Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 2008

Here we have the Holmes-Shannon House, a killer two-story craftsman from 1911, beautifully preserved, and a fine example of the work of architects Robert F. Train & Robert E. Williams. This one has all the signature design features you’d expect out of a luxe craftsman on the outside – the exposed roof beams and rafter tails, overhanging eaves, bands of windows and delicious transom windows, too, the works. There are Tudor touches here in the oriel (a window bay suspended from an upper floor) on the south facade, and the half-timber framing, currently painted olive green to contrast the lighter green stucco for a shimmery, mossy effect. 

I love how the two greens play against the red brick on the chimney and foundation. Very King Koopa! The original building permits from 1911 suggest a “blue brick” facing. It’s unclear to me whether “blue” refers to the style of brick or its color (blue-colored brick was a thing). I’m hoping for the latter, in which case this house would – if we’re sticking with the Super Mario Bros. theme – resemble a combo of the dark blues from the underground levels, and the greens from the treetop levels.

Speaking of treetops, the landscaping on this thing is just magnificent. I visited during the spring, and looking down the walkway, the house was framed by a riot of colorful flowers and trees, with a freshly-mowed lawn beckoning me onwards, challenging me not to trespass (I didn’t).

Since most of us will never see the inside of this beauty in person, we must satisfy ourselves with the descriptions that the current owners submitted along with their National Register nomination form, and these droolworthy photos on Zillow. You will salivate at the fine woodwork and wood wainscoting, done up with bookmatched mahogany slabs in striking flame patterns. You will envy the unusual, glassed-in “conservatory” room (a sort of greenhouse for humans), and the sunken music room, decorated with a lovely stained glass piece depicting a lutenist. You will gape at the built-in cabinetry and bookcases, and marvel at the 8’ x 8’ stained glass triptych on the landing at the top of the staircase. While no doubt this house is a comfortable place to live, it’s no Thomas Kinkade-style cabin in the woods – the Holmes-Shannon House injects the simplicity of the craftsman movement with real opulence. 

+ See droolworthy photos of the inside of the Holmes-Shannon House on Zillow

The Development of Victoria Park

The Holmes-Shannon House was one of the earlier homes in Victoria Park, a palm-lined neighborhood bordered by Pico on the north and Venice Boulevard (née 16th Street) on the south, West Boulevard on the west and South Victoria Avenue on the east. The land was part of a Mexican land grant known as Rancho Las Cienegas, granted in 1823 to Francisco Ávila, one-time alcalde (mayor) of the pueblo of Los Angeles. His son Januario owned the northeast section that would become Victoria Park. 

By the early 1900s much of the Ávilas’ land was sold off and subdivided, and in 1907, a syndicate of 19 real estate investors (including railway developers General Moses Hazeltine Sherman and Eli P. Clark) began marketing the Victoria Park tract in the papers. At the time the area was west of LA’s western boundary, but that didn’t keep them from attracting curious clients.

“A handsome, spacious private residence park,” proclaimed a March 31, 1907 Los Angeles Times ad for the area, placed by the neighborhood’s agents David Barry & Co. “On elevated level ground, commanding a magnificent outlook.” The ad extolled Victoria Park’s proximity to the Los Angeles-Pacific Electric car lines, and the general high-class housing you could expect there. “Residences only, all to be two stories high, and to cost from $4500 and $5000 up. All houses to be 60 feet from the roadway.”

It wasn’t just the size and cost of the houses that made Victoria Park feel exclusive. It was also their configuration, inside and around a paved circle, inspired by the work of master landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (NYC’s Central Park; Boston’s Emerald Necklace). At first, each lot’s address was its lot number – in the case of Holmes-Shannon House, you’d be visiting Victoria Park No. 83. Très à la mode!  

After some early success finding buyers and constructing upscale homes, lot sales had petered out in Victoria Park by WWI; in the above photo from 1918, you can see how much of the land was left unsold around the middle circle. After the war the neighborhood was rezoned to accommodate multi-family housing and more middle-class buyers. Driving around Victoria Park today, you can tell there’s a mix of architectural eras and construction qualities represented. Still, there’s a preponderance of beautifully crafted homes here. Come for the Holmes-Shannon, stay for the rest of the lovely historic homes in the neighborhood. You could literally drive around Victoria Park forever without using your turn signal once.  

Above photos public domain. From Men of California, 1900-1902, edited by Wellington C. Wolfe

The Architects

Robert F. Train & Robert E. Williams were both expats, Train from Nottingham, England and Williams from Canada. By 1900 they were working together in Los Angeles, and their firm would design banks and churches, masonic temples and downtown business blocks, theaters and mansions. But the important factoid in relation to the Holmes-Shannon House is that they were also members of the influential Arroyo Guild of Fellow Craftsman, a consortium of artists, craftspeople and builders, centered around the Arroyo Seco, who had a big impact on home design in the early 1900s:

The Arroyo Set also defined the visual arts and architecture of turn-of-the-century Los Angeles. George Wharton James, a desert health faddist like [Charles] Lummis, organized the Arroyo Guild, a short-lived but seminal point of intersection between the mission-myth romantics and the Pasadena franchise of the Arts and Crafts movement dominated by the celebrated Greene brothers. A synthesis of the two currents, of course, was the typical Craftsman bungalow with its Navajo and ‘Mission Oak’ interior decoration…the masses could buy small but still stylish imitations in ‘do-it-yourself’ kits that could be thrown up on any vacant lot. For an entire generation, these ‘democratic bungalows,’ with their domestic miniaturization of the Arroyo aesthetic, were praised not only for making Los Angeles a city of single-family homes…but also for assuring ‘industrial freedom.’

-Mike Davis, City of Quartz

Train & Williams also designed a new campus for the USC College of Fine Arts in Highland Park, after the original was destroyed in a fire in 1910. When the main USC campus absorbed the College of Fine Arts, the building was taken over by the great stained glass house Judson Studios, headed by William Lees Judson – co-founder of the Arroyo Guild. Given all these connections between Train & Williams and Judson, it’s likely that the stained glass in the Holmes-Shannon House was created at Judson Studios. 

The Clients

The duo who lived here was Nellie Holmes-Shannon and Michael Shannon, a Los Angeles power couple with a great backstory. Nellie was a relative of the poet and scholar Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most-cited justices in US Supreme Court history. By the time she commissioned the house in Victoria Park (it’s her name on the deed), she had built a reputation as a successful real estate owner and financier, and a leader in social and philanthropic circles.

Nellie’s husband Michael Shannon was no slouch, an Irish immigrant who served in the Civil War, then became Superintendent of Construction for the Central Pacific Railroad. He was there when the golden spike was driven in Utah in 1869, officially linking the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, and then oversaw the workers that brought the railroad to Los Angeles in the 1870s. In the late 1880s Shannon joined the LA police force, and became the city’s first (and for a while only) traffic cop, overseeing the flow of people and horses through the congested intersection of Spring and Temple Streets. According to a 1927 LA Times article, the intersection was known as “Shannon’s Point” during his tenure. According to one source, his traffic-slowing technique involved a cane with a hook at its end, which he’d use to snag the bridle of a speeding horse. But Shannon later said that this legend was poppycock, and he would actually grab the bridle or the horse’s neck by hand!

Nellie lived in the Holmes-Shannon House until she died in 1924. Michael followed her to the beyond in 1931.

Also living at the Holmes-Shannon House soon after its construction in 1911 were Nellie and Michael’s only child, Michael Francis Shannon, his wife Agnes and (eventually) their three children. Michael Francis made a name for himself as a litigator in a number of sensational cases covered by the papers. In one 1919 trial, he lashed himself with a whip in court without raising a welt, to demonstrate that the father he was defending was not guilty of cruelty for flogging his 11-year-old son. Later Michael Francis won national renown for his involvement with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. After speeding up the ranks in the LA Elks Lodge No. 99, then becoming Grand Esquire of the entire South Central California region, Michael Francis was named Justice of the Grand Forum (like the US Supreme Court for Elks) in 1931. Finally in 1934, he was voted the Grand Exalted Ruler of the entire Elks organization, the first time the post had been held by a Southern Californian. Quite a family. 

There’s a lot that’s embodied in this one house: the history of a region, the background of the architects that built it and the style they employed, and the story of the remarkable family that lived there for decades. More than 100 years after it was built, the Holmes-Shannon maintains its allure – in fact the “Open House of Horrors” episode of Modern Family was shot inside in 2012. Exteriors were filmed at another NRHP-listed abode, the Miller & Herriott House a few miles away (see visit #166).

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ “Attractive Homes Being Built in Victoria Park” (Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1909 – via ProQuest)

+ Bell, Alison: “Artisans group offered one-stop shopping for ‘excellence and beauty’” (Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2011)

+ Blake, Lindsay: “Scene It Before: Phil’s Halloween Open House from Modern Family” (Los Angeles Magazine, October 9, 2014)

+ Davis, Mike: City of Quartz (Verso, 2018 edition)

+ Ellzev, Lisa & Ulrik Theer, owners: Holmes-Shannon House’s NRHP nomination form

+ Garcia, Edgar, Preservation Planner, Office of Historic Resources: “Holmes Shannon House” (PDF – June 12, 2007)

+ “Homes Built in Victoria Park: Tract West of City Rapidly Being Improved” (Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1908 – via ProQuest)

+ Kines, Mark Tapio: “Venice Boulevard” (LAStreetNames.com)

+ Wood, Ira Berthelot: “Beginnings of Los Angeles: Early Events in History of Metropolis Recounted” (Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1927 – via ProQuest)