Added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2024

In the mid-1880s, a speculative land boom brought a wave of migrants to Los Angeles from the East Coast and Midwest. The San Gabriel Valley Railroad and the Santa Fe Railroad had finally connected in 1887, around present-day San Dimas, creating an efficient travel route from Los Angeles to Chicago and parts east. It gave civic boosters and landowners a golden opportunity to advertise the health, perpetual sunshine and agricultural potential of the largely undeveloped land of the San Gabriel Valley, just east of Los Angeles.

Monrovia was one of the many small cities in the SGV that popped up along the rail lines during that era of growth. Incorporated as part of LA County in 1887, Monrovia grew steadily even as some of its neighboring towns failed. Purchasers of residential lots in Monrovia were required to start construction on their homes within six months, which cut down on the speculation that brought volatile boom-and-bust cycles in other communities east of LA. Within a year of incorporation Monrovia’s residents had increased more than six-fold, and 220 new buildings had been erected at an estimated cost of $550,000. By the end of 1887 Monrovia boasted banks, hotels, churches, schools, restaurants, boarding houses, stables and at least one billiard hall to support its growing population.

These two neighboring Victorian houses at 508 and 512 South Ivy are typical of the homes built for the well-to-do during Monrovia’s earliest days (another good example is The Oaks, built for Monrovia’s namesake family). The fact that they still exist today is not so typical. 

Scaffolding surrounded them when I visited in fall of 2024, evidence of their transformation into B&Bs. Their stories are reminders that historic preservation requires commitment, resources stretching across generations, and a willingness to reimagine how a historic place can function. And sometimes, it even requires a change of scenery or two. 

Luther and Adah Blair House | 508 South Ivy Avenue, Monrovia

Add this Queen Anne Victorian to the long list of historic homes that LA architects designed for themselves (see also the National Register-listed Lautner House, Neutra VDL House and Schindler House). In the mid-1880s, architect Luther Reed Blair and his wife Adah moved from Denver to Monrovia with their three kids. Blair joined up with contractor Uriah Zimmerman to build some of Monrovia’s most important early buildings, including the home of Monrovia co-founder William Monroe’s son, Milton, and the Orange Avenue School (now demolished). He was also a charter member of Monrovia’s Odd Fellows Lodge and Masonic Lodge. 

When it was completed in 1887, the Blair House stood at the corner of Ivy and Olive Avenues. After the building boom went bust, Blair took his family back to Denver to find more work, and sold it to Andrew Ryder in 1895. Next up was Thomas Wardall, a prominent real estate wheeler and dealer from Duarte, who bought it in 1906. The Wardalls moved east in 1910 and rented out the Blair House for 17 years. Then in 1927, the house began its nomadic phase when Thomas Wardall moved it about 16 blocks southwest to 319 W. Duarte Road, where it stayed for nearly 70 years. A succession of residents passed through in the 1930s – a salesman, a poultryman, a masseuse, a foundry worker. The house found its longest-term stewards in the Lisle family, who bought it in the late 1930s and owned the house until 1992, when Gwen Lisle moved out to an Altadena retirement community called the Scripps Home, where she had been working for years. 

So here is where things get interesting. Gwen and her siblings were motivated to sell the house. They found a developer (more accurately a high school principal moonlighting as a developer) who was interested in purchasing the property, but he was wary of developing land with a historic home on it, because of local preservation restrictions. So he proposed to the City of Monrovia that he move the house to a different property of his, just down Duarte Road, near one of City of Hope’s research centers. After some initial success, the developer’s plan was rejected by the City Council; some theorize that City of Hope pulled some strings to have the proposal mothballed, as they were considering purchasing the developer’s property themselves, and didn’t want to have to work around a protected Victorian home, either. At least two other plans to move the house came and went with no action. 

Enter Steve Baker, a beloved fifth-generation Monrovian who was the official City Historian between 1991 and his death in 2022. Baker was able to work out a deal to purchase the Blair House itself, and move it off the Lisles’ property so that they could still sell it unencumbered, and Scripps Hall would receive their endowment for Gwen Lisle’s care. 

Baker employed the woodworking wizardry of a local carpenter named Jimi Hendrix (I kid you not) to prepare the house for the move. They had to remove the roof so as not to rip through the power and telephone lines; when Hendrix was removing the pieces, he was able to sever the rafters at the same joints where they had been cut during the last move in 1927.

In 1993, after a challenging two-day move involving the police, CHP officers and utility workers, the old Blair House ended up at 508 South Ivy, just three modern blocks north of where it stood when Luther & Adah Blair lived there. And literally next door to Steve Baker’s longtime home at 512 South Ivy. We’ll get to that one in a minute. 

The two-story, wood-frame Blair House is a fairly conventional Eastlake-style Queen Anne Victorian on the outside. On the facade you’ve got that interplay of textures, with the clapboard siding mixed with the fishy scales on the west-facing gable, and a shingled roof. A porch extends out in front of the house, covered by a shed roof supported by some fantastically ornate turned posts and brackets. The most distinctive elements? The nearly hexagonal tower to the south, and that wooden skirt surrounding the front porch, with cut-outs of a crane, looking up and to the left. Apparently Luther Blair was a big fan of the cranes, as he used the same skirt design for the W.A. Chess Residence, at the northwest corner of Magnolia and White Oak Avenue (later renamed Foothill). The Chess Residence was demolished in 1924 to make way for the Aztec Hotel.

