Added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 2002

Look at old aerial photos of Uptown Whittier and there are two buildings that stand out through their sheer size: the National Bank of Whittier Building at Philadelphia Street and Greenleaf Avenue, and just half a block south of it, the Hotel Hoover. 

Both the National Bank of Whittier and the Hoover Hotel have presidential connections. The bank was the location of Richard Nixon’s first law job back in the late ‘30s, and is now rebranded as Nixon Plaza. The Hotel Hoover was named after Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States from 1929-1933, and a Whittierite during the 1880s and early 1890s. A full bio of Mrs. Hoover is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say she was an insanely accomplished woman: the first female to graduate from Stanford University’s geology program, a polyglot who studied five languages and translated an important 16th century metallurgical text (De Re Metallica) from Latin to English, the designer of a surprisingly modern house on the Stanford campus for herself and her husband Herbert Hoover, two-time president of the Girl Scouts of America, and an opponent of segregation, even when that stance brought controversy. She was a great choice as a namesake. 

The Hotel Hoover wasn’t Whittier’s first hostelry for out-of-towners. The Greenleaf had existed since Whittier’s origins in the late 1880s, and the William Penn went up in the mid-1920s. Both are gone now, which leaves the Hoover as Whittier’s oldest standing hotel building, and at six stories and 110 rooms, it was the city’s largest when it opened in 1930.

Whittier’s population at the time stood at just under 15,000 souls – nearly twice as many as in 1920, but still a modest number compared to Pasadena, Glendale, Pomona and other growing cities in LA County. You might very well ask why a town of that size needed a third hotel, larger than the first two. According to a front-page story in The Whittier News, the hotel’s financier Aubrey Wardman (President of the Whittier Home Telephone Company) was motivated “to assist in the development of the business district as a whole…that it was his idea to have the business spread along the four natural arteries centering at Greenleaf avenue and Philadelphia street.” Financial boosterism, borne of a sincere belief in the prospects of a town where Wardman had lived and worked since 1902. 

We should also consider when the Hotel Hoover opened: March 8, 1930 was just five months after the stock market crash that kicked off the Great Depression. Wardman’s insistence on hiring local workers and suppliers to erect the hotel helped to keep Whittier at work during the worst years of the Depression. He wrote that same policy into the contract for another one of his developments, the Wardman Theatre (now the Starlight Whittier Village Cinemas) across the street. Together, the two projects are said to have pumped $365,000 into Whittier’s economy. The March 7, 1930 issue of The Whittier News is stuffed with ads from the contractor, engineer, plumber, roofer, electrical and hardware companies involved with the Hotel Hoover’s construction, each one proudly acknowledging its involvement.   

One of the locals who contributed to the Hotel Hoover was David Bushnell, an experienced structural engineer and architect, and a Whittier resident since the mid-1920s. Bushnell did a lot of work in the area, including markets, theatres (the Wardman Theatre was his design), the La Habra Packing House, The Whittier News headquarters, and an addition to the building where Aubrey Wardman’s telephone company was located. 

The Hotel Hoover was Bushnell’s biggest job to date, and he brought a wealth of knowledge as a structural engineer to the project. According to The Whittier News, The Hoover Hotel was built out of 100 tons of steel and 9,000 sacks of cement. At each floor level, Bushnell specified steel tie rods to keep the walls from stretching apart in a severe earthquake. Even the shower baths in each room were encased in steel, to prevent water from seeping down into the rooms below as the walls settle and crack over time. 

On top of its steel skeleton, the Hoover Hotel is skinned in cast concrete on the bottom floor and stucco above. Lintels add a whiff of decorative flair above each of the windows, except for the skinny windows on the left side of the facade, which act as lightwells for a corner stairway. Up above the top row of windows there’s an ornate floral frieze. And above that, red clay tiles top the variegated roof sections on the streetside elevation, including a fun octagon that projects up from the northeast part of the building. 

With its flat stucco exterior and red tile adorning parts of the roof, the Hoover Hotel evokes the Spanish colonial revival architecture tradition that took over southern California in the 1920s. This one is by no means a textbook example – in both its materials (e.g. concrete and steel) and detailing (friezes, quoins, etc.), it’s got plenty of elements that you’d never find in a Spanish colonial hacienda. But no doubt, it’s loosely inspired by the Spanish colonial revival movement, especially the lobby, with its colorful tiles on the floors and stair risers, and intricate wrought-iron banister.

I haven’t seen any photos of the original interior, but that same front page Whittier News spread gives some clues. When it opened, the 110 rooms were filled with antique furniture of Hawaiian mahogany. There were singles, doubles (with kitchenettes) and three-room apartments (without kitchenettes). All were equipped with a wall telephone, and the hotel was served by a ‘round-the-clock switchboard service (its financier, Mr. Wardman, worked for a telephone company after all, it just wouldn’t do not to have one in every room). The Hotel’s interior designers believed in heavy curtains instead of window shades, and for ventilation, they installed metal shutters at the top of every door, to admit air while keeping out looky-loos. 

