3100 West Adams Boulevard

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In 1902, Emeline Childs, the rich widow of old Angeleno Ozro W. Childs, commissioned Frederick L. Roehrig to build a big modern Colonial house on a large tract she had acquired at the southwest corner of Adams and Arlington streets. The south side of Adams from this corner west, at the top of a slope in an extension of old West Adams beyond the city limits, was becoming an estate area, with large, set-back houses from which there were spectacular southerly views. The neighborhood had begun to decline even before Mrs. Childs died at home in 1935, although her house would last another 43 years. Its stables were demolished in 1945; when the house itself came down in March 1978, there were reverberations of the demolition of the Richfield Building nine years earlier, stirring some to action in theretofore preservation-averse Los Angeles. For urban archaeologists, at least, some of its sidewalk stone wall remains. Although no full, unobstructed views of the 3100 West Adams Street—originally numbered 2300—have surfaced as yet, those seen here give an idea of the scale of the largest West Adams houses, not mere suburban residences, but estates whose owners might have chosen Beverly Hills or Bel-Air had they built in the 1920s instead of a few decades earlier.




A remnant of the Childs property can
be seen today—the photograph below was taken
in June 2012—running west on the south side of
Adams Boulevard from Arlington Avenue.





 Illustrations: LAPL; Private Collection; Google Street View