Stimson House
Encyclopedia
Stimson House is a Richardsonian Romanesque
mansion in Los Angeles, California
on Figueroa Street
north of West Adams
. Built in 1891, it was the home of lumber and banking millionaire, Thomas Douglas Stimson. During Stimson’s lifetime, the house survived a dynamite attack by a blackmailer in 1896. After Stimson’s death, the house has been occupied by a brewer who reportedly stored wines and other spirits in the basement, a fraternity house that conducted noisy parties causing consternation among occupants of neighboring mansions, as student housing for Mount St. Mary's College
, and as a convent for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.
When Stimson House was built in the 1890s, the Los Angeles Times
described it as "the costliest and most beautiful private residence in Los Angeles," a building "admired by all who see it." More than a hundred years later, the Times said: “From the front, the 3-story house resembles a medieval castle, with brick chimneys standing guard like sentries along the roof and an ornate four-story crenelated tower on the northeast corner, a noble rook
from a massive chess board
." With its $150,000 cost, it was the most expensive house that had been built in Los Angeles at the time.
From the day it was built, the 30-room house was a Los Angeles landmark. Neighbors and occupants have referred to it over the years as "the Castle" or the "Red Castle" due to its turret
-top walls, four-story tower, and red-stone exterior.
style, with rough-hewn stone, round headed arches, short columns, rows of arched or rectangular windows and an overall fortress quality. The Richardsonian style was popular in the Upper Midwest
in the 1880s, though the style never became popular in Los Angeles. Stimson reportedly wanted his new home to resemble the brick-and-stone mansions of Chicago's Gold Coast, including the Palmer Mansion
. A Los Angeles Times music critic reviewing a chamber music performance at the house in 1989 called its architecture "Midwestern Ivanhoe
." With its Gothic tower and other features, the style of the house is not strictly Richardsonian. A Times writer in 1948 noted that the house presents a "puzzling" appearance: "Its architecture reflects the Mission influence
, a bit of Byzantine
, something Latin and a little Fort Ticonderoga
."
Brown obtained the distinctive red stones from a quarry in New Mexico and used San Fernando sandstone for the windows, balconies and the tower's crown trim. The most prominent feature on the house is the four-story Gothic tower. The top of the tower and ridges are crenellated and finished with notched battlement
s. Other important features include a third floor balcony with a gabled arch and a stepped gable
with a Palladian window. A porch with carved stone columns surrounds the first floor.
The neighborhood in which the Stimson House was built became known as "Millionaires Row" in the 1890s, though the size and stone construction of Stimson House set it apart from the wood houses along Millionaires Row.
, sycamore
, birch
, mahogany
, walnut
, gumwood and oak
, all shipped from lumber yards in the Midwest." Each room on the first floor is furnished with a different type of wood, and the heavy doors have double thickness, to match the wood of the room on either side. An intricate parquet border is found at the edge of the oak floors throughout the house.
Under the first floor there is a basement, "a maze of rooms and arched doorways." There was a room that at one time served as an underground lounge and bar. In another recess there was a wine cellar equipped with an iron door that served as a makeshift jail cell and the scene of many pranks during the house’s later years as a fraternity house. There were also traces of organ pipes that once were installed there.
The interior features also included a Diebold
safe hidden behind a door in Stimson’s study. The nuns who occupied the house in later years reportedly stored their cleaning supplies in the safe. Stimson reportedly took photographs of his Chicago mansion and hired Carsley and East Manufacturing Co. to duplicate them and ship the finished products to Los Angeles.
Thomas Douglas Stimson was one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles. He was known as a self-made man who left his home in Canada at age 14, and worked a trader in Michigan. He later moved to Chicago where he built a successful lumber business. In 1890, he moved to Los Angeles at age 63, seeking a more pleasant and healthful climate for his retirement. However, rather than retiring, Stimson became one of the most active members of the Los Angeles business community. He became one of the largest shareholders in the Citizens Banks and was vice president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
In 1893, Stimson used the same architect who had built Stimson House (H. Carroll Brown) to build the Stimson Block, a six-story office building at the corner of Spring and Third Streets downtown. The Stimson Block used many of the same architectural features employed in Stimson House, and when it opened in 1893, the Stimson Block was the tallest building in Los Angeles. The Stimson Block was demolished in 1963 to make room for a parking lot.
Stimson died at Stimson House in February 1898. His widow, Achsah, lived in the house until she died in 1904.
