2190 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Completed in 1911 on Lots 8, 9, 10, and 11 in Block 1 of the Boulevard Tract by Redondo Beach developer Harry Ainsworth
  • Architect: Lovell Bearse Pemberton of Redondo Beach
  • The Department of Buildings issued Ainsworth a permit for the house's foundation on September 18, 1910, and one for the building itself on October 17, 1910
  • On November 13, 1910, Times featured a large rendering of 2190 West Adams with a detailed description: "The exterior will be of blue brick with terra cotta trimmings. The roof is to be of gray slate. Green shutters will complete the exterior effect. The main doorway will be one of the handsomest in the city. It will have a width of thirteen feet and will open off from a portico nine feet wide and seventy-five feet long, supported by eight classical columns and paved with tile. The doors will be of mahogany. Pilasters of enamel finish and leaded glass fan and side lights will enter into the entrance treatment. The house will sit 50 feet back from the street and the rear of the lot will be elaborately terraced. ...the back of the building will be three stories high, and this extra lower story will provide space for a ball room, together with servants' quarters, laundry, storage and furnace rooms. The first story proper will contain an entrance hall twenty by thirty feet in size at the rear of which will be a winding colonial stairway of mahogany. Back of this the conservatory will be built, and into this French doors will lead from the dining and living-rooms as well as from the hall. The living-room, twenty-four by thirty-six feet, will be finished in white enamel. The library will be fourteen by fifteen feet and will open onto a back porch. The dining-room, nineteen by twenty-seven feet, will be finished in white enamel with paneled wainscoting. There will be four colonial fireplaces down stairs"
  • Harry Ainsworth followed his father in the development of Redondo Beach and was serving his second term as its mayor when he commissioned his Los Angeles house. Due to his change of residence, he resigned from office on April 24, 1911,. He had moved into 2190 West Adams the previous week



 A rendering of the Ainsworth house appeared in the
 Los Angeles Times on November 13, 1910, along with one
of a house being built in a suburb that, among others along the
Wilshire Boulevard corridor, that would be responsible for the start
of the decline of the Adams District within a decade. While lot sales in
 Beverly Hills had begun in 1906, it was still an unincorporated town.
Below: A photograph of the completed 2190 West Adams ran in
the Times on April 23, 1911, landscaping not yet completed.



  • On June 16, 1916, the Herald reported that Ainsworth, who would now be relocating to his country house in Arcadia, had made a deal that day to sell 2190 West Adams to Chicago politician Thomas T. Carey. Carey's fortune derived from the Carey Brick Company; he was also the owner of the Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero. It was reported that Carey would be making 2190 his permanent home, although records indicate that he maintained his Illinois residency and in his first years of ownership used the house as a winter retreat
  • On June 11, 1917, the Department of Buildings issued Carey a permit to add a 14-by-14-foot sunroom to the house; on September 8 of that year he was issued a permit to build an enclosure over the property's swimming pool that would include dressing rooms
  • Thomas T. Carey retired from business in Chicago in 1921 and moved more or less full-time to Los Angeles. Among family members joining him at 2190 West Adams was his 22-year-old son Eugene, who began investing in San Fernando Valley real estate
  • Tom Carey, as he was referred to in his Chicago Daily Tribune obituary, died at 2190 West Adams on September 1, 1925. In recounting his life, the Tribune mentioned his years of service as an alderman as well as two unsuccessful runs for mayor. The cause of death was cited as a kidney ailment, perhaps brought on by stress—in January the Tribune had reported on recent troubles: "A warrant for the arrest of Thomas Carey, retired millionaire, one time candidate for mayor and picturesque [sic] back-o'-the-yards politician of the old school, was issued yesterday on a charge of operating a confidence game. A loss to stockholders in a defunct bus line of at least $100,000 is said to be involved. Carey is at his winter home in Los Angeles, but it is said by his lawyers that he will return immediately and face the charges." In February, Carey sold his 32-room residence in Chicago, described as being of brick and stone and having, improbably, a 50-car garage. The Grand Boulevard house was considered a flagrant display of Carey's luxurious lifestyle by his working-class constituents, their defection leading to his political eclipse
  • Eugene Carey remained at 2190 West Adams; in 1929 he married divorcée Lucile Hillery Greene, later referred to in some records as a professional singer. The couple had a daughter, Patricia, and, while retaining ownership of the house, moved to Granada Hills by mid-decade
  • The Careys lent 2190 West Adams to the Works Progress Administration during 1936 for a program that trained women between the ages of 18 and 40 in the art of domestic service. The Times reported that "The students are furnished with carfare, uniforms and aprons"




By 1940, palms in the front yard had grown big. With its second-floor
windows tucked under the porch, the appearance of the house from Adams
belied its size. Colonial Revival architecture had been slowly rising in popularity in
America as a counter to busy Victorian concoctions since McKim, Mead & White designed
 the Henry A. C. Taylor house in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1886. Across Adams Street was
2205, which had been sold to William Andrews Clark Jr. just before Harry Ainsworth
began building 2190. The Clark Library remains on the site of 2205, if not the
original house, behind a long brick wall as a reminder of old West Adams.



