1227 East Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1905 by real estate operator and builder Bert Paul Jolly on Lot 109 in Grider & Dow's Subdivision of the Briswalter Tract
  • On November 18, 1904, the Los Angeles Herald reported Jolly had purchased the lot. He and his wife Lura appear to have moved into 1227 East Adams Street upon its completion a few months later, although their stay was brief; the house was one of several of Jolly's real estate projects. He was moving to Los Angeles from pre-annexation San Pedro, where he ran that city's Hotel Angelus
  • The Los Angeles Herald reported on May 18, 1905, that Bert and Lura Jolly had just sold 1227 East Adams to another real estate operator, Luella Rogers, whose family occupied the house for several years before moving to 2104 Sixth Avenue. Mrs. Rogers may have retained ownership of 1227 East Adams while it was rented to wholesale produce dealer James H. Boggess
  • By early 1913, 1227 East Adams Street had a new owner who appears to have been the first African-American to purchase a house in the 1200 block of East Adams. The pioneer leading the coming demographic change in what was then referred to as South Los Angeles was produce seller William J. Harrold, who may have known James Boggess through business. Harrold and his family, recently arrived from their native Texas, would remain at 1227 for the next 25 years
The Harrold family had been living at 1227 East Adams, center, for 20 years when this image was
taken on November 18, 1932, by German photographer Anton Wagner, whose 1935 book Los
 Angeles: The Development, Life, and Form of the City of Two Million in Southern California
 was based on his archival research, field work, and wide-ranging walks across the city.
Wagner's work influenced no less than British architectural critic Reyner Banham
 and his seminal Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971).
 Wagner described this image as one depicting "good negro houses,"
 the neighborhood by 1932 having become a stronghold of
 African-American life. At left is 1219 East Adams
and at right, 1231 East Adams Boulevard.
  • On February 11, 1913, the Department of Buildings issued William Harrold a permit to add a 14-by-20-foot barn to the rear of the property
  • William and Bessie Harrold's fourth daughter, Bessie Mae, was born at 1227 East Adams on May 20, 1913; their first son was born at 1227 on November 16, 1918
  • The Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to W. J. Harrold on March 7, 1928, to add a 10-by-16-foot sleeping porch to the house
  • Much in the way that his family had been pioneers in what had been Caucasian neighborhoods flanking East Adams, in 1938 Harrold bought a house in Jefferson Park, a district undergoing its own demographic change. He may have retained 1227 East Adams as rental property, or sold it to someone who would be leasing it
  • Renting 1227 East Adams by the spring of 1940 was James Stasher, his wife Sicily, and their five children. The Stashers would remain until 1947, when they bought 752 East Adams Boulevard and moved the few blocks west
  • Worthy S. and Rowena Goodwin bought 1227 East Adams in 1947; Mr. Goodwin remained until his death on June 19, 1967. Mrs. Goodwin remained at 1227 into the 1970s. She died in Detroit on November 17, 1983, and is buried with her husband at Forest Lawn
  • While leaving the imbrication in the front gable intact, owner Roberto Mendez applied stucco to the exterior of 1227 East Adams in 1983; his family appears to still occupy the house. A new roof was installed in 2012



 Illustrations: Private Collection; CHSDL