Initially, there was suspicion that "the plot to blow up the house" was either a robbery attempt or the "dastardly" act of "some Anarchist or enemy of capitalists who took this cowardly method of expressing his hatred for men of wealth, and singled out a man who is reputed to be one of the wealthiest in Los Angeles, and who lives sumptuously as becomes his station."
Later that month, private detective Harry Coyne was arrested for the attack. Stimson testified at the preliminary hearing that he had hired Coyne to accompany his son to Mexico the prior month. Shortly after returning from Mexico, Coyne told Stimson that he was in danger from the machinations of a notorious Mexican criminal. Coyne offered his services to help foil the attack. Over a period of time, Coyne advised Stimson that the criminal had been attempting to break into the house, and sought to verify his claim with the discovery of tools and marks on a window. Coyne also claimed that the criminal had poisoned Stimson’s dog, after which the Stimson family dog became sick. After the explosion, Coyne told Stimson that the trouble was still not over, that he was in constant danger of being shot or stabbed and that the crooks had eleven sticks of dynamite remaining that would be used for another attack on the house. Coyne suggested that the only way to stop the culprits was to kill them, and he offered his services to take care of the matter. Stimson confronted Coyne and told him he suspected the affair to be a blackmailing scheme by Coyne himself. Coyne’s minute information as to the supposed crooks' plans and actions betrayed his role in the crime, and he was eventually convicted and sentenced to five years at Folsom Prison
.
’s Pi Kappa Alpha
fraternity for $20,000 – about 13% of the original cost of construction. In their first year of occupancy, the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity put Stimson House at the center of a near riot among USC students. Members of a UCLA fraternity prematurely set the traditional USC bonfire ablaze early in the morning before the scheduled event. Two of the UCLA students were captured by members of the USC fraternity and returned to Stimson House. In response to the acts of the UCLA students, 800 Trojans set fires in the streets with makeshift piles of sticks, boxes, crates, wooden benches and anything that would burn. When firemen arrived, a "solid wall of undergraduates" blocked their access to the nearest fireplug. Firemen doused the students with their fire hoses, and police unsheathed their billy clubs to avert a riot. Two hours later, the two captured UCLA students were displayed to reporters "imprisoned in the 'catacombs'" of Stimson House. The two young men had been stripped of their clothing, their bodies smeared with black paint, and on the chest of each was written the letters "S.C." Their heads had also been shaved, leaving only a topknot with a circle of black paint creating the appearance of an Iroquois
Indian. Both had been spanked until sitting was uncomfortable, and the two were "guarded in their cell by more than 100 husky Trojans." One of the captured UCLA students was the son of Los Angeles Police Chief Hohmann who said, "Bob (his son) got himself into this, and he’ll have to take his medicine."
In 1996, the Pi Kappa Alphas held a reunion at Stimson house, which they had referred to as the "Red Castle." They found the iron-gated wine cellar just as it was when errant pledges (and UCLA prisoners) were locked inside and sprayed with a hose. Memories flowed as the fraternity brothers gathered at the house, one recalling his proposal to his wife on the stairs of the house, and another recalling pelting a pledge with eggs from the same staircase, only to discover that the pledge was allergic to eggs—paramedics had to be called when his eyes swelled closed. One of the returning fraternity members recalled that, as a pledge, he crawled through an air shaft to escape from the catacombs and, covered with soot, appeared at the door of a neighbor asking if he might use the phone—the neighbor being Mrs. Doheny who later bought Stimson House to rid herself of the Pi Kappa Alphas.
. Mrs. Doheny had grown up in the neighborhood and had watched as the Stimson House was built. She recalled, "I remember when Mr. Stimson was building this house. When I was just a little girl, my father would take me for a walk on Sunday afternoons, and we’d always walk this way to see how far along the work had progressed." For eight years from 1940 to 1948, Mrs. Doheny lived behind the fraternity, and the boisterous parties in the house’s dungeon-like "catacombs" were an ongoing source of annoyance. Mrs. Doheny repeatedly complained to the university president, Rufus B. Von Kleinsmid, about disturbances, a former house president recalling that he was called before Kleinsmid "once a month or so" as a result of her complaints. By 1948, Mrs. Doheny had dealt with the fraternity for long enough and offered $75,000 to purchase the house that the fraternity bought eight years earlier for $20,000. The fraternity house was already struggling with the cost of maintaining the large house and accepted Mrs. Doheny’s offer. After the sale closed, Mrs. Doheny assured herself that she would have no further problems with noisy neighbors by deeding Stimson House to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for use as a convent. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted: "The parlor where merry parties reveled at the turn of the century will become a chapel where reverent nuns will now bow in humble devotion. The gay conversation of the festive past will yield place to solemn intonations of morning prayers."
