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Overview

Architect B. Cooper Corbett designed this Italian Villa for Hortense Hellman and her German-born husband Carl T. Stern in 1910. Hellman was part of the Hellman banking family in Los Angeles, and she erected her $20,000 residence in the fashionable West Adams Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA.

Building History

Hortense Hellman met her German-born husband while on a European vacation around 1900. They wed in 1901 and returned to live in Los Angeles, where her family had significant real estate and financial interests. (The Hellmans were co-founders in 1871 of the Farmers and Merchants Bank later known as Security National Bank in Los Angeles, a highly successful early lender in the city.) In 1906, they bought Lot #14 of the West Adams Heights Tract from A.W. Ballard on which to build their new dwelling. (See "Real Estate Record," Los Angeles Times, 11/14/1906, p. 13.)

The Los Angeles Herald reported on the design and construction of the Carl T. and Hortense Stern House in 1910: "Work has just commence upon the erection of a large Italian villa on Hobart boulevard, south of Washington street, for Mrs. Hortense H. Stern. It was designed by Architect B. Cooper Corbett, is three stories high and will cost $20,000. It will have cement exterior walls, with the entrance graced with orders. The interior finish will be of cedar stained mahogany. There will be several stone fireplaces, oak floors, furnace heating system and first class plumbing." (See "Italian Villa Home for Mrs. H.H. Stern," Los Angeles Herald, 06/05/1910, part III, p. 2.)

Alteration

Corbett's Italian Villa Style house design may have been an alteration of an existing dwelling.

PCAD id: 24618