Added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 17, 1984

The Alvarado Terrace Historic District is tailor made for a man of my particular interests. A whole neighborhood full of intact, fin-de-siècle mansions, originally populated by some of LA’s most powerful and successful people, developed by a Scottish widow who was active in LA’s Jewish community, despite never having converted to Judaism (maybe)? And the district also includes the shortest street in the city? Yes please, tell me more. 

As so many of our stories do, the history of the Alvarado Terrace neighborhood begins with the native inhabitants of Los Angeles. For thousands of years before the Spanish came, the land that became Pico-Union was the seat of Geveronga, a small Gabrielino-Tongva village located just southwest of the important village of Yaangna (near where the Los Angeles Plaza is today). When the Spanish came, many of the Geverongit people were forcibly converted by the friars of the San Gabriel Mission. The villages were dismantled by 1781, when the pueblo of Los Angeles was founded, and what’s now Pico-Union became part of the western edge of the original four square leagues marked out for the new pueblo by the Spanish crown.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

This land went through a number of owners in the 19th century, including horticulturalist, vintner, politician and landowner Don Mateo Keller (fun fact: a banquet he threw in 1875 resulted in the oldest known menu in Los Angeles culinary history). But the person we care about most here is Doria Deighton Jones, the woman who developed this area into what it became. So we’re going to take a little detour to follow Ms. Jones’s story. 

Doria Deighton Jones was a Scotswoman, a born Christian, who married a successful liquor and food wholesaler named John Jones in San Francisco in the 1850s, and later moved with him to Los Angeles. In addition to his business acumen, John was the first Jew to be named President of the LA City Council. Doria was treasurer for the Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society in the 1870s, though the jury is still out on whether she converted to Judaism before marrying John, or remained a goy throughout her life. They also married off their daughter Caroline to James B. Lankershim, scion of the Lankershim family who developed much of the San Fernando Valley. Big muckety-mucks, these Joneses, right? 

After John Jones exited the wholesale business, he and Doria Jones got into the real estate game, which Doria continued to play brilliantly after her husband died in 1876. Her obituary from 1908 valued her real estate holdings at “over $1,000,000” – well over $30 million in today’s money. It also described her as “the oldest white woman resident of the city,” at 84 years old. 

The Development of Alvarado Terrace

Back to Alvarado Terrace. It was the 1890s, and Doria Deighton Jones was in possession of a 53-acre parcel of land encompassing modern-day Westlake and Pico-Union. Her family used part of it for a farming operation for a while, and in the late 1890s, leased out half of it for a nine-hole golf course called Windmill Links, a predecessor to the Los Angeles Country Club (and, according to LA Conservancy, the location of LA’s first round of golf, played on December 18, 1897). After the golf course moved to Pico Heights in 1899, Jones began subdividing her land into housing lots. 

Acting as “manager” for the tract was Pomeroy Powers, the president of an Arizona-based mining company and VP of the Short Line Beach Company, which would later construct the six Venice Canals that still exist today. He was also active in LA’s political life, serving a four-year stretch on the LA City Council (1900-1904), including two years as its president. Pomeroy Powers’s wife Ida was involved in real estate, and bought and sold several of the other properties in the neighborhood.

Jones and Powers envisioned an enclave of grand homes for grand people. As described in a 1902 ad placed in the Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, Alvarado Terrace offered “The only exclusive residence tract in the city,” with “high class building restrictions.” She required anyone who purchased a lot to shell out at least $4000 to build their homes – somewhere in the $130,000 range today, which may not seem like much to build an extravagant mansion, but surely was a huge outlay of cash back then. And the lots sold quickly. By the time the below Sanborn map was printed in 1906, nearly all of the elegant homes of the Alvarado Terrace Historic District had been completed. 

The 12 contributing buildings to the district encompass a diversity of architectural styles, from mission revival to Tudor revival, craftsman to shingle style to Queen Anne Victorians. Most were built by different architects, over a range of eight years. And yet the entire tract feels cohesive, thanks to the uniform relationship of many of these homes to the street. By design, the houses on the north side of Alvarado Terrace are set back at least 40 feet, on top of a steep-sloping hill that follows the curve of the street. There’s a real sense of discovery as you round the curve, look up to the next magnificent mansion, and contemplate clambering up the steps for a better look at the residential palace up top.