When the fraternity brothers gathered for their reunion in 1996, the Los Angeles Times noted: "What a difference half a century makes. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet now say their prayers in those wood-paneled rooms where the PiKAs sang: 'He rambled down to Hades, To see the poor lost souls, Saw a bunch of Kappa Sigs a-roasting on the coals. . . .'"
The Sisters of St. Joseph operated the house as a convent from 1948 to 1969. From 1969 to 1993, the house was converted to use as housing for students at Mount St. Mary's College
. In the fall of 1993, the sisters returned to Stimson House and resumed using it as a convent.
. The roof had to be removed after bricks fell through it, and the chimney, parapets and tower were also damaged. The Sisters of St. Joseph had reoccupied the house as a convent in the fall of 1993, but were forced to vacate the property for ten months while repairs were made.
in 1978 and has also been named a Historic-Cultural Monument (# 212) by the City of Los Angeles. Material prepared for the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission's review of the Stimson house in 1977 called it "architecturally unique in Los Angeles," "the best example of this period of American architecture in Los Angeles" and "one of the most significant structures in the Los Angeles area."
Richardsonian Romanesque
Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston , designated a National Historic Landmark...
mansion in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
on Figueroa Street
Figueroa Street
Figueroa Street is a street in Los Angeles County, California named for General José Figueroa , governor of Alta California from 1833 to 1835, who oversaw the secularization of the missions of California...
north of West Adams
West Adams, Los Angeles, California
West Adams, also known as Historic West Adams, is a large district located in the center of Los Angeles, California, southwest of Downtown and west of USC...
. Built in 1891, it was the home of lumber and banking millionaire, Thomas Douglas Stimson. During Stimson’s lifetime, the house survived a dynamite attack by a blackmailer in 1896. After Stimson’s death, the house has been occupied by a brewer who reportedly stored wines and other spirits in the basement, a fraternity house that conducted noisy parties causing consternation among occupants of neighboring mansions, as student housing for Mount St. Mary's College
Mount St. Mary's College
Mount St. Mary's College is a private, independent, Catholic liberal arts college, primarily for women, in Los Angeles, California. The college was founded in 1925 by the Sisters of St...
, and as a convent for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.
A Los Angeles landmark
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
described it as "the costliest and most beautiful private residence in Los Angeles," a building "admired by all who see it." More than a hundred years later, the Times said: “From the front, the 3-story house resembles a medieval castle, with brick chimneys standing guard like sentries along the roof and an ornate four-story crenelated tower on the northeast corner, a noble rook
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
from a massive chess board
Chessboard
A chessboard is the type of checkerboard used in the board game chess, and consists of 64 squares arranged in two alternating colors...
." With its $150,000 cost, it was the most expensive house that had been built in Los Angeles at the time.
From the day it was built, the 30-room house was a Los Angeles landmark. Neighbors and occupants have referred to it over the years as "the Castle" or the "Red Castle" due to its turret
Turret
In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...
-top walls, four-story tower, and red-stone exterior.
Exterior features
The original occupant, Thomas Douglas Stimson, hired architect H. Carroll Brown, then only 27 years old, to design his new home. Stimson designed the home principally in the Richardsonian RomanesqueRichardsonian Romanesque
Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston , designated a National Historic Landmark...
style, with rough-hewn stone, round headed arches, short columns, rows of arched or rectangular windows and an overall fortress quality. The Richardsonian style was popular in the Upper Midwest
Upper Midwest
The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the midwest. Although there are no uniformly agreed-upon boundaries, the region is most commonly used to refer to the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and...
in the 1880s, though the style never became popular in Los Angeles. Stimson reportedly wanted his new home to resemble the brick-and-stone mansions of Chicago's Gold Coast, including the Palmer Mansion
Palmer Mansion
The Palmer Mansion, constructed 1882–1885 at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive, was once the largest private residence in Chicago, Illinois, located in the Near North Side neighborhood and facing Lake Michigan. It was designed by architects Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost of the firm Cobb and Frost...
. A Los Angeles Times music critic reviewing a chamber music performance at the house in 1989 called its architecture "Midwestern Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe is a historical fiction novel by Sir Walter Scott in 1819, and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in Romanticism and Medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages," while...
