Added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1979

In the fall of 1887, an early LA settler named Charles Harper sold a tract of land to a pair of real estate developers named Miller & Herriott. It was prime property, just north of the new-ish University of Southern California campus, opened just seven years prior.

The transaction occurred in the middle of a real estate bubble that took hold of LA in 1886-87. The Santa Fe railroad had just arrived, making cross-country rail travel to LA absurdly cheap. Land speculators began salivating at the possibilities for development, they gobbled up massive amounts of open land, invented new towns out of thin air, and advertised the virtues of California living to easterners and midwesterners eager to move to a land of sunshine and clean air. 

The response to all that boosterism wasn’t nearly as robust as anyone had hoped. The boom collapsed by summer of 1888, and many of the lots owned by Miller & Herriot remained unsold. In the July 12, 1891 issue of the Los Angeles Times, an unnamed journalist penned a short article called “The Harper Tract: A Suburb That Has Had No Reaction.” Ouch! 

Still, Miller & Herriott believed in their investment:

…They went ahead with substantial improvements, having their streets nicely graded and aligned with cement curbs and sidewalks. Then they proceeded themselves to build substantial and tasty residences, costing not less than $3000 each, which they sold as customers came along.

-“The Harper Tract: A Suburb That Has Had No Reaction” (Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1891 – via ProQuest)

Eventually their faith paid off. The neighborhood became a popular one among the upper middle class, especially after a streetcar line connected to the area in 1891, making it that much easier to commute between North University Park and downtown LA. Adlai Stevenson, the democratic nominee for US President in 1952 & 1956, was born in the neighborhood in 1900. Future California governor William Stephens lived right around the corner in the 1910s.

Built ca. 1890, the Miller & Herriott House at the corner of 27th Street and Magnolia Avenue is the oldest surviving house commissioned in the tract. It was built totally on spec, a “model” house intended to attract a potential buyer. Neither Miller nor Herriott ever resided there. And in fact, it was bought on a speculative basis, too – none of the house’s first three owners actually lived in it.

While some sources cite Joseph Cather Newsom as the architect (he’s also dubiously attached to the nearby Seaman-Foshay House, visit #147), others attribute the house to Bradbeer & Ferris, who designed a number of other Victorians in the same Harper tract.

It’s no surprise that a house built for an unknown client would be designed in the most fashionable architectural mode of the day. Back in the 1880s, that was the Queen Anne Victorian. On the Miller & Herriott House you’ll see plenty of the lathe-turned spindles, scrolled brackets and decorated eaves typical of the Eastlake variant of Victorian homes. A square tower looms above the southwest corner of the home; architectural critics Gebhard & Winter call it the home’s “commanding feature.” 

There are also some unique details here, unusual for the time. Most of the rooms on the first floor are separated by large sliding doors, so you could create a large open space should you be a particularly adventurous 19th century homeowner. Several of the window bays were designed to include much larger expanses of glass than a standard Victorian, and four of the rooms are seven-sided!

This house had an astounding 27 owners in its first 90 years, and plenty more since then. It changed from a single-family residence to a boarding house, then to a set of apartments and back to a single family residence. And just like the North University Park neighborhood around it, it has undergone periods of dereliction and restoration. Much of the woodwork inside is original, but most of the original stained glass is gone, including a bit over the front door transom that was sold to a restaurant somewhere near Disneyland, according to a couple LA Times articles from 1980.  

In the late 1970s, the Miller & Herriott House’s owners John Evan Miller (I’m assuming no relation) and Richard Mouck began to restore it. They had to strip back years of unsympathetic changes (can you believe someone had covered the original oak staircase in black paint?). Miller was a theater historian and preservation advocate, clearly the right kind of guy to oversee the rebirth of a Victorian mansion. 

He was also the person who prepared the NRHP nomination form for the Miller & Herriott House. Down at the bottom of the form, there’s a copy of a letter from Miller to the State Office of Historic Preservation, from July of 1979, pleading with them to approve the NRHP nomination quickly. He was concerned about the LA Community Redevelopment Agency’s plans to demolish a number of homes in the area:

Nomination of individual key landmarks such as the Miller – Herriott House should help establish the overall character of the area as a potential Historic District. Unfortunately, we no longer have enough time for such a strategy. We are now drafting requests for determinations of eligibility as endangered structures are identified.

From the actions we have seen during the first 30 days of the CRA project, individual determinations may be only a stopgap measure. The PAC Committee and CRA are identifying vulnerable landmarks for replacement much faster than we can research them. Documentation on many of these buildings is nearly nonexistent because of careless disposal of City and County records applying to pre-1900 buildings. Many disappeared as recently as 1975.

-John Evan Miller, letter to State Office of Historic Preservation, part of Miller & Herriott House’s NRHP nomination form

As much as I love this house as architecture, I’m also fascinated by it as a window into how historic preservation works in LA. John Evan Miller was an early member of the LA Conservancy, still in its infancy in 1979, and would serve as its president for a year. Even back then, a small group of preservationists succeeded in organizing walking tours of the neighborhood and open houses at some of its historic homes. They got the Los Angeles Times to cover the story of what was happening there, multiple times. 

Their efforts were successful. The Miller & Herriott House is still standing, and the entire North University Park neighborhood has had its own NRHP designation since 2004. The house has also been preserved on film, as a backdrop for TV shows like Modern Family and the 1980s series Flamingo Road.

When I visited in late 2022, much of the greenery I’d seen in pictures from a decade ago was gone, but there were still echoes of the house’s early days out front. The diamond patterns in the concrete walkway are original, as is the iron hitching post with a horse’s head, a relic of an era before the streetcars were electrified. These days the house is being used as accommodations for USC students. A pair of sweatpants hung over one of the balustrades, drying in the sun, and a large wooden table stood in the middle of the front lawn, waiting for a game of flip cup. 130+ years in, this house still shows signs of life.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Blake, Lindsay: “Scene It Before: Phil’s Halloween Open House from Modern Family” (LAMag.com, October 9, 2014)

+ Gebhard, David and Robert Winter: Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide (Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1994)

+ Grimes, Teresa & Jim Childs: North University Park Historic District’s NRHP nomination form

+ “The Harper Tract” (Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1891 – via ProQuest)

+ “The Harper Tract: A Suburb That Has Had No Reaction” (Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1891 – via ProQuest)

+ Miller, John Evan: Miller & Herriott House’s NRHP nomination form

+ “North University Park Historic District” (LivingPlaces.com)

+ “NOT A BOOM: But Progress That Is and Has Been Steady and Undeviating” (Los Angeles, February 19, 1893 – via ProQuest)

+ Parachini, Allan: “Gentrification of Los Angeles: A Return to Urban Living?” (Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1980 – via ProQuest)

+ “A Recent Purchaser” (Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1892 – via ProQuest)

+ Smith, Jack: “House-to-House Resuscitation” (Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1980 – via ProQuest)

+ Waldie, DJ: “The Romance of Real Estate: Boom and Bust in Gladstone” (KCET.org, November 10, 2016)