Let’s get to know each of the contributing buildings to the Alvarado Terrace Historic District, and the folks that lived in them early on.

1314 S. Bonnie Brae Street

This 1907 craftsman stands out for its uneven saltbox roofline, with the left side of the front gable extending much lower than the right. The clinker brick on the bottom floor and shingles on the second floor merge beautifully, especially in the slightly raised eyebrow just above the right window. Records are unclear about the first owners, but as of 1911 we have a classified ad for one Eugene S. Mattenson, looking for “a partner with some capital” to help him grow “tobacco, broom corn, and other products” in Tepic, Mexico. Then for about 60 years beginning in 1924, it was owned by the Wickstrom family – including Edwin L. Wickstrom, who would later become the SVP and director of the FIrst Federal Savings and Loan Association. 

Boyle-Barmore House | 1317 (originally 1313) Alvarado Terrace

In 1905 architect Charles E. Shattuck crafted this two-and-a-half-floor, Tudor-influenced craftsman for Calvin A. Boyle, founder of the Hollywood Board of Trade. Three years later it was bought by Edmund H. Barmore, a former University of Michigan football star who later found success as president and GM of the Los Angeles Transfer Company, once described as having a “practical monopoly of the transfer business at railroad stations” by the Los Angeles Times. By 1911 George & Florence Cutts owned the house; after Florence died in 1913, George married Helen, the nurse who had tended to Florence during her final years. Helen Cutts made the news in 1954 when she died after falling from a moving train on a safari in Kimberley, South Africa. Her cenotaph is in the Cutts family crypt at Hollywood Forever, along with George and Florence’s graves. 

Subsequent owners converted 1317 Alvarado Terrace into a hotel and a rooming house. In the 1960s it was turned into a clergy housing for the Missionary Sisters of St. Augustine; later on it was a women’s shelter, run by the Union Rescue Mission. 

Cohn House | 1325 Alvarado Terrace

Here’s a 1902 shingle style home, Swiss chalet-influenced, designed by Hudson & Munsell about a decade before they gave us the Natural History Museum, the Los Angeles County General Hospital Administration Building (now the LA County Coroner’s Office) and the now-demolished LA County Hall of Records. The combo of shingles, carved wood and rough-hewn, rock-faced sandstone on the facade give it an earthy, organic feel, like it’s just emerged from the ground.

The below video tour shows off a free-flowing floor plan, profusion of built-in cabinetry and reading nooks, even an entire living room covered floor to ceiling in wood panels where clearly I am going to spend my time when I live here. According to a self-guided walking tour brochure prepared by the LA Conservancy, there’s a carriage house in the rear of the property that once featured a circular turntable to prepare horseless carriages for its next journey.

The original owner was Morris R. Cohn, a German immigrant who became LA’s first garment manufacturer; after hooking up with a new business partner Lemuel Goldwater, their company became well known for their workmen’s overalls, boots, shirts and trousers. Cohn & Goldwater also commissioned the first modern steel-reinforced concrete factory building in Los Angeles, at 525 East 12th Street. And Morris Cohn wasn’t the only family member to influence the fashion world. His son Frederick had changed his last name to “Cole” during a stint as a silent film actor, and after Morris Cohn died, Frederick transformed his dad’s knitted underwear company West Coast Knitting Mills into the pioneering women’s swimwear brand Cole of California. 

This home would later become a men’s residence for the Union Rescue Mission, a twin to its next door neighbor at 1317. 