." With its Gothic tower and other features, the style of the house is not strictly Richardsonian. A Times writer in 1948 noted that the house presents a "puzzling" appearance: "Its architecture reflects the Mission influence
Mission Revival Style architecture
The Mission Revival Style was an architectural movement that began in the late 19th century for a colonial style's revivalism and reinterpretation, which drew inspiration from the late 18th and early 19th century Spanish missions in California....
, a bit of Byzantine
Neo-Byzantine architecture
The Byzantine Revival was an architectural revival movement, most frequently seen in religious, institutional and public buildings. It emerged in 1840s in Western Europe and peaked in the last quarter of 19th century in the Russian Empire; an isolated Neo-Byzantine school was active in Yugoslavia...
, something Latin and a little Fort Ticonderoga
Fort Ticonderoga
Fort Ticonderoga, formerly Fort Carillon, is a large 18th-century fort built by the Canadians and the French at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain in upstate New York in the United States...
."
Brown obtained the distinctive red stones from a quarry in New Mexico and used San Fernando sandstone for the windows, balconies and the tower's crown trim. The most prominent feature on the house is the four-story Gothic tower. The top of the tower and ridges are crenellated and finished with notched battlement
Battlement
A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet , in which portions have been cut out at intervals to allow the discharge of arrows or other missiles. These cut-out portions form crenels...
s. Other important features include a third floor balcony with a gabled arch and a stepped gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
with a Palladian window. A porch with carved stone columns surrounds the first floor.
The neighborhood in which the Stimson House was built became known as "Millionaires Row" in the 1890s, though the size and stone construction of Stimson House set it apart from the wood houses along Millionaires Row.
Interior features
Some have noted the "irony" in a lumber baron’s home being built of stone rather than wood. However, the interior has been described as "a shrine to lumber, a museum of wood, a smorgasbord of timber -- ashAsh tree
Fraxinus is a genus flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45-65 species of usually medium to large trees, mostly deciduous though a few subtropical species are evergreen. The tree's common English name, ash, goes back to the Old English æsc, while the generic name...
, sycamore
Sycamore
Sycamore is a name which is applied at various times and places to three very different types of trees, but with somewhat similar leaf forms....
, birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
, mahogany
Mahogany
The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....
, walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...
, gumwood and oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
, all shipped from lumber yards in the Midwest." Each room on the first floor is furnished with a different type of wood, and the heavy doors have double thickness, to match the wood of the room on either side. An intricate parquet border is found at the edge of the oak floors throughout the house.
Under the first floor there is a basement, "a maze of rooms and arched doorways." There was a room that at one time served as an underground lounge and bar. In another recess there was a wine cellar equipped with an iron door that served as a makeshift jail cell and the scene of many pranks during the house’s later years as a fraternity house. There were also traces of organ pipes that once were installed there.
The interior features also included a Diebold
Diebold
Diebold, Inc. is a United States-based security systems corporation that is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems , electronic and physical security products , and software and integrated systems for global financial and...
safe hidden behind a door in Stimson’s study. The nuns who occupied the house in later years reportedly stored their cleaning supplies in the safe. Stimson reportedly took photographs of his Chicago mansion and hired Carsley and East Manufacturing Co. to duplicate them and ship the finished products to Los Angeles.
Thomas Douglas Stimson
In 1893, Stimson used the same architect who had built Stimson House (H. Carroll Brown) to build the Stimson Block, a six-story office building at the corner of Spring and Third Streets downtown. The Stimson Block used many of the same architectural features employed in Stimson House, and when it opened in 1893, the Stimson Block was the tallest building in Los Angeles. The Stimson Block was demolished in 1963 to make room for a parking lot.
Stimson died at Stimson House in February 1898. His widow, Achsah, lived in the house until she died in 1904.
”Dynamite Fiends”
In February 1896, the Stimson House was the target of a bizarre bombing attack. The headline in the Los Angeles Times read, "DYNAMITE FIENDS: An Attempt to Blow Up the Stimson Mansion; The Redstone Walls Resisted the Terrific Explosion." A "stick of giant powder" was placed against the foundation of the house, directly under Stimson’s bedroom. A large hole was torn in the side of the house by the explosion, but the thick foundation wall was not damaged. Reports indicated that a frame house would have been shattered into fragments by the explosion, but the solid stone structure withstood the blast. Two neighbors witnessed the culprit lighting the fire on the dynamite, grabbed their guns, ran across the lawn, and were thrown off their feet by the explosion. On regaining their balance, the neighbors saw a man running away from the scene and fired several shots in his direction, but the man escaped.Initially, there was suspicion that "the plot to blow up the house" was either a robbery attempt or the "dastardly" act of "some Anarchist or enemy of capitalists who took this cowardly method of expressing his hatred for men of wealth, and singled out a man who is reputed to be one of the wealthiest in Los Angeles, and who lives sumptuously as becomes his station."
