The ‘Places’ — Wilton, Gramercy, St. Andrew’s and Manhattan

As we continue our study of Greater Wilshire’s potential historic districts, let us head east to look at two surviving pockets of our community’s earliest developments that survive along that noble sounding thoroughfare of St. Andrew’s Place. The Gramercy Place-St. Andrew’s Place Residential Historic District (between 2nd and 3rd streets) and the smaller St. Andrew’s Residential Historic District (between Council and 1st streets), are two high Craftsman remnants of what were originally among the area’s first neighborhoods along the “Places,” which included neighboring Wilton Place, as the city jumped its boundaries over Western Avenue into Rancho La Brea. They were identified by SurveyLA as among the most intact clusters of our community’s residential development from this early period.

According to Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times, Western Avenue was laid out by the county in 1853 and at that time was the horizon of the city, far away from the bustle of the old Pueblo and the rough and tumble of Downtown. By the turn of the last century, the city was rapidly expanding, and the

On Preservation

by Brian Curran

street had become an unofficial western boundary of the city (Hoover Street being the actual boundary until 1896 when the annexation of the Western Addition pushed the boundary to Arlington Avenue, followed by the annexation of Colegrove in 1909 which pushed the boundary roughly to June Street).

As the population of Los Angeles grew and the reach of the Pacific Electric expanded, the wide plains and vistas of the now accessible Rancho La Brea beckoned developers looking to cash in. In 1901, W.G. Nevin took advantage of 1899’s third relocation to the west of the Los Angeles Country Club (to Pico Boulevard and Western Avenue) — today’s Country Club Park neighborhood — to plant his flag over the border and start his western subdivision. Here Nevin laid out these twoblock-long “Places:” Manhattan Place, Gramercy Place, Wilton Place, and, in a nod to the Los Angeles Country Club, St. Andrew’s Place, named for the oldest golf course in the world, the Old Course at St. Andrew’s, Scotland.

The “Places” would move north (and south) helping define new subdivisions in what had originally been the eastern half of Plummer Square, between Temple Street (Beverly Boulevard) and Second Street (Third Street). Many of these new subdivisions decided to riff on the idea of the new “west,” with names such as Westfields (1909), Westminster (1907) and Western Place (1906), with the exception of Wilton Place (1907) and Barton Heights (1909). These subdivisions were soon filling up with new oneand two-story craftsman style homes of the finest quality. Developed in a very suburban manner, the parcels of these subdivisions were arranged on rectilinear streets with uniform setbacks and detached garages as well as concrete sidewalks, driveways and steps.

These earlier neighborhoods were soon eclipsed as new tracts were opened up including the subdivisions of Windsor Square, Fremont Place, Ridgewood Park, Country Club Park and

Wilshire Crest, all further removed from Western Avenue. By the 1930s, many of the single-family homes along the “Places” began to give way to multifamily residences to take advantage of the Western Avenue streetcar including such buildings as 210 N. St. (Please turn to page 13)