Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1974

There are so many ways to interpret La Casa Nueva, the 1920s mansion built for the family of businessman and Temple City founder, Walter P. Temple. As a work of architecture, it’s easily one of the most sublime Spanish colonial revival homes I’ve seen in LA County. The textured stucco walls and decorative plasterwork, the breathtaking entrance hall, the ornate ironwork, custom stained glass and whimsical wood carvings…there is an overwhelming amount of detail to take in, and intention behind every choice.

You can also look at the house as an expression of California’s obsession in the 1920s with its Spanish fantasy past, a dynamic made more complex by the Temple family’s mixed ethnicities. Take a spin around the shaded walkway that lines the southern boundary of the home. The concrete is embedded with the names and founding dates of the 21 California missions. If that’s not enough to convince you that the Temples viewed the Spanish colonial enterprise through rose-colored glasses, head to the main entrance hall, which is dominated by a giant window depicting Spanish galleons, unloading cargo for California’s European settlers.

To me, the most powerful factor at play at La Casa Nueva is how the house embeds the story of the Temple family and their forebears into its design and structure. As we’ll see later, this house can be read as a symbol of the Temple family’s resurgence after a traumatic few decades, and represented a continuation of their ancestors’ work in developing Los Angeles. To understand La Casa Nueva, we need to first understand the historical context that deepens this already deep building.

Walter P. Temple came from a long line of prominent Angelenos, stretching back to his half-uncle Jonathan Temple, one of the very first non-Hispanics to settle in Los Angeles. He moved to LA in the late 1820s and opened the first proper store in the pueblo, where he sold goods he had acquired from mercantile ships docked at San Pedro.

Jonathan Temple was also owner or part-owner of Rancho Los Cerritos (present day Long Beach), Rancho El Consuelo (Tulare County) and Rancho El Tejon (Kern County), all of which contributed to his wealth as a rancher during the Gold Rush, selling beef cattle to the miners up north. In the estimation of merchant and historian Harris Newmark, Temple was “a very rich, if miserly man.” But he also shaped LA’s development, through both his business exploits and through his financing of the Ord Survey of 1849, the first map to divide LA’s public land into lots that could be sold.

Walter P. Temple’s grandfather on his mom’s side was William Workman, a native of Britain who immigrated to Los Angeles from New Mexico in 1841 on the very first LA-bound caravan of Americans and Europeans from the east. Among his many land holdings, Workman owned half of Rancho La Puente, and operated a successful ranch and agricultural enterprise from his homestead there. It was centered around the Workman Adobe, just east of La Casa Nueva, which you can still visit today.

William Workman’s daughter Antonia Margarita (Walter’s mom) married Jonathan Temple’s half-brother FPF Temple (Walter’s dad) in 1845. In the decades to come, William and FPF would go into business together and exert a major impact on the growth of LA, especially downtown. In the early 1870s they formed the Temple & Workman Bank, which invested in a huge variety of industries – from real estate to oil, rail and water infrastructure to newspaper publishing.

But their bank had a reputation for liberal lending and investment policies. So when a financial panic rocked the California banking world in late 1875 and FPF Temple ran out of cash, to float their bank, they had to ask the ruthless businessman Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin for a loan.

Baldwin offered to mortgage an obscenely large swath of Workman & Temple’s land holdings in exchange for the loan. And when not even that could instill faith in the Temple & Workman Bank’s customers, depositors withdrew their funds and the bank shut down in January of 1876, over $1 million in debt. Baldwin foreclosed on the family’s real estate, FPF Temple declared bankruptcy, and William Workman shot himself in the parlor of the Workman Adobe that May.

In 1880 FPF Temple’s son Francis was able to buy back a 75-acre vestige of his family’s land, but the family struggled to hold onto it, and by 1899 the Workman homestead was again lost to foreclosure. For the next 20+ years it had a series of owners, none of which shared the Workman and Temple family’s history or connection to the land.