  • After 20 years of ownership, the Carey family sold 2190 West Adams to Keturah Elizabeth Smith Cantrell, whose husband, an attorney, had died in April 1936. Mrs. Cantrell, who had been faith healer back in Kansas, had been operating her Cantrell School in her home on South Kingsley Drive; she would reopen it at 2190 and by 1940 was occupying the house with her divorced daughters Lois Thorpe and Marcelle Bordner, two grandsons, two teachers, a cook, and "school matron." Described in news reports as a psychologist and teacher, Mrs. Cantrell was also a chiropractor and was a practitioner of Self Unfoldment. It is unclear as to whether the parents of her students understood what was being taught at the Cantrell School, but by 1941 it had morphed into a business promoting her interest in eastern mysticism. The indefatigable Mrs. Cantrell and her Science for Self Unfoldment, Inc., sponsored lectures and musicales at 2190 all, presumably, part of a proselytizing effort. There yet another business run out if the house; Billboard magazine's Music Year Book of 1943 listed a Cantrell Music Publications at 2190 West Adams. In addition, Mrs. Cantrell supported and ran the Spastic Children's Society of Southern California out of 2190. The Cantrell family remained at 2190 West Adams until not long after 1950. Mrs. Cantrell died in 1960 at the age of 93
  • It is unclear as to who might have occupied 2190 West Adams immediately after the departure of the Cantrells; in 1956, a third colorful character (if not a fourth) moved into the house
  • Lucius Lomax Sr. was in residence at 2190 West Adams by early 1956. A prominent figure in South Los Angeles, having owned for a time during the 1930s the famous Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue, he has been described variously as a gambler, a brothel-keeper, a bootlegger, a lawyer, a gangster, a power broker, a boxing promoter, and a financier. Lomax 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
  • As was the case with his predecessor Elizabeth Cantrell, Lomax appears to have few made few changes to the house during his tenancy; on April 6, 1956, he was issued a permit to install a range vent
  • Reportedly despondent over a lingering illness, Lucius Lomax Sr. committed suicide in his bedroom at 2190 West Adams on June 27, 1961. A nickel-plated automatic pistol was found near the body. The Los Angeles Sentinel reported details of Lomax's will on July 6, beginning with an enormous two-line boldface head at the top of page one: BULK OF LOMAX ESTATE LEFT TO GRANDCHILDREN. "The once handsome young man, who built an empire of wealth through his knowledge of human nature and material values, but still remained modest and unpretentious, also remembered some friends with cash grants and property." To his "friend"—the paper's emphasis—and secretary, Wilma Dungey, he left city property as well as a place in Laguna Beach. "It was also stipulated that Wilma Dungey shall have the right to use the property at 2190 W. Adams Blvd., plus its furnishings for ten years." It is unclear if Mrs. Dungey ever occupied the house. A deal appears to have been worked out between the family and Ms. Dungey resulting in her relinquishing her right to use the house
  • The Department of Building and Safety issued a demolition permit for 2190 West Adams on September 27, 1965
  • Lucius Lomax Sr. had acquired the adjacent 2180 West Adams by 1960. Lucius Lomax's heirs appear to have sold at least part of the original parcel of 2190 (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 




An early view of the considerably more modern-appearing rear façade
of 2190 West Adams reveals the southerly slope down from the boulevard that
would attract homebuilders to the ridge of its westerly reaches, where an estate area
developed before improvements to automobiles made slightly newer suburbs more distant
from downtown Los Angeles competitive. While there were sweeping views from the ridge as far
as the ocean and deep lots for terraced gardens and cooling breezes, it seems that Lovell Pemberton
might have considered the blast of sun on the south side of the house and equipped it with the sort of
deep overhang found on the north façade. The streetcars of the Los Angeles Railway that ran along
Adams in front of the house helped developed westerly West Adams but came to be considered
a liability by the richest Angelenos, who decamped for quieter Windsor Square, Fremont Place,
Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and other points north and northwest. The Ainsworth property rolled
down to New Orleans Street, which is today designated West 26th Place. The image
above appeared on the front of a postcard annotated by an individual who was
apparently either Harry B. Ainsworth's son John or his daughter Anna.





Illustrations: Private Collection; LAPL; LAT; Ebay