2070 West Adams Street

PLEASE ALSO SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO ADAMS BOULEVARD, CLICK HERE




  • Built in 1905 by former Los Angeles mayor Cameron Erskine Thom. It was sited 135 feet back from the curb on a 166-by-590-foot, 2.23-acre parcel beginning 420 feet west of the southwest corner of Adams Street and Western Avenue
  • Architect: Hudson & Munsell (Frank D. Hudson and William A. O. Munsell)
  • The Department of Buildings issued Cameron E. Thom a construction permit for a 14-room house on September 19, 1905. It was described on the document as having a façade of brick and shingles, with a shingled peaked roof, five chimneys, and six toilets. The dining room was enlarged and a porch enclosed in the summer of 1911; the next year, an outbuilding was relocated 150 feet down the slope toward the property's border at West 27th Street
  • Virginia-born Cameron E. Thom came west as a '49er, and afterward, with his law degree from the University of Virginia, opened a legal practice in Sacramento. After a stop in San Francisco, he moved south in 1854. That year he became district attorney of Los Angeles County, a post that overlapped with a two-year term as city attorney. He then served as a state senator and two additional nonconsecutive terms as county D.A. before being elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1882 for two years. He was a founder in 1871 of the Farmers & Merchants Bank and a lifelong member of its board of directors. Thom was a founder of Glendale in 1887 when his 724-acre citrus ranch became part of that city; at the time he also owned a large parcel at the corner of Main and Third streets, in a lush garden at the center of which he lived in an impressive Italianate house for decades. Even after his own commercial redevelopment of the property that surrounded it, Thom appears to have remained living there until as late as the summer of 1900. He and his wife then lived for a few years at the Angelus Hotel while deciding on a new neighborhood in which to settle


Cameron Erskine Thom, mayor of Los Angeles 1882-1884, at 2070 West Adams


  • Not surprisingly, the Thoms chose the West Adams District, the stretch of which near and beyond Western Avenue was rapidly being developed with even larger of the high-end residences that the linear district had become famous for; among the other developments anticipated at the time was Berkeley Square, to open in 1905. In January 1903, at the northwest corner of Hobart Boulevard and West 22nd Street a block from Berkeley Square's west gate, Thom was reported to have purchased a 150-by-150-foot building parcel. After two separate transactions the following summer, the property was increased in frontage to 300 feet, with the Herald reporting that "a modern family residence" would be built. Then the significant southerly slope of Adams Street beyond Western Avenue caught the eye of the Thoms; the Hobart property was resold at what was no doubt a nice boom-time profit
  • Real estate investor Hanford L. Gordon had acquired a 166-by-590-foot, 2.23-acre parcel on Adams Street west of Western Avenue in 1902, paying $7,000. On May 22, 1904, the Herald reported that Gordon had just resold the property to Cameron E. Thorn, who paid $15,000
  • No images or adequate description of the house that the Thoms had Hudson & Munsell design and build on Adams in the fall of 1905 have surfaced as of yet. As did a number of builders of what amounted to in-town estates along the south side of Adams beyond Western Avenue, the Thoms gave their property a name: They called it "Wildair." A profile of Mr. Thom appearing in the Times on May 14, 1911, describes Wildair after five years of cultivation: "[The house] stands in the midst of liberal grounds, the front surrounded by great trees and a well-kept lawn..., while at the side and rear, tropical plants, fruits and flowers fill the air with fragrance and delight the eye"
  • Cameron E. Thom died at 2070 West Adams Street on February 2, 1915, four months shy of his 90th birthday. He had been married three times; his first wife died in Los Angeles in 1856. His next marriages were to sisters of old Virginia stock. Henrietta Hathwell Thom died in 1862, when the future Mrs. Thom, 20 years her sister's junior, was just 2½; Thom was 49 when he married 14½-year-old Belle Cameron Hathwell in November 1874. After his death, Belle Thom spent extended periods of time in London with her daughter Jett, who was the wife of Arthur Pelham Collins, the longtime managing director of the Drury Lane Theatre. Belle Hathwell Thom remained based at 2070 and died there on November 17, 1924. Three days later in The Lancer, his Times column consisting mostly of filler, newsman Harry Carr eulogized her thusly: "The death of Mrs. Cameron Thom takes away one of the last of the grande dames who ruled California society before the flappers and the movie stars came. In the eighties, Los Angeles, in its upper crust, was almost a Southern town. And Mrs. Thom was a leader of that old southern group, who belonged to the Episcopal church, voted Democratic and annihilated social offenders with a glance"
  • It is unclear as to when Daniel Murphy of 2076 West Adams acquired the Thom property to add to his holdings; the house itself was sold to the wrecking firm of Whiting-Mead, which was issued a permit for its demolition on March 6, 1928 


While photographic evidence of Cameron Thom's second in-town estate on Adams Street is elusive, his
first is seen here circa 1880. It was built at the southeast corner of Main and Third streets circa
1872 and was reportedly the first brick residence in the city. It remained standing as his
home even after Thom's commercial redevelopment of his property that included
leasing a section of it to the Los Angeles Panorama Company, which in 1887
built an enormous circular exhibition hall housing a painted cyclorama
of the Siege of Paris. Part of the house remained standing at least
until its appearance in a January 1934 aerial image, four
years after 2070 West Adams was demolished.
Horsecar tracks appear in the dirt street.



    Illustrations: Private Collection; LAPL