development in her
study area is summed up succinctly, and is reflective of Los Angeles in general by
the late 1920s: “the single detached house, occupied by one family, is still the
prevailing type of dwelling, tending to be replaced by multiple dwellings, either of a
remodeled type or built as such.”
70

McLenahan’s subjects spoke about many aspects of life in their quadrant of
Los Angeles, including changes to housing over the years. Those in favor of more
units and increased rents—at least on their lot—expressed themselves by building.
“Mr. B” bought a house that he first rented out to tenants, then moved into and
rented out rooms. He also built a six-room rear house, and told his interviewer:
“With that rent and our roomers we get a nice income from this buy.”
71
One family
bought a lot and built a small single-family house around 1914, which they lived in
until 1925. At that point, said the owner, “we moved it to the back of the lot and put
up a four-family flat,” observing that “[f]lats are coming in and … property keeps
going up [in price] because it’s a good spot for apartments.”
72
This increase in
property values sometimes led to builder’s remorse among aspiring landlords.
According to the sociologist, “one family built a four-family flat and then regretted
that they had not put up an apartment house, because of the demand for such

69
Coleman Woodbury, Apartment House Increases and Attitudes Toward Home Ownership
(Chigago: Institute for Economic Research, n.d., ca. 1931).
70
McLenahan, 18.
71
Ibid., 36, interview no. 289.
72
Ibid., 34, interview no. 106.

158
dwellings and the greater possible rentals.”
73
(The terms “flat” and “apartment”
were sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes not. The former usually meant a
4-unit structure and the latter a larger building.)
Despite a kind of growing landlord fever, many residents (presumably both
renters and owners) were anything but sanguine about the district’s transition from
single- to multi-family housing. With this part of the city recently zoned to allow
any kind of residential development (either single- or multi-family; see discussion
below, and Chapter 6), the most that opponents could now do was bend the
interviewer’s ear about the loss of privacy, quiet, and yard space. One complained:
“When we first built our home here it was a nice residential district. Now if anyone
sells, the house is made into a rooming house or apartments.”
74
“Mrs. R,” another
long-timer, had lived in her house since 1911, and had witnessed the area’s gradual
build-up with multiple dwellings. She may well have been a neighbor of the area’s
first full-fledged apartment building constructed in 1927. Soon after, she said: “I
dislike very much the … apartment house which has been built next to me…. Since
it has been built, a draft sweeps through the driveway like a wind through a
canyon…. [My] house is dark and it used to be so cheerful and bright[.] I think the
whole neighborhood will eventually be … all rented properties like the monstrous,
unhomelike thing next door to me.”
75
She had a kindred spirit in “Mrs. Y,” who
bemoaned all the lot-packing by neighboring owners out to increase their property’s

73
Ibid., 27.
74
Ibid., 23, interview no. 17.
75
Ibid., 27, interview no. 127.

159
earning power: “Almost everyone on this street is building rear houses and I can’t go
out in my back yard without people observing me.”
76

Unfortunately, detailed statistics on building types from the sociologist’s
1928 study are somewhat murky, due to categories that seem to overlap. Yet some
data is discernable for this eighteen square blocks south of Jefferson Boulevard and
Reed Terrace.
77
Of the 469 occupied residential lots
78
in her study, about 295 held
single-family dwellings—or sixty-two percent.
79
The remaining thirty-eight percent
of residential lots held some form of multi-family dwelling, including at least 14
four-flats and 27 duplexes of various configurations. The balance of residential units
was found in multiple detached houses on a single lot, single-family houses
converted to apartments or lodgings, bungalow courts, and a few (very recently built)
bigger apartment buildings.
This increase in multi-family housing construction in areas previously
covered in single-family dwellings did not depend on the kind of encouragement
given by the Janss Investment Company in Reed Terrace’s advertising—though
there, on a recently available tabula rasa, this approach did result in proliferation.
Many residential subdivisions were governed by deed restrictions limiting the types

76
Ibid., 27, interview no. 331.
77
Ibid., 16-19. Her quantification of housing types is flawed; the desirable method of
exhaustive, mutually exclusive categories is not achieved. Classifications seem to overlap, and are
not fully explained. However, the data is useable in getting rough numbers of general categories.
78
The 1910 Baist atlas shows approximately 486 residential lots in her study zone. A subtotal
of 469 occupied lots would mean that about 17 lots (3.5%) in her sample were still vacant.
79
By one measurement, 287; by another, 303; these average to 295. (This proportion is lower
than the estimated 75 percent around Reed Terrace six years earlier but not outside a reasonable
variation, especially considering that the years between the 1922 mapping and the 1928 study saw a
sharp rise in multi-family construction and decline in single-family construction in Los Angeles.)

160
of structure(s) permissible to build. A detached one-family dwelling was by far the
most commonly allowed, with multiple dwellings or commercial buildings often
explicitly prohibited.
80
The development and maintenance of uniform, low-scale
residential areas relied upon such private rules, but two factors could nullify this
outcome. One was the eventual expiration of these restrictions, after which an owner
was subject only to municipal ordinance—and official land-use regulation would
remain fairly general in this part of the city for years, granting any kind of residential
use. A second factor was the lack of enforcement of private deed restrictions,
simultaneously 1) a common lament of some home-owners and 2) assistance to
aspiring apartment-builders. Both factors—rules both lapsed and ignored—no doubt
played parts in the densification of Southwest Los Angeles as the demand for rental
housing intensified.
81
The lone four-flat on the east side of Van Buren Place in the
case study block would have been developed in this context, as well as the newer
duplexes and flats in McLenahan’s study area.

By the early 1920s, the Sanborn sample area (Site 3) surrounding (but not including)
Reed Terrace was almost ninety percent developed; about 90 of its 1,050 lots were
still vacant; see Figure 17. A cursory examination of 1922 maps indicates that

80
See, for example, a sample deed for the Commonwealth Terrace subdivision being developed
in 1910 about two miles north of Reed Terrace. “[T]he property described in this deed shall be used
for residence purposes exclusively[.] [N]o double or tenement houses [or] flats … shall ever be
erected or placed upon the premises hereby conveyed.” Brochure, n.d., ca. 1910, UCLA Special
Collections.
81
In addition, many subdivisions carried no deed restrictions whatsoever. There, property
owners essentially crossed their fingers in hopes that any new development would not disturb their
use.

161

Figure 17. Sanborn map dated 1922 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the Reed Terrace
subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3.

Single-family dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange; other structures, purple.
(Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5 and 6, 1922.)

162
perhaps three-quarters of the improved residential lots now held single-family
houses, down from 96 percent in 1907. The ongoing construction of multiple
dwellings—so conspicuous to study participants south of Jefferson Boulevard—was
in full swing here, too. McLenahan’s 1928 comment about her study zone was more
widely applicable: “it is easy to observe the remodeled houses, the newly built courts
and apartments, flats and rear houses, so that the occupancy of the [average] lot is no
longer exclusively characterized by single dwellings.”
82

In particular, the four-flat “apartment in disguise” had become an extremely
popular real estate venture in Los Angeles; twenty-four such structures were
developed in this area just outside Reed Terrace. In addition, about a dozen duplexes
and three bungalow courts had appeared, as well as many converted single-family
houses (into two or more units), and lots “packed” over time with various small
residential structures. No larger apartment buildings yet appeared, though a few
would by the late 1920s. Many more commercial buildings were in evidence—none
higher than two stories, and all of them along the major thoroughfares of Vermont,
Adams, and Jefferson. Still, gaps along these boulevards accounted for a good
percentage of the area’s remaining vacant lots.
The intensification of both residential and commercial development in this
part of the city was impossible to miss. McLenahan commented: “Changes in the
use of land, for business on the boundary streets and for multiple dwellings within
the area, are responses to the pressures of a growing population” in southwest Los

82
McLenahan, 6.

163
Angeles.
83
Recently installed city planners certainly took note starting in the early
1920s, and endorsed this increasingly familiar land-use pattern in new zoning maps
(see Chapter 6). The unmistakable, ongoing transition from single- to multi-family
residential land-use visible in many parts of the city was further sanctioned by new
planners in their designation of vast swaths of municipal territory as “B” zones: this
permitted all housing types, from detached bungalows up to large apartment
buildings. The general exception was property along major and proposed
thoroughfares, zoned “C” to allow commercial structures (as well as residential ones,
if owners desired to continue that kind of development). The City Planning
Commission’s new scheme would draw both fire and favor.
84
It rested on the notion
that, overall, subdividers and builders attentive to market forces knew what they
were doing, and that new regulation should support this process, not attempt to
change it.

Reed Terrace was also filling in by 1922, though less so than its surroundings. Of its
142 residential lots, 86 were now built upon, or sixty percent. Three-fourths of these
developed lots were occupied by multi-family dwellings (for 252 housing units), and
only one-fourth by single-family dwellings (for 20 units). (This 3:1 lot ratio of
multiples to singles is approximately the reverse that of the surrounding area at the

83
Ibid., 102.
84
One of the most trenchant criticisms was that the scheme failed to provide enough territory
zoned “A” to protect single-family residential development. Planners countered this argument by
pointing out that vast areas of dozens of square miles at the urban edge were, or would be, so zoned.
See Chapter 6.

164
time, noted above.) Significantly, almost all of the construction since 1914 (when
“flats with gabled roofs” was added to advertising) was in multiple dwellings. Of the
lots developed in the intervening eight years, only five held new single-family
houses; 34 held new four-flats, 5 held new duplexes, and one a new bungalow court.
Only six of the two-dozen commercial lots along Jefferson Boulevard had
been built upon: they held two stores, a bakery, a commercial garage, and a gas
station at the intersection at Normandie Avenue. The sixth lot held a residential
duplex and detached garage; both of these were located on the alley at the back half
of the site, with the front half along the boulevard left open—presumably for future
retail use.
85
(The reportedly early sale of all these commercial lots and their
protracted vacancy demonstrates the problematic, liminal nature of land along
thoroughfares. (See Chapter 6.)

The 2900 block of Van Buren Place (Site 1) was about seventy percent developed by
1922.
86
The east side of the street, outside Reed Terrace, now held a four-flat
(permitted 1915) and a duplex (probably moved there from elsewhere) along with
seven single-family houses; three lots were still vacant.
87
On the west, Reed Terrace

85
Narrow lots along thoroughfares were generally intended for commercial development,
though “higher” residential uses were normally allowed.
86
16 of 23 lots fronting on Van Buren show as developed in the 1922 Sanborn maps.
87
Building permits for Van Buren Place’s east side:
No. Date Building type Owner
2910 9/22/1911 Single-family dwelling Nathan Lansberg
2916 7/29/1914 Single-family dwelling F. Rollins
2920 12/04/1908 Single-family dwelling Mary Brown
2924 6/16/1909 Single-family dwelling E.R. Bohan
2928 6/16/1909 Single-family dwelling E.R. Bohan

165
side, each of the seven built lots held a four-flat. The remaining four lots would be
occupied soon: permits were taken out that year and the next for another four-flat
and two bungalow court-type projects. This was also around the time that the
neighbors at the north end of the block undertook to further develop their lots. The
Shaplands added a new two-flat to their by-now-subdivided house (for a combined
four-flat) in 1921, and the Haddads would convert their four units into eight smaller
ones in 1923.
88

The two courts were built next door to one another, by different owners,
taking up three lots total—the center lot having been officially divvied up between
the two. (This is not surprising, given the normally larger site needed for this type.)
Both projects were variants on the bungalow-court layout, not the original pattern of
individual one-story dwellings. Each was symmetrical and contained eight units, but
in different arrangements of fewer structures. At 2933 Van Buren, the L.A.
Construction Company built the more conventional-looking court: four small, one-
story duplexes, two on either side of a central yard.
89
Next door at 2925, Mrs. Anna
Shaw built essentially a flat-court hybrid: a pair of 2-story four-flats, each rotated

2932 6/29/1922 Single-family dwelling J.J. Morris
2938 7/30/1915 Four-flat James Grace
2948 10/02/1922 Duplex Annie Goldberg
2950 8/16/1938 Apartment building Mrs. Haddad
2952 < 9/02/1911 Single-family dwelling McStay
Issuance of building permits does not prove actual construction. Field observation indicates,
however, that each of these structures was indeed built and is still extant on site.
88
Shapland’s permit dated November 16, 1921; Haddad’s dated December 21, 1923.
89
Building permit dated February 6, 1923.

166
ninety degrees to face the other across a central yard in a court-like site plan.
90

Neither “court” had any dwelling structure on axis at the rear of the central yard (a
typical feature), though Mrs. Shaw’s did have a multi-car garage in this place on her
lot. At this same time, P.A. Weeger, acting as owner-builder, obtained a permit to
build the block’s last four-flat at number 2941, between the new bungalow court and
one of Harry Gray’s flats.
91
Directly across the street, construction of J.J. Morris’s
new single-family house at number 2932 would have been going on at the same time.
None of these four projects show on the 1922 Sanborns, but were permitted that year
or the next.
So, by about 1923, in just a year or so after the Sanborn survey, this block of
Van Buren Place had gone from 70 to almost 90 percent complete. A single lot on
the east side of the street (outside Reed Terrace) would remain vacant for another
decade and a half—when it would be improved with an apartment building by Mrs.
Haddad from across the street.

BY MIDCENTURY
The community study (of Site 4) south of Reed Terrace concluded in 1928,
so examination of the housing inventory in adjoining areas is limited to the
surrounding blocks also analyzed from 1907 and 1922 maps (Site 3).

90
Building permit dated November 8, 1922. Such combinations of building types were not
unheard of. A court with a U-shaped plan made up of three 4-flats was proposed by developer F.W.
Murphy a few years earlier in another part of town, about the time he built a four-flat in the next block
down Van Buren Place. LAT April 16, 1916, V14; June 24, 1917, V1.
91
Building permit dated February 14, 1923.

167
By 1950, the area surrounding Reed Terrace was completely developed: of
the sample 1,050 lots checked in that year’s Sanborn maps, fewer than a dozen
remained vacant; see Figure 18. The proportion of lots holding single-family
dwellings had dropped from ninety-six percent in 1907 to about three-fourths in
1922 to perhaps one-half; now at least as many lots contained multiple dwellings.
(McLenahan’s observation of transition to higher residential density had only
continued.) The majority of these were small: two-story four-flats and one-story
duplexes predominated, with some bungalow courts as well. Also, these later maps
record a number of converted, older private houses, variously denoted “F” (flats),
“Apts” (apartments), “Rms” (rooms for rent), and “Hskpg rms” (housekeeping
rooms, which possibly included cooking facilities). Finally, many lots bore multiple
small, miscellaneous, irregularly sited structures marked “D” for dwelling; these
indicate “packed” lots, built up over time, rather than purpose-built bungalow
courts.
92

Larger multi-family dwellings were now familiar sights here, too: thirteen
apartment buildings of 8 or more units were surveyed. The two largest were each
three stories. One was an imposing brick edifice on Budlong Avenue, located just
around the corner from the Shaplands and Haddads; it held 30 units and was
probably built in the late 1920s or early ‘30s. The other contained 32 units and was

92
Paul Groth discusses the methodology of Sanborn interpretation in “Rooming and Boarding
in West Oakland,” Sights and Sounds: Essays in Celebration of West Oakland (December 1997), 85-
112.

168

Figure 18. Sanborn map dated 1950 of Van Buren Place (Site 1), the Reed Terrace
subdivision (Site 2), and a few blocks of Site 3.

Single-family dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange; other structures, purple.
(Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5 and 6, 1950.)

169
built of wood frame, (the much more common construction type), located on
Halldale Avenue just north of Jefferson.
Commercial and institutional uses had taken over along Adams and Jefferson
Boulevards and Vermont Avenue by 1950. Though no structure was taller than two
stories, building footprints had gotten larger, extending across lot frontages. As a
result, several block-long stretches of boulevard property now had no gaps in
building. Functions had multiplied as well. The variety of churches exposes the
district’s location at racial boundaries (Centenary Methodist, Christian Scientist,
Calvary—all presumably white—and Korean Presbyterian and “colored” Missionary
Baptist). Light manufacturing uses had proliferated (shops for auto repair, printing,
machining, welding, woodworking, candy-making, hat manufacture, and heater
repair). And, of course, retail had expanded and diversified tremendously in
response to residential development and the customer base it supplied (in addition to
many stores marked “S” without further specificity, the maps denote at least a dozen
restaurants, three markets, two bakeries, a drugstore, and no fewer than 7 furniture
stores). The area also was home to a bank, a post office, a clinic, several “gas and
oil” stations, Neeland’s Department Store, and a substation of the Department of
Power and Light.

170
The Reed Terrace subdivision still had eleven vacant lots remaining as of 1950:
seven residential and four commercial ones along Jefferson.
93
Of the tract’s original
142 residential lots, only 15 (less than eleven percent) were now occupied by single-
family dwellings. The remaining approximately 120 lots
94
held 417 dwelling units,
for an average of 3.5 per lot. This density was accomplished in 5 apartment
buildings (containing from eight to twelve units), 82 four-flats, 27 duplexes (of
various configurations), and 4 bungalow courts; the remaining lots with multiple
units were “packed” with two or three structures apiece.

The last lot developed on the case study block was at 2950 Van Buren, across the
street from Reed Terrace. In 1938, Mrs. Foteen Haddad, who resided up the block in
her flat at number 2909-1/4, took out a permit for a two-story 12-unit apartment
house. The most recent construction on the block had been fifteen years earlier (save
for a few garage additions in the interim), so this last vacant lot was itself another
hold-out, though at a smaller scale. But its later development was not for lack of
earlier interest. In 1927 and 1928, a Charlotte Campbell, hoping to construct a three-
story brick apartment building of 21units on the property, had filed two successive
building permit applications; nothing came of that activity.
95
But Mrs. Haddad and

93
Two of these residential lots held rear auxiliary structures but no dwellings.
94
At this point, precise lot counts are difficult on Sanborn maps, since it appears that some
larger lots corner lots were further subdivided. I say apparent, because the in some cases these corner
lots show several structures on such a lot, some with apparent newer property lines between, others
without. It is not known if the mapmakers actually verified lot-splitting, or assumed such occurred
when they observed additional structures and fences on a lot.
95
Building permit applications dated August 3, 1927 and April 2, 1928.

171
her contractor did build their more modern structure, complete with below-grade
garage. She also maintained the family’s rentier interests, still owning the building
two decades later in 1958.
96

AFTER A CENTURY
In 2005, Reed Terrace looks like a typical, older residential Los Angeles
neighborhood; see Figure 19. Its initial coverage with mostly duplexes and four-flats
distinguished it from its surroundings by the 1920s in terms of density, but any visual
contrast would have been softened by the apartments-in-disguise aesthetic of these
small multiple dwellings. The two sides of the 2900 block of Van Buren Place—one
mostly houses, the other mostly flats comparable in appearance (but not
identical
97
)—testify to this. More intensive development taking over much of the
city since then has helped the adjoining areas to “catch up” in density, more or less.
Some of the original structures—both inside and outside of the Reed tract—have
been replaced with more modern apartment buildings. It appears that most of these
more recent projects are two-story frame-and-stucco structures built between the
1940s and 1970s. There is little indication that much newer redevelopment has taken
place here.

96
Los Angeles Block Book Co., Records (Los Angeles, 1958, published privately).
97
Field observation reveals this difference. The four-flat type was innovated largely to allow
aspiring landlords to work their way into attractive neighborhoods of single-family dwellings in which
the prospect of a full-fledged, lot-filling apartment building would have drawn too much protest to get
approved; see Chapter 2. And while the most effective of the “imposter” multiples successfully
mimicked the scale and general appearance of large private houses, distinguishing between the two is
not difficult for the trained eye.

172

Figure 19. Panoramic view looking north on the 2900 block of Van Buren Place
(Site 1) in 2005.

On the left (west) side are mostly four-family flats; on the right (east) side, mostly single-family
dwellings. With few exceptions, all structures are those initially developed in the 1910s and ‘20s.
(By author.)

173
The case study block of Van Buren Place still contains all of the original
dwellings built in the three decades following 1908, with two exceptions. At some
point after 1950, single-family houses replaced two multiples: the Haddads’
renovated eight-flat at number 2909, and the four-flat next door at 2915. (This
reduction in density runs counter to conventional development wisdom promoting
“highest and best use,” but is not unheard of.) Also, many of the properties and their
structures have been altered in various minor ways over the decades. Garage
additions at the rears of lots were common early on. Later, perhaps around mid-
century, the exterior covering-over of original wood siding with new stucco would
have been an ordinary improvement for structures built before the1920s. More
recently, wrought iron fences and window grilles have been added to some buildings
in order to provide more security in a part of the city now suffering from increased
crime. Architectural modernization in the forms of replacement windows and the
occasional fake mansard roof addition are visible as well. All of these observable
changes are at the exterior, and do not include the inevitable interior renovations and
updating of materials and fixtures, if not room layouts.
These myriad, piecemeal transformations have been undertaken at different
times by different owners in order to render their properties more attractive and
desirable. In the case of multi-family dwellings, the driving factor has no doubt been
to attract and keep tenants. And, of course, this is nothing new. Such motivations
and actions by small landlord-rentiers are exactly in keeping with those of their
properties’ original developers nearly a hundred years ago.

174
RESIDENTS: PART OF THE MAJORITY
McLenahan depicted denizens in her part of southwest Los Angeles in 1928
as “a predominantly American population [with] a scattering of various European
nationalities in addition to a few Mexican families.”
98
Her interviewees included
those of Italian, Norwegian, German and Armenian ancestries, as well as former
residents of Idaho, South Dakota, Kansas, and Michigan. Many of her subjects were
long-time Angelenos. (Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive.)
Three-fourths of the resident property owners in her investigation had resided
thereon for five years or longer, almost half of that number for ten years or longer.
Renters were far more transient: only about eight percent had occupied their
domicile for five years or longer.
99
But, while mobile, renters as a whole were still
local: 63 percent reported that their previous residence was in Los Angeles city,
another 11 percent elsewhere in California.
100

These anecdotal and statistical particulars describing this area’s inhabitants
correspond to the conventional account of the city’s majority population in the early
1900s—its “melting pot of home-owners.”
101
Corresponding data for the area north

98
McLenahan, 20.
99
Ibid., 15-16. Of 231 owner-households, a total of 75.8% reported a length of residence of
five years or longer; a total of 37.3%, ten years or longer. Of 368 renter-households, a total of 8.4%
reported residence of five years or longer.
100
Ibid., 16.
101
Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine
Smith Books, 1946; 1973), Chapters 9 and 12, quote from page 232; Fogelson, Chapter 4.

175
of Jefferson Boulevard is not available.
102
It is probably safe to assume, however,
that the social makeup of Reed Terrace and its surroundings above Jefferson largely
coincided with that found in the sociologist’s sample territory directly to the south.
Information on a sampling of owners and residents along several blocks of
Van Buren Place reinforces this assumption: the street was occupied over the years
by its share of white, middle-class newcomers and longtime Angelenos. In 1904,
three elegant and substantial two-story residences were built on the block just south
of West Adams Street (inside the 1903 subdivision noted above). Ralph T. Vining
owned one, Percy H. Clark the other two—one of which he quickly sold to Mrs. Ida
Mae Hutcharon, the other to “an eastern buyer.”
103
Further south, in 1912, Dr. and
Mrs. Thomas L. Catherwood were living at 2920 Van Buren in a two-story house—
one of the very first to appear on the case study block, built just three years earlier.
Originally from Minneapolis, the Catherwoods were preparing for the nuptials of
their daughter, Dorothy, to her fiancé, a Berkeley graduate and a “Phi Kappa Sigma
man.”
104
At about this time, transplanted Nebraskans Edwin and Mattie Shapland
were building their place up at the corner, and would stay there for many years. In
1925, Edwin served as campaign chairman for his neighbor across the street, John
Topham.
105
Residents do not get much more white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant and
middle-class than the Methodist, English-born Topham, an Angeleno since 1893. He

102
A sampling of newspaper items from the era indicate that George and Foteen Haddad may
have been Syrian, but this is not known.
103
“Among Owners and Dealers,” LAT July 24, 1904, D1.
104
“Events in Local Society,” LAT January 4, 1912, II6.
105
LAT March 13, 1925, I5.

176
resided at number 2924, next door to the Catherwood house, in one of the twin 7-
room houses developed by E.R. Bohan years earlier. Topham was active in local
politics for years, serving variously as police commissioner and fifth-district city
councilman for multiple terms.
106

Many women owners of income property in this period also operated it, as
landlady or manager. This proved not to be the case with Mrs. Anna B. Shaw, who
instead offered for sale her project just completed at 2925 Van Buren in 1923—the
unusual court-variant holding two facing 4-flats.
107
A decade later, one of the units
inside would be home to Mr. and Mrs. D.A. Cunningham, whose infant son Dwight
had won a beautiful baby contest sponsored by the Adohr dairy.
108
Their one-
bedroom apartment also had a concealed bed in its living room, rendering it suitable
for a small family.
Not everyone with interests in Van Buren Place real estate lived there, of
course. In 1915, a M. Goldman of Kansas City, Missouri purchased the four-flat in
the next block down at number 3014 as part of a two-property deal; the other
building was in Hollywood.
109
Two years earlier, a Charles A. Dole of Salt Lake
City bought the pair of flats that Harry Gray had just finished at numbers 3025 and
3033.
110

106
Who’s Who in the Pacific Southwest (Los Angeles: Times-Mirror Print and Binding House,
1913), 367.
107
Display advertisement, LAT April 2, 1923, I6.
108
Display advertisement, LAT May 28, 1933, G3.
109
“Easterners Buy Local Holdings,” LAT December 12, 1915, V14.

177
RESTRICTED RENTIERS
In the early twentieth century, the population of Van Buren Place, Reed
Terrace and surroundings was white and middle-class—mostly. Those buying
property and wanting to build a house, duplex, bungalow court or flat to occupy, rent
out, or sell faced the usual financial challenges and regulatory hurdles. But as time
passed, some faced additional obstacles imposed on them only because of their race.
What was the experience of aspiring African-American landlords? Were there
differences in the housing stock that resulted?
The intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Normandie Avenue marked not
only the southeast corner of Reed Terrace (Site 2), but also (what had become) the
northwest boundary of a small “colored district,” as the Sanborn map-makers labeled
it in 1922 and again in 1950 (Site 5). As in many American cities, racially exclusive
deed restrictions had become commonplace in Los Angeles by the 1920s. Such
discriminatory covenants attached to land routinely confined its sale and occupancy
to “Caucasians” only; in places covered by such constraints, non-Caucasians were
barred from renting and owning property. The residence and real estate ambitions of
Blacks, Japanese, and Chinese were limited to parts of the city lacking these
restrictions. Scholars have identified five such places in Los Angeles,
111
one of them

110
LAT August 31, 1913, VI4.
111
Lonnie Bunch, “A Past Not Necessarily Prologue: The Afro-American in Los Angeles,” in
20
th
Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict, ed. Norman M. Klein and Martin J.
Schiesel (Claremont CA: Regina Books, 1990), 101-130; Jacqueline Leavitt, “Charlotta Bass, The
‘California Eagle,’ and Black Settlement in Los Angeles,” in June Manning Thomas and Marsha
Ritzdorf, eds, Urban Planning and the African American Community (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage
Publications, 1997), 167-186; Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the
Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 16-18.

178
comprised of several blocks in the Southwest part of the city—diagonally southwest
of Reed Terrace and west of McLenahan’s study zone.
112

Portions of four blocks in this Southwest “colored district” are visible in my
Sanborn sampling (where Site 5 overlaps with Site 3). (The housing enumerated
below is included in the totals described above for Reed Terrace’s environs in Site
3.) In 1922, more than a hundred of these approximately 116 lots were developed,
mostly with single-family houses. Of the twenty lots with multiple dwellings, all but
one held simply two detached cottages; one four-flat is visible on West 35
th
Street.
By 1950, lots having multiple units had more than doubled to forty-five—virtual
parity with the remaining one-family housing stock. Seven four-flats had been added
to the neighborhood, as well as two bungalow courts and six duplexes. The
remaining multiples were found in the now-familiar mixture of converted single-
family houses and rear dwellings. This corner of the sample also now held its share

112
McLenahan’s research addressed this socio-spatial condition relative to her site: “the section,
which was originally the habitat of white families, has changed to include families of both the black
and yellow races. The northwest corner of the square [immediately south of Reed Terrace] is no
longer in the [exclusive] hands of the Caucasians,” p. 84. Yet a mostly white district with the right
amount of “infiltration” by minorities is probably just what she had in mind for her sociological
inquiry. Concerned with social relations—but solely as they affected the racial majority, not the
reverse—McLenahan instructed her surveyors “to call only on families of the white race” for
interviews, 130, emphasis added. She directed her canvassers: “If you discover families of Japanese,
Chinese, or Negroes, please note the place of residence, the number of the house, and the name of the
street.” Not unusual for its time, this one-directional methodology examined the transformation of
neighboring practices and perceptions among white residents, as well as the impact on them of the
“invasion of Negroes and Japanese,” 5. After all, she wrote, “[t]he study was not undertaken with the
idea of securing data for any ‘reform movement,’” 10.
Despite the best efforts of racist white property-owners organized to enforce deed
restrictions, a minority family sometimes managed to break the color line and buy, then move, into a
restricted area. One of McLenahan’s subjects reported that, starting about 1916, “the Negroes …
came east of Normandie, but they came slowly,” 28. This gave rise to formation of the local Anti-
African Housing Association in 1922, charged with stemming the tide of “invaders.” No indication is
given that the organization was successful in curtailing the moving-in of black and Asian families.

179
of the territory’s commercial structures, but none of the dozen or so larger apartment
buildings.

In a fast-growing metropolis like Los Angeles, the few unrestricted zones open to
minorities became crowded then overcrowded, as more and more people in targeted
groups moved there and sought a place to live within a segregated, fixed amount of
urban space.
113
A standard response available to white property owners experiencing
greater shelter demand—development of new multi-family housing to replace single-
family—was often thwarted for blacks by further institutional racism.
Discriminatory lending practices kept funds for construction and renovation out of
the hands of racial minorities, including budding landlords. One result of this chain
of adversity was a comparative shortage of apartment buildings, especially large
ones. New multiple-unit dwellings were indeed built, but in fewer numbers than
cases of “lot-packing”—the ad hoc, piecemeal, pay-as-you-go form of real estate
development.
Despite punitive barriers facing black landlords and developers beyond the
normal risks facing real estate entrepreneurs, some managed to prevail.
114
J.H.
Sykes was one of the success stories. His acumen over in the South Central district

113
Racial boundaries were sometimes porous, with “colored” areas actually growing. But this
process was slow, in the face of hostility and opposition by white neighbors; added area was never
enough to meet the faster demand of population growth. Lawrence B. De Graaf, “The City of Black
Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890-1930,” Pacific Historical Review 39 (1970),
323-352.
114
See, for example, Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow
America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 78-81.

180
was touted in the pages of The California Eagle, a major African-American
newspaper, in 1927. He had come to Los Angeles two decades earlier “with nothing,
practically, but a keen vision and ambition[.]”
115
According to the article, he and
Mrs. Sykes had recently developed two four-flats: one at 1226 East Adams Street,
the other at 5121 Ascot Avenue. Both were inside one of the five territories
unrestricted by racial covenants—this one, south of downtown and west of heavy
industrial zones along the river. Sanborn maps from 1922 and 1950 convey the built
context for these two residential projects, five years before and almost a quarter-
century after their construction.
The Ascot Avenue location was well south of the central city, on a short
street in a neighborhood between the more-traveled Compton and Hooper Avenues.
In 1922, this was probably considered suburban—similar to the Southwest district.
The five-block area sampled here was about four-fifths developed; Sykes’s future
flat would occupy one of the two-dozen vacant lots. Of the developed property,
single-family houses (small and large) dominated, to perhaps 80 percent. Lots
holding multiple units totaled about 15 percent; almost all of these were occupied by
two small, detached dwellings. Two structures denoted “2-flats” were also surveyed,
both appearing to be converted one-family residences. Half a dozen lots held small
commercial buildings. The neighborhood was built out by 1950. More than half of
its lots now held several residential units; but newer, purpose-built multiple
dwellings were far outnumbered by ad hoc accretions of small dwellings. Sykes’s

115
“Pioneer Citizen in Van of Progress,” California Eagle (December 23, 1927), 1.

181
four-flat was one of only three in the neighborhood, and three bungalow courts had
also been built in the previous 28 years. At least thirty lots were now “packed” with
tiny one-story dwellings behind older single-family houses (a few of which had been
converted to apartments) and alley houses. Even where “proper” new multiple
dwellings did appear, they themselves might be on a packed lot: Sykes’s flat was the
only residence on his parcel, but the other two newer flats shared their lots with
other, older dwellings.
The Adams Street locale was between Naomi and Hooper Avenues, due (and
well) east of the fashionable West Adams district. Closer proximity to downtown
probably helped it to fill out early; in 1922 only four vacant lots appeared in the
surrounding four blocks. About a quarter of the lots held multiple units, the rest
single-family houses (and a few small commercial structures). Six 4-flats, six
duplexes, and two small “tenements” (apartment buildings)
116
were surveyed, along
with more than two dozen lots packed with 2 or 3 individual dwellings. A single-
family residence then occupied the site of Sykes’s future flat. By 1950, lots holding
a single dwelling were on the decline, dropping from over two-thirds of development
to just over one-third. Not surprisingly, lots with multiple units had taken over. But,
despite the centrality of this area and its overall higher residential density (both,

116
This term was on the wane in housing nomenclature, but it still appeared from time to time.
The next year, in 1923, a revision in the state housing code would eliminate from its official language
“tenement” altogether favor of “apartment.” Given that “tenement” does not appear on any other
Sanborn samples from the same years covering other (white) parts of the city, it is conceivable that
surveyors distinguished between possibly run-down apartment buildings (tenements) in “colored
districts” and the presumably better-maintained “apartments” elsewhere. This is only conjecture, and
could also be explained by a lack of standardized terminology employed by surveyors.

182
relative to the Ascot and Jefferson neighborhoods) no boom in larger apartment
construction took place in this vicinity. (Of the existing tenements, one had been
converted to a hotel, the other was now denoted a four-flat.) The Sykes’s was one of
four newer flats; two bungalow court variations and two duplexes had also appeared.
Otherwise, all of the newer dwelling units had come in the form of added rear
cottages and converted houses.

A comparison of these small samples from unrestricted “colored” areas (the two
South Central neighborhoods and the one in the Southwest district) with the
presumably whites-only areas surrounding Reed Terrace sheds light on variations in
the shelter market in Los Angeles. Similarities are quite evident—at least in terms of
the building stock described by Sanborn surveyors. The areas where African-
American occupancy and/or ownership was permitted showed much the same
transition over time from single-family to small-scale multi-family housing that
McLenahan describes further west. All areas, white and black, showed an increase
in lots packed with hodgepodges of small dwellings, as well as new multiple
dwellings such as duplexes, flats, and bungalow courts. Moreover, this general
pattern matched that occurring in many parts of the city at large.
Yet a difference existed between development on opposite sides of the color
line. By 1950, in the unrestricted areas examined, nothing larger than four-flats had
been built to help accommodate what must have become crushing growth in the

183
African-American population.
117
None of the kind of newer, bigger apartment
buildings visible in the whites-only part of the Southwest district around Reed
Terrace showed up in these samples. Even in the downtown-adjacent Adams Street
case—where by mid-century one might expect to find a few sizable structures of a
dozen or more apartments—the best that black developers could do to meet the
housing shortage was to build more flats: diminutive multiple dwellings not much
larger than a big two-story house.
The limited comparison between these white and black areas vis-a-vis
residential densification might be grossly characterized this way: minority rentiers
built the same kinds of multi-family housing as whites, but later. The types of
development in restricted white areas by 1922—four-flats and bungalow courts in
appreciable numbers—generally did not appear in black areas until later.
118
By
1950, unrestricted (black) areas had more flats and courts, but none of the larger
apartment buildings found in white areas.
These mapping samples are small and selective; far more analysis is
necessary—expanding both detail and geographic sweep. Without such
investigation into ownership and building patterns over large areas, authoritative
claims about minority landlords and their properties in Los Angeles are impossible to
make. But the residential landscape visible in these small specimens seems to

117
For example, the number of black Angelenos grew from 15,579 to nearly 39,000 during the
1920s. See De Graaf, 344.
118
In the Adams Street neighborhood, several flats did appear early on. It is possible that white
developers in this area closer to downtown responded to the demand for additional housing units in

184
reinforce existing scholarship about the limited access to capital and credit for blacks
in Los Angeles real estate relative to whites in the early 1900s.
Other characteristics may have differentiated the housing stock in these
Anglo- and African-American blocks—but not in ways noted on insurance maps.
Sanborn surveyors were charged with describing building heights, floor area,
construction type, and function; the quality of construction and level of upkeep was
not part of their reports. Consequently it is impossible to know the precise condition
of these thousands of buildings. The backyard cottages, duplexes and converted
houses of blacks on the whole may have been more cheaply built and poorly
maintained than their counterparts across the color line in white neighborhoods. If
so, this would not have been due to any inherent difference between the races in
attitudes toward property, but, again, only in relative access to capital.

FINDINGS
By about 1910, an appreciable demand existed for rented multiple dwellings
in at least one outlying area of the Los Angeles. Thus, a 1911 newspaper item
reporting on this phenomenon is more than real estate hyperbole: “Apartment house
and flat construction goes on apace … being projected for sites which even two years
ago would have been considered hopelessly remote for this kind of improvement.”
119

This is more than a decade earlier than represented in the few sources acknowledging

the years before racial deed restrictions became popular. In that scenario, existing flats could have
passed into black ownership.
119
LAT August 6, 1911, VI1.

