Hale House

About this property

Hale House is a Queen Anne style Victorian mansion built in 1887 in the Highland Park section of northeast Los Angeles, California. It has been described as "the most photographed house in the entire city", and "the most elaborately decorated". In 1966, it was declared a Historic-Cultural Monument, and in 1972 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house was relocated in 1970 to the Heritage Square Museum in Montecito Heights where it remains open to the public. The Hale House was designed by Joseph Cather Newsom, a leading architect throughout the era. It was built in 1887 by real estate developer, George W. Morgan, at the foot of Mount Washington. Built at an original cost of less than $4,000, the house was originally situated at 4501 North Pasadena Avenue (now Figueroa Street), but was moved to 4425 North Pasadena before it was purchased by motorman James G. Hale. It is believed to have been associated with the old Page School for Girls which once stood directly across Avenue 44 from Hale House. The house was purchased by James G. Hale and his newlywed, Beret “Bessie” Hovelsrud, in 1901. James Hale met Bessie, a farm girl from Nebraska, at the Pio Pico House she was waitressing in. The two fell in love, got married, and purchased the Hale House to live in; however, a few years later, the couple separated and Hale died from a heart attack on August 15, 1921, at age 51. Bessie retained title to the house. She operated the house as a boarding house until the late 1950s and lived there until she died in 1966 at age 97. The house was inherited by Hale's niece, Odena Johnson, who stated her desire to dispose of it as soon as possible. When plans were announced to demolish the house and build a chrome and steel gas station in its place, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission stopped the demolition temporarily by declaring the house a Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM #40) in 1966. A column by noted Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith helped the preservation effort. Smith called the "faded old house" one of the few remaining from the "age of exuberance." Smith described the house's significance as follows:The house has been called 'picturesque eclectic,' meaning its designer took a scroll from here and a fleur-de-lis from there and put everything together with romantic abandon. … Because of its eclectic nature, the Hale house is said to embody, in one package, many architectural inventions of the late 19th century, that buoyant and capricious era. Hale's niece agreed to sell the house for $1 if it could be moved from the site. In July 1970, the house was lifted from its foundation and moved to the nearby Heritage Square Museum in Highland Park. The move cost $10,300 and an additional $3,000 to raise wires so the house could pass under. Jack Smith, who had been an advocate of the home's preservation, attended the midnight moving of the house in July 1970. He later wrote that a "motley and festive" crowd gathered to watch, with cries of jubilation rising when the chimneys survived the move.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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