Structure Type: built works - dwellings - houses

Designers: Parkinson, John, Architect (firm); John Parkinson (architect)

Dates: constructed 1900-1901

2 stories

688 Wilshire Place
Los Angeles, CA 90005-3930

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The house was located just south of the Bullock's Wilshire store on Wilshire Boulevard.

Important Los Angeles architect John Parkinson (1861-1935) built this residence for himself and his wife, Meta, and their two children in 1901, and lived here until 1915. At that time, Parkinson and family moved to a larger, cross-gabled residence at 688 Wilshire Place, where they resided between 1915-1920.

Architect's own house; the hipped-roofed Parkinson House of 1901 was an interesting blend of influences, reflecting the architect's knowledge of Irving J. Gill's residences as well as contemporary Prairie Style work.

As noted by Duncan Maginnis, the house at 600 St. Paul Avenue was moved to an unknown location in 1926. He illustrated a 07/25/1926 Los Angeles Times photograph of the Parkinson House being moved from its hillside location. After the house was moved, the site was graded to remove the elevation change. Westinghouse Electric Company erected a building on the site for its personnel in 1948. (See Duncan Maginnis, The Underappreciated Legacy of Los Angeles: A Miscellany,Accessed 06/15/2012.) (Mr. Maginnis kindly provided this information to the author in an email of 06/12/2012. He corrected an earlier erroneous PCAD entry that had conflated houses #1 and #2.)

PCAD id: 9201