185
the city’s multi-family housing, which treat the boom in construction of large
apartment houses in the 1920s as the only blip on the Angeleno residential radar
worth mentioning.
120

Despite the call for suburban multi-family rentals, bigger buildings of five or
more units did not appear until after 1922. For most peripheral territory this was an
indication of upward limits on the demand by those seeking shelter. As the city
continued to grow outward and in population, renters would bid housing prices even
higher in these first-tier suburbs nearer downtown, and development of bigger
apartment houses gradually made more economic sense. McLenahan noted that the
1927 construction of the first large, purpose-built apartment building in her study
zone “marked a definite change in type of building and the commercialization of
land area.”
121
In the sampling of areas open to blacks, however, larger structures had
not yet appeared as late as 1950. For African-American developers confined to
“colored districts,” this lag would have been due to their inability to borrow, since
demand for housing by blacks would typically have been high enough to warrant
more and larger apartment houses.
A few dwelling types became quite common, repeated widely with minor
variations. The single-story double bungalow/duplex, the four-family flat, and the
bungalow court—visible all over Los Angeles—dominated new multi-family
construction in the Southwest district from 1910 into the 1930s. Sam Bass Warner’s
description of small-scale, conservative, and imitative residential development in

120
See Fogelson, 151.

186
Boston is instructive in considering the popularity of types in this period: “No special
regulatory body was need to tell most builders what was appropriate; the other
houses in the area presented them with models. … Once a builder had learned a
successful land-house combination he stuck to it until fashion forced him to abandon
it.”
122
For example, the three-family house popular in other parts of the nation—
Warner’s Boston for one—did not appear in Los Angeles except in rare cases. Any
triple-unit structure was far likelier to be a converted single-family house than a new
building designed as such. The Angel City did have its share of elaborate double-
decker, two-family duplex houses (one unit to a floor), but these were built in a few
concentrations further west, not in or near Reed Terrace (see Chapter 3). One
unusual two-family dwelling type did appear in the case study area: the double
house—essentially a pair of two-story row houses sharing a common wall, usually
built several to a lot.
123
A quite interesting design solution, this type did not seem to
catch on; few built examples survive. Finally, the single-family house converted to
apartments or lodgings did occur, and was a popular choice for aspiring landlords
with not much capital with which to work.
The “packed lot” was another common form of multi-family housing
development. This kind of piecemeal residential compound was normally made up

121
McLenahan, 16.
122
Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 76.
123
These are found in three places in this case study area: inside Reed Terrace, three double
houses occupy a large corner lot at Kenwood Avenue and 29
th
Street, and one double house sits at the
rear (alley-side) of a commercial lot at Jefferson Boulevard and Raymond Avenue. Up at Adams
Street and Raymond, six double houses occupy a large corner lot. In all likelihood, these different
projects had some participant in common—be it owner, builder, or architect.

187
of an original single-family house and one or more rental units added over time.
Newer “backyard dwellings” could be attached to the existing house over time, built
in separate structures, or in some combination thereof. Sometimes the original house
was converted to apartments. Sanborn maps also indicate sheds and garages
frequently crowding this tiniest of housing complexes—some of which were put into
service as dwelling conversions. Paul Groth notes the economic origins and
advantages of this form, calling it “small-scale entrepreneurial maximization of the
lot,” or just “making the most of the yard with no large mortgage.”
124
Whereas
“owners with good access to capital would have torn down the old house and rebuilt
a full-scale apartment house [or four-flat] … packing the lot with small buildings”
125

would have been a property owner’s easiest and cheapest entry into the multi-family
shelter market.

REPRESENTATIVENESS
Assembly of this case study began with the finding of a 1914 real estate
brochure promoting the suburban Reed Terrace tract for not only bungalows but also
flats. Consequently, the location was not randomly selected, and includes anomalous
features. I attempt to counter problems of representativeness by expanding my

124
Groth, “Rooming and Boarding…,” 106.
125
Ibid.

188
case’s boundaries well beyond Reed Terrace to include a significant amount of other,
more typical residential environment.
126

The kinds of development and inhabitants McLenahan describes in her
territory qualifies it as fairly average when considered alongside other Los Angeles
histories—sufficient to represent other parts of the city undergoing similar
transformation in this period. The researcher noted: “Although the area studied is
located in a city of over a million, it is not a congested section and represents in a
measure the traditional, middle-class residential district with a prevailing single-
house pattern of dwelling.”
127
(One would need to add the qualifier largely white to
her characterization.) Still, she found “unmistakable signs of change …in its
physical composition[.]”
128
One significant change was the increase in multi-family
housing construction beginning in the late 1910s, normally replacing older single-
family development. McLenahan’s various data accords with information gleaned

126
My Sanborn sample (Site 3) shows the housing stock in great detail, but lacks crucial data
about people and processes. McLenahan’s research deals largely with this aspect: the actions and
reactions of certain residents vis-à-vis multi-family housing and residential development, sometimes
in intricate detail; she also provides some general and helpful statistics on the overall shelter inventory
in her territory (Site 4). But her ethnographic emphasis fails to provide the kind of large-scale lot- and
building-level detail I find in my Sanborn sample.
I have attempted to bolster each source’s shortcomings. First: I expanded my Sanborn
sample to include several blocks of the sociologist’s zone, enabling me to examine a portion of its
housing stock and physical setting more closely. Second: I located some information on a sampling
of inhabitants and builders in the area north (in Reed Terrace, Site 2) to get an indication of
individual, personal activities relative to residence, construction, and property in that zone. In
weaving together disparate elements of these two areas, I hope to effectively broaden and deepen my
case study’s reach. All told, I believe that I found enough similarity in population characteristics,
building stock, and development dynamics to suggest that both areas were sufficiently similar to
constitute two pieces of a larger, generally homogenous zone. The notable exception to this is a
portion of the “colored district” open to racial minorities and banned from the larger areas.
127
McLenahan, 99.
128
Ibid., 5.

189
from 1) the Sanborn maps of the area surrounding Reed Terrace
129
as well as 2)
more recent research incorporating a residential zone just south of hers. Clark Davis
found that nearby “Vermont Square itself encompassed primarily modest, single-
family homes built just prior to the [first World] war, but few properties were
occupied by single families [by the 1920s]. Owners had divided many residences
into apartments, duplexes and triplexes that they rented out to multiple families and
lodgers.”
130
All in all, the larger, composite area sampled (Sites 3 and 4 together)
probably represents the mainstream Angeleno residential situation up to the early
twentieth century, of the kind described by Fogelson and others: mile after mile of
detached (ostensibly) one-family houses occupying private yards.
131
What these
observers have missed were the many buildings concealing two to four rental
apartments, already complicating the city of homes.

Typical aspects aside, my sample territory was not randomly chosen, and its irregular
attributes deserve acknowledgment. From the outset, the promotion of a large
residential subdivision specifically for the construction of small apartment buildings
was unusual for its time in this city.
Inclusion of an unrestricted neighborhood open to racial minorities is another
aberration. The discussion above considers how external forces (exerted by public
and private actors in the majority race/class) probably shaped the housing conditions

129
In fact, Sites 3 and 4 overlap in a six-block area.
130
Davis, Company Men, 89.
131
Fogelson, Chapter 7.

190
of blacks and Asians within such “colored districts.” But impact in the reverse
direction—on the larger, restricted white areas just outside—would certainly have
been felt. As already stated, Sanborn map data indicate no significant differences in
building types, with both racial minority and majority land owners constructing the
same kinds of housing. Race seemed to play more of a part in timing, and possibly
quality and price, due to a differential in access to capital.
132

Neighborhoods home to mostly blacks and Japanese fell into a general,
“undesirable” land use category (for many whites) which would have also included
heavy industry and noisy traffic arteries, not to mention apartment districts.
Closeness thereto normally brought about, or merely hastened, the transition of
territory once considered suitable for low-density, private domesticity (for whites) to
a more dense, less private residential setting (possibly whites-only, possibly mixed-
race). In other words, white owners did not necessarily think “Negroes nearby =
good apartment area”—probably more of “there goes the neighborhood, time to get
whatever possible in rentals.”
Close proximity to the university is another unusual attribute of my case
study.
133
As already mentioned, such institutions can act magnetically for local
growth in cities where place entrepreneurs look for hot spots to guide their decisions

132
Much would depend upon who was involved. White property owners would have suffered a
loss in property values—if they were intent on selling or renting only to other whites. If willing to sell
to blacks (a practice widely criticized), white owners may have been able to get their price, so tight
was the supply of property available to excluded minorities. Concomitantly, property owned by
blacks and rented to other black families would have also commanded a relatively high price.
133
The USC campus was much smaller than it is currently, of course. Its core was about three-
fourths of a mile from the intersection of Jefferson and Normandie.

191
on where to invest. Though USC must have impacted nearby development in
various ways, it is unclear just how the housing stock was affected. In 1928, Bessie
McLenahan noted “a number of rooming and boarding houses in the area,”
134
and
her interviewees sometimes remarked on this condition. One property owner
thought that her large house “would be a good one for … a boarding house for
university students,” adding: “Lots of the neighbors take in boarders and
roomers.”
135
Another resident rented his house to a USC sorority for almost a year
before turning it into a rooming house.
136
More commodious shelter would have
been in demand as well. One person declared: “Of course nearness to Vermont
[Avenue] and the University has caused some apartments to be built out of some of
these old houses.”
137
Most of the newer “apartments” to which these and other
residents referred would have been in four-flats, since McLenahan notes that the
area’s first purpose-built apartment house (of 16 units) was not built until 1927—just
a year before her interviews were conducted.
Not all of the lodgers and tenants would have been students, however.
McLenahan noted her area’s “convenience of location relative to employment,
availability of streetcar service, and nearness to the downtown section.”
138
The
likelihood is great that at least some of her 1,061 men and women renters were
young, white-collar workers employed in central city businesses. This would concur

134
McLenahan, 12.
135
Ibid., 45.
136
Ibid., 36.
137
Ibid., 23, interview no. 17.
138
Ibid., 41.

192
with Clark Davis’s study of white male professionals working in downtown
corporate offices in the 1920s; many of these young men resided in boarding houses
and flats in the Vermont Square neighborhood to the south.
139
And it is not
inconceivable that a handful of them may well have lived inside McLenahan’s zone,
renting from one of her subjects—or, even on Van Buren Place north of Jefferson, as
a tenant of the Shaplands, Haddads, or Mrs. Snider.
140

Again, it is impossible to divine the university’s precise impact on the
surrounding housing inventory. It may have delivered its neighboring landowners a
higher-than-normal share of short-term renters. But in a burgeoning metropolis with
a large transitory population, any difference this might have had on physical
development would have been one of degree, not kind. Apartments and rooms for
rent would have been needed by all kinds of folks in many parts of the city, not just
college students near their campus. Further, McLenahan found no higher percentage
of renters in her area than in the city at large.
141
If a discernible difference did exist
due to USC’s adjacency, it may have been in a higher ratio of rented rooms to
apartment units than might appear in other sections of Los Angeles.
142

139
Davis, 84-90.
140
Davis, 86, plots the home addresses of hundreds of downtown employees on a map of the
city. Though it is difficult to read at a fine grain, the map seems to indicate a few plotted points inside
the McLenahan sample and Reed Terrace.
141
McLenahan actually found a lower percentage of renters in her area than in the city as a
whole, but not by much. In general, her sample territory aligned with the 1920 census finding for Los
Angeles: 34.7% of households were owners, 65.3% renters.
142
Unfortunately, the Sanborn sample is somewhat mute on this hypothesis. A few rooming
houses are identified in the 1922 and 1950 maps, but not the number one might expect given
McLenahan’s findings. Possible explanations: 1) the common occurrence of unofficial boarding
houses run by homeowners, not identified as such; 2) the conversion of single-family dwellings to
rooming houses, then further conversion to flats or re-conversion back to single-family houses in the

193
Each of these anomalies—Reed Terrace’s promotion for flats, the presence of a
“colored district,” and nearness to USC—would have had the effect of encouraging
the local production of higher numbers of rental dwelling units. Would this part of
southwest Los Angeles have developed differently if not for these factors? The
answer is probably not, though the transition to a denser residential landscape was
likely accelerated as a result.
First, Reed Terrace was not the only tract advertised for multi-family
residential development at the time. In the fashionable Crown Hill district just west
of downtown, for example, a 56-lot portion of the original Witmer subdivision was
advertised in 1911 as “apartment house property.”
143
Its much more central location
“only a 15-minute walk from Broadway” would help its lots to develop with (mostly)
bigger buildings and more dwelling units per acre than its counterpart further out in
the southwest quarter. Similar to that area, however, new multiple dwellings in
Crown Hill would not be limited to this subdivision, but would also appear in
surrounding tracts not necessarily marketed for apartment construction.
144

28 years between Sanborn surveys. On the fluidity of the rooming-house enterprise, see Richard
Harris, “The Flexible House: The Housing Backlog and the Persistence of Lodging,” Social Science
History 18/1 (Spring 1994), 31-53; and Groth, “Rooming and Boarding….”
143
Brochure (n.d., ca. 1911) bound into a scrapbook of real estate ephemera in the Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce collection, USC Regional History Collection. Even more like Reed Terrace,
and in nearly synchronous timing with it, the Witmer subdivision had also been originally marketed
for “fine” single family homes just a few years earlier. See classified advertisement, LAT August 21,
1904, C6.
144
Baist real estate maps (1910), Sanborn maps (1907, 1950), newspaper items and current field
observation reveal that this parcel and its surroundings developed into a dense residential district. See
also Virginia Linden Comer, Los Angeles, A View from Crown Hill (Los Angeles: Talbot Press,
1986) and Gail Sansbury, “Journeys to Work: Gender, Work Landscapes, and Urban Form” (PhD
Diss., University of California Los Angeles, 2000). A full range of multi-family dwellings types—
bungalow courts, four-flats, row-house flats, and 3-5 story apartment buildings—were built starting in
the 1910s. For profiles of a sampling of development, see items from LAT: “Unsightly Gulch is

194
Moreover, by the 1920s, new, privately planned communities such as Leimert Park
and (though not inside the city) Palos Verdes Estates would include zones
specifically intended for multi-family structures as well as single-family housing.
145

Second, the kinds of small multiple dwellings occupying these southwest
neighborhoods were popular all over the city—built by the thousands in the 1910s,
‘20s and ‘30s. Building permit data demonstrate that these types came to represent a
significant proportion of the city’s housing stock. In fiscal year 1919-20, for
example, duplexes and four-flats provided 1,150 new dwelling units, more than one-
fifth the number of that year’s new 5,465 single dwellings.
146
(The same data also
indicates the popularity of lot-packing.
147
) In 1924, it was calculated that duplexes,
four-flats and bungalow courts contained thirty percent of the city’s total housing
units.
148
These appeared all over Los Angeles, not just in its southwest corner.

Changed to Terraced Garden,” October 25, 1908, V22; “All ‘Frills’ to be Left Out,” May 23, 1915,
V1; “Duplexes Being Built on Own-Your-Own Plan,” February 10, 1924, D10.
145
On Leimert Park, see Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century
Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Chapter 1; also the brochure “First
Annual Small Homes Exhibition: Leimert Park” (1928), USC Regional History Collection: “Broad
boulevards are provided where flats and apartments are to be built,” n.p. On Palos Verdes, see
Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los
Angeles, 1920-1950 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1997), 153-158; also the privately printed booklet
“Protective Restrictions [for] Palos Verdes Estates” (1926): “The four principal communities … have
… small business centers, about two miles apart[.] Adjoining them are some blocks open to
apartment houses, hotels and house-courts,” 6.
146
Los Angeles Building Department, Annual Report (1919-20), 3. Certain types—duplexes
and four-flats, for example—were so prevalent that for years their construction was tracked separately
from the more miscellaneous “apartment” category.
147
In the 1919-20 year, 4,953 permits were issued for “additions” and “alterations,” for total
construction costs of $4,928,369. Though some of these would have been for non-residential
properties and others for enlargement of existing households, many would have created new dwelling
units in backyard structures and house conversions. For comparison, the total valuation of new
residential construction that year was $22,090,172.
148
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly Letter, November 30, 1925. According
to this study, the percentage of dwellings units in these types were as follows: duplex houses, 9.69;
flats, 13.96; bungalow courts, 7.11. The total proportion is 30.76 percent.

195
Sanborn surveyors found them in locations both central and peripheral by 1922, and
current field observation confirms this finding eight decades later.
149
Stretches of
duplexes or flats constructed in the 1920s and ‘30s survive in many places, in
addition to their even more common presence on blocks holding several kinds of
residential structures.
150
Economically, the kinds of small income properties filling
in Reed Terrace and environs were a staple of the regional real estate discourse. As
early as 1901, the Times’ real estate editor wrote: “Flats continue to be the favorite
form of building for small and medium investors.”
151
A virtually identical headline
appeared in 1915.
152
And in 1917: “The construction of double houses and …
duplex residences … for investment purposes is playing a constantly larger part in
the residence building activities of Los Angeles.”
153
So, the mixture of owned and
rented single-family houses alongside a variety of small multi-family dwellings for
rent—characterizing the vicinity bounded generally by Adams, Vermont, Exposition,
and Normandie—marked much of the city’s residential landscape in this period.
Third, this corner of Los Angeles—at least McLenahan’s portion—had about
the same proportion of renters to owners as the city at large, despite nearness to the

149
For descriptions of variations of several types , see Barbara Rubin, “A Chronology of
Architecture in Los Angeles,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67/4 (December
1977), 521-537; Kirk E. Peterson, “Eclectic Stucco,” in Home Sweet Home: American Domestic
Vernacular Architecture, eds. Charles W. Moore, Kathryn Smith and Peter Becker (New York:
Rizzoli, 1983), 112-117; Stefanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood, and James Tice, Courtyard Housing
in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
150
Dense concentrations of four-flats can be found in mid-Wilshire, bounded by Vermont
Avenue, Beverly Boulevard, Normandie Avenue, and Third Street; and further west in an area
bounded by Beverly, Fairfax, Melrose, and Curson. Two-story “double-houses” were developed for
blocks along Crescent Heights Boulevard between Pico and Olympic Boulevards.
151
LAT July 14, 1901, A1.

196
university and its potential to skew this statistic. The sociologist found that 63% of
households in her half-mile square rented their dwelling unit, and the other 37%
owned. This jibes with figures for the city of Los Angeles from the US Census of
1920.
154

Finally, this trend of gradual suburban densification in diminutive structures
was not an Angeleno fluke. Urban- and housing historians have analyzed several
communities maturing between the 1870s and 1930s which my case study
parallels—notwithstanding local variations in lot pattern, architectural style and
construction material. Sam Bass Warner’s seminal study of Boston’s suburbs in the
late nineteenth century found almost as many small multiples as single dwellings.
Southern California’s four-flat apartments-in-disguise strategy corresponded to some
of these “three-family structures, which in their exteriors conformed to the … houses
of the neighborhood but did service within as … three-deckers.”
155

More recently, a dissertation on early apartment housing in Minneapolis
discovered that four-flats (not unlike those in Los Angeles) accounted for over two-
thirds of that city’s multiple-unit structures and over 45 percent of its multi-family
dwelling units in 1912.
156
Paul Groth has documented areas in Oakland, California,

152
“Flats Continue Popular Form of Investment in Residence Districts,” LAT August 1, 1915,
V1.
153
“Many Double Houses,” LAT February 4, 1917, V1.
154
U.S. Census, 1920, reported 65.3% renters and 34.7% owners for the city of Los Angeles.
McLenahan, 13, actually found a slightly higher rate (by 2.3%) of owners in her study, done eight
years after the census.
155
Warner, 114.
156
Philip Kent Wagner, “The Historical Geography of Apartment Housing in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 1870 to 1930” (PhD Diss., University of Minnesota, 1991), 132-138. Wagner found that

197
that transformed from turn-of-the-century suburbs of single-family bungalows into
dense districts of converted lodging houses, four-flats, small apartment buildings,
and lots packed with rear dwellings.
157
Roger Simon has chronicled northwest
Milwaukee’s transition from agricultural acreage to suburban subdivisions of
detached cottages, then to growing numbers of small income properties (mostly two-
family houses).
158
Eric Sandweiss has found neighborhoods around St. Louis that
developed variously in one-, two-, and four-family houses, detached and attached,
sometimes in mixtures of types.
159
And James Borchert has investigated the
different communities of a Cleveland suburb
160
—one of good-sized single- and
double houses, and another, more dense area of “small tenements or front and back
houses that could produce rent” for working-class property owners. As in southwest
Los Angeles, this “landscape effectively hid this density; [m]any structures appear to
be typical detached two … story single-family homes[.]”
161
Each of these examples

four-flats constituted 67.5% of all apartment buildings in 1912, and that 45.8% of apartment units
were in four-flats that same year.
157
Paul Groth, “Rooming and Boarding in West Oakland,” Sights and Sounds: Essays in
Celebration of West Oakland… (December 1997), 85-112; “Workers’-Cottage and Minimal-
Bungalow Districts in Oakland and Berkeley, California, 1870-1945,” Urban Morphology 8/1 (2004),
13-25. These studies are seminal for the discussion of lot-packing as well as the utility of Sanborn
maps for housing research.
158
Roger D. Simon, “The City-Building Process: Housing and Services in New Milwaukee
Neighborhoods, 1880-1910,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 68 (July 1978), 1-
64.
159
Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2001), Chapter 5.
160
James Borchert, “Visual Landscapes of a Streetcar Suburb,” in Understanding Ordinary
Landscapes, eds. Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 25-43.
161
Ibid., 34.

198
emphasizes the fact that the majority of multi-family housing in the United States in
this period was contained in relatively small structures of few units.
162

162
Robert G. Barrows, “Beyond the Tenement: Patterns of American Urban Housing, 1870-
1930,” Journal of Urban History 9/4 (August 1983), 395-420.

199
Chapter 4

Building a City of Apartments?
A Case Study of the Wilshire-Ambassador District, 1910-1951

Los Angeles has achieved its wonderful reputation as a
desirable place to live in as much as by its restriction [sic] of
height to two stories … as any other one thing.

—A Wilshire district resident, in a 1922 letter to the
Los Angeles City Council
1

In January 1922, a worried E.L. Lewis wrote to the city council about apartments.
Vice President of the Los Angeles Railway Land Company and a new buyer in the
expanding Wilshire district west of downtown, he implored the council to turn its
attention to “the question of heights of tenement buildings.” Lewis praised the city’s
low residential scale achieved thus far (see epigraph), and did not seem to mind the
small crop of two-story flats being built on nearby blocks among the bungalows. He
certainly made no objection to the area’s gigantic new neighbor—the seven-story
Ambassador Hotel—half a block up from his new place at 837 South Kenmore
Avenue.
2
His concern focused on the proposed “three-story flat building” across the
street. For Lewis, this was a harbinger of urban doom, not the one-of-a-kind wonder
the grand new hotel represented. Like many property owners who try to persuade
public authorities to ban some perceived nuisance, he invoked the specter of its

1
Letter, E.L. Lewis to Los Angeles City Council, January 17, 1922 (Los Angeles City
Archive).
2
Evidently, E.L. Lewis did not yet reside on Kenmore Avenue when he wrote the city council:
1922 Sanborn maps indicate a vacant lot at his address. The 1923 Los Angeles City directory (Los
Angeles Directory Co.) is the first edition to list Lewis at the new address, so he probably owned the
lot and was having his house built as he lodged his complaint.

200
unavoidable multiplication if allowed: “Let this three-story flat idea start and it will
be a hard matter to stop,” he warned, “and they may go to four stories[.]”
3

Hard to stop, indeed: “they” soon went to four, six, ten and twelve stories—
around the corner and around the city. Los Angeles was already a booming
metropolis in the early twentieth century: population rose dramatically year after
year, bringing with it the demand for shelter. Multi-family housing was essential to
this growth, and became a common element in the urban environment. Alongside
many sectors of the economy, apartment development got a further boost in the
1920s as investment capital became much easier to come by; this was true for most
American cities. And in Los Angeles, a thriving tourism industry was yet another
shot in the arm. Petit landlords built more and more small multiple dwellings for
residents and long-stay visitors, but the big story was big buildings: industrious
rentiers with better access to capital turned out hundreds upon hundreds of mid-to-
high-rise apartment blocks, in many districts. And officials at city hall sat up and
took notice. Newly minted city planners, basically helpless to guide all this
development in their first few years on the job, took heed nonetheless. By the end of
the decade, they would learn then incorporate valuable lessons into the next iteration
of land-use policy. This chapter examines this complicated process, a sample of the
built landscape, and the relationship between them, focusing mainly on the period
from the early 1900s to the 1930s.

3
Ibid.

201
Back on Kenmore Avenue, E.L. Lewis’s particular three-story bogey never
appeared. Still, Lewis was prescient. Within a few short years, his low-scale
neighborhood near the edge of town would be utterly transformed into a densely-
built urban housing district. By 1930, ambitious developers would erect dozens of
multi-story apartment houses in the vicinity of the Ambassador, and even more
would construct smaller ones on lots in-between. Some single-family homes would
remain, but be outnumbered and then virtually overwhelmed in the 1940s. Even the
apprehensive Lewis could not have predicted such a metamorphosis happening so
quickly—much less that he would soon spearhead efforts to protect the burgeoning
apartment district from unwanted commercial development. For E.L. Lewis and
most residents of Los Angeles, events of the 1920s held many surprises, and sparked
an era of abrupt and sweeping change for the urban landscape.

METHODS & AREAS OF STUDY
As in the chapter on the Southwest district, several overlapping geographic
areas are analyzed for this case study, beginning with a large-scale section, and then
zooming in on progressively smaller zones for examination in greater levels of
detail; see Figure 20. The largest area, denoted Site 3, is fifty square blocks—
roughly a half-mile by three-fourths of a mile on what was the city’s west side. This
territory is defined on the north and south by Fifth and San Marino Streets
respectively, on the east by Berendo Street and on the west by Harvard Boulevard
and Kingsley Drive. These boundaries constitute the limits of this case’s housing

202

Figure 20. Schematic map of Wilshire-Ambassador district case study. (By author.)

203
statistics drawn from insurance- and real estate maps.
4
The next study area (Site 2)
is a ten-acre tract that came onto the market in 1923, after this stretch of Wilshire
Boulevard and environs had become magnetized for urban development by the
success of the Ambassador Hotel. Long vacant and surrounded by dozens, then
hundreds of houses and the new resort, this parcel was finally subdivided into lots
fully intended for wholesale apartment development. The last section scrutinized
(Site 1) is the 700 block of Normandie Avenue—the western half of Ambassador
Terrace (Site 2). Consisting of 22 lots, this block would be developed by ambitious
rentiers within five years of subdivision and sale with big, multi-story apartment
buildings. Data from building permits and other sources allow for a detailed
historical model of one of the densest residential blocks in Los Angeles—occupied
by the types of large multiple dwellings that became very popular (with both builders
and renters) in this period all over the city.
Two other areas are found inside the case study boundaries but are excluded
from housing statistics. Site 0 is a ten-acre parcel along Wilshire Boulevard just
west of the hotel and north of Ambassador Terrace, held off the market until
sometime after the 1920s and not developed until 1950 with office buildings. Site A
is the Ambassador Hotel property—one that has a complicated relationship to this
case. The hotel’s very existence helped the district to grow quickly and dense with
multi-family housing. Yet its status as an elite resort complex recommends that its

4
G. William Baist, Baist’s Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Los Angeles, Cal. (Philadelphia:
Published privately, 1910), 18; Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California,
Volumes 7 and 8 (1922; 1951).

204
commercial housing units be excluded from calculation of the dwelling units in the
general district.
5

Finally, the larger urban context is important to interrogate as well. Wilshire
Boulevard—one of the most celebrated and contested spaces in twentieth-century
Los Angeles—greatly influenced how this side of the city developed, including the
sample area, I argue. It is impossible to explain the particulars of timing, scale,
density, and building type in the sample without giving a general understanding of
this thoroughfare’s growing, changing impact. Consequently, several less-
quantitative sections describe Wilshire’s evolution over time, both the street itself
and the land through which it passed: elite suburban enclave, park and hotel district,
apartment zone, mixed-use urban corridor.

THE EARLY LANDSCAPE
Gottfried L. Schmidt, like his contemporary Isaac Reed two miles south,
could not have fathomed that the rural acreage he purchased in 1870s Los Angeles
County would one day hold a dense urban district. The kinds of lot-jamming, multi-
story apartment blocks that would occupy part of his land within a few decades had
just barely begun to appear in the United States—at that, only in New York City.

5
Any hope for a clean conceptual divide between commercial housing and residential housing
is dashed when examining some of this city’s population characteristics in the years up to the 1930s.
Some “transients” dwelled in Los Angeles for years. And apartment hotels and residential hotels
were home to a wide range of folks, both newcomers and old-timers; see Chapter 2 on categories.
Still, the Ambassador’s rare position as a first-class destination for visitors to the region, and as an
elegant home (first or second) for celebrities, probably disqualifies its suites and apartments from
consideration alongside the area’s other shelter inventory.

205
Yet, via the various incidents and accidents of urban growth over time, Schmidt’s
farms and fields would end up in a booming part of an already thriving city sooner
than anyone would have imagined. Three- to eight-story apartment houses, built
cheek-by-jowl, would crowd a few blocks of the neighborhood by the 1920s,
alongside many more blocks of smaller ones, plus hotels, stores and parking garages
accommodating hundreds of automobiles. Robert Fogelson has noted this piece of
Los Angeles for its high concentration of apartment buildings.
6
How and why did
this district develop as it did, when it did?
In 1875, Gottfried Schmidt purchased his piece of the US Public Lands: the
northeast quarter of Section 25, Township 1 South, Range 14 West, San Bernardino
Meridian, in the county of Los Angeles. At this time, the vast expanse that would
become the Wilshire and Hollywood districts “was a region of a few winding roads,
several creeks, and a sprinkling of farm houses.”
7
Others were also purchasing
acreage by the quarter-section in this period, as the United States government offered
for sale former Mexican ranchos and other lands.
8
Rancho boundaries and activities
survived for a time, but were being marked by new property lines, crops, and
livestock by new Anglo-American owners. The larger vicinity would be annexed to
the city of Los Angeles in 1890. Schmidt’s half-mile square was situated between

6
Fogleson. 151/
7
W.W. Robinson, Maps of Los Angeles, from Ord's Survey Of 1849 To The End Of The
Boom Of The Eighties (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Bookshop, 1966), 58: “Township Map Showing
Public Lands Immediately West of Original Four-Square League Area of the City of Los Angeles[.]”
8
W.W. Robinson, Land in California (New York: Arno Press, 1979; 1948); Leonard Pitt,
Decline of the Californios (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); Carey McWilliams,
Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1973; 1946).

206
(what would become) Vermont and Normandie Avenues on the east and west,
respectively, and Wilshire Boulevard and San Marino Street on the north and south.
At a reported $12.50 per acre, Schmidt had gotten a bargain; his heirs would
eventually receive in excess of $50,000 for each precious acre remaining.
9
For many
years, the family dairy farm occupied this parcel.
10
The closest thing to a boulevard
or apartment house would have been a dirt road and bunkhouse for ranch hands.
Schmidt’s 160-acre parcel was sold off in pieces over the years. The eastern
half was disposed of in 1886 for a reported $175 per acre, at the start of a land boom
that would launch the region’s transformation from outpost to entrepot.
11
An
approximately twenty-acre tract—eventually the site of the Ambassador Hotel—was
sold in 1903. The following year, another twenty-acre parcel was auctioned off; yet
another went in 1913. And another decade would pass before one of two remaining
ten-acre sections held by the Schmidt family would sell for more than a half-million
dollars, in 1923. With the exception of the future hotel grounds along the boulevard,
all of this acreage was (or would be) subdivided into town lots by the various
purchasers, and then re-sold to individual buyers and builders erecting structures
(sooner or later) on one or more lots.

9
“Valuable Property Sold,” LAT, November 4, 1923, V9.
10
Ralph Hancock, Fabulous Boulevard (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1949), 132.

207
WILSHIRE BOULEVARD I: ORIGINS AND MANSIONS
It is difficult to overstate the impact of Wilshire Boulevard on this case
study’s urban development. Consequently, a brief rehearsal of the thoroughfare’s
history is called for—drawn from both primary sources and scholarly treatments, and
undergoing some reinterpretation relative to housing. This boulevard is probably the
most chronicled urban space in Los Angeles, the site of real estate bonanzas, famous
businesses, august institutions, and eye-catching architecture. Parts of it have been
christened with magical names like “Miracle Mile,” “Golden Mile,” and “the Fifth
Avenue of the West”—each reflective of the street’s hold on the imagination (local
and national), as well as the work of boosters, developers and others out to capture
that imagination and put it to material use.
Despite its now-singular name, Wilshire Boulevard must be understood—at
least in its early years—not as a unified entity. According to historian Thomas
Hines, “Wilshire’s development resulted from a series of serendipitous convergences
over a long period of time, not from any conscious adherence” to a single vision for
development.
12
Rather, what would become the fifteen-mile-long, world-famous
“grand concourse of Los Angeles” gradually took shape as a string of several
discrete streets under development at different times, in different jurisdictions, by
different place entrepreneurs, with different kinds of buildings and uses. Over the

11
Glenn S. Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (San Marino CA:
Huntington Library, 1944).
12
Thomas S. Hines, “Wilshire Boulevard,” in Jan Cigliano and Sarah Bradford Landau, eds.,
The Grand American Avenue, 1850-1920 (San Francisco: Pomegranate Books, 1994), 307-337;
quotation, 312.

208
course of a half-century or more, multiple sets of officials, engineers, and developers
improved, extended, built along, and ultimately aligned and connected these discrete
roadways.
13
This case study examines the portion first called “Wilshire Boulevard,”
beginning at Westlake Park, and soon extending westward for about two miles; see
Figure 21.

Wilshire Boulevard proper began as the short, central street of a small residential
subdivision west of downtown (just across Westlake Park from the terminus of
Orange Street, which led east, back into the central city). In 1895, Henry Gaylord
Wilshire laid out eight residential blocks bisected by his eponymous avenue,
intended to run only the few short blocks to the city’s western limits (then at Hoover
Street).
14
But, according to one author, “the boulevard happened to coincide with an
important old roadway that headed west past the La Brea tar pits and beyond.”
15

Wilshire the man could not have anticipated the future, major metropolitan nexus
resulting from this alignment, but Wilshire the boulevard would forever benefit. But
such was no sure thing at this early stage, and more was needed to propel this street
and its properties to fame, fortune, and apartments.

13
Kevin Roderick and J. Eric Lynxwiler, Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los
Angeles (Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 2005).
14
Evidently, the boulevard’s name was originally Benton, then quickly changed to Wilshire.
15
Douglas R. Suisman, Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public (Los
Angeles: Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 1989), 23-26; quotation, 26.

209

Figure 21. Map of early Wilshire district(s).

This view shows both the Ambassador and Westlake portions of the Wilshire district, circa 1910 to
1936. Note that Figure 32 in Chapter 6 shows a zoning map of this vicinity. (By author.)

210
Gaylord Wilshire wanted to ensure that his subdivision would attract the
city’s wealthy residents. Having a park next door was an excellent start, and he
envisioned his central boulevard as its linear extension, dedicating a quite generous
120-foot swath for just this purpose.
16
But he went further, seeking (and apparently
receiving) the city council’s promise not to grant licenses for new street railways
along his boulevard, or to allow service vehicles.
17
This combination of location and
protections coalesced into real estate victory. The subdivision’s success (and the
thoroughfare’s future) was undoubtedly advanced when Harrison Gray Otis, the
powerful editor-publisher of the Los Angeles Times, promptly bought at the corner
of Wilshire and Park Place and erected “the Bivouac,” his stately mansion. Other
Angeleno elites followed suit, and the tract and its boulevard acquired an air of
notoriety that would endure. In fact, the entire district surrounding Westlake Park
benefited.
So, at the time when the municipality was poised for westward expansion, a
new, wide and elegant (if truncated) conduit was emerging, conveniently aligned
with an established (if unpaved) route running across the basin toward the ocean.
This convergence and timing would help to set Wilshire’s boulevard on its fabled
course.

16
Such a scheme was similar in concept to the residential square, a real estate strategy whereby
a developer locates a project adjacent to a new square or park (sometimes donating the land for the
park itself) to create a good location by adding a geographic amenity to otherwise undifferentiated
land. Gaylord Wilshire was educated and well traveled; he may have encountered examples of this
approach that inspired his Los Angeles subdivision.

211
At the turn of the twentieth century, in the city’s recent (1896) westerly
annexation—right in the path of the new boulevard—“practically all the land in the
district was acreage.”
18
This was “when a large part of the Wilshire district was
inhabited principally by meadow larks,” according to one report, “occupied by
dairies, grain fields [and] small vineyards.”
19
But affluent, white American families
were about to displace the creatures and crops in short order and big numbers. By
1914, the Times reported on the remarkable “transition from low-priced barley fields
to residence property[.] Nearly all the land west of Westlake Park … has been
subdivided into tracts”
20
of lots suited for suburban bungalows.
The prominence of the boulevard’s now-eastern end as “one of the most
exclusive residence streets of the city” prompted developers to emulate Gaylord’s
example.
21
Subdividers selling further west on either side of Wilshire Boulevard
touted their lots and locations as “near enough to enjoy all [the] advantages, but far
enough removed to escape [the] noises, smoke … and dust” of the city.
22
More of
the Angeleno aristocracy bought and built on the Wilshire extension and in its most
prestigious neighborhoods; less affluent (though still middle-class) aspirants bought
in more modest tracts off the boulevard. Nonetheless, realtors reassured these

17
Hines, 316.
18
See reports in “From Barley Fields to Palatial Homes,” Los Angeles Times, (henceforth
LAT) March 29, 1914, VI1, and “Fair Charms of the City Beautiful Conspicuous in the Wilshire
District,” LAT, October 23, 1907, III1.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Brochure for Boulevard Heights (ca. 1914); USC Archive Research Center.
22
Brochure for Country Club Park (ca. 1915); USC Archive Research Center.

212
bourgeois prospects: “Remember, you pass through the finest residence section of
the city to reach this property, including Westlake and Sunset Parks.”
23

In 1908, renowned planning consultant Charles Mulford Robinson, ardent
promoter of the “city beautiful” aesthetic, recognized Wilshire as the closest thing
Los Angeles had to a proper boulevard parkway.
24
He recommended its extension
and improvement as such, including the creation of a Parisian-type rond-point (a
traffic circle from which feeder streets radiate) at the intersection with Vermont
Avenue. This argument to secure the boulevard’s prominence was shared by many
city-builders, in concept if not in detail. It, and vocal opposition to it, would cause
controversy for years.
Wilshire Boulevard was extended westward in various layers in phases,
though in less grandiose form than Robinson proposed. First came the incremental
right-of-way dedications as new subdivisions were recorded; then, grading and
paving as funds became available.
25
Improvement work was predictably
inconvenient: owners of frontage property complained that the muddy mess
resembled a “well-worked battlefield.”
26
But prime location made the trouble worth
enduring, and, once finished, it was cause for celebration.

23
Brochure for North Vermont Heights (ca. 1914); USC Archive Research Center.
24
Report of the Municipal art commission for the city of Los Angeles, California, including
“The City Beautiful: Suggestions by Charles Mulford Robinson, (Los Angeles: W.J. Porter, 1909),
emphasis added.
25
The boulevard was also extended eastward in the late 1930s, cutting through Westlake Park
and joining up with Orange Street (renamed Wilshire) to connect to downtown.
26
“Apartment House and Hotel News,” LAT, October 2, 1934, 6.

