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Introduction and Inventory


ELABORATELY GATED WESTMORELAND PLACE was just one of many residential subdivisions developed after Los Angeles emerged from the national financial doldrums of the 1890s and its burghers once again felt comfortable building statement houses. While the tract's founders had spent a decade studying the local real estate market, it seems they were short-sighted when it came to the effects of technology. As soon as the first automobile was seen chugging down Broadway in the afternoon shadow of Bunker Hill before the turn of the century, the civic die had been cast—the addictive allure of speed and convenience would mean dizzying suburbanization across Los Angeles and its continuing annexations, well beyond what had been created by the leisurely pace of local streetcars over the previous two decades.
The prime developers of Westmoreland Place were captured by Los Angeles Times illustrator—and
noted painter—Arthur Burnside Dodge in 1905. Wesley Clark is holding aloft an image of the
gates of their new subdivision. The real estate titans had begun their partnership with
a tract east of Main Street; soon understanding that the future of Los Angeles
lay to the west, the men developed a tract straddling Westlake Avenue
and then crossed Hoover Street to begin platting the acreage
they'd acquired from homesteader Bartolo Ballerino.


Wesley Clark and Elden P. Bryan teamed up officially as a Los Angeles real estate force by 1893, both Texans having arrived from Dallas to catch the city's fabled (and short-lived) Boom of the Eighties, Bryan in December 1885 and Clark soon after. Clark operated in real estate on his own at first, though apparently associating, at least to some degree, with Bryan and Bryan's partner Frank M. Kelsey in real estate and insurance; by 1893 Bryan & Kelsey had become Clark & Bryan. By 1893, the men had established their Clark & Bryan Tract at the southeast corner of Eighth and San Pedro streets. Angelenos had already begun leaving their turreted piles perched atop Bunker Hill; despite the national financial headwinds of the '90s, Clark and Bryan began to faithfully promote the benefits of moving away from the congested downtown core of Los Angeles. The ever-increasing tide of newcomers to the city also needed to be accommodated beyond the capacity of the several existing Victorian suburbs: Angelino Heights was not far to the north of downtown; Boyle Heights east across the river was also reachable by streetcar. Most notably, as soon as the University of Southern California was founded in 1880, there had been rapid development of seriously scaled houses on generous lots south along Figueroa and Flower streets as well as on Grand Avenue, all leading to Adams Street, along which the high-end residential city would first move west. Soon after opening their original tract, which they followed with the South Bonnie Brae Tract in the southerly Westlake district, Clark and Bryan realized that the future of residential Los Angeles would lie beyond Hoover Street, where the city's original grid, oriented to the northeast and southwest, met a new compass-point grid. Before long, they secured a large portion of the property of Bartolo Ballerino, an old Angeleno finally beginning to give up on something of a personal crusade against the voracious city itching to expand west over his quarter-section homestead.

Known as Los Angeles's "Crib King," Bartolo Ballerino also owned considerable real estate near the Plaza, where, sanctioned with a wink by the City Council's legal tolerance for prostitution in the manner of New Orleans's later Storyville, he had at least as early as the 1870s converted several blocks of old houses into a crib district, where temptresses displayed themselves alluringly in windows. In the laissez-faire nature of Los Angeles between its founding and a reform movement at the time of the development of Westmoreland Place that closed his vice operations, Ballerino impressed the establishment for his accumulation of money and land, then as now the chief measures of American success. The establishment was also given to easily turning a blind eye to vice in the Gilded Age, even to prostitution, possibly since men in power have traditionally enjoyed the thrill of the kind of back-door, down-low hospitality that a man like Ballerino could provide. By the turn of the 20th century, however, Los Angeles was looking to be taken seriously as a major American city and sought a better class of investor. Despite his close friendship with the likes of County Sheriff William A. Hammel, Ballerino had become an embarrassment—as had his ethnicity—although what seems to have actually been behind the vice crackdown on old Bartolo (and others) was not so much civic pride but that the establishment coveted his downtown properties for expansion of the legitimate business district—and, pertaining to our story of Westmoreland Place—his quarter-section near Pico Street for residential expansion. Though sleaze-capitalist Ballerino emerged stealthily with smaller, disconnected cribs around town—and would only be jailed for 30 days, in the spring of 1904—other crime kingpins soon pushed the old man aside. He was further embittered by having had his wife Maria divorce him and make claims on his fortune, which put more pressure on him to give into those coveting his homestead. According to the Los Angeles Express of May 21, 1904, which came out during his brief incarceration, "Clark & Bryan are making a beauty spot of Westmoreland Place, which, until they acquired the property, consisted of a wide barley field, with only an old red house set far back from the street to indicate the occupancy of the land. Old rags were stuffed in the windows of the house and a few rusty farming implements were scattered around, with one or two dogs and a few cattle to keep them company.... That was the home of Bartolo Ballerino...whose refusal to sell his home place so long stood in the way of the development of Pico Heights. With hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of land and an abundance of money in the bank, he preferred to live in that little two-room house, with its scanty furnishings and the squalid accompaniments of poverty, rather than to alter the course of his life." Ballerino died at 80 on July 11, 1909.


In a southwesterly aerial view as imagined by lithographer and land developer Bruce W. Pierce in 1894,
the Pico Heights neighborhood is noted on the far side of Vermont Avenue. After the turn of the
century, Wesley Clark and Elden Bryan would acquire the green field bisected by the
slough to begin development of Westmoreland Place and its associated
tracts. The two roadways of the Place would run parallel north
from Pico Street between the stand of trees and
Vermont Avenue, with the pond at the
tract's northwest corner.


On Sunday, November 28, 1897, Clark and Bryan announced the opening of the Lone Star Tract on their new 50-acre acquisition, which would only be the beginning of their development of the Ballerino lands. In November 1901, the Ballerino family sold the rest of its property to Chicago real estate investor Mitchell Allen, who, by late 1902, had transferred it to Clark and Bryan and their silent partner, investor Henry E. Huntington—who was also busy building transit lines west across the city—each to hold an undivided third. Purloining the name from a famous private street in St. Louis, residential development in which city, much in the news at the time for its World's Fair, was inspiring private residential parks and street-naming all over the country, including yet another Westmoreland Place in Pasadena—the three developers introduced the name Westmoreland, suggestive of Anglo privilege and pastoral tradition, to Los Angeles. Clark and Bryan immediately began work on improvements in the newest parcels of their holdings. In addition to the middle-class 161-lot Lone Star Tract, there would now be the upper-middle-class 185-lot Westmoreland Tract and, at the northeast corner of Tenth Street (now Olympic Boulevard) and Vermont Avenue, the 14-lot Bungalow Row for those of modest means. The crown jewel of the new district would be private Westmoreland Place, with gates and stone entrance lodges connected by ironwork arches, fortifications intended to guard a projected full complement of palaces, many to be built on parcels comprised of more than one of the tract's 65 lots. Only nine houses would be built.