Gilbert House | 1333 Alvarado Terrace

There’s a little bit of everything in this 1903 Queen Anne Victorian/shingle style home. You’ve got the wraparound porch, gables, decorative lintels and a witch’s hat-looking tower that you might expect from a Victorian, a barn-like gambrel roofline more typical of shingle style, and a low, wide massing you might expect from a craftsman home. I haven’t found any interior pictures, but the LA Conservancy wrote in the 1980s that “The grand reception hall of golden oak has a beamed ceiling with original gas light fixtures and finely carved columns…The original tapestry wall coverings, gas lighting fixtures, hand painted ceiling, and furnishings still remain. The original carriage house, barn, stable and servant’s quarters still stand at the rear of the property, as does the hitching post in front” (it would seem that the hitching post has since been removed). 

This home was originally built on spec by the Powers family (see the entry for 1345 Alvarado Terrace), and purchased in 1903 by the successful Texas oilman, Wilbur F. Gilbert. By the 1930s Gilbert’s daughter, Carolyn McCulloch, owned the house and had it divided into furnished apartments. McCulloch served as the neighborhood’s de facto historian for decades, collecting letters and photographs related to its history. 

Powers House | 1345 Alvarado Terrace

One of the most distinctive-looking homes on the block was designed for the aforementioned Powers family, arguably the most important developers of the Alvarado Terrace Historic District after Doria Deighton Jones herself. The family moved into their new home on Alvarado Terrace around 1904, right at the end of Pomeroy Powers’s stint with the LA City Council. Pomeroy died in 1916, and his family continued to live here until 1920, after which it was converted into furnished apartments. 

This house was designed by Arthur L. Haley, known for his National Register-listed Lanterman House in La Cañada-Flintridge. It’s dominated by a sensual, mission-style parapet on the facade, between two pagoda-esque towers covered in Spanish tile. The big tower to the left encloses a loft room, accessible only from the upstairs porch. There’s fancy plasterwork ornaments galore, an arcaded veranda surrounding three sides of the home, some fine spindlework on the balustrade and gorgeous diamond-patterned sidelights abutting the front door.

Check out the above video for a walk around the inside – definitely nothing mission-y about it, but there’s some extraordinary, tasteful luxury in there.

Raphael House | 1353 Alvarado Terrace

This 1903 stunner is one of three houses in the Alvarado Terrace Historic District designed by the venerable firm of Sumner Hunt & A. Wesley Eager. Together they mostly designed luxury homes, but Hunt also gave us Casa de Rosas, the Wilshire Ebell, the Southwest Museum and the Automobile Club of Southern California. Most historians now attribute the Bradbury Building to him. 

The 10-bedroom, three-bath Raphael House is a fine Tudor-influenced craftsman home, with that classic half-timbering on the outside, a terra cotta roof and three gazillion windows drenching the insides with light. The interior is laden with stained and leaded glass, depicting art nouveau and medieval motifs; even the kitchen and butler pantry walls and ceilings were covered by glass tiles. Nearly every room is slathered in fine wood – the floors, wainscoting, railings, built-in benches, window muntins, doorframes and even some ceilings are made of fancy tree flesh. And there is a freaking BALLROOM. Take a look around the interior to see for yourself:

All that glass and wood must have been easy to come by, given that the home’s first owner Robert H. Raphael was the owner of a glass manufacturing company, and president of the Southern California Hardwood and Manufacturing Company. At the peak of his success, Raphael was a millionaire; but at some point in his retirement he had a fall from financial grace. According to a 1932 story in the LA Times, he was arrested at the age of 68 for writing a bad check to the Hollywood Super Service Station.

By the 1980s, the Raphael House had been converted into a bed and breakfast called “Terrace Manor.” It was last sold in 2022 for $1,850,000. Worth every penny, I imagine. 

Kinney-Everhardy House | 1401 Alvarado Terrace

Here’s another Hunt & Eager joint, dating to 1902, this time a “transitional” Queen Anne/craftsman with a barn-like gambrel roofline, shingles up top, stucco on the bottom. My favorite outside detail: the super-fun sandstone frame around the front right window, which also houses a gorgeous stained glass transom window.

The original owner of the house was Arthur W. Kinney, a multi-faceted professional as so many homeowners on this block were. He was a receiver for the United States Land Office, a now-defunct agency of the federal government responsible for managing public domain lands, director of Oceanic Oil Company, and Deputy Los Angeles County Recorder in the mid 1890s. He also headed up the Los Angeles High School Alumni association for nearly 20 years, and later owned the Kinney Iron Works, after his family had moved out of the house. 

