1264 West Adams Boulevard


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  • Built in 1900 on Lot 2 of the Ellendale Place Tract by Tyler & Company as a speculative venture. Tyler & Company was a family real estate development firm in which investor Marcus S. Tyler was partnered with his sons Walter, Bernard, Frank M. Tyler, and, in time, his youngest son, Arthur. Frank Tyler became the firm's principal architect and one of Los Angeles's most prolific residential designers of the early 20th century
  • Architect: Frank M. Tyler. Just 23 when 1264 was designed, Tyler would go on to create numerous frame residences in Los Angeles during the first four decades of the 1900s, many of them significant and still standing. He practiced both in connection with Tyler & Company and independently
  • Also during 1900 Tyler & Company built several spec houses in the 1000 block of Westlake Avenue in the Bonnie Brae district; one of those still standing, 1040, is nearly identical to the residence the firm was building at 1264 West Adams
  • On May 27, 1900, the Los Angeles Herald reported that Tyler & Company had just been issued a permit by the Superintendent of Buildings for 1264 West Adams, a "dwelling...east of Ellendale place" budgeted at $3,900. It would be erected next door to 1280 West Adams, which had been built in 1894, and in two years be flanked on its east side by 1256
  • Tyler & Company began advertising 1264 West Adams for sale in October 1900 alongside its projects on Westlake Avenue. Ads for both 1264 and for 1040 South Westlake referred to their use of red sandstone on their first floors. Elijah K. Rand bought the Westlake house from Tyler & Company in August 1901 for $6,500; 1264 West Adams appears to have had no buyer until late 1902 and does not seem to have had any interim renters


Built by the family firm of architect Frank M. Tyler contemporaneously with 1264 West Adams Street
was 1040 South Westlake Avenue in the Bonnie Brae district, one of many competing bon-ton
neighborhoods in burgeoning Los Angeles. In 1900 Tyler & Company, in the manner
of many residential designers, had stock plans for houses that less custom-
minded clients could choose from; 1040 South Westlake, erected
on spec as was 1264 but unlike it still standing in good
repair, shared most major design features
including red sandstone facing.


