Landmark Awards feature a love match and a high-end jeweler
It’s Landmark Awards season again!
The Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society will present on Sat., Aug. 3 its annual Landmark Awards for historic properties — residential and commercial — which are of architectural or historic significance in the community or in the boundaries of historic Rancho LaBrea. This year the awards went to two properties: 553 S. Windsor Blvd. and 119 N. Larchmont Blvd.
AWARDEE. This home on South Windsor Boulevard was built in 1914 by the same architects that designed the famed Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre.
Photo by Dinah Yorkin
The winners are…
The 553 S. Windsor Blvd. home was built in 1914 by the design and construction firm The Milwaukee Building Company, operated by Mendel Meyer and Gabriel Holler (who would later change the firm to become Meyer and Holler, best known as the architects of Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard). Their clients Mr. John F. and Mrs. Nellie Powers, who had moved to Los Angeles to invest in real estate, and later became the owners of the minor league Los Angeles Angels baseball team.
Described as a “Palatial Dwelling of the English Manor Type,” the house was an early Tudor, a hybrid of Craftsman and Tudor design. It combined brick and half timbering, but utilized simple and solid detailing more typical of Craftsman than the studied and delicate carving and architectural elements of later Tudors. Among the home’s most notable features are its massive doorway, which sits beneath an exceptionally wide brick archway and opens into an expansive hall with a monumental bifurcated staircase.
The house’s recent history was featured in the Wall Street Journal article entitled, “This Los Angeles Love Story Begins Inside a Rundown Tudor Revival.” It described the chance meeting of Bradley and Roger Perry at the house during an estate sale in 2013.
The couple soon fell in love and moved into the house, surviving a grueling six-year restoration, and now share the property with their two children.
The other award-winner is Larchmont Jewelers, scheduled to open this month at 119 N. Larchmont Blvd. — one of the few historic buildings on Larchmont Boulevard which retains its original façade.
Built in 1923 on the west side of Larchmont Boulevard near the corner of First Street, the building was designed by architect High Barton Saunders for owner Albert B. Stephens. Designed in what has been described as “commercial vernacular,” the property was to have ground floor storefronts with five apartments above. There was originally a three-car garage building in the rear.
The Larchmont façade was faced in brick, with two large plate glass windows flanking a central door with a fan light above. The second floor continued the symmetry with evenly matched windows, Juliette balconies and arches. While the color, storefront designs and window treatments changed over time and tenants, the overall historic façade remained unchanged when David Lee of Hing Wa Lee Jewelers decided to open his third retail store at the location (see story Section 1, Page 1).
Historic façade
Local preservationist James Dastoli, concerned that the historic façade would be lost in the renovations, submitted an application for Historic Cultural Monument designation, which the building was awarded earlier this year.
To Dastoli’s delight and that of the community, Mr. Lee embraced the recognition of the building as historic and proposed a design which preserves the historic façade while adapting the building to its new use as a destination jewelry and watch emporium.
Congratulations to the winners for being chosen this year’s Landmark Awards recipients!
Category: Real Estate