Next up was a wholesale and retail grocer named Matthew William Everhardy, who moved in around 1906. Like several of the other manses on Alvarado Terrace, the Kinney-Everhardy House was later converted into apartments, this one as early as the 1920s. At least as of this 2007 blog post, it was still divided up as four apartments.

Riveroll House | 1406 Alvarado Terrace

This one from 1906 is a clear throwback to colonial American architecture, itself a throwback to Greco-Roman architecture, by which I mean: COLUMNS. The orgy of Ionic columns supporting the portico, and Corinthians stretching up to the second floor, mark this as the only colonial revival house on the block. I haven’t encountered the name of the architect, but it was built on spec and initially sold to Manuel Riveroll. 

Mr. Riveroll was an immigrant from a prominent Mexican family, whose father Teodoro was the first governor of Baja California to be elected via popular vote, according to an LA Times article written after his death in 1934. He was also acquainted with Mexican president Porfirio Diaz and Teddy Roosevelt, and a personal friend of the French Emperor Maximilian during France’s occupation of Mexico in the 1860s. 

The house was in the Riveroll family for decades. It’s exchanged hands multiple times over the years, but has always remained a single-family dwelling. 

Henderson House | 1421 Alvarado Terrace

Today, this home is divided up into apartments and is mostly hidden behind a tall security gate. Gaze through the iron bars and you’ll find a two-and-a-half-story craftsman with clapboard siding, and a gabled portico topped with half-timber details on the gable. 

According to all the secondary sources I’ve read, the family of Henry Henderson originally lived here, but as early as 1902 there are articles connecting Henderson to a different house around the corner, at 1303 South Westlake. And then the LA Times reported in 1908 that a permit had been issued to one J.W. Hendrick for construction of a “two-story, ten-room residence” at this same address, and another permit in 1913 connects Hendrick to the property. Perhaps the Hendersons sold the undeveloped lot at 1421 Alvarado Terrace to Hendrick, after settling into their own house on Westlake? Or there were two branches of the Henderson clan, living nearby, and then Hendrick bought one and demolished it for his own dream house? It’s another housing history mystery!

1414, 1416 & 1418 Alvarado Terrace

Here’s a classic two-tier craftsman from 1910, with an extra-pronounced Japanese influence in how those rafter tails and support beams are peeking out from underneath the eaves, like the visible skeleton of the house. It would appear that several of the windows on the facade have been replaced, but you can still see the Japanese-inspired muntin patterns in the window on the left of the second floor. 

One R. R. Wilcox is listed as both the architect and contractor for this house. While the size certainly suggests that this could be another single-family home split into apartments, like many of the others in the Alvarado Terrace Historic District, this one was originally intended as three apartments.

A 1931 list of naturalization petitions in the Los Angeles Times shows an Italian immigrant named Joseph Eugene Pollastrini living in the 1418 Alvarado Terrace unit. It’s a snapshot of the changing Pico-Union area, which became a haven for waves of immigrants – from Mexico, from Europe, and later from Central America – as the decades wore on.

Hannas House | 1400 Alvarado Terrace

This bumpy-looking two-story craftsman on the corner of Alvarado Terrace and Malvern Avenue was built in 1905 by Pomeroy & Ida Powers (occupants of 1345 Alvarado Terrace) and said to be a honeymoon cottage for their daughter, Grace and her husband Milo Hannas, although they were married for six years before moving in (still, that’s nothing compared to Greystone Mansion, a wedding gift for Ned & Lucy Doheny completed 14 years after their wedding). I’m a big fan of the sloping brick and stone pillars supporting the front portico, and the many steep, intersecting rooflines that bring the entire structure a sense of added height. 

As early as 1913, the home’s owner was offering up the front room for rent to “a refined gentleman,” and by mid-century, the house had been split into a duplex. An owner in the 1960s enclosed the front porch and added a layer of stucco on top of the clapboard and shingle siding of the house. Thankfully those questionable alterations have since been undone, but this video tour of the property from 2022 suggests that the interior has been completely remodeled and drained of whatever craftsman character it once had. 