Walter P. Temple was just six years old when the Temple & Workman Bank collapsed and his grandfather died by suicide. His childhood straddled the highest highs and the lowest lows of his family’s story. He witnessed his father FPF Temple, once the richest man in LA, fall into financial ruin and die before he could crawl out of it; he watched as his brothers tried and eventually failed to keep the Workman homestead. Though Walter grew up on a separate homestead on nearby Rancho La Merced, the Workman property was an important part of his family’s legacy, and many of his closest relatives were buried in its private cemetery, El Campo Santo. It meant enough to Walter that in 1906, he successfully sued one of the interim owners of the Workman homestead for desecrating the cemetery. 

So when Walter’s nine-year-old son Thomas discovered oil on their land in the Montebello Hills in 1914, and the family started raking in thousands of dollars a month through a lease arrangement with Standard Oil, one of the first things they did was buy back the Workman homestead for $40,000.

Stained glass in the master bedroom of La Casa Nueva, depicting oil derricks/tanks on the Temples’ Montebello Hills property (Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry)

Building La Casa Nueva wasn’t on the Temples’ agenda when they acquired the homestead. They already lived in a fine craftsman home in Alhambra, and mostly used the Workman Adobe on their weekend getaways. They did introduce a raft of improvements to the property in the late 1910s and early 1920s though. They electrified and heated the Workman Adobe, added a reservoir/swimming pool, and transformed some ancillary buildings into an auditorium, garage and a dining hall. Perhaps the most enduring addition during that period was the stately Walter P. Temple Mausoleum at El Campo Santo, dedicated in 1921.

The catalyst for La Casa Nueva was a family visit to Mexico in the summer of 1922. For Walter, the trip was likely a mix of business and pleasure. He and his business manager Milton Kauffman were exploring the potential for investments in Mexican oil. But Walter also had fond memories of visiting his brother William in Mexico City in the 1890s, and his wife Laura Gonzalez was the child of a Mexican immigrant father, so there were family connections to explore down south too. 

Walter and Laura were inspired enough by what they saw that they decided to build a second home next to the Workman Adobe, in a style reminiscent of the Spanish colonial buildings of Mexico. While traveling through Guadalajara, the Temples also met a master stone mason (or maestro de obra) named Pablo Urzua, who would help to turn their ideas into a 3D reality over the next few years.

Within months of the family’s return from Mexico, the Temples and their contractor Sylvester Cook (builder of the Temple mausoleum) drew up some basic plans on butcher paper, and hired architects Walker & Eisen to formalize them. At the time, the firm was working with Walter on various commercial projects in LA and the San Gabriel Valley. Later on they would earn a reputation for elegant commercial buildings like the Oviatt Building, the Fine Arts Building and various theaters for United Artists.

When construction began on La Casa Nueva in late 1922, it was a homecoming of sorts for the Temple family: a physical marker of their financial stability after decades of hard times, and a return of the family to the Workman homestead, the former center of the Workman family’s ranching and agricultural empire. You can imagine how proud Walter must have felt at the prospect of living full time on his ancestral property.

But with pride, came sadness. The main adobe walls and wood framing of the house were already underway towards the end of 1922, when Laura’s health began to deteriorate quickly due to colon cancer. She died on December 28 at just 51 years old. Construction stopped for a period as Walter considered how to proceed. Eventually the work continued, and on the one-year anniversary of Laura’s death, the house was dedicated to her memory, with a polished granite plaque installed to the right of the front door. 

La Casa Nueva took nearly five years to complete. Partly that was due to the Temples’ shifting financial picture, which was worsening as the oil from Montebello Hills dried up. Also holding things up was the choice to build the main exterior walls out of adobe bricks. Pablo Urzua’s men would come up for a few months a year to create thousands of large bricks from earth, water and straw, then bake them in outdoor kilns. This was faster than the traditional method of drying them in the sun, but meant that Urzua’s workers were only on-site during the drier, warmer seasons.

