2501 Ninth Avenue

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  • Built in 1914 on Lots 14 and 16 in Block 10 of the West Adams Terrace Tract by Emma Dryden Bohlinger; the Department of Building issued a construction permit on September 15, 1914. Mrs. Bohlinger was the youngest daughter of pioneer Angeleno William Dryden, who had arrived in Los Angeles County in 1868 and traded a horse for a quarter-section south of town that would make his fortune. After his death in 1912, his four daughters built houses near each other: At the same time Mrs. Bohlinger was building her house, Mary Dryden Stevens was building 3817 West Adams, a block south and two lots east of Ninth, with, on the corner next to that, with the unmarried Ada and Josephine Dryden and their mother having built 3825 West Adams the year before, both also in the West Adams Terract Tract. The subdivision had only been part of the City of Los Angeles since October 27, 1909, when it was annexed as part of the Colegrove addition 
  • Architect: Charles E. Shattuck, who designed all three of the Dryden daughters' new houses in altogether different styles: red-brick Georgian, English half-timbered, and, for Mrs. Bohlinger, columned Colonial
  • On September 14, 1922, the Department of Buildings issued a permit for a garage and gardener's quarters on the property
  • Emma Bohlinger and her husband, poultry wholesaler Eugene Rutherford Bohlinger, moved into 2501 with their daughter Lucille, who had been born on April 19, 1913. Viola Emma was born on March 1, 1915 and Thomas Alwynne on July 12, 1917. Lucille married in 1940 and Tom in 1943; after Eugene Bohlinger died on January 9, 1949, Emma and Viola—who never married—remained at 2510 Ninth Avenue, Mrs. Bohlinger retaining possession of the house until her death on November 20, 1973. Mrs. Bohlinger was one of a very small group of Los Angeles's social old guard—Isabel Maier of 3820 West Adams was another—who had never been persuaded to leave a radically changing neighborhood for newer Wilshire-corridor suburbs such as Windsor Square or Fremont Place or for the Westside or Pasadena
  • The Bohlinger house was sold for the first time on April 17, 1974, for $43,500, to John and Mary Keipp, who were then living three houses north at 2421 Ninth Avenue
  • On August 27, 1974, the Department of Building and Safety issued John Keipp a construction permit for an additional garage on the property
  • Keipp, a family physician, remained at 2501 Ninth Avenue until transferring the property to Mary as her own in 1996. Mary Keipp remains in the house as of 2018
  • Had 2501 Ninth Avenue been built in, for instance, Windsor Square—lot sales in which had begun three years before the Bohlingers chose West Adams Terrace—it would have be valued at many times the current figures even in the close-to-original state in which it appears today. As it is, 2501 stands along with its "sister" houses at 3817 and 3825 West Adams as part of the historic fabric of the neighborhood, all the more remarkable in its originality and that only two families have occupied it in 104 years
Illustration: Private Collection