213
Chronicles of Wilshire Boulevard’s evolution usually focus on its function as the
first and most successful automobile thoroughfare in the city, and, closely related, its
status as the address of notable structures and famous business establishments.
27
But
what about the larger area through which it passed? Did it have a greater impact?
Unquestionably, yes. Thomas Hines states that the boulevard “shaped and reflected
a much broader corridor of influence” as it extended westward.
28
Such a
phenomenon is commonplace in urbanization, of course. The real estate mantra
“location, location, location” reinforces the reality that proximity to a desirable site
tends to increase property values. Gaylord Wilshire had depended on this when
laying out his subdivision: he hoped that the cachet of his new linear parkway would
extend at least as far as the furthest house lots a block north and south. He
succeeded in this and more, and the surrounding Westlake district rose in prestige
not only due to its namesake park but also to its wide new landscaped boulevard
running to the west.
Once the boulevard became known as an elite address, place entrepreneurs
jumped on the Wilshire bandwagon. As early as 1905, land-owners and realtors
named this part of Los Angeles after the boulevard’s first extension—probably
informally at first, but the designation stuck.
29
Before long, real estate

27
The most recent and comprehensive account of Wilshire Boulevard’s development as “the
city’s most touted corridor of commerce” is Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall:
Architecture the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
1997), Chapter 5.
28
Hines, 310, emphasis added.
29
The term “Wilshire district”was fairly elastic in its use by place entrepreneurs. Before about
1905, it referred to the small area west of Westlake Park. After this, it came to be used for the much
larger area further west to about Western Avenue, centered on the boulevard. As the thoroughfare

214
advertisements made careful note of property located “in the Wilshire.”
30
This
reflected the street’s prominence early on. The Times reported that “a strikingly
apparent effect has been the expansion out Wilshire and to the north and south of
that boulevard of the highest class of residential development.”
31
This corridor of
influence—the perpendicular reach of the Wilshire brand name for blocks above and
below the boulevard as it eventually stretched across the basin—would have
enduring consequences for the area’s residential development.

1910 LANDSCAPE: GROWING SUBURB
In 1910, the case study area was located in an expanding residential quarter at
Los Angeles’s westerly urban fringe. Wilshire Boulevard had been dedicated as a
straight right-of-way running west, between large quarter-sections platted in the
rectangular survey, and it was already considered a prime avenue of the city. Few
large tracts remained at this point, and included a forty-acre corner of Schmidt’s
original quarter-section, a twenty acre plot next door (the future hotel site), and an
eighty-acre tract belonging to Germain Pellissier a few blocks to the west. The Baist
Real Estate Atlas from that year shows the larger vicinity (including the case study

was extended farther westward, the “original” district was called the Westlake district by newer
rentiers along the extension, to claim Wilshire-adjacency while distinguishing the newer territory
from the older. Once the Ambassador Hotel opened and succeeded, its vicinity was denoted the
Ambassador district in the same manner. But over time in all areas—older or newer, easterly or
west—“Wilshire district” was fair game in classic realtor fashion. See, for example, “Fair Charms of
the City Beautiful Conspicuous in the Wilshire District,” LAT, October 23, 1907, III1.
30
For example, see advertisement for Pellissier Square property, LAT, May 25, 1913, VI15.
31
“From Barley Fields to Palatial Homes,” LAT, March 29, 1914, VI1.

215

Figure 22. Map of early Ambassador district and environs, 1910.

Site 3 is indicated by a dashed red line; the blocks and lots of the future Ambassador Terrace
subdivision (Site 2) are shaded in orange. Outside this case study’s sample area, individual lots
holding multiple dwellings are also shaded in orange. Throughout, all buildings are shaded in black.
(Drawn by author on map from William G. Baist, Baist Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Los Angeles,
California, 1910.)

216
sample) mostly subdivided into lots and starting to fill in with detached single
dwellings; see Figure 22. Subdividers had gambled that the district—near the
budding Wilshire thoroughfare, at least—would continue to attract wealthy
Angelenos who would build mansions there. For this reason, a number of real-estate
optimists laid out lots larger than the common, roughly five-thousand-square-foot
size.
32
The most auspicious of these tracts was Normandie Hill, four square blocks
along the north side of Wilshire at Normandie Avenue; its lots were 95 feet wide by
150 feet deep, for an area nearly three times that of the typical Los Angeles house
plot.
Site 3 of the case study sample—the four-dozen square blocks surrounding
the future hotel grounds and apartment subdivision—was only seventeen percent
developed in 1910.
33
On a total of approximately 775 lots, builders and home-
seekers had thus far constructed 134 structures—single-family houses all.
34
Some of
these were large and stately, their owners choosing to live on or near the prestigious,
elongating Wilshire thoroughfare. By the 1910s, local luminaries such as
businessman Earle C. Anthony, film producer Thomas Ince, and movie stars Jackie
Coogan and Mary Pickford had joined publishers Otis and Earl and built mansions

32
In the days before statewide regulation was imposed in the 1929 Subdivision Map Act, lot
sizes varied quite a bit—all at the discretion of land sellers doing their best to anticipate market
demand. In general, residential lots 40 to 50 feet wide and 100 to 120 feet deep were the most
common. In the early 1920s, the City Planning Commission began promoting voluntary adherence to
a minimum standard size of 5,000 square feet (50 by 100 feet).
33
A twenty-acre portion of Site 3 just south of Sites A and 2 was not subdivided into lots until
1913.
34
The Baist Real Estate Atlas maps (1910) are far less specific than the Sanborns. Yet, going
by the standard symbols in Baist, its map shows no indication of any non-residential- or multi-family

217
along Wilshire in this part of town west of Westlake Park.
35
Most houses nearby
were not as large or elaborate, however, and occupied the far more common smaller
lots on cross-streets extending north and south of the boulevard.

Sites 0, 1, 2, and a twenty-acre portion of Site 3 were still Schmidt-owned acreage in
1910. The family had sold off a twenty-acre parcel (Site A) to an E.T. Crowell in
1903; Crowell had turned around and sold half of it three years later to the Los
Angeles Pacific Railway Company. Around 1918, the California Hotel Corporation
would buy up both halves for its new venture, soon to be renamed the Ambassador.
36

But at this point, only dairy cows and the family of Gottfried’s son, Ruben, occupied
this sixty-acre blank slate surrounded by residential subdivisions.
The Baist company mapped this land and its structures before the demand for
rental apartments had reached the case study area, but it was getting very close.
Though less than one lot in five was occupied here, the Southwest district’s higher
density was spreading north toward Wilshire, bringing with it some multi-family
housing; see Chapter 3. The two dozen or so blocks immediately south of Site 3
(outside the sample, and between Western and Vermont Avenues) were at least half-
developed in 1910—the further east (and closer to downtown), the more structures.
Most of this development was single-family dwellings, but over a dozen
entrepreneurs had speculated on income property by constructing small multiple-

residential structures in the study area. This terrain was not yet mapped in the 1907 Sanborns, though
adjacent areas just south were.
35
See Hancock , 129-135; Hines, 316-320.

218
dwellings. These included a two-family duplex, 2 four-family flats, and several
instances of “lot-packing,” where two or more detached dwellings shared a single
plot. Small commercial- and mixed-use development was also visible along Tenth
Street and its streetcar line: two 2-story buildings with apartments or rented rooms
over ground floor stores, and two single-story “taxpayer blocks” of shops only.
37

WILSHIRE BOULEVARD II: HOUSES, HOTELS AND APARTMENTS
The thoroughfare’s corridor of influence was both broadening and
lengthening. In 1914 the Times claimed, “the term ‘Wilshire district’ is beginning to
apply to a wide strip of land stretching westward along the county highway extension
of Wilshire Boulevard[.]”
38
This cross-sectional cachet affected not only property
values north and south of the boulevard but land uses, too. Longitudinally,
proximity to (and distance from) downtown also played an important role in
determining what was built when at any given point along the length.
The same market forces driving up prices for ostensibly suburban lots out
beyond Vermont Avenue drove them even higher for lots back in the Westlake
vicinity. According to a recent history of the area: “Mansions built by prominent
Los Angeles citizens … pushed the value of Wilshire Boulevard land to lofty
heights. Inevitably, the four blocks of the original [Gaylord Wilshire] tract between
Westlake and Sunset Parks became too desirable to remain the exclusive preserve of

36
“Valuable Property Sold,” LAT, November 4, 1923, V9.
37
Sanborn maps add particulars about individual properties. All structures noted herein
(except one of the 4-flats) was already built in 1907.

219
private homes.”
39
Real estate observers were excited about all this activity. One
1914 account reported on the resulting changes in land use: “The hotel men are
claiming site after site in the vicinity of Westlake and Sunset Parks and are
gradually, but surely, replacing the beautiful homes of this ‘original Wilshire
district’ with splendid hostelries and apartments[.]”
40
Though many were happy
about this progress in urban evolution, some were not—especially if it threatened the
city’s reputation for fine homes on spacious, landscaped lots. As late as 1920, more
conservative Angelenos hoped to keep the vicinity from changing. In this, they
found an ally in another nationally known planner. Charles H. Cheney warned the
Chamber of Commerce about the “serious damage” done by “flats and apartments
creeping into the Wilshire district.”
41

This process began quickly. In 1907, barely a dozen years after General Otis
had erected his private villa facing the park, heiress Mira Hershey commissioned the
rambling Hotel Hershey Arms for a site just two blocks west.
42
That same year,
plans were announced for the 7-story Wilshire Boulevard Apartments only a block
from Otis’s address.
43
And the development continued. In 1911, a “Kansas City
hotel woman of considerable wealth” made plans for the 4-story Warwick Court
apartment hotel directly adjacent to Sunset (now Lafayette) Park, on the corner of

38
“From Barley Fields to Palatial Homes,” LAT, March 29, 1914, VI1.
39
Roderick and Lynxwiler, 43.
40
“From Barley Fields to Palatial Homes,” LAT, March 29, 1914, VI1, emphasis added.
41
“Planners Want Cheney As Aide,” LAT, September 2, 1920, I8.
42
Roderick and Lynxwiler, 43-44.
43
“For Wilshire Boulevard,” LAT, March 3, 1907, V1.

220
Sixth Street and Commonwealth.
44
At about the same time, developer Hugh Bryson
completed the 5-story Rampart Hotel across Sunset Park, on Sixth Street at Rampart
Boulevard. Apparently encouraged by that success, the entrepreneur soon
commenced work on his namesake project, the Bryson Apartments, just down the
block. At first planning a 6-story structure, Bryson soon made changes. Bowing to
the concerns of residents and officials, he decided to set the building back
substantially from both Wilshire and Rampart—not only leaving space for a front
garden but helping to maintain the boulevard’s generous width. In exchange, he
added three floors to his apartment house, making it a nine-story tower, visible for
miles around the low-scale district. The apartments all reportedly rented within two
days of its opening, justifying its owner’s ambitions.
45

Growth elites in many US cities sometimes sought to elevate the prestige
(hence the price) of land in their particular burgh by making positive associations
with the nation’s premier metropolis. Rhetorical comparisons of some local place or
project with a supposed counterpart in New York City were commonplace in
advertisements or the booster press.
46
In Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle
Mile would be hailed as “the Fifth Avenue of the West” in the 1930s as developers
built more and more high-end commercial facilities to attract an affluent and

44
“Fine Hotel to Front on Park,” LAT, October 1, 1911, V1.
45
“Large Apartment House for Exclusive Westlake District,” LAT, May 19, 1912, VI1; also
Roderick and Lynxwiler, 44.
46
This tactic was also useful in the negative. Urban reformers working to improve slum
housing conditions in Los Angeles sometimes invoked the specter of derelict and congested tenement
housing on Manhattan’s lower east side in their attempts to persuade officials of the dire need for new
regulation.

221
fashionable clientele. But in the 1910s, it was another, residential part of Manhattan
to which Angeleno rentiers referred when discussing Wilshire—at least the stretch
between Westlake and Sunset Parks. In commenting on “the rise of values in all the
property facing upon Westlake Park and near thereto in the last decade,” the Los
Angeles Times observed in 1912 “the development of an area of apartment houses
… and hotels of the highest type … comparable to that of the Riverside Drive district
in New York City.”
47
Plainly, the density of such structures came nowhere near
Gotham’s, but the number of new and proposed large and costly residential buildings
in this part of the city was notable, and did reflect an agglomeration mentality among
certain rentiers. This would spur more plans for new and large apartment and hotel
construction further west along the boulevard.

Wilshire Boulevard became the location of choice for elite accommodations in Los
Angeles, and received the imprimatur of the local growth coalition with the
development of the Ambassador Hotel. Opening on New Year’s Day of 1921, it was
actually a full resort, on over twenty acres of grounds that included lawns, gardens,
swimming pool, and private bungalows. The main building—containing a reported
13 acres of floor space, 1000 windows and 2,300 doors—held seven floors of elegant
guest rooms, as well as restaurants, a theater, a bank, and stylish shops.
48
Backers of
this ambitious project included notables from all areas of Angeleno business and

47
LAT, May 26, 1912, V1.
48
“Five-Million-Dollar Hostelry is Opened,” LAT, January 1, 1921, II1.

222
society; the wide assortment of investors demonstrates the reach of growth machine
participation in this venture.
Development of as ambitious a project as the Ambassador Hotel
comparatively far from the central city has been characterized by some historians
(and contemporaries) as risky. The grand resort’s construction in 1919-20, amid
“bean and barley fields on the fringes of rather tentative residential subdivisions”
suggests a dicey proposition for investors.
49
But this interpretation is mistaken.
Given 1) the establishment of a district of large apartment houses and hotels less than
a mile east in the years previous, 2) Wilshire Boulevard’s extension as an east-west
traffic artery by the 1910s, and 3) the affluence characterizing much of the
residential development in the boulevard’s corridor of influence, only the luxury and
costliness of the Ambassador was a risk. By its opening in 1921, its location
probably posed no financial jeopardy beyond that of any imposing project of its kind.
Indeed, an even bigger tourist hotel was in the planning stages simultaneously.
Located further east, adjoining Sunset (now Lafayette) Park in the Westlake district,
this project was called “the second great hotel project of the year for the Wilshire
district.”
50
The Lafayette Park Hotel was on a smaller site, but was to reach fourteen
stories, twice the Ambassador’s seven. One of many ambitious projects for the area
that never came to fruition, its location and scope nevertheless indicated a growing
faith in Wilshire Boulevard west of downtown for large-scale development. In other

49
Charles Moore, Peter Becker, and Regula Campbell, The City Observed: Los Angeles, A
Guide to Its Architecture and Landscapes (New York: Random House, 1984), 148.
50
“Great Hotel to Face Park,” LAT, February 23, 1919, V1.

223
words, by the time that the Ambassador was under serious consideration, its site was
already in (or at least at the edge of) a growing precinct of big, fashionable apartment
houses and hotels.

By the 1920s, commercial developers had become interested in Wilshire Boulevard.
Land values were escalating further, due to a combination of 1) high residential
density in its hotel and apartment areas, 2) prestige in its elite suburban enclaves, and
3) the demand for goods and services in both territories more remote from the central
city. Entrepreneurs specializing in business properties saw the great potential; their
various attempts to gain a foothold would kick off a struggle that would go back and
forth for years—finally resulting in what Richard Longstreth calls “a motor-age
Champs-Elysees.”
51
On a symbolic level, the fight was over the future of the
boulevard’s appearance and function at the urban and even regional scale. But it was
also about rents and profits, and the owner of each lot with a Wilshire address had a
more tangible than visionary interest. Early municipal zoning prohibited business
uses, halting (for a time) the “threatened invasion of Wilshire by commercial
buildings.”
52
Those hoping to get around this ban faced clashes at various locations
at different times with not only neighbors but also the planning commission, city
council, realty board, and others doing their parts for the growth machine. As the
Westlake then Ambassador areas became increasingly popular for more intensive
apartment (and, eventually, retail) development on and near the boulevard, some

224
home-owners would move farther west. Occasionally, they took their dwellings with
them, participating in this period’s active spell of house-moving.

1922 LANDSCAPE: A NEW NEIGHBOR, POISED FOR CHANGE
At about the time E.L. Lewis wrote the city council complaining about the
three-story flat proposed for Kenmore Avenue at Eighth Street, “pacers” or “striders”
from the Sanborn Company were surveying Los Angeles, including the burgeoning
Wilshire district.
53
In 1922, the case study zone was far from fully developed, but
still held more than five hundred structures—enough to keep its assigned field
observer busy.
The Ambassador Hotel had opened just a year before Lewis’s letter, on New
Year’s Day of 1921. Inaugural guests on the upper floors must have enjoyed a
commanding view of the city. Looking west, they would have seen (and probably
smelled) the “half-million rosebushes” covering the Schmidt estate’s remaining
acreage next door (Sites 0, 1, 2); the Pacific Rose Company had leased the land for
six years.
54
Looking north, the distant Hollywood Hills would have been a striking
scene, soon interrupted: the 13-story Gaylord Apartment would go up directly across
Wilshire in just a couple of years. Eastward observers would have seen Wilshire

51
Longstreth, 111; see also Hancock, 149-164, 260-261; Hines, 320-327.
52
“Beauty of Boulevard is Saved,” LAT, August 26, 1922, I7.
53
For a brief history of the map and survey business in this era, see Diane L. Oswald, Fire
Insurance Maps: Their History and Applications (College Station TX: Lacewing Press, 1997),
especially Chapter 4.
54
Advertisements, LAT, December 3, 1915, I10; LAT, July 24, 1921, VII17. According to its
advertisements, the Pacific Rose Company occupied 3444 Wilshire Boulevard—the Schmidt’s twenty
remaining acres of Site 1-2—from 1915 to mid-1921, when it relocated to Western Avenue.

225
Boulevard running back toward Westlake Park, the Bryson Apartments and Rampart
Hotel rising above it. Beyond, downtown and its growing mass of mid- and high-
rise buildings would have marked the horizon. In all directions from the
Ambassador’s heights, the one- and two-story residential urban fabric held so dear
by Mr. Lewis and countless other Angelenos, interspersed with vacant tracts large
and small, would have dominated the scene.
As mentioned, Sites 0, 1 and 2 of the case study—the Schmidt estate’s twenty
remaining acres, soon to be a Manhattan-in-miniature—held plants and flowers at
this point. Site 3, surrounding the hotel and adjacent nursery, had gone from
seventeen to fifty-eight percent developed, with 475 of the now 818 plots occupied
by structures.
55
Of these buildings, nearly nine out of ten (88 percent) were single-
family dwellings of varying sizes.
56
Aside from the hotel complex, commercial or
institutional buildings numbered only six (about one percent): two churches, two
stores, a gas-and-oil station, and the flower shop of the Pacific Rose Company.
57

Along Wilshire Boulevard, houses and vacant lots were the norm; see Figure 23 for a
partial sample.

55
The total number is approximated. In 1913, a twenty-acre Schmidt-owned tract had been
sold and subdivided into 96 new lots. Conversely, a few older lots had since been tied together into
pairs, reducing the net count.
56
Many lots also held a detached garage, which are not included in the overall count of
structures.
57
The Pacific Rose Company property also held four small, auxiliary shed and greenhouse
structures.

226

Figure 23. Sanborn map dated 1922 indicating the western half of Site A (the
Ambassador Hotel property) along the right; the large empty tract at the center (then,
the Pacific Rose Company’s grounds) includes Sites 0 and what would soon become
Sites 1 and 2; refer to Figure 20.

Most of the development in the area was in detached private houses at this point. Single-family
dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange; other structures, purple. (Sanborn Map
Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5 and 6, 1922.)

227
The demand by some Angelenos for rental apartments had reached this district in the
years since the Baist company mapped it in 1910. Multiple-unit dwellings were now
part of the landscape here: petit rentiers had built 54 such structures, comprising just
over one building in ten (11 percent) in Site 3. All but two appear to have been new,
purpose-built structures rather than converted private houses. Four-family flats were
the most popular among developers, with 37 showing up. One- or two-story
duplexes accounted for 15 structures. One large lot held a ten-unit bungalow court,
and another held three identical detached dwellings—the only instance of lot-
packing noted by Sanborn striders here.
Surveyors found no larger apartment buildings here, only the sprawling hotel
complex. Had their mapping occurred two or three years later, these pacers would
have been far busier. By 1925, Los Angeles was three years into a multi-year boom
in multi-family housing construction that would leave parts of the city almost
unrecognizable by 1930—especially the Wilshire-Ambassador district. And just two
square blocks (Sites 1 and 2) would show this overwhelming growth literally in high
relief, as two dozen apartment houses holding over a thousand dwelling units would
quickly cover what had only recently been an open field.

WILSHIRE BOULEVARD III: APARTMENT DISTRICT
The heirs of Gottfried Schmidt had sold the future Ambassador Hotel
property around 1903 for roughly $1000 per acre, so they did not directly benefit
when the hotel corporation paid about sixteen times that price to the land’s new

228
owners in 1919.
58
Nonetheless, the family would reap an even greater profit next
door. After selling off tract after tract for residential subdivisions after the late
1880s, as neighboring land-owners had been doing, Gottfried’s widow and sons
decided to hold onto the estate’s remaining acreage (Sites 0-2)— as Isaac Reed’s
family had done in the Southwest district (see Chapter 3). Despite missing out on
the Ambassador deal, the Schmidts would soon find themselves in any real estate
entrepreneur’s wildest dream come true: possessing the last large piece of vacant
property (20 acres) along a promising stretch of major thoroughfare—and adjacent to
the region’s popular, shiny new showplace.
From its opening in 1921, the Ambassador Hotel helped to create prime
location on the west side of Los Angeles. It became a hive of social, cultural, and
business activity for not only local and regional but also national elites (of the white
race)—serving as both meeting place for prominent Angelenos and winter residence
for visiting celebrities and dignitaries. Names like DuPont, Vanderbilt, Hoover, and
Einstein graced the guest register.
59
The resort’s sudden and remarkable influence on
Los Angeles society rather quickly “moved the city’s center of gravity westward and
spurred the … development of Wilshire Boulevard.”
60
Real estate values along
Wilshire had been rising steadily for years, but the new hotel helped spur them even
higher in this area. Proudly hailing “the Fifth Avenue of the West,” place

58
LAT, September 2, 1902, 12; “Valuable Property Sold,” LAT, November 4, 1923, V9. The
earlier story reported a price of “about $25,000” for twenty acres, or $1250 per acre. The later story
cited “$1000 an acre” paid in 1903, and a price of “$325,000, or an average of $16,000 an acre” paid
by the hotel corporation in 1919.
59
Roderick and Lynxwiler, Chapter 3.

229
entrepreneurs would boast in just a few years: “One square foot of some of the land
is now worth more than the whole domain once sold for.”
61
To the most optimistic,
it must have suddenly seemed as though property along this stretch went from good
investment to gold mine.
62
Indeed, the Ambassador’s centrifugal effect on real estate
no doubt fueled elite rentier interests back downtown, who agitated for their own
showplace hotel at Fifth and Olive Streets—what would become the mammoth and
regal Biltmore—in just a few years. The downtown camp did this “to stabilize the
business center of the city,”
63
already suffering the slow, steady drain of commercial
activity to outlying areas.
64

The conspicuous achievement of the Ambassador Hotel’s backers coaxed
other real estate investors to venture further west of Westlake with their plans for big
new residential structures. As a result, building developers eyed west Wilshire sites
for high-rise apartment buildings. One of the first such projects was proposed for
part of the remaining Schmidt acreage in mid-1921. The Barcelona was a “gigantic,”
sprawling 12-story complex on a ten-acre site (Site 0), to contain 344 high-class

60
Moore, Becker, and Campbell, 148.
61
“Wilshire Paces Growth of City,” LAT, January 20, 1929, E1.
62
This highly profitable yet comparatively rare circumstance is what fueled the “hope zone”
condition referred to by city planners, whereby thousands of owners of boulevard frontage held it
vacant hoping for some new development to locate nearby and give a huge boost to surrounding
property values. See Chapter 6.
63
“The Retail Business Section of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Realtor, November 1921, 6. A
committee of local notables, including J.R. Sartori and Marco Hellman, “was selected by some 45 of
the leading business men of the city” to choose the best possible site downtown.
64
For a discussion of downtown Los Angeles’s commercial primacy then decline, see
Longstreth, Chapters 2 and 3.

230
apartments intended for cooperative ownership rather than rental.
65
“The scale …
will make it the largest apartment structure in the West,” promised an advertisement
featuring a lavish architectural rendering to remove any doubt. Interestingly, the
Barcelona was touted as “the house of homes” with “exceptional protection for
family life,” referring not only to various physical amenities but the opportunity for
individual ownership.
66
This recognized that apartment life in Los Angeles could
suit not only the predictable constituencies of long-term tourists, young single
workers and retired adults, but families in the middle-class and above; see Figure 24.
The Barcelona was never built. Sanborn surveyors mapping this part of Los
Angeles the following year noted the Schmidt’s twenty acres still undivided and
undisturbed, save for the surviving structures of the now-relocated Pacific Rose
Company: a small shop (probably a converted single-family dwelling), a greenhouse
and a few lattice-covered “Jap huts” set a few hundred feet back from the street.
67

It should surprise no one that a project as elegant and ambitious as the
Barcelona failed to materialize. It was not alone: several speculative plans for
skyscraping multiple dwellings along Wilshire Boulevard came and went in the
1920s. These include another (12- to 13-story) height-limit apartment building at the
corner of New Hampshire Avenue for two San Francisco investors; yet another at
Irolo Street for the investment firm of movie mogul Louis B. Mayer; and a seven-

65
A small proportion of apartments were slated for rental, to fund ongoing building operations
and maintenance. In this way, owners’ obligations would not extend past the initial purchase.
66
Display advertisement, LAT, May 1, 1921, V4.

231

Figure 24. Real estate advertisement for the Barcelona Apartments, 1921.

This unbuilt project was proposed for the site just west of the Ambassador Hotel, drawing on the
hotel’s immediate popularity and the resulting interest in the area by developers of urban multi-family
housing. (LAT April 3, 1921, V1.)

67
This racial nomenclature is probably a general reflection of the large proportion of Japanese
and Japanese-Americans engaged in commercial horticulture in this period. It is not known whether
the Pacific Rose Company was so owned or operated.

232
story structure at Catalina Street by and for the Frank Meline real estate firm.
68
The
comparative “reality” of such projects—how far the processes of land acquisition,
municipal permits, building design, and construction financing ever actually
proceeded—varied from venture to venture, and is difficult to reconstruct decades
later. Frequently, such proposals were the architectural equivalent of “paper cities”
marketed by land speculators in the nineteenth century. A beautiful drawing of an
impressive edifice in 1920 was the same as an eye-catching town plat in 1880: easy
and cheap to produce, and a useful tool to attract investors (best case) or merely test
the market for any interest whatsoever before abandoning the venture (worst case,
and probably more common). Many a real estate scheme was floated in this way. It
was a simple matter for a developer—merely in talks with a land-owner—to hire an
architect to draw up a hypothetical structure, then write a paragraph or two
describing its equally hypothetical attributes. These components were spun in
advertising copy (and often repeated by a cooperative booster press) as a foregone
conclusion. The Barcelona’s promoters stated on April 3, 1921, probably speciously,
that the land was “recently purchased from Mrs. Hulda Franceska Schmidt” and that
“applications for apartments [would] be received beginning tomorrow.”
69
Again, it
is difficult to ascertain just how close to realization this or any unbuilt project may
have come. The flower nursery renting the Schmidt’s Wilshire frontage announced
its relocation over to Western Avenue about the time of the Barcelona

68
“Local Men Buy Tract on Coast,” LAT, December 27, 1923, II9; Architect and Engineer
(August 1927), 107.
69
Display advertisements, LAT, April 3, 1921, V1; April 17, 1921, V4.

233
advertisements, so it is possible that the development may have actually progressed
beyond the fanciful stage. In any case, a Schmidt heir still owned the all-but-vacant
parcel five years later, in 1926.
70

The Schmidts continued to await their windfall, holding onto the twenty acres
(Sites 0-2) alongside the Ambassador. Another developer came calling in 1923, and
Hulda Schmidt cashed in for a reported $55,000 per acre—well over three times
what the hotel investors had paid just four years earlier. (This highlights the almost
instantaneous and practically institutional role that the hotel played in the culture and
business of white, bourgeois Los Angeles, as well as its impact on urban growth.)
Yet the family could see the promise of still greater profits in the future for holders
of property abutting Wilshire, and decided to sell off only the rear half of the
remaining acreage. Tellingly, the portion they retained was that which fronted on the
boulevard itself (Site 0), disposing instead of the southerly ten acres between
Seventh and Eighth Streets (Site 2).
71
Even absent the Wilshire frontage, the tract
they sold off was comparatively large and in a very desirable location: bordering on
the hotel’s park-like grounds, amid respectable residential subdivisions, and facing
Eighth Street—an emerging secondary thoroughfare parallel to Wilshire, two blocks
south.
A major land development firm operating in southern California since 1904,
the Edwards and Wildey Company recognized the potential for these particular ten

70
“Street Land Given City,” LAT, August 30, 1926, A1. Gottfried and Hulda’s son Ruben was
listed as owner.

234
acres (Site 2) and paid dearly to get in on the action.
72
The first thing the new owner
did was to christen the tract Ambassador Terrace in honor of its famous neighbor,
hoping to capitalize on the hotel’s hugely successful brand name.
73
The company
also understood larger trends in the Los Angeles real estate market. Just as in the
Westlake district a decade earlier, such valuable land no longer made sense for new
single-family dwellings, no matter how lavish and pricey. Simple economics called
for higher density. Moreover, the city’s brand-new zoning code restricted the entire
parcel to residential use—though of ostensibly “unlimited” scale.
74
Both the
growing demand for multi-family rental units in the region generally, and their
increasing popularity on this trajectory west of downtown specifically, seemed to
make the big back yard of the former flower nursery perfect soil for new apartment
houses. Denied actual frontage, the realty company wagered—to the tune of a
whopping half-million dollars or more, just for the ground—that Wilshire
Boulevard’s corridor of significant influence extended at least two blocks south.
75

Edwards and Wildey, a land company, wanted to tap the market for building
developers seeking to erect large apartment houses on this side of the city. Despite
the number of ambitious projects along Wilshire going unbuilt, others came to

71
One of Mrs. Schmidt’s sons held onto a corner lot from the parcel otherwise released for
sale, at the northeast corner of Mariposa Avenue and Eighth Street.
72
“Formation of Company Announced,” LAT, November 3, 1929, D8.
73
“Valuable Property Sold,” LAT, November 4, 1923, V9. Edwards and Wildey named
another of its subdivisions after the hotel. Located several blocks north and east of the hotel,
Ambassador Heights was intended for “flats and apartments,” and developed in such structures.
74
Los Angeles Municipal Atlas: Official Zoning Maps (1925).
75
The firm bet on an even wider “corridor of influence” for new multi-family housing with its
Ambassador Heights subdivision in 1921. Located five blocks north of the new hotel, this tract was

235
fruition in the early 1920s, further stimulating investor confidence in the area; see
Figure 25. Some of the imposing apartment buildings that did rise include: the
height-limit, 13-story Gaylord directly across Wilshire from the Ambassador; the 10-
story Talmadge two blocks east at Wilshire and Berendo (developed by the husband
of film star Norma Talmadge)
76
; and the 5-story Los Altos farther out at Bronson
Avenue. The closer-in Westlake district was still ripe, too, shown in the construction
of the 8-story Victoria Arms at Carondolet Street; its developer stated (however self-
servingly), “Los Angeles is due for a great development in first-class apartment
houses on Wilshire Boulevard.”
77
And for each such showplace on the boulevard,
competitors were planning developments a block or more north or south in the larger
Wilshire corridor. The 4-story Haddon Hall on Eighth Street at Fedora and the 6-
story Windsor on Seventh Street at Catalina were two such contemporaneous
projects. Both located within two hundred feet of the Ambassador site, their owners
hoped to benefit from this proximity without paying the exorbitant price for a
Wilshire address. This particular niche of apartment builder was precisely Edwards
and Wildey’s target for its new subdivision.

promoted “exclusively for … flats, apartments and duplexes.” Advertisement, LAT, January 19,
1921, I5.
76
“Norma Talmadge’s Apartments Opened,” LAT, July 11, 1924, A3.
77
“Los Angeles Progress in Apartment Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor, September 1924, 11.
Joe Toplitzky was a Los Angeles Realty Board member specializing in apartment building
development and sales.

236

Figure 25. Aerial view of the Wilshire-Ambassador district in 1924, looking
southeast.

The Ambassador Hotel is the H-shaped building toward the center of the photograph, which was
taken just after completion of the 13-story Gaylord and 10-story Talmadge apartment houses along
Wilshire Boulevard. The new Ambassador Terrace subdivision (Site 2) is dashed in red.

237
In laying out Ambassador Terrace (Site 2), the engineers at Edwards and Wildey
divided it into two square blocks by extending existing streets into the ten-acre site.
Seventh Street ran east-west along the tract’s northern edge, separating it from what
was left of the Schmidt acreage (Site 0).
78
Normandie and Mariposa Avenues were
extended in, running north-south; the former was required to have a more generous
eighty-foot width, to comply with recommendations in the newly published Major
Traffic Street Plan.
79
Then the firm did what all experienced land developers do:
performed the nuanced, speculative calculus translating information about land
values, municipal regulation and building types into new property lines on the
ground. The firm’s economic- and engineering personnel weighed the crucial
difference between more building plots of smaller size versus fewer of larger size,
opting for the latter. Rather than go with the fifty-foot lots characterizing most of the
area, the firm platted 44 lots a roomier sixty feet in width.
80
This scheme resulted in
eight fewer lots—not insignificant for someone in the business of selling land.
81
Yet,

78
The sale and subdivision is mentioned in “Valuable Property Sold,” LAT, November 4,
1923, V9, but the 20-acre Schmidt parcel still shows whole in the 1925 Los Angeles Zoning Atlas.
This probably indicates a lag in the city’s surveying of recent land transactions.
79
Report by Frederick Law Olmsted, Harland Bartholomew and Charles Henry Cheney for The
Traffic Commission of the City and County of Los Angeles, A Major Traffic Street Plan for Los
Angeles, (1924). For a discussion of implementation, see Scott L. Bottles, Los Angeles and the
Automobile: The Making of the Modern City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 106-
111.
The building permit issued July 25, 1927 for the apartment building at 732 Normandie noted
the project’s approval “since Normandie between 7
th
and 8
th
Streets is now 80 [feet] in width.”
Normandie was one of the proposed primary north-south arteries recommended for widening. It was,
though it was never extended through the remaining Schmidt acreage at Site 0, despite a promise by
Ruben Schmidt to deed the right-of-way for this purpose. “Street Land Given City,” LAT, August 30,
1926, A1.
80
The four corner lots at Eighth Street were 65 feet wide.
81
Lots sixty feet wide (and even wider) appeared in a few places in the district, but had been
the result of earlier subdivisions, and intended to provide spacious yards for large single-family

238
the extra ten feet per lot meant not only added building square footage over several
potential floors, but increased flexibility for architects designing the kinds of
buildings containing dozens of apartments already dotting the denser parts of Los
Angeles. Moreover, no deed restrictions specified side setbacks (beyond the state-
mandated minimums) and no front setback whatsoever, allowing for even greater lot
coverage. The Edwards and Wildey Company gambled, successfully, that these
bigger sites would attract developers willing to pay a premium for more space in
such a good location. Lots sold fast, sometimes in pairs or more; some were bought
just for land speculation, and re-sold quickly.
82

Edwards and Wildey was not the only land developer marketing on a large
scale to apartment builders at this time in this vicinity of the grand hotel.
83
Kells and
Grant realtors were already promoting their tract six blocks north the same way.
“We suggest that you build flats, apartments or duplex houses in Ambassador

dwellings being built in the 1890s through the 1910s. As remaining acreage was cut up, newer lots
were narrower; a fifty-foot frontage became an increasingly popular standard for bungalow
development. The vast majority of lots between Vermont and Western Avenues in this area were this
width. (Common lot depths ranged from 120 to 150 feet.) For sub-dividers to return to a greater lot
width this late is evidence of an anticipated change in development type, I believe. See City of Los
Angeles Parcel Map nos. 132B193 and 132B197.
82
“Hollywood and Wilshire Homes in Realty Deals,” LAT, May 31, 1925, F5. For example,
lots on the Mariposa block initially purchased by George A. Stocker and Lawrence O. Stocker were
sold to apartment developer “Ray De Camp and others who are to build apartment buildings thereon.”
83
“Zoning Change Yields Activity,” LAT, October 28, 1928, E4. A protracted lawsuit finally
overturning private deed restrictions opened up several blocks of land in Pellissier Square (in the
southeast quadrant of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue) for development in other than single-
family dwellings. This article notes that, within months of the decision, six multi-story apartment
buildings (collectively containing more than 300 dwelling units) were in construction. Another nine
such projects were listed as in the planning stages.
Pellissier Square is situated outside this case study area, just blocks to the west.

239
Heights,” their advertisement read for a similarly named parcel.
84
In 1926, the
Henry de Roulet Company would subdivide the remaining six square blocks of the
nearby Pellissier Square tract and offer its lots for multi-family housing. A
newspaper article on “Community Development” reported that “[t]his thirty-three
acre property in the heart of the exclusive Wilshire district … is restricted to
apartment and income property sites[.]” Mr. de Roulet (grandson of the acreage’s
original purchaser, sheep rancher Germain Pellissier), noted his development’s
“definite, well-considered planning” as a large “close-in area devoted strictly to …
apartment-house[s].”
85
He cited its convenient location near Western Avenue’s
emerging commercial facilities, easy accessibility by auto, streetcar and bus, as well
as improvement with street lighting and other utilities. Pellissier Square’s apartment
section was characterized as a big and bold real estate undertaking, and it was. But
the surge of large-scale construction on Ambassador Terrace properties several
blocks east must have bolstered the confidence de Roulet needed for his project.

Merchants, businessmen, home-owners, realtors, developers and planners continued
to battle over acceptable uses for Wilshire property during the 1920s. The earlier
vision for a wide, tree-lined parkway of fine houses and (later) elegant apartments
remained vital for a top-tier metropolis, according to those harkening back to the
Robinson plan. “Wilshire Boulevard is virtually the city’s only opportunity to create

84
Advertisement, LAT, December 14, 1920, I7. While this subdivision was developed with
mny multi-family dwellings, most were four-flats and small apartment buildings.
85
“Last of Large Tract Offered,” LAT, March 28, 1926, E6.