A map from the 1921 Baist Real Estate Atlas illustrates the four tracts developed
by Wesley Clark and Elden P. Bryan on their purchase of a portion of the
Ballerino quarter-section. The first opened was the Lone Star Tract
at the southeast corner. It was followed by Bungalow Row
and the Westmoreland Tract. The last to open its
gates was Westmoreland Place, meant to
be the developers' crown jewel.


 Clark and Bryan first concentrated on promoting the Westmoreland Tract and Bungalow Row, holding off on development of Westmoreland Place until, apparently, sufficient buzz on the new district had been generated. A map of Westmoreland Place prepared in late 1902—though not filed with the city until December 1904—indicates that all but five of the 200-foot-deep lots had frontages of 100 feet; two were 175 feet wide and three, 150. Documents prepared for later litigation over its uses continue the tract's description: "All of the lots face on private streets within the tract. On one side thereof high and ornamental fences and walls have been constructed on the street frontages adjoining the tract, with massive, ornamental gate entrances on those streets. The roads of the tract are graded and macadamized, cement curbs and sidewalks are constructed, and an attractive lighting system has been installed; parking spaces between the curbs and sidewalks are laid out, and the lots themselves are planted with palms and ornamental trees...." The luxury and exclusivity of Westmoreland Place, rather than mere bourgeois comfort of the Westmoreland tract or the practicality of Bungalow Row would now be the focus of Clark and Bryan's advertising. The partners purloined more than a name from St. Louis: Copies of William Eames's and Thomas Young's design of the east gate of that city's 1887 Westmoreland Place was lifted, almost brick by brick and tile by tile, it seems, and placed at the four main entrances of its Los Angeles doppelganger, two on Tenth Street/Olympic Boulevard and two on Pico Street (now Pico Boulevard). Sanborn insurance maps indicate the eight lodges as "waiting rooms," serving as they did as shelter for Los Angeles Railway passengers on Tenth and Pico. A trace of a pedestrian gate remains today at the southeast corner of Westmorland Avenue and Olympic, a tiny testament to Clark and Bryan's Westmoreland Place, architecturally poignant when one considers the intact splendor of its Missouri inspiration, which remains one of the most beautiful urban confections anywhere in the world.
Although no definitive photographs of West Coast
doppelgängers have yet been found, the inspiration that
Wesley Clark and E. P. Bryan took from the east gate of St. Louis's
Westmoreland Place, below, is clear. That subdivision was developed in 1887
with a parallel residential park, the similarly lavish and also extant Portland Place;
their four main entrances have distinctly varied gates. Advertising copy suggests that
 identical twin-lodge gates guarding the new Los Angeles subdivision were placed at the
north and south ends of Westmoreland Place and what is today Menlo Avenue between
10th Street (today's Olympic Boulevard) and Pico Street (today's Pico Boulevard), and
aerial photography indicates that smaller pillar gates may have existed at the 11th
 Street entrances of the subdivision (a pair a half-block west of Elden Avenue,
with another at 11th Street and Vermont Avenue). Aerials taken August 1,
 1927, and January 1, 1928, indicate that the eight stone lodges (which
served as streetcar waiting rooms) lasted until the fall of 1927.



The original building restrictions for Los Angeles's Westmoreland Place were considerable, if not unusual for high-end subdivisions of the early 20th century. As enumerated in a later lawsuit contending that they had been breached—particularly item 1— the strictures were

1. That each and every lot and parcel of land included in said tract shall be used for residence purposes exclusively; that no building or structure pertaining to or for the conduct of business of any kind whatsoever shall ever be erected thereon.
2. That no residence of less than two full stories above the basement shall ever be erected or placed upon said premises, and that no residence shall be erected or placed upon said premises that shall cost less than $15,000.
3. That any residence to be built upon said premises shall front upon the private driveways shown upon said plat, and that the front line of such residence, including porch or piazza, but not including front steps, shall be placed on a line 60 feet from the front line of said property; that said front line of said property shall be considered to be 19 feet from the outside of the street curb; that no building shall ever be placed on said premises nearer to said front line of said property than said designated line.
4. That no fence or wall on the side line of any lot or parcel of land situated in said tract in front of said house line shall ever be built or placed of a greater height than four feet from the ground.
5. That no more than one residence shall ever be erected or placed or allowed to be upon any lot in said tract.
6. That no double house or tenement house, that no flat nor any kind of a residence except a residence designed for use as a single residence, shall ever be erected or placed upon any of said lots.
7. That no oil well shall ever be bored or operated upon any part of said premises; that no derrick nor machinery for conducting any kind of business whatever shall ever be erected or placed upon any portion of said premises.
8. That no residence shall be erected upon any lot in said premises nearer than 15 feet to the north and south (or side) lines of said lots, not including steps and porte-cochère.
9. That no transfer or lease of any portion of said premises shall ever be made to anyone other than to a person of the Caucasian or white race.
10. That upon a breach of either or any one of the fore-going conditions, title to any property conveyed in said tract by said defendants, and to the whole thereof, shall become at once divested from the owner thereof, his heirs or assigns, and shall revert to and revest in... [developers] Wesley Clark and E. P. Bryan, their heirs and assigns.
11. That said tract is intended to be used exclusively as a first-class residence property, and that each and every condition, limitation, reservation, restriction, and covenant above set out is intended for and is for the benefit of each and every lot in said tract, and of the owners thereof, and that a breach of any one of said conditions, limitations, reservations, restrictions, and covenants may be enjoined or prevented by any person owning any property in said tract.

The first lot sale in Westmoreland Place was to George P. Thresher, vice president of the Los Angeles Building Company; he built his own home on Lot 37 in mid 1904. It seems likely that Thresher was motivated to be an early purchaser when he saw that E. P. Bryan was building an extravagant home of his own within the gates and that Wesley Clark also had plans for one in the Place; Thresher's lot was the next one north of Bryan's. The next sale, in October 1904, was to the Los Angeles Building Company itself; this was a parcel comprised of Lot 43 and the northerly 50 feet of Lot 45, on which company secretary Oliver C. Bryant would build a large spec house in 1907. After both transactions in which the Los Angeles Building Company was involved were officially executed in January 1905, sales in Westmoreland Place stalled. Whether or not this lack of success had something to do with with the forthcoming dissolution of the Clark and Bryan partnership is unclear—the men denied rumors that the split wasn't amicable—but a parting came on November 7, 1906, by which time, nearly two years after the Thresher purchases, no additional lots had been successfully peddled; the dissolution became official one day after Bryan's daughter Bessie married real estate man Luther T. Bradford, who became his father-in-law's new business partner. At the breakup, unsold frontage in Westmoreland Place was divided between Clark, Bryan, and Henry Huntington, who had his lots transferred to the Huntington Land and Improvement Company. Another year would pass before another conveyance would be made, that of Lot 33 at the southwest corner of Tenth and Westmoreland—adjacent to Thresher's home—to Alexander Parley Johnson on December 11, 1907. (Given that the Panic of 1907 had begun eight weeks before, this sale was significant, but still not an indicator of an upturn in the subdivision's rate of sales.) Johnson would complete 33 Westmoreland Place by late the next year.
A postcard view depicts the scene north along the easterly drive of Westmoreland Place toward its
intersection with West 11th Street, which crosses in the middle. Elden P. Bryan's elaborate
palace is at the northwest corner; a block west is seen Wesley Clark's house.
This image was rendered prior to the construction of the Gillette/
Miles house—#43—at the southwest corner of the
easterly drive and West 11th in 1905.


