255 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Completed in 1906 on a parcel comprised of the east 35 feet of Lot 2 and the west 30 feet of Lot 3 in Shafer's Re-subdivision of the Daman & Millard Tract. Contractor and real estate investor Eugene Carlos Shipley was building it as his own home
  • Architect: Abram M. Edelman
  • As a builder Eugene Shipley was involved in the construction of a number of large Los Angeles dwellings, working with major architects including Edelman and Arthur B. Benton; he collaborated with Frederick L. Roehrig on Frederick H. Rindge's landmark 1902 house at 2263 South Harvard Boulevard. (Rindge was, incidentally, a fellow staunch teetotaling Methodist.) While Edelman's projects were generally big houses—including 3240, 3325, 3350, and 3986 Wilshire Boulevard—he was Shipley's choice to design his own more modest residence. It could be that Shipley's invoice for his services on other projects were taken by Edelman as payment in kind; the two men clearly appear to have respected one another
  • On December 21, 1905, the Superintendent of Buildings issued Eugene Shipley a construction permit for his eight-room, 28-by-62-foot brick house. On the following April 3, Shipley pulled a permit for a shed and an "automobile house" on the property
  • Eugene Shipley did not have long in his new home; he died of nephritis at 255 East Adams early on the morning of May 18, 1907. His funeral was held at the First Free Methodist Church on East Sixth Street, of which he had been a founder in 1893 and where he had been a prominent layman. He is buried at Rosedale


Ohio native Eugene Shipley came to Los Angeles during the Boom of the '80s, forming a brief partner-
ship with architect John M. Babcock. He soon built several residences on what is today West 24th
Street between Broadway and Hill, near his final home at 255 East Adams, built in 1906. In
the meantime, retaining his own house on 24th Street as a rental, he built his family
a new one at 744 East Eighth Street, seen above soon after completion circa
1890 at the southeast corner of Clark Avenue (renamed not long after
when it became a segment of Crocker Street). After the Shipleys'
move to 255 East Adams, 744 East Eighth Street was
relocated to 1498 West 35th Street, where the
house is today, though much modified.


  • Shipley's widow, Elizabeth, and their daughter, born Annetta but known as Bird, remained at 255 East Adams after his death. Her older children—Guy Arthur and Emmaline—were married and living elsewhere by the time 255 was built; in January 1913, 26-year-old Bird married 37-year-old Arthur Kendrick Goodwin, who was in the wholesale drug business in Los Angeles and well-known as an amateur handball player and deep-sea angler. Goodwin moved into 255 East Adams
  • Elizabeth Shipley and the Goodwins would remain at 255 East Adams for the next 18 years. By mid 1929, Emmaline Myrtle Shipley Ebey Davies, who had been married and divorced from George Ebey—son of a pastor at one time of the First Free Methodist Church—and who had then remarried and soon been widowed, moved into 255 East Adams, coming down from Oakland; her son Eugene Carlos Ebey had married by then and remained in Alameda County. Both George and Eugene Ebey had worked in theater management, which may have led to the coming successor of the Shipleys and Goodwins at 255 East Adams
  • Mrs. Shipley died at 255 East Adams on March 26, 1930. In 1931 the Goodwins—including their son Eugene K. Goodwin—and Mrs. Davies moved to a rented duplex at 832 South Sycamore Avenue, selling 255 East Adams, somewhat improbably, to a Hollywood actor
  • Born as Valentine Stanton Burch in London in 1886, Val Stanton was half of a successful vaudeville team with his brother Ernie Stanton. While living in New York during the '20s, the Stanton brothers had recorded an eight-minute short in an early Vitaphone project, leading to Val's decision to settle in Hollywood with the advent of sound in feature films. Most of his credits appear to have been for Poverty Row studio pictures, although he appeared with Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, and Spring Byington in the 1936 Warner Bros. musical Stage Struck. (It was directed by Busby Berkeley, who was soon to move into 3500 West Adams Boulevard)


The Stanton brothers were vaudeville-circuit comedians who described themselves as "The Men Who
Laugh and Make the World Laugh With Them." Their disparity in height (Val was 5-feet-6, Ernie
6 feet), English-accented nonsequiturs, and, per one unimpressed critic, "meaningless ver-
bosity" ("In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, and in articulating your superficial
sentimentalities, beware of platitudinous ponderosity…”) nevertheless attracted a
producer at Warner Bros. as it rolled out its Vitaphone technology in a ser-
ies of short films including the Stantons' Cut Yourself a Piece of Cake.


  • Valentine Stanton Burch's parents were English actors who had emigrated to Chicago in 1898. His first wife, with whom he had three daughters all born in New York, died in 1920. He moved into 255 East Adams with his second wife, Frances, although she was replaced by a third Mrs. Burch—née Marie Harrington—by 1934. Burch's father Walter moved into 255 before the end of the decade; they were joined during the war years by Val's daughter Doris Hancock. While he wasn't of the rank of performers who could afford Beverly Hills, it is curious that Stanton/Burch chose to live so far from the studios in Hollywood; he would nevertheless remain on East Adams until at least 1948, his whereabouts then becoming unclear until reports of his death in Uniondale, Long Island, on January 25, 1967
  • Sometime between 1948 and early 1953, 255 East Adams was acquired by Enrique C. Rosales. On May 15, 1953, Rosales was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add an additional dwelling to the property; it is described on the permit as a stucco-clad one-story 26-by-35-foot building to be situated at the rear of the 65-by-148-foot lot
  • The Standard Oil Company acquired the property of 255 East Adams as well as the corner house and its annex at 261 East Adams in 1961 to build a Chevron station. The company was issued a permit to erect a sign on the combined property on December 15, 1961, even before its buildings were demolished
  • On March 10, 1962, the Department of Building and Safety issued a demolition permit for the structures at 255 East Adams; a demolition permit for 261 East Adams had been issued three days before. A permit for the construction of the Chevron station—to be addressed 257 East Adams—had been issued on February 13. The station was decommissioned in 1973, its building converted to a convenience store. This was demolished in 1976 and replaced with the current liquor-store building in 1980 
Illustrations: Private Collection; USCDL; The New York Times