240
a broad thoroughfare to the ocean worthy of Los Angeles,”
86
advocates maintained,
and must be “closed to all [uses] but residences and apartment-houses.”
87
But this
view was losing currency. Rentiers seeking their fortunes in commercial real estate
continued their opposition, arguing that boulevard frontage was far too valuable for a
residential “strait-jacket.” As we now know, the commercial crowd won the
argument—with much effort, and only in fits and starts over a period of years. By
1928, “the [planning] commission realized that the Wilshire-for-residences battle
was lost[.]”
88
Those more enthusiastic declared, “Wilshire Boulevard is rapidly
shaking its shackles [of] residential and income zoning restrictions.”
89
Builders
would still erect formidable apartment houses on the thoroughfare, but not
exclusively. Increasingly, these would be located on blocks north and south, with
more Wilshire addresses holding new shops, offices, theaters, restaurants, markets
and gas stations.
This period is when the architecturally striking branch location of Bullocks
department store was planned for Wilshire Boulevard just east, near Westlake Park.
It opened in 1929. This venture is sometimes characterized as urbanistically
groundbreaking, its owners hailed as prescient in their decision to site a major retail
establishment so far from downtown’s commercial core.
90
But this part of Los

86
“The Wilshire Zone,” LAT, August 10, 1922, II4.
87
“Beauty of Boulevard is Saved,” LAT, August 26, 1922, I7. Powerful downtown business
interests saw any major commercial development in outlying areas as unwanted competition. This
faction lobbied strenuously for a residence-only Wilshire Boulevard.
88
New Zone Proposal Approved,” LAT, November 16, 1928, A18.
89
“Wilshire Paces Growth of City,” LAT, January 20, 1929, E1.
90
Margaret Leslie Davis, Bullock’s Wilshire (Los Angeles: Balcony Press, 1996).

241
Angeles was already booming. In 1924, the Eberle and Riggleman research firm
noted the area’s “relatively high concentration of purchasing power,” due, in part, “to
the large number of apartment houses and the high density of population” as well as
high family incomes in lower-scale residential portions.
91
Richard Longstreth writes
that John Bullock “recognized Wilshire’s potential,” and that “[h]opes for intense
development no longer seemed so far-fetched.”
92
Bullock may have taken a risk (as
had the Ambassador’s owners) in constructing such a costly, opulent edifice.
However, its location was no mere dart thrown at the map, nor a lucky guess: it was
a reasoned and reasonable real estate decision based on years of substantial urban
development in the vicinity.

GROWTH ON THE GROUND, 1925-1931
Urban development virtually exploded in the 1920s, including multi-family
housing construction. Unfortunately, no mapping of the case study area in this
period has been found. Sanborn maps from 1922 predate the dramatic surge; the
1951 maps include this development, along with everything else built after the boom.
However, a detailed workup of one sample block, drawn from insurance maps,
building permit records, newspaper items, planning documents and field observation
illustrates the kinds of large, costly projects being executed in the last half of the
1920s, as the apartment market soared.

91
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service newsletter, December 15, 1924, n.p.
92
Longstreth, 112-113.

242
The 700 block of South Normandie Avenue (Site 1) is the focal piece of the
case study sample. The western half of the two-block, ten-acre Ambassador Terrace
subdivision went from open field to one of the city’s densest urban blocks in about
five years. In 1924, this block was still in vacant lots straddling a dirt road.
93
By
1930, it was “built up solid” with “all apartments” according to two concerned (and
envious) home-owners nearby.
94
For so much large-scale construction to be
completed by so many different developers so quickly was unusual. But the late
1920s in Los Angeles (and in other cities) was an exceptional period, and so was the
site; see Figure 26.

Builders broke ground in late 1925. Four of the tract’s new land-owners secured
building permits that year: George B. Knudsen for the 74-unit Barclay Apartments at
the northeast corner of Normandie and Seventh Street; Lee Callahan and Sons for the
68-unit La Granada Apartments across the street at mid-block; D. Rosengarten for a
30-unit, three-story apartment house down the block at number 756; and, next door,
W.J. Fox for a mixed-use building at the end of the block. This structure housed 30
dwelling units in four stories over a ground floor of shops facing the emerging cross-
town thoroughfare of Eighth Street, two blocks south of Wilshire Boulevard.
95

93
Figure 5A shows about half of the Ambassador Terrace parcel in 1924. One apartment
building, under construction, shows up at 751 Mariposa, the next block over. The first building
permits issued for lots in the 700 block of Normandie were issued in 1925.
94
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Zoning Committee Meeting minutes, January 5,
1929, petition of Charlotte M. Donahue; and February 27, 1930, petition of E.A. Dane. Both property
owners sought a rezoning of their blocks elsewhere in the Wilshire district from a single-family-only
“A” designation to the more inclusive “B” category allowing all forms of multi-family housing.
95
Eighth Street held a street railway line, whereas Wilshire Boulevard did not.

243

Figure 26. Axonometric model of the 700 block of South Normandie Avenue (Site
1).

Indicated for each property is its development information: year of building permit, name of owner,
architect and builder (if supplied), size and construction type. This reconstruction of the western half
of the Ambassador Terrace subdivision indicates the swiftness of development there. All but the two
small apartment houses were built during the last half of the 1920s. (By author.)

244
The following year, A.W. Menkins secured a permit for his property at the
southwest corner of Normandie and Seventh, opposite the Barclay Apartments then
under construction. He hired Lee Callahan and Sons to handle both design and
general contracting. The Times noted that the owner had come recently from
England, and that his new venture “represents the investment of foreign capital” in
the expanding Wilshire district.
96
Though the extraordinary Barcelona project had
never materialized a block north, Menkins’ new Langham Apartments was also
ambitious. The building had 180 units on seven floors organized around two
courtyards, plus a roof garden with swimming pool, beauty parlor, café, reception
rooms and foyer—the latter “a replica of the famous Davanzati Palace of Florence,
Italy.”
97
Clearly, this place entrepreneur was hoping to ride the costly coattails of the
Ambassador Hotel a block away. The Parker Construction Company started on the
Stuart Hall Apartments at number 732 the next year. While obtaining permits at the
building department, the firm’s agent must have stood in line with many competitors.
The project was one of seventy-four apartment houses approved in just four weeks—
July 1-29, 1927, for an average of nearly four such buildings each business day.
Stuart Hall contained 37 of the approximately 1,100 apartment units permitted in that
particularly active month.
98

96
“Huge Realty Deals Closed,” LAT, November 17, 1925, A22.
97
“New Apartment House Opens,” LAT, December 4, 1927, F4.
98
“Housing Looms in July Figures,” LAT, July 31, 1927, E1, notes permits for 809 single-
family- and duplex houses and 74 apartment buildings, for a total of 2,037 “families accommodated”
(dwelling units) that month with no further breakdown. The annual totals for 1927 are summarized in
Southwest Builder and Contractor, January 6, 1928, 50. Overall, the ratio of single-family dwellings
to duplexes was 7:1 for the year; applying that proportion to the month of July, then 911 housing units

245
Over the next three years, more property owners developed their share of
rental apartments on the new block of Normandie Avenue. By 1931, eleven new
apartment houses contained a total of 646 dwelling units. In addition, the six-level,
300-car Rozel parking structure (with shops at street level) was built on the
northwest corner of Normandie and Eighth, opposite W.J. Fox’s mixed-use building.
The garage was leased and operated in conjunction with the Ambassador Hotel.
99

The scale of development on this block was big, just as its subdivider had
hoped: six of the structures occupied a total of thirteen already-sizable lots. Most of
these sat on two lots (legally tied together); the enormous Langham took up four.
Buildings ranged from 3 to 7 stories tall, and were all of fireproof or semi-fireproof
construction employing concrete frames or load-bearing masonry walls. Several had
architecturally elaborate facades. The sum effect of so many sizable structures,
erected enfilade before municipal codes would mandate front or side setbacks, was
of an unbroken street wall directly on the sidewalk, fifty to ninety feet high—a
decidedly urban, even urbane setting.
100
See Figure 27.

This focal block of the case study—built up so densely in five short years—is plainly
a special case. Delivery trucks undoubtedly jammed this short stretch of Normandie,

were such, with the remaining 1,126 in apartments. Four-flats would have been included under
“apartment building” by this time.
99
“Lease Given Hotel for New Garage,” LAT, March 18, 1928, E5.
100
The west side of the street was unbroken except for three front-facing courtyards in U- or E-
shaped building plans. The east side of the street held three vacant lots; one would be occupied by a
small apartment building in 1939, another in 1948. The lot between the Barclay and the Chalfonte
remains vacant to this day, and is used for parking.

246

Figure 27. View looking south on the 700 block of South Normandie Avenue (Site
1) in 2005.

The Barclay (left) and Langham (right) are in the foreground; the Chalfonte is center left.

247
hurrying to unload building materials; new drivers probably wondered which of the
many job sites was the right one for their shipment of steel, bricks, concrete, or
lumber. Every morning, construction workers must have descended on this tiny
patch of Los Angeles by the hundreds. This block, along with its counterpart over on
Mariposa, would have been a noisy, dirty, hazardous hive of blue collars and heavy
equipment. Late sleepers at the Ambassador Hotel may well have cursed the racket
of revving engines, clanging rivet guns, pounding hammers, and raucous shouts that
must have emanated from the former nursery, sunrise to sunset. Tourists gazing
south from the Hollywood Hills were probably curious about the perpetual dust
cloud hovering just to the right of the Wilshire resort during the last half of the
1920s.
The other half of Ambassador Terrace—the 700 block of Mariposa
Avenue—took on a similar form at the same time. Owners, builders and architects—
some of them working over on Normandie, too—developed another dozen apartment
buildings of the same general size and type as Stuart Hall or the Roosevelt. The
chief difference on Mariposa was a lack of huge structures—of more than four or
five floors, or occupying more than one lot. And apparently no one ventured the
development of any mixed-use buildings on either lot at the south end. One of the
corners at Mariposa and Eighth held a gas station by 1951 (since demolished), and
the other has apparently never been built on.
101

248
The back ten acres of the former Pacific Rose Company, planted in flowers just a
few years before, had sprouted apartments by the hundreds. And in addition to the
nearly two dozen big apartment houses on Normandie and Mariposa, another forty-
five or so went up in Site 3 in roughly the same period, though in less-dense
groupings.
102
And just outside the sample area, to the west, Henry de Roulet’s
heavily promoted apartment district was another success.
103
Developers with high
hopes, big plans and borrowed money descended on Pellissier Square as Ambassador
Terrace was filling up nearby; a few of them built in both subdivisions. Between
1928 and 1933, they collectively erected 17 four- to nine-story apartment houses in
the eight square blocks between Western Avenue and Harvard Boulevard, south of

101
Assessor information, including (approximate) construction date and number of dwelling
units, is found at http://zimas.lacity.org.
102
This determination is made by counting buildings which appear on the 1951 Sanborn but not
on the 1922 mapping. Any such apartment houses built a) of brick, and/or b) to the front or side
property lines would almost certainly have been erected prior to the early 1930s, due to either of the
following: a 1934 setback ordinance mandating front and side yards, or the massive downturn of
multi-family development in the mid-1930s.
103
The slightly newer apartment district shared a few things in common with Ambassador
Terrace—namely, 1) a quantity of larger lots held vacant for several years, 2) as the district developed
around it, 3) while the general climate fostering multi-family housing peaked. This was the situation
ripe for Henry de Roulet’s new marketing of the area to apartment builders.
The southerly portion of the Pellissier Square tract had remained vacant after subdivision in
1913. Some owners of these larger lots (originally intended for substantial private houses) remained
hesitant to build bungalows once other owners, eager to build income property, raised a challenge to
the 1916 residential deed restrictions. A lengthy court battle was finally settled in 1928, involving
some thirty-one attorneys. The private single-family dwelling requirement was lifted. See all LAT:
“Arguments Continue in Tract Case,” March 10, 1926, A1; “Last of Large Tract Offered,” March 28,
1926, E6; “Pellissier Restriction Data Heard,” March 28, 1928; and “Court Rules in Wilshire Fight,”
March 9, 1928, A3. And even though part of the tract was publicly zoned “A” for detached houses,
property owners sought and gained rezoning to “B” for unlimited residential use. See Los Angeles
Municipal Atlas: Official Zoning Maps, 1925 and 1930; and Los Angeles City Planning Commission,
Zoning Committee meeting minutes, December 15, 1925; February 16, 1926; and November 15,
1929.

249
Eighth Street.
104
Dense residential nodes also agglomerated in a few other areas of
Los Angeles, including parts of Bunker Hill, Crown Hill, and Hollywood. These
unmistakable assemblages are the only multi-family housing normally acknowledged
in histories of this city.
The remarkably fast and dense development of Ambassador Terrace is
interesting, but uncommon: once finished, these two blocks boasted a quarter of the
entire sample area’s dwelling units (see below). Few blocks in Los Angeles were
built out to this extent, or so quickly. But the same economic forces operating all at
once on this ideally located tabula rasa were at work all over the city, in less-
dramatic and less-concentrated forms. On the whole, the city’s multi-family housing
stock was more varied and modestly scaled. For every apartment building 4 or more
stories tall permitted from 1919 to 1930, fifteen 2-story apartment houses and flats
were approved.
105
Outside the occasional large concentration noted above, the
occasional mid- to high-rise apartment block (or two, or three) was typically
surrounded by an assortment of small apartment houses, flats, bungalow courts,
duplexes and single-family abodes, not to mention vacant lots. Even inside Site 3 of
the study sample, much of the housing stock was small in scale, as noted in the 1922
and 1951 landscape descriptions.

104
“Many Large Buildings…” LAT, March 14, 1937, E1. Building permit data indicates that
most of these buildings, if not all, were permitted in 1931 or earlier.
105
In the 2-story category (including four-flats), 7,628 permits were issued, compared to the 506
for projects 4 stories and more. In the 3-story mid-range, 451 permits were issued.

250
All of this new housing meant that droves of people now living in outlying areas
needed conveniently located consumer commodities. “In districts where the
multifamily building is housing more and more of the residents, the character of
buying is changing,” economic observers wrote about Los Angeles-in-flux.
106

Where the home-owner or housewife was ostensibly better able to cook, clean and
entertain in a suburban cottage’s fully equipped kitchen, laundry porch, and
backyard, “[t]he apartment, flat or bungalow court dweller demands … primarily a
delicatessen table … of prepared meats, vegetables, fruits and baked goods.”
Further, “The apartment, flat and bungalow court districts have a greater demand for
laundry service than the single-family districts.”
107
Housing historian Paul Groth
calls this distinctly urban phenomenon “living up and down the street,” whereby
close-dwelling renters meet their domestic needs in various nearby establishments
providing goods and services otherwise stocked and accommodated in a private
bungalow.
108
This was clearly happening in Los Angeles, where the rental housing
inventory itself supported the process: 80 percent of all apartments contained only
one or two rooms in the mid-1920s, and an overwhelming 98 percent were
reportedly rented furnished.
109
These quarters—compact, convenient and easy to
move in and out of—were as ideal for long-stay tourists as for young unmarrieds

106
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, July 18, 1927, 174.
107
Ibid., emphasis added.
108
Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States
(Berkeley: University of California, 1994).
109
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, November 30, 1925, n.p.
“Furnished” usually meant not only tables, chairs, beds, etcetera, but also bed and bath linens and
kitchen utensils.

251
working in downtown offices, or retired couples living off the income of a sold
home. In many dense neighborhoods, demand existed for more than food and clean
laundry. “The absence … or relatively small number … of children in multifamily
dwellings tends to set more purchasing power free” for non-essentials such as
“men’s and women’s clothing, jewelry, antiques, amusement, books and
periodicals[.]”
110

This was precisely the multifaceted market that business owners hoped to
profit from in their gradually successful push for commercial zoning along Wilshire
and other main thoroughfares. While some developers were loading up lots in
Ambassador Terrace and Pellissier Square with single and double apartments, others
were filling retail needs. Hungry diners, both local and tourist, patronized the new,
hat-shaped Brown Derby restaurant—directly across the street from the Ambassador
Hotel—starting in 1925. The owners of the Chapman Park Hotel complex opened
the innovative drive-in Chapman Park Market on Sixth Street in 1929. In 1931,
auto-dealer E.L. Cord started supplying goods of a decidedly more luxurious nature
in his new showroom and headquarters on Wilshire at Mariposa. A few blocks west,
at Oxford Street, the McKinley Building offered fashionable stores. By 1931, the
dazzling, towering Pellissier Building at Western Avenue furnished ample square-
footage for merchants in ground floor shops, professionals in upper-floor offices, and
entertainers and spectators in the Warner Brothers Theater. Church builders were
also busy, meeting needs of a higher order. Immanuel Presbyterian, St. Basil’s,

110
Ibid.

252
Wilshire Christian Church and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, along with their
auxiliary structures, were also built in this period in or near the case study sample.
Many of these commercial and institutional buildings were fairly elaborate pieces of
architecture.
111
That so many went up so close together in time and space was
another measure of the Wilshire-Ambassador district’s prestige. Yet, as with
residential development, these edifices coexisted with smaller and cheaper structures
less aesthetically significant, but no less important to their owners, tenants, and
customers.
Not all of those patronizing various establishments' were nearby residents;
many would have driven to the area from elsewhere. As automobile ownership
skyrocketed in 1920s Los Angeles, parking became a problem in certain parts of the
city. A few entrepreneurs profited from this niche of the urban economy, erecting
multi-story garages to furnish hundreds of desperately needed parking spaces.
112
In
the case study area of Site 3, two such operations were built—both in connection
with big hotel complexes. As noted, the Rozel Garage on Normandie at Eighth was
one such place, affiliated with the Ambassador. Up at Sixth and Mariposa, the
Chapman Park Hotel’s owners built their own.
113
No doubt some of the cars parked
inside of both belonged to apartment tenants living nearby, at a time before planning
regulations mandated the provision of on-site parking for multiple dwellings.

111
For descriptions of some of the surviving architecture in this district, see David Gebhard and
Robert Winter, Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith
Books, 1985), 201-209.
112
See, for example, “City Meeting Garage Needs,” LAT, July 10, 1927, E8.
113
“Mariposa Garage is Under Way,” LAT, January 23, 1927, E3.

253
CITY-BUILDING AND CITY BUILDERS
Many participants in the roar of city-building during the 1920s tended to be active in
more than one project. Consequently, the developers, architects and builders
engaged on Normandie Avenue in Ambassador Terrace were busy elsewhere, too;
see Table 1. Lee Callahan and Sons may have been the busiest firm on the block,
acting as architect for the Langham, the Barclay, La Granada, and W.J. Fox’s mixed-
use building. A design-build concern, Callahan and Sons was also a rentier—
owning and constructing La Granada Apartments as well as designing it. The firm
also designed, built, and/or owned several other apartment houses and hotels in this
period, including two more in the Wilshire district, two in the Westlake district, and
one each in the Pico and University districts.
114

114
See all LAT, “Start Work on Fine Buildings…” September 12, 1920, V1; April 23, 1922,
V11; “Three Sales Made,” August 17, 1924, D5; February 1, 1925, E9; “Three Projects Cited,” June
27, 1926, E1.

254

Principal Projects at 700 South
Normandie Ave (Site 1)
Selected projects elsewhere
(Apartment buildings unless noted)
Richard D. King
(Architect)
-761: Parking Garage & Shops -700 block, Mariposa Av
-La Brea & 9
th
St. (Theater, shops)
-Del Rey Apts., 610 N. Kenmore
Callahan & Sons
(Architect/Builde
r/Owner)
-706: Barclay Apts
-715: Langham Apts.
-729: La Granada Apts.
-764: Apts. & Shops
-7
th
St. & Westlake Av.
-2
nd
Av. & Pico St.
-Wilshire Lorraine Apts., Rampart Bl.
-4815 S. Vermont Av.
-205 N. Kenmore Av.
-Maryella Hotel, 8
th
& New Hampshire
Interstate
Mortgage &
Investment Co.
(Owner)
-720: Chalfonte Apts.
-751: Richelieu Apts.
-761: Rozel Garage & Shops
-Picadilly Apts., Irolo St.
-Beverly Manor Apts., 334 Normandie
Av.
-Warrington Apts, Harvard Bl., Pell.
Square
-Park Lane Apts. in Glendale
Samuel Bard
(Builder/Owner)
-756: Evelyn-Ambassador
Apts.
-Hobart Bl. & 9
th
St., Pellissier Square
-Apt. building & (3) hotels, Hollywood
L.A. Smith
(Architect)
-756: Evelyn-Ambassador
Apts.
-Embassy Apts., 7
th
St. & Mariposa
Edwards, Wildey
& Dixon
(Builder/Owner)
-706: Barclay Apts.
-715: Langham Apts.
-764: Apts & Shops
-7
th
& Hope Sts. (Office & Store bldg.)
-San Diego (Office bldg.)
Irving Siegel
(Builder/Owner)
-745: Roosevelt Apartments -800 block, Oxford Av., Pellissier Square
Parker
Construction Co.
(Builder/Owner)
-732: Stuart Hall Apts. -841 Serrano Av., Pellissier Square
Max Maltman
(Architect)
-745: Roosevelt Apts. -700 block, Mariposa Av.
-530 Kingsley Dr.
Milton Friedman
(Architect)
-720: Chalfonte Apts. -Franklin Av. near Vine St., Hollywood
-Paramount Studios, Hollywood (Offices)
Albert Chotiner
(Owner)
-739: Apartment house -La Brea & 9
th
St. (Theater & shops)
-8
th
St. at Fedora (Store bldg.)
-Wilshire Blvd. (Theater/ shops/ offices)
Table 1. Development principals’ work on case study block and elsewhere during
the 1920s.

255
If the Callahan company had the most time invested on this block of Normandie,
then the Interstate Mortgage and Investment Company may have had the most
money on the line.
115
This firm owned and developed three projects there for a total
outlay somewhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million: the 80-unit Chalfonte, the 42-
unit Richelieu, and the 300-car Rozel garage.
116
Interstate was extremely active in
multi-family properties, owning and operating eight multi-story apartment buildings
in 1928, including Beverly Manor a few blocks up Normandie, the Picadilly a block
over on Irolo Street, the Warrington a few blocks west, and the Park Lane up in
Glendale.
117
Interstate was also an active cog in Los Angeles’s growth machine. In
typical booster fashion, its president was quoted in several stories for the Los
Angeles Times on various aspects of the local and regional development picture,

115
Francis J. Murphy was listed as owner on the permits for the two apartment buildings; press
releases noted F.J. Murphy as secretary of the Interstate firm, “DeLuxe Apartment-house to be
Opened Formally Today,” LAT, March 22, 1927, 10. Interstate was listed as builder of the Chalfonte;
S.C. Clark, builder of at least one more Interstate-owned apartment house, was so listed for the
Richelieu. The actual ownership of these projects by Interstate Mortgage and Investment Company is
described in newspaper real estate reports, for example “A Notable Achievement for 1928,” LAT,
January 2, 1929, E21.
116
The projected costs claimed in the three building permits (“construction valuation”) total
$485,000. Contemporary newspaper accounts, placed with the blessing of the development firm,
reached $1,390,000 and even higher. For example, the Chalfonte’s valuation was listed on its 1928
permit at $160,000; four months later, an announcement in the Times projected a cost of $500,000;
another note the next month put the cost at $750,000. Developers have every reason to low-ball
permit valuations and exaggerate costs everywhere else, because valuations normally determine
permit fees, and other reports affect sales, rents, and general prestige. See all LAT: “Lease Given
Hotel for New Garage,” March 18, 1928, E5; “Apartment to Cost $200,000 Rising,” September 16,
1928; “Wilshire Apartment Rising,” December 9, 1928. Apart from possibly specious salesmanship,
another factor at work was definitional. Permit valuations excluded costs of land and furnishings, and
it is quite likely that all other reports did include these components.
117
Advertisement, LAT, January 2, 1929, E21.

256
including rental housing demand, building materials prices, wage levels, industrial
employment, parking demand, and population growth.
118

The Ambassador Terrace tract’s original subdivider also became heavily
involved here via its construction and operations subsidiaries. Edwards, Wildey, and
Dixon was a general contracting firm working at all scales in greater Los Angeles.
In 1923 and 1924, for example, the company was responsible for a four-story office
building downtown, the height-limit Taft building in Hollywood, and a two-story
bungalow in Silver Lake, among other projects.
119
Here—in the parcel it had
purchased, cut up and sold off just a year earlier—the firm was hired by W.J. Fox to
construct his $120,000 apartment-and-store building designed by Callahan and Sons.
But there was even more work here for Edwards and Wildey—the men, if not the
company. In addition to subdivision and construction, the firm’s principals were
involved in financing and operations. In 1927, Godfrey Edwards was listed as
president of a corporation “organized … to acquire, own, and operate the Langham
Apartment Hotel now nearing completion.”
120
That same year, Otto G. Wildey was
named president of another concern doing the same for the Barclay Apartments
across the street.
121

118
See, for example, “Materials at Low Cost Ebb,” LAT, November 14, 1926, E5; “Scale of
Wages Up…” LAT, February 20, 1927, E5; Incomes Show Large Increase,” LAT, March 20, 1927,
E9; “California Population Rise Steady,” LAT, July 24, 1927, E7; “Factories Here Employ 200,000,”
LAT, July 31, 1927, E7.
119
“Office Structure to Rise,” LAT, September 15, 1923, II1; “Taft Building is Completed,”
LAT, May 25, 1924, D2; “Many Buildings Under Way…” LAT, June 22, 1924, D6.
120
Advertisement for Seventh and Normandie Holding Corporation, LAT, August 31, 1927, 13.
121
Advertisement for Normandie Holding Corporation, LAT, May 12, 1927, 13. The complex,
overlapping roles and engagements of rentiers and their agents in this active period of multi-family
production warrants further, future scrutiny.

257
Still others were busy with apartment construction both here on Normandie
and elsewhere. Some projects never reached fruition, yet many did. Several helped
to fill out the other half of Ambassador Terrace, and most were located in the general
Wilshire district.
122
Richard D. King, architect of the parking structure at number
761, also designed an apartment house a block over on Mariposa Avenue, as well as
the Del Rey just above Wilshire Boulevard on Kenmore Avenue.
123
Samuel Bard
and L.A. Smith, owner-builder and architect, respectively, of the Evelyn-
Ambassador at number 756, worked together on many projects. One was a few
blocks west on Hobart Boulevard; they also collaborated on four properties up in
Hollywood. Smith also designed the Embassy over on Mariposa for another
client.
124
Irving Siegel, owner-builder of the Art-Deco-styled Roosevelt at number
745, also built in the 800 block of Oxford Avenue.
125
Siegel’s architect for the
Roosevelt, Max Maltman, also designed the Fox-Mariposa Apartments for the next
street over, as well as a project at 530 Kingsley Drive.
126
The Parker Construction
Company put up not only Stuart Hall but also the even bigger Sir Francis Drake at

122
Quite a few were within the area’s other new apartment district in the Pellissier Square tract,
between Ambassador Terrace and Western Avenue, south of Wilshire Boulevard.
123
See all LAT, May 8, 1927; “New Apartment Structure…” May 31, 1927, A8.
124
See all LAT, “New Apartments Planned,” August 30, 1925, G6; “Four Projects for
Hollywood,” November 15, 1926, A1.
125
See all LAT, “Erection of Apartment Underway,” October 5, 1930, D3; “Zoning Change
Yields Activity,” October 28, 1928, E4.
126
See all LAT, “First Unit of Apartments…” January 12, 1930, D5; “Apartments to be
Erected…” March 9, 1930, D1.

258
841 Serrano Avenue in the Pellissier Square tract.
127
Thousands of households were
accommodated in all of this work.
Perhaps the only apartment amateur on the Normandie block was Albert C.
Chotiner—though he was no novice to real estate. Chotiner Amusement Corporation
was a growing entertainment concern at this time, and its president had many irons in
the fire. In 1926, Richard D. King prepared plans for a theater building at the corner
of La Brea and Ninth Street. Later in the decade, renowned architect S. Charles Lee
worked on two projects for Chotiner and his investors: one, a playhouse in Pasadena;
the other, a height-limit tower on Wilshire to contain offices, shops, and a theater.
Chotiner may have decided to diversify his portfolio during this period’s
construction boom. In 1925, he applied for a permit to build a store building on
Eighth Street across from the Ambassador Hotel’s rear grounds; in 1927, he
contracted with Kemp and Sons for construction of the 32-unit apartment house at
739 Normandie Avenue.
128

Albert Chotiner’s was no rare case: many affiliated with the motion picture
industry were also invested in residential real estate. The proposed 1923
development of the Cosmosart studio property on Beverly Boulevard, undertaken by
film producer Charles Ray and investors, included not only a shopping center but

127
See all LAT, “Permits Gain Over August,” September 16, 1928, E1; “Zoning Change Yields
Activity,” October 28, 1928, E4.
128
See all LAT, “Showhouse Structure Projected,” January 31, 1926, F11; “Playhouse To Be
Built…” May 24, 1929, A1; “Theater Chain Plans Erection of Showhouse,” June 1, 1930, D1.

259
also “spacious and ornate apartment houses” on the twenty-acre site.
129
Some
Hollywood luminaries were apartment landlords—owners or investors, of course, as
opposed to managers. For example, in 1927 film star Pola Negri commissioned the
design of a 5-story apartment house on Mariposa Avenue in Ambassador Terrace.
This project apparently fell through, but Negri was committed to both the location
and investment: the following year she purchased the newly completed Stuart Hall a
block over on Normandie.
130
Actor Noah Beery reportedly “collected a number of
apartment houses and bungalow courts.”
131
Of course, “picture people” such as
Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Chico Marx and others could be tenants,
too.
132
Even trade publications aimed at landlords eagerly reported on the decidedly
upscale lifestyles of celebrities. One breathless piece in The Apartment Journal
described the regal Ravenswood Apartments on North Rossmore Street—home of
both George Raft and Mae West—as “equidistant from downtown Los Angeles and
the playgrounds of Santa Monica and Malibu[.] It reflects in its high windows the
glitter that is Hollywood, the substance that is Wilshire, the glamour that is Beverly
Hills.”
133

Meanwhile, the powerful magnetism exerted by the Wilshire district for
builders of large-scale multi-family housing and commercial structures became

129
“A Transformation in Motion Picture Homes,” Southern California Business, August 1923,
30.
130
“Two Apartments Planned,” LAT, October 9, 1927, E1; “Pola Negri Invests in Wilshire,”
LAT, June 17, 1928, E5.
131
“The Birth of a Giant,” Southern California Business, December 1923, 19.
132
The Apartment Journal, November 1934, 20-21.
133
The Apartment Journal, December 1933, 6-7.

260
apparent, and fast. Less than three years after his call to forbid the area’s first 3-
story flat, none other than E.L. Lewis had read the writing on the multi-story wall,
and switched sides in the development cause. He became president of the
Ambassador District Improvement Association, a property-owners’ group “formed
for the purpose of aiding the development … and the creation of an apartment-house
district[.]”
134
This time, the target was commercial establishments; the association
wasted no time in imploring the city council to cease its approval of spot-zoning
petitions giving “special permits for business houses in residential districts.”
135
Even
apartment-house neighborhoods could suffer from the intrusion of stores, theaters
and gas stations, Lewis himself argued to the city planning commission.
136
These
efforts were unsuccessful, however. Variance applications were frequently granted,
and businesses gradually took over this stretch of Eighth Street—at least at ground
level. The dual demands for both retail and residence along the busy thoroughfare
literally overlapped, and mixed-use structures of apartments or rented rooms over
first-floor shops became increasingly popular investments there. W.J. Fox’s property
at the south end of the Normandie case study block was just one such project. And
though available sources do not specify, it is unlikely that the improvement
association objected to commerce along Wilshire Boulevard itself by this point.

134
LAT, December 14, 1924, E12.
135
“Association Hits Zoning Alteration,” LAT, February 26, 1925, A1; see also Los Angeles
City Planning Commission, Regular meeting minutes, August 6, 1925.
136
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Zoning Committee meeting minutes, November 3,
1925. Interestingly, Lewis was arguing against new commercial zoning along Eighth Street petitioned
by Hulda Schmidt—Gottfried’s widow, recent seller of Ambassador Terrace, and apparently still
owner of several corner lots along Eighth.

261
1951 LANDSCAPE: FROM EDGE TO CENTER
By mid-century, the Wilshire-Ambassador district was largely developed,
now situated in an expanded central city. In the sample area surrounding the
Ambassador Hotel (sites 1 through 3, inclusive) 773 of 833 lots (92.8 percent) now
held structures.
137
Land-use broke down this way: 35.8 percent of lots contained
single-family dwellings, 44.5 percent multi-family dwellings, 12.3 percent
commercial buildings, and 7.2 percent remained vacant. The “fabulous boulevard’s”
biographer described the area this way: “Lift a mile of [Manhattan’s] Fifth Avenue
… transplant it to [Los Angeles], then surround this business section with tightly
packed blocks of … apartment buildings and private homes … and you have an
approximation of … Wilshire Boulevard … in 1949.
138

Overall, the average density of the total sample area (sites 1-3) had reached
23 dwelling units per acre (gross)—more than triple that of standard single-family
development.
139
This part of the Wilshire district, though quite densely built, was
still mainly residential: four out of five lots held a house, duplex, flat, court or
apartment building. A few lots—perhaps thirty—were “packed” with more than one
dwelling structure. At least a dozen surviving, large single-family houses had been
converted to rooming- or boarding houses. The sample area now contained

137
The total number of lots is estimated. The forty-four lots of the Ambassador Terrace
subdivision (Sites 1-2) were added to the total of approximately 818 (Site 3) indicated on the 1922
Sanborn map, and some of those existing lots had since been tied together for larger development—
hence subtracted from the count.
138
Hancock, 150, was writing of the Miracle Mile further west, but the description holds for the
Ambassador district as well.

262
approximately 4,818 dwelling units—only about 300 of them in one-family
dwellings. Fifty duplexes held 100 units, one-hundred-seven flats about 428 units,
and three bungalow courts 24 units. The remaining almost 4,000 dwelling units were
found in apartment buildings ranging from two to thirteen stories tall, holding from a
half-dozen to nearly two-hundred apartments.
140
Significantly, the lots which had
come onto the market latest—the 1913 and 1923 subdivisions of former Schmidt
acreage—showed the highest proportion of multi-family structures. Other areas
typically held more surviving single-family dwellings. As we have seen, many of
the biggest buildings in the fifty-block sample were concentrated in the two square
blocks of the Ambassador Terrace subdivision (Site 2). In fact, the 700 blocks of
South Normandie and Mariposa Avenues now held 1,114 multi-family units—an
incredible one-fourth of the area’s total (Sites 1, 2 and 3, inclusive).
141
At ten acres
gross, this put the late-blooming tract’s density at a steep 111 units per acre. See
Figure 28.

139
The total area of sites 1-3 is about 210 acres; when divided by 4,818 dwelling units, this
yields an average density of 22.94 per acre (gross). Single-family houses on 50-by-120 foot lots
would yield about 7 units per acre (gross).
140
On the calculation of dwelling units: buildings designated “hotel” are considered commercial
housing, and not included; “rooming houses” and “lodging houses” are counted as one unit each—as
an extended household, however large the occupancy; for the few buildings indicating a given number
of “apartments and rooms,” the room count is divided by two to estimate some number of two-room
units.
141
A total of 4,519 multi-family units was contained in the overall sample territory including
Sites 1, 2, and 3, placing Ambassador Terrace’s share at 24.6 percent.

263

Figure 28. Sanborn map dated 1951, indicating the proliferation of multi-family
housing in this district in the three decades since the previous mapping.

The two blocks of the Ambassador Terrace subdivision (Site 2) show the highest density of
development.) Single-family dwellings are shaded yellow; multi-family dwellings, orange; other
structures, purple. (Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Los Angeles, California, Volumes 5
and 6, 1951.)

264
Two decades earlier, the Depression had halted the intensive development that
produced the likes of Ambassador Terrace and Pellissier Square. All across Los
Angeles and the United States, developers of large-scale housing had stopped their
activities once capital flows dried up. Those who did undertake new residential
buildings after 1931 (and there were some) built small, comparatively inexpensive
apartment houses: two-story wood-frame structures constituted 98 percent of
apartment-house permits in 1930s Los Angeles.
142
Financing for these much more
modest projects would have remained feasible for some rentiers.
This scaling back certainly held true in the Wilshire-Ambassador district
143
—
even on the remaining lots in Ambassador Terrace’s land of the giants. In 1939,
Morris Bear put up his small apartment house at 750 South Normandie—one of the
last two on the block. Harry and Bluma Vancott built the other one in 1948, two
doors up. These constituted the only new construction on the block after 1931—
when five years’ “speculative frenzy” had concluded. These later projects were
much smaller than their looming predecessors were. Bear’s contained eight units,
the Vancotts’ twelve. Each was only two stories tall, and of more affordable wood
frame and stucco, not masonry or concrete. Both structures were set far enough from

142
Los Angeles Building Department permit data. Only one apartment building taller than
three-floors was permitted from 1931 to 1940 in the city of Los Angeles. And even though 2,527
apartment projects were permitted in this period, they were quite small. For example, permit data for
1936 indicate that the average number of dwelling units per apartment building was 4.2; in 1940, this
average was 6 per building.
143
For example, see “Year’s Building Activity Quickly Launched Here,” LAT, January 5, 1936,
14; “Best Building-Loan Year Since 1930 Seen in Survey,” LAT, September 13, 1936, E1. These
articles touting proposed and new construction show much smaller buildings than those built just a
few years earlier. Now, it was two-story garden apartments that were featured, sited behind
substantial setbacks with fewer than a dozen units.