The mezzanine level, up that wrought iron staircase from the lobby, hosted a writing room and a ladies’ dressing room. On the bottom floor you found three arched openings, with the left serving as an entrance, the two right ones connected to a retail business. At first it was a coffee shop, run by the Wardman family. 

When it opened in 1930, the Hotel Hoover was leased and operated by Consolidated Hotels, Inc., proprietors of over 100 apartment buildings and hotels in the LA area. It was a fashionable place, and hosted luncheons and meetings in its conference rooms, in addition to its revolving door of guests. Notices in the local papers place the California Avocado Association at the Hoover for their fall 1933 meeting, and a breakfast in support of Hugh Thatcher’s re-election campaign to the LA County Board of Supervisors in 1934. The Hotel’s National Register form claims that Lou Henry Hoover herself visited the Hoover Hotel in 1933, where she was entertained by Aubrey Wardman and Walter F. Dexter, president of Whittier College.

In 1936 Aubrey Wardman unloaded the Hotel Hoover to start a citrus ranch empire in Orange County. Around that time we start to find “FOR RENT” ads for a corner apartment at the hotel – perhaps suggesting that its business model was changing to accommodate longer-term and permanent guests, in addition to the constant stream out out-of-towners.

The Hotel Hoover popped up in the news again in 1953, when its new owners, the Whittier Plaza Hotel Corp., applied for a liquor license to open the city’s first cocktail lounge downstairs. The State Board of Equalization granted the license, despite the opposition of a well-organized group of Whittierites, who were concerned that an influx of bars would contribute to juvenile delinquency and public drunkenness (Whittier was founded by Quakers, and the city was for the most part dry). The opposition group, led by a local reverend, circulated petitions to have the Board of Equalization reverse its decision, and then asked Whittier’s City Council to “amend or pass new ordinances for safeguarding and maintaining Whittier’s good name and reputation.” 

The booze won: The Whittier News reported in 1955 on the quiet opening of a small lounge adjoining the Oak Room, the new fine dining restaurant located downstairs at the Hotel Hoover. Quoth the article: “It may be significant that one of the active leaders in the petition movement against the bar was one of its first luncheon customers.”

In 1960 the Hotel Hoover was forced to close, and its tenants told to vacate, due to non-compliance with city fire codes. The Uniform Building Code required Whittier Plaza Hotel, Inc. to enclose the interior stairways with fire resistant material, and replace the metal louvers on the doors to each room with plywood at least 3/4“ thick. The owners claimed that they couldn’t afford it. At the time the hotel had 40 permanent residents and a few dozen transient guests, mostly elderly women; they were all gone by November of 1960. By early 1962 the hotel and the Oak Room were foreclosed on, and returned to the property’s title owner. Woodrow Holder, president of the Whittier Plaza Hotel Corp., tried to transfer the Oak Room’s liquor license to a former furniture store a couple blocks north, but the request was denied. 

Under the new ownership of Reliance National Investors Corp., the Hotel Hoover transformed into a residence for senior citizens in late 1962 and early 1963. They added a penthouse and sundeck, a renovated dining room, rec rooms and an exam room. On the streetside, they covered over two of the three arched transom windows with plaster, scored to look like stone blocks (here’s a picture of what it looked like). The Los Angeles Times reported there were plans to add a swimming pool in the former garage. Meanwhile, the Oak Room reopened, and the Whittier City Council even approved the use of one of its banquet rooms for dancing – a first for uptown Whittier. 

We start seeing the Hotel Hoover test out different ways of marketing itself in 1963. You have the typical bare-bones “Apts. for Lease” type ads: 

…and this advertorial-style bit in the East Review: 

And even some attempts at humor: 

In a Long Beach Independent review of the Oak Room from 1977, writer Todd Thomey lauds the prime rib and his server, Ruthie Cruz, but also calls it a “genuine nostalgia restaurant,” and “a visit to another era, the time when a majestic hotel dining room was the most popular restaurant in town.” By the mid ’80s it was gone, replaced by a boisterous bar called Noa-Noa; right across the street, where the Wardman Theatre once presented first-run movies, the Pussycat Theater now played porn.

The Hotel Hoover sustained major damage in the Whittier Narrows earthquake on October 1, 1987. This Los Angeles Times article from the following day recounts how roofs caved in, walls cracked and pipes burst around the hotel’s elderly residents. Thankfully, structural engineers found that the building was still sound; residents were able to move back in a couple months later, after repairs were finished.

