1119 West Adams Street
PLEASE ALSO SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO ADAMS BOULEVARD, CLICK HERE
- Built circa 1900 on Lots 6 and 7 of Dietz's Adams Street Tract. The first owner was Joseph Hamilton Lapham, an oilman, president of both the California Fish Company and the Southern California Supply Company (a wholesale dealer of bakers' and confectioners' supplies), and a philanthropist
- Joseph Lapham, who had moved from 2355 Thompson Street, was listed as living at 1125 West Adams Street in the 1900 city directory, which was published on October 1; in the next edition, this was corrected to 1119 West Adams and remained Lapham's address through 1907
- 1119 West Adams Street came on the auction block on September 30, 1907; the Department of Buildings would be issuing Joseph Lapham a permit for a new residence at 2045 South Oxford Avenue in West Adams Heights on October 21. Lapham and his family would be in their new house by early 1908; he died there in 1910
 |
| As advertised in the Los Angeles Times on September 28, 1907 |
- 1119 West Adams was rented for a short time by banker George W. Fishburn until its sale to real estate investor William F. Young. After arriving in Los Angeles in 1907, Young had set up several real estate and construction businesses; seeming to sample neighborhoods, Young and his wife rented in the Westlake district before buying 1119, which they would flip before a stop at 1910 South Harvard Boulevard in West Adams Heights and then building 59 Westmoreland Place in 1909. (In 1911, Young built the Young Apartments that still stands at the northwest corner of 17th Street and Grand Avenue, hard by and noticeable from the 10 Freeway)
- Acquiring 1119 West Adams in 1909—the house, not the property—was, interestingly, esteemed architect Sumner P. Hunt, now partnered with Wesley Eager and Silas Burns. With the aim of expanding their house and grounds, the Spencer H. Smiths of 1109 West Adams next door acquired 1119 that year. The Smiths were employing Hunt to begin work on plans to enlarge 1109; it may be that Hunt took possession of 1119 itself as partial payment. In any case it is his name (and signature) that appears as the building's owner on the permit for its relocation to the northeast corner of Ellendale Place and West 29th Street that was issued by the Department of Buildings on May 10, 1909. With the house gone from Adams Street, the footprint of the Smith's 1109 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 enlarge the dining room of 1109, with Hunt cited as architect, now practicing with just Silas Burns, Eager having left the firm in 1910. The Smiths' combined holdings in the Dietz Tract, which now included Lots 6, 7, 8, and part of 9 plus more of the tract acquired toward Quincy Street, would now be designated as Tract 1063.
- After Sumner Hunt's relocation of it, 1119 West Adams sat on Lot 7 of Badham's Subdivision of the Ellendale Tract (later designated Tract 9307, with the house sitting on its Lot 2). Here the building became addressed 2830 Ellendale Place. The relocation permit also authorized Hunt to add rooms in his renovation of the structure. Over the years, various alteration were made; in 1948, the house was converted into a four-unit apartment building. It lasted on Ellendale Place until 1966; a permit for its demolition was issued by the Department of Building and Safety on July 14 of that year. A U.S.C–owned apartment building replaced it and the house to its north in 1981
 |
| After sitting on Adams Street for nine years, 1119 spent the next 57 not far away on Ellendale Place |