265
the side and rear lot lines to allow for a driveway and parking area at the back
yard.
144
Mr. Bear ponied up for an eight-car garage at the rear of his lot; the
Vancotts did not, and their tenants would have had to park their cars in the open air.
Another distinction, at least for the Vancotts: they kept their property for a decade or
more. They were in the class of petit rentiers, building and owning their piece of a
large city of small multiple dwellings, unlike many big apartment developers in the
1920s who sold off soon after completion.
145

Newer commercial and institutional development in the area had been
concentrated along thoroughfares, not surprisingly. Most of the sample’s hundred or
so business structures were located on Wilshire Boulevard, Sixth or Eighth Streets
(the latter rezoned for such after 1930). The Schmidt estate’s holdout acreage (Site
0) at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Mariposa Avenue had been in use for
years as a golf driving range. In 1950, developer Norman Tishman purchased the
land and built the district’s largest project yet: three 12-story office towers above a
sprawling base of ground floor shops—this, on the site projected for the equally
large but unbuilt Barcelona Apartments.
146
The rest of the area’s many smaller, non-
residential buildings were either: 1) gas-and-oil stations, 2) newer one- or two-story
office- and store buildings, or 3) older, converted single-family dwellings—now

144
Though both were built after the new municipal yard ordinance went into effect, their owners
were able to build to the front lot line because of the prevailing condition created by all of the existing
structures.
145
“Apartments and Courts—Eight Units and Over,” Los Angeles Block Book Co. (Los
Angeles: 1958, published privately). The survey of Normandie Avenue’s 700 block shows the
Vancott’s still in possession a decade after construction. Every other property had changed hands at
least once.
146
Roderick and Lynxwiler, 98-99.

266
holding shops, offices, private schools, clinics, cafés, and a sanitarium. Wilshire’s
corridor of influence may have narrowed chiefly to boulevard frontage in this part of
Los Angeles—at least as far as cultural cachet was concerned. A boulevard address
was still prestigious, but now mainly for commercial establishments, it seems.
Stylish retailers and chic restaurants dotted the thoroughfare—some new, some not:
Bullock’s Wilshire, I. Magnin, the Cocoanut Grove, the Brown Derby, Perino’s, the
Zebra Room. Behind, on the blocks north and south, it is not clear how a Wilshire
identification affected development of remaining property.

2005 LANDSCAPE: CROWDED AND COSMOPOLITAN
A century has passed since landowners and builders began transforming this
part of Los Angeles from horticulture to housing. Wilshire Boulevard has remained
one of the region’s primary thoroughfares, and the portion running through the
sample territory is now a high-density commercial corridor holding an enormous
range of business establishments. Ambitious developers have managed to turn one
stretch of boulevard frontage into a canyon of exclusive high-priced, high-rise multi-
family dwellings—but this is ten miles west, out past Beverly Hills near the elite
Westwood area. And many of the thousands of units in these structures, built from
the 1960s forward along the “Golden Mile” are owned condominiums rather than
rental apartments.
In the Wilshire-Ambassador district, many of the single-family houses still
standing when the Sanborn company last mapped the area are now gone.

267
Succeeding generations of landlords, capitalizing on the still-vigorous market for
multi-family rental housing, have replaced those old houses with still more
apartment buildings. Since the 1950s, the newer structures have generally been two-
to four stories; occupying a bigger footprint on larger, assembled lots; of wood frame
construction faced in stucco; and with larger yards and more parking spaces than
their predecessors. In other words: garden apartments. In all cases—just as with the
big Normandie edifices of the 1920s—the particular size, form, use, construction
type, placement, and amenity of any given property reflects a complicated and
calculated response by its architect, builder, and owner. The pull of consumer
demand meeting the push of financial constraints, under the watchful eye of official
regulation, all in the medium of aesthetic and cultural norms, is constantly shifting.
The changing apartment landscape is an expression of this complex process.
Overall, the building stock has grown quite diverse in terms of density,
quality, age, style, condition, and type.
147
Several structures in this part of the city,
inside the sample and just beyond, became landmarks either for their architectural or
cultural significance. Some have survived, others not. The Ambassador Hotel—the
institution which first magnetized this neighborhood for intense development—
recently fell to the wrecking ball, the loser in a contentious battle waged between
preservationists and its new owner. The Pellissier Building and Warner Brothers

147
A colleague new to Los Angeles was describing her search for an apartment to rent. She
didn’t like this part of the city, however, because its buildings and landscape were “too mixed.” She
explained this to mean too many sizes, architectural styles, variations in quality, and ages of
construction—sometimes all in one block. The lack of any perceptible order or uniformity made her
uncomfortable, she said.

268
(now Wiltern) Theater complex, a few blocks west at the corner of Western Avenue
and Wilshire, met a happier fate: facing demolition in the 1980s, activists rallied to
save and restore the structure. The Chapman Market on Sixth Street also has been
spared, but not the Brown Derby restaurant. Most of the larger brick and concrete
apartment houses built in the 1920s survive, in part because they provide vital
dwelling units, in part because they are costly to tear down and replace.
On the case study block of Normandie Avenue, little seems to have changed
since the Vancotts built their piece of income property in 1948—at least outside.
The very rarity of this stretch of Los Angeles streetscape—its likeness to popular
images of other cities—is highlighted in its use as a filming location. A recent visit
turned up trucks, cameras, and dressing-room trailers along the curb between
temporary “No Parking: Media Production” placards tacked to sign-poles. The
Langham, La Granada, Barclay, and Chalfonte buildings were no doubt standing in
for apartment houses in New York City or Chicago in some upcoming drama. This
is ironic, considering how hard some boosters worked to keep the nation’s image of
Los Angeles free of such elements—at precisely the same moment when these
structures went up.
A good project for future research would involve surveying and documenting
the interiors of these apartment buildings to determine how much renovation has
been done over the years, if any.
148
A recent walk through the corridors of the

148
Assessor information for this block of Normandie Avenue notes little change in the unit
count of each building, with a couple of exceptions. The Roxborough at number 746 now lists about

269
Langham did not reveal any obvious architectural or structural modifications. The
likeliest items for upgrading would serve safety, convenience, and cosmetic
purposes: fire alarms, fire doors, electrical and plumbing fixtures, appliances, carpet,
and paint. More substantial remodeling to reconfigure apartment units, bringing
them up to more recent spatial standards for domestic life, are more costly and less
likely, in general.
149

E.L. Lewis, the home-owner-turned-neighborhood booster from the 1920s, would
probably have mixed feelings about the case study area were he alive to see it. He
certainly was around long enough to experience its early transformation: he
continued to reside on South Kenmore Avenue until at least 1930, as the apartment-
construction craze died down.
150
No doubt he was pleased by the initial rise in
population, investment and property values—once he’d let go of his notion of a
quiet, two story residential zone and joined the development bandwagon promoting
Wilshire Boulevard’s corridor of influence. One imagines now that he would be
shocked at the noise and sheer number of cars, trucks and buses criss-crossing the

a dozen units more than originally permitted; and the apartment-and-store building at the corner of
Eighth Street now lists a half-dozen more units. http://zimas.lacity.org.
149
An example is the recent renovation project in the 800 block of South Gramercy Place,
several blocks west of Normandie Avenue. This two-story, 8-unit apartment building was built in
1930, and resembles the one developed by Morris Bear on the case study block. The current work
scope is limited to replacement of cabinetry and fixtures (electrical and plumbing) in kitchens and
bathrooms, as well as doors, windows and security bars. Construction documents explicitly state:
“The rehabilitation plans will not result in any modification to the building unit configurations or unit
mix. There will be no change in use or square footage.” These assurances are made to public
officials to escape newer requirements for additional parking and handicap accessibility
improvements that would be triggered by more substantial, structural changes. The building is now

270
area’s streets day and night—not to mention the new subway line and station up at
Wilshire and Normandie. But how would he have felt about the wide social mix of
races, ethnicities and economic classes who now call this district home?
Historian Clark Davis has argued that, from the late nineteenth century well
into the twentieth, an “Anglophile elite” manning (literally) southern California’s
many and varied corporate enterprises tended to see progress in explicitly racial
terms. During the 1920s and earlier, “Los Angeles businessmen were … idealizing
Anglo-Saxon peoples and culture[.] Business leaders spoke often and fervently
about the need to create and maintain racial and ethnic divisions in the region’s
social and economic structure.”
151
Lewis certainly fit this fortunate demographic:
married, west-side home-buyer, and vice-president of Henry Huntington’s Los
Angeles Railway Land Company. Using Davis’s critical framework, it is almost
possible to hear Mr. Lewis gasp at his beloved neighborhood’s recent designation:
Koreatown. Immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities like Mexicans, Filipinos,
Koreans, and blacks now reside alongside Anglo-Americans—many with low
incomes, sometimes doubling-up in many of the thousands of apartments and houses.
It is quite conceivable, of course, that Lewis was as progressive as they come, and
that he would have not minded such a diverse social jumble. According to Davis,
though, this would have put Lewis in his own minority among his peers in the 1920s.

used as a homeless family shelter, the owner being a non-profit community organization. Interview
by the author with Natalie Bunkley of TWG Architects, March 7, 2006.
150
Los Angeles City Directory (1930).
151
Clark Davis, Company Men: White-Collar Life and Corporate Cultures in Los Angeles,
1892-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 72-73.

271
One thing about 2005 Los Angeles that Lewis would not have believed: that
prosperous Angelenos now pay high prices to live in converted downtown office
buildings. He had written the city council in 1922 from his tenth-floor office in the
brand-new Los Angeles Railway Building at Eleventh and Broadway. It and many
other new commercial high-rises were as much outcomes of the 1920s building
boom as the apartment houses he resided among on the west side. Back then, each
had their “proper” place in most minds. Two aspects of present-day urbanism would
certainly have confounded him: first, that the region’s housing shortage would
become so acute that people like himself would one day choose to inhabit part of an
office floor at, say, Seventh and Spring; second, that downtown would be abandoned
by so many businesses that this functional change would become feasible.

FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS
1) Los Angeles fully participated in the national urban boom of apartment
construction in the 1920s.
152
Land economist Coleman Woodbury researched the
phenomenon, and found it “was not confined to one or two sections of the United
States but was felt in all districts of the country.” Overall, in American cities from
1921 to 1928, the share of residential units accommodated in new multiple dwellings
went from one-fourth to over one-half. But not all places saw the same rate of
growth. “The increase of multi-family construction … has been much more rapid in

152
John Hancock, “The Apartment House in Urban America,” Buildings and Society: Essays on
the Social Development of the Built Environment, ed. Anthony King (London: Routledge and Kegan

272
metropolitan districts than in independent, separate cities,” Woodbury found.
Moreover, “cities with zoning ordinances had a much larger increase … than
unzoned cities.”
153

Los Angeles in the early ‘twenties was already a multi-nucleated metropolis,
undergoing its first comprehensive zoning process. As such, it fit this description of
urban areas likeliest to experience a greater upsurge in apartment construction.
Angeleno speculators and landlords did just what their counterparts in New York
City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland did—they developed small flats
and medium-to-big apartment buildings in great numbers during this fertile period.
154

Locally, multiple dwellings of generally the same types were also going up in Santa
Monica, Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, and Long Beach.
2) Within Los Angeles, the high concentration of housing found in the
Wilshire-Ambassador district by 1930 was unusual but not unique. Developers of
big apartment houses favored a few other areas, too, including parts of Hollywood,
Westlake, Crown Hill and Bunker Hill. These residential nodes may have appeared
freakish when they shot up in a short time, but were logical outcomes of historical
forces and geographic attributes. Remarkable gains in both prosperity and

Paul, 1980), 158-179. Hancock identifies three boom periods of multi-family housing in US cities;
1890 –1917; 1921-1931; and the 1960s.
153
Woodbury, vii. A survey of 255 American cities found 24.4% of new housing units in
apartment houses in 1921; the number in 1928 had risen to 53.7%.
154
See also Michael Doucet and John Weaver, Housing the North American City (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), Chapter 9, “The North American Apartment Building as a
Matter of Business and an Expression of Culture: A Survey and Case Study, 1900s-1980s,” 388-419;
For a sampling of larger building types erected in this period in a number of US cities, including Los
Angeles, see R.W. Sexton, American Apartment Houses of Today (New York: Architectural Book
Publishing, 1926).

273
population met available land in convenient proximity to social and business centers.
Normally, this urban process played out on a lot-by-lot basis. Every so often, it took
place on a nominally blank slate counted in square blocks, surrounded by older
building stock and ripe for new, more intensive development. Such was the case
with Ambassador Terrace. But the case study area as a whole (Sites 1-3) shows a
full cross-section of residential forms found all over the city—from small to large,
modest to elegant, old to new.
155

Wilshire Boulevard’s corridor of influence was wide, and the Ambassador
Hotel’s success created a hub, magnetic for major development after 1920.
However, more was at work: expansion from other parts of the city contributed as
well. The Wilshire-Ambassador district’s emergence as a principal apartment sector
was not merely a westward extension of big multiple dwellings emanating from the
Westlake area, but also an extension of small multiples growing northward from the
Southwest district and southward from Hollywood.
3) In the early twentieth century, tourism was crucial—“a Godsend,” no
less—to the multi-family housing industry in southern California and Los Angeles.
Landlords eagerly anticipated the predictable, growing flood of seasonal tenants each
and every year, which only bolstered the already-considerable shelter demand made
by Angeleno residents. And realtors and developers were only too happy to keep the

155
This project’s other case study sample shows similar characteristics, though at a smaller
scale. The mostly single-family-developed Southwest district gradually became densified with the
addition of small multiple-unit dwellings. An eight-block subdivision held off the market while the
surrounding territory was first built with houses was developed with many more multi-family
structures than the other parts of the sample. See Chapter 3.

274
supply of rental units mounting. This relationship between tourism and housing is
evident for those involved in more substantial properties, seen in trade publications
serving landlords and operators of big apartment houses and hotels. But owners of
innumerable small multiple dwellings, not organized into any association, also
profited from a successful tourist industry. “Vacationists” from Illinois, Ohio,
Missouri or dozens of other places might just as often prefer their home-away-from-
home in a flat or bungalow court on a roomy “suburban” lot as a single-apartment on
the fourth or fifth floor of a Wilshire or Westlake mid-rise.
4) The apartment boom of the 1920s played a key role in the planning of Los
Angeles; see Chapter 6. The city’s first comprehensive zoning ordinance, enacted in
1921, treated all multi-family housing alike. Conceptually, a duplex was no different
than a behemoth like the 13-story Gaylord. The ordinance came just prior to the
explosion of large-scale apartment construction. Likely as not, novice planners had
figured that most developers interested in income property would continue to build
bungalow courts and small flats in greater numbers—the occasional, big tenement
block made tolerable in its only intermittent appearance. But the following
“speculative frenzy” did not curtail development of small multiples, only added to
the popularity of big ones. Undifferentiated multiple-residential land-use meant that
more “desirable” duplexes, flats and courts now needed the kind of regulatory
protection (from “rogue” speculators erecting bulky apartment houses) originally
crafted for single-family homes. Planners revised the zoning code in 1930; a major

275
element was a new, separate category for small multiple-dwellings of two to four
units.
156

Coincidentally, Ambassador Terrace itself helped planners with their mission
to revamp codes. The Normandie block’s density and coverage, as noted, was rare.
It also held a critical object lesson (if not silver lining) for those trying to keep most
of Los Angeles an orderly, lower density city. The 600-foot long, multi-story street
wall formed by the Langham, La Granada, Roosevelt and Richelieu apartment
houses, all sited right at the sidewalk, provided a superb cautionary tale; see Figure
29. A photograph of it appeared in the 1931 annual report of the City Planning
Commission, in which new setback regulations were proposed. “This [undesirable
condition] will happen … throughout the City where districts have not been
protected by Building Line ordinances,” the caption lectured. “Due to this
unnecessary crowding the buildings will soon become obsolete”—not a prediction
Callahan and Sons or Interstate Mortgage and Investment were eager to see in
print.
157
A comprehensive yard ordinance came within a few short years, replacing
piecemeal, ad hoc versions, systematizing setback regulations.
158
Furthermore, this
is also the time that the city first required off-street parking for multiple dwelling
units; no doubt, solid blocks like Normandie and Mariposa figured into this new
regulation.

156
Revisions in 1930 to the zoning ordinance had much to do with multi-family residential
development, but were still rather complex. See Chapter 6 on planning and zoning for a fuller
argument and explanation.
157
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report, 1930-31, 20.
158
Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Annual Report, 1934-35.

276

Figure 29. Normandie Avenue case study block in 1931.

This illustration in a city planning report warns of the problems caused by a lack of adequate setbacks
for apartment buildings. (Annual Report of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, 1930-31.)

277
5) Early on, apartment buildings and rental dwellings became prominent
not only in Los Angeles’s urban landscape, but also in its everyday discourse about
housing and economic development. This is despite the overwhelming emphasis on
single-family home ownership in booster rhetoric and publications issued by the
growth coalition at the time—and repeated and focused on by historians since.
Realtors, architects, builders, financiers, planners and public officials—prime
constituencies of the growth machine, all—saw nothing unusual or illicit about
multi-family housing. For them, it was just one more component of the expanding
metropolis.

The different stories about Los Angeles housing had everything to do with audience.
The external discourse of place promotion, carefully crafted and directed outward
across the nation for publicity purposes, dwelled on dwellings of the private,
detached type. Apartments and hotels did receive mention in this material, but only
as temporary housing for tourists and newcomers. But internal, local discussion of
residential development covered all kinds, from modest cottages to skyscraping
apartment towers and everything in between. In this hometown conversation, the
reality of dense, urban rental housing was just one more topic of discussion, as it
would be in any growing American city.

278
Chapter 5

Building Boomtown:
The Apartment Market in 1920s Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION
Much historical writing about Los Angeles begins with, or focuses on, the
decade of the 1920s.
1
Part of this project’s goal is to explain housing and residential
development well before this. But, in the region’s long period of growth and
transformation dating further back to the late 1880s, the tumultuous ‘twenties does
stand out for astonishing increases in population, area, and urbanization. Multi-
family housing was front and center in this process: by 1924—several years before
the boom was over— multiple-dwelling structures contained nearly half of the city’s
328,000 residential units.
2
More than one person would call Los Angeles “a city of
apartments” at this time. As a result, housing production in this decade does deserve
particular scrutiny.

1
The growth of Los Angeles and southern California in this decade has been rehearsed by
historians exploring a variety of subjects. See Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los
Angeles, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; 1967); Carey McWilliams,
Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1973; 1946);
Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990); Tom Sitton and William Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the
1920s, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
2
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, November 1, 1924, n.p. The firm
estimated that the city’s housing dwelling units were found in the following building types:
Single-family house 51.83%
Two-family duplex 9.69%
Bungalow Courts 7.11%
Apartments 17.41%
Flats 13.96%
This proportion is almost identical to that found in the 1940 US Census of Housing, which classified
51.29 percent of dwelling units in the city of Los Angeles as of 1924 to be single-family. A major

279
During the 1920s, Los Angeles rocketed from the nation’s tenth largest city
to fifth largest (overtaking Cleveland
3
), as population more than doubled to 1.2
million by 1930. In the same decade, Los Angeles County grew from just under a
million residents to 2.2 million—averaging nearly 350 new inhabitants per day,
every day, for ten years. This remarkable rate of growth was double that of Detroit,
the closest competitor, and more than quadruple that of New York City, Chicago and
San Francisco in the same period.
4
And it was not just population that grew.
Between 1920 and 1929, Los Angeles city added area—eighty square miles in
annexations of 45 adjacent communities.
5
Industrial expansion was even more
dramatic: output measured $103 million in the mid-1910s, and by the late 1920s had
multiplied nearly six-fold to $610 million.
6
Housing production soared as well,
especially multiple dwellings: builders obtained permits for over 78,000 multi-family
units in this decade.
Public, private and civic entities worked to help their various constituencies
make sense of the extended commotion—if not manage or benefit from it in some
way. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Realty Board, and
Apartment House Association had all been in existence for years, but during this
boom each began publishing a monthly journal for members; Eberle and Riggleman

difference, however, is the census’s estimation of 306,006 total dwelling units, some 22,000 shy of
Eberle’s count.
3
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, July 20, 1925, n.p.
4
Fogelson, Chapter 4.
5
Jules Tygiel, “Introduction,” Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, eds. Tom
Sitton and William Deverell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 1-10.

280
economic consultants also began its newsletter in this period.
7
And the new City
Planning Commission was finally constituted by the city council in 1920, after years
of lobbying by those in the region’s growth coalition hoping to control and direct
urban growth.

PACKIN’ ‘EM INTO PARADISE
Much of the expansion was due to the Herculean efforts of these place-
promotional organizations—especially the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,
which spent considerable resources to publicize the city and region to the rest of the
nation in order to attract population and capital. In 1921, the newly-founded and
funded All-Year-Club of Southern California (AYC) became the latest, greatest cog
in the region’s growth machine; its members dedicated themselves to luring more
and more tourists to Los Angeles and environs from all over the United States. (See
Chapter 1 for more on the Club and other growth coalition member groups.
8
) The
AYC was sophisticated in its methods and successful in its results.
9
For example,
after years of publicity and boosting, the Club claimed that 1,066,722 tourists had

6
Greg Hise, “Industry and Imaginative Geographies,” Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles
in the 1920s, eds. Tom Sitton and William Deverell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
13-44.
7
The Apartment House Trade Journal actually got a jump on the others, beginning in 1917;
but the allied Pacific Coast Record journal for the hospitality industry was initiated in the early
‘twenties. Both Southern California Business and Los Angeles Realtor were launched in 1921. The
Eberle firm’s newsletter began in 1924.
8
As a full participant in Los Angeles’s growth machine, the AYC was also explicitly
interested in “producing tourist business and permanent residents for this region.” Memorandum to
Executive Committee, All-Year-Club of Southern California, March 9, 1926.
9
Todd Gish, “Selling Los Angeles: Media and Marketing for Fun and Profit, 1921-1941,”
Critical Planning 10 (Summer 2003), 29-43.

281
visited southern California in 1929—“equal [to] the combined population of Kansas
City, Dallas, Akron [and] Omaha.”
10
For its part, the Chamber was giddy at the
prospect of so many potential settlers and investors passing through. Its journal
Southern California Business trumpeted the Club’s early achievement in attracting
tourists: “[T]he great stream of humanity is flowing in … with no end to the
overwhelming influx in sight.”
11

Tourist travel, and the growing numbers of visitors it brought, had been increasingly
important to California’s economy since the state became linked to the national
railroad network in the 1870s. Moreover, the common practice of long-stay tourism-
cum-temporary residence had an enormous impact on the housing industry in
destination cities.
12
By one estimate in the late 1920s, one in seven Los Angeles
dwelling units was occupied by a tourist household. This was over 47,000 houses
and apartments, and did not include all the tourists staying in hotels.
13
The AYC
president, writing in a trade journal for Los Angeles landlords, left no doubt about
this crucial relationship: “Tourist traffic is Godsend to [the] apartment industry.”
Calling tourism “Our Pot of Gold,” he opined that this “is largely why we have

10
All-Year Club of Southern California, Newsletter, February 1930, front cover.
11
“From All Quarters They Come to Us,” Southern California Business, February 1923, 21.
12
“New Peak-Load of Tourists Coming,” Southern California Business, November 1923. The
Chamber of Commerce “estimated that three out of every ten remain as visitors for at least five
months,” 26.
13
Eberle Economic Service, Tourist Survey of Southern California for the All-Year Club of
Southern California (1929). One-seventh of the approximately 328,816 dwelling units enumerated in
the 1924 survey would be 46,973.

282
apartment houses and hotels[.]”
14
Multi-family rental housing of all shapes and sizes
would continue to shelter newcomers and old-timers, visitors and residents, as Los
Angeles virtually exploded with growth after World War I.
15
This topic of tourist
housing—a regular subject in the lively internal discourse of Los Angeles—was only
rarely glimpsed in the practiced external discourse favoring residential suburbs of
private houses and gardens.

BUILDING? OR OVERBUILDING?
When the newly established Los Angeles Building and Safety Commission
held its first regular meeting in July 1925, its first item of business was telling: it
involved a large new apartment-house project. Developer Luther T. Mayo was
seeking approval for a non-compliant corridor layout in the plans for what would
become the lavish Los Altos Apartments on Wilshire Boulevard. (The application
was “tentatively refused.”) The very next item concerned another big apartment
building—this one for a site in the Ambassador Terrace apartment subdivision,
further east in the Wilshire district. Architect E.B. Rust (coincidentally, designer of
the Los Altos as well) was seeking a permit for the new 4-story Reid Studio

14
“Our Pot of Gold,” Apartment Journal, January 1934, 13. It should be noted that the All-
Year-Club had to boost locally—for subscription funds from interested trade groups like the
Apartment House Association—in addition to its national publicity program to attract visitors.
15
The Wilshire district was one place of several receiving more than its share of the ever-
escalating demand for rental housing in the 1920s. In particular, the newly available Ambassador
Terrace subdivision—with its 44 large lots so close to both the famous Ambassador Hotel and
fabulous Wilshire Boulevard—was positively magnetic in its draw for place entrepreneurs dealing in
apartments. See this case study in Chapter 4.

283
Apartments at 701 South Mariposa.
16
Rust’s plans, apparently completed before the
area was designated a fire district, did not contain a firewall since deemed necessary.
(Commissioners proposed an alternative construction assembly as a compromise.)
17

It is fitting that the new commission would face questions about apartment
buildings on its first day. The City of Angels already had its share, including
thousands of two- and three story brick tenements and wood-frame flats built in the
1910s and earlier.
18
Multi-family housing construction skyrocketed in this decade—
both in absolute numbers and in its share of total new development. Each year from
1921 to 1930, more than half of all residential construction dollars were spent on
multiple dwellings.
19
In the same period, the building department issued 7906
permits for flats and apartment buildings, to contain 78,781 units; see Figure 30.
Most (84 percent) of these projects were relatively modest: 2- or 3-story wood frame
structures, holding from four to perhaps thirty units. Another 8 percent were of the
same general size and scale, but of more substantial (and costly) masonry
construction. But the high-stakes real estate boom encouraged significantly bigger

16
Photograph and caption, 1928, Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database no. 00026692.
17
Los Angeles Board of Building and Safety Commissioners, Meeting minutes, July 7, 1925.
This was actually the board’s second meeting, but the first in which business was actually discussed.
The kickoff meeting the day before had been held to establish procedures and elect officers.
18
In 1912, for example, 340 permits were issued for brick and concrete buildings, “for the most
part new apartment houses.” See “Sixty-Six Miles of New Houses,” LAT, December 29, 1912, V1.
Another account, on the eleven-year period from 1904-1914, reported: “Close to 3,000 brick buildings
… have been constructed[.] A large proportion of these are apartment houses.” In “Leads Every
City,” LAT, January 3, 1915, VI1. The number of smaller, more affordable wood-frame flats would
have been even higher.
19
These figures exclude two-family dwellings, which were enumerated in their own category
separate from single and multiple dwellings. Such an in-betwixt accounting is fitting, for duplexes
occupied a kind of cultural neither-nor zone between the ideal, private bungalow and the clearly
communal flat or apartment house. To lump this category together with multiples would put the
single-family share of development even lower. See Chapter 2 for more on particular building types.

284

Figure 30. Multi-family housing as a share of all new housing in the City of Los
Angeles. (From annual permit data from the Los Angeles Building Department,
published in Southwest Builder and Contractor each January for the preceding year.)

285
development, too. Over 7 percent of these permits were for brick, concrete or steel
structures of 4 stories or higher.
20
Though a small proportion, the huge overall total
for the period yields some impressive numbers borne out in the landscape: 432
apartment buildings from four to six floors in height, and 37 of seven floors or
more.
21
The occasional outrageous developer hoped to utterly blow the lid off the
market, proposing apartment towers of twenty, thirty or even forty stories; these
schemes always bumped up against the municipal height limit of 150 feet,
however.
22

Though the peak of construction would not come until later in the decade, debate
over non-stop development—residential and otherwise—began earlier.
23
In 1925,
the Eberle and Riggleman consulting firm put it this way: “The large speculative
profits made in the subdividing and selling of land and in the building and selling of
various kinds of buildings naturally caused these activities to be carried too far, and
hence we find our land over-subdivided and our multiple-family dwellings and office
buildings overbuilt.”
24
The research firm had already cautioned that sharp
population gains would not go on forever, and advised restraint for those in the

20
Virtually all of the development in the Ambassador Terrace subdivision discussed in the
Wilshire district case study fell into this category.
21
These figures are drawn from annual permit statistics provided by the Los Angeles Building
Department and published in Southwest Builder and Contractor every January for the preceding year.
22
Letter from William Bruce to Los Angeles Board of Building and Safety Commissioners,
January 14, 1927; Los Angeles City Council file no. 456. Bruce was an architect asking permission
for his client to exceed the city’s 13-story height limit by another thirty floors for an apartment-hotel
project for Hollywood Boulevard.
23
Marc A. Weiss, “The Politics of Real Estate Cycles,” Business and Economic History 20
(1991), 127-135.

286
housing field. “In view of the present oversupply of duplexes, courts, apartments,
and flats it is doubtful if any new construction of these types of dwellings should be
started for a couple of years.”
25
Some landlords themselves were concerned. One
article in the Apartment House Journal sounded “A Note of Warning to Builders,”
stating that “the frenzied wave of building activity … has resulted in … a
considerable surplus of multiple-unit residence properties.”
26
The Co-operative
Apartment and Hotel Association even corresponded with the seemingly omniscient
Chamber of Commerce “in connection with the over-building … and over-financing
… of apartment houses and hotels in Los Angeles[.]”
27

Funding streams from the seemingly bottomless fountain of development
dollars were channeled in a very few particular directions in this period, sometimes
mysteriously so. Subdivision of acreage into house lots became rampant, but single-
family dwelling construction fell precipitously. A 1928 study of several years’ worth
of building permit data showed that “[a]ll classes of building construction have
decreased … with the exception of apartments, office buildings, and
warehouses[.]”
28
Like apartment units, new office space had become a favorite
outlet for speculators’ investments for several years in other cities.
29
But enough
was enough, thought some in Los Angeles’s growth coalition. “If relatively more of

24
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, April 27, 1925, n.p.
25
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, October 15, 1924, n.p.; quote is
from Weekly letter, July 20, 1925, n.p.
26
“A Note of Warning to Builders,” Apartment House Journal, May 1926, 3-4.
27
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors meeting minutes, September 22,
1927.
28
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, December 21, 1925, n.p.; July 9, 1928, 167.

287
our land, labor, capital, and management were being directed into industries and
other activities … for which there is an actual need, our economic structure would
become much more sound than it is at present.”
30
Rentiers with capital to invest
were urged to help shore up the metropolis’s manufacturing sector. An article in Los
Angeles Realtor reported in 1925: “Industrial property up to this time has been kept
very free from speculative influences, having been sold in the past principally to
users only.” This type of land, it was explained, “has never had the spectacular sky-
rocketing of values that other property has enjoyed,” and so was touted as a
worthwhile and affordable alternative to the saturated apartment and office sub-
markets.
31

The search by investors for profitable real estate ventures was nothing new,
but it did hit new heights in this period. It was also a national phenomenon, and
multi-family housing was a favorite outlet in many cities.
32
The Eberle firm
reported: “This high speculation in apartment houses is not peculiar to Los Angeles
alone. In speaking of the national situation… speculative building continues
unchecked, and … high-priced apartments and office buildings, mortgaged to a very
high percentage of their cost of construction, continue to rise.”
33
This condition was
hazardous to local economic health, investors were lectured time and again. But try

29
Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995).
30
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, December 14, 1925, n.p., emphasis added.
31
“Los Angeles Industrially, and the Industrial Real Estate Situation in Los Angeles Today,”
Los Angeles Realtor, February 1925, 10.
32
Coleman Woodbury, Apartment House Increases and Attitudes Toward Home Ownership
(Chicago: Institute for Economic Research, n.d., ca. 1931).
33
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, November 30, 1925, n.p.

288
to convince Angelenos. After decades of incessant booster hype, the ethos of growth
for growth’s sake described by Logan and Molotch had become the very air breathed
by Angelenos.
34
Many would have none of anything that smacked of “pessimism”
or “nay-saying.” In 1923, the Eberle firm worried about “a widespread belief … that
Los Angeles is not influenced by the same factors that influence the business of the
rest of the country.” Its newsletter stated, however, that “actual measurements show
that this is not true of building activities.”
35
The predictable relationship between
supply, demand, and price made no exception even for real estate in the vaunted City
of Angels, the economists cautioned.
The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and much of its membership were
typical of those believing in Angeleno exceptionalism. These die-hard boosters
flatly rejected all warnings about an overbuilt rental housing market. In a 1926
article in the Chamber’s monthly journal, the Southern California Hotelmen’s
Association president boasted about the region’s quarter-billion-dollar industry, and
made no apologies. The hotelman claimed that “Los Angeles and vicinity has
$250,000,000 invested in ‘guest rooms’ for visitors[.] These … are in the
magnificent hotels and the elaborate apartment houses and flat buildings for which
Southern California has become noted … [and] within a few weeks there will
scarcely be a vacancy. That is why more will be needed and why more are being

34
John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
35
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, “Los Angeles Business Statistics,” October 1923,
n.p.

289
built.”
36
Tourists, visitors and newcomers were highly prized by rentiers, and had
been either turned away or over-charged during a severe housing shortage following
World War I. This situation had threatened to cripple the local economy; apparently,
the lesson of under-production had been learned, and then some.
Others developers followed suit. Luther T. Mayo, the Building and Safety
Commission’s very first petitioner, wrote in 1927 under the headline “City Lacks
Apartments and Hotels.”
37
This was quite a claim coming on the heels of six years
of intensive multi-family housing development. That year alone, 774 apartment
buildings containing nearly ten thousand dwelling units were in construction or
officially permitted by the city.
38
To be accurate, Mayo did acknowledge “an over-
supply at present of the more ordinary type buildings.” He suggested instead that
“Los Angeles is facing a shortage of high-class hotels and apartment buildings.”
39

Typical of the era’s booster-friendly press, this place entrepreneur wrote newspaper
items promoting development of one kind or another under the vague guise of
detached expert. And an expert he may have been, but detached? Hardly. Mayo
was an established apartment developer with much to lose if property owners
listened to dire predictions and stopped building apartment houses.
40
Whether

36
“Over $250,000,000 Invested in Guest Rooms,” Southern California Business, February
1926, 9, emphasis added.
37
“City Lacks Apartments and Hotels,” LAT, December 4, 1927, F4.
38
Los Angeles Building Department permit data for 1927, from Southwest Builder and
Contractor, January 6, 1928. “Record of families,” or individual dwelling units, in apartment houses
totaled 9,968.
39
“City Lacks Apartments and Hotels,” LAT, December 4, 1927, F4, emphasis added.
40
Advertisement, LAT, August 13, 1922, V2. Mayo claimed “ten years experience [since
1912] … in apartment house designing, building, and financing.” See also LAT, June 12, 1927, V2,

290
sincere or jaded, rentiers taking this position worked to bolster their case. “Despite
the fact that it is charged the city is overbuilt in apartments, flats, and bungalow
courts, a recent survey showed that the percentage of vacancies is not particularly
high,” wrote one member of the Realty Board.
41
Another invoked outside expertise
on the issue: “Despite the increasing apartment house construction, some shrewd
easterners have said: ‘Los Angeles is still under-built in apartment houses.’”
42

Worrywarts would not dissuade those whose livelihood depended upon the
development of flats, apartment houses and hotels.
The rental housing glut affected not only builders, of course, but also
operators and tenants. Additional apartments gave prospective occupants more
choice, tending to drive down rents—and striking fear into landlords’ hearts.
43
A
chief aim of the Los Angeles Apartment House Association (AHA), one of several
landlord trade groups, was the stabilization of an already risky business dependent
upon seasonal travel and often practiced by amateurs. The AHA encouraged
members to cooperate, self-regulate, and not destabilize the industry with “unfair”
competitive practices like undercutting rents or offering extra services for free.
44

Now, with the building boom, the business was further plagued by a fast-growing

in which the ad reads “Luther T. Mayo, Inc. … Designing, Financing, Building… Apartments, Hotels,
Business Buildings[.]”
41
Los Angeles Realtor, September 1925, 18.
42
“Los Angeles Progress in Apartment Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor, September 1924, 11;
emphasis added.
43
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, December 27, 1926, 295. “[T]he
building of multiple family houses should not proceed except under the most favorable conditions, as
the vacancy factor remains so high that competition for tenants will be very keen for some time to
come.”

291
surplus of product. Already by 1923, years before the construction peak, observers
reported: “The tremendous increase of apartment houses of any and all sizes in Los
Angeles … puts the apartment house operators back on an old primal footing. ‘Take
it or leave it,’ a maxim so often handed prospective tenants in the past … has been
hidden under the desk[.]”
45
Potential lessees would have to be courted once again.
The AHA took the long view (for a time, at least), joining with others
interested in Los Angeles’s long-range prospects and prosperity in encouraging land
owners to diversify—even if it meant pulling funds out of the shelter market. “Those
with capital to invest should make such resources available for industrial and
commercial enterprises, rather than continue making unwise investments in
apartment houses and other multiple-unit residence properties[.]”
46
The local
apartment industry would remain concerned with the long-term implications of over-
production well into the next decade.
47

Though the housing surge produced thousands of new structures, existing buildings
constituted an important segment of the business.
48
Some owners made their money

44
See, for example, Apartment House Journal (October 1919), 3; (December 1919), 3;
(February 1921), 3.
45
“The Where of Apartment House Business,” Pacific Coast Record (April 1923), 23;
emphasis added.
46
“A Note of Warning to Builders,” Apartment House Journal (May 1926), 3-4.
47
“What of Future Apartments?” Apartment Journal (July 1936), 8. “[T]he danger is that
housing will be built, not to fill a definite need, but to provide an outlet for investment funds, to
satisfy a speculative fancy, to afford a contractor employment[.] The only person to suffer … will be
the multiple housing owner.”
48
Operations constituted an entire sector of the apartment business not involved in
construction. A firm or individual typically leased a medium to large property from its owner for a
sum, and then ran the apartment house as commercial concern. Bills were paid to vendors, funds

292
via exchange. Newspapers’ real estate sections were usually filled with
advertisements for apartment properties to swap. And as population, shelter demand,
and production all escalated, so did sales. Repeated turnover by reportedly
“unscrupulous speculators” became common. Frequent ownership changes could
also make keeping tenants difficult, and was discouraged by the Apartment House
Association. As early as 1919, its journal observed that “apartment houses continue
to change hands,”
49
and that more than a third “of them are still in the hands of
speculators.”
50
(One could imagine substituting “clutches.”) Just as in today’s
heightened marketplace, sellers of property during the ‘twenties sometimes asked for
both the moon and the stars, regardless of actual demand. In 1925, a bemused
Angeleno realtor wrote of one more potential client out for a windfall: “Another
‘horrible example’ of over-pricing … was the case of an owner who called on me to
list his apartment house at $350,000[.]” After no one showed interest, “he lowered
his price to $225,000.”
51
An asking price inflated 55 percent above market value is
another example of the virtual delirium permeating multi-family residential real
estate at this time. The AHA offered its own solution to calm things down:
“everybody hang onto their [apartment] houses and be satisfied with a good …

spent on equipment and furnishings, and wages paid to staff; rents collected from tenants covered
these expenses and provided (hopefully) a suitable profit. Petit rentiers were not part of this higher
end of the business. The typical owner(s) of a four-flat or bungalow court often resided on the
property, and ran an essentially mom-and-pop enterprise. These tens of thousands of small landlords
were not organized into associations or served by trade publications. Just where the upper limit of a
self-run property met the lower limit of a leased, professionally managed property is unclear.
49
Apartment House Trade Journal (September 1919), 13.
50
Apartment House Trade Journal (November 1919), 13.
51
“Real Estate Exchanges,” Los Angeles Realtor (December 1925), 26.

