814 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1900 on Lot 24 in Grider & Dow's Adams Street Tract by street railway electrician Romeo Edgar Ellithorp and his wife Henrietta
  • On September 28, 1900, the Los Angeles Herald reported several recent transactions regarding Lot 24 resulting in its purchase by the Ellithorps and their immediate mortgaging of it to William H. Purcell, a Chicago grain man who had retired to Los Angeles to invest in real estate. The mortgage amount if $1,200 suggests that the funds were used to begin construction of 814 immediately
  • The Ellithorps were native Midwesterners (he an Illinoisian, she a Michigander) who met in Seattle and married there on February 13, 1889; their son Sidney was born on September 3, 1890. A decade later, the family moved south, where Romeo began a new job with the Los Angeles Railway in July 1900, living first at 518 Central Avenue. Once the Ellithorps moved into 814 East Adams Street, they would remain for 31 years, with occasional mentions in social columns. Their 1909 was eventful: At 19, Sidney married 26-year-old Blanch Green on May 7. On the evening of December 1, per the Herald the next day, "While his wife aroused the neighborhood with piercing screams for help, R. E. Ellithorp...fought a desperate hand-to-hand battle for his life with an armed burglar in their home at 814 East Adams street...." The well-dressed teenage picklock had surprised the Ellithorps as they arrived home from an outing; Romeo and the intruder wrangled for the latter's revolver through several rooms, upsetting furniture and breaking dishes until help arrived and the burglar gave up
  • On April 3, 1914, the Department of Buildings issued Henrietta Ellithorp as permit to "Build on rear on second floor to inlarge [sic] one room. New bath room and screen porch. Put in set of steps in rear of house. Put in full set of plumbing on second floor. Put in two Dis[appearing] Beds." These alteration were to create a two-family house; such conversions were becoming common in the neighborhood. The second address became 812 East Adams
  • On December 20, 1920, the Department of Buildings issued Mrs. Ellithorp a permit to build a lot-width (18-by-49-foot) garage and storage building at the rear of the property
  • Sid and Blanch Ellithorp were divorced after several years, he having remarrying in 1920. The May 7, 1923, issue of Two Bells, the house organ of the Los Angeles Railway, ran an item citing Romeo Ellithorp as the current acting foreman of the electrical department of the company's South Park shops on 53rd Street. The Two Bells of August 31, 1925, carried an article noting that Ellithorp was celebrating his 25th year of service to the railway and its Yellow Cars and that he and Etta were taking a cruise to New York via the Panama Canal to celebrate
  • Henrietta Ellithorp died on February 12, 1932. Romeo left 814 East Adams almost immediately to move in with his son on Brighton Avenue just south of 78th Street
  • It appears that Romeo Ellithorp may have retained 812-814 East Adams as rental property until his death on March 1, 1937. By 1939, Compton Avenue grocer Sam Quon had purchased the property
  • In the 1940 Federal census, 74-year-old Sam Quon is enumerated at 812 East Adams along with his 42-year-old wife, Ho Shee, and eight children ranging in age from 7 to 22; a sixth daughter had died in 1933. It would seem that the large family occupied both 812 and 814; after the 1940 census, the former address disappears from records for many years. Sam Quon died on May 3, 1948; his family would still be in possession of 814 East Adams at the time of his widow's death on April 21, 1984. Living with Mrs. Quon for decades at 814 was her eldest living child, Frances, and her husband Gene Tom; his name is associated in records with 814 East Adams into the late 1990s 
  • By 2005, 814 East Adams had a new owner. José Ramirez, using 812 as his address, was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety on June 7, 2005, to erect a new two-story, single-family residence, incorporating a garage, at the rear of the property. The 1920 garage gave way to it if it hadn't already been demolished




Los Angeles was not without a serious crime problem
in its days of still being scented by orange groves; the press
of the time contained daily summaries of all manner of heinous
activity, with home invasions perhaps the most common. Etta and
Romeo Ellithorp were pictured in the Times on December 2, 1909, after
catching a burglar ransacking their house at 814 East Adams the day
before. Below: Ho Shee Quon, who lived at 814 for 45 years, is
pictured on her gravestone in Angeleus Rosedale Cemetery.
She ran the family's grocery store with her husband Sam.




Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; Find A Grave