The sale of 43 Westmoreland Place—the spec house built by Oliver Bryant—to miner and oil man Grant G. Gillette was made in February 1908. That year also saw a lot sale by E. P. Bryan to Harriett Hollingsworth, wife of real estate operator William I. Hollingsworth; it was not uncommon for purchasers of land to place deeds in the names of their spouses. It seems that in the Hollingsworth case the lot was held, unimproved, as an investment. Lot 61 and the southerly half of 59 was sold to real estate man William F. Young, who began building #59 for himself there in the fall of 1909. In March 1911, Clark sold Lot 143 and the northerly 75 feet of 145 to yet another real estate operator, Joseph E. Carr, who began construction of a massive Renaissance palazzo across Eleventh Street from Clark. As part of a last-ditch effort to promote Westmoreland Place, Clark and Bryan each built elaborate spec houses toward the barren Pico Street end of the tract in the summer of 1911. Clark built his on Lot 156 facing west on the westerly drive. A house straddling a parcel composed of the southerly three-quarters of Lot 60 and the northerly half of Lot 62—addressed 60 Westmoreland Place—was built as a project of Bryan and his business partner since 1907, Luther T. Bradford. By this time, however, the jig was up. The Place, though during 1912 being once again advertised with frantic vigor by the original three investors—Clark, Bryan, and Huntington—was an abject failure. Only one additional sale would result from the recent ballyhoo: Taxicab-company owner Ralph E. Wells bought the six-bedroom 156 Westmoreland Place in November 1912—the only surviving dwelling, today addressed 1218 Menlo Avenue. Bryan & Bradford's 60 Westmoreland Place would sit for five years until real estate operator W. Ross Campbell acquired it as his own home, perhaps then securing it at a bargain price.
All nine original houses of Westmoreland Place remain in this aerial view taken on January 1,
 1928. Vermont Avenue is at the lower edge; Olympic and Pico boulevards are at left
and right, with the tract's easterly lots lines at the top edge. At top right is
#60; from left to right across the street from it are 33, 37, 41,
43, and 59. Along the lower light-colored roadway
from left to right are 141, 143, and 156,
which is the lone survivor.
Why did Westmoreland Place fail? In a simple word—timing. Technology driven by petroleum, real estate mania, and the discovery of Los Angeles as the promised land were all coming together at the turn of the 20th century. After a decade of public demand for a tunnel though Bunker Hill—a virtual wall to the west thwarting the old pueblo-based city when the civic Manifest Destiny was naturally inclined toward the Pacific—a portal finally opened in March 1901. Suburban residential possibilities with easy access to the business district increased dramatically. Seemingly the entire plain south of the Hollywood Hills would be platted within another decade, by which time Hollywood itself had been annexed into the city. Adams Street was rapidly extending west and would become the established spine of the best neighborhoods, reaching an estate area beyond Western Avenue early in the new century. Streetcar service had long been running along Adams from Normandie Avenue and to Pico Heights, bounded by Tenth/Olympic, Pico, Vermont, and Western Avenue, and these lines were extended. Had Westmoreland Place been built west of the Heights, rather than between it and downtown, its fortunes may have been very different; after the huge increase of private automobile ownership following the introduction of the Model T in the fall of 1908, Clark and Bryan's advertising for the tract, touting 10-minute Los Angeles Railway schedules to downtown, had little impact on newly and excitedly motorized homeseekers.

While the Adams corridor had the cachet, it did not have a lock on the pocketbooks of the affluent forever. Wesley Clark had built his own home at 234 Adams Street in 1893; as a witness to that avenue's dramatic westward expansion of affluence, one might think he'd have left Westmoreland Place out of his plans for the Ballerino property, concentrating on middle-class development there—especially as he would have been aware of the emergence of similarly gated Berkeley Square in westerly West Adams, which occurred just as he was cutting up his St. Louis knockoff into lots. While Clark and Bryan may have studied the original Westmoreland Place itself, it was the full history of the Missouri city's famous gated neighborhoods that they failed to consider. Rather than enduring as has the St. Louis's has, their Westmoreland Place instead would suffer the fate of St. Louis's first private street, Lucas Place, built in 1851: It was too close to the congestion of a widening commercial core.
Wesley Clark and E. P. Bryan, though no longer partners, continued to market Westmoreland Place
along with Henry Huntington's development company despite the subdivision's having become
flyover territory. The newly motorized rich preferred farther-flung developments such as
gated Berkeley Square; somewhat less well-heeled homeseekers were finding lots
even beyond Crenshaw Boulevard in such new neighborhoods as Victoria Park,
opened in 1907. The year this advertisement appeared—1911—lot sales
were beginning in Windsor Square and Fremont Place, all but sealing
the fate of Westmoreland Place. The street lamps of the tract—
the one here, inset left, was in front of #41, E. P. Bryan's
house—were of an unusual type also once found,
interestingly enough, in Victoria Park (right).


