1581 West Adams Boulevard

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  • Built in 1907 on Lot 3 in Block D of the Adams Street Tract by developer and builder G. Frank Sloan
  • On February 8, 1907, the Department of Buildings issued a construction permit to Minnie E. Sloan, the builder's wife, for a two-story dwelling with a 38-by-34-foot footprint. (Frank Sloan had begun building 1571 West Adams two doors to the west in the summer of 1907; while himself occupying 1571, he began planning 1575 in between 1571 and 1581, beginning construction of that house in September 1908) 
  • Canadian-born Thomas Pattison Robertson, a merchandise broker familiarly known as Tom, bought 1581 West Adams from Frank Sloan after its completion. His family would remain in the house for nearly 30 years. Robertson and his wife, née Kathleen Pillsbury, had two daughters when they arrived on Adams from 817 West 23rd Street; after apparently having caught scarlet fever from a neighborhood child and having begun to feel ill on Christmas Day 1908, 11-year-old Kathleen Jr. died at 1581 on December 29
  • Thomas Pillsbury Robertson arrived on April 25, 1910. On March 27, 1918, at St. Matthias Episcopal Church a few blocks north on Washington Street, the Robertson's 17-year-old daughter Mary married Clarence Upson Young, an army aviator stationed in San Antonio; Young was the son of the first city attorney of Hollywood and later became a noted screenwriter. The marriage did not last. On June 24, 1925, at 1581 West Adams, Mary Robertson Young married dentist Ernest F. Walther of San Jose. (The Walthers' daughter Joann was born in Sacramento in 1932, but their marriage would the second of Mary's to fail.) Mary Walther died at the age of 40 Valentine's Day 1941
  • On June 14, 1915, the Express reported an overnight robbery at 1581 West Adams during which $125 worth of jewelry was stolen
  • On July 22, 1922, the Department of Buildings issued Tom P. Robertson a permit to add an 16-by-18-foot garage to the property
  • On Janaury 23, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Mrs. Robertson a permit to glass in a sleeping porch and to cut a new window into the west side of the house
  • After the death of her father in 1922, Mrs. Robertson's mother, Sarah A. Pillsbury, moved west from Boston and into 1581 West Adams. She would expire at home at the age of 81 on March 23, 1930
  • On July 18, 1930, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. Robertson a permit to place new shingles over the previous roof covering
  • A month shy of his 62nd birthday, Tom P. Robertson died at California Hospital on Hope Street on May 18, 1934. According to the Times the next day, he had been ill for some time
  • On January 6, 1935, the Times reported, as it did annually, on the various updates included in the most recent edition of the Southwest Blue Book. The editors of this tome, one of two local versions of the New York–based Social Register—which itself had published an edition covering Los Angeles and Pasadena during the 1910s and '20s—had the edge in prestige over the Los Angeles Blue Book. The Times might have been writing satirically when it reported that Kathleen Robertson's son and his recent bride were "among those who dwell for the present in the parental homestead, at 1581 West Adams Boulevard." The senior Mrs. Robertson's widowed mother-in-law was also in residence at the time. Somewhat significant is that the neighborhood had by now become distinctly déclassé, with the death of Kathleen E. P. Robertson on March 30, 1935, bringing another Blue Book family's tenure in old West Adams to a close
  • Commercialization of the blocks of Adams Boulevard between Vermont and Western Avenues had begun in the 1920s, with some purpose-built store buildings going up before the onset of the Depression. In 1936, the Robertson family sold 1581 West Adams to a man who would follow this trend
  • Dr. Victor E. Bruel, a pharmacist turned osteopathic OB-GYN, saw real estate opportunity in a neighborhood where, typical of the times in ever-expanding Los Angeles, 29-year-old houses were obsolete. It was Dr. Bruel who added the first front-yard commercial addition to 1581 West Adams; he moved into the original structure with his second wife Juliaette (known as Judy), his son by his first marriage Dr. Victor G. Bruel, and his father and mother, Charles and Margaret Bruel
  • On February 3, 1937, the Department of Building and Safety issued Dr. Bruel a permit to add a 38-by-22-foot one-story front addition to 1581 West Adams. The contractor was the Properties Maintenance Company, which was moving into 1571 West Adams two doors away, and later into 1575, as those houses, also built by developer G. Frank Sloan, were repurposed. This appendage would be brought nine feet closer to the sidewalk with a further addition in 1974
  • On December 16, 1941, the Department of Building and Safety issued Dr. Bruel a permit to add a pool to the property, presumably one used for hydrotherapy
  • Dr. Victor E. Bruel practiced at 1581 West Adams with his son into the late 1950s. Victor senior died at the age of 62 on Christmas Day 1959, by which time he was living in Sherman Oaks. Victor junior was still listed at 1581 in the city directory's 1965 edition, issued in April, although he had died on January 26 of that year at the age of 45


Dr. Joanne Bannister Ewing, 1931-2018


  • After the building's occupancy by a series of physicians between 1965 and 1973, 1581 West Adams and its westerly neighbor, 1587 (occupying Lot 1 of the adjacent Patterson Tract), were acquired by Dr. Joanne Ellen Bannister Ewing, a family physician. A graduate of the Howard University College of Medicine, Dr. Ewing came from an accomplished family; her mother, Lela M. Bannister, had worked as a film editor at the Pentagon and was a noted teacher. She was, sadly, killed by a deranged tenant in her Washington apartment building in February 1969
  • On November 20, 1974, the Department of Building and Safety issued Joanne B. Ewing, M.D., a permit for a remodeling of 1581 West Adams that included a nine-foot southerly extension to the 1937 addition made by Dr. Victor E. Bruel. The original house would now be classified as an apartment building
  • On September 12, 1975, the Department of Building and Safety issued "Dr. Joanne B. Ewing a.k.a. Joanne Bannister" a permit to demolish 1587 West Adams; 1581, our subject house, remains standing
  • On October 2, 1989, the Department of Building and Safety issued "Ellen Bannister" of 1581 West Adams a permit to replace a sign on the vacant lot at 1587. This enormous 11-by-23-foot billboard rose 38 feet above the ground on the west edge of the lot. The sign and its pole were removed in 2017
  • Dr. Ewing appears to have retained ownershop of 1581 and 1587 West Adams into the 2000s. She also maintained an office in Beverly Hills. She died on May 1, 2018
  • By 2007, Ampelio Flores and Jorge Escareno owned 1581 West Adams and the vacant lot next door to the west. On March 30 of that year, they were issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to replace the roof after removing the former covering. On June 14, 2017, Escareno was issued a permit to remove the tall billboard erected on the west border of the combined properties of 1581 and 1587 in 1989
  • On July 24, 2019, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to combine Lot 1 of the Patterson Tract, on which 1587 West Adams Boulevard had been built in 1902 and had stood until being demolished in 1975, and Lot 3 in Block D of the Adams Street Tract on which sat 1581. On February 1, 2021, the Department of Building and Safety issued a demolition permit for the 114-year-old 1581 West Adams Boulevard. On the same day, a permit was issued to Dream City Funding Inc. for a new complex of two three-story buildings containing seven four-bedroom townhouses with garages underneath on the combined lots of 1581 and 1587


As would also happen along residential Wilshire Boulevard, the spacious front yards of some big
houses along West Adams Boulevard were in time built over with commercial appendages.


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT