April 22 is the anniversary of 1300 Carroll block’s addition to the National Register of Historic Places.

The immaculately preserved Victorian homes on Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights make up the highest concentration of Queen Annes in LA, and serve as a proud example of preservation efforts done right

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 22, 1976

There’s no shortage of Victorian homes in Los Angeles. You can find great examples from Altadena to Long Beach, West Adams to Wilmington; we even have a whole historical theme park of relocated Victorians in Heritage Square. But the highest concentration of Victorians in their original setting is on the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights, just east of Echo Park. More than just a museum of dead architecture, this block of nine pristine, 130-year-old Queen Anne/Eastlake-style homes is part of a still-thriving neighborhood. And it embodies a multi-layered story about the development of LA. 

In 1880, about 100 years after Los Angeles was founded, the city was still a small one. 11,183 Angelenos were recorded in the census that year, with another 22,000 in outlying towns of LA County. But outside of a small urban core centered around downtown, Los Angeles proper was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of undeveloped land, controlled by a small number of landowners.

Things started to change when the Southern Pacific Railroad came to town in the mid-1870s. Once the Santa Fe Railroad added LA to its transcontinental portfolio in 1886, the dam broke down, and migrants and speculators started pouring in. The railroad competition meant that you could ride from Kansas City to LA for as little as $1. Why not try your luck out west? 

As a result, 1886 kicked off a short boom era for land speculation and building in LA. That year, midwestern developers William W. Stilson and Everett E. Hall created one of the city’s first suburbs when they bought the subdivision that would become Angelino Heights (then “Angeleno Heights”). Many of the streets, Carroll Avenue included, were named after Stilson and Hall’s family members. 

With its hilltop views and three tennis courts, Angeleno Heights attracted affluent families that were active in LA business and society. The house at 1300 Carroll was built for Aaron Phillips, who owned a successful hardware business in Iowa before starting a furniture business in LA; 1316 was owned early on by Major Horace M. Russell, who made a fortune in mining; 1320 was occupied by the son of the co-founder of Heim Brewing Company, who opened his own brewery in LA; 1324 was owned by a respected orchardist; 1329 by the real estate developer and LA City Councilman Daniel Innes; 1330 (my favorite!) by a dairyman turned oil speculator; 1345 (the house used at the end of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video) by Michael Sanders, who ran storage warehouses in Little Tokyo; and 1355 by the high society industrialist Henry L. Pinney. 

The above eight Victorians were all built on Carroll Avenue during the boom years of 1887-88. In 1888, a banking recession shut down new construction almost immediately. The economy didn’t pick up again until the mid-1890s, after oil was discovered near downtown. It’s against that backdrop that we get the final Victorian on the block, the Haskins House at 1344 Carroll Avenue (see below). It was built in 1895 in the “gay ‘90s” substyle of Queen Anne, so named for the “cheerful” appearance and brightly-colored paint jobs. 

There is one final house on the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue that figures into the National Register of Historic Places induction. Victoriana had fallen out of fashion after the turn of the century, and craftsman architecture was coming into vogue. And so we have the 1907 property at 1340 Carroll, built for a plumber named Edward Thomas in the early craftsman style with wide windows and doors, exposed roof rafter tails and relative lack of fancitude. While it doesn’t quite fit in aesthetically with the rest of the block, it pointed the way to the homes that would sprout up in Angelino Heights in the early 20th century.

In the years since, Angelino Heights has witnessed a slow-moving revolving door of Victorians. Portions of the neighborhood were demolished in the late 1940s to make room for the 101 freeway. In the 1980s and ‘90s, several vintage Queen Annes were moved from other parts of the city to take their place among their stately neighbors on Carroll Avenue.

On August 10, 1983, Angelino Heights became the very first of LA’s 35 Historic Preservation Overlay Zones. An HPOZ designation protects the historic character of an area by setting rules and an oversight structure for exterior alterations, landscaping or new constructions. In an HPOZ, all of the above must be compatible with the architectural and visual integrity of the area; and any demolition efforts can only move forward if it’s shown that preservation would be economically or structurally impossible. 

Walking down Carroll Avenue today, it’s clear how much pride the owners take in these homes. Some seem like they were built (or at least painted) yesterday; others were undergoing restoration as I walked down the street. The residents of Angelino Heights wouldn’t pay the significant costs associated with maintaining their century-old homes if they didn’t love them. I often hear the canard that Los Angeles doesn’t care about its history. The 1300 block of Carroll Avenue stands as a defiant counter-example.

Recommended Reading

+1300 Carroll Block’s NRHP nomination form

+Angelino Heights (Echo Park Historical Society)

+Angelino Heights Walking Tour (PDF from LA Conservancy)

+How We Got This Way (Los Angeles has Always Been Suburban)(KCET, 2011)

+Angelino Heights: Oldest Surviving Suburb of Los Angeles (LA Almanac)

+Neighborhood Project: Angelino Heights (LAist, 2007)