After their last and unsuccessful push of Westmoreland Place during 1911 and 1912, Clark, Bryan, and the Huntington Land and Improvement Company would try to renege on their own original lot covenants, contending that it was a changing city and not their lack of foresight that had doomed the gated tract. George Thresher, Parley Johnson, William Hollingsworth, Joseph Carr, and Joseph H. Miles—who now owned #43, the Bryant/Gillette house—were seriously displeased to find that lots sold after they bought theirs were less restricted than their own, with, among other differences, clauses that provided for the expiration of restrictions whereas those on the original deeds were expressly stated as being meant to stand in perpetuity. William F. Young's deed, for example, provided for an expiration date in January 1916. Without sufficiently informing early purchasers of the changes, the developers formally agreed on February 6, 1911, to significantly change deed restrictions. The result was that during their extensive promotion of Westmoreland Place through 1912, tract covenant changes were various and unclear. The final provocation to the early owners came in November 1912 after unsuccessful promotions of the tract that year when Clark, Bryan, the Huntington Land and Improvement Company rescinded the 1911 agreement altogether. The owners with enormous sums tied up in expensive houses on what were turning out to be their own poor choices of location were extremely vexed when large billboards appeared along Tenth and Pico bearing the developers' names and offering Westmoreland Place lots as sites for apartment buildings and hotels. Adding insult to injury were large advertisements in the Times and the Herald and other dailies repeating the offering. Lawsuits ensued, with many hundreds of pages of documents being considered in court. On June 4, 1915, a ruling was handed down in favor of the plaintiffs—Westmoreland Place was to be reserved for residence purposes only. Naturally, the developers appealed, with further litigation continuing up to the California Supreme Court, which refused to hear the developers' appeal. Negotiations if not litigation between original homeowners and the three corporate holders of the rest of the tract continued all the way until January 25, 1929, when an agreement was reached whereby restrictions against multi-unit housing were finally rescinded. "Compromise succeeded where litigation failed," as the Times observed the next day. Presumably some kind of financial settlement was reached between owners; it must have been agreed among them that their investments in their lots, for which Ballerino had paid $1.25 and acre and Clark and Bryan $1,000, had been good to them all. Remarkably, most of the earliest families were still living in Westmoreland Place at the time of the agreement: The Johnsons, the Threshers, the Bryans, the Mileses, the Clarks, the Youngs, the Carrs, and the Wellses had all held firm, some retaining ownership well into the neighborhood's ungated apartment-house era.
In an aerial of October 1, 1962, corresponding to the 1928 aerial two images above, what was once known as Westmoreland Place has now been been fully covered by apartment houses
and commercial structures, though seven of the tract's nine original houses remain.
Numbers 37 and 41 were demolished in 1941 for five apartment buildings.


 The atmosphere of uncertainty prevailing over Westmoreland Place since the first lawsuit was brought against the developers had naturally discouraged any further purchases in the tract, and each year was bringing new competition for the dollars of men of means. While the district was one of several in the city described as the "West End"—the vicinity of Adams and Figueroa streets had also been called this—the holder of the sobriquet during the 1910s was far out on Wilshire Boulevard, itself a residential thoroughfare not yet going commercial. Windsor Square and Fremont Place had opened in semi-rolling prairie in that West End in 1911; in 1920, lots sales in Hancock Park would be commencing. Beverly Hills was already active, as was far-flung Brentwood. The gates of Bel-Air would open soon after these. The fates and pretensions of fully developed Adams Boulevard and practically stillborn Westmoreland Place were sealed. Berkeley Square would thrive, more or less, for decades, surviving mostly intact until the Santa Monica Freeway and school expansion took out every last vestige when the road came through in the early 1960s. By then, however, in a movement that had actually begun 40 years before, the affluent had abandoned West Adams for the Wilshire Corridor and the Westside from Wilton to as far as the ocean.

Westmoreland Place, born in 1903, was dying on the vine less than a decade later, even as Windsor Square and Fremont Place were opening. One proposal that might have made considerable difference to Pico Heights and vicinity was that of the powerful Automobile Club of Southern California in the fall of 1923 as it was involved in the putting together the famous "Major Traffic Street Plan" of May 1924. The plan, developed by the office of Frederick Law Olmsted for the Traffic Commission of the city and county, was notable for suggesting the widening of major streets, including Tenth and Pico. The idea of the city acquiring the empty acres of Westmoreland Place to create a park—there would still have been more than 30 acres, with trees planted in 1903 now nicely maturing—as suggested by the Auto Club might have made all the difference to the area. On November 14, 1923, the Los Angeles Times ran an item headlined NEW PARK FOR CITY URGED: WESTMORELAND PLACE IS PICKED AS IDEAL SPOT detailing the resolutions for such a plan sent by the Community Development Association to Mayor George Cryer and the City Council. The pressures on housing with the dramatic population rise in Los Angeles during the '20s—it would more than double during the decade—rendered any such park a pipe dream; apartment houses and hotels it would be, though the proper use of the Place would continue to be wrangled for years. On May 3, 1931, the Times reported that the first apartment structure in the original Westmoreland Place tract had just opened, a five-story Art Deco building still standing at 1036 Menlo Avenue. The Crestwood was the seed of dozens of apartment buildings that would rise over the next few decades within the Westmoreland Place tract. Only the original house on Lot #156 remains today, occupied by a Japanese language school; at the Olympic end are the New Seoul Hotel and a plastic-surgery center on the site of the Johnson residence. At the Pico corners now are a strip mall, a fire station, parking lot, and Huicho's Bakery. Aerial photography suggests that the gates of Westmoreland Place disappeared, apparently in anticipation of the 1929 agreement, in late 1927. Only a remnant of them at the southeast corner of Olympic Boulevard and Westmoreland Avenue, along with the house at 1218 Menlo Avenue and towering palms along the tract's old roadways, suggest what might have been.


Due to work being done to straighten Olympic Boulevard at
Vermont Avenue—where a billboard is seen here in the distance—
the Los Angeles Railway cut its Yellow Car service on the "L" line back to
 Menlo Avenue from its former westerly terminus at Mullen Avenue on April 19, 1940,
four days before this photograph was taken. New track stops and truncated trolley wires
mark the new terminus at the former northwest gate of Westmoreland Place. Streetcar service
to Pico Heights had begun as early as 1887. The original pedestrian gate and retaining wall
at the southwest corner of Westmoreland Avenue can be seen at left; behind it is the
edge of 33 Westmoreland Place and its garage. A plastic-surgery center is now on
the corner and the Westmoreland Place remnants are gone; the gate on
the southeast corner, however, remains to this day, as seen below.



A NOTE ON THE STREET NAMES OF WESTMORELAND PLACE: Originally the street bearing the name Westmoreland, running south from Wilshire Boulevard to Tenth/Olympic, was appended as an "avenue," with its route north from Wilshire designated Miami Avenue until citywide address and street-name changes following the annexation of Hollywood in 1910. Until the mid-1920s, the specific designation "Westmoreland Place" applied to both gated roadways within the tract. Despite its paucity of houses, there was still considerable cachet around the name of Clark and Bryan's crowning tract, which prompted the "Place" nameplate to be used even for, unofficially, Westmoreland addresses outside of the gates. Once the neighborhood became ungated, Menlo became the name of the Place's westerly roadway south of Tenth/Olympic, then continuing beyond Pico along the route of the former Reid Street; the Place's easterly roadway is now part of Westmoreland Avenue, the segment of which south of Pico was originally Millard Avenue. The former two- and three-digit addresses of Westmoreland Place were altered to conform with those of other of the city's north-south 1000 and 1100 blocks. •


Below appear images of the nine houses of Westmoreland Place.
The red links under each leads to their full house histories.



