3301 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Built as 2501 West Adams Street in 1905 by builder Walter E. Tyler on a parcel comprised of Lot 17 and the east 23 feet of Lot 18 in the Adams & Fourth Avenue Tract. Tyler was president of Tyler & Company, a real estate development firm in which he was partnered with his brothers Bernard L. Tyler and Frank M. Tyler, the partnership's principal architect; 2501 West Adams was to be Walter Tyler's own residence. Not long after it was completed, the brothers built a house for their parents around the corner at 2530 Fourth Avenue. Their father, Marcus Tyler, was a real estate investor 
  • Architect: Frank M. Tyler. Frank Tyler designed numerous frame residences in Los Angeles during the first four decades of the 1900s, many of them significant and still standing, both in connection with Tyler & Company—which in time included a fourth brother, Arthur W. Tyler—and independently
  • On September 10, 1905, the Los Angeles Herald reported that Frank Tyler had prepared plans for his brother's house to be built at the northwest corner of Adams Street and Third Avenue, then just outside the westerly limits of Los Angeles. The property would not technically be part of the city until October 27, 1909, when the Colegrove Addition, a section of county territory running irregularly from not-yet-annexed Hollywood south to Rodeo Road, expanded Los Angeles by 5,579 acres
  • On April 19, 1912, the Department of Buildings issued Walter Tyler a permit to add a bathroom
  • The Department of Buildings issued Tyler & Company a permit for a new house at 151 North Oxford Avenue on December 14, 1915; Walter and Edna Tyler moved into it after it was completed. It is unclear if Tyler—or the company—retained possession of 3301 West Adams; it was offered for sale or "for exchange for suburban property," with no seller indicated, in an ad in the Herald on May 1, 1918. Ownership still uncertain, the house was rented later that month
  • Edward D. Roberts was a San Bernardino County banker who had moved to Los Angeles to become vice-president of the First National Bank in January 1916. Having been living at the Hotel Darby at 234 West Adams, Roberts now kept 3301 as his city residence until his unexpected death after an attack of appendicitis in San Bernardino on August 5, 1920
  • After Maud Roberts gave up the lease on 3301 West Adams in 1921, another widow, Colombian-born Eva de la Plaza Griffin, moved into the house on what appears to be a rental basis. Colonel George Butler Griffin was an engineer, a lawyer, an editor at the Los Angeles Evening Express, and a president of the Historical Society of Southern California who had died in 1893, leaving his wife with six children at home in Lincoln Heights. Mrs. Griffin had been renting 2639 Monmouth Avenue before moving into the West Adams house with her unmarried daughters Georgina and Alma and divorcée Phyllis Daniels (born Pastora Griffin in Colombia)
  • Phyllis Daniels was the mother of Hollywood star Bebe Daniels, who, in what she managed to turn into a publicity stunt, had served 10 days in jail for speeding through Santa Ana just before the family moved into 3301 West Adams. On May 18, 1922, the press reported that Bebe was living at 3301 when the family was visited by a man named Charles Caprice, who claimed that he had been blackmailed into attempting to knife the actress because of his involvement in a narcotics ring and instead wished to warn her that she was in danger. Given that Caprice was hauled off to the psychopathic ward of the County Hospital after the incident, his implausible story seems to have been part of his stalking of Miss Daniels, the narcotics angle derived from lurid tales of drug use in Hollywood then in the news and soon to result in the death of actor Wallace Reid, among others. In a happier connection to Hollywood through her granddaughter, Eva Griffin met Harold Lloyd, who, reportedly, had started her on a collection of 2,500 kewpie dolls by giving her the first one


The house at 3301 West Adams had a peripheral connection to Hollywood in the form of Eva Griffin's
granddaughter Bebe Daniels, who started acting as a child and had a long career in film. She is
seen here in 1918's Take a Chance with frequent costar Harold Lloyd. Miss Daniels lived
briefly at 3301 before buying 2326 North Commonwealth Avenue in Los Feliz.


  • Eva Griffin appears to have bought 3301 West Adams in 1930; the family is listed as renting the house—from whom is unclear—in the 1930 census, enumerated on April 2; on December 22, Georgina Griffin is listed as the owner on a permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety for the enlargement of the garage on the property. Georgina Griffin is described as being a writer who lived at 3301 until her death at 59 at California Hospital on December 30, 1937. Her sister Clementina, who since 1921 had been a school principal in Hermosa Beach and living there with her Vassar classmate Ellinor Dewey, had recently moved back to Los Angeles to live at 3301. Mrs. Griffin was was still there at the time of her death at home on November 19, 1943, following a heart attack. Her obituary appeared in papers across the country, including The New York Times. She was just shy of her 93rd birthday




Principal Clementina Griffin is seen at her desk at Venice High School
 in the 1939 volume of the Gondolier. In a nod to Miss Griffin's extracurricular
 passion, the theme of the yearbook was aviation. Her letter to students under the
picture, "Flight Report from Chief Pilot Griffin," recounted her first parachute jump.
 She was also pictured with her plane. School staff was referred to in the book as
the "Ground Crew." Aircraft were pictured on the cover and endpapers.



  • At Vassar, Clementina Griffin, class of 1909, served as president of the school's athletic association, playing fullback on the varsity hockey team and center on the basketball team in addition to running track. Her yearbook quote was "What I must do, is what concerns me, not what people think." In 1920 she pursued a master's degree at U.S.C.; her thesis was titled "Poverty Among the Mexicans in Los Angeles." After her years in Hermosa she became the principal of Venice High School, though for unclear reasons she was demoted to the teaching staff after the 1940-41 school year. She continued as a teacher and worked with the National Youth Administration, but also pursued her interest in aviation, serving as president of the Los Angeles branch of the Women's International Association of Aeronautics. Her niece Bebe would also obtain a pilot's license
  • Clementina de Forest Griffin was enumerated in voting records as living at 3301 West Adams Boulevard for nearly 20 years after her mother's death, appearing to have remained in the house until it was sold to a developer in 1962


While Clementina Griffin had 3301 West Adams on and off the market during
the 1950s and early '60s, she retained ownership until it was sold to the
developer Joseph Stabler in 1962. Telephone service at the house
under the number REpublic 4-7460 was still in the name
her mother, Mrs. George Butler Griffin, when
Clementina left after more than
40 years of ownership
by her family.


  • Joseph Stabler and his eponymous construction company saw opportunity in a changing West Adams; early in 1962 replacing adjacent houses at 4105 and 4025 West Adams Boulevard with 26-unit apartment complexes, he would be using the same formula after acquiring neighboring 3301 and 3315 West Adams. Stabler demolished 3315 and began construction on a 23-unit building on the site of 3315 in October 1962; it was called the Le Mans initially and later the Marcell Arms. Today it is simply 3315 West Adams Boulevard
  • A demolition permit for 3301 West Adams was issued by the Department of Building and Safety on December 14, 1962. Four days later, the agency issued Joseph Stabler a permit for a 23-unit companion building to 3315, though rather than 3301 it would be addressed 3305. The replacement of the 57-year-old Tyler-Griffin house was initially called the La Seine. Later referred to simply as 3305 West Adams Boulevard, it was advertised as providing "Quiet Living for Discriminating Adults"




    The apartment building that replaced
    3301 West Adams Boulevard has now been
    standing on the site for as long as the house
    did; early ads for it     featured its original name
    and ran in the Times, the Herald-Examiner,
    and the     Sentinel. The house next door at
    3315 was replaced at the same time.





    Illustrations: Private Collection; Library of Congress; IMDB; U.S. School Yearbooks;
    Los Angeles Sentinel