1300 West Adams Street

1289 West Adams Boulevard

PLEASE ALSO SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO ADAMS BOULEVARD, CLICK HERE




  • Built in 1890 straddling Lots 5 and 6 of the Ellendale Place Tract by the Reverend Washington Warren Welsh; in 1916, the one-story house was moved kitty-corner across the intersection of Adams Street and Ellendale Place to straddle Lots 13 and 14 in Block 2 of the Urmston Tract
  • Reverend Welsh, a Methodist minister and temperence lecturer, would occupy 1300 West Adams from 1890 until his death in the house on April 26, 1905; his widow remained until 1907, when the building was purchased by candy manufacturer and real estate investor Roland P. Bishop, who had built his own home at 1280 West Adams just across Ellendale Place in 1894. Moving from just down the street at 2633 Ellendale Place, Bishop's in-laws, U.S. District Court judge Olin Wellborn and his wife Lillie, occupied 1300 from 1907 until moving to Beverly Hills in 1915
  • The Wellborns' daughter Lillian married oilman Burton E. Green at 2633 Ellendale on January 14, 1905. Green was chief among the developers of Beverly Hills, to which the Greens and the Roland Bishops would move to become early settlers of the aborning westerly suburb in 1914; the Wellborns would soon follow. As part of Bishop's own property schemes in his former neighborhood, he would move the 26-year-old 1300 West Adams to a parcel kitty-corner across Adams Street; a permit for this relocation was issued to Bishop by the Department of Buildings on June 1, 1916. On its new site, the house became 1289 West Adams Street. On June 15, 1916, a permit for its successor on its original lot, 2615 Ellendale Place, was issued to Frank Page Bacon; this house still stands 
  • Ownership of 1289 West Adams before 1920 is unclear; it may be that Roland Bishop retained it as rental property until its purchase by businessman George E. Bentel
  • On March 23, 1920, George Bentel's wife, Elizabeth, was issued a permit by the Department of Buildings to have part of a porch glassed in and for other minor alterations
  • A curious addition was made to the easterly side of the Bentel property in 1921. On March 29 of that year, George Bentel was issued a permit by the Department of Buildings for the erection of a one-story, 20-by-32-foot structure, described on the document as a dwelling and presumably intended by Bentel to be a residential rental. With its simple design and its narrow end facing Adams, the house, which still stands, resembles a prefabricated storage building of the type still available today. It also bears a resemblance to the many small real estate offices that were often built on prominent corners of new subdivisions in the early decades of the 20th century; 1283 would in fact later be utilized as a real estate office
  • 1289 West Adams was converted at some point before 1941 into a duplex, adding the address 2514 Ellendale Place to the house. In 1941, the duplex became a triplex, adding 2512 Ellendale; on September 15 of that year the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit for the conversion to new owner Eugene Masterson, who had been lodging a few houses away on Adams. Masterson, apparently recently divorced, moved in with his mother, Julia. Not long before, Masterson had run a gas station; after the bowling gig, he moved on to managing an Elks Club. One of his sons, Robert Masterson, was killed in a tractor accident on June 26, 1947. Julia Masterson died at the age of 95 on October 24, 1955; Eugene left 1289 soon after
  • Acquiring 1289 West Adams in the 1960s was Arvey Haws Lyons Sr., who would be redeveloping the property, if slowly
  • On September 27, 1968, the Department of Building and Safety issued Arvey H. Lyons Sr. a permit for the demolition of 1289 West Adams Boulevard; this permit was allowed to expire. On April 16, 1971, separate demolition permits were issued to Lyons for the house and the garage. Perhaps due to the distraction of the activities of his namesake, Arvey Jr., it would be 13 years before a structure would occupy the northeast corner of Adams and Ellendale; on September 19, 1984, Arvey Lyons Sr. was issued a permit for the 60-by-55-foot, five-unit open-court stucco apartment building that stands on the site today
  • Arvey H. Lyons Jr., whose parents had divorced not long after his birth in 1951, was entrepreneurial in his own way. In July 1977, he and his girlfriend Vicky Colbert were among eight people arrested after a jewelry heist in Beverly Hills; the Times reported on July 18 that the eight were thought to belong to a gang that had hit 30 stores in Southern California for more than $2.5 million in loot. Details of the criminal proceedings are unclear, but they did not prevent Arvey Jr. and Vicky from marrying the following February or Arvey from co-hosting a lavish birthday party for his grandmother at his Ladera Heights home in March 1979, per the Sentinel of March 29. Arvey Jr., by now having gained the sobriquet "Filthy Rich Al" by his associates—who wound up ratting him out—was arrested again on November 10, 1981, this time by F.B.I. agents on federal charges of "conspiring to steal and transport by interstate commerce" tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothing from a Dallas women's shop. The Times of December 1 also reported that authorities had recovered $240,000 worth of stolen property from Lyons's house in Ladera Heights. "I have a file on Arvey that's probably a foot and a half thick," Los Angeles County Sheriff Department detective Sergeant Mike Belger commented to the paper. Undaunted, Arvey Jr. would be arrested again in August 1995, the Los Angeles Daily News and The Orange County Register reporting on August 5 that the police described him as the mastermind of a traveler's check counterfeiting scam that was part of a larger criminal enterprise. Set in his ways, Lyons was arrested yet again on November 3, 2006, in St. Louis in connection with the use of a counterfeit credit card, per court records
  • Arvey Lyons Sr., meanwhile, built up an impressive portfolio of real estate investments; his family still owned 1289 West Adams as of June 2019



Illustrations: Private Collection; LOC