33 Westmoreland Place: The Alexander Parley Johnson House



 37 Westmoreland Place: The George P. Thresher House


41 Westmoreland Place: The Elden P. Bryan House



43 Westmoreland Place: The Grant G. Gillette / Joseph H. Miles House



59 Westmoreland Place: The William F. Young House

60 Westmoreland Place: The W. Ross Campbell House

141 Westmoreland Place: The Wesley Clark House


143 Westmoreland Place: The Joseph E. Carr House

156 Westmoreland Place: The Ralph E. Wells House
(now 1218 Menlo Avenue)


Illustrations: Private Collection; David Rumsey Map Collection; LAT; LAPL; CDNC;
LOC; Sanborn Maps
Posted by
41 Westmoreland Place

PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO WESTMORELAND PLACE, CLICK HERE




  • Completed in 1905 on Lot 41 of the Westmoreland Place Tract by real estate developer Elden Patrick Bryan
  • Architect: Charles F. Whittlesey
  • The Los Angeles Express of May 27, 1905, offered a photograph and detailed description of the house, its exterior already largely completed: "Mr. Bryan's house is on the [northwest] corner of Easterly drive [today, Westmoreland Avenue] and Eleventh street. It is of the mission style of architecture, modified by English features.... The house is a two-story structure, with basement and attic. It is of heavy frame construction with cement plaster and gray sandstone exterior finish. The building covers a ground space about 80 feet front by 180 feet deep and will contain eighteen rooms besides the hallways and smaller rooms pertaining. It faces east, and the principal entrance is across a wide projecting porch that is surmounted by an archway. Passing through a massive doorway, one enters the main hall of the building, 20 by 40 feet. Opening into this is the library, about 20 by 39 feet; a reception room, 17 by 17 feet, with niches and bays; a den, 10 by 10 feet; a dining room, 20 by 40 feet. Connected with the latter is a butlery and a kitchen, 17 by 30 feet, and two servants' rooms with baths. Back of the great hallway is a garden porch, 13 by 30 feet, which looks out upon the Cahuenga valley and commands a beautiful view. The garden porch opens upon a garden court 38 by 43 feet that is to be filled with playing fountains and choice flowers, and is surrounded by a pergola. On the second floor is a family room 30 by 19 feet; a main chamber, 17 by 21 feet; a dressing room, 11 by 12 feet; a guest room, 17 by 21 feet; two sleeping rooms, 17 by 21 feet each; a palm room, 8 by 22 feet, and three bathrooms. A roof garden covers the garden porch and four window effects add to the attractiveness of this part of he dwelling."
  • Elden P. Bryan was born in East Texas on March 28, 1851, moving by the age of 19 with his family to Dallas, where he became a cotton buyer and grocer. Bryan did well in Dallas but he saw even bigger possibilites at the end of the Southern Pacific's southern transcontinental route, which opened in February 1883, sparking the Boom of the Eighties. The Los Angeles Herald reported Bryan's arrival in that city on December 14, 1885. He set himself up quickly as a Los Angeles real estate and insurance man, at first operating on his own but soon taking on Frank M. Kelsey as a partner. Another Dallas emigrant (and presumed prior acquaintance), Wesley Clark, was operating his own office in Los Angeles, and apparently to some degree in association with Bryan and Bryan's then partner Frank Kelsey; by 1893 Bryan & Kelsey had become Clark & Bryan. (Clark's name coming first on the new letterhead was perhaps due to an infusion of capital.) The new team dealt in downtown properties, but realizing the growth of Los Angeles to the southwest, the men established their residential Clark & Bryan Tract at the southeast corner of Eighth and San Pedro streets. Even as early as the mid '90s, affluent Angelenos had already begun leaving what was only just coming to be called Bunker Hill, where Bryan had built his Newsom-designed residence at 333 South Grand Avenue in 1888. Selling that house in February 1902, Bryan moved two blocks north to the Melrose Hotel, where he lived until 41 Westmoreland Place was completed in late 1905. In noting the sale, the Los Angeles Express of February 13, 1902, reported that Bryan "contemplates erecting a handsome residence for his family at the center of the Ballerino Heights tract," the Ballerino lands then being subdivided by Bryan, Clark, and their silent partner, railroad and property developer Henry E. Huntington. (In a particularly stark demonstration of Los Angeles's brief cycles of architectural usefulness, Bryan's 15-year-old Grand Street house was replaced with the Hotel Fleur-de-Lis in 1903)




A photograph of 41 Westmoreland Place
taken soon after its initial landscaping includes
one of the custom multi-globe lampposts designed
for the gated tract, above; below is a side view
of the house with plantings farther along.





  • Elden P. Bryan married Georgie Hendricks in Dallas on May 13, 1875; Bessie was born the following March and Minnie in June 1878. Within a few years the family settled into the Grand Avenue house, which, exclusive of the lot, was reported in the Herald on September 16, 1888, as having cost $10,000, indicating the considerable capital that flowed into Los Angeles during the 1880s. Despite waves of national financial panics during the '90s, Bryan and Wesley Clark became a formidable real estate team, each having grand ideas, if not perfect foresight, for property development and for their own domestic arrangements. Their big houses a block apart in Westmoreland Place were meant to house their families as much as to serve as showplaces to lure the very rich, locals and newcomers alike, but the men did better with their more middle-class subdivisions adjacent to the gated Place. Westmoreland Place would turn out to be their real estate Waterloo, the rich quickly adapting automobiles enabling more westerly residences in such developments as Berkeley Square. Though their showplaces would house their families for many years in the midst of vast acres of unimproved properties, the failure of Westmoreland Place was undeniable by the early 1910s
  • Bessie and Minnie Bryan were both, curiously, enumerated in the 1900 federal census as having been divorced. It seems, however, that Bessie's first and only marriage was to the man who replaced Wesley Clark not altogether as a force in the promotion of Westmoreland Place and Clark & Bryan's other developments but as Bryan's nominal partner in what became Bryan & Bradford. Bessie married Luther T. Bradford at 41 Westmoreland Place on the evening of November 6, 1906; the next day, the dissolution of the Clark & Bryan real estate partnership was announced in the press. Minnie Bryan's first (and only) marriage occurred in London on January 2, 1913. She was by now 34 years old; her groom was 41-year-old Dr. Edward Avery Newton, apparently a widower, who was at the time living in the spa town of Bad Nauheim, Germany. (Dr. Newton had visited Los Angeles a few years before and may have met Minnie there.) After their wedding, with Minnie residing temporarily in Berlin, Dr. Newton assisted in Red Cross work in Belgrade for several months before the couple returned to the United States in November 1913 to settle in Los Angeles, moving into 41 Westmoreland Place and then to Wesley Clark's Hotel Darby on Adams Street. Dr. Newton opened a practice downtown, later venturing into the livestock business—hogs—at his Arenal Ranch in what is today North Hollywood
  • June Bradford was born to Bessie and Luther on July 29, 1912; on September 20 of the following year, Bessie Bryan Bradford died at California Hospital following an operation. Luther, now 49, and June remained living at 41 Westmoreland Place with the Bryans until marrying 26-year-old June Mizener in October 1920. (The newlyweds and June then moved to Costa Mesa; Luther and Ruth Bradford would later live in San Marino and had a son and daughter of their own)
  • Georgie Bryan died at 41 Westmoreland Place on November 26, 1923, after a long illness. She was 69. While in the winter of 1921 E. P. Bryan was considered important enough and his bouts with bronchitis grave enough to be reported in the press, his death at home on September 5, 1925, was noted only by small paid obituaries


A closer side-street view of 41 Westmoreland Place, dated 1911, is seen in Robert G. Cowan's 1969
book A Backward Glance: Los Angeles 1901-1915. The photographer was Bryan's northerly
 neighbor at #37, George P. Thresher, who bought the first lot in the tract in 1904. 