Another big reason for the lengthy build was that the Temples dropped Walker & Eisen from the project in 1924. It’s not that their work was lackluster – in this virtual lecture by Homestead Museum Director Paul R. Spitzzeri, you can see that their floorplans did a lot to define the ultimate shape and layout of the house. But La Casa Nueva didn’t really become the showpiece that it is today until Roy Seldon Price took over in 1924. 

Price is a somewhat obscure architect today, probably best remembered for designing Dias Dorados, the Benedict Canyon mansion of early film mogul Thomas Ince. He also designed a number of abodes for wealthy clientele around Beverly Hills, including actresses Norma Talmadge and Lita Grey Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin’s second wife). 

From Price’s work for the Temples, it’s clear to see why he was trusted by the monied class. Walker & Eisen’s version was designed in a relatively straightforward mission revival style, blockier than the house would become, with far less decorative flair. While Price didn’t fundamentally change the bones of the house, he transformed it into a more distinctive, aesthetically refined Spanish colonial revival home. 

Price’s changes start with the front entrance. He introduced a churrigueresque plasterwork surround around the main door that necessitated moving the granite dedication plaque from 1923 further east on the outer wall. Above the door, he added a small balcony with a wrought-iron cage, decked out in the Temple family’s coat of arms. On the corners of the short patio wall surrounding the front entrance, plaster workers crafted abstracted cactus and palm tree designs, which we believe were Price’s ideas too.

Immediately inside, Walker & Eisen had designed a double staircase on the southeast and southwest corners of the entrance hall. Price objected to how the stairs minimized the view out to the courtyard through the south door, so he tore out both staircases and installed a new one just on the right side. There also used to be a bridge across the main hall, connecting the two wings upstairs. Price had that ripped out too, and replaced it with a walkway hugging the north wall, to better emphasize the grandness of the room and allow space for a cast-iron chandelier. 

On top of the two projecting wings, Price convinced Walter Temple to turn the ugly tar paper roofs planned by Walker & Eisen into open sun decks, which added 1,000 square feet of extra outdoor space on each side for the family to relax and entertain guests.

Price specified hand-carved doors, leading from the main hall to the living room, library, music room and dining room. He added colorful tiles to wall niches, and insisted on whimsical iron door hinges in the shape of angels and monkeys. You’ll find decorative wood brackets near the ceilings throughout the main living spaces downstairs, depicting animals and smiling human faces. 

All of these flights of fancy came at considerable expense. The Temple family used to joke that Price’s last name matched his invoicing. But no doubt, Price’s choices made a huge difference. Under his care La Casa Nueva developed into a home with unique character, not just outward indicators of wealth.

One of my favorite aspects of La Casa Nueva is how personal it feels, with images of the family and its history embedded into its very walls and doors. The Workman family cattle brand was carved into the walnut doors off the main hall, and stained glass windows in one of the upstairs bedrooms depict the caravan (in highly romanticized form) that brought William Workman and his family to LA in 1841, and the oil derricks that brought the Temples prosperity in the 1910s. Two of the Temple kids, Agnes & Thomas, were immortalized in stained glass windows in the living room, and in the courtyard, you can still see wooden beams jutting out of the walls, with the heads of the Temple family’s pets carved into the ends.

Above photos courtesy Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry

There are some interesting material connections between La Casa Nueva and the Temple and Workman family histories, too. In 1926, the old Temple Block at the intersection of Main and Spring streets was set for demolition, to make way for the new LA City Hall. That whole block was thick with Temple lore: Walter’s half-uncle Jonathan Temple had built its first structure, and his dad FPF Temple had built its last, the three-story home of the defunct Temple & Workman Bank.

The razing of the Temple Block opened up a remarkable opportunity to acquire pieces of it for La Casa Nueva. Down in the basement, Walter placed an 1870s vault used by the bank that took over the space once occupied by the Temple & Workman Bank. Some of the bricks from the Temple Block were saved and incorporated into a tepee just southwest of the main house. The man helping to salvage all this stuff? Will D. Gould, an attorney who had worked at the Temple Block since it opened in 1871. 