  • Frank L. Moore was a businessman who had founded the Western Commercial Company, dealing in building materials, in 1892, not long after his arrival in Los Angeles. Other of his related ventures included Marsden & Moore, a roofing concern, in partnership with Charles Marsden, and the Mountain Summit Lime Company. He also invested in property. A native of Massachusetts, Moore had come to California via Tombstone, Arizona, where, just turning 25 in May 1882, he married Lois Owsley, 19. They had a son, Julius, before she died. In 1888, Frank married Lois's youngest sister, 18-year-old Pauline, in Los Angeles, where she now lived with her sister Annie and their mother Anna Tasker. Pauline Moore, Annie Owlsey, and their mother remained in Los Angeles while Frank spent part of his time working in Arizona before settling in L.A. with the rest of the family by 1892. By the late 1890s, the Moores and Mrs. Tasker were living at 1017 Westlake Avenue and had become very well connected socially, often playing cards at the Orange Street Whist Club with the likes of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Murphy and Dr. and Mrs. Henderson Hayward. On March 14, 1895, Pauline gave birth to a daughter, Sylvia
  • Given their occupations, it seems likely that Frank Moore knew Marcus Tyler and his sons and would, no doubt, have observed the construction of their projects just across Westlake Avenue in 1900, perhaps paying particular attention to number 1040. It may have been Moore's intention to have the Tylers build him a similar house at the southwest corner of Harvard Boulevard and West 21st Street, having bought the lot there in September 1902. Within months, however, Moore and his family had moved into 1264 West Adams Street, as the Boulevard was then designated
  • On April 8, 1904, the Herald reported that there had been a small fire of undetermined origin at 1264 West Adams
  • While his business affairs were in good order and he was said to be content with his his life at home, overwork leading to severe insomnia and depression—"nervous prostration," as the press put it—led Frank Moore to take some time off in January 1905. Leaving the children at home with her mother, Frank and Pauline planned a trip to Hawaii, stopping on the way in San Francisco, where he sought treatment, receiving some relief, or so it was at first thought. On February 17, he took Pauline to the Palace Hotel for lunch. As they sat beforehand in the Palace's Palm Court just before noon, Moore excused himself to carry out what was later thought to be a plan. He left the hotel, bought a gun, and, having walked up Market Street to the Ferry Building, shot himself in the temple in a bathroom there at 12:30. He died soon after while being transported to the hospital
  • Pauline Moore appears to have sold 1264 West Adams within a year of her husband's death to businessman Max Russokov, newly arrived in Los Angeles, who does not seem to have occupied the house, or did so only briefly. On December 14, 1906, the Times reported that Lockhart & Son, a real estate dealer, had just sold 1264 for Mr. Russakov to Dr. Isaac McCarty of Corona. (Pauline Moore went on to marry gold-mine promoter Frank D. McPherson on October 29, 1908)
  • Isaac McCarty was born in October 1859 in recently founded Mason City, Illinois; his father, who appears to have been a prosperous farmer there, moved his family, after a seven-year stint in agriculture near Dallas, west to Riverside once Southern California was connected with San Francisco and transcontinental rail lines in 1876. Leaving his wife and nine children, he was dead within a few years. Isaac, his second-eldest child, determined to become a doctor, went back east to school in Texas and then was graduated from the St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1883, afterward setting up a practice in Dallas. He married his first cousin Ona Belle McCarty back in Mason City on May 22, 1887. The McCartys remained in Dallas, with visits to California, until settling in South Riverside—to be renamed Corona in 1896—in 1891. Dr. McCarty practiced there and served as an early superintendent of the Riverside County Hospital (now part of the Riverside University Health System) before he and his wife moved to Los Angeles and purchased n 1906
  • On December 7, 1911, the Department of Buildings issued Isaac A. McCarty a permit to build a 16-by-18-foot garage behind the house
  • On August 8, 1927, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued Dr. McCarty a permit to convert 1264 West Adams into a duplex, adding the address 1268. The documents reads in part "Remove non bearing partition, cut opening for 20 x 68 door"; the contractor was Edgar W. Black, whose family had developed their ancestral Hooper Tract on the eastern reaches of Adams Boulevard
  • Isaac and Ona McCarty led quiet lives at 1264 West Adams and, perhaps keeping in mind their close blood relationship, had no children. Without filial expenses, being frugal by nature, and having made wise investments, the devout McCartys spent time traveling widely in Europe and America studying church architecture. The culmination of this study would be their donation in 1931 of $200,000 ($3.2 million in 2020 dollars) for the erection of a Gothic Revival church at the northwest corner of Adams Boulevard and Eleventh Avenue, the site also having been donated by the couple. Designed by Barber & Kingsbury (Thomas P. Barber and Paul Kingsbury), the church was dedicated on May 22, 1932, the McCartys' 45th wedding anniversary. It became known as McCarty Memorial Christian Church, its congregation having been assembled from two existing parishes of the Disciples of Christ; the South Park Christian Church on East 42nd Street had been struggling to maintain a diminishing flock and the West Adams Christian Church had no proper sanctuary. The McCartys themselves did not regularly attend the new church, instead continuing to worship at the Magnolia Avenue Christian Church around the corner from 1264 West Adams


Dr. and Mrs. Isaac A. McCarty were pictured in the Los Angeles Evening Express on June 15, 1931,
with a rendering of the church they financed, McCarty Memorial Christian Church, which
would be completed the following spring and dedicated on their 45th anniversary.
The edifice still stands at the corner of Adams and Eleventh Avenue.


  • Dr. Isaac A. McCarty died at 1264 West Adams on March 23, 1934, at the age of 74; his funeral was held at McCarty Memorial Christian Church. Mrs. McCarty remained at 1264 until her death there at the age of 71 on October 20, 1940. Her funeral was also held at McCarty Memorial. In her latter years Ona McCarty was attended by practical nurse Jane Garvin, who remained at 1264 into the next year. Interestingly, her visiting evangelist brother Noah's wife Bessie gave birth to Joseph Noah Garvin in the house on February 13, 1941
  • As was common for commodious houses near U.S.C., 1264 West Adams became a rooming house after the death of Ona McCarty. Though ownership afterward is unclear, the house may have been left to McCarty Memorial Christian Church. Gladys Keppler, apparently the manager, was in residence during until 1948, and was one of a number of names associated with the address during the 1940s and '50s in various records such as voter rolls. A classified advertisement under the heading "Rooming Houses" in the Los Angeles Times on November 23, 1955, offered the building for sale: "NR USC Frat row...$17,000 completely furnished." Another for-sale ad in the Los Angeles Sentinel on May 19, 1960, described 1264 as having five bedrooms and two baths and as suitable for a guest house. An ad in the Sentinel on June 24, 1965, offered "quiet rooms" in a "Christian atmosphere" at $11 per week, with kitchen privileges
  • On August 28, 1972, the Department of Building and Safety issued investor George S. Allen a demolition permit for 1264/1268 West Adams Boulevard
  • Lot 2 of the Ellendale Place Tract would remain empty for the next 48 years. On November 15, 2017, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to investor Teddy Anderson for a four-story, 12-unit apartment building on the lot. Site preparation was underway by April 2018, with the structure nearing completion in mid 2020



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAH, LAE