3315 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Built as 2505 West Adams Street in 1906 by Santa Fe Railway executive Frederic Chandler Ripley on a parcel comprised of the west 47 feet of Lot 18 and the east 47 feet of Lot 19 in the Adams & Fourth Avenue Tract. 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
  • Architect: Charles F. Whittlesey
  • Charles Whittlesey's sketch of the Ripley house, seen above, appeared in the Los Angeles Express on August 26, 1905. A description accompanied the image: "...the first story will be of rough, pebble-dash concrete. The second story will be of Swiss timber work. The roof will be of split shingles.... On the first floor there will be a living room, reception hall, dining room and kitchen, together with a front and rear porch. On the second floor there will be five bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a front and rear balcony. Each of the balconies will command an excellent view of the surrounding country. The interior finish of the first floor will be in slashed grain Oregon pine. The second floor will be finished in white enamel." 
  • Boston native F. C. Ripley's father, Edward Payson Ripley, was president of the Santa Fe Railway for exactly 24 years (he resigned on January 1, 1920, a month before he died). At the time he built 2505 West Adams Street, F. C. was the assistant general manager of the Santa Fe's oil properties; in 1905, the railroad acquired the Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company, of which F. C. Ripley later became the vice-president and general manager


The family firm: While no images of F. C. Ripley's house on Adams Street have surfaced, there was a
design connection to the Santa Fe's La Grande Station, which opened in Los Angeles on July 29,
1893. While the residence is unlikely to have resembled the flamboyantly Moorish station,
both appear to have come from drawing boards of the railroad's engineering office.
La Grande Station was designed by the Santa Fe's chief engineer in 1893,
Fred T. Perris, for whom the city of Perris is named (some sources
cite company draftsman B. Frank Levet Jr.); their Santa Fe
colleague Richard H. Wells is likely to have been the
the architect of Ripley's 2505 West Adams.


  • F. C. and Vernette Ripley "of 2505 West Adams" were in their new house by May 18, 1906, when, the Herald of June 13 reported, a second son was born to them. He was christened Frederic C. Ripley Jr.; the Ripleys' first son had been named for his paternal grandfather. A third son, Forbes, was born in 1909. By April 1910, the Ripley household also included Mrs. Ripley's mother, Vernette Snyder—for whom the Ripleys' daughter, born on October 14, 1913, would be named—and two servants
  • In anticipation of Vernette's birth, the Ripleys enlarged two rooms of the house to the design of Richard H. Wells; a permit for the work was issued by the Department of Buildings on May 22, 1913, under the original address of 2505 West Adams. Richard Wells, whose brother Arthur G. Wells was the Santa Fe's general manager, was an architect in the engineering department of the railroad, based in Los Angeles. Also pulled by Wells on May 22, 1913, was a permit for a new garage for Ripley behind the house
  • With annexation-related address and street-name alterations occurring in the city during the 1910-1913 period, 2505 would be renumbered as 3315 West Adams
  • The year 1919 was a bit of a dark time for the Ripleys; on May 11, Vernette Snyder died at home; on the evening of November 26, with the entire family at home, a prowler unversed in reconnaissance climbed into an upstairs bathroom where Mrs. Ripley's visiting brother Charles C. Snyder was shaving. Grabbed by Mr. Snyder, the intruder shot him in the shoulder and escaped by running downstairs past family members and out onto Adams Street; he was thought to be the perpetrator of a number of recent University and Wilshire district robberies. An electrical engineer for the Santa Fe's Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company, Charles Snyder recovered and went ahead with his plans to marry in January
  • The Ripleys led the lives of typical Southwest Blue Book Angelenos of their time; while Mrs. Ripley ran the house and did volunteer work in support of the Assistance League (local social competition for the Junior League) and the Historical Society of Southern California—and indulged her hobby of collecting dolls—the older boys were sent east to school, no doubt with Santa Fe passes for their comings and goings. In the mid-'20s, Edward was at Dartmouth and Frederic Jr., for whom travel would take the place of higher education, at Deerfield; Forbes would be going to U.S.C after being graduated from Los Angeles High School. The three boys took educational round-the-world tours, though Forbes, sadly, would not return from his. He died in New York on May 21, 1929, reportedly having contracted an illness while overseas. (The family established a scholarship at the high school in his memory the next year.) Vernette Ripley attended U.C.L.A. and after travel abroad of her own married Stanford man Donn Tatum in 1937 at E. P. Ripley's house in Santa Barbara, still in family hands. The Ripleys were unusually steadfast in their loyalty to West Adams; while the vast majority of their social cohort had left the district by the time of Pearl Harbor, the family would remain until the early 1960s when the Santa Monica Freeway infamously walled off West Adams from the newer neighborhoods to which their friends had begun to retreat in the 1920s. Even more unusual is that the Ripleys remained in the house they built in 1906 for 55 years, their phone number, EMpire 7460, carrying over into the dial age as REpublic 4-7460, still in use in 1961
  • Even with their children long gone from 3315 West Adams, preferring in their adulthood newer Los Angeles neighborhoods, the South Coast, and Ojai, the Ripleys would not budge. F. C. Ripley died at the Santa Fe Hospital in Boyle Heights on April 11, 1960; Vernette Ripley, still unmoved, died at 3315 West Adams Boulevard on December 22, 1961. Within a year, the house would be demolished and construction started on its replacement
  • The Ripley heirs wasted little time in disposing of 3315, which was just the sort of property that developer Joseph Stabler, seizing on the opportunities presented by evolving West Adams, was interested in. He and his eponymous construction company had early in 1962 replaced adjacent houses at 4105 and 4025 West Adams Boulevard with 26-unit apartment complexes; he would be using the same formula after acquiring 3315 and its easterly neighbor 3301
  • A demolition permit for 3315 West Adams was issued to Stabler by the Department of Building and Safety on October 9, 1962. Two days later, he pulled a permit for a 23-unit apartment complex to replace it. Called initially the Le Mans, it was later named the Marcell Arms. Recently refurbished, it is now known simply as 3315 West Adams Boulevard 




The Le Mans at 3315 West Adams—known for a time later
as the Marcell Arms—has now been on its lot longer than the Ripley
house, which stood from 1906 to 1962. A companion building of similar
size replaced the neighboring residence at 3301 around the same
time. At far left is a glimpse of a boulevard survivor at 3321.





Illustrations: Private Collection; LAE; LAT;