About that tepee: this weird conical structure was completed in late 1927, as one of La Casa Nueva’s final touches. It was inspired by Walter Temple’s trip to the Soboba Hot Springs in San Jacinto, where he stayed in a tepee-shaped cottage at the resort village there. Inside is a main space, a half bathroom and an attic up top, accessible via an opening in the bathroom ceiling. Originally, there was a small patio next to the door, with a thatch roof cover supported by totem poles. Apparently it was built right on the ground with no foundation, which has caused some structural issues over the years as water infiltrates the walls and floors. 

The Temples had done well for themselves for much of the 1920s. Walter expanded his interests from petroleum to real estate. He developed downtown Alhambra, and invested in construction projects throughout LA County. He even founded Temple City, and poured money into building out its early business sector. 

But by the time La Casa Nueva was completed in 1927, the Temples’ financial outlook was shifting. With oil revenues declining, expenses ramping up for his building projects and his four kids’ elite schooling, and his debt increasing, Walter’s accounts became overextended. He took out a mortgage on the homestead that he couldn’t pay back, and in 1930, as the country was tipping into the Great Depression, the Temples had to leave their home just two and a half years after they had moved in. It was a painful repetition of the same cycle that had impacted three generations of the Workman and Temple families. 

In May of 1930 the Temples leased 20 acres of the homestead (including La Casa Nueva) to the Golden State Military Academy, which enclosed the sun decks for dorms, among other changes. The Temples held onto the remaining 72 acres for commercial walnut farming. But in 1932 with their finances dwindling, they lost the homestead to foreclosure, and the California Bank took over; Walter moved down to Ensenada in Mexico to regroup, and lived out his final years in a small backhouse in Lincoln Heights. When Walter died in 1938, the bank wouldn’t even allow the Temples to inter him in the mausoleum he built. Instead he was buried in the cemetery at Mission San Gabriel Arcángel until 2002, when his remains were finally moved to El Campo Santo. 

The military academy (later renamed Raenford) stayed at the homestead from 1930-1935, until they could no longer afford rent and decamped to Encino. The school’s president, Major Lawrence Lewis, absconded with some of the Temples’ original furnishings from La Casa Nueva when he left. There were efforts to purchase them back from Lewis in the 1970s while La Casa Nueva was being restored, but Lewis was asking for more than the City wanted to pay. He died in 1979, and as far as I can tell, none of the missing furniture was ever recovered.

From 1935-1940, the entire Workman homestead was unoccupied, save for some caretakers from the Brink family (founders of the Brink’s security empire). Then in 1940 it was purchased by Harry and Lois Brown, who converted it into El Encanto Sanitarium. Harry had worked as a psychiatric parole officer for LA County, which meant he had a lot of experience placing mentally ill people in facilities that could help them. After that job ended in 1935, he and Lois started a sanitarium of their own in Monrovia, all while their three sons attended the military academy at Golden State/Raenford. When they discovered that the site where their kids attended school was available for purchase, they jumped at the chance to expand their growing business. 

During the Browns’ 20+ years there the former sun decks at La Casa Nueva housed beds for convalescent patients. The four main rooms downstairs were used for recreation and entertainment; the tepee, originally Walter Temple’s office, became Harry Brown’s office, then a workspace for El Encanto’s head nurse after Harry died. 

The Brown family kept the whole property for more than two decades until a California mandate required them to build more modern facilities. To pay for the new construction the Browns sold off the homestead piecemeal to the newly-established City of Industry, beginning in 1963. By late 1975 La Casa Nueva had become city property, and El Encanto had moved to a huge new compound just north of La Casa Nueva.

The City of Industry sank $3.4 million into restoring the homestead in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, under the supervision of restoration architect Raymond Girvigian and project coordinator Mel Gooch. Unlike the Workman Adobe’s restoration, which was limited to the exterior, La Casa Nueva got the deluxe glow up, inside and out.