Later that month, private detective Harry Coyne was arrested for the attack. Stimson testified at the preliminary hearing that he had hired Coyne to accompany his son to Mexico the prior month. Shortly after returning from Mexico, Coyne told Stimson that he was in danger from the machinations of a notorious Mexican criminal. Coyne offered his services to help foil the attack. Over a period of time, Coyne advised Stimson that the criminal had been attempting to break into the house, and sought to verify his claim with the discovery of tools and marks on a window. Coyne also claimed that the criminal had poisoned Stimson’s dog, after which the Stimson family dog became sick. After the explosion, Coyne told Stimson that the trouble was still not over, that he was in constant danger of being shot or stabbed and that the crooks had eleven sticks of dynamite remaining that would be used for another attack on the house. Coyne suggested that the only way to stop the culprits was to kill them, and he offered his services to take care of the matter. Stimson confronted Coyne and told him he suspected the affair to be a blackmailing scheme by Coyne himself. Coyne’s minute information as to the supposed crooks' plans and actions betrayed his role in the crime, and he was eventually convicted and sentenced to five years at Folsom Prison
Folsom State Prison
Folsom State Prison is a California State Prison located in the city of Folsom, California, northeast from the state capital of Sacramento. Opened in 1880, Folsom is the second-oldest prison in the state of California after San Quentin and was the first in the country to have electricity...
.
Edward Maier
After Stimson’s wife died in 1904, the house was purchased by a civil engineer named Alfred Solano. In 1918, Edward R. Maier, sportsman and owner of Maier Brewing Co., bought the house, and it served as the Maier family home until 1940. Maier was said to have stored his wines and liqueurs in the labyrinthine basement.Fraternity Hijinks
In 1940, the Maier family sold the house to USCUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
’s Pi Kappa Alpha
Pi Kappa Alpha
Pi Kappa Alpha is a Greek social fraternity with over 230 chapters and colonies and over 250,000 lifetime initiates in the United States and Canada.-History:...
fraternity for $20,000 – about 13% of the original cost of construction. In their first year of occupancy, the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity put Stimson House at the center of a near riot among USC students. Members of a UCLA fraternity prematurely set the traditional USC bonfire ablaze early in the morning before the scheduled event. Two of the UCLA students were captured by members of the USC fraternity and returned to Stimson House. In response to the acts of the UCLA students, 800 Trojans set fires in the streets with makeshift piles of sticks, boxes, crates, wooden benches and anything that would burn. When firemen arrived, a "solid wall of undergraduates" blocked their access to the nearest fireplug. Firemen doused the students with their fire hoses, and police unsheathed their billy clubs to avert a riot. Two hours later, the two captured UCLA students were displayed to reporters "imprisoned in the 'catacombs'" of Stimson House. The two young men had been stripped of their clothing, their bodies smeared with black paint, and on the chest of each was written the letters "S.C." Their heads had also been shaved, leaving only a topknot with a circle of black paint creating the appearance of an Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
Indian. Both had been spanked until sitting was uncomfortable, and the two were "guarded in their cell by more than 100 husky Trojans." One of the captured UCLA students was the son of Los Angeles Police Chief Hohmann who said, "Bob (his son) got himself into this, and he’ll have to take his medicine."
In 1996, the Pi Kappa Alphas held a reunion at Stimson house, which they had referred to as the "Red Castle." They found the iron-gated wine cellar just as it was when errant pledges (and UCLA prisoners) were locked inside and sprayed with a hose. Memories flowed as the fraternity brothers gathered at the house, one recalling his proposal to his wife on the stairs of the house, and another recalling pelting a pledge with eggs from the same staircase, only to discover that the pledge was allergic to eggs—paramedics had to be called when his eyes swelled closed. One of the returning fraternity members recalled that, as a pledge, he crawled through an air shaft to escape from the catacombs and, covered with soot, appeared at the door of a neighbor asking if he might use the phone—the neighbor being Mrs. Doheny who later bought Stimson House to rid herself of the Pi Kappa Alphas.
