L.A. Survivor: West Adams Bungalow Courts

I like to tell myself I’ve done a good job of rambling over the greater Los Angeles metropolis in my 25 years here. That’s true to some degree. Although I think of myself as an Angeleno now, I was well into adulthood before I arrived. I’m always cognizant that I’ve had fewer years to get to know the place than longtime residents the same age as I am. The place is vast, seen in this view from a vantage point near my house, looking north across 30 miles of city. The skyscrapers of downtown are a speck against the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.

That’s a lot of territory to cover, and it’s just one slice of the city.

All I have to do to be reminded that I haven’t even made a dent in the task of knowing L.A. is to take a freeway exit I’ve never used, or go to an appointment in a new part of town.

It happened recently when I drove into downtown on a Sunday morning to visit a relative who was here for the recent World Series. I knew where his motel was, but my freeway exit and all the streets I’d planned to take were closed to traffic for a street race. It took me twenty minutes — including driving east on a freeway in order to turn around to go west — before I cleared the obstacles and exited the freeway a few blocks from his motel. I was in a part of town I’d never visited, called the West Adams District.

The moment I reached the end of the unfamiliar exit ramp, there it was— an unexpected discovery.

It was a happy coincidence for me. That old apartment complex is a version of the “bungalow court,” a form of architecture I wrote about recently in the post at this link. There are several hundred bungalow courts still in existence, scattered across L.A. West Adams has a few of them.

The Old City

West Adams is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, dating from the 1880s — once one of the most desirable parts of town. It’s full of Victorian, Craftsman and Spanish Revival houses, as well as some genuine mansions that show what a grand place it once was — home for the city’s bankers, merchants and businesspeople. No longer a prosperous neighborhood, today it might be called “working class,” as inadequate and vague as that term is.

Less than a quarter mile to the east of the structure I photographed is an area of West Adams called the 20th Street Historic District. The houses in that district were all designed “early in the 20th century,” according to Wikipedia, by an architect named W. Wayman Watts. There’s a bungalow court similar to this one in that area. I haven’t done enough research to know if Mr. Watts had a hand in either of the buildings.

Much of West Adams is better-kept than the impression you get from this building, and there are some impressive old estates. This court’s on a busy cross street next to a freeway exit, and is obviously down-at-heels.

This is a large example of a bungalow court. I guess it’s from the 1920s or early 1930s, in a variety of Mission Revival style architecture, common in L.A. then.

I’ll do some digging. If I find information that might be interesting, I’ll write more about this place.

Today’s Lesson

Although I know it’s there — immediately north of the University of Southern California campus —  I’ve never explored West Adams at all. Happenstance sent me there after I’d driven past it on the freeway for 25 years. One more reminder you can never know a place inside-out; you can only keep looking. And have your camera with you, ready to pull over and shoot the gosh-darned picture, even if you’re running late for an appointment.

Do you know a town like the back of your hand and still have it surprise you? Leave a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2018