Floors were redone on the balconies and courtyard. Busted balustrades got new spindles. Walls were re-plastered, and the decorative plasterwork around the short wall surrounding the north patio was recreated. A butler’s pantry, refashioned as a bathroom after the Temples moved out, was returned to its original appearance using the original sink, which fortunately had been stored on premises for decades. Weathered tiles on staircases and decorative niches were repaired or remade by expert craftsmen led by Jose Gonzalez. And that vault, salvaged from the Temple Block and whitewashed over the years, was refinished and repainted by Raymond Girvigian’s sister-in-law Dorothy Nersesian.

All above vault photos courtesy Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry

The restorers paid special attention to the ornate wood carvings that still give La Casa Nueva so much of its character. Woodworker Harvey Morris (a professional electrician who moonlit as a terrific woodworker) painstakingly rebuilt the doors leading from the main hall to the library and dining room, several of which were stolen at some point during the ‘70s and had to be re-carved based on photos. Morris also replicated the carved dog and cat heads at the end of the roof beams that projected from the courtyard walls, as memorials to the Temples’ pets. 

Stained glass artisan John Wallis was brought in to replicate the windows depicting Agnes & Thomas Temple, which had been stolen at the same time as the doors. The replicas were placed in the empty arches to the left and right of the front door, where they were before they were stolen. Decades after the restoration, a Homestead Museum intern discovered an old photo taken during the Temples’ time, showing the Agnes & Thomas windows in the living room. The Homestead Museum made the decision to move them back to their original location, where you can still see them today. 

The restoration work on La Casa Nueva and the rest of the Workman homestead was complete by early 1981, and the entire compound reopened to the public as a museum in the spring of 1981. The LA Conservancy gave the City of Industry a much-deserved award for their efforts.

Nowadays, the staff of the Homestead Museum keep their archives in the upper story of one of the wings, where the Temples lounged al fresco in the ‘20s, military cadets slept in the 1930s, and patients convalesced during the El Encanto era. Seems like a safer, more weather-resistant place to keep them than the attic of the tepee, where the Temples stored many old blueprints and documents related to the house before they vacated in 1930. 

It’s absolutely worth spending an afternoon exploring the whole Homestead Museum, for the layered histories that are embodied by the structures, the artifacts and the landscape you encounter. But to my mind, La Casa Nueva is the crown jewel of the Museum, the most beautiful and personal of the many structures there. And the first one that I’d buy if my nine-year-old discovered oil on my property. 

La Casa Nueva is open for free guided tours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 1 & 3pm, except the fourth weekend of the month. Look for the special “behind-the-scenes” tours if you want to see the basement vault and other goodies that aren’t shown on the regular tours. You can also take a free tour of The Workman Adobe at 12 & 2pm those same days, and visit El Campo Santo Cemetery seven days a week from 9am-5pm. 

Resources & Recommended Reading

+ Donnan, Sharon Gordon: “Textile Conservation at the Workman and Temple Homestead” (Western Association for Art Conservation Newsletter, Volume 10, Number 1, January 1988)

+ “Fortune Smiles on Pioneer Family” (The Whittier News, December 3, 1917 – via newspapers.com)