Beyrle House | 1866 W. 14th Street (originally 1402 Malvern Avenue)

Hunt & Eager’s third home on the block is the least visible structure in the Alvarado Terrace Historic District. It’s hemmed in by mature trees and bougainvillea, and unless you’re willing to peer in the holes between the iron security gate, all you’ll see is the shingled upper story, covered in pine needles. The eight-room home’s another craftsman on a sandstone base, all resting on a concrete foundation which was apparently uncommon for 1906.

The home was designed for Frenchman Andrew Beyrle and his wife Laura. Andrew was president of the California Planing Mill and Lumber Company, and later headed up the California Fire-Proof Door Company. Andrew’s brother Robert was a structural engineer, responsible for the Broadway Tunnel that connected downtown with the Eastside until it was demolished in 1949 to make way for the 101. 

At some point the entrance was changed from Malvern Avenue to the 14th Street side, for a better view of Terrace Park. Aside from that, this home looks much like it did when the Beyrles moved in. I haven’t seen any interior photos, but the LA Conservancy offers some tantalizing details: “The interior is well preserved, with a beautifully detailed suspended staircase, with a railing in a bowed shape. The living room has an inglenook with built-in seats and the dining room has a built-in sideboard…The house still uses its original wood and coal furnace as its sole heating source.” Yummy.

Terrace Park & Powers Place

The final two contributing elements of the Alvarado Terrace Historic District aren’t houses. One of them is Terrace Park, comprising two wedges of grass, trees and concrete paths in between all of the houses that acts as a visual centerpiece and communal space for the entire district. When Doria Deighton Jones first subdivided the Alvarado Terrace tract in 1902, the park land was included in the lots available to buyers. But through the efforts of Alvarado Terrace resident Pomeroy Powers, still an influential member of the LA City Council at the time, the City of LA purchased the land in 1904 and turned it into a park and playground. 

As part of the deal, property owners in the tract deeded small parts of their land to extend the park north to Pico Boulevard; in exchange, the city agreed to purchase 14 lots to continue the park south to 14th Street. The center of the park once contained a fish pond, and they used to employ a full time gardener to tend to the roses and geraniums around the parkway. In 1921 the park was remodeled; only the grass and trees remain. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE FISH, LA???

Early on, the park was known as Summerland Park, in honor of City Council member Theodore J. Summerland who was an early advocate for the City’s purchase plan. It took just a couple months for the City Council to change its mind and change it to Terrace Park. 

Just north of Terrace Park, separating it from the tiny strip of land that extends to Pico, you’ll find a short stretch of street paved in red brick, the final contributing part of the Alvarado Terrace Historic District. This is Powers Place, one of the very few remaining brick-paved streets in Los Angeles. At just 36 feet long, it’s often called the shortest street in Los Angeles. It was named in 1910 after Pomeroy Powers (natch) – a very short street for a man with such a long-lasting impact on this neighborhood.

Great Doria’s Ghost

The legacy of this district’s original developer, Doria Deighton Jones, also lives on through buildings she commissioned that are still around today. For years, she and her husband John lived in an old adobe right on the Plaza in downtown. It was torn down and replaced in the 1890s by the Simpson-Jones building (commissioned by Doria Jones), which still stands at the south end of Olvera Street and currently houses the Mexican restaurant La Luz del Dia. 

Closer to Alvarado Terrace you’ll find The Doria Apartments (above), a mission revival-style apartment complex at the corner of Pico and Union, built for Ms. Deighton Jones in 1903. You can guess where the name comes from. I’d like to imagine Doria’s spirit hovering above the apartment building that bears her name, casting its gaze a couple blocks southwest at this small neighborhood full of beautiful houses that she developed, and still look divine today. 

