1109 West Adams Boulevard
PLEASE ALSO SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO ADAMS BOULEVARD, CLICK HERE
- Built in 1896 on a parcel comprised of Lot 8 and part of Lot 9 of Deitz's Adams Street Tract by banker William H. Holliday. The house was initially addressed 1021 West Adams, at which Holliday was listed in the 1897 city directory; this became 1109 in the next edition
- On June 11, 1896, both the Times and the Express reported that William Holliday had just the bought southerly portions of Lots 1, 2, and 3 and all of Lots 8, 9, and 10 of Deitz's Adams Street Tract for $7,000. The Los Angeles Herald of September 3 reported that William H. Holliday had been issued a permit for a $6,000, two-story dwelling near the corner of Adams and Hoover; on January 14, 1897, the paper reported that Holliday and his family had moved into their new house
- William and Flora Holliday's only child, Maria Louise, died of diphtheria at 1109 West Adams on April 11, 1902, age 11. The event appears to have been the cause of the Hollidays' departure from the house, which they left within six months
- The Herald of October 12, 1902, reported the Hollidays' sale of 1109 West Adams to Hattie D'Acheul for $15,000
- After extended stays at the Hotel Westminster and then at the Angelus, the Hollidays moved to 605 Avenue 66 in the Garvanza district of Los Angeles, about as far as they could get from their old neighborhood and still be within the city limits. They would, interestingly, return to it in when they bought 1386 West Adams in 1912
- Well-heeled and well-connected Harry Achille D'Acheul and his wife Hattie were recent arrivals in Los Angeles from Butte, Montana, where Mr. D'Acheul had been a druggist but also an investor in mining alongside the legendary William A. Clark; D'Acheul was also a co-owner of the first electric plant in Butte with Clark and his brother J. Ross Clark, who completed 710 West Adams in 1904. After visiting the city as winter tourists for years, the D'Acheuls rented the house Willard H. Stimson had built in 1893 at 2426 South Figueroa, across the street from his late father Thomas D. Stimson's famous red sandstone house at 2421. On May 28, 1901, the Herald reported that the D'Acheuls had bought the two lots just north of 2426 South Figueroa and had plans to build their own residence. This venture, however, was dropped when they got wind of the Hollidays' decision to leave 1109 West Adams
 |
| As seen in the trade journal The Inland Architect and News Record, June 1904 |
- It seems that Harry and Hattie D'Acheul decided to spend future winters in more resort-like Pasadena rather than in growing Los Angeles; by early 1906, they had sold 1109 West Adams to a retired Wall Street financier, Spencer Henry Smith, a vigorous well-born native of Manhattan who had already spent considerable time in Southern California and who was happy to have the house as a seasonal city residence
- Spencer Smith's first wife, Eliza, a granddaughter of Walter Bowne, a rich businessman who once employed Smith and who was mayor of New York from 1829 to 1833, had generously supported the career of uber-talented sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The artist appears to have been adept at charming older women; he was also championed by noted Southern Californian Jessie Benton Fremont and Catalina developer Hancock Banning. (Borglum went on to sculpt Stone Mountain in Georgia as well as Mount Rushmore and to express virulent racist and xenophobic sentiments despite being the son of a Danish immigrant.) Eliza Smith died in Southern California in 1892. Deciding to spend more time on the west coast, Spencer Henry Smith was 79 when he bought 1109 West Adams, and he seems to have been rejuvenated by the purchase. Having had his eye on the daughter of a former associate he'd known since she was a girl, he dashed secretively back east to Philadelphia to marry 47-year-old Miss Catherine Dallett on August 9, 1907. Some press reports announcing the surprise wedding cut a few years off his age—he'd turned 80 the previous March—and as many as 12 off hers, but the new Mrs. Smith did indeed enliven 1109 West Adams, where she was taken up forthwith by local high society. The second Mrs. Smith entertained regularly and lavishly at 1109
- It appears that, with the aim of expanding their house and grounds, the Smiths acquired the next-door parcel comprised of Lots 6 and 7 of Dietz's Adams Street Tract, containing 1119 West Adams, in 1909. Esteemed architect Sumner P. Hunt, now partnered with Wesley Eager and Silas Burns, was being employed by the couple to begin work on enlarging 1109. Perhaps as partial payment, Hunt took possession of 1119 itself; in any case it is his name and signature that appears as its owner on the permit for the relocation of 1119 to the northeast corner of Ellendale Place and West 29th Street issued by the Department of Buildings on May 10, 1909. The footprint of the Smith house expanded onto Lot 7 of Deitz's Adams Street Tract; on August 31, 1911, the Department of Buildings issued Spencer H. Smith a permit to slightly enlarge the dining room of 1109 West Adams, with Hunt cited as architect. (Hunt was now practicing with just Silas Burns, Eager having left the firm in 1910.) The Smiths' combined holdings in the Dietz Tract would now be designated as Tract 1063. Our title image is dated May 1, 1910, prior to the dining-room extension
- Catherine Smith and her husband kept a summer residence in Montecito; Spencer Smith died there at the age of 90 on November 28, 1917. (In 1929 Mrs. Smith had George Washington Smith produce drawings for an addition or a completely new house in Montecito, but it is unclear if this project was ever executed)
 |
| Spencer Henry Smith, circa 1907, and Catherine Dallett Smith, 1924 |
- Mrs. Smith remained active socially and philanthropically into her 90s. In 1927, in a memory of her husband, she gave the marble lectern to the left of the nave of St. John's Episcopal Church, on Adams Boulevard a half mile to the east of 1109. The piece was carved by Salvatore Cartaino Scarpitta, born in Palermo, now living in Los Angeles
- Catherine Dallett Smith remained at 1109 West Adams through the neighborhood's decline, dying in her bed in the house on February 21, 1956, at the age of 95. Her obituaries described her charitable endeavors but erroneously attributed the first Mrs. Spencer H. Smith's support of Gutzon Borglum to her
- By mid 1958, 1109 West Adams had been acquired by the Chi chapter of Delta Sigma Delta, a U.S.C. dental fraternity, which had plans for expansion. On July 9, 1958, the Department of Building and Safety issued the organization a permit to make two large rear additions to the house. After selling 1109 to a developer—in this case the Union Oil Company—in early 1967, the men of Delta Sigma Delta moved to their present home at 1222 West 29th Street, a 1910 house designed by Hunt, Eager & Burns
- Between April and August 1967, the Department of Building and Safety issued several permits to the Union Oil Company pertaining to the demolition of 1109 West Adams. The Cowles house next door at 1101 West Adams had been torn down in late 1966; work on a filling station covering the sites of both houses began in the fall of 1967
 |
Grainy views of 1109 West Adams Boulevard in its latter years as a fraternity house, provided by one of the brothers, whose vehicles are parked on the lawn prior to demolition in 1967. Below: Permits for a visual mishmash of a multi- use building on the northwest corner of Adams Boulevard and Hoover Street that includes luxurious student housing were issued in 2015. Completed in 2016, it replaced a filling station and shopping complex that were on the site for decades. |
 |
A diagram appearing on the building permits authorizing the conversion of 1109 West Adams to a fraternity house illustrates the northward additions by Delta Sigma Delta in 1958. Nine years later, the house was demolished and replaced by a filling station on the former sites of 1101 and 1109 West Adams. |
