02c - 140 Hollister Ave - Horatio West Court - Irving J Gill (E) by Kansas Sebastian

OCEAN PARK On a gray May day, Greg and I took the new Exposition Line (transferring to the 733) to Venice, and walked up to Ocean Park. We didn’t have a goal in mind, except to enjoy the day. While we were in Ocean Park we thought we’d check on a house that we know well – the home of James M Hale, proprietor of the Los Angeles dry good’s store, Hale’s. Almost directly behind Hale’s house is Horatio West Court, by Irving J Gill. 01. James M Hale House, 1907 149 Wadsworth Ave Ocean Park, CA Wadsworth &amp; Hollister Tract, Santa Monica Architect Unknown James M Hale was the proprietor of the J M Hale Co, a chain of seven dry goods stores. The store first began at 7 &amp; 9 Spring Street in the early 1890's. Later the address was changed to 107, 109 &amp; 111 N. Spring St. Sometime around 1905/6 he sold the Spring Street location and moved the store to 341-345 S Broadway, near the new Romanesque City Hall. Additional stores were opened in Ocean Park, Santa Monica, and other locations around Southern California and (apparently) elsewhere. Until 1907 Hale lived in the 800 block of Grand Avenue. As the Red Car expanded in Los Angeles, options to live out of the city began to open up for the burgeoning population. Hale took advantage of this new opportunity. In 1907 Hale contracted “for the erection of a handsome home in the Wadsworth &amp; Hollister Tract. It is to cost $7,434, and is to be completed in seventy working days.” The result is this beautiful, very-late Queen Anne/Shingle Style Victorian house. Thanks to the gracious owners, we were able to tour the inside. It is spectacular, if not unusual. The interior is a mixture of styles common in Los Angeles at the time. The layout and most of the detail, like baseboards and crown molding, are pure Victorian. The pressed-brick fireplace mantles are Craftsman. The large built-in buffet is Art Nouveau. An oddly-placed foyer sits behind the first parlor, which may have been a reception room of some kind. The formal front door to the foyer is on the West-facing side of the house. The rails of the grand staircase are transitional in style (almost Mission Revival) and the chandelier is high Victorian. One of the globes is monogrammed with Hale’s initials – JMH. The architect is as yet unknown. Who ever it was, they seemed to have been playing to the tastes of an older client. or the architect himself was older and designed a house in the style he was accustomed. The situation of the house with the front door on the side rather than in front, gives the impression that this wasn’t a new building – that it was moved to the site, turned on it’s side, and then remodeled. But the permit implies new construction. And, if it were an older house remodeled, most of the Victorian features should have been stripped away. Likely it would be fully Craftsman, or Mission Revival like the Joseph Cather Newsom across the street at 140 Wadsworth. The James M Hale house in Ocean Park is not yet a Santa Monica Historic Landmark, but it is fully deserving of both local and national historic status. I encourage the owners to pursue historic designation to protect the house, and possibly take advantage of the Mills Act tax advantages. Many people may fondly (or not) remember Hale’s Brothers, Inc, the San Francisco-based nation-wide department store which failed in the late 1960's and was absorbed into the Los Angeles-based Broadway Stores. J M Hale appears to be related to the Hale Brothers of the San Francisco department store, although the relationship hasn’t been not solidly confirmed yet. The icon failed because of several bad business decisions – acquiring Sacramento-based Weinstock-Lubin &amp; Co. and a real estate gamble gone awry. The relationship clues are there, however: J M Hale Co, Inc used the same swooping logo as Hale Bros Inc, with the same tag line “Good Goods,” and they were in essentially the same kind of market. It appears each branch of Hale’s was run independently, with slight variations on the name. From what I can derive on the internet, Hale’s was founded in San Jose, CA, by O A Hale, as a simple dry goods store. He quickly expanded the store with his sons, first to Sacramento and San Francisco, then Los Angeles and beyond. James M may have been O A’s brother, or the oldest son. Under the “Hale’s California” umbrella were: Hale Bros Incorporated (San Francisco); Hale Bros &amp; Co (Sacramento); O A Hale &amp; Co (San Jose); Hale &amp; Co (Stockton); Hale Bros &amp; Co (Petaluma); and J M Hale Co, Inc (Los Angeles). Other locations of Hale Bros and J M Hale Co can be found throughout the country. There’s a story on The State Historical Society of Missouri website, which chronicles the life of James Cash Penney (yes, that Penney – J C Penney’s). According to the site, Penney’s first job was as a store clerk at J M Hale and Bros in Hamilton, Mo. It’s somewhat ironic then that it was a shady real estate deal where J C Penney’s acquired the coveted Hale Bros Inc building in San Francisco’s Market St, and Hale’s had to settle for the old J C Penny’s building, further down the street, competing with the more popular Emporium. This swap lead to the decline of Hales, and eventual merger with The Broadway Stores. The Broadway was eventually swallowed by The Federated Group (Macy’s) or sold off when it too failed. Additional tidbits about James M Hale. – The State Historical Society of Missouri (J C Penney): <a href="http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/p/penney/" rel="nofollow">shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/p/penney/</a> – A great synopses of Hale’s Bros. (San Francisco) can be found at Plummer &amp; Associates Blog on Wordpress at; <a href="http://www.plummersearch.com/blog/?p=1019" rel="nofollow">www.plummersearch.com/blog/?p=1019</a> – An interesting relationship to J M Hale can be found at the Stoltz family webpage at: <a href="http://www.stoltzfamily.us/?p=373" rel="nofollow">www.stoltzfamily.us/?p=373</a> – J M Hale, along with his secretary, Charles C Gibbons, invested in other endeavors, such as Wood’s Dry Condenser – an ore crushing machine to extract gold in mines: <a href="http://www.randdesertmuseum.com/mills_of_the_rand_district/ore_mills_of_johannesburg" rel="nofollow">www.randdesertmuseum.com/mills_of_the_rand_district/ore_m...</a> – James M Hale is buried with his wife, Della Hale, at Rosedale Cemetery, I the Historic West Adams district of Los Angeles, Find-A-Grave Monument No. 7505602. James M Hale: 1846 - 1936; Della Hale: died 1930. <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&amp;GRid=7505602" rel="nofollow">www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&amp;GRid=7505602</a> 02. Horatio West Court, 1919-1921 National Register of Historic Places No. 77000302, 1977 Santa Monica Historic Landmark No. 10 140 Hollister Ave Ocean Park, CA Wadsworth &amp; Hollister Tract, Santa Monica Irving J Gill, Architect On the same block as the J M Hale house sits the magnificent Horatio West Court, designed by Irving J Gill. The composition is an arrangement of six modernist cubes, in Gill’s trademark Mission Revival style. Connecting the cluster of semi-attached homes is a central courtyard, with shared sidewalks and a central driveway. The homes sit on a 60ft-wide lot, and predate the Modernist Movement as we traditionally know it, by 10 to 15 years. Today we’d think of it as a “Small Lot Ordinance,” which was pioneered by the masters of Modernism – Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, A E Morris, and others. In fact, Neutra admired the complex so much he photographed it extensively in the 1930's.