1219 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1882 by orange-grower John Joseph Maxey at the southeast corner of the city on his 20-acre ranch on the west side of Alameda Street between East 24th and East 28th streets. Maxey had arrived recently from Denver, where he sold farm equipment. Contractor William O. Burr built the house; as reported in the Los Angeles Herald on May 13, 1882, the cost of the building was $4,000. While his property was within the Los Angeles city limits, Maxey's address was most often given as "Vernon"
  • Relocated in 1906 by J. J. Maxey to a parcel comprised of Lots 107 and 108 in Grider & Dow's Subdivision of the Briswalter Tract where it became 1219 East Adams Street
  • Raised in Missouri though a native of Tipperary, with a long Irish upper lip to prove it, J. J. Maxey saw his property, next to the Southern Pacific tracks along Alameda Street, increase in value exponentially during the Boom of the 1880s and was smart enough to hold on to it through the depressed '90s, by which time industry had begun to surround his spread. After relocating his family house from there to Adams Street, the east end of which ended at Long Beach Avenue near the ranch, he put his 20 acres on the market and reached a deal with the Wright & Callender Company for its sale in early February 1907. Wright & Callender, a leading real estate operator, had plans to divide the former citrus grove into 34 manufacturing sites


John Joseph Maxey's trajectory was that of many
Angelenos: foreign-born, Midwestern-raised,
but pushing still farther west to the sun.


  • On October 5, 1906, the Department of Buildings issued J. J. Maxey a permit to relocate the house, wire it for electricity—had it been gas-lit since 1882?—add a bathroom, and otherwise refurbish the tall house, which stood out, and still does, among its cottage neighbors
  • John Maxey was now more firmly established in business in the city, with a downtown office; having done well as an orchardist and real estate investor, he vacationed regularly at the beach with his wife Anna, of whom social reporters were given to referring as Mr. Maxey's "estimable wife," for reasons unspecified, although it could be because she had seven children. Maxey's entry in Who's Who on the Pacific Coast of 1913 identified him a capitalist, using a Gilded Age notation of success. The Maxeys' second son, 35-year-old James, died at 1219 East Adams on December 5, 1909. On December 20, 1911, Catherine M. Wilhelm, the Maxeys' eldest daughter, called Kate and the mother of 12 who lived in suburban Hyde Park, was killed instantly when a cartridge exploded as she attempted to shoot a rabbit while visiting friends near Hemet
  • Soon after the deaths of their children, it appears that Walter E. Maxey, John and Anna'a second-youngest son and a hardware dealer, took control of his parents' lives. He appears to have worked out a deal in which the Maxey family swapped 1219 East Adams for real estate operator Charles A. Matson's house in what is today called Melrose Hill in recently annexed Hollywood (what was 1208 Laurel Avenue became 920 North Oxford Avenue after street and address adjustments following the consolidation). John J. Maxey expired here after a stroke on April 29, 1912; on May 18 the Los Angeles Times reported that he died intestate


A rare vintage image of East Adams Street, taken on
November 18, 1932, by German geographer Anton Wagner,
and its counterpart today, below. Wagner's 1935 book Los Angeles:
The Development, Life, and Form of the City of Two Million in Southern
California was based on his archival research, field work, and wide-ranging
walks across the city; his work influenced British architectural critic Reyner
Banham and his seminal Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
(1971). Wagner described his image here as one depicting "good negro
houses," the neighborhood by 1932 having become a stronghold
of African-Americans life; 1219, left, is seen with 1227 at
center and 1231 East Adams Boulevard at right.



  • Charles A. Matson lived at 1219 East Adams for a few years, adding a bathroom in 1913 before moving back to Hollywood by 1915 and selling 1219 to junk dealer Morris Pearlman. Pearlman lived in the house with his family from 1915 to 1918. Then, for the next 25 years, divided into at least three units, 1219 would be occupied by numerous renters
  • During the tenancy of the Pearlmans, the press reported on July 27, 1916, that 1219 East Adams Street had been raided as an opium den the day before, with arrests made of two "handsomely clad" Caucasian women, who were "found in the house with Negroes" but denied using drugs, according to the Los Angeles Herald. On July 28, the paper ran a small item reporting that the Pearlmans had contacted its editors "stating that the house at 1219 East Adams street is owned by them" and "that the house was not raided as an opium den as was erroneously reported." The den appears to have actually been down the street at 1267 East Adams on the subdivision's Lot 119, that designation possibly accounting for the confusion


Photographer Harry Adams captured the staff of the Eastside Settlement House and neighborhood
children in 1970, toward the end of its occupancy of 1219 East Adams Boulevard. Details of
a remodeling are evident; a sign in the window offers the house as a meeting venue.


  • After its years as a multi-unit rental dwelling, its actual ownership unclear, 1219 East Adams appears to have been emptied not long after 12 people in three separate apartments were reported at the address in the 1940 Federal census, enumerated on April 24. The house was soon acquired by what had been founded in 1919 as the Eastside Mothers' Club, which was evolving into the Eastside Settlement House, a shelter. The organization was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety on July 20, 1943, for general repairs. The Eastside Settlement House remained at 1219 into the mid 1970s. Since then renovations and additions have rendered the 1882 Maxey house almost unrecognizable. In recent decades various religious organizations have occupied 1219 East Adams


Buried within 1219 East Adams Boulevard today is an 1882 farmhouse; a triangular metal attic
vent at its peak is almost the only identifiable feature of the house from its early days.



Illustrations: Private Collection; Devri Speaks; CHSDL; CSUNDC