1321 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built circa 1904 on Lot 50 of Hooper's Adams Street Tract by Frederick R. and Alice Hooper Black as a speculative project
  • The Los Angeles Herald of February 28, 1904, reported the sale of Lot 50 by real estate investors Lafayette and Fannie Chapman to Frederick R. Black and his wife. Mrs. Black was a daughter of John W. and Adeline Hooper, part of whose orange groves had begun to be subdivided by the Blacks in the mid 1890s. It seems that the Chapmans, who themselves lived up the street at 1123 East Adams and had at some point had acquired Lot 50 from the Hooper interests, were now selling it back for $525  
  • Fred and Alice Black 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 five on 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'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. Mrs. Hooper died on February 28, 1900; the Blacks 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


Fred Black became an agent along with Loren B. Case, who maintained the orange orchard on the
property, in the subdivision of his mother-in-law's East Adams Street holdings. Mrs. Hooper's
address after Los Angeles's adoption of numerical addresses circa 1891 had become
2601 Orange Avenue, Orange Avenue later becoming part of Compton
Avenue. The Los Angeles Times ran the advertisement
above in the spring of 1896 as lot sales
of the Hooper tract began.


  • 1321 East Adams was among several houses 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 they had built 1333 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 along with 1315, which was completed in 1905 and sold immediately; 1321 appears to have been rented for two years to grocer Otis O. Hunley before being sold. (Hunley worked in his father's grocery store at Adams and Central and was moving two doors east from 1309 East Adams)
  • Bertha Goodman, a widow, became the owner of 1321 East Adams by 1908. On May 20, 1908, the Department of Buildings issued Mrs. Goodman a permit for an 8-by-6-foot addition to the house, with Fred Black noted as the contractor for the work; somewhat confusing is that the document refers to "lot 50" while at the same time giving Mrs. Goodman's address as 1319 East Adams rather than 1321. It should be noted that in the first years of the development of the Hooper holdings, house numbering was somewhat haphazard, with the various designations from the Hooper Avenue corner to Hooper Alley sometimes moving from lot to lot in various records including city directories and on Sanborn insurance maps. It seems that Fred Black would assign a number arbitrarily as he built, with the city later sorting out the sequence
  • Bertha Goodman would occupy 1321 East Adams for the next decade; her daughter Emma lived with her during most of that time, being absent only during 1910 when she moved to 621 West Sixth Street to run a rooming house there. It seems that the Goodmans also rented rooms at 1321; by the spring of 1916, five unrelated individuals were in residence besides the Goodmans including Los Angeles Railway conductor Charley Lange, his wife Faye, and their son Robert. That June 28, Faye Lange gave birth to a daughter, Millie, at 1321 East Adams
  • The Goodmans left 1321 East Adams by the end of the 1910s, moving down to a small cottage at Central Avenue and 57th Street. Ownership of 1321 East Adams after their departure is unclear, though there are indications that possession of it reverted to the Black family, who may have retained the house as a rental along with their other income-producing properties on the block over the following decades. In any case, multiple names appear at the address (and its fractionals) in various records over the next century—including, from 1934 into the 1950s, Arthur Roberts, who was among those who rented space in Edgar W. Black's commercial property at the east end of Hooper's Adams Street Tract along Compton Avenue. Roberts is listed in the 1934 city directory as running a billiard parlor at 2617 Compton and in later directories as proprietor of a restaurant at that address
  • It is unclear as to when the Black family, if they had indeed re-acquired it, may have sold 1321 East Adams, though they are known to have retained other properties in their ancestral tract at least into the late 1960s. Later owners included Albert Lugo of Pico Rivera, who was issued building permits in the 1990s for rehabilitation work of the century-old house



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT