834 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1903 on Lot 20 of Grider & Dow's Adams Street Tract by Lottie R. Richardson; her husband, Fred T. Richardson, would be associated for many years with the local branch of Haas, Baruch & Company, San Francisco–based wholesale grocers, coffee roasters, spice grinders, and tobacco and cigar purveyors
  • On October 12, 1902, the Los Angeles Herald reported that Mrs. Lottie R. Richardson had just bought Lot 20 from real estate investor William H. Bosley for $1,125, "to be improved with a dwelling." The Times reported on March 9, 1903, that the house was under construction; it was valued at $3,500
  • The first recorded social event in the finished house—something of an unconventional housewarming considering that his wife's name was on the deed—was held on July 23, 1903, when friends of Fred Richardson surprised him with a smoker (i.e., stag party). Both the Herald and the Times reported the event, the latter allowing on July 26, innocently enough, that the affair was given by a few of the honoree's "male intimates.... Cards and various other games passed the evening pleasantly, and dainty refreshments were served." Lottie's counterpart entertainments included her hosting on occasion members the Thimble Club of the Purity Temple, a distaff auxiliary of Fred's Knights of Pythias
  • On October 9, 1913, Lottie Richardson was issued a permit by the Department of Buildings to make interior alterations to remodel 834 East Adams into a duplex; an exterior change cited on the document was the addition of a roof over a balcony to create a screen porch. The Richardsons' unit would now be addressed 832 East Adams Street, with 834 becoming rental property
  • Lottie appears to have been the organizer of the Richardsons' domestic arrangements. In 1923, with housing pressures in Los Angeles increasing as the city's population began its more-than-doubling during the decade, she made a move to maximize the income potential of her house. South Los Angeles had become more cosmopolitan during the 1910s, with great interest in the district by African-Americans, who had begun migrating to the city from Texas, Louisiana, and other southern states to escape racial violence and bigotry. According to historian Kelly Simpson, "Job opportunities were plentiful, including hauling lumber, digging ditches, cleaning toilets, laying brick, scrubbing laundry and shining shoes." Black migrants had earlier settled closer to the business district around the landholdings of former slave and Los Angeles pioneer Biddy Mason, the area becoming known as "Brick Block." As the original householders of South Los Angeles began to consider the hundreds of new subdivisions springing up in the city to the west and northwest, African-Americans moved south to concentrate along Central Avenue, with, per Simpson, "clubs, churches, black-owned businesses and newspapers [such as] The California Eagle supplying community needs." Lottie Richardson saw the housing need and made plans to exploit her East Adams Street lot even further than her 1913 duplexing
  • On June 12, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Lottie Richardson a permit for new building behind 832-834 East Adams. This is the one-story, six-room, two-family dwelling that stands at the rear of the property, addressed 836 and 836½. The addition appears to have been part of the Richardsons' plan to leave East Adams for a new neighborhood
  • West Adams Street, commencing at Main Street, had long been a destination for the local Establishment and for strivers. While its easterly reaches were fading by 1925, its larger dwellings being repurposed into rooming establishments or fraternity houses, the westerly reaches were managing to hold their own in competition with new Wilshire-corridor subdivisions as far-flung as the Pacific. (As a result of the Major Traffic Street Plan of 1924, Adams Street was morphing into Adams Boulevard; with increased traffic and then the Crash of 1929, West Adams would eventually follow East Adams into decline.) On June 23, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Lottie Richardson a permit for a 16-room, four-family house at 4028-4028½-4030-4030½ West Adams, which still stands today facing north up Eleventh Avenue. Fred acted as contractor for the project; the Richardsons moved west to 4030½ West Adams, apparently retaining 832-834-836 East Adams as rental property
  • Ownership of 832-834-836 East Adams beyond that of the Richardsons is unclear; Fred died in 1949, Lottie in 1953, she still living at 4030½ West Adams and possibly having retaining ownership of the East Adams property. Many individual renters occupying it from 1925 into future decades. Among long-term tenants were William Clements, a building porter, and his wife, Fannie, in residence at 834 from at least 1928 into the early 1950s, and Maude Y. Asbury, who lived at 832 from 1935 until 1958
  • The Velasquez family has owned 832-834-836 East Adams in recent decades
Illustration: Private Collection