209 East Adams Boulevard

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




  • Built in 1895 on Lot 16 in the Daman & Millard Tract
  • Lot 16 changed hands several times during 1895; on November 9, 1895, the Los Angeles Express reported that Ida D. Wilson, the wife of Joseph Lyman Wilson, a piano tuner with the Southern California Music Company, had acquired the property and had begun building 209 East Adams Street; the Johnson & Keeney Company, a major residential developer and builder during the 1890s, was noted as the contractor. Wilson was in residence with his wife, their daughters Lena and Alice, and his widowed mother Celia C. Ferguson by early 1896. The extended family was moving from Edgeware Road in Angelino Heights
  • On November 30, 1897, "Professor" and Mrs. Wilson, Lena—a music teacher—and the professor's older brother Sewell A. Wilson, also a piano tuner, provided music for the opening of the seventh annual bazaar of St. John's Episcopal Church, located, as it is now, at Adams and Figueroa
  • On January 27, 1903, Lena Wilson was married to Arthur Kelsey Rebard in the parlor of 209 East Adams, with a reception there following the ceremony. Music was provided by the "We Are Seven" orchestra, of which the bride was a member. After their honeymoon, the Rebards moved into 1208 East 22nd Street. Arthur Rebard clerked at F. B. Silverwood, the merchant tailor and purveyor of men's furnishings on Spring Street and later well-known as the 18-store chain called Silverwood's
  • The Wilsons and Mrs. Ferguson left 209 East Adams in the spring of 1904. The Times reported on June 12 that the family had just moved into 1990 West Washington Street, a house at the north edge of West Adams Heights (it was demolished in 1968, what had been renamed Washington Boulevard long since having become a commercial corridor).
  • Auctioneer John Wallace Reed bought 209 East Adams from the Wilsons; his family would remain in the house for 40 years. Reed was at the time in business with Benjamin O. Rhoads, their firm then known as Rhoads & Reed. Reed moved in with his wife Frances, son Lawrence Earl, daughter Ivy Belle, and his mother-in-law, Dr. Martha E. Bucknell. Mrs. Reed had at one time been a music teacher, influencing her son Lawrence, away at Cal when the family moved into Adams Street, to become a long-time music dealer in Berkeley with his lifelong partner John C. Tupper
  • On January 21, 1912, 25-year-old Ivy Reed married printer Samuel T. Terusa in the parlor of 209 East Adams
  • Dr. Bucknell died at 209 East Adams on April 5, 1915, at the age of 90. Said to be the first woman to practice medicine in the state, Bucknell's impressive obituaries in the Times and the Herald the next day told of her having sailed from Boston in 1850 with her husband, the four-master's surgeon, around the Horn, arriving in San Francisco, where Frances Bucknell Reed was born in February 1856. Widowed not long after, Mrs. Bucknell decided to return east to attend medical school herself, afterward re-crossing the continent to set up practice in the Bay Area. By the end of 1884 she had moved south to Los Angeles
  • Only a small item appeared in the Express noted the death of Frances Reed on July 31, 1918, at Angelus Hospital. She is interred in a crypt near her mother in the mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery
  • Around the time of his wife's death, John Reed turned from auctioneering to direct sales as an art dealer. He got off to a bit of a rough start when, in late winter 1919, he got into a legal tussle over 18 paintings (some by Paul de Longpré, who started out in Los Angeles nearby at 2601 South Figueroa) involving "Oil Queen" Emma Summers. The Express of March 7 reported that Reed was given title to the pictures in the end, which may have formed the basis of his new venture. On September 6, the Herald reported that Reed had bought Abel Byrens's art gallery at 801 South Hill 
  • Ivy and Sam Terusa appear to have divorced before he changed his name to Sam T. Terry and remarried in January 1919. Ivy and her father were alone at 209 East Adams for only a short while until she married L.A.P.D. detective Charles E. Vernand, himself acquiring a second spouse; Lawrence Reed Vernand, named for his uncle, was born on February 10, 1922
  • John Wallace Reed died in Los Angeles on July 20, 1934, at the age of 78
  • Charles, Ivy, and Lawrence Vernand remained at 209 East Adams until 1943, when they sold the house to produce merchant Chung Hom, known familiarly as Henry
  • On December 12, 1952, Chung Hom was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to demolish the garage
  • Henry Hom still owned 209 East Adams at the time of his death on October 1, 1974; records indicate that his son Terry W. Hom was living in the house that year
  • Juan and Rosario Izaguirre were the owners of 209 East Adams by the early 1980s
  • On May 6, 1981, the Izaguirres were issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a one-story addition across the back of the house containing a bedroom, bath, and washroom. On January 14, 1982, the Izaguirres were issued a permit to add a 30-by-18 patio in the rear

Illustration: Private Collection