3301 Wilshire Boulevard

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The history of Southern California is one of successive swells of Midwesterners, men living in a huge swath from eastern New York State to the Great Plains, seeking ever more space and opportunity for their families, just as their forebears had once moved inland from the Eastern seaboard. Born in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on May 20, 1876, Charles G. Andrews arrived in California at the turn of the 20th century; on his way west he married the widowed and five-years-older Mary Carney Moran in Denver on March 31, 1902. Once settled in Los Angeles, he took up his line of real estate, in 1903 joining Wright & Callender, founded six years before and one of the city's fastest-growing real estate firms. His quick rise after a year to the vice-presidency of Wright & Callender called for a new house. Perhaps it is a given that real estate men, especially in the ever-metastasizing City of Angels, seek investment return over permanence—perhaps Andrews could somehow foresee that Wilshire Boulevard would inevitably rise beyond its residential roots and turn commercial. He wisely chose the prime northwest corner of Berendo Street and the still-unpaved Wilshire, purchasing his 150-by-130-foot lot in April 1907 and building on it a very modern, big-gabled Craftsman house. While considered a mansion, the house was rather modest in comparison to the grandiose Aronson pile built six years later next door at 3325. The Andrews house appears to have faced Berendo Street and have been quite close to the boulevard, which would have put everything from Model Ts, which would come to the market a year or so after the Andrewses moved in, to Packards and Cadillacs practically in its front parlor, especially should Wilshire ever be widened, which it would inevitably be. Perhaps development came faster than Andrews anticipated and the attendant traffic roar had become too much by 1917, after which Charles and Mary decamped for a stay on Benton Way before, in the way of real estate men, it was ever onward to grander precincts. After a stop at the Ambassador, it was on to Windsor Square, where they briefly occupied 525 Lorraine Boulevard before stopping for a few years at 626 South Windsor Boulevard, which he had a hand in marketing in conjunction with its builders. Then, finally, the Andrewses decided to settle in Hancock Park, building 400 South June Street there in 1926. Andrews could afford to move up: In 1919, he had brokered the sale of the nearly 3,300-acre Wolfskill Ranch to Arthur Letts, founder of The Broadway department store (and backer of John G. Bullock in his first retail endeavor). The ranch was developed into Westwood within a few years. Wright-Callender-Andrews, as the business was renamed in 1912, was dissolved in 1921, with Andrews then opening his own successful property firm. If not quite in the cinematic way of some, the man was perhaps the archetype of the early-20th-century Los Angeles booster: a head for opportunity, the California Club, the Country Club, and, above all, self-made.

Andrews may have retained ownership of 3301 after moving out, renting it as the value of its lot rose ever higher. Widowed attorney Samuel M. Sargent was listed in the 1920 Federal census as living at 971 Elden avenue, within walking distance of Wilshire and Berendo; in that year's city directory, he is also listed at 3100—perhaps he used the house as an office. Successively over the next two years, the names Michael G. Heim and Mildred C. Eastman were associated with the address. It was Mrs. Eastman and her husband, hotel manager George A. Eastman, who would buy and move into 3301 briefly, and then give the house a second act. All around 3301, with commerce roaring east along Wilshire, houses were being jacked up and moved, among them 3325 next door, to 31 Fremont Place; 666 South Berendo, to Beverly Hills; and 3200 and 3250, to Windsor Square. It was to the latter subdivision that the Eastmans would move 3301 and its garage; they were issued relocation permits by the Department of Buildings on May 28, 1923. The Eastmans stayed in their relocated residence, now addressed 602 South Lucerne Boulevard, for only a few years. The house would last on its new corner until late 1956, when it was demolished to be replaced with the less picturesque residence there today.

With talk among saavy real estate men (if not yet among the general public) of the Miracle Mile forming three miles west along Wilshire, it appears that a pair of real estate investors saw commercial gold in the northerly corners of Wilshire and Berendo. On April 22, 1923, the Times reported that investor Abram Post and California state senator Louis H. Roseberry had together just purchased the northeast corner of the intersection, apparently never before built upon. In time Roseberry took possession of the lot, with Post acquiring the northwest corner across Berendo Street. Roseberry's name appears as owner on the building permit issued for the northeast corner on June 29, 1926, which cites the firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements as architect for the shops-and-studios structure on the site today. Its particularly imaginative Churrigueresque detailing has led to its being referred to as the "Monkey Building." The building Post developed across Berendo was of massing similar to the Roseberry building but of a different Mediterranean Revival design, and elaborately finialed, by a different architect. Abram Post's name appears as owner and the firm of Meyer & Holler as architect on the building permit issued on April 30, 1925, for the stores-and-lofts structure. Opened in the fall of 1925, its tenant list over the years would include a branch of the Dorothy Gray cosmetics firm and the nationally known shop of needlepoint guru Lucie Newman. Unlike its Roseberry companion, it survived only until 1969, when it was replaced by the regrettable but in boulevard-evolution terms inevitable 12-story Wilshire Plaza. The Roseberry Building at least remains as an especially charming reminder of the boulevard's early, more human-scaled commercial years.


The Post Building, 1925-1969


Illustrations: LAT; California State Library