459 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1904 on Lot 12 in Block A of Culver's Adams Street Subdivision of the Shorb Homestead by Carrie L. McDonald; her husband, Patrick J. McDonald, who owned the Los Angeles Planing Mill, was the contractor
  • The Los Angeles Herald reported on December 27, 1903, that Patrick McDonald was planning to build a new house on Adams Street. On March 13, 1904, both the Los Angeles Times and the Herald reported that a building permit had been issued to Mrs. McDonald for an 11-room house at 459 East Adams; on March 20, the Herald noted that the McDonalds had sold their six-room cottage at 1160 East Adams in preparation for a move. On July 17, the Times included a social note that has the McDonalds in residence by that time




  • Rough-hewn Patrick J. McDonald, born in County Wexford in 1863, appears to have been nobody's idea of a pleasant neighbor. As soon as he moved his family into 459 East Adams, he got into a dispute with his easterly neighbor, James M. Flowers, who had begun building his house soon after McDonald began construction. Flowers, it must be said, does not appear to have been any less annoying than McDonald, his Fraternal Real Estate, Loan & Investment Company, at least, appearing to have been misnamed. The two men got began arguing as soon as the houses were completed. McDonald complained to a Herald reporter in February 1904: [Flowers's] house is a cheap affair.... Still, I don't object to that, but when he built his kitchen so that the smell of food would blow right into our dining room windows I couldn't stand it any longer. So I built a fence that reached clear to the eaves of his house." Once McDonald put up his barrier, Flowers built one even higher next to it and extended his to the sidewalk and went so far as to put a down payment on the empty lot on the other side of McDonald from his property—and proceeded to build there another ridiculously tall spite fence on a lot for which he hadn't yet been given title. "Mr. Flowers had visions of shutting out all the free sunlight from the McDonald home by fences on all sides," the Herald observed. The seller of the third lot kicked Flowers off, thwarting the "fraternal" Flowers, but the war was not over and the wall between the houses remained as the mill owner and the real estate man fumed for over a year. On Saturday evening, June 18, 1905, Flowers threw a garden party to celebrate his departure from the neighborhood "after renting his house to a colored family to further spite McDonald"—even more spite and even less fraternity. McDonald blew his top again, aiming a garden hose at the candlelit Japanese lanterns his neighbor had strung across his yard for his soirée—but only after starting a bonfire of rubber shoes and rotten eggs and blowing the smoke over the fence at Flowers's guests. The party host rushed "madly into the house and emerged again with a big pistol and a terrible glitter in his eye." He called McDonald a "mean little cur." The police were called and the two men wound up in court; while Flowers was physically the bigger man, he appears to have backed down completely and put his house on the market. McDonald would be going nowhere for the next 37 years
  • P. J. McDonald was issued a permit by the Department of Buildings on May 10, 1909, to add an attic billiard room and a sleeping porch to 459. Eight days later, his son Laurence, at the wheel of his father's car, struck a wagon at Vermont and West 24th Street, injuring a gardener. (Though he was deemed not to be at fault, Laurence McDonald, still living at 459 East Adams, injured a two-year old boy with his car on April 3, 1939)


Just-married Ethel and Edward Murray pose on the steps of 459 East Adams Street with their wedding
party on June 25, 1919. Flanking the couple are her sister Jennie McDonald and his, Helen Murray,
as bridesmaids; his attendants are his brother Frank and Ethel's brother Laurence McDonald.


  • Ethel, the elder of Patrick and Carrie McDonald's two daughters—there were also sons Laurence and David—was married on June 25, 1919, at St. Vincent's Church, then at the northwest corner of Washington and Grand. A small reception was held at 459 East Adams. The groom was Edward Murray, whose parents lived at 686 South Carondelet Street for many years. (The Murrays occupied a number of houses in our series; Edward's older sister Mabel Murray Howard lived at 601 South Windsor Boulevard in Windsor Square; his younger sister, Helen Murray Swensen—who was Ethel McDonald's maid of honor—lived at 16 Berkeley Square)
  • Patrick J. McDonald was still living at 459 East Adams when he died at St. Vincent's Hospital on December 21, 1941, at the age of 78. McDonald had suffered a stroke 14 days before while listening to radio reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; his younger son David was stationed in Honolulu at the time, though he was found not to be among the victims. A large obituary in the Times on December 22 described P. J. McDonald as having arrived in the the United States at an early age, living first in Chicago, where he grew up and went into the building trade. The paper has him being sent to San Diego as superintendent of the construction of the Hotel del Coronado in 1887. While he survived Pearl Harbor, David McDonald died at the naval hospital in San Diego on August 20, 1942
  • Carrie McDonald was still living at 459 East Adams in 1948, moving not long after to Victoria Park Place. She died at the West Olympic Sanitorium on May 22, 1951, age 87
  • Advertisements for 459 East Adams began appearing in the Los Angeles Sentinel in May 1948 describing it as being an "11 room 3 story old mansion, [with] 5 bedrooms, playroom, [and] 3 garages"
  • In recent years, occupants of 459 East Adams have reported experiencing paranormal activity in the house; perhaps the 115-year-old bad blood between Patrick McDonald and his neighbor James Flowers lingers


A vintage house that was the contractor's own—especially if he also was the proprietor of the
planing mill through which its lumber would have come—would seem to be more finely
built than those of the usual variety. Patrick McDonald was pleased enough with
the house he built in 1904 to stay for 37 years; his wife remained 7 more.






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