Ernest McConnell was an American architect, who worked in-house for the Los Angeles Investment Company.
McConnell also designed numerous Craftsman homes featured in a plan book that the Los Angeles Investment Co. published. The LAIC constructed many homes from those plans in various housing developments they built throughout Southern California. [1] [2]
McConnell oversaw the creation of all the designs in a 92-page catalog book that the Investment Co. released in 1912-3, titled Modern Homes of California. The book contained 77 architectural designs and photographs of mostly Arts and Crafts style bungalows across the Southland priced between $1500 and $5000, as well as 200 detailed illustrations of exterior and interior views, along with plans that provided accurate estimates for construction materials and labor costs. [3] [4] [5]
Ernest McConnell designed Chapman Building, which was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #899 and a contributing property to the Broadway Theater and Commercial District. [6]
The Chateau Marmont is a hotel located at 8221 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The hotel was designed by architects Arnold A. Weitzman and William Douglas Lee and completed in 1929. It was modeled loosely after the Château d'Amboise, a royal retreat in France's Loire Valley.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press. Later in life, Goodhue freed his architectural style with works like El Fureidis in Montecito, California, one of three estates he designed.
West Adams is a neighborhood in the South Los Angeles region of Los Angeles, California. The neighborhood is known for its large number of historic buildings, structures, notable houses, and mansions. It contains several Historic Preservation Overlay Zones as well as designated historic districts.
Jefferson Park is a neighborhood in the South Los Angeles region of the City of Los Angeles, California. There are fourteen Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in the neighborhood, and in 1987, the 1923 Spanish Colonial Revival Jefferson Branch Library was added to the National Register of Historic Places. A portion of the neighborhood is a designated Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ).
California bungalow is an alternative name for the American Craftsman style of residential architecture, when it was applied to small-to-medium-sized homes rather than the large "ultimate bungalow" houses of designers like Greene and Greene. California bungalows became popular in suburban neighborhoods across the United States, and to varying extents elsewhere, from around 1910 to 1939.
Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.
George Franklin Barber was an American architect known for the house designs he marketed worldwide through mail-order catalogs. Barber was one of the most successful residential architects of the late Victorian period in the United States, and his plans were used for houses in all 50 U.S. states, and in nations as far away as Japan and the Philippines. Over four dozen Barber houses are individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and several dozen more are listed as part of historic districts.
Sumner P. Hunt was an architect in Los Angeles from 1888 to the 1930s. On January 21, 1892, he married Mary Hancock Chapman, January 21, 1892. They had a daughter Louise Hunt.
William James Dodd (1862–1930) was an American architect and designer who worked mainly in Louisville, Kentucky from 1886 through the end of 1912 and in Los Angeles, California from early 1913 until his death. Dodd rose from the so-called First Chicago School of architecture, though of greater influence for his mature designs was the classical aesthetic of the Beaux-Arts style ascendant after the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. His design work also included functional and decorative architectural glass and ceramics, furniture, home appliances, and literary illustration.
Lester Sherwood Moore (1871–1924) was an American architect.
Myron Hubbard Hunt was an American architect whose numerous projects include many noted landmarks in Southern California and Evanston, Illinois. Hunt was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1908.
Kit houses, also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses,mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of housing that was popular in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the first half of the 20th century. Kit house manufacturers sold houses in many different plans and styles, from simple bungalows to imposing Colonials, and supplied at a fixed price all materials needed for construction of a particular house, but typically excluding brick, concrete, or masonry. Some house styles, like log cabins and geodesic dome homes, are still sometimes sold in kit form.
Elmer Grey, FAIA was an American architect and artist based in Pasadena, California. Grey designed many noted landmarks in Southern California, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Huntington Art Gallery, the Pasadena Playhouse and Wattles Mansion. He is credited with being one of the pioneers in the development of the new American architecture in the early 20th century, with a focus on harmony with nature and eliminating features not belonging to the local climate and conditions. Grey was also a noted artist whose paintings are in the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute.
The Ernest and Florence Bent Halstead House is an American Craftsman style home built in 1912 in Los Angeles, California.
The Metropolitan Building, in Los Angeles, California, was completed in 1913 and is one of a number of buildings built along Broadway in the early decades of the twentieth century for commercial and retail uses in what had then become the busiest and largest shopping district of the city. Located at the intersection of W. 5th Street and S. Broadway, the Metropolitan Building replaced a two-story, Romanesque Revival style building with storefronts on S. Broadway and W. 5th Street. This building was called the Mueller Building for its owner, Michail Mueller. The date of the building's construction is not known, nor has any additional information about it been located.
7th Street is a street in Los Angeles, California running from S. Norton Ave in Mid-Wilshire through Downtown Los Angeles. It goes all the way to the eastern city limits at Indiana Ave., and the border between Boyle Heights, Los Angeles and East Los Angeles.
Charles Herbert Christie and Alfred Ernest Christie were Canadian motion picture entrepreneurs.
Chapman Building, also known as Los Angeles Investment Company Building, Charles C. Chapman Building, The Chapman, and Chapman Flats, is a historic thirteen-story highrise located at 756 S. Broadway and 227 W. 8th Street in the Broadway Theater District in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles.
Founded in 1899 by Charles Abbott Elder and his partners, the Los Angeles Investment Company (LAIC) quickly established itself as a significant player in real estate development across Southern California. Elder envisioned an approach that made homeownership accessible to middle-class individuals, relying on a model where small investors could pool funds to support large-scale property development. By promoting installment payment options, LAIC allowed everyday citizens to become homeowners, especially during a period of rapid growth in Los Angeles.