1323 and 1325 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1931 on Lot 51 of Hooper's Adams Street Tract by real estate investor Frederick Rufus Black
  • Fred Black and his wife Alice invested all over Los Angeles and built a number of houses in the neighborhoods flanking the eastern end of East Adams Street, including at least six on the north side of the East Adams block of Hooper's Adams Street Tract between Hooper and Compton avenues. In the mid-1890s, Fred Black became a sales agent—along with Loren B. Case, who had been overseeing the orange orchards on the property—in the subdivision of his mother-in-law Adeline Hooper's East Adams Street holdings. Mrs. Hooper and her husband John had acquired 50 acres at the corner of Adams Street and Orange Avenue—now Compton Avenue—for $1.25 an acre under the Homestead Act soon after their arrival from Vermont in 1873. After John Hooper's death in 1887, his wife and son Arthur retained the property until deciding to subdivide along with Alice and Fred Black. Mrs. Hooper died on February 28, 1900; the Black family would retain a number of lots in the tract for themselves, going on to build residences that in some cases would be retained by them for over 60 years, on property owned by their extended family for nearly a century
  • 1323 and 1325 East Adams were among the six houses known to be erected by Fred and Alice Black on lots on the north side of East Adams between Hooper Avenue and what is today known as Hooper Alley. In 1896 the Blacks had built 1331 as their own home, retaining it after building a new house for themselves at 1335 in 1904. 1321 East Adams appears to have been built by the family along with 1315, which was completed in 1905 and sold immediately. Lot 51 between 1321 and 1333 remained empty until 1924, when the Blacks built a two-story building at the rear of the lot incorporating two apartments over garages. Another dwelling may have been considered for the front of the lot, but only the rear building appears in an August 1, 1927, aerial image; it wouldn't be until 1931 that the diminutive 1323 and 1325 would be built
  • On February 7, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Alice Hooper Black a permit for a two-story building described as a six-room, two-family-dwelling-over-garage measuring 44 feet wide by 20 feet deep. The addresses indicated are 1323 and 1323½. This structure remains standing at the rear of Lot 51. That year, the Blacks themselves moved west to a new house Mr. Black built at 1950 South Victoria Avenue in Wellington Square, a newer development at the western edge of the West Adams district.
  • On April 7, 1931, what was now the Department of Building and Safety issued Fred R. Black individual permits for new dwellings to be built at the front of Lot 51 in Hooper's Adams Street Tract. These became designated 1323 and 1325 East Adams Boulevard, East Adams Street having been upgraded in status in the middle of the previous decade. Each house is described on their documents as measuring 19 by 28 feet, having three rooms, and as having stucco exteriors. With a central driveway leading to the rear apartments, these units appear at first to comprise the front of a classic Los Angeles bungalow court
  • Fred and Alice Black and their four children remained at 1335 East Adams until moving to Wellington Square in 1924. Elder son Elmore became an auto mechanic and married late; Edgar Black followed his father into the contracting trade and began to take over the business in the mid 1920s. Daughters Helen and Hazel became involved in the family real estate interests at least insofar as being named as owners of properties the Blacks had retained in the Hooper tract. While family members themselves moved west to newer parts of the city, several of their East Adams houses were retained as income property, including 1323 and 1325 and their fractionally addressed apartments in the 1924 building at the rear of the lot
  • On November 14, 1955, the Department of Building and Safety issued Edgar Black individual permits for 1323 and 1325 East Adams to widen their living-room windows. In 1956, a small marquee was added over the entrance of each house
  • On April 25, 1962, the Department of Building and Safety issued Edgar Black a permit to convert the 38-year-old rear building from one containing two apartments over a multi-car garage to one with four apartments and no indoor parking
  • Edgar Black ran a classified advertisement in the Los Angeles Sentinel on March 17, 1966, offering 1323 East Adams for rent
  • It is unclear as to when the Black family divested themselves of the properties they had retained in John and Adeline Hooper's original homestead; Alice Black died in 1943, Fred in 1950. Edgar died in 1983, Hazel in 1992, with Helen Black Losinger surviving until August 19, 1998, a month shy of her 98th birthday
  • Many tenants appear to have cycled in and out of 1323 and 1325 East Adams in the past several decades. A recent owner is LA Condo Developers LLC of Beverly Hills, incorporated in January 2019. The firm's interior alterations to 1323, permitted by the Department of Building and Safety on April 19, 2019, signal that the houses may be preserved, at least for the time being, although recent years have seen various developers demolish a number of original East Adams dwellings to build full-lot, mulit-unit residential buildings. While such change may alter the original cottage streetscape, the leafy early-20th-century guise of which is long gone, practical matters such as the need for housing and the limitations of adapting century-old dwellings to modern Los Angeles are legitimate considerations 



Illustration: Private Collection