293
permanent income[.]”
52
This conservative view failed to convince many, and
properties continued to change hands. Perhaps the pinnacle of multi-family housing
speculation was Consolidated Hotels, Incorporated. In 1929, the Times described it
as “a chain of 103 hotels and apartment houses,” with a combined valuation of $25
million, expanding on average by one additional property per week.
53
This glowing
report came just before economic changes would halt production.
Other rentiers, in their quest to capitalize on a vigorous rental market,
remodeled their buildings to meet shifting demand.
54
This might mean making more
spacious (though fewer) units by combining small units together, as the owner of the
brand-new Chalfonte sought to do soon after it opened in 1929 on Normandie
Avenue. Three doors down at the Roxborough, its owner did the opposite,
subdividing eight double apartments into sixteen singles and bachelors just a few
years after it opened.
55

THE SUPPLY-SIDE FUELS THE FIRE
As all of the contemporaneous warnings about over-production should make
evident, the demand for rental housing was not the only thing driving development.
Nor were tremendous population gains sufficient to ensure occupancy of all the

52
Apartment House Trade Journal (February 1920), 13.
53
“Firm Adds to Group of Hotels,” LAT, July 28, 1929, D3.
54
A common theme of articles in the Apartment House Journal was advice to landlords on how
to affordably update older apartments. See, for example, “What of Future Apartments?” (July 1936),
8-9.
55
For the Chalfonte, see permit dated March 21, 1929; for the Roxborough, see permit dated
December 14, 1937. The second case occurred after the boom, but was still in the spirit of market-

294
dwelling units being finished month-in and month-out through the 1920s. Other
forces were at work favoring new apartment construction. These included the 1)
availability of affordable financing, 2) low prices of building materials, 3) increase
of property values and taxes, and 4) large amount of land zoned to allow multiple-
unit dwellings.
For the white Anglo majority in general, money became easier and cheaper to
borrow, especially for real estate purposes. This was true in other major American
cities as well.
56
Writing on the apartment bond market in Chicago, a land economist
found in this period “stiff competition among the bond houses, and consequently
borrowers shopped around … going where they could get the best bargain”

on loans
for land and construction.
57
The Eberle firm found the same “alarming condition” in
Los Angeles. “Undoubtedly, easy money and high-pressure selling are having a
great deal to do with the continuing of apartment-house building.”
58
Real estate
investors were warned time and again about the dubious practices of developers and
lenders trying to capitalize on the current trend. The Apartment House Journal
advised readers: “Beware the persuasive building contractors and money brokers
who come to you with rosy visions of large returns on apartment house
investments[.]”
59

response characterizing the 1920s. See Chapter 3 on the Southwest district for examples of interior
subdivisions.
56
See Willis, Form Follows Finance.
57
Carrie Maude Jones, “Apartment House Bonds: Some Plans for Reorganizing Defaulted
Issues,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 9/4 (November 1933), 359.
58
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, July 20, 1925, n.p.
59
“A Note of Warning to Builders,” Apartment House Journal, May 1926, 3-4.

295
Borrowed capital did not come so easily to aspiring minority landlords.
Some did manage to take part in the apartment and hotel boom, but generally on a
very limited scale. Still, the occasional prominent rentier did succeed with a big
property—even two. Drs. John and Vada Somerville were leaders in the local
African-American community, both dentists who had graduated from the University
of Southern California in the 1910s. They developed the large Somerville Hotel at
Central Avenue and Forty-first Street, working with black realtor H.A. Howard. The
doors opened in 1928. The block-long, four-story structure contained a hundred
hotel rooms in addition to professional offices, a restaurant, patio, and “fashionable
stores” on the ground floor. Just as the new Ambassador Hotel had quickly drawn
the region’s white cultural elite westward out Wilshire Boulevard,
60
the Somerville
Hotel was equally magnetic, bringing the African-American social center of gravity
southward, down Central Avenue.
61
At this same time, the Somervilles also
developed the impressive La Vada Apartments further east, on Vernon Avenue. The
imposing three-story masonry building held 27 units behind a neo-classical façade.
62

Other, even grander residential projects never got past the planning stages—a
common fact in general but probably much more so for black investors. For
example, the 250-room Bronx Hotel and the nine-story, 300-room Ruth Alberta

60
See Chapter 4.
61
Anthony Sweeting, “The Dunbar Hotel and Central Avenue Renaissance, 1781-1950,” PhD
Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992, Chapter 4. Another parallel to the Ambassador’s
development was the Somerville investment company’s board of directors, which included newspaper
editor Charlotta Bass and other local black elites.
62
“Los Angeles to Have New and Spacious Hotel and Apartment House,” California Eagle,
December 23, 1927, 1.

296
Hotel, to be “built and owned exclusively by colored people [for a] site on Central
Avenue” never materialized in the 1920s.
63

Just as with speculative commercial development, in which reports of rising
property values (not to mention the occasional, spectacular windfall) encouraged
entry into the field despite oversupply, so went the multi-family housing sector.
64

Investment in apartment buildings could be large—such as the development of
several properties (as with Callahan and Sons or the Interstate Mortgage and
Investment Company). But more modest participation could be had as well, such as
the construction of a single apartment house, which the owner might choose to sell or
operate. For those outside the business altogether, an investor could participate in a
big project via purchase of mortgage bonds issued for a large property.
65
The
Langham and Barclay apartment houses, both large and elaborate structures in the
Wilshire district, were financed in this way. Bonds were available in $500 and
$1000 increments—for many, a reasonably priced entry into the hot apartment
market; the Langham offered a 6.5 percent return and the Barclay, 7 percent.
66

Not only was construction financing increasingly affordable; so were
building materials.
67
No more immune to the hope of a financial killing than anyone

63
“Complete Plan for Colored People’s Hotel,” LAT, May 28, 1922, V1-2. The prominent
architects John and Donald Parkinson were listed as designers of the Ruth Alberta.
64
See Chapter 6 on the popularity of and over-speculation in commercial property in Los
Angeles.
65
See, for example, “Real Estate Mortgage Bonds and What They Have Done for Real Estate,”
Los Angeles Realtor, July 1925, 17.
66
Advertisements for California Securities Company, LAT, May 12, 1927, 13; August 31,
1927, 13.
67
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, August 16, 1926, 181. One item
was headlined “Building Materials Costs Lowest in Seven Years.”

297
else in the booming 1920s, entrepreneurs selling lumber, brick, concrete, steel and
other construction materials proliferated. In doing so, they comprised another part of
the formula driving development costs down—rendering ventures such as new
apartment houses more attractive to both veterans and novices. Growth-obsessed
boosters, hoping to encourage more and more investment and development, often
highlighted these cheaper production costs. The Chamber of Commerce told its
constituents: “Now is the time to build … while building materials are lower than
they have been in years [and] while skilled labor is plentiful[.]”
68

The impact of rising property values has already been discussed in Chapter 4
as powerful motivation for an owner to develop her or his land more intensively.
Higher taxes only added more incentive. Research on the national apartment
explosion in this period found a “fairly high degree of correlation between heavy tax
burdens on realty, and strength in the multi-family house movement” in any given
city.
69
Unfortunately, the Eberle firm did not address this subject as it did so many
others concerning Los Angeles’s economy. Yet records of the city planning
commission reveal that a growing tax bill was a common justification given by land-
owners when applying for re-zoning from single- to multi-family designation, or

68
Advertisement in Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Bulletin, February 23, 1931, 3. This
ad ran after the close of this speculation boom, once prices had risen and then dropped again. Yet it
was typical of the feverish promotional pitch pervading the discourse during the 1920s.
69
Woodbury, 54.

298
when choosing to build a larger multi-unit project than currently existed in a
residential district.
70

If the promise of profit, the affordability of credit and materiel, and the fear
of increasing taxes and financial liability were not sufficient to prod apartment
developers, then the city’s new zoning work was. Despite growth-machine hype of a
city of single-family homes, newly minted Los Angeles planners in the early 1920s
designated dozens of square miles as permissible for multiple-unit dwellings of any
size. (The reasons for this are many and complex; see Chapter 6.) The fever for
apartment construction was high enough that, even with this lopsided zoning,
planning commissioners spent much of their time hearing petitions for even more
land so zoned. Realtors, along with thousands of individual land owners, lobbied
hard: “[A]ny zoning that could help push up the asking price [of property] was very
much in demand. The two most favored categories were [the] income-producing
uses of rental apartments and commercial structures.”
71

70
See, for example, Los Angeles City Planning Commission, Regular meeting minutes,
December 10, 1925; Zoning Committee meeting minutes, January 31, 1928.
71
Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry
and Urban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 102.

299
“THE MONSTROUS, UNHOMELIKE THING NEXT DOOR TO ME,” OR,
APARTMENTS AND URBAN STRUCTURE
72

Some of the apprehension about apartment oversupply in the 1920s focused
on the concomitant decline in new single-family house construction. One observer
wrote that “multiple-family structures, including bungalow courts, flats and
apartments have increased in direct proportion to the losses shown in single-family
dwellings.”
73
This was cause for concern in a place so heavily promoted to the
world as a haven for home-owners. Detached single-family houses accounted for
less and less of all new residential construction in this decade, descending from a
high of over two-thirds of new units in 1921 to less than a third in 1928.
74

Residential income property was hot, and all kinds of land-owners wanted in—
regardless of actual need for such development, some worried. “In an attempt to
make as much as possible by building multiple family accommodations on a single
lot, the tendency is to build duplex houses, courts, apartments and flats without any
inquiry as to what is really wanted by the consumer.”
75

Another major concern was where some of the bigger apartment houses were
going up. The successful occupancy of many apartment buildings frequently drove
up surrounding property values to the point where new single-family housing
development was no longer viable. The Eberle firm described that the “speculation

72
Interview no. 27, with a resident of southwest Los Angeles, in Bessie Averne McLenahan,
The Changing Urban Neighborhood: From Neighbor to Nigh-Dweller (Los Angeles: University of
Southern California, 1929), 27.
73
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, July 9, 1928, 168, emphasis added.
74
City of Los Angeles building permit data on construction valuations.

300
in Los Angeles real estate with the accompanying rise in prices has caused such high
values to be placed upon close-in residential lots that the owners must place
multiple-family dwellings on them if they are to receive fair returns on their
investments.”
76
This kind of dense urban development was “rapidly forcing the
single-family home to the outlying districts.”
77
This is precisely what had happened
rather quickly, for example, in the dense apartment areas of the Westlake district
starting in the 1910s and in the Wilshire-Ambassador district beginning in 1920; see
Chapter 4.
Another factor pushing bungalow developers to the outskirts was the
uncomfortable proximity of hulking new apartment houses to closer-in areas of
existing homes—and even to small multi-family structures. In 1928, the Times
reported that “owners of limited multiple-dwelling units in … Los Angeles are
raising protests against the helter-skelter erection of high apartment-houses adjacent
to their duplexes, four-family flats and triplexes, which thereby shut out light and air
from the homes, destroy the residential beauty of the section[.]”
78
The early
popularity of income property had prompted new planning commissioners to zone
much of the central city to allow apartments when they began their work in the early
1920s. But 1) the sustained excess of apartment development, 2) its increasing scale,
and 3) its injurious affect on more “desirable” residential areas of one-, two- and
four-family dwellings led the planning commission to its first revision of the zoning

75
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, October 15, 1924, n.p.
76
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, November 30, 1925, n.p.
77
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, May 19, 1930, 106.

301
ordinance in 1930. This would place greater controls on the location of large
apartment houses, giving new, greater protections to smaller multiple-dwelling types
such as four-flats.
79

The apartment frenzy spurred changes to land-use regulation, but it also
caused additional attempts to restrict building sizes. The municipal 150-foot height
limit applied to all structures inside the city limits, but was really only tested
downtown—and in new apartment districts newly filling out in the 1920s. In the
Wilshire area, for instance, the 13-story Gaylord building scraped against this line
when tradesmen topped off its roof parapet in 1924, and the 10-story Talmadge had
stopped not far short of it the year earlier. The planning commission was concerned,
and floated a potential lower maximum for consideration in parts of the city at risk.
When the planning director appeared at a “mass meeting of the Wilshire and
Westlake districts’ property owners”—held right across the street from the Gaylord
at the Ambassador Hotel—he got a chilly reception. “Indignant and forceful protests
were voiced against G. Gordon Whitnall … for his asserted proposal to limit to six
stories the height of buildings in the outlying districts,” the Times reported. The
thriving market in mid- to high-rise multi-family housing was just the kind of
opportunity patient land-owners had been waiting for. The threat that bureaucratic
meddling might literally cut off their profits at the knee drew fire. “[T]he business of
developing and improving real property in the city of Los Angeles should not be
limited and hampered by unnecessary, whimsical and capricious regulations,” said

78
“Zone Condition Draws Protest,” LAT, December 2, 1928, E1.

302
one protester. Another particularly emotional one reportedly cried, “Let’s get Mr.
Whitnall’s scalp!”
80
The planner left unscathed, and dropped the proposed
restriction—allowing, for example, A.W. Menkins to develop the 7-story Langham
Apartments in the Ambassador district, and Joseph Toplitzky to erect the 8-story
Victoria Arms in Westlake.
81
Similar concerns over the three-dimensional bulk of
structures led to the systematizing of piecemeal regulations for building setbacks,
which had been unevenly applied and only partially enforced since about 1920. The
municipal Yard Ordinance was enacted in 1934-35, and required all residential
structures (regardless of size and construction type) to be set back from all property
lines.

WINDING DOWN, COOLING OFF
All of the intense activity and almost-frantic speculation in urban
development over so many years led, predictably, to decline if not ruin for some
participants. The Eberle firm, which had been carefully tracking all sectors of the
Angeleno economy for years, declared, in general: “Business failures during 1929 in
both Los Angeles and Southern California reached record levels[.]” More
specifically, however, “the failures of building and building materials concerns have
been exceedingly prominent, as well of those of real estate firms.”
82
In looking at

79
See Chapter 6 for a full discussion on zoning and multi-family housing.
80
“Height Limit is Protested,” LAT, May 30, 1925, 5, emphasis added.
81
“Los Angeles Progress in Apartment Houses,” Los Angeles Realtor (September 1924), 11;
“Projects Cost Millions,” LAT, May 16, 1926, E3.
82
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, March 24, 1930, 67-68, emphasis added.

303
particulars, the economists found that from 1926 to 1929, building and building
materials firms accounted for nearly $21 million in liabilities in southern California,
with a total of 858 firms going under. The worst year was 1927, during which nearly
one in four bankrupt firms—and fully half of all monetary liabilities—came from
this sector.
83
Landlords and rentiers failed, too, of course. As early as 1926, Eberle
noted that a “number of new apartment houses are standing 100 percent vacant and
have been in this condition for some time.”
84
The evidently nationwide epidemic of
defaulting on mortgage bonds issued for apartment house investment in the 1920s
was enough for two articles by a Chicago economist. “Abnormal construction
brought into the field a large number of mortgage loan operators, many of whom had
inadequate capital and no background of experience, training, or ideas of successful
operation[.]” This resulted, she wrote, in nothing short of “a holocaust among real
estate mortgage bonds.”
85
The dire warnings made by cooler heads about apartment
over-building had at least partially come true.
Yet, Los Angeles’s apartment boom did not burst; it deflated rapidly over a
period of about three years; see Table 1. The peak of the surge was 1928, when
almost nine hundred permits were issued for new multi-family structures containing
11,762 units, for over $28 million in construction. In 1932, just seventy-five permits
were doled out for buildings holding 444 units, for less than a million dollars of

83
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly letter, February 3, 1930, 26. The consulting firm reported
on $20,985,117 worth of failures of building and materials firms—23.2% of all failed concerns in
1927— in the ten southern California counties.
84
Eberle and Riggleman Economic Service, Weekly letter, September 27, 1926, 222.
85
Jones, “Apartment House Bonds,” 360.

304
work. Of course, the national depression had everything to do with the depths of this
trough, but the downturn began before the stock-market crash. Already by 1929,
apartment permits were down by a fourth from the previous year, with construction
valuations declining by forty percent. All the cautions about over-building and a
glutted market must have convinced some rentiers and investors before larger
economic forces would finally settle the issue.

As Figure 30 shows, the years 1932 to 1936 were very slow for apartment developers
in Los Angeles. Annual permit counts numbered only in the dozens, and yearly
construction totals only topped a million dollars once. Builders built, but only small
numbers of small, relatively inexpensive multiple dwellings. Virtually all were two-
story, wood-frame structures averaging four to six units apiece. In 1937, the housing
market rebounded remarkably. Single-family construction multiplied eleven-fold
over the previous year (setting the stage for its legendary, long-term resurgence), and
multi-family by a factor of fourteen. New multiples remained small, but were again
numbering in the hundreds, for annual construction totals from $5 to $10 million by
decade’s end.

305
Chapter 6

Planning, Zoning and Housing:
The Problem of Apartments in a “City of Homes”

INTRODUCTION

“We have here a ‘city of homes’ and it is to these homes and
to the manner of living of our people to which we are
constantly pointing with pride, and to which we are constantly
inviting those outside to come.”
1

—Los Angeles Health Department, Bureau of Housing

Public officials, realtors, and other boosters driving the local growth machine faced
many difficulties in their efforts to guide booming urban growth in early twentieth-
century Los Angeles. Possibly their thorniest challenge was making space for
increasing multitudes of newcomers while trying to maintain the city’s reputation as
a haven for suburban home-ownership. An image of tree-lined subdivisions
containing attractive bungalows on spacious lots, extending mile after mile from the
mountains to the sea, was a vital component of both nationwide publicity and local
identity. But the growing demand for, and diverse supply of, flats, courts, and
apartments for rent was equally important to the city’s development. This did not fit
this carefully-crafted story told time and again in the external discourse of Los
Angeles; instead, boosters asked themselves what a more recent observer “obsessed
by LA’s great riddle” wonders: “can a city be a city without appearing to be one?”
2

1
Los Angeles Bureau of Housing, Department of Health, Annual Report, 1913-14, 123.
2
Douglas Suisman, Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Politic (Los Angeles:
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, 1989), 5, emphasis added. Robert Fogelson,
in The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1967), 2, focuses on this “ambivalent attitude toward urbanization.” Indeed, he argues that “[t]he

306
Such was the contradiction facing city’s budding planners. This new arm of
the local state was charged specifically with protecting the city’s image, not to
mention its property values. Was there a way to somehow conceal part of a housing
stock seemingly more reminiscent of Pittsburgh than paradise? What legal means
were available to policymakers working to shape the urban landscape in ways that
continued to attract favorable press, without closing off opportunities to shelter all
who came? One faction of Progressive housing reformers at work in other cities had
already proposed, in effect, regulating the multi-story tenement building out of
existence. Some saw this as a clear improvement for poverty-plagued cities, and had
begun to lobby and draft new codes to make dense multi-family housing financially
infeasible—all with the aim of encouraging single-family housing everywhere they
could.
3
Would planners in Los Angeles concur and imitate? What did they do about
apartments and other multi-family housing in their supposed “city of homes”?
This chapter will focus on work by aspiring and appointed city planners to
deal with multi-family housing in first three decades of the twentieth century. The
timeline includes: the popular use of deed restrictions to privately control land use;
the municipality’s innovative implementation of use districts; the advent of zoning in
the early 1920s, when not only the division of urban space but the very classification

quintessence of Los Angeles is the tension between these themes[:] the emergence of a populous,
urbanized, and industrialized settlement … [and] the rejection of the metropolis in favor of its
suburbs[.]”
3
Kenneth Baar, “The National Movement to Halt the Spread of Multifamily Housing, 1890-
1926,” Journal of the American Planning Association (Winter 1992), 39-48. On the general policy
preference for owned single- versus rented multi-family housing, see Paul Groth, Living Downtown:
The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994), Chapter 8.

307
of urban functions was up for debate; and the first zoning revision in 1930, after
several years of experimentation and implementation had not only begun to shape
the landscape, but also yielded important lessons in how better to go about the
process.

CITY IN FLUX, HOUSING IN DEMAND

“There is considerable chaos among the property owners, due to the
fact that no final scheme has been adopted and no one knows what to
build or where.”
4

—Los Angeles City Planning Commission

Los Angeles grew astonishingly fast in the early twentieth century, both in
population and in area. In 1900 the city had barely a hundred thousand residents; by
1930 that number had multiplied twelve times to over 1.2 million. In the 1920s
alone population doubled as Los Angeles shot from the nation’s tenth largest city to
fifth largest. Other cities saw high growth rates during the same period, but none
matched this incredible boom.
5

The demand for housing grew every day, as all kinds of people flocked to the
City of Angels. The well-documented sector of middle-aged (and older), middle-
class Midwesterners discussed by Carey McWilliams and Robert Fogelson certainly
came in droves.
6
So did those less prosperous, eager to test the region’s reputation—
deserved or not—for economic opportunity for all who made the effort to get there.

4
LACPC, Meeting Minutes, August 5, 1924; emphasis added.
5
See Fogelson’s use of census data, 78-79.
6
Fogelson, Chapter 4; Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt
Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1946; 1973), Chapter 9.

308
This included both white and black Americans from all regions, as well as
immigrants from Mexico and many European and Asian countries.
7

A significant portion of new arrivals were tourists. Though these visitors
officially made their homes elsewhere, the nature of tourism at that time effectively
placed them in residence in a host city like Los Angeles for a period of months rather
than weeks.
8
Many travelers stayed in hotels, but setting up housekeeping in
furnished quarters was equally commonplace. All kinds of shelter, from modest
bungalows to first-class resorts and everything between, accommodated middle- and
upper-class tourists from all over the United States.
9
This particular, residential
aspect of tourism—coupled with overall success in attracting tens of thousands to
Los Angeles year in and year out—impacted the regional housing industry in ways
and at a scale not typical of other American cities.
10

Besides population growth, the city’s territorial expansion was equally
dramatic, and, of course, contributed some of the new inhabitants. For over a
century after its 1781 founding, municipal boundaries barely changed, enclosing 28

7
Lawrence DeGraaf, “The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto,
1890-1930,” Pacific Historical Review (date); Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, eds., Ethnic
Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996); George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican
American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993); and Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the
Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
8
John Jakle, The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth Century North America (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1985); Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990), Chapter 5; Catherine Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of
Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
9
Eberle Economic Service, “Tourist Survey of Southern California for the All-Year Club of
Southern California,” (March 1929). This report detailed the myriad ways in which the tourism
industry impacted the local and regional economy, especially rental housing.

309
square miles. The year 1895 began a succession of annexations numbering nearly
eighty by 1930, by which time the city was 442 square miles in area.
11
This frequent
redrawing of the city limits to capture more territory and voters also captured homes,
businesses and industries, as well as vast tracts of land yet to be subdivided and
developed.
Los Angeles was a city in flux. And people and territory were only parts of
the urban equation. The dynamic landscape was comprised not only of new houses,
new buildings and new streets, but existing development under constant renovation
and rearrangement. One commentator in the Times wrote of the “Los Angeles
epidemic of house-moving” in 1920.
12
As subdivisions opened up at the periphery
and older areas nearer the central city declined in attractiveness, an increasing
number of home-owners would buy a new lot further out and hire someone to
relocate the family house, rather than build new. “All over Los Angeles one sees
houses picking up their skirts and tripping … to new locations,” wrote one observer.
Larger structures, such as churches, hotels, and apartment buildings, were moved as
well.
13
In one dramatic case, a six-story masonry hotel was moved down the street in
an epic production of engineering and manpower, in order to make way for the new

10
Miami was a notable exception, where tourism also had a profound influence on the housing
industry. See Allan T. Shulman, “Miami Beach as Urban Assemblage: A Unique Culture of
Housing,” The New City. (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 26-49.
11
Richard Bigger and James D. Kitchen, How the Cities Grew: A Study in Integration (Los
Angeles: The Haynes Foundation, 1952); Fogelson, 226-227.
12
“Architect Decries Moving of Houses,” Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1920, V3; also, for years
the standard application form for a building permit to renovate an existing structure included blanks
“[building] removed from” and “removed to.” House-moving firms were regular fixtures in business
directories.
13
Myrtle Gebhart, “Homes That Wander,” Los Angeles Times, 25 March 1923, III13.

310
Hall of Justice.
14
Moreover, many business enterprises faced the need to relocate—
either for expansion, to reach new markets, or in response to complaints by
surrounding home-owners. Further still, many city streets were in dire need of
widening and straightening, which often required the full or partial demolition of
structures alongside them.
All of this change—more people, more area, more development—brought
excitement to growth-minded elites eager for economic expansion. It also heaped
anxiety upon officials responsible for keeping Los Angeles a place where other
Americans would want to visit or locate, and who were already overwhelmed with
not only a rapidly changing urban environment but an often-turbulent social setting
as well. Finally, these nascent planners also had to deal with more than just
newcomers. Residential mobility was high for longtime Angelenos as well, house-
moving aside. For those pondering the city’s housing, this meant not only making
room for more and more new people, but for those already there but moving around.

VISIONING LOS ANGELES: “ONE VAST SUBURB,” A “CITY OF HOMES”

“We are the ones who should ‘Dream dreams and see visions’—
visions of a better City to be[.]”
15

—President, Los Angeles City Planning Commission

Visions for the City of Angels took shape in the minds of its leaders from its
inception. Despite any differences, they all had the same over-arching objective in

14
“Greatest Hotel Moving Job Under Way in Los Angeles at Present,” Pacific Coast Record 19
(September 1923), 16.

311
mind: growth—in population, area, wealth, rank, regional influence and national
visibility. The various groups constituting the region’s growth machine were clear
on this: more was better, and even more was even better. The particulars differed
mainly on how best to achieve that growth.
16

The specifics of the vision depended upon who was doing the envisioning,
and when. The very first concept for the city was as outpost of the Spanish territory
of Alta California; the city was to be the administrative center (pueblo) of a vast
farming region to help settle the northern bounds of the overextended Spanish colony
of Mexico.
17
Beginning in the 1870s (and once in United States territory), health
seekers and travelers from all over the nation helped local developers and merchants
picture the region as a vast resort complex.
18
In the late 1880s, competitive railroad
routes fueled massive in-migration and a land boom of legendary proportions. An
immense infusion of population and capital stimulated speculation in real estate, as
huge tracts were subdivided into small farms and house lots, and entire new towns
were laid out and put up for sale. This spectacular upsurge fell off rather quickly,
but not before conjuring the first image of an urban Los Angeles, complete with all

15
Letter from W.H. Pierce to the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, n.d., acknowledging
his election as the commission’s first president. Bound into LACPC meeting minutes, July 7, 1920.
16
See Chapter 1 on the political economy of housing in Los Angeles for a discussion of
important organizational players in the city’s urbanization, and how residential development figured
into the goals of each.
17
Dora P. Crouch, Daniel J. Garr and Axel I. Mundigo, Spanish City Planning in North
America (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1982), chapter 3; David Hornbeck, “Spanish Legacy in the
Borderlands,” in Michael P. Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape (New York:
Routledge, 1990), 27-50.
18
See for example, Charles Nordhoff, California For Health, Pleasure And Residence; A Book
For Travellers And Settlers (New York: Harpers, 1882).

312
the requisite (if still incipient) urban functions: trade, commerce, industry,
transportation, institutions and home-sites.
19

In 1894, before the region could be truly called “urban,” however, civic
boosters still hoped to cultivate an agricultural capital, insisting that the “advertising
of Southern California must be continued with unflagging persistence until the great
ranches are divided into countless small farms[.]”
20
Twenty years later, utopians
made their own bid for an agrarian community—much smaller, further out, and
differently organized. Llano del Rio was established in 1914 as a socialist farm
commune in the Antelope Valley, north of the city. Begun by prominent socialists,
the experiment seemed to thrive for a few years, when a lack of water rendered
continued development infeasible.
21

During the same period, many Progressive-era reformers held high hopes for
the successful importation of the English garden city idea to southern California. In
1913, influential civic leader Reverend Dana Bartlett even cribbed the rhetoric of
Ebenezer Howard himself: “Let us ruralize the city and urbanize the country. Let us
help to surround every city with a hundred industrial villages[.]”
22
Bartlett and
others advocated a larger, regional approach to development in a place urbanizing in
an already spatially-diffused pattern. Boosters from adjacent cities trumpeted the

19
Glenn Dumke, The Boom of the Eighties in Southern California (San Marino CA:
Huntington Library, 1963); Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1973), chapters 12-13; Fogelson, chapters 4, 5 and 6.
20
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report (1894), n.p.
21
McWilliams, 284-287.
22
Quoted in John Ihlder, “Housing at the Los Angeles Conference,” National Municipal
Review 2/1 (January 1913), 69. See also Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow (Cambridge
MA: MIT Press, 1965; 1984).

313
fact that the area had expanded into a place where distinctions between cities hardly
mattered; as early as 1903 Long Beach spokesmen heralded that the ever-extending
“Pacific Electric Railway is making the entire [region] one vast suburb.”
23

By the 1920s, Los Angeles had grown immense and diverse, in terms of
population, physical development, and economic base.
24
Over the years, the
powerful and business-minded Chamber of Commerce had diligently crafted an
image of Los Angeles as an ideal place for industrial development. The Chamber
envisioned and promoted “nature’s workshop,” wherein the region’s reputed
“natural” features (nearby harbor, mild climate, and available land) would lure
capitalists from all over with promises of the best conditions for successful
investment in manufacturing. Though industry was the nominal focus of this vision,
housing was its cornerstone. Prospective industrialists were assured: “In Los
Angeles, labor reaches its highest efficiency and its maximum contentment.” This
was due, boosters reported, to the widespread availability of single-family dwellings
affordable by all, including wage-earners. “No congested tenement districts”
existed, according to these promoters; rather, “[w]orkmen live in modest and
comfortable bungalows, invariably with lawns and flowers.”
25
Even the location of

23
Brochure. “Long Beach: The City by the Sea,” n.d., 13. Reprinted from Out West (June
1903). Emphasis added.
24
See, for example, Tom Sitton and William Deverell, eds, Metropolis in the Making: Los
Angeles in the 1920s, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
25
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, “Los Angeles: Where Nature Helps Industry Most.”
Pamphlet, (n.d., ca. 1914), 4.

314
the central manufacturing district was said to be beneficial, being downwind of most
residential parts of the city.
26

An emphasis on quality-of-life, tied specifically to they single-family housing
type, was not new—here or elsewhere.
27
Yet, most visions for Los Angeles elevated
this particular aspect to apotheosis. The iconic use of the freestanding cottage on its
own lot by the Chamber in crafting a massive place promotion campaign only
cemented the house’s importance to the city’s identity and culture. Moreover, the
pairing of house (usually as “home”) with nature in countless advertisements,
articles, sermons and speeches in popular and political discourse reinforced the close
association of house with a rural ideal already powerful in North American culture.
28

Such longstanding rhetorical and conceptual intertwining made the house itself seem
natural in Los Angeles and southern California: a fact of life, to be taken for granted.
This perception is what many rentier-boosters sought to cultivate among outsiders
and citizens alike. Yet these leaders recognized that the tree-shaded bungalow
belonged to the same category as water: it was an infrastructural element,
indispensable to future growth, requiring forethought and intensive planning. All

26
“The industrial district of Los Angeles is so zoned as to permit ready access and, as it is
located in the Eastern section, the winds which blow from the sea … prevent [sic] any odors or vapors
reaching the great residential sections… [in] comparison with the dull, be-smudged dwellings and
buildings in the East[.]” See “Building a New City Every Twelve Months,” Southern California
Business (September 1922), 39. This charitable description did not mention that the large working-
class district of East Los Angeles (despite its name, outside the city limits), home to a heavily
Mexican American and Mexican immigrant population, was downwind of the CMD.
27
Many other places claimed to be a “city of [single-family] homes.” See Chapter 7.
28
See, for example, Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United
States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and
Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

315
such machinations, however, were to be invisible in the external discourse tailored to
the visitor, the tourist, the newcomer, the home-seeker.
29

Another significant, recurring theme in the visioning of future Los Angeles
was the “clean slate”—specifically, the rare chance such a condition offered for city-
building purposes.
30
The fact that the region was a kind of late-bloomer in its
urbanization provided a critical, fleeting opportunity to avoid the mistakes made in
older, eastern US cities, according to advocates for official city planning. Thus far,
Southern California had managed (it was thought) to escape many of the notorious
troubles of congested streets, squalid tenements, and inadequate infrastructure.
31
In
1930, the city planning commission would report: “Where in other cities the major
emphasis has been … the correction of mistakes caused by uncontrolled structural
growth, in Los Angeles we also have the opportunity to control much of the future

29
Environmental historian William Cronon has theorized a facet of urbanization wherein
certain human-made infrastructural elements come to be literally taken for granted by succeeding
generations. “A kind of ‘second nature,’ designed by people and ‘improved’ toward human ends,
gradually emerged atop the original landscape” … wherein “boosters and others often forgot the
distinction between them.” See Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: WW
Norton and Co., 1991), 56. Cronon was referring chiefly to artificial transportation channels, but I
believe the concept is useful in considering single-family housing in Los Angeles. An important
difference is that, although detached dwellings may have come to seem a given in Los Angeles, no
one in power believed that this real estate triumph could continue without sustained effort in both the
public and private sectors.
30
The rare opportunity provided by an ostensible tabula rasa to “get it right” and avoid
mistakes has long been a theme of planning, especially in places considered frontiers. Southern
Californians saw Los Angeles as one such urban opportunity; once the city was well underway to
development, the San Fernando Valley was considered a clean slate too important to mess up; more
recently, the acreage of the Playa Vista area on the city’s west side has likewise been treated as yet
another (nearly) blank canvas on which to carry out the latest in “good” planning techniques.
31
See Robert Alan Phelps, “Dangerous Class on the Plains of Id: Ideology and Homeownership
in Southern California (PhD Diss., University of California, Riverside, 1996), on the disparity
between booster claims about a worker’s ideal of affordable home ownership and the reality of
housing conditions in Los Angeles.

316
structure of the city[.]”
32
But time was of the essence for those trying not only to
paint the big picture but to assure its realization. At the same time, the county’s
Regional Planning Commission was blunt in its worry over missed chances:
“Bungling at this stage can never be wholly repaired.”
33
In this case, bungling would
have been to allow the work of subdividers, builders, and business interests to go
unchecked by increased public oversight.
These forces—a combined ideological, social and economic rationale for
unfettered single-family residential development; the sense of a fleeting opportunity
for nearly wholesale implementation of a guiding vision; and the threats to such a
vision, escalating in both number and scale on a daily basis—constituted a major
thrust in the push for official city planning in Los Angeles in the first decades of the
1900s.
34

Not everyone in Los Angeles shared a vision of the city as one dedicated
only to the detached bungalow in a garden. Some, in fact, saw continued population
growth as fodder for a more conventionally urban setting of dense rental housing.
As will be examined below, alternative thinking about residential planning did exist.
Such an approach—favoring the better integration of more multi-family dwellings—
was always subordinate to the dominant paradigm, but did gain credence in many
circles and complicated the housing discourse over time. By the 1920s, this
approach would begin to inform new local land-use policy.

32
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-1930), 17, emphasis added.
33
Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission, “A Comprehensive Report of the Regional
Plan of Highways: Section 4, Long Beach-Redondo Area (1931), 15.

317
PLANNING I: PRIVATE CONTROLS BY THE MARKET
“‘It is the Realtor subdivider who is really planning our cities today[.]
Subdividers take the raw land, carve out a street system, parcel the
area into lots and through their development activities stamp them
with a definite character. In the past, this has taken place with a
minimum of interference or guidance from the neighboring city and
often without any guidance at all.’”
35

—George B. Ford, American city planner

Until the early 1900s, local governments (unlike private developers) were strictly
limited as to what regulations they could impose on the use of private property
within their boundaries. Specific activities commonly accepted as nuisances
(especially when adjacent to residences)—such as laundries, stables or
manufacturing plants—could be prohibited by a municipality on a case-by-case
basis. Otherwise, cities lacked authority to regulate property more generally.
36

Years before public officials charged with planning cities would begin to formulate
then implement the first zoning ordinances, the private sector was shaping the urban
landscape. This was accomplished through restrictive covenants incorporated into
land deeds, in which the buyer agreed to build in accordance with the attached
covenant. Both land use and building form were subject to these market-based
controls. One of the most common uses of deed restrictions was the development of

34
Other major planning themes were industrial expansion and infrastructure improvements.
35
Quoted in Helen C. Monchow, The Use of Deed Restrictions in Subdivision Development
(Chicago: Institute for Land Economics and Public Utilities, 1928), 8.

36
On the origins of the police power to regulate land use, see Richard Babcock, The Zoning
Game: Municipal Policies and Practices (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966) ; Mel
Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Chicago: American Planning Association, 1969;1995),
Chapter 3; Keith Revell, Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public Policy in New York City, 1898-
1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), Chapter 5.

318
residential neighborhoods, done by subdividers blanketing entire tracts they had
parceled into house lots.
37
A typical set of restrictions on a given lot included
requirements for: a single-family detached dwelling; the minimum cost for such a
building; setback requirements; and, sometimes, prohibition of property sale or rental
to particular racial minorities, or to non-whites in general.
38

Some residential subdivisions made allowances for a certain amount of other
land uses, including stores and apartment houses. Setting the land-use pattern for
many subsequent zoning codes, deed restrictions permitting multi-family dwellings
usually limited their location to major streets at the outer edges of the development,
bounding the central area kept for one-family houses. On occasion, entire
subdivisions (or significant portions thereof) permitted apartments or flats—
sometimes, in those tracts located near transit lines or near the central city where
rental housing for small households made sense. Large apartment houses might be
allowed in such cases, or covenants might limit development to small two- or four-
unit flat structures, depending on the subdivider’s vision for the project.
39

37
This practice predates the widespread integration of land subdivision and dwelling
construction under a single firm.
38
See June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf, eds, Urban Planning and the African
American Community (Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 1997), for a collection of essays
which address this topic’s various dimensions.
39
Monchow, Chapter 2. See also real estate tract brochures for examples of the range of
conditions: a sample deed in the pamphlet for Commonwealth Terrace, a 56-lot tract located between
Vermont Avenue and Hoover Street, just south of Third Street (ca. 1910, held at UCLA Special
Collections, collection 349) states that “no double or tenement houses, flats, or any kind of residence,
except [one] designed for use as a single residence, shall ever be erected”; the form shows an
expiration date of January 1, 1930.
A pair of brochures from USC Special Collections, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
Collection, illustrate developments allowing multiple dwellings. Reed Terrace, ca. 1914, was a
subdivision of about 162 lots at the northeast corner of Normandie Avenue and Jefferson Street (now
Boulevard). Situated in the “beautiful West Adams high class residence and apartment house

319
So, the spatial separation of different land uses—so attractive to booster-
minded businessmen eager to achieve a residential metropolis—could at first only be
accomplished by operators in the private real estate market using deed restrictions.
These market-based controls did have an effect of grouping together certain kinds of
uses—residential, commercial, industrial—but only here and there, since the
municipality lacked the authority to coordinate among the various entrepreneurs
setting the rules for their small piece of the city. Consequently, despite pockets of
functionally partitioned development, the overall mixed-use urban pattern persisted.
And a typical unrestricted city block might still hold any combination of single-
family residences, boarding houses, apartment buildings, shops, offices, factories. It
became clear to place entrepreneurs, both businessmen and bureaucrats, that the local
real estate industry could not be counted on to coordinate and police its members
sufficiently to assure an attractive city of homes.
40

PLANNING II: DISTRICTING BY THE LOCAL STATE

“The ordinance seeks to define what is and is not an industry as
distinguished from home, sweet home. Then it proceeds to “shoo” the
industries out of the residential districts[.]”
41

—Los Angeles Times

district,” the tract was advertised as permitting “flats with gabled roofs.” Further north, a tract once
owned by the elite Witmer family was advertised, ca. 1912, as “apartment house property.” This
development was more centrally located, just west of downtown—“only a 15-minute walk from
Broadway”—in the Crown Hill neighborhood. The (approximately) 52 lots were much larger and
more expensive than those at Reed Park, probably explained by their location in a part of the city
already seeing development in large apartment houses and hotels.
40
Mansel Blackford, The Lost Dream: Businessmen and City Planning on the Pacific Coast,
1890-1920 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993), Chapter 3.

320
Municipal bureaucrats were faced with the ongoing challenge of trying to steer
physical development in the burgeoning metropolis. Beginning with a limited set of
legal means with which to direct how much of what should go where, public officials
did their best to impose some order on the often uncoordinated and multifarious
private activities of numerous landowners and builders. When it came to housing,
two primary goals seemed to cancel each other out: keep the city at low-density (at
least in appearance), but continue to make room for a lot more housing. On one
hand, the “protection” of single-family housing from the encroachments of
undesirable land uses was of paramount concern. But a pattern of only one dwelling
per lot could never come close to accommodating the continuing waves of arrivals.
And more dense housing—essential to sheltering so many—was one of those very
uses deemed objectionable. How could more and more room be made for a
population that increased perceptibly every day, without hurting Los Angeles’s
reputation as a residential Eden?
State-sanctioned land-use planning in the United States took a leap forward in
Los Angeles beginning in 1904. This exercise of public authority would exceed that
of private deed restrictions, defining a specific “residence district” which excluded
by ordinance certain obnoxious industrial activities. At this early stage, a residence
district included all land uses not specifically excluded: single-family dwellings
could co-exist alongside apartments, stores, schools, offices and other functions as
well. In 1908, virtually the entire municipality was divided into either residential or

41
“Industrial Plants to be Pulled Up By Roots,” Los Angeles Times, January 5, 1913, II1.

321
industrial districts.
42
As with all new legislation limiting private property, lawsuits
by land owners against the city ensued, but the restrictions were ultimately upheld by
state and federal courts.
43
Historian Marc Weiss has noted that the “passage of
zoning laws in 1908 clearly reflected a strong push by the Los Angeles Realty Board
to reassure prospective lenders and purchasers that the city would continue to be a
spacious residential paradise of fine homes and quiet, clean surroundings.”
44

Despite these milestones in the push for stronger regulation, conflicts over
property rights, land use, and urban development continued and worsened.
Constantly expanding population and increasing industrialization overwhelmed the
fairly weak provisions of the districting ordinances. Indeed, “the blanket nature of
the law over such a vast territory meant that the City Council was constantly creating
‘exceptions’ for a whole variety of land uses that could not be kept too far away from
the residential portions of the city.”
45
Repeated concessions to these internal and
external pressures all but cancelled out important “protections” for residence districts
from undesirable “encroachments.” Except for housing subdivisions protected by
carefully written (and strongly enforced) deed restrictions, the mishmash of stores,
offices, houses and apartments characterizing much of the urban landscape continued
to appear, and to spread.

42
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 58-65; Weiss, 80-86.
43
A treatment of the legal landscape of planning and zoning is found in Stanley K. Schultz,
Constructing Urban Culture: American Cities and City Planning, 1800-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1989), Chapter 4.
44
Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry
and Urban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 86; emphasis added.
45
Ibid., 87.

322
The ongoing mongrelization of the built environment was considered a
calamity by many on the Los Angeles Realty Board—a powerful interest group
whose elite members were intimately involved in every stage of the city’s planning.
These realtors, along with all land-owning booster factions, were anxious to keep the
city’s residential pedigree intact. This large segment of place entrepreneurs sought,
in particular, to enshrine the single-family detached dwelling in a set of defenses
strong enough to keep other kinds of development at a suitable distance.

PLANNING III: ZONING BY A NEW COMMISSION

“[T]here are certain fundamentals of city planning and zoning which
are technically and academically sound…. Business should not be
allowed to encroach into residential neighborhood[s]…. Likewise,
the single-family residence is entitled to protection from
encroachment of hotels, apartment houses [and] flats.”
46

—Los Angeles City Planning Commission

The next milestone in came in 1920, with the establishment of the new Los Angeles
City Planning Commission.
47
A group of fifty-one business- and civic leaders, the
commission faced tasks similar to those confronting their counterparts in other cities
at the time: design of a new civic center, improvement and expansion of streets and
highways, and provision of parks. But ahead of all of those pressing problems of
public infrastructure was that of regulating the vast expanse of private property—
especially protecting existing residential areas and making plenty of room for new

46
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 21-22.
47
For an overall history of planning activities, both before and after establishment of the
commission, see Greg Hise and Todd Gish, “City Planning in Los Angeles, 1781-1999,” in Los
Angeles: An Institutional Memory (forthcoming).

323
ones. Even after several years in force, the best that the first districting ordinances
could accomplish was the banishment of heavy industry from areas that were
otherwise undifferentiated in their allowance of various housing types, retail and
office buildings, schools, churches, cemeteries and workshops. The resulting
uncertainty caused by the uneven success of use districts, by uncoordinated (and
expiring) sets of deed restrictions, and by rapid industrial development cast a pall
over the all-important real estate business.
48
Plenty of construction was taking place,
but often in areas not yet provided with public utilities or services, or in areas where
residents sought to keep out new development. One critic asked, “how in the world
can any planning commission or anyone else devise a logical zoning arrangement
that can keep logical pace with a city so large and of such rapid growth as this?”
49

City-builders in both the public and private sectors had been agitating for formal
planning for decades, and at last they had their agency. Eager to channel new
development more rationally and deliberately, but overwhelmed by the immensity of
such a task, many may have found themselves wondering, how do we do this?

48
To many in Los Angeles’s landed civic elite, industry was as important an object of zoning
as residence. The Chamber of Commerce focused its considerable efforts on development of the city
as an industrial metropolis, and the uncertainties of land regulation had made investment in
manufacturing risky. As increasing emphasis was placed on “protecting” ever-growing residential
areas, some long-established factories were forced to pull-up stakes and relocate. Part of the drive for
zoning was to stabilize the prospects for those keen on buying property for new manufacturing plants.
For a discussion of industrial decentralization in Los Angeles, see Greg Hise, “’Nature’s Workshop’:
Industry and Urban Expansion in Southern California, 1900-1950,” Journal of Historical Geography
27 (2001), 74-92.
49
“Proposed Zone Plan Attacked,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1929, A17.

324
The residential mandate drove the new agency from the start, and members assured
the city council: “We hold it to be our first duty to protect the homes of the city.”
50

Commissioners wanted to isolate single-family housing, since multi-family
dwellings were popularly considered rental or commercial housing, hence not up to
the same standard.
51
But even a lone, comprehensive residential classification (to
include all housing types and exclude all else) was novel. The idea of an even more
restricted category just for detached houses, enforceable by the local government,
was unheard of; planners were cautioned by the city attorney about the dangers of
legal trailblazing.
52
Eventually, planners overruled “considerable doubt as to the
advisability of distinguishing between single family areas and the more intensive
character of residence [apartments],” and saw their chance to act boldly: they chose
to place the detached house in its own exclusive category.
53
This was nothing short
of “epochal,” according to the planning director.
54
The chief zoning engineer would
later recall: “None of the cities then zoned had provided for a strictly single family
residential zone, but the preponderance of single dwellings in Los Angeles ma[d]e it
imperative to provide them with protection.”
55
The bungalow in its garden—the
pride-and-joy of real estate boosters—was at last given its own official pedestal.

50
LACPC, Meeting Minutes, August 27, 1925.
51
This view ignored the category of rented single-family houses.
52
LACPC, Zoning Committee meeting minutes, September 24, 1920.
53
LACPC, Zoning Committee meeting minutes, January 14, 1921.
54
G. Gordon Whitnall, “The Significance of the Recent Supreme Court Zoning Ruling,” Los
Angeles Realtor, (April 1925), 19.
55
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 59. Well-known planner Charles S. Cheney applauded a
Supreme Court decision upholding Los Angeles’s right to zone exclusively for single-family
dwellings, but noted that Berkeley, California had instituted such an ordinance in 1916. See
“Supreme Court Upholds City Zoning Ordinances,” Los Angeles Times. His description elsewhere of

325
But what about other housing? Again, the residential inventory in Los
Angeles was quite varied in scale, form, and occupancy. Single-family housing itself
showed a wide range of quality, size, age, and location; multi-family housing was
even more diverse. Apartment buildings of every size and description were located
in many parts of the city, as were duplexes, four-family flats, and bungalow courts.
This variety did not escape planners, who early on reported “that the various styles of
residences could be adequately accommodated only by providing three residence
zones.”
56
One commissioner argued strenuously for a zone for small multi-family
dwellings—the popular double bungalows (duplexes) and flats.
57
Such would have
occupied an intermediate class between zones for detached houses and apartment
buildings. Once more, the city’s lawyers cautioned against diverging too far from
legal precedent. Already planners were pushing the limits of municipal authority in
segregating land uses; setting up too many different categories threatened the whole
system with overturning by the courts. Consequently, a simple binary of single- and
multiple-dwelling uses was adopted by these innovators concerned about over-
complicating their already untested regulatory scheme.
58
The issue of a diverse
housing stock was dropped for the time being, but would later reemerge as land-use
regulation evolved.

the northern California city noted an important difference, however. Under Berkeley’s ordinance,
residential districts would be created by petition when at least fifty percent of affected property
owners approved. This “bottom-up,” privately initiated residence district contrasted with the “top-
down” classification in Los Angeles legislated by its city council. See Charles Cheney, “The New
Berkeley Ordinance,” American City, (August 1916), 183.
56
LACPC, Zoning Committee meeting minutes, October 22, 1920; emphasis added.
57
LACPC meeting minutes, April 26, 1921.
58
LACPC, Zoning Committee Meeting Minutes, October 15, 1920.

326
Zoning quickly became the commission’s highest priority, and would
command the bulk of its resources for more than a decade. The first zoning
ordinance was passed in 1921, after considerable assistance from the city attorney’s
office; even more help would come from the city engineer’s office in carrying out
surveys, research and hearings. All the wrangling over different residential uses, as
well as over other functions, resulted in the now-classic land-use pyramid—
hierarchical from the most restrictive classification down to the least. Single-family
housing occupied the top (zone “A”) and heavy manufacturing the bottom (“E”).
Zone “B” included all multiple-unit dwellings and certain institutions, such as
churches and schools; “C” allowed commercial and retail uses; and “D” was for light
industry. The diagram was cumulative, so that in each zone below “A,” permissible
uses included not only those explicitly stated for that zone, but any in the categories
above. For example, zone “B” allowed not only apartments and schools but single-
family houses as well. This would prove important in the ongoing controversy over
public regulation of private property; see Figure 31.
Enthusiasm for planning only grew more widespread on the part of city
officials, civic leaders, the business community, and property owners. In 1925, a
new city charter created the City Planning Department, a professionally staffed and
funded agency working at the behest of a newly downsized five-member

327

Figure 31. Diagram of zoning “pyramid” of cumulative land-use categories as
outlined in the 1921 Los Angeles ordinance.

The top-tier category, always reserved for single-family dwellings in any city’s zoning schema, is the
least intensive and, hence, most restrictive. Each subsequent category introduces a new, increasingly
intensive use, but also allows all uses “above” it in the pyramid. (By author.)

328
commission.
59
This evolution allowed increased autonomy and expertise among
those doing planning.
The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission (RPC) was another
outcome of the planning movement in southern California. Established in 1922, the
RPC was the culmination of a series of conferences participated in by public officials
from municipalities throughout the county. The RPC’s overall goal was better
coordination of various aspects of urban development—land use, property
subdivision, streets and highways—among member cities and unincorporated
communities. Primarily, this would be done via the promulgation of “best practices”
in reports, as well as ordinances applying to unincorporated areas. Moreover, the
RPC acted as a paid consultant to some small local governments eager for planning
services (usually zoning), but without commissions or departments of their own.
60

G. Gordon Whitnall, director of the City Planning Department, was also
involved with RPC activities. He was thinking cooperatively when he stated the
necessity for a “declaration of interdependence” among the numerous jurisdictions in
the metropolitan region.
61
But despite the county’s much larger area and ranking
status in the chain of state governance, it was the city which dominated planning
discourse and innovation early on. Conference proceedings noted that “throughout
the regional district, the importance of Los Angeles as the focal city must be

59
LACPD, “City Planners & Planning in Los Angeles, 1781-1998,” 1998.
60
Judith Norvell Jamison, Metropolitan Los Angeles: A Study in Integration. Part III:
Regional Planning (Los Angeles: The Haynes Foundation, 1952).
61
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 43.

329
recognized.”
62
Still, by 1928 the RPC had enacted, among other ordinances, one for
zoning in its unincorporated areas. Its structure and categories resembled those of
the city’s ordinance, but variations were visible. As both agencies progressed in
their work, their respective zoning codes would appear more and more alike.

A NEW VISION? PLANNING A CITY OF APARTMENTS

“Los Angeles is largely a city of apartments and flats[.]”
63

“Since 1920 a very marked decrease has taken place in the proportion
of single-family dwellings in Los Angeles proper[.]”
64

If the city’s planners thought that a new, systematic zoning code issued by a newly-
ordained public agency would at last eliminate clashes over development, they were
wrong. Battles over property rights and competing land-use classifications began
even before the zoning ordinance could be formally announced, applied and
enforced. Lawsuits were filed, building permits denied, variances sought, and re-
zoning applied for. Regarding the proper place for apartments in Los Angeles, the
discussion had only begun.
One of the biggest controversies—and surprising, given the commission’s
hard work to create a separate category reserved for detached houses—involved how
little area was so designated, and how much territory was given over to multi-family
residential use. Despite the mandate to expand and protect single-family

62
“Conclusions of the Regional Planning Conference,” September 16, 1922, 1, quoted in Boyd
J. O’Donnell, “The History of Planning in Los Angeles, 1907-1923” (n.d., ca. 1930), 25.
63
LACPC, Zoning Committee Meeting Minutes, January 31, 1928.
64
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, May 1, 1930, 105.

330
development, most of the city’s zoned area permitted multi-family dwelling use. As
of 1926, nearly sixty percent of “urban Los Angeles” was placed in zone “B”
(allowing both multiple- and single-family dwellings) and just under ten percent in
zone “A” (restricted to single-family only).
65
This oddity was highlighted with
apprehension in official reports and the popular press. And, if the specter of dense
urban housing was not conjured up sufficiently, so much grey area (denoting “B”
uses) and so little white (for “A”) on newly issued zoning maps completed what to
some was an alarming picture.
66
See Figure 32.
To read some critics and observers from the 1920s and ‘30s might lead one to
believe that theirs was no longer a city of houses—if it had ever been one—but one
of flats and apartments. A 1931 report stated: “Originally Los Angeles was a
community of single family homes, but with the influx of population, the desire for
multiple dwellings was created and … the increase in apartment house building gave
the impression that single family homes were passé.”
67
Graphs charted the annual
decline in new permits for single dwellings alongside the spike in those for multi-
family structures.
68
Even more compelling were planning reports’ illustrations of

65
LACPD, Annual Report, (1927-28), 6-7. A much-published chart showed the following
breakdown: zone A 9.5% (single-family dwellings only)
B 59.3% (multi-family dwellings, institutions, + A uses)
C 13.4% (commercial + B + A uses)
D and E 17.8% (light and heavy industrial + C + B + A uses)
As for the report’s methodology: “The graph data is based on number of lots, or area” [emphasis
added]. This method assumes that all or most lots were of equal size, which was not the case. In fact,
lots zoned “A” may have tended to be larger, so that their low proportion may have actually been
somewhat higher if true area had been calculated.
66
Los Angeles Municipal Atlas: Official Zoning Maps (1925).
67
LACPD, Annual Report, (1930-31), 12.
68
Ibid.), 13.

331

Figure 32. Portion of Los Angeles zoning map, Wilshire-Ambassador district (refer
to Figure 21).

A-zone (single-family residence only) is rendered white; B-zone (multi-family residence + A uses),
grey; and C-zone (commercial + B uses + A uses), black. Note the large amounts of B-zoned land,
and the long, thin stretches of C-zoned land. (Los Angeles Municipal Atlas: Official Zoning Maps,
1925.)

332
hypothetical streetscapes. Perspective drawings depicted explicitly urban
environments conceivably resulting from the development of new multi-family
residential zones—street walls formed of multi-story apartment buildings extending
for blocks. Though planners did express concern about the fate of the city’s
detached residences, they also possessed a clear alternative vision of dense urban
housing for at least part of their city; see Figure 33.
69

Even more than new land-use designations by the local state, new
construction in the private sector was crucial in fostering the notion—troubling to
some—that the city might be overrun with apartments. As discussed in Chapters 4
and 5, larger and larger apartment buildings were appearing in more areas of the city,
in response to an inexhaustible demand for all types of shelter made by a surging
population and a thriving tourist trade. The supply side of this escalation came from
growing numbers of rentiers eager for investments in income property: both rental
housing construction and operations provided popular outlets for this entrepreneurial
impulse. Increasing capital for these ventures was made more available by lenders
competing for business during the real estate boom of the ‘twenties. This was not
unusual, but a national trend: in many US cities, the share of new construction in
multi-family units was increasing dramatically just as single-family units were

69
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-30), 62 shows a set of graphic vignettes titled “Typical
Development Conforming to New Zoning Ordinance.” It is important to note that these images were
not illustrating worst-case scenarios, but demonstrating the orderly development of characteristic
building types appropriate to recently designed R3 and R4 classifications.

333

Figure 33. Illustration of new zoning ordinance’s graduated residential
classifications, 1930; note the relatively low-scale character of the new R-2 category.
(Annual Report of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, 1929-30.)

334
decreasing.
70
This worried social critics, business leaders and public officials up to
the highest levels, both locally and nationally. United States Commerce Secretary
Herbert Hoover’s push for a massive public-private cooperative effort to prop up
both house-building and home ownership came largely in response to this sea-change
in the nation’s housing market.
71

Though an increase in apartment construction was observed in many
American cities during this period, southern California’s astonishing population
growth fueled even more growth in this residential sector. From the post-war
building boom commencing in 1919 until the downturn brought on by the
Depression in the early 1930s, more and more of the city’s new housing stock was
multi-family. Annual calculations by the Department of Buildings compared the
estimated value of new permitted construction by category; these figures reveal the
increasing proportion of new (projected) multi-family housing relative to single-
family.
72
As a baseline, in 1904 eighteen percent of that year’s residential
construction was in flats and apartments; single-family dwellings comprised the

70
Coleman Woodbury, Apartment House Increases and Attitudes Toward Home Ownership
(Chicago: Institute for Economic Research, n.d., ca. 1931); Michael Doucet and John Weaver,
Housing the North American City (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1991), Chapter 9.
71
Janet Hutchison, “Shaping Housing and Enhancing Consumption: Hoover’s Interwar
Housing Policy,” 81-101; Gail Radford, “The Federal Government and Housing During the Great
Depression,” 102-120, in John F. Bauman, Roger Biles and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From
Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century
America (University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
72
Permit valuation data is a standard proxy for value of new construction; see, for example,
Robert G. Barrows, “Beyond the Tenement: Patterns of American Urban Housing, 1870-1930,”
Journal of Urban History 9 (August 1983), 395-420. Several limitations should be noted, however.
First, not all projects permitted actually get built, or built that same year. Second, valuations are
usually declared by the applicant-developer, who might have reasons to underestimate (to avoid
higher permit fees based on percentage of valuation) or overestimate (to meet deed restrictions’

335
remaining eighty-two percent. In 1920, multiple dwellings of various types
constituted nearly one-fourth of all new residential construction. Five years later,
multiples accounted for nearly forty percent; at decade’s end, the annual share was
up to one-half.
73
After a decade of intense development, the Times reported in 1930
that “Los Angeles is maintaining its supremacy as the center of … apartment-house
construction … on the Pacific coast.”
74
As the 1920s progressed, an expanding share
of this construction was in quite large, multi-story buildings.
Some were pleased that the stock of apartments was expanding, and
encouraged or even exaggerated that perception. A few wanted still more land zoned
to allow multiple dwellings, proposing that the entire city, save for the hills, be so
designated; this same group strenuously opposed any zoning changes which would
scale down the unrestricted nature of the “B” zone. Not surprisingly, such support
came from the rental housing industry.
75
As early as 1911, a group of newly
organized landlords had claimed (somewhat speciously) that “Los Angeles is one of
the largest apartment-house cities in the world.”
76
Years later, another of those
lobbying for the interests of denser housing declared that “there is no other city in
America where apartments and flats are so general a necessity as in … Los

minimum requirements with cheaper construction). Beyond these factors, not all builders obtain
permits. No reliable method exists to account for these limitations.
73
LABSC Annual Reports, (1919-20; 1924-25; 1929-30). By fiscal year:
1919-20 23.4% duplexes, flats and apartments
1924-25 39.1% duplexes and apartments (no separate “flat” category)
1929-30 49.1% duplexes and apartments (no separate “flat” category)
74
“Multiple Unit Growth Traced,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1930, D3.
75
W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers Seen,” Apartment Journal (July 1934), 9.
76
“Apartment Owners Join,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1911, I8.

336
Angeles.”
77
Such claims, however self-serving, could be made with a straight face in
a city where the number of multi-family units grew demonstrably each year.

RESIDENTIAL PARADISE, OR PARADOX?

“If … effort can be started to return to single-family classification the
vast area of the city which is now zoned for income property, then it
will be possible … to curtail the expensive, speculative apartment
house building program.”
78

—W.L. Pollard, attorney and zoning expert

Many people were having none of any vision of an apartment-housed Los Angeles.
The seemingly mysterious, ostensible over-zoning of the city for residential income
property—flats, courts and apartments—became a controversial issue soon after
official land-use maps were published. Planning commissioners listened to many
complaints on the subject made by citizens, officials and others, such as this one in
1923: “Where are the ideals of comfortable home life when high land prices are
forcing … buildings higher and closer together, doing away with open space …
[and] reducing all social standards and eliminating social ideals?”
79

The planning commission and department recognized that they had a public-
relations problem on their hands. In the part of the city covered under the ordinance,
“sixty percent was zoned for multiple residential … purposes and consequently open

77
LACPC, Zoning Committee Meeting Minutes, January 31, 1928. The statement was made
by a petitioner seeking a zone change from “A” (single-family dwellings) to “B” (allowing multi-
family dwellings), in an attempt to persuade the Zoning Committee that the demand for apartment
rentals was sufficiently high that his request should be granted. It was popularly thought that such a
zone change automatically increased the property’s value.
78
W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers Seen,” Apartment Journal (July 1934), 9, emphasis added.
79
Siegfried Goetze, “The Housing Situation in Los Angeles,” National Municipal Review 8/4
(April 1924), 199. This paper was read at a meeting of the city planning commission in 1923.

337
to encroachment of limit-height apartment houses and hotels.”
80
(Again, a B-zone
designation allowed any and all types of residential uses from houses to apartment
towers.) Quiet “home” districts—Los Angeles’s stock-in-trade—were in danger of
being overwhelmed by newer, bigger neighbors. It was clear that the apparent
zoning imbalance needed correction. Worry over this large-scale application of a
catch-all classification would drive the push for a revamped zoning ordinance over
the next several years.
In all likelihood, no one believed that all of the city’s “B”-zoned property
would actually be developed with multiple dwellings. One observer wrote: “The
idea that every lot in the extensive ‘B’ zone district of this city is potentially an
apartment house site is a fallacy of ridiculous proportions.”
81
Yet several forces—
dramatic and sustained population growth, a phenomenally successful tourism
industry, and a multi-year surge of speculation in real estate—combined to drive up
the demand for all sizes and types of rental units while zoning simultaneously made
it easier to build them in more locations.

Why did the city’s first official planners zone so much area to permit apartments?
Did this reflect some fundamental change in the vision for Los Angeles? Or was the
reason more pragmatic? The explanation is predictably complex, with several
contributing factors. In brief, it involves a combination of the following: 1) a

80
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-30), 60. The zoning ordinance was rolled out over a period
of years, applied to more and more parts of the city as they were mapped with the new land-use
classifications.

338
fragmented real estate lobby and market, 2) a booming speculative economy, 3) the
cumulative nature of zoning categories, 4) the popularity of small multiple dwellings,
5) the newness of planners and planning, and 6) the opportunities offered by
territorial expansion.
Marc Weiss’s case study of planning in Los Angeles from 1900 into the
1930s helps clarify the first two aspects of this subject. He notes that, although the
powerful Los Angeles Realty Board often appeared as a unified front when lobbying
municipal authorities, the Board—and industry it represented—was far from
monolithic. Struggle was sometimes fierce among various factions within the
profession along several axes, including location (e.g., downtown versus peripheral
interests), sector (industrial, commercial, residential) and—within residential—
dwelling type.
82
Though a large number of realtors focused on single-family
properties, a significant portion participated in apartment development.
83
As in any
growing enterprise under sudden threat of regulatory scrutiny, many practitioners
fought any restrictions on their part of the business. When the time came to lobby
the city council on specifics for property regulation, enough realtors saw promise in
the multiple-dwelling market to successfully challenge rules which might curtail that
kind of development.
Also, Weiss describes the speculative land boom in the 1920s as pivotal in
the early municipal mapping of land uses. “A great number of people were buying

81
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, December 24, 1928, 316.
82
Weiss, 90-105.

339
lots in anticipation of selling for huge gains … and any zoning that could help push
up the asking price was very much in demand. The two most favored categories
were ‘B’ and ‘C,’ income-producing uses of rental apartments and commercial
structures.”
84
According to Weiss, the ties between the Realty Board—at least the
faction pulling for multi-family development—and the planning commission were
sufficiently strong to yield a surplus of urban property designated for (or at least
permitting) residential income uses.
Weiss’s account is a textbook illustration of what socioligists Logan and
Molotch term structural speculation by place entrepreneurs out to tilt public policy
in their favor. “These entrepreneurs … attempt to determine the patterns through
which others will seek use values from place[.]” For example: “They lobby for or
against specific zoning[.]”
85
Though growth machine participants (in this case
rentiers) agreed that growth for Los Angeles was always good for the real estate
business, disagreement frequently occurred on particulars, and this explains at least
some of the demand for “B” zoning in a city thought dedicated to single-family
residential “A” uses.
86

83
See Chapter 1 regarding the significant participation of the Los Angeles Realty Board
membership in several categories of “income property,” also known as rental flats and apartments.
84
Weiss, 102, emphasis added.
85
Logan and Molotch, 30-31.
86
This structural explanation was verified, decades later and in no uncertain terms, by Huber
Smutz. Delivering a paper to planners in the 1960s, the former Los Angeleszoning engineer admitted:
“We made the same mistakes as every other city and even our compromises with the real estate
interests reflected their optimism and classified entirely too much property in the business and
unlimited residential zones.” Huber Smutz, “The Value of a Zoning Plan: Los Angeles Experiences.”
Paper delivered to the Fifth International Planning Congress, Mexico City, September 1964). Cited in
Foster, 252.

340
Weiss’s analysis of these dynamics is accurate, demonstrating no smooth
path to some mythic city of homes, but a bumpy ride to diverse urban residential
development. However, it does not go far enough in explaining why “most of the
interior land was placed in ‘B’ zone” by the new planners.
87
Other dynamics were at
work contributing to this seeming paradox.
First, the zoning ordinance itself provides further insight into its heavy
application. Since zoning categories were cumulative of all those above in the land-
use pyramid, property in a “B” zone could be developed with either multiple- or
single-family dwellings.
88
Thus, despite the worries of home-owners and ideologues
favoring the private one-family house, a “B” designation did not automatically mean
“apartment building.” Deed restrictions enforced by private subdividers were still
very much a force controlling residential development—including that in newly
zoned areas. Planning director Whitnall declared (as did the zoning ordinance itself)
“no intention that our zoning … shall in any way supersede private restrictions
which by their nature are more strict tha[n] the city’s.”
89
In other words, any “B”-
zoned property also limited by deed to single-family dwellings could be held to that
“higher” standard by the developer. This persistence of restrictive covenants,
combined with continued demand for houses, would keep a suitable balance of
singles to multiples in the city’s vast “B” zones, planners must have thought.
90

87
Weiss, 96.
88
Institutional uses, such as churches, schools and hospitals, were also allowed in zone “B.”
89
LACPC, Zoning Committee meeting minutes, January 14, 1921; emphasis added.
90
Further, time added an important dimension to this model: the eventual expiration of deed
restrictions meant that extant single-family neighborhoods suddenly designated “B” would only

341
Next, the planning commission was sanguine about letting parts of the
booming city develop in multiple dwellings—small ones.
91
Though unquestionably
aware of existing large apartment buildings—and eager for authority to circumscribe
the location of future ones—the first zoning attempt in 1921 predated the marked
surge in construction of big multiple dwellings to come a few years later.
92
With a
designation of “B,” planners did not believe that they were necessarily encouraging
large buildings—certainly not the four- to thirteen story behemoths soon to
multiply—only allowing a greater choice of residential types in a market already
chiefly characterized by small structures. Even after the peak of large-scale, high-
rise apartment development, planners in 1930 insisted that “[t]hese … comprise only
a small portion of the … ‘B’ zone uses, the major portion consisting of duplexes,
flats, bungalow courts or small apartment and rooming houses.”
93
Authors of the
first ordinance had assumed (or hoped) that much of the territory zoned “B” would
fill out in 1) detached dwellings and 2) small multiples resembling them.
94

gradually be redeveloped with flats and apartments over the following decades—in the parts of the
city likeliest to require more dense housing as time went on.
91
A later planning report stated: “According to the trend in building, it is reasonable to estimate
that the average development throughout the City will be between R2 and R3 uses…. In other words,
it is possible to spread the load of population over most of the area of Los Angeles, resulting in not
more than two or three families to a lot.” LACPD, Annual Report, (1931-32), 10, emphasis added.
92
See Chapter 4 for a case study on the Wilshire-Ambassador district.
93
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-30), 60.
94
A later survey of land use in the city’s seventeen square-mile Southwest district appears to
bear this out; LACPC, Annual Report, (1932-33), 14. More than a decade after the first ordinance
was promulgated, nearly 59 percent of the district’s area (probably quantified by number of lots) was
developed in single-family dwellings, though less than 5 percent was zoned “A”. And though almost
63 percent of the district was zoned “B” to allow both multi- and single-family structures, only about
20 percent held small multiples (duplexes and flats), and less than 6 percent larger apartment
buildings. The major finding was that extensive “B”-zoning did not necessarily result in a
correspondingly vast amount of multi-family residential development. Since the category also
allowed single-family structures, this popular latter type continued to proliferate.

342
Another possible explanation for lopsided allotments of land use was novelty:
zoning was experimental and planners were inexperienced. This form of regulation
was recent and largely untested in terms of impacts.
95
And fairly soon, the
commission could see mistakes: “The original zoning plan of the city was made at a
time [1920-25] when much less was known of the … subject or its economic
applications[.] Excessive areas were then set aside for commercial and multiple
residence uses which have not justified early expectations in their development.”
96

This issue of problematic or erroneous zoning should have surprised no one. Though
the new board was comprised of civic and professional elites, “conferring the title of
‘City Planning Commissioner’ … did not … endow the individuals concerned with
any greater ability or foresight[.]”
97
Home-owning constituents sought protections
for residential areas as much as manufacturers did for industrial districts; and though
these seemed easy enough for new planners to designate on paper, the larger
consequences of such actions were not immediately apparent.
98
These novice city-
builders tried to do the impossible: simultaneously please multiple interest groups

This discovery provided the commission with “proof that our often expressed opinions
concerning the unbalanced and over-zoned condition of the [‘B’] zoning in this territory were entirely
correct.” In other words, the demand for houses was still sufficiently large to warrant much more land
dedicated thereto. But it also supports the contention that those doing the very first zoning a dozen
years earlier probably recognized the large imbalance in the application of the two classifications, yet
believed (either firmly or with fingers crossed) that detached homes would continue to dominate, with
four-flats running a distant second.
A second survey in the same report, of the City Terrace-El Sereno-Garavanza district on the
East side, further supports these conclusions: “Most of the property on this map was originally zoned
for either apartment house, business or … industrial uses, however, the trend of development was
decidedly single family residential in character with a scattering of small income uses,” 15.
95
See Babcock, Zoning Game; Schultz, Urban Culture; Revell, Building Gotham.
96
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-30), 18, emphasis added.
97
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-30), 42.

343
and voters; rationalize the locations of divergent urban functions; and enable the
sheltering of increasing multitudes—all with an eye on shaping a desirable future.
By designating so much land in a way that seemed somewhat flexible (allowing for
all types of housing), planners probably believed they had reached a good
compromise. In the minds of many in the private sector, however, this relative
inexperience in the complexities of urban development seemed to reduce all these
efforts to merely good intentions.
Finally, and not surprisingly, a primary factor in the apparent oversupply of
property zoned for multiple dwellings was geographical. One year following the
description of heavily unbalanced “B”-zoning, planners heeded the public outcry and
explained themselves.
99
Clarifying that the report had counted only “the urban
portion of the city, compris[ing] only one-third of the zoned area of the City,” the
commission reassured readers that nearly half of the city’s zoned areas—including
the vast Westside area—was saved for single-family housing: “[W]e have carefully
computed … that, of the portion [of the city] that is zoned, 47.2% is in “A” zone.
100

In other words, the city of homes was safe—if growing outward from an urban core
of denser housing, commerce and industry.

98
Added to the newness of the zoning process was its piecemeal application. See G. Gordon
Whitnall, “History of Zoning Told,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1923, V5.
99
Curious is the fact that the initial finding of over-zoning was made by the planning
commission itself—seeming to indict its own staff. The next year’s report worked to correct the
impression of insufficient area dedicated to single-family housing. This reversal may have been
caused by internal disagreement among commissioners, though this is not made clear in reports or
meeting minutes.
100
LACPC Annual Report, (1928-29, 16, emphasis added. As of this report, 48.2 percent, or
131,140 acres, of the city had been zoned. Much of the remaining portion of the city was blanketed
under the longstanding Residential District Ordinance.

344
Some parts of the large central city already developed—with shops, offices,
apartment buildings, or even older single-family housing itself—seemed a lost cause
for future low-density neighborhoods of detached dwellings that a new “A”
designation would have been meant to encourage. Massive property-use surveys
undertaken in the early 1920s had turned up many extant residence districts in some
stage of transition to a combination of houses, flats, courts, and apartment buildings.
Realtors believed that this shift—however gradual, once begun—was the death-knell
for any area’s “home value,”
101
and planners attempted to deal with this reality. The
work to zone already-developed districts was complicated, trying to determine the
best category in which to place any given area, given both its preponderant
development and potential for desirable future development (or redevelopment).
102

101
Harry Culver, “A Realtor’s Viewpoint on Zoning, Present and Future,” Annals of the
American Academy of Political Science 155 (May 1931), 210. The noted realtor (and past president
of local, state and national realty organizations) wrote about the common appearance of multiple-unit
structures in otherwise single-family areas. “[T]hat district is not yet able to absorb many apartment
houses, and thus the home value is prematurely destroyed…. Properly controlled, the single-family
residence district should last a longer time than it now lasts. Add a few years to the life of such a
district, and the … transition from the single-family to the apartment-house district will be materially
decreased.” [emphasis added]
This quote reveals an important point beyond the need to protect “home” areas. It was taken
for granted that many older single-family districts would densify with multiple dwellings sooner or
later; the only question was when. Given the early introduction of multiples into many such districts
in the central city, the “B” zoning seems no mystery.
102
The fundamental question was: which new designation should be given to older areas already
built out to varying degrees in one or several land uses. See G. Gordon Whitnall, “History of Zoning
Told,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1923, V5. “An immediate and intensive survey was begun
of the present uses of property. Elaborate and authentic maps were prepared. Extensive field work
was undertaken. Over 4500 miles were traveled in determining the exact type of use (if any) to which
each of the then 150,000 odd parcels of land in the city was then put. …[A]nalytical studies were
begun[.] Distinctive areas of characteristically similar development were visualized. By bringing into
consideration the factors of traffic, railroads, topography and other subjects it became clearly apparent
that each … area of development was directly traceable to some … combination of factors. Through
this means the past history of development lost much of its mystery and disclosed itself for the first
time as a very logical process following very definite causes.”

