404 West Adams Boulevard


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




  • Built in 1904 on Lot 2 of the Lee & Johnson Tract by Gordis Royal Cobleigh
  • On November 6, 1904, the Los Angeles Herald reported that a building permit had been issued by the Superintendent of Buildings to Gordis Cobleigh's wife, Mary Virginia Smith Cobleigh, for a two-story frame residence at 404 West Adams Street. The budget was $4,000
  • New Hampshire–born Gordis Cobleigh had arrived in Los Angeles from Peoria in the summer of 1895, joining grading contractor Robert Sherer in his business. Mr. and Mrs. Cobleigh came with their daughter Virginia; their eldest living son, Frank, was married and remained back in Illinois. (Royal Erastus and William, twins born in 1865, had died in 1865 and 1898, respectively; Gordis Jr., born in 1870, died in 1873.) The Cobleighs rented various houses in the Adams District before building 404 West Adams including 625 West 21st Street, 500 and 820 West Adams, and 1935 South Figueroa, which the couple presented to their daughter when in January 1904 she married David E. Llewellyn, secretary of his family's Llewellyn Iron Works, whose family lived at 226 West Adams. An interesting side note is that a maternal great-uncle of Mrs. Cobleigh was Daniel Boone  
  • Gordis and Mary Cobleigh lived with the Lllewellyns until their new house was completed early in 1905; they would remain at 404 West Adams until 1911, when they returned to live with the Llewellyns on Figueroa Street
  • The Cobleighs sold 404 West Adams to well-known Arizona businessman Charles J. Babbitt, who moved his wife, Mary, and their five children into the house while maintaining a residence in Flagstaff. The family would retain 404 for the next 55 years, even as it came to sit on the very edge of the Harbor Freeway
  • The story of Charles Babbitt and his four brothers and their vast Arizona business empire, the Babbitt Brothers Trading Company, is told here; the company maintained an office in downtown Los Angeles. While Mary and the children appear to have spent most of their time in the city, there were frequent trips back to Flagstaff; the entire family would, in fact, be counted in both places in the 1920 federal census, enumerated on January 2nd at 404 West Adams and on the 30th in Flagstaff
  • On October 7, 1911, the Department of Buildings issued C. J. Babbitt a permit to add a bedroom and closets in the attic and a sleeping porch to 404 West Adams
  • Following the mysterious murder of bond broker and mining man Rueben M. Fogel in a house around the corner at 429 West 27th Street on October 29, 1918, 16-year-old James Babbitt and his friends were questioned on the street by the police about anything unusual they may have seen. The Babbitts' yard included the lot behind them extending their property through to 27th Street and to just a few doors away from the murder scene
  • James Babbitt would grow up to become an attorney and work for the family firm as would his brother John. The second-eldest Babbitt son, Paul, would also become a lawyer as well as the father of Flagstaff mayor Paul Babbitt Jr. and Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt, who also served as Secretary of the Interior during the Clinton administration
  • The Babbitts' eldest of four sons was a troubled soul. On April 15, 1925, the Times reported that Maurice Charles Babbitt, a patient at Dr. Geiermann's sanitarium in Pasadena, had gone into the Pasadena Hardware Company and asked to be shown a selection of revolvers and bullets. Grabbing a gun, Babbitt quickly loaded it and attempted to shoot himself twice, the hammer both times striking an empty chamber. Clerks disarmed him before he could try again. Sadly, Maurice succeeded a few months later in Flagstaff. On July 15, 1925, he died of a gunshot wound, which three days later the coroner ruled, improbably but perhaps in deference to his powerful family, to be caused by an accidental discharge
  • At the time of the enumeration of the 1930 Federal census in April, Mary Babbitt was living at 404 West Adams with Helen and Paul while her husband was counted in Flagstaff living with his sister Gertrude and sons James and John
  • Mary Bernadette Verkamp Babbitt died at 404 West Adams on April 11, 1948, at the age of 82
  • What little was left of the withering, once-salubrious heart of the Adams district, centering on the intersection of the Boulevard and Figueroa Street doors away from 404 West Adams, was destroyed once excavation for the Harbor Freeway began after the State Highway Commission announced that, as reported in the Times on June 24, 1950, "the Harbor Freeway literally will make a bow to the University of Southern California.... The bend over to Flower St. [south from downtown] is being made...to avoid interfering with plans for the future development and expansion of either the University of Southern California or the university housing facilities, including the fraternity and sorority row development along both sides of 28th St. and west of Figueroa." While rumors circulated as to the influence of telephone-operator-turned-papal-countess Estelle Doheny to spare her Chester Place fiefdom, the key to the altered route was no doubt the university and the power of its fraternity alumni now spread through an establishment trying to balance progress with collegiate nostalgia. To that cohort, now living in newer suburbs such as Windsor Square, Hancock Park, the Westside, and elsewhere, Adams Boulevard had long since become déclassé as a residential boulevard except in that, since the 1920s, its big residences had been repurposed as fraternities before the decision to consolidated them on the 28th Street row was made
  • An incident on November 15, 1954, underscored the proximity of 404 West Adams to the enormous gouge of the Harbor Freeway through the neighborhood. Per the Times the next day, a bus from Redondo Beach with a full load of 40 passengers was eastbound on Adams Boulevard when its steering gear snapped. The vehicle had just crossed the bridge over the wide Harbor Freeway construction site when the driver lost control, missing a palm tree by inches before tearing deep gouges across the lawn of the home owned by C. J. Babbitt
  • In early 1956, at the age of 90, Charles J. Babbitt resigned from the presidency of Babbitt Brothers Trading Company after 26 years to become chairman of the board. According to his obituary in the Williams (Arizona) News, at the time of his change of roles the company had general stores in Flagstaff, at the Grand Canyon, in Winslow, and in Williams as well as a number of drug stores and large ranch properties. Returning to live with Helen in Los Angeles, he died at 404 West Adams on May 28, 1956, a month shy of his 91st birthday
  • 404 West Adams was perhaps not the best place for Charles Babbitt to spend the last months of his life; under construction just next door since 1953, the Harbor Freeway opened to traffic south of Washington Boulevard on March 27, 1956. Helen was obviously attached to the house, if not her father. With deep and wide exacavations for the new roadway begun three years before, 414 West Adams next door, along with 422, had been demolished and 428 moved to West 39th Street. The freeway's northbound Adams Boulevard off-ramp became the Babbitts' new and noisy neighbor
  • Despite the sound of thousands of cars a day rushing by on the freeway rising, as sound does, toward 404 West Adams, Helen Babbitt, who never married, remained, rather amazingly, for another decade. She was still listed there in the city directory's 1965 edition issued in July. The demolition date of 404 West Adams appears to be 1966, after which its site was taken over by Los Angeles County as parking for its social-services buildings on Grand Avenue between Adams and West 28th Street




The Cobleigh-Babbitt house at 404 West Adams
sat hard by the Harbor Freeway during its last decade.
The house is circled in red in the 1960 aerial view below;
St. Vincent de Paul Church at the northwest corner of Adams
and Figueroa is at the bottom right of the image with St. John's
Episcopal across the intersection. Flower Street swerves as
it bridges the freeway, which is seen as it bends to
accommodate U.S.C. campus to the southwest.




Illustrations: Private Collection; LAPL