  • Despite the real estate vicissitudes of E. P. Bryan's Westmoreland Place tract (as detailed in our Introduction), his family would remain at #41 through its days of obvious failure—with most lots unsold—through infighting with those who had bought lots and built houses in good faith when Bryan and his partners attempted to renege on their original covenants and build apartments within the gates of the tract in 1911, and even through the demolition of the tract's elaborate gates, the renaming of streets and address renumberings and the inevitable appearance of multi-unit buildings. After the death of the patriarch, Minnie and Avery Newton moved into the house, which, integrated into the larger city street grid, would now be addressed 1041 South Westmoreland Avenue
  • Dr. E. Avery Newton died following a heart attack at an Elks' meeting on December 11, 1930; his obituary in the Times two days later noted that he was "a specialist in the type of disease which caused his own death." Minnie Newton remained at 1041 South Westmoreland and was still living in the house when she died on July 15, 1937. Her mother's divorced sister, Anna Hendricks Lamonaca, had also been in residence at 1041 during the '30s, as would be, briefly, Bessie's daughter June Bradford
  • In a style that Evelyn Waugh would have appreciated, June Bradford married attorney Albert Lee Casey at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather chapel at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale on April 17, 1937. The couple would live at 1041 South Westmoreland until the house was sold in 1940
  • Classified advertisements in local papers appeared in early 1940 offering a "Beautiful 15-rm. mansion. 150x200 cor. Cost over $100,000. Now $16,000. 1041 S. Westmoreland." The final sale price is unknown but the numbers indicate the loss to the Bryan family over 35 years and indicate in stark terms the decline of the neighborhood as one of large single-family residences and further underscore the failure of Clark & Bryan's original plan for gated Westmoreland Place
  • A developer acquired 1041 South Westmoreland by the end of 1940; the house and garage themselves were sold to the well-known Whiting-Mead Company, wreckers and salvagers, which was issued demolition permits on March 4 and March 17, 1941, for the house and the garage, respectively. As soon as the lot was cleared, construction began on the mirror-twin two-story apartment buildings that sit on the site today; these were built in conjuction with two others, all designed by architect Ralph S. Loring, on a parcel comprised of Lots 37 and 41 of the original Westmoreland Place Tract. George Thresher had begun building 37 Westmoreland Place in 1904 alongside E. P. Bryan's 41; Thresher's family retained 37 (later 1037 South Westmoreland Avenue) until 1940, both houses giving way to apartments at the same time. Building contractor George Miller's name appears on the construction permits for new buildings, the addresses of which today range from 1019 to 1057 South Westmoreland Avenue 




A view north of the Bryan house from West 11th Street was
featured on postcards during its early years, as was an image of it
from the corner of 11th and Westmoreland Place as seen at top. some
cards identified the house as belonging to E. P. Bryan while others identify
it as "One of Our Beautiful California Homes." While much bigger and even
more eccentric, if not over the top, the house's sloping walls and half-
timbering are reminiscent of architect Charles Whittlesey's 1906
Longyear house at 3555 Wilshire Boulevard. Below, a kitty-
corner view of 41 seen on half of a stereopticon card.




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A Backward Glance: Los Angeles 1901-1915
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141 Westmoreland Place

PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES
FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO WESTMORELAND PLACE, CLICK HERE




  • Completed in 1905 on Lot 141 of the Westmoreland Place Tract by Texas-born real estate developer Wesley Clark
  • Architect: Hudson & Munsell (Frank D. Hudson and William A. O. Munsell)
  • The Los Angeles Express of May 27, 1905, offered a photograph and detailed description of the house, its exterior already largely completed: "Wesley Clark's home stands on the [northwest] corner of Westerly drive [today, Menlo Avenue] and Eleventh street....In its architectural arrangement it is distinctive and striking. The heavy timbered and gable effects and the light color of the general exterior of the building contrast agreeably with the reddish brown tinge of the roof and brown sandstone of the lower exterior. The massive chimneys, of the same general color, and [their] tower effects, add to the imposing character of the exterior. The dwelling covers a ground space of 67.4 by 96.5 feet. It stands nearer the west line of [the tract] and commands a view which reaches far into the Cahuenga valley. The building contains twenty rooms, exclusive of the halls and smaller rooms pertaining to a family mansion of this class. On the first floor is a reception hall, 17 by 15 feet; a library, 25 by 17 feet; a billiard room, 29 by 17 feet; a drawing room, 23 by 17½ feet; a dining room, 25 by 17½ feet; a kitchen, 18½ by 17 feet, and four servants' rooms. On the second floor are five large bedchambers, three bathrooms and a lavatory; a hallway, 16 by 22 feet; a sewing room, 16 by 16 feet, and two balconies. In the attic are storage rooms, and in the basement are wine cellars, vegetable cellars, cold storage rooms and fuel and furnace rooms. The finish and equipment of the building will be complete in every detail, and even now it is regarded as one of the show places of the city."
  • An item in the Express on October 24, 1905, apparently placed by Wesley Clark himself, announced that he and his wife were moving into the newly completed 141 Westmoreland Place "today." The item also reported that "This leaves vacant Mr. and Mrs. Clark's residence at 234 West Adams Street" and suggests that those interested should contact Mr. Clark at his office
  • The vast rooms of 141 Westmoreland Place did not go to waste; the Los Angeles dailies covered numerous social functions hosted by the Clarks in the house, culminating in the marriages of their daughter Lucile to Houghton Metcalf of Providence at home on the evening of November 4, 1913, and of daughter Sarah to Walter Brunswig on January 21, 1914, also at home. (Walter Brunswig was the son of pharmaceutical mogul Lucien Napoleon Brunswig of 3528 West Adams Street)
  • While living back in Dallas, Wesley Clark had had two daughters, Nellie and Inez, by his first wife, Ida, who died in May 1885. Moving to Los Angeles not long after, intending to ride the Boom of the Eighties, he went into real estate on his own, though apparently becoming associated to some degree with established real estate and insurance man Elden P. Bryan (another native Texan and recent arrival from Dallas, he in December 1885) and Bryan's then-partner Frank M. Kelsey. By 1893 Bryan & Kelsey had become Clark & Bryan. In March 1888, Wesley Clark married 25-year-old Mississippi native Sarah Russell. Lucile was born to them in December 1889, Sarah in February 1891, and William Russell Clark—finally a boy—in October 1892. The family of seven lived on South Flower Street until 1893, that year building 234 West Adams, from which they moved to 141 Westmoreland Place 12 years later. Nellie Clark married Reginald J. C. Wood in May 1903 as her father was planning his new subdivision
  • In what one might have suspected was a Clark & Bryan publicity stunt, the Herald of August 7, 1904, featured 11-year-old Russell Clark as a businessman on the move. "A few weeks ago Russell Clark addressed Wesley Clark thus: 'I have decided to go into the real estate business and I want to buy a lot.'" Russell had his eye on Clark & Bryan's Bungalow Row, a tract of modest-sized building sites just outside the north gates of Westmoreland Place. In what would turn out to be a harbinger relating to the future success of the Place, Wesley Clark replied, "Keep your money, Russell, there's nothing in it." "Well, why don't you get out of it, then, and not spend all you ever made in advertising Westmoreland?" asked Russell. "The whole thing, my boy, has grown upon me." "If the whole thing has grown upon you I think that Los Angeles is big enough to allow me to grow up to it, and I have decided to grow up a real estate man. I want to buy a lot and get out my signs right away." After the dissolution of the Clark & Bryan firm on November 7, 1906—the day after Bryan's daughter Bessie married real estate man Luther T. Bradford, Bryan going on to partner with his new son-in-law—Russell would indeed join his father in business as Wesley Clark & Company. Father and son would try to revive the fortunes of Westmoreland Place, to no avail. By early 1923, they were, interestingly, in the poultry business, having opened Darby Farms in San Bernardino. In later life, Russell became a shipyard worker up north in Richmond
  • Russell Clark's hormones were pumping. Eight years later, in November 1912, he created a scandal when he eloped with 21-year-old Clytie Cosper Elizalde, who'd already been divorced from Joseph Elizalde of Santa Barbara. Wesley and Sarah Clark disapproved; when asked by the Herald to comment, they noted that their son had only just turned 20, shy of the apparent legal age without parental consent of 21. There were rumors that the Clarks would seek to have the marriage annulled; when asked by the Herald whether or not he would take immediate steps toward annulling the marriage, Wesley Clark, perhaps having gotten a better idea of the couple's affinity, told the paper, "No, they're married—let them stay married. I haven't anything to say about it." Russell and Clytie separted five months later. On April 22, 1913, the Herald reported that "It is understood an annullment will be sought on the ground that Clark was under age and did not have his parents' consent."




