3115 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1904 as 2315 West Adams Street on the 83.6-by-180-foot Lot 9 in Block 7 of the Arlington Heights Tract by music dealer James T. Fitzgerald
  • Architect: Joseph Cather Newsom; contractor: Clarence V. McFall
  • A building permit for the house was issued to Fitzgerald's wife, Anne, during the first week of March 1904; the document was described in press items as authorizing a nine-room building to cost $8,000. Work proceeded quickly, with the Herald reporting on July 19 that the couple "will soon remove to their new home at 2615 [sic] West Adams street." The Fitzgeralds had sold their residence at 1134 West 29th Street in late 1903; the Herald reported in May that they had moved into the Hotel Alvarado afterward and that they were now renting a house while awaiting the completion of 2315


A view of the Fitzgerald-Haggarty-Moody house circa 1910 reveals a profile unchanged for 115 years


  • Casting about for descriptions, the local press settled on classifying the design of the completed Fitzgerald house as an example of the "Italian Gothic" mode. It was more darkly Victorian than modern—definitely Munsteresque to later eyes. Long famous for his busy turreted and spindled designs in florid Victorian modes, Newsom would appear not to have noticed the general passing of the old style by 1904 or to have sussed out the trend toward horizontal lines soon to be exemplified by the Greene Brothers of Pasadena. Newsom did, however, recognize the Craftsman use of clinker brick, applying it liberally to the Fitzgerald residence
  • Perhaps it was the intrusion of a porchclimber on November 18, 1907—though this perpetrator simply pushed past a maid and entered through the front door rather than shimmy up a column—or perhaps it was dissatisfaction with the charming though undoubtedly dark house, but the Fitzgeralds would leave 2315 after less than five years. After a stop in a rented house in South Pasadena, the couple bought Effie Neustadt's much, much grander pile four blocks east on Adams at 2445 South Western Avenue—light-filled and only a year old 




Native San Franciscan James T. Fitzgerald arrived in Los Angeles in
1891 and was soon partnered in a music store with Frederick W. Blanchard;
both men would contribute greatly to the cultural life of the city, if separately after
their breakup in 1898 when they came to blows—literally, as James pleaded guilty that
August to Fred's charge of battery against him. Fitzgerald gained control of the store; the
Fitzgerald Music Company was still advertising in the Times as late as January 1962, the
year of its 70th anniversary, but disappeared from the city soon after. Among the
instruments sold by the firm early in the century was a badge-engineered
upright made by the Krell Piano Company, originally of Cincinnati.



  • The 1910 Baist real estate atlas indicates that the Los Angeles city line ran directly through the Fitzgerald lot. It was not until October 27, 1909, when the Colegrove Addition, a section of county territory running irregularly from not-yet-annexed Hollywood south to Rodeo Road, added 5,579 acres to the city and included the whole of Joughin's Ainsworth subdivision. After the annexations of Hollywood and East Hollywood in February 1910, street realignments and renamings and address changes caused eight blocks of Adams to vanish numerically; addresses now jumped from the 2200 block at Arlington Avenue, the 2300 block becoming the 3100 block, 2315 West Adams becoming 3115
  • Not long before it was renumbered, 3115 West Adams came to be occupied by John J. Haggarty, proprietor of the New York Cloak & Suit House on Broadway. J. J. Haggarty would be building his famous "Castle York" across the street at 3330 West Adams in 1912; his son, James C. Haggarty, would retain 3115 after his parents' move. On November 12, 1912, James married Stella Hayden at St. Agnes Church at Adams and Vermont; while waiting for his father and stepmother to vacate their house, the newlyweds occupied an apartment at the new Rex Arms on Orange Street (now part of Wilshire Boulevard) after returning from their honeymoon
  • On July 1, 1920, the Department of Buildings issued J. C. Haggarty a permit to add a 17-by-13-foot sun parlor on the rear of the first floor with a sleeping porch above it. On February 26, 1925, Haggarty received a permit to reconfigure the garage to include servants' quarters. On May 14, 1927, what was now the Department of Building and Safety issued Haggarty a permit to add an 11-foot-square maid's room to the rear of the main house




