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When I Think of Home: Images from L.A. Archives

Historic Home Museums

The theme of "home" is a natural fit for historic home museums and organizations with photographs of historic homes in their collections. Historic homes are physical reminders of Los Angeles history and allow us a glimpse of the lives of Angelenos across different time periods. These items provide a look into what life was like for families and residents in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

The oldest home represented in this exhibit is the Rancho Los Cerritos Adobe, built in 1844 in what is now Long Beach. This residence serves as a physical reminder of the Mexican era in California. Homes built in the early 1900s are also present, with the Eugene W. Britt House built in the Georgian Colonial Revival style in 1919 and La Casa Nueva (at the Homestead Museum) whose construction was finalized1927. These representations of Los Angeles area historic homes give us the opportunity to explore local history from the comfort of our own homes.

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View of the Foy Residence at the corner of 7th and Figueroa (current site of the Wilshire Grand Center). Built by Samuel Calvert Foy (1830-1901) around 1872, the house was moved to Witmer Street in 1920, and again to Carroll Avenue in 1992 where it still stands. Foy was the father of Mary E. Foy (1862-1962) a leader in the local suffrage movement and the first woman to serve as the Los Angeles Public Library's City Librarian.
Roy and Emily Lanterman converse in the living room of their home, El Retiro, also known as the Lanterman House, in La Cañada Flintridge, California. Roy Lanterman’s family founded La Cañada in the 1870s. He and his wife Emily built the house in 1915 and their sons donated the house and all of its original furnishings to the city of La Cañada Flintridge in the 1980s. The living room today looks much the same as the Lantermans left it.
The difference between a house and a home is reflected in La Casa Nueva at the Homestead Museum. The Spanish Colonial Revival house, filled with references to the family and California history, was intended to be a family home for years to come, but the death of Laura Gonzalez Temple was an obvious blow to those plans. Catholic Bishop Cantwell blesses the home in her memory on the first anniversary of her death in December 1923.
In addition to Mrs. Temple's death, the four children were away at school during the five-year construction process and for two more years after it was finished in 1927. This November 1924 letter from daughter Agnes to her brother Thomas discusses progress on the house during a visit from her during a time when she attended a girl's school in Los Angeles. Surviving letters show the eagerness of the family to enjoy their home, but conditions dramatically changed.
Though La Casa Nueva was finished in 1927, the children remained away at school for two more years. Occasional events, like this church society party, were held there, but the home was largely empty. By the time the Temples reunited in summer 1929 after the children graduated from their respective schools, financial problems worsened. The next spring, the house was leased and the family moved, soon to lose it in 1932 during the Great Depression.
The Britt House Mansion is a colonial revival design. Colonial revival is a copy of Georgian 100 years after the Georgian era. It is on 1 1/2 acres. The exterior walls are all three bricks deep. All the outside terra cotta (sills, lintels, key-stones, ornamental panels, chimney caps, portico columns) were originally in cream white. The interior is vintage Craftsman dating back to the 1905-1914 time period.

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Muller House Museum Living Room