Wesley Clark and E. P. Bryan advertised heavily in Los Angeles newspapers
and were successful at courting real estate reporters for additional coverage during early
early promotions of the tract and again in the early 1910s in a second (and no more successful)
push to sell lots. At top is an image appearing in the Express on May 27, 1905; above, one of
the house used alongside a picture of Bryan's 41 in a large advertisement placed in the
Herald on March 7, 1911, and, below, in that periodical on March 16, 1912.



  • Wesley Clark intended to move out of 141 Westmoreland well before Lucile's wedding in November 1913; advertisements offering the house for sale (along with a new spec house at 156), placed by Wesley Clark & Company, appeared as early as January 1912. Ads offering the house for long-term rental or for sale began to appear again in October 1913. Even as early as this Westmoreland Place had become a failure, its many empty lots going begging. Los Angeles was now determindly motorized, and affluent builders of big houses were leapfrogging the close-in tract for those farther afield such as Berkeley Square, Windsor Square, Fremont Place, and even distant Beverly Hills. Renters of 141, a white elephant after less than a decade, were fairly scarce, and short-termers. The Clarks would now live primarily at their Hotel Darby, which Wesley opened in 1910 on the site of the family's former residence at 234 West Adams, though the family would retain ownership of 141 into the 1930s
  • Renting 141 Westmoreland Place during 1915 and 1916 was James Kennedy, a general contractor, followed for a similarly short period by Melville Ross Gooderham of Toronto, apparently occupying the house as a winter home
  • In a moment of glamour for what was by now a largely windswept Westmoreland Place—only nine houses had ever been built on its 56 lots—Hollywood came to roost briefly for a few years in 1919, with 141 playing a pivotal role in filmdom's discovery of Beverly Hills as its residential suburb of choice
  • Silent superstar Mary Pickford, born Gladys Smith in Toronto in 1892, was given her stage name by producer David Belasco for a 1907 Broadway play; "Pickford" was to become the Smiths' brand name, adopted by the rest of the family. By the summer of 1918, Mary had left her first husband, Irish-born actor Owen Moore, and was secretly courting Douglas Fairbanks while seeking a divorce. Mary's mother Charlotte Hennessey Smith (a.k.a. Charlotee Hennessey Pickford, Charlotte Pickford Smith, and Charlotte Pickford) appears to have become the organizer of a base for her daughter as well as for Mary's actress sister Lottie Pickford Rupp—also separated from her husband—and, briefly, once he was demobbed after the Armistice, for the sisters' brother Jack Pickford and his actress-wife Olive Thomas. The family first came together at 56 Fremont Place, in August 1918 renting it for a year. After the lease was up, Charlotte, Mary, Lottie, and Lottie's three-year-old-daughter Mary Charlotte Rupp came to alight for a time at 141 Westmoreland Place. (The chemical escapades of Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas would soon create one of the first of the notorious Hollywood scandals of the early 1920s, as related in the story of 646 South Gramercy Place)


 As featured in the Herald on August 7, 1904, the year before his family moved from Adams
 Street to Westmoreland  Place, Russell Clark was a boy in a hurry to grow up. "No novice
in business," the paper reported, "for three years he has been in the chicken business,
having turned the few square feet of the family rear yard into a profitable hennery."
Russell had decided to get out of poultry, taking his considerable profits to buy 
a lot in his father's Bungalow Row—just north of Westmoreland Place—which
he was intending to flip. Just eight years later, he ran off to get married.