  • James Haggarty would remain at 3115 West Adams until 1934, when the effects of the Depression caught up with him. The New York Cloak & Suit House had moved into carriage-trade womens' wear, its name shortened, more or less, to J. J. Haggarty's The New York Store, or simply "The New York," by 1929 becoming known simply as J. J. Haggarty. The senior Haggarty continued to spend the fortune he had been making; in 1927, he was building a 15,000-square-foot weekend house at Malaga Cove with a private 200-foot breakwater. The next year he and his son announced their intention to build a store as high as 150 feet on the site of the five-year-old Busch Building at the southeast corner of Wilshire and Vermont. While he took out a lease on the Busch structure and renamed it the Haggarty-Wilshire Building, it was not replaced with a tower; the family's ambitions and purse were soon to be definitively curtailed by the Depression. It is unclear if there was a personal rift between father and son, but James left the J. J. Haggarty Company in June 1932. On January 16, 1933, he would open his own exclusive women's wear shop on Wilshire Boulevard, known formally as James Haggarty Incorporated. James and his new venture were bankrupt by December 1934
  • While J. J. Haggarty would continue in operation, its eponymous head would die at home at 3300 West Adams in February 1935; the business was sold by the family within a year and survive until May 1970
  • James Haggarty was forced to dispose of 3115 West Adams as a result of his business debacle. A private sale of the house's furnishings—characterized in some sources as a yard sale—was held over three days in December 1934 prior to a large-scale public auction on January 7. The house, of dated design as soon as it was completed 30 years before and now in a rapidly deteriorating district, was ripe for the sort of demolition that was occurring all around it to much more modern-appearing houses. But 3115 would survive




The Haggarty family's fortunes sank precipitously in concert
with their neighborhood, both savaged by the Great Depression.
The affluent of Los Angeles had not finished their peregrinations from
Bunker Hill south to West Adams, then west along its main thoroughfare,
 then north and then west along the Wilshire corridor. Pockets of the linear
West Adams district such as Berkeley Square held on longer than many of
its other neighborhoods, but with Los Angeles's continuing annexations
and thus hundreds of square miles of new barley fields to develop,
the rich saw no reason to be nostalgic for their fathers' houses.



  • With newer suburban developments having begun to vacuum many of the affluent out of the linear West Adams District as early as the post–World War I years, well before Black Tuesday, the Depression rendered many big houses vulnerable to replacement, or if the buildings were lucky, scooped up by bargain hunters who would rather live in a big faded house than a small new bungalow. The Fitzgerald-Haggarty house was thus perfect for its next owners. Those of the all-title (if that) and no-cattle class of expatriates had long been drawn to Los Angeles because of its tendency to fawn over those with even purported aristocratic credentials and the city's long distance from anyone who could verify them; Count Charles F. de Zaruba and his wife, Madame Emma Loeffler de Zaruba, were among this cohort. A July 1930 profile of Madame de Zaruba in the Times noted a career in grand opera and revealed her worship of her ancestors as well as the allegedly ancient Bohemian ties of her husband, who was apparently also involved in music
  • The De Zarubas were likely forced to sell their former home for economic reasons, if not trouble as dire as the Haggartys' seems to have been; they would be moving with their teenage son Lionel from 503 South Andrews Place—a house of similar size to 3115 West Adams but newer and in an expensive neighborhood north of Wilshire Boulevard not yet gone the déclassé way of West Adams. The family was in possession of 3115 West Adams by the summer of 1935. In the 1928 directory Women of the West, Emma de Zaruba is described as a "voice pedagogue" and as an authority on opera. She set up a studio in the house and solicited students; the Count, who identified himself as being in the film-exhibition business on the 1930 Federal census, would now be occupying his time and supplementing the family income by running a liquor store on Main Street across from City Hall. His time at 3115 was short; he died in the house on November 18, 1936. His obituary in the Times two days later referred to him as the "scion of the 440-year-old Barony of de Zaruba de Castalovitz." Crescent Liquors on Main Street was sold, but Emma and Lionel remained at 3115 for the time being, taking in three lodgers by April 1940


