Are the Stories About Your Home True?
Los
Angeles has been the home of many famous people and many homes are themselves equally famous or, at least, important for either
their style or the architect who designed them. I remember when I first became a real estate agent and,
then, began specializing in historic homes, I couldn’t believe the number of sellers who thought their homes had be
owned or occupied by a famous actor, writer or some other public figure. I caught on very quickly that
in too many instances it wasn’t true but had been passed from one owner to the next like an urban legend.
Some people today won’t take the “urban legend” approach and send me e-mails to find
out whether or not their property might be historic or they ask “how can I trace the history of my house?”
The search can be fun! Here are some resources:
Books
on Los Angeles:
Architecture in Los Angeles,
A Complete Guide, by my friend Dr. Robert Winter and Dr. Richard Gephard, now deceased, is a good place to start
figuring out both the architectural and historic scene in Los Angeles.
Public Library:
Los Angeles’ main library has a California section with all kinds
of material on Los Angeles and other communities. It also has an historic database you can access from
the internet at http://www.lapl.org/ including photos, newspaper articles, etc.
Check the local library
in the neighborhood where the property is. There may even be a section on the neighborhood with information on local dignitaries
and their homes.
Historically designated and/or older neighborhoods:
The various cities in metropolitan Los Angeles have their own designations for
a historic neighborhood. Within Los Angeles’ borders, they are called HPOZ’s for Historic Preservation
Overlay Zone. The city will have a department, such as LA’s cultural heritage, that provides information
on those buildings, sites and other items that have been designated a cultural monument.
The older neighborhoods usually have either a neighborhood association or someone who likes to be
the “neighborhood historian,” accumulating information and artifacts about the neighborhood.
Public/commercial
and private records:
The history of every property in
Los Angeles begins at some point in the public records collected by the government for purposes of control
(safety, zoning, etc.) and taxes. This history may also be available from a title company’s
“chain of title.” How far back the records go, of course, depends when the governmental
control began and how specific its record requirements were at the time.
Early
records include the telephone book. I have studied early Los Angeles telephone books to
research my own property. Some will give the telephone number, address and, even, the profession of the
occupant! Almost any company providing services to a house may have historic records of who occupied it
at any certain time. Telephone, gas, electric, etc.
Sanborn
Insurance maps. One of the most exciting experiences I had was finding the “footprint”
of a Victorian I owned in a copy of the Sanborn maps. It showed that what I thought was an “add-on”
was, in fact, a part of the original structure. Here are the maps as described in the Library of Congress:
“The Sanborn map collection consists of a uniform series of large-scale
maps, dating from 1867 to the present and depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some twelve thousand
cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents in determining
the degree of hazard associated with a particular property and therefore show the size, shape, and construction of dwellings,
commercial buildings, and factories as well as fire walls, locations of windows and doors, sprinkler systems, and types of
roofs. The maps also indicate widths and names of streets, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers.
They show the locations of water mains, giving their dimensions, and of fire alarm boxes and hydrants. Sanborn maps are thus
an unrivaled source of information about the structure and use of buildings in American cities.”
I can’t describe the maps any better than this. To find out if there are any locally, it’s
best to contact the city library. I understand the University of California at Berkley has a complete set.
Private sources include family-funded libraries
originally built by a philanthropist to house their special interest books, etc. The William Clark Library
on West Adams is such a resource. It is a part of the University of California, Los Angeles.
(This is only an example; I don’t believe they have any local records.) Other sources may be from collectors
who have memorabilia, from automobiles to China dishware, who may have items in their collection from local families, one
of which just might have occupied the home you lived in. It’s a long shot, of course, but it is one
of the imaginative ways you take to research your property.
Local
newspapers. All newspapers have a “morgue,” most of which are now on computers, I
would assume, and which house all of the newspapers they have ever printed. If you know the age of your
property, you can also scan the papers to see what was going on at the time, perhaps, in your neighborhood, to determine if
there are leads you can follow.
Occasionally, the newspapers themselves
will write an article on researching an home. See "Researching
your home's history"
Los Angeles Times, Sep. 21, 1997
The easy
way:
There is an individual by the name of Tim
Gregory who has a business call the Building Biographer. Tim has been researching
the history of homes for clients for many years. When I list an historic house, it makes my marketing much
easier to let him confirm the facts. Tim can be reached at (626) 792-7465.
