246 East Adams Boulevard

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




  • Built in 1913 on Lot 20 in Block A of Shafer & Lanterman's Subdivision of the Montague Tract by retired tile setter James W. Dand
  • Architect: Fred R. Dorn
  • On July 1, 1913, the Department of Buildings issued J. W. Dand a permit for a two-story, nine-room residence on Lot 20; a permit for a 12-by-18-foot garage—not designed by Dorn—was issued to Dand on August 26, 1913
  • Craftsman design would reach its peak in Southern California during the 1910s; the style and size of the Dands' new house were more characteristic of residences built in the more fashionable West Adams district during the same era
  • Native Nova Scotian James Dand had arrived the United States in the 1870s. By the mid '80s he was farming most of a quarter-section on the Arkansas River south of Wichita and north of Belle Plaine, where he would eventually maintain a town residence. There Dand met Maggie Flett, a farm widow with two children; they married on July 6, 1882. (Her son David died of measles the following spring.) Running nearby the farm was the Santa Fe Railway, which, after it reached Los Angeles in 1887, no doubt put the Dands in mind of a more salubrious climate. In the meantime, James gave up farming and became a citified tile setter, a trade he would carry with him to Los Angeles, where the Dands settled by 1895
  • The Dands had prospered in prairie agriculture. There was some buying and selling of real estate in their new western home, particularly after the sale of the farm back in Kansas in 1897. During the 1900s, a fourplex on South Figueroa was acquired, among other property. The Los Angeles Express reported on September 2, 1905, that Dand had commissioned Fred R. Dorn to build a two-story, eight-room house in Long Beach. By 1908, the Dands were living at 424 East 16th Street in Los Angeles, which they enlarged 1910, and where they would remain until hiring Dorn to build 246 East Adams
  • On February 10, 1921, the Department of Buildings issued J. W. Dand a permit to erect a three-room dwelling at the rear of the property; this became 246½ East Adams
  • James and Margaret Dand lived quietly at 246 East Adams, rarely appearing in the press in social or business-news coverage. James died in Los Angeles on May 11, 1925, at the age of 71. Maggie died on March 3, 1927, age 74
  • Ownership of 246 East Adams after the departure of the Dands is unclear; the family may have retained it as income property or sold it to someone who rented rooms starting in 1928. A number of renters are associated with 246 and 246½ in various records into the 1940s; these included the family of Wah Shue and Woon Tsun Young Don, in residence from 1935 to as late as 1993. Woon Tsun, called Sarah, was a widow by the time of the enumeration of the 1940 Federal census in April, living at 246 East Adams with her four sons—Frank, George, Leroy, and Daniel—and her daughter and son-in-law Helen and Albert Chow. The family appears to have bought the house by 1944
  • On July 21, 1944, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to Mrs. Don, specified as the current owner, to replace the roof of 246 East Adams
  • Frank Don was at one time the proprietor of an "auto laundry," as car washes were once referred to; George Don, born in 1903, worked for Conrad Helgesen, a produce commission merchant. He was still living at 246 East Adams at the time of his death on April 26, 1993 



Illustration: Private Collection