Added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 23, 1988

Added to the National Register as a contributing building to the St. James Park Historic District on September 27, 1991

Something you should know about the plaques you often see bolted to the wall at so many historic sites: they aren’t necessarily fact-checked by historians. The National Register of Historic Places doesn’t provide plaques (or require them) for NRHP-listed properties, so it’s kind of up to whoever’s paying for the plaque to determine what’s going to be on it. I’ve seen examples where dates listed aren’t consistent with the historical record, and even one example where the plaque claims it was deemed “A National Historic Landmark,” which is totally untrue. I treat these plaques like I treat a Wikipedia page: a good starting point for research, but not the end of it by any means.

This is all to say that the NRHP plaque attached to the Seaman-Foshay House is a confounding one. In addition to misspelling “Queen Anne-Eastlake” as “Queen Ann-Eastlake,” the plaque proclaims Joseph Cather Newsom as the architect, when none of the supporting documents for any of the four historic bona fides attached to the house claim a definitive architect. In fact its NRHP nomination form states:  

The house is typical of Victorian residential construction, and was probably designed and erected in 1888 by a local builder who may have drawn inspiration from a patternbook design and who used stock woodwork, mantels, and hardware, some of it probably shipped to Los Angeles by the railroad, such as the hearth tiles stamped “U.S. Tile Company, Indianapolis, Indiana.”

-architectural historian Patricia Murphy

The house

The Seaman-Foshay House is peak Queen Anne-Eastlake. The multiple gables and steep pitch on the roof, the asymmetrical facade, the play of different styles of cladding, the lathe-turned columns on the wraparound porch, the decorative curved brackets with scrollwork patterns, the starburst design on the pediment…this could be one of the “painted ladies” of San Francisco, immortalized in the opening credits of Full House. I am especially taken by the decorative frame around that square window on the second floor, which itself is framed by 16 smaller square windows. Though you can’t really see it from the street, on the south side of the home there’s a neato second-story balcony with two keyhole-shaped openings, an unusual feature for Victorian homes. 

There aren’t many pictures available of the inside, but from the description in the home’s NRHP nomination form, it would seem that a lot of the original wood and lighting fixtures are intact – or at least they were in the late 1980s. Parlor room, grand staircase, formal dining room, central chimney, built-in cabinetry – the Seaman-Foshay has it all. 

The house is set back pretty far from Scarff Street, and these days the front yard is stuffed with a variety of plants, including palm, camphor and a small bamboo grove. Some might call it “overgrown.” I would call it “jungly.” Especially with its current polychromatic green color scheme, the Seaman-Foshay House does its best to blend in with the foliage that surrounds it. 

The occupants

The Seaman-Foshay House was one of the first homes in the Chester Place/St. James Park neighborhood, which would soon become a fashionable enclave for the well-to-do. When the home was built in 1887, LA was in the midst of a building boom, due in part to the recent expansion of the railroad to southern California and a short-lived real estate bubble. Also of note was the establishment of the University of Southern California in 1880, with its campus just a bit south of the house.

Indeed, it was some notable educators who occupied the house in its early years. The first recorded resident was a lawyer named W.H.H. Russell, who was president at the time of a major title insurance company based in Los Angeles. A deed was recorded in 1892 indicating a transfer from John and Adelaide C. Machell (no evidence that they ever lived there) to the home’s first titular resident: William W. Seaman, who served as LA County Superintendent of Schools. Seaman lived at the house with his wife as well as his sister Josephine, one of the very few female professors teaching on the faculty of the State Normal School – a precursor to UCLA. In 1896, Seaman got a job as the Deputy Superintendent of Instruction for the entire State of California, at which point he moved to Sacramento. 

After Seaman moved north, the house on Scarff Street was taken up by his successor in the Superintendent of Schools gig, James A. Foshay. The two men likely knew each other from the LA County Board of Education, and as board members of the local Banner Oil Company. Foshay was a beloved figure in educational circled. He was a frequent writer on pedagogy, VP of the National Education Association, on the California Council of Education, a director of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, he has a high school named after him, you get the gist. 

Foshay used to host meetups of the LA Schoolmasters’ Club at his house, according to the LA Times. He was also a bigwig within Freemasonry. He served as the 34th Grand Master of Masons in California, even had a Masonic lodge named in his honor, which is normally prohibited under California Masonic Law. In 1906 Foshay became Supreme President of the co-ed Fraternal Brotherhood. 

A few years after Foshay left the house on Scarff Street, William W. Seaman moved back in. Records show he occupied the address again from around 1910 until his death in 1943, during which time his occupation was listed in city directories as “real estate,” “clerk” and “clerk, city auditor.” Seaman’s art teacher daughter Josephine (yes, there were two Josephine Seamans – or Seamen? – who lived at this residence) had the house until her own death in the 1970s. 

Strange side note, an LA Times story from May of 1938 reported that William W. Seaman suffered severe bruises after being “struck by a machine as he was going home from his work in the City Controller’s office.” Whether the machine intentionally struck him or not is unclear, as is which type of machine (Laundry machine? Espresso maker? Robot?) The same story reports an unrelated car accident wherein a 15-year-old Judy Garland suffered three broken ribs and a punctured lung, while filming Love Finds Andy Hardy. This was just a few months before she began shooting The Wizard of Oz. 

SO: a terrific Queen Anne Victorian, nestled in the overgrowth, occupied by two eminent men of letters and their educator wives or kids. One of the residents of this house would definitely have caught that misspelling on the NRHP plaque. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Murphy, Patricia: Machell-Seaman-Foshay House’s NRHP nomination form

+ St. James Park Historic District’s NRHP nomination form

+ Miglino, Malia: “The Mysterious History of the Seaman-Foshay House” (@la_history_girl on TikTok)

+ Miller, Mike: “Masonic Education” (CulverCityMasons.org, 2015) 

+ University Park HPOZ Preservation Plan (LA City Planning, 2005)

+ “City Briefs” (Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1896 – accessed via ProQuest)

+ “Film Singer Hurt in Crash” (Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1938 – accessed via ProQuest)

+ ”Foshay, Dr. James” in Press Reference Library: Notables of the West, Volume 2 (International News Service, 1913 – via Google Books)

+ “The Andy Hardy Series” (TheJudyRoom.com)