345
In essence, the first zoning maps either gave a stamp of approval to existing patterns
which planners sought to sustain, or attempted to halt and change such patterns.
Planners accepted that multiple dwellings of various kinds had taken a significant
hold in the central city, and decided to permit still more—even if it meant the
gradual surrender of extant single-family districts.
The key for residential planning, then, was the vast amount of other, largely
undeveloped land at the city’s periphery. The ostensibly clean slates of the Westside
and the San Fernando Valley would provide all the territory needed for “A” zoning,
thought the “disciples of decentralization” steering the planning commission.
103

Their mission to protect and promote single-family dwellings was secure, as long as
huge tracts and new annexations remained available for “colonization” by house-
builders and buyers.
104

It is unlikely that most Angelenos truly worried that apartments would
virtually replace houses in their city. More probable was the concern that the reputed
“city of homes” would lose its preponderance of single-family dwellings, and that
attractive low-density neighborhoods would become increasingly adulterated by

Another report, Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, Master Plan of Land
Use Inventory and Classification (1941), also refers to this complex task. “The Master Plan of Land
Use must be correlated with, but not controlled arbitrarily by the existing pattern of uses. It is based
upon acceptance of some current trends, and upon a belief in the urgent necessity of altering others in
the interests of a more nearly ideal development. It must recognize the practical effects of existing
social and economic customs. It proposes no Utopian impossibilities, but challenges those who would
deny the feasibility of conscious and effective improvement through concerted effort.”
103
Mark S. Foster, “The Decentralization of Los Angeles During the 1920s” (PhD Dissertation,
University of Southern California, 1971), 195.
104
LACPC annual reports from 1928 through 1932. Upon annexation in 1915, most of the
valley’s area was blanketed under the protection of the city’s residential districting ordinance, which
prohibited industrial development and fostered residential and agricultural development.

346
apartment “invasions” of greater scale. Evidence of this danger was all around. One
attorney specializing in land-use law, and a sympathetic consultant to the Apartment
House Association, told a familiar tale: “In the mad race to build apartment houses
and to compete with existing structures … speculative builders and … real estate
operators have gone into a district of single homes and erected an apartment house[.]
The result of such action is a destruction of the residential character of the
district[.]”
105
After more than a decade of intense residential development, it had
become clear that all kinds of housing would have to be taken into consideration in
the city’s planning.

PLANNING IV: FIXING ZONING, FINDING MORE “HOMES”

“Some correction must be had to the present zoning situation in Los
Angeles … to preserve for persons who desire to live in single-family
residence[s] or in duplexes or four-family flats some degree of safety.
The [larger] apartment house … erected adjacent to the limited multi-
family dwelling shuts off light and air…”
106

—Los Angeles Times

The city issued a revised zoning code in 1930.
107
Planners updating land-use
regulations had learned a lot in the intervening decade. They reported: “The new
ordinance is a simple and logical result of modernizing the old law after nine years of

105
W.L. Pollard, “Zoning Dangers Seen,” Apartment Journal (July 1934), 9.
106
“Urge Zoning Correction by Civic Groups Here,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1929, E1;
emphasis added.
107
In addition to changes in land-use classification, new regulations were issued setting
maximums for building height and lot coverage for each new zoning category. This was considered
tardy by critics, who had argued that the previous ordinance’s silence on such aspects of development
had rendered it largely ineffective.

347
close application and observations … contain[ing] corrections and additions.”
108

This tame official account understated the many serious problems caused by “bad”
zoning, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Convinced by authoritative [research]
that Los Angeles by her rapid progress has developed undesirable zoning conditions,
the Realty Board, Chamber of Commerce, City Planning Commission and … county
Regional Planning Commission … are devoting much time to … correcting the
evil.”
109
Those whose fortunes were tied to a land-based economy considered any
threat to property values as “evil” in the extreme.
Though many changes were incorporated, multi-family housing was a
primary focus of the revision. Part of the “evil” perpetrated by the earlier zoning
scheme was its failure to recognize the city’s residential diversity and its stock of
small-scale multiple housing, according to the Times. Planners in 1921 had not
foreseen the extent of potential problems caused by an undifferentiated zoning
category encompassing all multi-family dwelling types. If they had waited only
another year or two, they would have recognized the trouble waiting to happen.
Booms in tourism, population and real estate speculation would ratchet up the
demand for (and supplying of) multiple-unit housing just as vast areas of the city
were zoned “B”. This convergence of forces enabled, even encouraged, large-scale
apartment development in places planners probably expected to fill out in much
smaller residential stock. The real-estate market’s response to this situation—
construction of so many multi-family units, often in high-rise buildings adjacent to

108
LACPC, City Planning Impressions Newsletter no. 3, June 5, 1930, n.p.

348
more modest houses and flats—had quickly highlighted the need for a more
graduated land-use classification system.
The new ordinance went a long way toward this end, establishing four
residential zones: “R1” merely replaced the single-family “A” label with no other
change; and “R4” replaced the unlimited “B” label, still allowing multi-family
structures up to the city’s 150-foot height limit (institutional uses were also included
herein). Significantly, the revision also provided not one but “two new
classifications … to fill that wide gap” between the extremes.
110
“R2” permitted
two- to four units in structures up to two-and-a-half stories in height, recognizing the
popularity of apartments-in-disguise: duplexes and flats. “R3” allowed medium-
sized apartment buildings up to four stories. Similarly, the classifications for both
commercial and industrial uses had been expanded as well.
To underscore the significance of this sea-change, the chief zoning engineer
declared: “These two intermediate residential zones are probably the most important
changes contained in the [revised] ordinance.”
111
Clearly, planners had concluded
that Los Angeles’s residential reputation now relied not just on subdivisions of
suburban cottages, but on attractive neighborhoods of small-scale apartment
buildings—apparently, the next best thing. In language once reserved for the
threatened bungalow, the commission declared, “[t]he primary need was for …
zone[s] which would protect districts particularly suited for duplexes, four family

109
“Urge Zoning Correction by Civic Groups Here,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1929, E1.
110
LACPD, Annual Report, (1928-1929), 16.
111
LACPD, Annual Report, (1929-1930), 63; emphasis added.

349
flats and small multiple dwellings from the encroachment of large multiple-story
apartment houses and hotels.”
112
Drawing a further, surprising parallel between
single-family- and small multi-family structures, the director of planning noted that
“the R2 zone is more or less an expanded R1 zone[.]”
113
No higher acclamation for
(small) apartments was possible than virtual equivalence with houses. As the city
continued to grow by leaps and bounds in population, area, and development, the
material-, physical- and theoretical lines separating “appropriate” homes from all
others had shifted to include more kinds of housing—notably, the types most
resembling the original ideal.
Apartments were still causing problems, and on a growing scale: more
buildings, bigger buildings, in more places. And, though the new zoning ordinance
was devised in large part as a corrective, mere dissatisfaction was not enough to
accomplish everything necessary to significantly amend the law. In the decade
between the original ordinance and its revision, several important things had come to
pass.
First, zoning was finally and fully recognized as a legitimate use of the police
power to mete out and assign specific functions to privately-owned urban space.
114

This opened the door for more advancements in zoning theory and practice, which
would include further refinements of basic land-use categories (residence,
commerce, industry) to acknowledge at least some of the nuance and variety of

112
Ibid.
113
LACPC, City Planning Impressions no. 3, June 5, 1930, n.p.

350
urban life. Second, population growth in Los Angeles continued to outstrip all
expectations, and the shelter industry frantically strove to keep pace. More housing
of all kinds continued to appear in all parts of the city; in particular, construction of
new multi-family dwelling units skyrocketed. Apartment buildings from a few to
hundred units or more became an even more popular form of real estate
development. Once-peripheral suburbs became full-fledged urban districts, and new
areas even further out from the downtown core were colonized by subdividers,
builders, home owners and apartment tenants. As a result, the so-called invasion of
lower-density residential districts by more intensive land use—zoning’s raison
d’etre—was bumped up another notch.
Next, public protest and organization among owners dissatisfied with their
property’s zoning designation was another important occurrence. The most
significant manifestation was the call by many to allow more, not less, of the city’s
area to permit apartments. No matter how much “B” -zoned land the city contained,
there still was not enough for the owner of an “A” -zoned lot interested in exchange
(rather than use) value. This came from both professional developers in the business
of building and operating multi-story apartment houses as well as petit rentiers
holding only a single lot (see Chapter 3). Many individual property owners banded
together, forming local improvement associations in hopes of gaining more clout
with the city council or planning commission on a variety of matters, including
zoning. A frequently heard goal was to have a particular neighborhood rezoned from

114
Euclid vs. Ambler Realty Co., 272 US 365 (1926) was the US Supreme Court ruling that at

351
“A” to “B,” so that members could either build a multiple-unit structure, or sell at a
higher price to a buyer who would.
115

The last occurrence necessary for change was the aforementioned
proliferation and popularity of small-scale multi-family dwellings. To be sure, some
Angelenos saw any kind of “multiple” as commercial (i.e. rental) housing, hence
inherently inferior to private housing in single-family dwellings for which the region
had become famous (justifiably or not). Aside from that narrow view, most attitudes
toward types such as the duplex, the bungalow court, and the four-family flat
disguised as a private home were more charitable, and easily differentiated from
those directed toward larger apartment houses.
Most officials and citizens were pragmatic, and not interested in banning
multi-family dwellings—only in limiting their location. Still, some of those most
fixated upon maintaining a city of single-family homes—in Los Angeles and other
places—did not much care what happened outside of those quiet, leafy
neighborhoods. In 1920, one critic wrote in American City magazine: “The
establishment of one-family detached house districts … does not restrict … those
parts of the city left open to apartments. There the owners would be allowed to pile
up as many apartments as they might choose.”
116
As long as sufficient area remained
reserved for detached cottages and bungalows, this thinking went, to hell with the

last gave municipalities the right to use the police power to regulate land use.
115
This particular, reverse strain of public protest over zoning has been underreported in favor
of the more frequently cited homeowner opposition to apartment “invasions.”
116
Herbert S. Swan, “Does Your City Keep Its Gas Range in the Parlor and Its Piano in the
Kitchen?” American City 22/4 (April 1920), 343.

352
rest of the city. More sensible professionals worried about such a cavalier attitude
seemingly embodied in the catch-all “B” category, and recognized the importance of
maintaining attractive areas of multi-family housing. “There appears the intention of
abandoning the apartment house to its own worst effects in locations where it is
assumed that its contaminating influence can do little harm.”
117
Such concern is
precisely what led to the new graduated classifications (R2, R3, R4) of multiple
dwellings in Los Angeles in its revised zoning code.
Together, all of these circumstances—zoning’s legal standing, urban and
economic growth driving a rise in multi-family housing construction, political
mobilization by property owners, and differentiation of housing types—encouraged
planners to explode the confines of the all-inclusive multi-family “B” zone, just as
the farsighted among their predecessors had wished.

MAKING A PLACE FOR APARTMENTS

“Zoning is nothing more or less than a place for everything and
everything in its place, extending good housekeeping to the whole
community.”
118

—Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission

The objective of all the experimentation with land-use regulation was to create an
orderly urban landscape. The observation that people did not know what to build or
where had reflected concerns about inefficiency in urban functions, but also the

117
John Taylor Boyd, Jr. “How Intensively Must We Use the Land?” American City 38/1
(January 1928), 107; emphasis added.
118
Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, Zoning Section Annual Report, (1932),
n.p.

353
bottom line for an army of existing and potential real estate investors, large and
small, making the city a metropolis. Other aspects of city-building were also
considered important, and the subject of effort on the part of other committees within
the planning commission. A new civic center, transportation improvements,
additional parks, and industrial expansion were all seen as essential for Los Angeles
to keep its ranking among American cities, and to continue growing. Yet the rational
placement of these and other elements in the region was a kind of meta-purpose for
planners. Land-use regulation constituted this overarching, all-important project,
and zoning ordinances provided the framework into which all the critical elements
needed to fit properly. Indeed, “interest in zoning had been the primary cause of the
creation of the commission”
119
and over the course of its first several years, trouble
had arisen due to the “monopoly of the time and resources of the [planning]
department by zoning matters[.]”
120

By 1930, it was apparent that outlying areas once considered reservations for
single-family suburban development would need to include multi-family housing as
well as a range of urban functions. These huge, mostly undeveloped sections—
chiefly the Westside and the San Fernando Valley—“comprised a huge laboratory
for testing planning and zoning theories.”
121
So, then: according to new planning
“scientists,” what was the proper place for flats, bungalow courts and apartments in
all of this? Initial arguments to increase the number of residential zone-types had

119
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 59.
120
LACPC, Annual Report, (1928-29, 3.
121
Foster, 11.

354
finally been won, and several categories (based on scale and density) had been
officially defined. But this was only half the battle. Where should each be placed
relative to each other, and to non-residential land uses? Answers would be found in
conceptual zoning plans promulgated by both the city and county of Los Angeles.
Nothing reveals more about ideas and ideals than a hypothetical design
unburdened with real-world constraints. Several such documents were produced by
planners in Los Angeles in the early 1930s, after years of battlefield experience with
zoning theory and its application to myriad extant conditions, both human and
geographic. These published plans, though generic, showed in great detail planners’
best and latest thinking about land use, and were intended for application on the
ground—once adapted for actual, site-specific conditions.
Two plans are particularly helpful in illustrating the state of the art in
planning philosophy up to that date—including the best location for multi-family
housing. One was issued by the city planning commission in 1932 in its annual
report; see Figure 34. Titled “Application of New Zoning System to a Quarter-
Section Under Standard Gridiron Layout,” the plan was a land-use template intended
for wholesale application to new subdivisions in the San Fernando Valley.
122

122
LACPC, Annual Report, (1931-32), 12. Though a few towns had been subdivided into lots
during the boom of the 1880s, much of the Valley’s area was still in very large tracts, and quarter-
section lines provided a convenient measure of such vast parcels—for planners and surveyors as well
as farmers. See George Joseph Heath, “Geographical Influences on the History of the San Fernando
Valley, 1769 to 1900” (Master’s Thesis, University of Southern California, 1966).

355

Figure 34. Application of new zoning system, 1932: a land-use planning template
intended for quarter-section (half-mile square) parcels of the slowly urbanizing San
Fernando Valley.

Note the placement of multi-family residential uses at the edges of the quadrant, “buffering” the
internal single-family blocks from perimeter thoroughfares. (Annual Report of the Los Angeles City
Planning Commission, 1931-32.)

356
In older areas of the city south of the Santa Monica Mountains and in the
eastern end of the basin toward the central city, zoning had needed to be carefully
tailored to an already-urbanizing area. This newer part of the city, however, was a
planner’s dream: almost a clean slate. Over two hundred square miles of mostly
small-to-large farms and ranches were waiting to be parceled into town lots, then
developed with the full range of suburban (and even urban) functions. And planners
were ready.
The zoning scheme’s proposed increment of development was coterminous
with that of the typical subdivision: the common half-mile by half-mile “quarter-
section.”
123
The overall diagram was one of concentric square “rings” bounding a
large inner square, with nodes at the four outer corners. Functionally, this scheme:
designated the quarter-section boundaries as major streets; zoned the property
fronting these streets (hence, bounding the square) for multi-family housing;
reserved the interior of the tract for single-family dwelling use; and left the four
corners for commercial use.
As far as multi-family residential zoning was concerned, its utility as a
cushion separating detached houses from both commercial development and

123
The quarter-section was a common large-scale measurement of land, into which much of the
western United States had been surveyed under the terms of the National Land Ordinance of 1785.
Surveying of California had begun in the 1850s. See Hildegard Binder Johnson, Order Upon the
Land (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) for a general discussion of the national rectangular
survey, especially Chapters 3, 4 and 7.
The Regional Planning Commission’s studies of ideal subdivision patterns also focused on
the quarter-section module. “[W]ithout doing violence to any of these typical ownership lines, an
arrangement of streets, blocks, and lots may be had which, while departing materially from present
methods, is believed to be thoroughly practical[.]” LACRPC, A Comprehensive Report on the
Regional Plan of Highways: Section 2-E, San Gabriel Valley, (1929), 58-59.

357
boulevard traffic is inescapable. This relationship was not new: the ostensibly hybrid
aspect of the multiple-dwelling as commercial (that is, rental) housing made it the
obvious choice of earlier subdividers when transitioning between Los Angeles’s
putatively endangered residential species and that species’ greatest natural
enemies—business and noise.
124
Fogelson recognized this pattern from the first
zoning maps in the 1920s,
125
and the commission’s meeting minutes and reports are
rife with references to the “usual policy of tapering down the zoning between the ‘C’
[commercial] … and ‘A’ [single-family dwelling] zone by a buffer of ‘B’ zone.”
126

A close look at the template shows much more nuance than the simple single-
versus-multiple-dwelling dichotomy marking earlier debates, however. The new
residential classifications spelled out in the 1930 ordinance were given full, spatial
expression in this plan. It was a model of the latest in transitional zoning theory: a
painstaking distribution of all these categories, carefully graduated by function,
intensity, and adjacency.
127
Since the intended application was at the urban
periphery, residential dominance was not surprising: the model’s central nucleus,
saved for “R1” (single-family) uses, comprised three-fourths of total number of lots.
“R2” (two-to-four family) uses were arrayed along the two boundary streets noted
“secondary,” with “R3” (four-story apartment) uses along the two “primary”

124
This view ignored the fact that a huge percentage of single-family houses in Los Angeles
were rented as well.
125
Fogelson, 255.
126
For example: see memorandum to city council from LACPC, July 11, 1927, file no. 5561;
LACPC, Regular meeting minutes, February 27, 1930.
127
For example, no directly adjacent lots transition more than one land-use “step” in this model.
“R1” lots are separated from “R3” by either “R2” lots, or an alley. And “R2” and “R3” multi-family
zones are separated from commercially-zoned lots by alleys.

358
boundary streets.
128
Low-scale “C2” (neighborhood retail) zoning was employed at
the three secondary corners, and the corner of the two primary streets was zoned
“C3” (general commercial). No “R4” (formerly “B”) zoning allowing (up to) height-
limit apartment blocks was included in the template, nor was land for industrial
use.
129

This zoning template proposed a multi-functional neighborhood unit of
sorts.
130
Its module of application—the half-mile square—signaled its intended
(eventual) replication across much of the Valley floor. The basic unit was to be
mirrored in plan (along a major boundary street), with the resulting pair mirrored
again (perpendicularly) into a square-mile quadrant. The ensuing pattern, copied
mile after mile would (and did) result in a vast gridded landscape of primary and
secondary streets alternating at half-mile intervals, most lined with medium-sized
and small apartment buildings respectively, with minor and major commercial

128
“R3” zoning also included institutional uses, such as schools and churches.
129
Though this template for typical development excluded industrial zoning, considerable area
would be so designated in the San Fernando Valley. Rather than appearing in small, modular units to
be replicated over a vast area (as with commercial blocks), zones for manufacturing would appear in a
few large concentrations in strategic locations—most, along railroad lines. See LACPC, “Planning
for the San Fernando Valley” (1945); also, Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth
Century Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Chapter 6.
130
A description found in a report from two years prior to publication of the template anticipates
its features: “the residential area should be … self contained, including a retail shopping district[.]
Lots should be of such size as to allow for yards entirely surrounding buildings[.] The ideal size
should be approximately a half mile square[.] Apartments should be so located as not to interfere
with or overshadow the single family buildings.” LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 49. Though
this characterization does not fully match the neighborhood unit concept devised by sociologist-
planner Clarence Perry of a few years earlier, the notion of a functionally balanced, correctly sized
urban module to be reproduced across the landscape is clearly related. See Regional Plan of New
York and Its Environs (New York: Committee on Regional Plan of New York, 1929).

359
corners at alternating principal intersections.
131
This larger pattern not only
demonstrated the latest in zoning thought, but also implemented recommendations of
the 1924 Major Traffic Street Plan as to widths and spacing of a hierarchy of
streets.
132

Another ideal zoning plan, published in 1931 by the Los Angeles County Regional
Planning Commission, confirms virtually all of these interpretations of the city’s
template; see Figure 35.
133
Another scheme for a hypothetical site, this one was big
enough for a self-contained small town, with the full range of urban functions. The
“site” was a thousand acres (not the 160 acres of a quarter-section)—sufficiently
large to include manufacturing, a small business sub-center, and a few small parks
and sites for public buildings.
134

Overall, a cross-section through the imaginary community, starting from the
railroad line along its edge (arguably one of the most intensive, intrusive urban
conditions there was) illustrates a perfect ascent of the new and improved land-use
pyramid widely employed by planning agencies. Industrial zoning adjoins the
tracks, then large-scale commercial, small-scale commercial, apartments, small

131
Indeed, much of the Valley’s current landscape reveals a fairly close implementation of this
diagram by the city, and adherence to it by developers. Dozens of square miles are so built.
132
Major Traffic Street Plan (1924).
133
LACRPC, “Regional Plan of Highways: Section 4: Long Beach-Redondo Area” (1931), 122:
“A Community Plan.”
134
The Community Plan was actually an abstracted version of a design prepared by LACRPC in
its capacity as consultant to smaller municipalities in the county without fully staffed planning
agencies.

360

Figure 35. Community plan, 1931: illustrative plan for a hypothetical town in Los
Angeles County employing the latest in transitional zoning theory, intended for
replication to create appropriately sized and functionally balanced neighborhood
units.

The different uses and their placement is very similar to the city planning commission’s scheme
shown in Figure 34. (Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, A Comprehensive Report
on the Regional Plan of Highways: Section 4, 1931.)

361
multiple dwellings, and, finally, single-family dwellings. Aside from its inclusion of
this wider range of uses, the county model essentially knits together several modules
illustrated in the city’s diagram, in precisely the replicative fashion advocated by
Whitnall’s agency. If the map itself is not adequately clear, a description is: “Each
segment of the plan is bounded by major and secondary highways, which set it off as
a neighborhood unit, so designed as to protect single-family dwelling districts …
from the disturbing influences of traffic.”
135
Intermediary blocks zoned for a range
of multi-family dwellings would provide that protection.
With little variation, the county’s version reaffirmed the city’s stance on both
the proper general role of multi-family housing, and the desirability of distinguishing
between its various forms and scales: “Apartments provide a natural intermediate
use for areas which are not needed for business, nor secluded enough for private
homes.”
136
As for the gradation of residential use, the county’s scheme divided its
four categories into two pairs: “apartments—unlimited and limited,” and “homes—
two-family and single-family.”
137
Finally, a third, separate scheme issued by the
county proposed in detail the planning of a typical boulevard intersection where a

135
LACRPC, “Regional Plan of Highways: Section 4: Long Beach-Redondo Area” (1931), 123.
136
Zoning ordinances of both the city and county spelled out four residential categories, but the
county’s middle two classifications were more restrictive:
City County
“R1” single-family single-family
“R2” two- to four-family two-family
“R3, limited multiple” apartments, up to 4 floors apartments, up to 2 floors
“R4, unlimited multiple” apartments, up to 150 feet apartments, unspecified height.
See LACRPC, “Guide to Los Angeles County Zoning Ordinance,” (1929); and LACPC, Annual
Report, (1930-31), emphasis added.
137
Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, “Regional Plan of Highways: Section
4: Long Beach-Redondo Area” (1931), 118, 123, emphasis added.

362
quartet of neighborhood units came together. It indicates small-scale commercial
development at the four corners, each retail node adjoining a range of multi-family
dwellings, finally giving way to detached houses at some distance from the
crossroads.
138
Again, the diminishing intensity of uses is obvious.

Lastly, on the desirable amounts of different housing: if the city’s template for the
Valley was taken as an indicator of some ideal distribution of dwelling types, then
three-quarters of vast new areas would be built in detached houses; one-eighth in
duplexes and flats; and perhaps one-twentieth in medium-sized apartment
buildings.
139
These peripheral locales offered no suitable place for taller apartment
towers. Such belonged in the city’s few urban subcenters, such as Hollywood,
Wilshire, Westlake, and downtown. The Eberle Economics firm’s belief reflected
that of both planning commissions: “It is quite evident that the erection of apartment
houses should decrease in number, and also that they should be restricted to well-
defined areas, instead of their promiscuous construction, especially of large
[buildings] in areas devoted to single or small multiple dwellings.”
140

138
See LACRPC, Annual Report (1929), 25 for intersection plan detail.
139
LACPC Annual Report, (1931-32), 12. The breakdown of land uses in the quarter-section
template are as follows:
Zone Percentage of lots Uses
R1 75.3 Single-family residence
R2 12.4 Four-family residence
R3 7.8 Four-story multiple, churches and schools
C2 2.6 Neighborhood retail
C3 1.9 General commercial
The R3 designation also includes institutional uses, so the residential proportion would be
smaller than the combined percentage of 7.8 indicated. Five percent is hypothesized here.
140
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, December 24, 1928, 315-16.

363
FROM “HOPE ZONE” TO HOME ZONE: APARTMENT-THOROUGHFARES

“[W]e can never expect that all of our major boulevards will be
developed to business uses. Construction of multiple residential
buildings thereon has not in all cases proved profitable, and such
major arteries are not desirable for single-family residential use.”
141

—Los Angeles City Planning Commission

The ideal zoning plans of the early 1930s demonstrate the important role of streets in
residential planning. A clear and hierarchical circulation system would promote not
only rational movement throughout the metropolis but an equally logical disposition
of land uses, according to planners. Private dwellings belonged on quiet
(presumably tree-lined) tertiary streets limited to neighborhood traffic. Duplexes and
flats were sometimes acceptable there, too, but secondary streets were better. And
the appropriate place for apartment and business buildings was on major streets and
boulevards. This last point seems obvious looking at how the landscape has been
built over time, but in fact had been the subject of considerable debate in the
preceding decade.
142

Ideas about the most appropriate land-use with which to flank thoroughfares
(outside of business-centered downtown) changed over time. In the years before
automobile use became commonplace, proper “boulevards” were considered linear
parkways, to be heavily landscaped and lined with single-family houses of the large
and elegant class. Other major streets with less lofty pretensions were likely to have

141
LACPC, Annual Report, (1929-30), 20.
142
See Weiss, 101-105.

364
detached dwellings along them as well.
143
One origin of extensive business-zoned
frontage along primary roads began with the private practices of subdividers
eliminating residential restrictions from particular lots so located. As automotive
transport grew in popularity, “the transformation of a boulevard of fine residences
into a corridor of commerce” came to be routine, in Los Angeles and cities across the
nation.
144

As downtown became more dense and congested with traffic—automobile,
truck and streetcar—major streets radiating outward became logical locations for
new businesses.
145
Where particular stretches of certain streets managed to attract a
successful mix of stores, offices, conveniences and parking, these locations would
draw other establishments as well—driving up the prices of frontage lots nearby.
Occasionally, a huge profit was achieved by the owner of property that had almost
magically gone from merely another residential parcel to a prime business location.
Real estate is built on such stories,
146
and the Los Angeles Realtor itself asked:

143
This is not surprising. Most cities’ building stock was largely residential, and the far smaller
amounts of commercial uses—especially retail—were concentrated in nodes, or fragmented as single-
lot developments.
144
Richard Longstreth, “The Forgotten Arterial Landscape: Photographic Documentation of
Commercial Development Along Los Angeles Boulevards During the Interwar Years,” Journal of
Urban History 23 (May 1997), 437.
145
As residential development spread out, some businesses hoped to cater to far-flung
customers. Other establishments were less interested in suburban market-share than in finding more
convenient and less expensive space away from downtown’s clogged traffic arteries and high rents.
Outlying locations also allowed the additional benefit of copious free parking.
146
Articles in the Los Angeles Realtor, August 1924, described two such thoroughfares. One
item encouraged owners along upper Vermont Avenue, “the spinal column of Greater Los Angeles,”
to support its widening. “[T]his will insure the future of the street, causing values to grow just as fast
as new building enterprises come to this artery.” Royall W. Wheeler, “The Widening of Upper
Vermont,” 9, 25. Another essay promised that “Washington [Street, now Boulevard] will continue to
grow in value and beauty, and each resident and dollar will increase the business opportunities … and

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“Which will be the lucky street?”
147
By the time the planning commission got to
work zoning the large central city, the pressure for a commercial designation by the
army of boulevard lot-owners was tremendous: even if the windfall never came, they
assumed that a commercial classification meant at least a somewhat higher selling
price.
148
For their part, new planners initially agreed that this appeared to be a good
solution in places where increasing traffic and noise on major streets rendered
adjacent land no longer suitable for houses. New zoning maps of the central city
were striped and crisscrossed with innumerable long, thin bands of black—the color
indicating commercial zoning for the one-lot-deep, miles-long strands of property
bordering thoroughfares, both existing and potential.
149

All of this resulted in a Los Angeles with far too much commercially zoned
property—enough for a city of 158 million people, according to one well-circulated
study in the 1920s.
150
Despite booming economic times, the Eberle Economic
Service declared that “we have hundreds of thousands of so-called business lots …
which will never be used for commercial purposes.”
151
What had seemed a boon for

values of this premiere street—the greatest business thoroughfare of today, the majestic ‘white way’
of tomorrow[.]” Clarence Urban, “West Washington—A Great White Way,” 10.
147
Ralph E. Ford, “Remarkable Development of One Outlying Business Street,” Los Angeles
Realtor 1/7 (April 1922), 23.
148
In addition to the speculation motive, some landowners along widened or otherwise-
improved streets sought an up-zoned classification (allowing more intensive use) as compensation for
assessments levied on them to accomplish the improvements. See LACPC Annual Report, (1929-30),
20.
149
Los Angeles Municipal Atlas: Official Zoning Maps, (1925).
150
LACPC, Annual Report, (1927-28), 7, refers to “computations made by our contemporary—
the Regional Planning Commission.”
151
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, July 15, 1929, 163. Economic expansion
occurring during much of the 1920s brought enormous growth in commercial activity, including the
quantity of business enterprises. But even an extended boom could not come close to providing the
number of establishments needed to fill so many commercial lots all over Los Angeles.

366
land owners as well as planners became a problem. A flat and rather empty linear
landscape punctuated by the occasional commercial structure provided neither the
attractive visual image nor the vibrant business environment growth elites tried to
encourage. The president of the Realty Board lamented both the aesthetics and
economics of this condition, saying that “most of the so-called business frontage was
born of the wedlock between ignorance and speculation, and the naked miles of
vacant lots along our arteries of travel are mute testimony to an economic waste.”
152

Three factors dovetailed to produce this situation: the dedication and extension of
more new and existing thoroughfares across hundreds of square miles; planners
“blindly following the practice of classifying all important highway frontages for
business”
153
; and property owners holding such lots for speculation. Both city and
county agencies were concerned; the Regional Planning Commission called property
lining thoroughfares the “‘hope zone,’ held out of use while the owners await the
realization of an impossible dream” of huge profits.
154

So, then: what could be done with so much vacant land, unneeded for stores
or offices and no longer appropriate for single-family houses? Planners began to
consider multi-family housing as a suitable, large-scale alternative for boulevard

152
George H. Coffin, “Zoned into Oblivion,” City Planning 10 (October 1934), 189, quoted in
Weiss, Community Builders, 103. Weiss notes that the concern about over-zoning was sometimes as
much about self-interest as civic betterment. Coffin was president of both the LARB and the
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce; in the second capacity, he had an interest in preventing a decline
in business property values in Hollywood brought on by commercial zoning in other areas of the city.
153
LACPC, Annual Report, (1927-28), 7.
154
Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, Master Plan of Land Use Inventory
and Classification (1941), 38.

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property in the early 1920s,
155
something that realtors were already promoting.
Planning director Whitnall reported in 1928 that “the planning commission has led
the way in trying to preserve Wilshire Boulevard as a residential street throughout its
length,” first in elegant mansions, then in apartments and hotels as development
pressures intensified over the years.
156
(The tale of these efforts, and their failures in
the face of opposition by commercial realtors, is a popular part of Los Angeles
history.
157
) Across town, Los Feliz Boulevard traversed an attractive suburban area
along the southern edge of Griffith Park. It was zoned residentially in the “A” and
“B” categories.
158
Residents and most other property owners there were pleased with
this arrangement. But a few sought a “C” designation for their parcel, either by
individual variance or wholesale rezoning, sparking a neighborhood battle that lasted
for several years. The planning commission did its best to resolve the situation, and
finally the city council had to settle the issue. For one vote in 1927, “[p]roperty
owners from all parts of the Los Feliz Boulevard district stormed the Council
chamber.”
159
In a hearing for opponents to the rezoning held two years later,
“[e]ach of the speakers pleaded with the city planning commission not to allow
business structure[s] to despoil the high-class residential artery” of fine homes and

155
LACPC Annual Report, (1927-28; 1929-30).
156
G. Gordon Whitnall, quoted in “New Zone Proposal Approved,” Los Angeles Times,
November 16, 1928, A18.
157
Ralph Hancock, Fabulous Boulevard (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1949); Thomas S.
Hines, “Wilshire Boulevard: The Linear City, 1895-1945,” in Jan Cigliano, ed., The Grand American
Avenue (Washington DC: The Architecture Foundation, 1994).
158
Los Angeles Municipal Zoning Atlas, (1925), district map 3A.
159
“City’s Zoning Law Sustained,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1927, A1.

368
apartment buildings.
160
Ultimately, by the vote of a single council member, the
residential zoning was left intact.
161
The opposite eventually took place down on
Wilshire Boulevard, and its transformation from apartment concourse to commercial
thoroughfare is well-known. Both of these cases illustrate that the notion of an
apartment boulevard was perfectly acceptable to at least some residents, realtors,
planners, and elected officials.
The cumulative nature of the zoning scheme again became an issue.
Apartment buildings were already permitted in the city’s miles of linear commercial
zones—but they were considered a risky investment there. “[O]nce frontage is
zoned for business … multiples [apartments] will in many cases not be constructed
due to the great danger of undesirable environment [noise, traffic] which will render
these projects unprofitable,” wrote observers.
162
(Though home-owners considered
apartment buildings the architectural equivalent of Barbarians at the gate, apartment
developers were equally concerned with the quality of their properties’ surroundings.
See Chapter 2.) The protection of a “B” designation—allowing multi-family
housing, but not more intensive business uses—was seen by some as the answer for
the miles and miles of “hope zone.” In many places where thoroughfares were not
zoned “B,” some locals lobbied for the change. The president of the Hollywood
Chamber of Commerce complained about the glut of commercial “C”-zoning along

160
“Los Feliz Zone Pondered,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1929, A1, emphasis added.
161
For some of the back-and-forth between the commission and the council, see “Zoning Action
Raises Storm,” April 23, 1927, A1, and “Loz Feliz ‘Zoning’ Beaten,” December 16, 1930, A1, both in
the Los Angeles Times.
162
Eberle Economic Service, Weekly Letter, July 15, 1929, 166.

369
some thirty miles of streets in that community: “only a small amount is intensively
developed for business … just enough ... to prevent the development of these streets
with high-class income residential property.”
163

The apartment-boulevard strategy was tentative at first. “Whether much will
be solved by placing such frontages … in ‘B’ (multiple residence, etc.) zone still
remains a question,” one report noted in 1928.
164
But this uncertainty (seen also in
the epigraph starting this subsection) soon evaporated, as the confluence of several
inescapable dynamics grew more urgent:
- hundreds of miles of thoroughfares with frontage largely undeveloped
- potential for traffic and noise along these thoroughfares
- unsuitability of this land for single-family housing
- insufficient demand for commercial development of so much land
- growing demand for all kinds of rental housing
- need for a buffer between urban commotion and quiet “home” districts.
Planners recognized that the only land use sufficiently hybrid in function to mediate
between residence and business, and in enough demand to (eventually) fill in so
much territory, was that of multi-family housing.
Planners sometimes mixed uses in an attempt to fine-tune the relationships
between urban functions along, across and behind main streets. One variation (in
areas outside the miles of speculative-commercial “hope zones”) was a “C”-
designation limited to corner lots at major intersections along otherwise “B”-zoned

163
Carl Bush, “What About Zoning,” Los Angeles Realtor (October 1925), 17, emphasis added.

370
avenues. This recognized both the need for some retail space in higher-density
residential areas, as well as the better visibility and accessibility that boulevard
corners offered to business uses.
165

The complexity of the boulevard-land-use issue drove planners as far as
sanctioning new urban buildings mixing residence and commerce in the same
structure. The “C1-Apartment House and Restricted Business” designation was
introduced in the late 1920s by the Regional Planning Commission. This category
was not to be utilized just anywhere: the affected “stores, shops, or businesses …
shall be operated only in buildings facing upon streets not less than eighty feet in
width.”
166
Banks, barber- and beauty shops, drugstores and telegraph offices were
the kinds of establishments envisioned for the ground floors of these hybrid
apartment houses. The city did not adopt this classification until 1934. There, then,
owners of land on Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue (among others)
requested the designation. “This new zone is particularly adaptable to the frontage
on major highways where the heavy traffic detracts from the desirability of the
abutting property for [single-family] residential purposes,” planners recognized.
167

This particular arrangement—of combining housing and business—was employed
despite admonitions by national planning experts concerning “promiscuous
buildings” of “congested tenements with stores and business premises on the ground

164
LACPC, Annual Report, (1927-28), 8.
165
Gordon Whitnall noted that the planning commission ceded this to commercial realty
interests in attempts to keep the majority of Wilshire Boulevard zoned residential, west of Western
Avenue. “New Zone Proposal Approved,” LAT (November 16, 1928), A18.
166
LACRPC, “Guide to Los Angeles County Zoning Ordinance,” (1929), 14.

371
floors,” which characterized “the old city type”.
168
After all, the disorderly
concoction of different “incompatible” land uses was what had driven the quest for
planning and zoning in the first place. And planners advocating this strategy were
duly cautious: “To many this new zone appears dangerous,” since it might make
property owners even more reluctant to build. But the new category’s potential to
fill in mile after mile of vacant boulevards eventually led the commission to declare
that “this new zone … should … replace a large percentage of the present ‘C2’ and
‘C3’ zones with the hope that it … would encourage more residential development
on the surplus business-zoned property.”
169
It is not clear how widespread or
successful the mixed-use “C1” designation would be; but its inclusion in the zoning
toolkit demonstrates that major streets presented planners a complicated challenge in
their parsing out of urban space.
The ideal zoning schemes of the early 1930s demonstrate that planners had
become convinced that multi-family housing was, by and large, the correct use for
property along thoroughfares in developing districts. The attenuated apartment zone,
carefully wrapping single-family areas, was the outcome of lessons learned from the
zoning struggles of the previous decade. The limited commercial corner was another
such insight. In laying out vacant parts of the city, new residential sub-categories
would now be matched up with hierarchical street types—smaller multiples along

167
LACPC, Annual Report, (1933-34), 11.
168
“A Plea for Decentralized Cities,” American City 10/5 (May 1914), 421. Though many early
planning advocates in the US had haile