433 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1910 on Lot 7 of Block A of Culver's Adams Street subdivision of the Shorb Homestead. Real estate investor Hans Phillip Puck was issued a permit to begin construction of a 10-room house on December 21, 1909, to occupy as his own home; he was issued a permit for a garage on the property on March 4, 1910
  • No architect is cited on the permits; Peter Muck was the contractor. Muck was active in the 1910 era building houses of a similar size and style to the Puck house though usually in developing western districts of Los Angeles; by this time, it was unusual for a prosperous man building a relatively expensive house to choose the easterly blocks of Adams Street, the affluent now settling many miles westward in newly fashionable developments along the Adams and Wilshire corridors
  • Hans Puck died at home on January 25, 1913, age 70. In his obituary, Puck was described as a retired adventurer and miner who had left his native Germany as a young man for the Australian Gold Rush; after some success there, he prospected for diamonds in South Africa, arriving in Los Angeles in 1872 to invest in property
  • Puck's widow, Amelie, would remain at 433 East Adams until her death there on August 3, 1933, age 74. She was described in her obituary as "prominent in religious and charitable work among the German-speaking people." She had arrived in Los Angeles in 1877 and married Hans Puck in 1881
  • The Pucks had four children: Charles, Lena, and twins Phillip and Arthur. Charles, who appears never to have married, lived at 433 East Adams until 1939; Arthur and his wife, Adelaide, were then living there with him. By the next year, the brothers and Adelaide were living on Kingsley Drive in the Wilshire District
  • In 1940, 433 East Adams became the home of fireman Horace C. Green and his wife, the Reverend Norma H. Nelson. The couple immediately began offering the house as a venue for church and community fundraisers; eventually they named it "Nel-Green Manor." Reverend Nelson was the longtime pastor of the Spiritual Fellowship Church, which in 1944 acquired the house at 665 East Adams. That house was demolished in 1949; services were held at Nel-Green Manor while, on the site of 665, a new sanctuary was being erected. The new Spiritual Fellowship Church opened in 1951, with a metal sign outlined in neon added the next year and still in place
  •  The Greens converted 433 to a fourplex in 1952. Horace Green died in 1954. After remarrying, Reverend Nelson became Mother Waters; she was still pastor of her church when she died on January 11, 1970. Family members retained ownership of 433 into the 1970s



Illustration: Private Collection