Portions
of this post first appeared on the blog of the Photo Friends of the Los Angeles
Public Library. All historic photos are from the Library’s collection; all
contemporary photos are my own.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00062061 |
Renaissance man Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859 – 1928) designed
and built his Los Angeles home over a period of some 13 years beginning about 1897, doing much of the labor himself. The name he gave his homestead was El
Alisal, place of the alders -- or sycamores -- or California sycamores. The
actual meaning is a bit lost in translation, but the important thing is it was
a Spanish name and Lummis loved all things Spanish. He also loved Native
American culture and dedicated a portion of his very active life to preserving
both.
Much has been written about Lummis the man. I’ll confine myself
to describing him as a collector, writer, preservationist, founder of the
Southwest Museum, advocate for Native American rights, and booster for all
things Old California.
The Los Angeles Public Library’s digital photographic
collection contains a number of images of El Alisal over a century of life.
Most of the photos are from the Security Pacific Bank Collection and the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner Collection. The image above, dated February 5, 1905,
taken while the house was still under construction, shows the castle-like
embellishments Lummis craved: towers, crenellations, slit windows.
In addition to collecting books, terra cotta pots and Indian
blankets, Lummis collected friends….local and national luminaries from the
worlds of art, letters, music, and politics.
And he held court at El Alisal.
The Lummis Home is located in the Highland Park neighborhood
of Los Angeles, along the Arroyo Seco (the creek and, later, the parkway).
Lummis welcomed guests to his home....artists, dignitaries, scientists, writers, movie stars, and other luminaries. The leather-bound guest book held almost 7,000 signatures by the time of Lummis' death. Dennis Harbach has culled through the book, now in the care of the Southwest Museum, and produced a two-volume illustrated set entitled El Alisal's Remarkable Visitors.
The monogram or rubrica on the front door is reportedly that
of Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conqueror of the Incas (Apostol); however, if one
squints a bit the initials of Charles Fletcher Lummis himself appear.
Lummis’ taste for romantic and vernacular architecture is
apparent. His design for El Alisal was part medieval castle, part California
rancho, part Native American pueblo. Much of his building materials were
locally-sourced, including river rock taken from the nearby Arroyo Seco and
discarded railroad utility poles used as ceiling support beams. The nomination
form that successfully placed El Alisal on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1971 described it as “a rambling 2-story random rubble stone, masonry
and concrete structure,” and noted that the building did not “meet present day
requirements of the Los Angeles City Building Code.”
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00062058 |
An undated photo of the “museo” or main room at El Alisal,
plentifully adorned with photos, artwork, mission style furniture, and Indian
rugs. A portrait of Lummis by Gerald Cassidy, now at the Autry National Center,
hangs on the far wall. Lummis was very much a part of the Arts and Crafts
movement in California which championed rusticity, natural materials, and folk
art.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00062064 |
The dining room at El Alisal in this 1910 photo displays an eclectic
assortment of china and artwork, as well as a pair of muskets mounted on the
wall. Many of the pictures and objects displayed in the house were created for
Lummis by his coterie of artist friends. Others Lummis collected on his travels
throughout the Southwest.
Alas, the kitchen at El Alisal has been thoroughly remodeled
since Lummis’ day.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00062085 |
An undated interior shot of the ground floor tower niche
shows Lummis’ own glass photographs used as window panes. The photographs in
this set of windows are now gone; however, others exist in the main room of the
house and make fascinating viewing.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00062066 |
This 1905 photograph shows the backyard courtyard of the
home, including a large sycamore and the central lily pond traditional to
California rancho style.
Today the original sycamore tree is gone; the pond remains.
To the right are two adjoining guest cottages used variously by Lummis children
and friends.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Herald Examiner Collection, Image #00047541 |
This 1949 photograph is an excellent study of the
fenestration at El Alisal. Lummis enjoyed designing windows; some windows were
placed at child’s-eye level. No two windows or doors in the house were
identical.