Interested in exploring the Alvarado Terrace Historic District? Esotouric offers a tour of the Alvarado Terrace and South Bonnie Brae Tracts, or you can DIY with LA Conservancy’s walking tour brochure of Pico Union.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ “1400 Alvarado Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90006” (JohnHart Real Estate on YouTube, December 16, 2022)

+ “At the City Hall: Park Proposed in the Fourth” (Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1904 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Baker, William James: “The Raphael House, 1903, Architects Sumner Hunt and Wesley Eager” (Dwell.com)

+ Bariscale, Floyd B.: “No. 87 – Raphael House” (Big Orange Landmarks, November 19, 2007)

+ Bariscale, Floyd B.: “No. 88 – Kinney-Everhardy House” (Big Orange Landmarks, November 22, 2007)

+ “The Beginning of LA’s Fashion Industry” (Los Angeles Almanac © 1998-2024 Given Place Media)

+ Chattel, Robert Jay, LA Conservancy: Alvarado Historic District’s NRHP nomination form 

+ Chattel, Robert Jay: “The Alvarado Terrace House Tour Presented by The Los Angeles Conservancy” (Los Angeles Conservancy, 1982) (PDF)

+ City of Los Angeles Planning Department: “Pico-Union Preservation Plan” (October 12, 2006) (PDF)

+ Classified Ad: “To let beautiful large front…” (Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1913 – via ProQuest)

+ Cole of California – Swimwear Pioneer (Los Angeles Almanac © 1998-2024 Given Place Media)

+ “Colorful Life Ended: Riveroll Saw History Made” (Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1934 – via ProQuest)

+ “Divorce Suits Filed” (Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1931 – via ProQuest)

+ “Doings of Builders and Architects” (Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1902 – via ProQuest)

+ “Ex-Business Man Faces Check Case” (Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1932 – via ProQuest)

+ Fischer, Greg: “L.A. History: Keeping Up With Doria Deighton Jones” (LA Downtown News, November 17, 2016)

+ “For Sale – Elegant Residence Sites in Alvarado Terrace” (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, May 3, 1902 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Helen F. Cutts Opens Wrong Door to Death” (Los Angeles Mirror, September 21, 1954 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Jason Buck presents: 1325 Alvarado Ter, Los Angeles, CA 90006” (The Luxury Level on YouTube, July 6, 2019)

+ “Jason Buck presents: “1345 Alvarado Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90006 remax” (The Luxury Level on YouTube, July 6, 2019)

+ Kahn, Ava: “John Jones: Early Los Angeles Jewish Pioneer” (Jewish Museum of the American West, November 1, 2012)

+ Kines, Mark Tapio: “Powers Place” (LAStreetNames.com)

+ Los Angeles Conservancy: “Layers of History: Pico Union” brochure (2009) (PDF)

+ Los Angeles Department of Building & Safety: various building permits

+ Lovett, Evan: “Pico-Union: A Stunning Time Capsule of Los Angeles” (LA in a Minute on YouTube, Feb 21, 2024) (VIDEO)

+ Obituary for Edwin L. Wickstrom (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, December 8, 1970 – view Newspapers.com)

+ Pico Union Neighborhood Council website

+ “Pioneer Woman Dies at County Home” (Los Angeles Herald, March 25, 1908 – via Library of Congress)

+ “Rooms to Rent” (Los Angeles Daily News, June 3, 1932 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Sanborn Map Company: “Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Los Angeles; Vol. 1, 1906” (via Library of Congress)

+ Sass, Stephen J.: “Downtown’s Jewish L.A.ndmarks” (Jewish Journal, August 9, 2011)

+ “Share of $600,000 Estate or Charity” (Los Angeles Evening Express, May 13, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Sold | 1353 Alvarado Terrace | Los Angeles, CA” (William James Baker – Architecture and Automobiles on YouTube, July 26, 2022)

+ “Transfer King Is a Bankrupt” (Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1917 – via Newspapers.com)

+ USC Van Hunnick History Department: “Department of History Land Acknowledgement” (https://dornsife.usc.edu)

+ Watanabe, Teresa: “Pico-Union tour traces historical immigration patterns” (Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2009)

+ Weeks, Linton: “The Repast Is Not Even Past: Old LA Menus” (NPR, May 19, 2015)