OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

Overview

This fine Queen Anne Style residence, was built for James McLaughlin, who moved to Southern California c. 1886. This house was erected c. 1890 for McLaughlin, but was sold to Eli Collins Hurd (c.1852-1897), shortly after its construction. In 1892, Hurd farmed fruit trees in what was called the Cahuenga Valley, Los Angeles County, CA, now in the vicinity of Hollywood. (Source Ancestry.com, Citation: California State Library, California History Section; Great Registers, 1866-1898; Collection Number: 4 - 2A; CSL Roll Number: 20; FHL Roll Number: 976929, accessed 04/12/2016.) During the remainder of his short life, (he died at age 45 on 10/04/1897), He was active in local Republican politics, raising lemons and oranges, organizing a local water company, dabbling in land development and running a cable railroad, also purchased from McLaughlin in 1890. After his death, the house was sold to a local banker, H.C. Whitley.

Building History

By the 1880s, farmers migrating to Southern California had "...discovered a frost-free belt along the base of the Santa Monica Mountains," ideal for growing warm-weather citrus crops. The tracts of Hollywood, Colegrove, Laurel, Lattin, and Prospect Park, began to attract settlers from across the nation, seeking a less-stressful way of life and a temperate, dry climate. (The climate was seen as especially salubrious for those with tuberculosis.) By the early 1890s, farmers planted citrus trees on large and small lots, and the Cahuenga Valley was becoming renowned for the quality of lemons.

James McLaughlin, the wealthy son of a juvenile book publisher in New York, came to Los Angeles in the mid-1880s. He purchased shares in a new cable railway that had just begun operations from Los Angeles to the Hollywood vicinity (what later became known as the Cahuenga Valley Railroad). McLaughlin ran into difficulties quickly, fighting with the owner of another commuter railway over a rail crossing; he also was quoted in the Los Angeles Times that he could buy the votes of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a controversy that did not help his appeals to the city to extend his rail line. He was briefly jailed in 1889, and forced to sell his railroad and house c. 1890.

A recent immigrant from Denver, CO, E.C. Hurd bought McLaughlin's Queen Anne mansion and set about planting a large grove of lemon trees in 1890. He also cultivated a notable rose garden. In 1896, Hurd was listed in the Gazetteer of Southern California, 1896, as a superintendent for the Cahuenga Valley Railroad living in Colegrove, CA. (See Gazetteer of Southern California, 1896, p. 1621.) The railroad had some success, as the Los Angeles Times observed in 1894: "The Cahuenga Valley Railroad must be doing a land-office business, judging from the Eastern visitors we have had of late." (See "Hollywood," Los Angeles Times,02/20/1894, p. 9)

During the 1890-1897 period, Hurd became a leading figure in Hollywood, active in civic affairs and land development. He was a friend of the Wilcox Family, prominent landowners in the valley, for whom Wilcox Street was named, a thoroughfare that bounded his property on the east. In 1894, the Los Angeles Times reported that, at a recent meeting of the Cahunega Valley Township Association, Hurd was part of a "committee on information" "...apppointed to ascertain what lands are offered in their prospective neighborhoods, with prices, terms, etc., for the information of intending purchasers. This is rendered necessary from the fact that there is not a real estate agent in Cahuenga Valley, and strangers coming out to look at the country have sometimes found it difficult to obtain such information as they desired in regard to lands and prices." (See "House and Lot: Cahuenga Valley," Los Angeles Times, 01/27/1894, p. 3.) Along with six other investors, Hurd was also a founding member of the Cahuenga Water Company, incorporated in 01/1894. He died on 10/04/1897 at the age of 45.

His estate was sold to H.C. Whitley in 1900, a member of the board of directors of the State Bank of Owensmouth, a nearby San Fernando Valley town.

PCAD id: 842