Structure Type: built works - dwellings - houses - apartment houses
Designers: Lilly - Fletcher Company Building Contractors (firm); Smith, L.A., Architect (firm); Herman E. Fletcher (building contractor); Paul Batelle Fletcher (building contractor); J B Lilly (building contractor); Lewis Arthur Smith (architect)
Dates: constructed 1920
2 stories
Historian Anna Marie Brooks has done extensive research on the owner, builder designer and construction contractor for her Los Angeles Department of City Planning Recommendation Report of 04/05/2008; much of the information below is derived from her work. Architect L.A. Smith, best known for his Los Angeles theatres, designed these buildings for Jessie D'Arche (1882-1935), an extraordinary single woman, who worked as a vaudeville singer, theatre operator and landlord. She arrived in Southern California in 1912 and began to accumulate real estate interests until her death on 09/03/1935. Smith collaborated with the Lilly-Fletcher Company, operated by J.B. Lilly and Paul Batelle Fletcher, who served as the General Contractor for this project. D'Arche commissioned other buildings from the Smith-Lilly-Fletcher team, including the West Adams Gardens Apartment complex and the 1131 West 27th Street Apartments. The Jessie D'Arche Apartments consisted of two buildings, 1155–1157 West 27th Street, located on a .18-acre parcel nearby to the University of Southern California. In 2008, the pair of buildings contained four three-bedroom/one-bath units and one one bedroom/one bath units. The apartments were sold by Circle Park Holdings LLC to L33T Student Housing (of Malibu, CA) for $1,175,000 in 04/2008.
The City of Los Angeles Cultural-Heritage Commission rejected a nomination to make the Jessie D'Arche Apartments a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2007.
Chimneys at the D'Arche Apartments toppled in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.
PCAD id: 15951