Late afternoon light on 3115 West Adams Street not long after completion


  • By 1941 referring to herself as Countess Emma de Zaruba, still involved in ladies' music-appreciation clubs and hosting fundraising efforts at 3115 for such causes as the Children's Home Society across the street in the Childs house at 3100 West Adams, she and Lionel left the neighborhood in 1942, settling in an apartment at the Royal Gardens on North Flores Street in West Hollywood
  • It is unclear as to under what circumstances 3115 West Adams passed from Countess Zaruba to South Los Angeles real estate investor Hezekiah A. Howard, better known as H. A. Howard, who, as had other prominent African-Americans including Hattie McDaniel, saw opportunity in West Adams even before the U. S. Supreme Court's landmark 1948 decision in Shelley v. Kraemer overturning racially restrictive housing covenants. Howard, in possession by early 1946, named the house "Villa Arlington" and made it available for community and business meetings. His ownership was challenged by neighbors; Judge Henry M. Willis of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, perhaps anticipating the Supreme Court decision, was unmoved by the petitioners' claim of damage to their property values. The house was later acquired by another prominent broker, Warren C. Vinston, who earlier in the '40s was on the staff of the Los Angeles Sentinel and was publisher of the 1942-43 edition of The Official Negro Directory and Classified Buyers' Guide. Vinston had been selling big West Adams houses in recent years; in 1948 he was the broker for the Auguste R. Marquis house just around the corner from 3115, later famous for its role in Six Feet Under, when it was sold to the Filipino Federation of America. (Another of his properties was the well-known Cuzner house at 2091 South Harvard Boulevard.) Vinston may have purchased 3115 West Adams from Howard as rental property or come into possession of it after an incident in June 1951 that the fire department suspected might have been caused by trespassing children playing with matches
  • On June 28, 1951, the Times reported that a fire the day before had caused $10,000 worth of damage to 3115 West Adams, which had just been been vacated by its most recent tenant. Warren C. Vinston, listed as the owner, was issued a permit to make repairs by the Department of Building and Safety on September 11, 1951
  • In the fall of 1952 a deal was struck with the Regular Associated Troupers to purchase 3115 West Adams for use as its clubhouse. In its issue of November 29, 1952, Billboard magazine reported that the well-known group of mostly female vaudeville actors and circus performers were planning to hold its first meeting in the house on December 4. The Troupers would remain for 25 years




The Fitzgerald-Haggarty house appeared in Billboard 
magazine on November 29, 1952, after it was acquired by
the Regular Associated Troupers, vaudeville actors and circus
 performers. A calendar of club events at 3115 West Adams
appeared in the trade journal on December 9, 1957.



