2080 West Adams Street

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




  • Built in 1896 on Lot D of Tract 164 by real estate investor Mattie Clark Corson; the house was built 190 feet back from the Adams Street curb and placed at a 40-degree angle to provide southwesterly rear views toward the Pacific over the rear slope of a 2.33-acre property 
  • Mattie Corson was the widow of Washington, D.C., banker John W. Corson, a consumptive who had come to Southern California for his health; he died in Los Angeles on December 20, 1892, leaving his wife with considerable capital. Deciding to remain in the city, Mrs. Corson bought a lot on West 28th Street three weeks before he died; she then began buying and selling more property along the Adams corridor
  • Mrs. Corson appears to have met another widow of means during 1892. Jane Ball Ridgway had begun investing in Adams Street subdivisions not long before Corson, who followed her friend in purchasing lots in the adjacent Miller & Herriott and Nies tracts and building speculative houses. Understanding the inexorable westward growth of Los Angeles, the women acquired property in July 1894 that was not yet part of the city; the new Western Addition beyond Hoover Street would be annexed to the city on April 2, 1896. There, Mrs. Ridgway built the first 2076 West Adams as her own home in the summer of 1896—it would be moved across the street and west to 2193 West Adams in 1903—with Mattie Corson completing 2080 next door for herself at about the same time
  • For both Mrs. Corson and Mrs. Ridgway, real estate was a fungible commodity; nothing they built appears to have been meant as permanent homes for themselves. Among the other projects Mattie Corson was working on at the time she was building 2080 West Adams was 2648 Orchard Avenue in the Nies Tract. The Corsons spent some time there after a fire that occurred in 1899 while the house was leased to girls' school. Later, 2080 West Adams was rented for short periods before Mattie sold it in 1902
  • On May 25, 1902, both the Times and the Herald reported that Mattie Corson had just sold 2080 West Adams Street to Mabelle Langdon Burbridge, the wife of Oscar H. Burbridge, a stockbroker



Mabelle Burbridge considered herself a local grandee, but
she was also not one to leave unmentioned being a descendant of
Robert E. Lee, as she claimed in an illustrated profile in the December
1907 issue of House & Garden. The magazine called her "one of the most
exclusive women of Los Angeles' smart set, who, two years ago, started what is
now the largest and most successful specialty poultry farm in the United States." While
early on she was accepted by rulers of local society, her outspokenness and her having
entered trade did not go unnoticed; neither did the stories of her husband's intemperance.
But it mattered more to her that a man such as George Gill Green of Pasadena's famous
Hotel Green came to dinner and, after sampling one of her birds, ordered a big batch
of Orpingtons sent to his own kitchens. While House & Garden, referring to the
property as "Orpington Ranch," described "acres of gardens, lawns and
shrubbery in West Adams Street, the choicest residence section of
the city," the rear slope of the property down to West 27th
Street appears to have been one big poultry pen.