  • The incessant westward growth of Los Angeles would render many a neighborhood unfashionable in less than a generation, but few were left in the dust as quickly as Westmoreland Place. With the postwar recession beginning, Wesley Clark was lucky to find the Pickford household and its Hollywood money as renters of his barn of a house at 141. Charlotte Pickford Smith had no intention of remaining so far downtown in a déclassé neighborhood; hankering always for upper-middle-class respectabilty, she yearned to return to Fremont Place. She bought #129 there in May 1920, but not before all manner of family comings and goings at the rented Clark house
  • Mary Pickford had married Owen Moore in 1911. Their relationship was a rocky one, he, it was rumored, being fond of a drink. The Moores were separated by the time the family moved to 56 Fremont Place in August 1918, Mary and Douglas Fairbanks's relationship (and cohabitation) another Hollywood rumor. In the 1920 federal census enumerated on January 9, Charlotte Pickford Smith is listed as head of the household at 141 Westmoreland Place. Mary Pickford Moore is also listed, as is Lottie Pickford Rupp, both indicated as married, but with spouses absent. Mrs. Rupp's three-year-old daughter Mary Charlotte Rupp was also part of the household but was now being called Mary Pickford Rupp
  • While officially living at 141 Westmoreland Place, Mary Pickford had been spending a great deal of time in Beverly Hills with actor Douglas Fairbanks, who'd bought the country home of Lee Allen Phillips in 1918. After finally being granted a divorce from Owen Moore on March 2, 1920, she married Fairbanks eight days later, with the Beverly Hills house forever afterward being referred to as Pickfair. (The establishment of Pickfair would, of course, be the famous catalyst that would begin to draw film folk away from the stuffy central Los Angeles strongholds of the local establishment, which became less enchanted with stars as the scandals of the early '20s unspooled) 
  • On July 24, 1920, Charlotte Pickford, having already decided that little Mary Charlotte Rupp should be called Mary Pickford Rupp as an interim measure, legally adopted the child as her own—giving her two daughters named Mary—and changed the child's name yet again to Mary Charlotte Pickford. The Evening Herald reported that day, rather creepily, that "Mrs. Smith took the child as her daughter to brighten her home at 141 Westmoreland place and to relieve the loneliness caused by the absence of "America's sweetheart." Sitting in court during the brief proceedings were little Mary's estranged parents, Lottie and "wealthy New Yorker" Albert G. Rupp. The former owners of 129 Fremont Place had moved out of that house the week before, but it is unclear as to whether Charlotte and Mary Charlotte Pickford ever moved in for any length of time. There had been press reports of Mama Charlotte building another elaborate house in Fremont Place, but this does not seem to have been built, she deciding instead to live at the recently opened Ambassador Hotel
  • Another big Hollywood name would soon pass through 141 Westmoreland Place. Actor, director, producer, and studio head Mack Sennett may have rented for only a year, or perhaps five; one of his biographers contends that his tenure lasted throughout the 1920s. This does not seem to be the case; neither does the biographer's contention that the house appears in Sennett's 1924 Harry Langdon comedy short "The Luck o' the Foolish" (the featured house in the film is more obviously a backdrop). Sennett seems to have had a fondness for big houses, though his ambitions went beyond even the substantial Clark house: Sennett would be one of the developers Hollywoodland, opened in 1923 (the surviving first nine letters of its promotional sign are the famous Los Angeles landmark). There, atop what was called at first Mount Hollywoodland, Sennett intended to build a huge million-dollar palace, commissioning architect John L. DeLario to come up with a plan. Sennett only got as far as flattening the top of Mount Hollywoodland before running out of money. (The son of well-known Cadillac dealer Don Lee later bought the site to build Los Angeles's first television studio and renamed the peak Mount Lee.) In the meantime, Sennett spent his time at 141 Westmoreland making full use of the house for entertaining. One notable event took place on October 27, 1921, when he held a dinner party for comedy star Mabel Normand, who was starring in Sennett's new film, Molly O. Afterward there was a screening of the movie and dancing
  • By the early 1920s the fate of Westmoreland Place began to be wrangled over. E. P. Bryan had a new partner and Wesley Clark was working with his son. There were proposals to turn the empty space of the tract into a city park; hotels and apartment houses were also suggested. Wesley and Sarah Clark maintained their house, though in some years during the decade they were listed in city directories at the Hotel Darby and also at a modest house at 2647 Raymond Avenue, perhaps during the continued rental by Mack Sennett or by others


The Clark house appears at the upper center in this 1931 aerial view; Vermont Avenue, running
at top left, had been widened six years before, encroaching on the lot and the garage.


  • Adding to the waning of Westmoreland Place was the city's decree that Vermont Avenue, after pushes to widen the key north-south roadway since at least 1908, be widened further. As the tract's western border, Wesley Clark's property was affected; his 1½-story, 40-by-60-foot garage at 141 would need to have its footprint reduced. On March 28, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Clark a permit to alter the building; despite the faded nature of the neighborhood, he didn't just call in a builder but instead hired top architect T. Beverley Keim to redesign. (Keim was also busy at the time working on the Jenkins-Getty-Desmond house at 641 South Irving Boulevard). Perhaps still renting the house out, though, the Clarks had moved to 1401 South St. Andrews Place, where Mr. Clark died on December 12, 1926. Sarah Clark moved back to 141 Westmoreland Place after her husband's death even with the impending removal of the tract's gates as the neighborhood was finally being redeveloped into the apartment-house district of today. Once the neighborhood became ungated, the Place was integrated into the city grid, its westerly drive becoming part of Menlo Avenue. Mrs. Clark's house was readdressed 1041 Menlo; she would remain there until 1930 with Inez, who, despite having caught her sister Lucile's bouquet back in 1913, was never to marry. Sarah Clark would be moving to the Hershey Arms on Wilshire Boulevard and later across the boulevard to the Arcady, where she died on March 28, 1945
  • The proverbial white elephant before its time, anyone interested in grand houses having long since moved west, the Depression would cause what was now 1041 Menlo Avenue further indignity. While demolition was staved off, it became a rooming house and meeting venue. Known as "Menlo Manor" from early 1931, the larger rooms were rented out for club gatherings and lectures, its dining room the scene of the occasional banquet. A permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on March 19, 1934, for termite repairs noted that 1041 was a "boarding house"; the owner of record was now the Title Insurance & Trust Company (one hopes that Mrs. Clark's house wasn't foreclosed upon). The apparently unrelated Jennie P. Clark ran the house in its early years
  • While still a rooming house, a name change and new focus came to 1041 Menlo Avenue in 1941. Classified advertisements for "Fireside Lodge, for the elderly," began to appear that summer. Pioneer mining man Louis A. Boyer and his wife Olorenza had bought the house to create the new business as a retirement project. (Having just turned 80, Louis A. Boyer would die at Fireside Lodge on January 30, 1945. He had operated the O.K. Mine at Twentynine Palms in the 1890s and then become an interior decorator [i.e., painting contractor] in Riverside. In 1913, he went into the oil business and drilled one of the first wells on Signal Hill)
  • Numerous permits were issued regarding 1041 Menlo Avenue by the Department of Building and Safety over the next 50 years. At least a dozen permits were issued to Olorenza Boyer for various interior and exterior alterations during the 940s and '50s. The name Fireside Lodge continued into the 1960s, though the business had been sold by Mrs. Boyer. A large new medical facility was added to the southeast corner of the lot (i.e., at the northeast corner of Vermont Avenue and Eleventh Street) in 1964, which survives today
  • Demolition permits for the 1905 Clark house and garage were issued on August 7, 1991. A parking lot for the Koryo Family Medical Center, which occupies the 1964 building, marks the site of 141 Westmoreland Place today



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