1235 West Adams Boulevard


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  • Built in 1896 on Lot 6 in Block 2 of the Urmston Tract; attorney Lynn Helm was the first owner if not the builder of the house
  • Lynn Helm had arrived in Los Angeles from Chicago in 1896 and immediately opening a new law practice. A member of the Princeton class of 1879—alongside future president Woodrow Wilson—Helm and his family first rented 2698 Orchard Avenue from prolific real estate investor Jane Ball Ridgway. Typical of talented, prosperous, well-connected immigrants to Los Angeles from the east, Helm was quickly taken up by local society; before long, he became a member of the California, Athletic, and University clubs as well as the Los Angeles, Annandale, and Crags country clubs. An owl-eyed commander of respect, Helm served as Los Angeles County's Referee in Bankruptcy from 1901 to 1915; he was also president of the Los Angeles Bar Association in 1909, served a term as president of the California Bar Association (predecessor of the State Bar of California), and was a member of the executive committee of the American Bar Association


Helm as seen in the Express, September 23, 1921

 
  • Lynn Helm remained at 1225 West Adams until completing a new house for his family at 2653 Ellendale Place in late 1903
  • By late 1903, 1225 West Adams was acquired by hotel man and real estate developer Joseph H. Bohon, who was returning from Redlands after four years at the Casa Loma Hotel. Bohon had first arrived in Los Angeles in the early '90s, managing the Hotel Westminster for eight years. He married Eleanor Page in Memphis on June 21, 1898; the couple had three daughters in rapid succession, the youngest, Henryetta, being born in Los Angeles on April 3, 1904
  • In 1904, Eleanor Bohon's cousin Kate Page Crutcher and her husband, attorney Albert Crutcher, built 1257 West Adams on a parcel two doors west of 1225
  • On April 16, 1905, the Los Angeles Times reported that Joseph Bohon "is having erected a twelve-room, two story frame residence to cost $9,700...at No. 1245 West Adams Street"; 1245 West Adams rose on a parcel comprised of Lot 7 and the easterly half of Lot 8 in Block 2 of the Urmston Tract, next door to 1225 and between it and the Crutchers' recently completed 1257
  • After the Bohons moved next door, 1225 West Adams became the home of Mrs. Bohon's mother, Margaret Eleanor Page, and Mrs. Bohon's unmarried sister Decatur Jackson Page
  • By early 1909 Eleanor and Decatur Page had moved to 2648 Orchard Avenue, a half-block south directly out of the front door of 1225 West Adams; it may be that Joseph Bohon retained possession of 1225 as rental property
  • Real estate and oil investor James North and his wife Edith, both English-born, moved into 1225 West Adams by early 1909; he and his wife Edith remained as renters until 1921
  • Dr. Franklin M. Greer, a dentist, was the owner of 1225 West Adams by early 1921. That year Dr. Greer was issued permits by the Department of Buildings to revise two porches and to lengthen the garage
  • On July 13, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Dr. Greer a permit to alter the front door and its sidelights and to revise the interior. On December 24, 1923, Dr. Greer was issued a permit to build a one-story, nine-by-nine-foot addition to the rear of the house intended as a workshop for his practice


Dr. Greer advertised regularly in local newspapers, as in the Los Angeles Times on December 11, 1921


  • In 1925, Dr. Greer, hiring Henry W. Greene as architect, converted 1225 West Adams into a five-unit apartment building, adding to the building three kitchens, three baths, and a rear stairway. A permit for this work was issued by the Department of Buildings on September 24, 1925; the conversion was completed by early January
  • The 1931 conversion of 1221 West Adams into a fourplex necessitated a renumbering of several houses on the northside of the Adams block between Magnolia Avenue and Ellendale Place, with that building taking the additional address of 1223 as well as having the 1225 designation reassigned to it. The original 1225, our subject house, became 1235 West Adams
  • Dr. Greer and his wife, Blanche, a dental nurse, would remain at 1225/1235 West Adams until 1935
  • Ownership of 1235 West Adams after the departure of the Greers is unclear. No resident owner is recorded in the federal census enumerated on April 19, 1940; by then, 1235 was the address of three renting families, with a new designation, 1237, the address of two
  • By 1946, 1235-1237 West Adams had gained another designation, 1239, and new owners, the sisters Helen and Zephyr Moomjean. Helen had recently moved down from Palo Alto; the Moomjeans were taking over the Hill-Young School of Corrective Speech, which they relocated to 1235-1237-1239 from its most recent location nearby at 2716 Ellendale Place. (The Hill-Young School had been founded in Minneapolis in 1923 before its move to Los Angeles five years later. Its founders were Edna Hill and her husband G. Kelson Young; after he died in 1938, Mrs. Young and the school remained on Ellendale Place until 1942 when she moved to Denver. The Los Angeles school would then be taken over by the Moomjeans)
  • Helen and Zephyr Moomjean and what was most recently known as the Hill-Young Method of Speech Correction were still listed at 1235-1237-1239 West Adams in the 1960 Los Angeles city directory but disappeared afterward
  • Aurelio and Rosa Orozco, owners of several properties in the neighborhood, had acquired 1235-1237-1239 West Adams by 1982, that year receiving a permit for upgrades; a Felipe Dias, who appears to have been related to the Orozcos, was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety on August 18, 1989, for a rehab of the building. Permit records indicate that the house had at one time been sided with asbestos, an early scourge of vintage Adams-corridor housing; this was later replaced by an application of stucco, a safer but no less detrimental alteration to many examples of historic domestic architecture in Los Angeles
  • In 2020, 1235-1237-1239 West Adams is known as the Adams Apartments and includes two studios, two one-bedroom apartments, and one two-bedroom unit. It is managed by the GF Property Group  



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; LAE