  • Newspaper reports of the activities of Oscar and Mabelle Burbridge paint a picture of less than desirable neighbors; before moving to Los Angeles in 1900, the Burbridges had been living in Long Beach, where Mr. Burbridge held a 10-year lease for a restaurant and bathhouse under the pleasure wharf there. In 1899 he had been found guilty of "selling liquor contrary to local ordinances"; alcohol would be causing him many personal problems as well. In Los Angeles, Burbridge opened a stock brokerage referred to in some reports as a bucket shop; he also became a partner in the short-lived real estate and building firm Burbridge & Brown, which he advertised prolifically. He was bought out of his Long Beach lease in 1904, apparently for being obstreperous. Mrs. Burbridge made the most of her new Adams Street acreage by raising rare Orpington chickens, which she sold for eggs and meat. Referred to in some news reports as the "Poultry Queen of California"—she kept a reported 5,000 chickens and 3,000 pigeons—she entered her birds in various poultry exhibitions and became the editor of the Pacific Fancier and a director and secretary of the Los Angeles County Poultry Association; sounding just as arrogant as her husband, her screed against a splinter group of the organization was transcribed in the Times in 1905. Not at all the typical West Adams consort, she served a term as the president of the California Business Women's Association. The Burbridges were contentious as well as litigious, with several reports of suits both by and against them over business matters. One case involved suing a neighbor whose Boston terrier ate some Orpingtons; another involved a tenant who rented 2080 during the summer of 1907 while the Burbridges were away, charging him with nonpayment of rent; the tenant claimed that the house was "infested with rats, mice, spiders and chicken lice" and that plaster was falling from the walls and ceilings. The Burbridges won $110.56. Within months, they decided to leave Adams Street to live on their poultry ranch in Inglewood, where ducks under Oscar's purview were added to chickens. The Adams property appears to have then been cleared of its farm equipment to prepare it for sale. In 1908 Oscar ran amok at the Inglewood property with a shotgun and two butcher knives, attacking his business partner and servants. He was arrested and jailed and later forced to appear in front of the Lunacy Commission, which judged him to be a mere dipsomaniac. In press reports, Mabelle was described incidentally as "having an alarming disregard of proper attire." In 1909, Oscar went on another gun-waving spree in a downtown Los Angeles barber shop, after which he was strapped down at the police station and judged to be showing extreme signs of alcoholism. The Burbridges were by this time divorced. Oscar somehow kept a downtown brokerage office open for a time; he died in Alameda in 1918. The indomitable Mabelle wound up in New York to become the local "Prudence Penny," domestic arts columnist, for the Daily News; in 1924, she published her book of personal-care hints, The Road to Beauty. In 1926 she married radio man Leon C. Gray, whose WAHG played the wedding march over the air to provide music for the home ceremony. The Burbridges' daughter became Betty Burbridge, a well-known screenwriter of, and sometime actress in, Westerns


The living room of 2080 West Adams appears to have been largely cleared of Victorian clutter by its
forward-thinking second chatelaine. In 1907 House & Garden magazine reported that "The house
stands well back from the broad boulevard, and is set in a grove of pepper and magnolia
trees. The interior is as charming as only a modernized old-fashioned house can be."


  • On March 21, 1908, the Times reported the Burbridges' sale of 2080 West Adams Street to Berlin paper manufacturer Gustav Werner for $25,000, its 165-by-591-foot lot including "an old two-story frame residence, a barn and other outbuildings." Gustav Werner emigrated from Germany to New York on March 22, 1902; he arrived to retire in Los Angeles five weeks later with his wife, Marie, and four of their five sons. Werner invested in local businesses and in mining with his sons
  • After a thorough fumigation, Werner hired architect John P. Krempel to renovate the house and add a one-story, 15-by-52-foot wing to include two bedrooms and a bath, for which a construction permit was issued by the Department of Buildings on April 9, 1908
  • Marie Werner died at 2080 West Adams on April 1, 1909; Gustave Werner died in the house on September 12, 1911
  • The timeline of the disposition of 2080 West Adams Street after the death of Gustav Werner is somewhat unclear; the house appears to have been rented for a least a short period before being acquired by businessman Daniel Murphy, who had completed the grand 2076 West Adams in 1910 to please his socially ambitious wife. With his annexation of the 2.33 acres of 2080, Murphy renamed his combined properties, formerly Lots D and E of Tract 164, the Antoinette Tract after Mrs. Murphy; the 2080 parcel was now its Lot A, with the 2076 parcel, also consisting of 2.33 acres, designated Lot B. In an article in the Times on August 6, 1916, describing the physical boulevarding and lighting of Adams Street then in progress, Murphy's recent acquisition of the Corson-Burbridge-Werner property is mentioned: "[Mr. Murphy] has just started in to enlarge and elaborate a landscaping scheme on which he has already expended a large amount of money. The front of the new plot will be put to lawn and the back into gardens." The 20-year-old 2080 West Adams would be demolished and replaced with the new greensward
  • The St. Andrews Gardens apartment complex rose on the former sites of 2076 and 2080 West Adams in 1971



Illustrations: House & Garden