2801 South Hoover Street
Los Angeles, CA, USA

No. 103 - Forthmann House and Forthmann Carriage House

If you’re interested in visiting all of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 103, you’ve got some driving to do. Sometime in the 1880s, Burgess J. Reeve designed a 4,200 square foot, eleven-room Victorian mansion for John A. Forthmann. Forthmann, a German immigrant, had made his money from founding and running the Los Angeles Soap Co. The business, most famous for its White King brand (“It takes so little”), at one point covered about sixteen acres of downtown. Forthmann died in 1922.

In the shot just above, from USC's Digital Archive and taken around 1900, John Forthmann is one of the guys in the buggy. Probably the cleanest one. Because he was in the soap business.

Different references mention different styles of the house, but mainly as a mix of Italianate and Eastlake. The house, along with its carriage house, stood at 629 West 18th Street, just off Figueroa.

Flash forward a century. In 1989, about seventeen years after its designation as a city landmark (and about a year after the Los Angeles Soap Co. finally closed its doors), the house was picked up and relocated to its current location on Hoover. According to Historic Places in Los Angeles County, published in 1978 by the Historical Society of Southern California, several additions had been made to the second floor at some point. Today the home – one of the oldest in the city – is the headquarters for USC’s Real Estate Development Corp.

The bad news? When the house was relocated, the Forthmann Carriage House was left behind. The good news? Sixteen years later, in 2005, the carriage house, officially part of HCM 103, was saved from demolition when it was moved, in the opposite direction of its old partner, to 812 East Edgeware Road in Angelino Heights. It stands there today, fairly well stripped and awaiting restoration. If anyone can tell me why it’s perched so high up on stilts, please do. Maybe just waiting for a foundation, I reckon.

Forthmann House

Forthmann House, now known as USC Community House, is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 103) located in the North University Park Historic District of West Adams, Los Angeles, California. It is a 4,200-square-foot (390 m2) Victorian house built c.1887, designed by Burgess J. Reeve. It was relocated in 1989 from its original location. A secondary structure known as the Forthmann Carriage House was moved from its original location to its new home in Angelino Heights at 812 E Edgeware Rd.