In 2001-2002 the Hotel Hoover crawled into another chrysalis, and emerged as Seasons at the Hoover, a 50-unit apartment community for low-income seniors, 62 and up. The renovation was led by LINC Housing and Vista Communities, bankrolled by Federal Home Loan Bank, the City of Whittier and the City of Industry, and partially funded with federal tax credits for low-income housing. Units were snapped up within 90 days, and the project earned awards from the Building Industry Association and The National Association of Home Builders.

As part of the $7.8 million renovation, the developers had to remove some original partition walls and bathrooms and non-original kitchens, to create larger, more accessible units. They also peeled back the more unfortunate parts of the ‘60s remodel, removing all that plaster on the bottom floor to reveal the arched openings, and adding back iron grills over the transom windows. The metal front doors and the marquee are new; the Spanish tile in the lobby is original.

I visited the Hotel Hoover on June 14, 2025, which happened to be No Kings Day, a nationwide day of protests against President Trump’s increasingly authoritarian administration. Demonstrators marched down Greenleaf Avenue with handmade signs; cars honked nonstop as they drove by the old Hotel Hoover building. I’d like to believe that its namesake Lou Henry Hoover, a “quiet activist” on civil rights issues, would have been proud that all these fellow Whittierites were exercising their right to protest policies that they deemed unjust.

Resources & Recommended Reading

+ “Apartments for Rent Furnished” (The Whittier News, March 10, 1936 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Avocado Meeting” (The Whittier News, November 15, 1933 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Bankers Join Local Men on Citrus Trip” (The Whittier News, September 18, 1936 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “City’s First Cocktail Bar Breaks Long ‘Dry’ Tradition” (The Whittier News, May 17, 1955 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Council Okays Dance Permit for Oak Room” (The Daily News, January 24, 1963 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “First Lady Lou Henry Hoover” (National Archives website)

+ Fulton, Mary: “Whittier Optimistic on Rebuilding of Its Shattered Uptown Village District” (Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1987 – via ProQuest)

+ “Funeral Set Saturday for Aubrey Wardman” (Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1961 – via ProQuest)

+ “General Population by City, Los Angeles County, 1910 – 1950 U.S. Census (Los Angeles Almanac. © 1998-2025 Given Place Media, publishing as Los Angeles Almanac – accessed November 16, 2025)

+ Gould, Charles: “Court Says Guests Must Leave Hotel: Building Held Not Safe for 60 Occupants” (Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1960 – via ProQuest)

+ Grimes, Teresa: Hotel Hoover’s NRHP nomination form (PDF – National Archives Catalog, 2001) 

+ “Hoover Hotel at Whittier in Opening Debut” (Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1930 – via ProQuest)

+ “‘Hoover Hotel’ Name Awarded Whittier Unit” (Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1930 – via ProQuest)

+ “Hoover Work Put on Rare Book List” (Pasadena Star-News, November 25, 1929 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Hotel Hoover Change Due by Feb. 15” (The Daily News, December 18, 1962 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Hotel Hoover Will Open Tomorrow” (The Whittier News, March 7, 1930 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Hotel Tenants Granted Time to Seek Homes” (The Daily News, November 1, 1960 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Lou Henry Hoover” (WhittierMuseum.org)

+ “New Hearing for Oak Room” (The Daily News, February 10, 1962 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “The Oak Room Closes Amid Litigation (The Daily News, October 4, 1961 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Oak Room Owners Seek Transfer of License” (The Daily News, September 21, 1961 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Petitions Out to Block Whittier Bar” (Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1953 – via ProQuest)

+ “Regardless of Suit, Oak Room Will Continue” (The Daily News, Jun 13, 1961 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Reopening of Oak Room Is Turned Down” (The Daily News – January 16, 1962)

+ Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Whittier, 1894 (via Stanford.edu)

+ Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Whittier, 1907

+ Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Whittier, 1912

+ Seasons at The Hoover (linchousing.org)

+ “Senior Citizens Hotel Opened” (Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1962 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Supervisor Is Guest of Local Club” (The Whittier News, October 17, 1934 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Tenants Vacate Hotel” (East Review, November 6, 1960 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Thomey, Tedd: “Stepping Out” (Long Beach Independent, June 3, 1977 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Wedner, Diane: “Solutions for Seniors” (Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2002 – via ProQuest)

+ “Where Are We Going to Put Mom…” (AD – East Review (Whittier, California) · Thu, June 27, 1963 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Whittier Fight Continued on Bar Licenses” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1953 – via ProQuest)

+ “Whittier Renews Battle on Bars” (Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1953 – via ProQuest)

+ Whittier Historical Society: “Lou Henry Hoover: Whittier’s ‘Grand First Lady’” (PDF brochure – WhittierMuseum.org, 2018)

+ Wood, Tracy & John Hurst: “Aftermath in Whittier: Pain, Pathos and Anger” (Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1987)

+ Young, Nancy Beck: “An Activist First Lady in Traditional Washington” (excerpt from Lou Hoover: Activist First Lady, University of Kansas Press, 2004 – via The White House Historical Association)