A healthy proportion of the exterior of the Blair House is original, including the stained-glass on the front door and the transom window above it, the porch and wood window frames and those crane cut-outs. The chimney had to be rebuilt after the move, and of course the foundation is not original. It was poured low so that a cripple wall could be built between the foundation and the first floor. That was done to allow enough space for the five steps leading up to the front porch, an original feature that Baker wanted to preserve. 

The interior images I’ve seen were all taken in October of 2022, after Baker’s passing, while the house was awaiting rehabilitation as a bed & breakfast. Pieces of wall are missing in the photos; you can see water damage to the ceiling, and it’s clearly in need of a paint job. And still, even in this slightly rundown state, you could tell that the bones of 508 South Ivy are good old bones, that it has still retained its original character. Aside from a linoleum overlay on the kitchen floor, most of the materials remaining inside the house are original. The floors, moldings, door/window trim, built-in cabinets, the wood finish on the staircase – they all date to the late 19th century.

John F. and Julia Brossart House | 512 South Ivy Avenue, Monrovia

Compared to many of the extant houses from Monrovia’s earliest days, the Brossart House is simple, almost a farmhouse in its design, without the ornamentation or structural flair of its neighbor the Blair House. Horizontal wood siding, rubblework foundation, small porches all around, simple windows and chamfered posts on the outside. The only decorative indulgence is on the apron between the first and second floors, which alternates between these pretty fun saw-tooth and fishscale-style patterns.

The interior is similarly unfussy. Plaster walls and wood floors mostly, with a dark-stained baseboard and picture railing circling the parlor, and a narrow staircase leading to the second story where you’ll find an additional three bedrooms. There’s plenty of fabric left intact from the original house, including many of the windows and doors, the built-in cabinetry and the cast-iron mantelpiece in the parlor.

Changes to the house over the years were fairly minimal. Some very à la mode Spanish-style arches replaced the doors leading to the parlor in the 1930s (the doors were since restored); bathrooms were added and removed as various rooms changed their purposes and became rental units. The only major alteration to the Brossart House came in 1914, when a new kitchen and service area were added at the rear of the house, with an extra bedroom just above it on the second floor. By that time, builders had moved on from Victorian styles, so you’ll see more of a craftsman aesthetic in the simpler trim and the plain apron atop the 1914 addition.  

The house at 512 South Ivy was built in 1887 for John F. Brossart and his wife Julia, who had moved to Los Angeles from Le Mars, Iowa in the 1880s. John quickly entrenched himself in the business affairs of the burgeoning Monrovia, setting up a real estate partnership with fellow Le Martians John Wilde and Joseph Sartori, and also serving as President of the First National Bank of Monrovia. By 1888, Brossart had sold the new house to a retired farmer from Michigan named Bradford Arthur and his wife Caroline. 

Originally the Brossart house was located at 343 South Heliotrope Avenue. After Bradford Arthur passed away in 1900, his daughter Jennie Arthur Church had the house moved to 202 East Lemon Avenue, so she could be closer to the center of town. The move was only about three and a half blocks southwest, which doesn’t sound that far, but it would have felt more considerable for an elderly woman in the horse and buggy era. And three and a half blocks is a lightyear compared to the next move the house underwent in 1909, literally two lots south, from 202 East Lemon to 512 South Ivy where it remains today.

The descendants of Bradford and Caroline Arthur continued to live in this house for over a century, and there were periods (e.g. 1909 – 1924) during which extra rooms were rented out as separate apartments. In 1941, Bradford & Caroline Arthur’s great-great grandchild Steve Baker was born; he would live in the house at 512 South Ivy from 1945-1949, then again in 1963, and from 1967-2022. It’s largely through his research that we have such detailed histories of the home’s former occupants.

It’s pretty amazing to think that the Brossart House is still completely recognizable as its 19th century self, despite 130 years of weathering and two moves. Chalk it up to hardy materials, sturdy design and a series of owners who cared about keeping their family’s legacy intact. Including Steve Baker, whose passion for authenticity and local history ensured that every wood finish and window frame that could be preserved, would be. 

Now that 512 South Ivy is turning into a bed & breakfast, the new owners plan to spruce up the kitchen and turn a couple closets into bathrooms. Here’s hoping that that’s it. 512 and its neighbor 508 have had long journeys to get where they are. They deserve to live out their golden years in peace. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Baker, Steve: “508 S. Ivy Ave.” (Monrovia Legacy Project)

+ Baker, Steve: “A history of 512 S Ivy and the families who lived there.” (Monrovia Legacy Project, 2022)

+ Baker, Steve: “Biographical notes on John Brossart and Joseph Sartori” (Monrovia Legacy Project)

+ Baker, Steve: “Blair House Saga” (VIDEO – Monrovia Historical Society on YouTube, October 28, 2020)

+ Baker, Steve: “Details on the history of the home, built by John Brossart” (Monrovia Legacy Project, 1985)

+ Bell, Nancy H., Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation: Brossart House’s NRHP nomination form

+ Bell, Nancy H., Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation: Blair House’s NRHP nomination form

+ “Monrovia’s First Houses – Still Remaining” (PDF – Monrovia Legacy Project, November 2016)

+ “Square footage of 512 S Ivy. John Brossart, Builder.” (Monrovia Legacy Project)

+ “Who Was Steve Baker?” (http://stevebakersmonrovia.com)

+ Wigton, Jim: “Saving an 1887 Vintage Home” (Patch.com, February 11, 2011)