+ Gooch, Millard E., AIA: La Casa Nueva’s NRHP nomination form, 1974

+ Mallory, Mary: “Thomas Ince’s Dias Dorados Salutes California’s Past” (LA Daily Mirror, September 24, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “All Over the Map: Jonathan Temple and the Ord Survey of Los Angeles, 1849” (Homestead Museum Blog, September 27, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ““As a Memorial to the Pioneer Temple Family”: The Announcement of the Town of Temple, 11 May 1923” (Homestead Museum Blog, May 11, 2023)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “A Touch of Glass: Photos of the Original Stained Glass Windows of Thomas and Agnes Temple, La Casa Nueva, 20 November 1979” (Homestead Museum Blog, November 20, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ”Behind the Scenes Postview: Documenting the Building of La Casa Nueva, 1922-1927” (Homestead Museum Blog, June 27, 2021)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ”Historical Scavenging: Walter P. Temple, Will D. Gould and La Casa Nueva” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 16, 2017)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ““I Cannot Do My Best For One Who Does Not Appreciate And Believe In My Ability And My Sincerity”: Reading Between the Lines in a Letter from Roy Seldon Price to Thomas W. Temple II, 27 November 1924” (Homestead Museum Blog, November 27, 2023)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “La Casa Nueva as a Laboratory for Unraveling California’s Spanish Fantasy Past” (Homestead Museum Blog, November 12, 2023)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “La Casa Nueva’s Centennial: La Familia Temple en México, Julio y Agosto 1922” (Homestead Museum Blog, July 31, 2022)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ““Latent in the Soul of the Southern California Cholo”: Mexican Artisans and the Construction of La Casa Nueva, Los Angeles Times, 22 February 1925” (Homestead Museum Blog, February 22, 2024)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ““Makers of Men”: The Golden State and Raenford Military Academies at the Homestead, 1930-1935” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 16, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: ““Makers of Men”: The Golden State and Raenford Military Academies at the Homestead, 1930-1935” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 16, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Museum Director Musings: Safe-ly Behind the Scenes” (Homestead Museum Blog, July 16, 2016)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Niños en Dos Mundos: The Mixed Ethnicity of the Children of Walter P. Temple and Laura González” (Homestead Museum Blog, September 22, 2021)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “No Place Like Home: An Early Concept of La Casa Nueva, 1922” (Homestead Museum Blog, May 10, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “No Place Like Home: La Casa Nueva in Construction, ca. 1924” (Homestead Museum Blog, October 12, 2016)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “No Place Like Home: La Casa Nueva in Construction, ca. 1924, #2” (Homestead Museum Blog, January 6, 2017)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “On This Day: La Casa Nueva Restoration Photos, 30 January 1979” (Homestead Museum Blog, January 30, 2017)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “On This Day: Tepee Restoration Photos, 26 December 1978” (Homestead Museum Blog, December 27, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “On This Day: The Birthday of Jonathan Temple (1796-1866), Part Two” (Homestead Museum Blog, August 16, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “On This Day: The Birthday of Walter P. Temple (1869-1938)” (Homestead Museum Blog, June 7, 2021)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Pet Project: The Restoration of Wood Carvings in the Courtyard of La Casa Nueva, 28 February 1979” (Homestead Museum Blog, February 28, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Plaque Build Up: La Casa Nueva’s Historic Markers” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 26, 2024)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “The Dedication of La Casa Nueva to Laura Gonzalez Temple, 28 December 1923” (Homestead Museum Blog, December 28, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “The Homestead and El Encanto Sanitarium, 1940-1973” (Homestead Museum Blog, March 20, 2019)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: The Workman & Temple Families of Southern California, 1830-1930 (Seligson Publishing Incorporated, 2007)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Through the Viewfinder: The Temple Block, Los Angeles, ca. 1872” (Homestead Museum Blog, June 30, 2020)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Time Capsule Tuesday: The City of Industry’s Acquisition of La Casa Nueva, December 1975” (Homestead Museum Blog, June 20, 2018)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Twists and Turns in the Twenties Postview: La Casa Nueva Architect Roy Seldon Price (1889-1940)” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 16, 2023) 

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Twists and Turns in the Twenties Preview with a Photo of the Montebello Oil Field, April 1926” (Homestead Museum Blog, April 14, 2023)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Una Hija Natural: Solving the Mystery of Identifying Laura González Temple’s Mother Francisca Valenzuela” (Homestead Museum Blog, November 29, 2021)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: VIDEO: “Behind-the-Scenes: The Evolution of La Casa Nueva” (Homestead Museum on YouTube, June 27, 2021)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: VIDEO: “Life During Wartime: The Workman and Temple Families in 1840s Los Angeles” (Homestead Museum on YouTube, Sep 27, 2020)

+ Turner, Timothy G.: “Mexicans Show Artistic Skill” (Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1925 – via newspapers.com)