  • The cost of upkeep on big West Adams houses was apparent to their owners as the buildings hit their 20-year-marks and was one of the many reasons for the flight of the affluent to newer dwellings in Wilshire-corridor suburbs; the replacement of complicated roofs and expensive repainting became even more prohibitive once the Depression set in. Club dues of the Regular Associated Troupers might barely have covered the taxes and the Edison bill, but the group did manage to hang on to 3115 West Adams for a quarter century, succeeding in keeping it from collapsing, at least. The house was reportedly in poor condition when in 1977 it came into the possession of Arlillian Moody, a sharecropper's daughter who had come to Los Angeles from northeast Louisiana in 1942 and opened a dressmaking shop in a downtown store left vacant by an interned Japanese American
  • While often written of as having been the dream of Ms. Moody, longing for a statement of arrival, the purchase of 3115 West Adams appears to have been at least as much the ambition of the middle of her three children, Ronald Carroll, who first noticed the house. Arlillian had at some point shed her husband and his last name and would in due course drop that of his successor, Ruben Scott. She had apparently already achieved considerable success in terms of housing; she and Mr. Scott had been living since at least 1956 in a comfortable house at 1962 Wellington Road in Wellington Square, a neighborhood in westernmost West Adams that still retains its architectural integrity, something that could not be said of the stretch of Adams Boulevard to which she would be moving. (The Wellington Road house would be retained by Arlillian's daughter Lauretta Carroll for many years)
  • In 1977, 3115 West Adams was purchased by Arlillian Moody from the Regular Associated Troopers for $49,000. In a feature that ran on November 19, 2004, the Times described the new household: "Ms. Moody moved into a downstairs room, set up her sewing equipment"—she had never stopped making dresses—"and got to work. She enlisted family members, friends and people off the street to help with the restoration. They painted inside and out, cleared the weeds, laid sod, and planted a garden with strawberries and tomatoes." The house became "a curious mix of community center, dress shop, catering operation and halfway house. Ms. Moody hosted fancy weddings and quinceaneras and Mother's Day celebrations. She rented it out for TV and movie shoots. It served as a polling place and a classroom, and the occasional home to political groups, nontraditional churches and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings." Arlillian named the house "Elegant Manor," indicating a new take on the deluxe residential nature of West Adams Street, as the Boulevard was originally designated




  • On November 5, 1982, lobbying of the city council by Arlillian and Ronald succeeded in having 3115 West Adams designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #258
  • When her health began to deteriorate in 1993, Arlillian Moody moved back to 1962 Wellington road to live with her daughter. Ronald was now free to have as his guests at Elegant Manor an inelegant and certainly less respectful cohort than the down-and-out souls his mother had sought to help. Rather than grow strawberries and tomatoes, he let derelict cars pile up in the yard. He appears to have seen no problem with renting the house out for raves and gang conclaves; the Times article of November 19, 2004, continues the story of the Moody-Carroll tenure at 3115 West Adams: "City records show a history of permits denied, granted, revoked and amended for Elegant Manor. There were orders to stop operating it as a restaurant and nightclub, to stop all commercial uses, and to stop using it as a community center.... Neighbors noticed a louder, more aggressive group of young people coming to the house for late-night parties. Residents regularly called police to complain about partygoers making noise, driving too fast and urinating on their lawns.... [t]hey were shocked in January when two teenagers were shot and killed outside the house. The two shooters were gang members who had attended a party there, police said. A month earlier, Ronald Carroll had been found guilty of violating trash and safety ordinances. He was sentenced to more than 400 hours of community service. In a separate action, the city revoked his permit to hold parties. Friends and family say the 57-year-old is a good man who was simply overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the home.... Joseph Davis, a friend of Ronald's, said the city had made him a scapegoat"
  • At the time of the Times article, the house was on the market for an improbable $1.2 million. It remained unsold; Ronald Carroll was still in possession when a fire destroyed the garage in 2010. On November 30 of that year, he was issued a permit for its reconstruction. There were reports of foreclosure; the identity of the owner when it was on the market in early 2017 for $1.495 million is unclear
  • A long-awaited new lease on life finally came for 3115 West Adams later in 2017. Adaptive reuse by a number of varied religious organizations had saved nearby houses, including 3300, 3424, 3500, 3726, and 3734 West Adams. Now, in an ambitious plan involving a lot-tie with the corner parcel that had once held the Andrew Joughin house at 3101 West Adams, the L A Anguk Center Corporation of Camarillo acquired 3115 with plans for a major renovation into a Buddhist temple and meditation center. A permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on June 21, 2019, called for the first floor to be used as the temple, with residential use remaining upstairs. A house that was stylistically obsolete by the time it was completed in 1904 will have thus managed to outlast many more modern domestic designs and contribute significantly to the ongoing revival of the West Adams district's historical importance to the city of Los Angeles


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; LAS; Billboard; LAPL