Convent for Sisters of St. Joseph
The property behind Stimson House (on Chester Place) was the home of Carrie Estelle Doheny, the widow of wealthy oil man, Edward L. DohenyEdward L. Doheny
Edward Laurence Doheny was an American oil tycoon, who in 1892, along with business partner Charles A. Canfield, drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field, setting off the petroleum boom in Southern California.At first he was an unsuccessful prospector in the state of...
. Mrs. Doheny had grown up in the neighborhood and had watched as the Stimson House was built. She recalled, "I remember when Mr. Stimson was building this house. When I was just a little girl, my father would take me for a walk on Sunday afternoons, and we’d always walk this way to see how far along the work had progressed." For eight years from 1940 to 1948, Mrs. Doheny lived behind the fraternity, and the boisterous parties in the house’s dungeon-like "catacombs" were an ongoing source of annoyance. Mrs. Doheny repeatedly complained to the university president, Rufus B. Von Kleinsmid, about disturbances, a former house president recalling that he was called before Kleinsmid "once a month or so" as a result of her complaints. By 1948, Mrs. Doheny had dealt with the fraternity for long enough and offered $75,000 to purchase the house that the fraternity bought eight years earlier for $20,000. The fraternity house was already struggling with the cost of maintaining the large house and accepted Mrs. Doheny’s offer. After the sale closed, Mrs. Doheny assured herself that she would have no further problems with noisy neighbors by deeding Stimson House to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for use as a convent. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted: "The parlor where merry parties reveled at the turn of the century will become a chapel where reverent nuns will now bow in humble devotion. The gay conversation of the festive past will yield place to solemn intonations of morning prayers."
When the fraternity brothers gathered for their reunion in 1996, the Los Angeles Times noted: "What a difference half a century makes. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet now say their prayers in those wood-paneled rooms where the PiKAs sang: 'He rambled down to Hades, To see the poor lost souls, Saw a bunch of Kappa Sigs a-roasting on the coals. . . .'"
The Sisters of St. Joseph operated the house as a convent from 1948 to 1969. From 1969 to 1993, the house was converted to use as housing for students at Mount St. Mary's College
Mount St. Mary's College
Mount St. Mary's College is a private, independent, Catholic liberal arts college, primarily for women, in Los Angeles, California. The college was founded in 1925 by the Sisters of St...
. In the fall of 1993, the sisters returned to Stimson House and resumed using it as a convent.
Earthquake damage
Stimson House suffered substantial damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquakeNorthridge earthquake
The Northridge earthquake was a massive earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 04:31 Pacific Standard Time in Reseda, a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California, lasting for about 10–20 seconds...
. The roof had to be removed after bricks fell through it, and the chimney, parapets and tower were also damaged. The Sisters of St. Joseph had reoccupied the house as a convent in the fall of 1993, but were forced to vacate the property for ten months while repairs were made.
Designation as historic building
The Stimson House was listed on the National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1978 and has also been named a Historic-Cultural Monument (# 212) by the City of Los Angeles. Material prepared for the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission's review of the Stimson house in 1977 called it "architecturally unique in Los Angeles," "the best example of this period of American architecture in Los Angeles" and "one of the most significant structures in the Los Angeles area."
Use as a filming location
The house has been used as a shooting location in numerous commercials, television shows, and feature films, including:- It appeared in the films House II and After Midnight.
- It appeared in the mini-series Captains and Kings and Testimony of Two Men.
- It appeared in an episode of The Bionic WomanThe Bionic WomanThe Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydiving accident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman ...
in which Lindsay WagnerLindsay WagnerLindsay Jean Wagner is an American actress. She is probably best known for her portrayal of Jaime Sommers in the 1970s television series The Bionic Woman , though she has maintained a lengthy career in a variety of other film and television productions since.-Early life:Wagner was born in Los...
's double jumped off a second-floor porch. Vincent PriceVincent PriceVincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...
, who appeared in episode, liked the spooky acoustics of the house and recorded some his later productions there. - It appeared in an episode of Pushing DaisiesPushing DaisiesPushing Daisies is an American comedy-drama television series created by Bryan Fuller that aired on ABC from October 3, 2007 to June 13, 2009. The series stars Lee Pace as Ned, a pie-maker with the ability to bring dead things back to life with his touch, an ability that comes with stipulations...
as a mortuary.