2180 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1894 by real estate investor Frank Benkert on Lot 7 in Block 1 of the Boulevard Tract
  • Frank Benkert had arrived in Los Angeles from his native Germany via New York by 1890. Having joined Christian Straszacker in Straszacker & Benkert, butchers, he married his partner's sister Elizabeth on July 30, 1890. The Straszackers' father was a rich St. Louis cattle buyer, which appears to account for the meat business as well as for Benkert leaving the partnership in 1894 to invest in real estate. That year, he and his wife began purchasing lots in Block 1 of the Boulevard Tract, beginning with Lot 7 upon which they built 2180; over the next decade they would acquire eight fifty-foot wide lots in the block, forming a parcel that extended 257 feet back from Adams Street down a slope to what was then New Orleans Street and is today West 26th Place. Soon after the turn of the century, Benkert acquired property near the western end of Adams Street at its intersection with Washington, where he began a cattle operation. Frank and Elizabeth and their two children moved there, along with Mrs. Benkert's sister Lottie Staszacker, selling the eight lots of 2180 to Thomas S. Fuller and his wife, Emma. The Herald reported the sale on March 14, 1905
  • Thomas and Emma Fuller bought two additional lots in the Boulevard Tract, these in Block 2 and not contiguous with their property in Block 1. On that parcel in 1909 the Fullers built 2234 West Adams, which still stands. They then leased 2180 West Adams to bachelor real estate broker Fenwick A. Carter and his sister Elizabeth Carter, who had come to Los Angeles from Vevay, Indiana, in 1901. Fenwick Carter died at 2180 on August 26, 1916. Elizabeth Carter, an artist, moved to the home of another brother nearby on LaSalle Street
  • Just six weeks after Fenwick Carter died, Emma Fuller expired at 2234 West Adams. Her widower would be moving to 2180, but between the departure of the Carters and his relocation, he leased the expansive rear of the property, if not the house itself, to nurseryman Shigezo Nishida. Nishida used the land as an annex to his nursery located just across New Orleans Street from the rear of 2180
  • On July 8, 1919, the Times reported that Thomas Fuller had just sold 2234 West Adams; he would be moving to 2180. Shigezo Nishida appears to have retained his operation on the property at least for a time
  • Still living at 2180 West Adams, Thomas S. Fuller died in Los Angeles on May 29, 1926. The Times reported on June 18 that he had left his estate to his housekeeper, Mattie Sandmo, although it is unclear as to whether this included 2180, or if it did, whether she kept it; she does not appear to have lived in it after Fuller's death  
  • The ownership of 2180 West Adams between 1927 and 1949 is uncertain. There were renters: From 1929 to 1934, divorcée Mabel Boissevain was in residence. For a few years from 1938 to 1943, the house was leased by the widow and children of James Van Meter, a well-known eccentric inventor among whose projects were chemical processes to extract gold from low-grade ore and gases used in citrus-grove fumigation and to fight boll weevil infestations in cotton fields. According to his January 1938 obituary in The New York Times, Van Meter was an intimate of Edison, Burbank, Marconi, and Tesla
  • Esther Van Meter, a great-granddaughter of John Quincy Adams occupied 2180 West Adams with her daughter and four of five sons. In 1942, James, Daniel, and Baron Van Meter (35, 28, and 26, respectively) were charged with failure to register as members of anti-war organization; they claimed to have only attended meetings of "Friends of Progress," an organization founded in 1941 and labeled subversive by the government and said to have ties to the pro-Nazi German American Bund. Life magazine called the group pro-Axis and its founder, Robert Noble, a fascist; he would ultimately be sentenced to five years in prison. Daniel and Baron Van Meter are described in court records as having distributed anti-Semitic circulars; they served time in San Quentin. An indication of life at once-genteel 2180 West Adams is revealed in an article in the Los Angeles Times on April 17, 1942, which described the Van Meter brothers as favoring 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots; also included is a reference to them raising goats, chickens, and rabbits on the property. Baron would go on to become a noted beer-can collector and square-dancing enthusiast; Daniel would gain attention as a paranoid right-wing bigot, terrified of "others," and as the builder of the Tower of Wooden Pallets in Sherman Oaks, which was Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #184 while it lasted. (More on the pallets and the Van Meter brothers is here.) Once Daniel and Baron were sent to the penitentiary, Esther Van Meter left 2180
  • A building permit authorizing interior alterations at 2180 West Adams was issued on September 27, 1945, to a party by the name of Lewis. By August 1948, the house was being advertised for sale in the Los Angeles Sentinel: "4 bedrooms. Xlnt. location for professionals"; on December 11, 1949, the Times reported that the Cosmopolitan Chess Club would be moving into 2180 on the 21st. The club would occupy the house into the late '50s
  • By 1960, 2180 West Adams had been acquired by businessman Lucius Lomax Sr., who had moved into 2190 next door in 1956. Lomax owned the famous Dunbar Hotel for a time during the '30s; he is described variously as a gambler, a brothel-keeper, a bootlegger, a lawyer, a gangster, a power broker, a boxing promoter, and a financier. He bankrolled the Los Angeles Tribune, founded in 1941 by pioneering African-American journalist and civil-rights activist Almena Davis, who married his son in 1949 after Junior's first wife divorced him, charging that he had fathered Almena's two children
  • In 1960, 2180 West Adams was being occupied by the actor Byron Ellis, apparently rented to him by Lomax. A permit issued to Lomax by the Department of Building and Safety on March 28, 1960, for a small stucco addition to the house was signed by Ellis. Classified ads offering rooms for rent at 2180 ran in the Sentinel during 1959; it may be that Mr. Ellis and his wife, who had once owned the Olivia Apartments in the house at 824 East Adams Boulevard, managed the building
  • Reportedly despondent over a lingering illness, Lucius Lomax Sr. committed suicide next door at 2190 West Adams on June 27, 1961
  • The Department of Building and Safety issued a demolition permit for 2180 West Adams on February 26, 1962
  • 2190 West Adams was demolished in 1965; Lucius Lomax's heirs appear to have sold part of its original parcel (the part comprised of Lots 8-11 in Block 1 of the Boulevard Tract) and the single lot on which 2180 once stood (7) to the developers of what would be the tenth in the Southern California chain of Golden Age Convalescent Homes. The Department of Building and Safety issued a permit for the facility, the structure of which still stands, on June 5, 1969; the building now houses the John Tracy Center, which has recently moved west along the street from 758 and 806, at 2160 West Adams  


Illustration: Private Collection