The doors to nowhere on the second story were meant to open
onto a balcony never built. In 1900 Lummis went into a profound depression
after the death of his young son, Amado. It is said that he turned his back on
the front of the house, locked the front door, and never opened it again.
Somehow this story does not jibe with what were clearly many more years of
entertaining.
1949 was also the year the Southern California Historical
Society took up the idea of turning the derelict building into a museum.
Although things did not pan out that way at first, in 1965 the society finally
was able to acquire use of the house as their headquarters in an arrangement
with the city that lasted 50 years. SCHS offered docent-led tours of the home’s
exterior and a few interior rooms. Safety concerns, as well as the use of some
spaces for offices and storage, made a full tour impossible.
This blogger served several years as a docent at the home
during the 1980s. Making a return visit some thirty years later, I found that
it was possible to see several rooms – kitchen, bathroom, and ground-floor
bedrooms that had been off limits even to insiders.
Fireplace in Eve Lummis' ground floor bedroom; her husband,
the poet, often slept in the circular upstairs tower room adjacent to his
"Lion's Den" sanctuary.
While the second floor is still off limits to the public, a
pair of ornate doors have been put on display on the ground floor.
Hand-planing, decorative incising, and metal ornamentation evoking pre-Columbian
history of Latin America show the work of the craftsman.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Herald Examiner Collection, Image #00050164 |
In the 1980s the exterior of the Lummis Home took on a
different look as the group Friends of the Lummis Home and Garden took on
responsibility for landscaping and maintaining the surrounding acreage. Lummis’
rough two plus acres were transformed into a demonstration garden of drought
tolerant plants. The image above shows an editor’s crop marks indicating that
the photo was destined for publication, probably in the Herald-Examiner.
Today the garden still teaches about water conservation,
although the recession, the California drought, and changes in management of
the grounds have taken a toll. Even drought-tolerant plants require some
moisture, and the moisture sustaining plantings against the house walls damaged
the foundations. As a result, the landscape surrounding El Alisal today probably
more closely resembles the arid acres Lummis built on.
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| Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library, Security Pacific Collection, Image #00031210 |
Lummis in his “Lion’s Den”: the framed photo of him with
Teddy Roosevelt taken during the president’s visit to Los Angeles in 1912. This
image was probably captured toward the end of Lummis life; he died in 1928 at
the age of 69. His ashes, along with those of his son, Amado, rest in a niche
in the courtyard wall (below). The photo is bad, but the epitaph, after his name, reads:
He founded the Southwest Museum
He built this house
He saved four Missions
He studied and recorded Spain in America
He tried to do his share
The Lummis home is now in the care of the Los Angeles
Department of Recreation and Parks and open for public tours. There have been
changes since the City of Los Angeles took over direct management of this
cultural treasure and the Historical Society of Southern California moved out early
in 2015. To check it out, visit http://www.laparks.org/dos/historic/lummis.htm.
Special thanks to Dennis Harbach and his co-docent whose
name I neglected to record! Both were very welcoming and knowledgeable during my
tour January 23, 2016.
Other resources were:
Jane Apostol, El
Alisal: Where History Lingers, Historical Society of Southern California,
1994.
Daniel Frederick Blitz, Charles Fletcher Lummis: Los Angeles
City Librarian, Thesis, UCLA Library and Information Science, 2013.
“Happy Birthday to Charles F. Lummis, founder of the
Southwest Museum,” The Autry Blog,
http://blog.theautry.org/2012/03/happy-birthday-to-charles-f-lummis-founder-of-the-southwest-museum/.
Bob Pool, “Historic Lummis House faces an uncertain future,
Los Angeles Times online, November 11, 2014.
Hadley Meares, “Lummis House: Where Highland Park’s Herald
of the Southwest Reigned over his Kingdom,” KCET.org, November 17, 2015,
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/lost-landmarks/lummis-house-where-highland-parks-herald-of-the-southwest-reigned-over-his-kingdom.html.
Harbach, Dennis, Charles Lummis' Home: El Alisal's Remarkable Visitors, two volumes, 2015.
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