Edwin R. Richmond (1818-1888) in front of his home at 30 West Tenth Street, northwest corner of
Tenth and Fort Streets,
Los Angeles,
1885.
(Quite a different scene than that same corner of
Olympic and Broadway today.)
The Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum
Richmond and his second wife, Harriet Chamberlain, moved from Denver to Los Angeles in April of 1882. A man of means, Richmond bought and sold multiple properties of considerable value in the four years he lived in the city.
In October, 1883, he purchased Lot 12 Block B in the John G. Downey Tract, where in early 1885 he built the home pictured above.
LA County Dept. of Public Works
Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1883, at Newspapers dot com.
Eight years after the OP photo was taken, the house's footprint remained unchanged, as can be seen in the Sanborn fire insurance map of 1894.
Library of Congress
In 1886, Richmond sold his corner lot and house in Los Angeles for $10,000 and moved to the recently-founded town of Covina, where he became one of its earliest settlers. Just as he had in the big city, Richmond had a keen eye for prime real estate in his new rural situation.
His first purchase there was a 22.6-acre tract that lay between the Covina townsite and the San Bernardino stage road—at that time the only thoroughfare passing east to west through the Lower Azusa Valley.
LA County Dept. of Public Works
That property in addition to several others in and around Covina secured the legacy of Richmond's descendants for decades following his death in late 1888.
More about Richmond's time in Covina and his eldest daughter's remarkable life story can be found
in this article.
Prev
for a photograph of the interior!
) and downtown late at night reminded me of this Garry Winogrand (1950) photograph:
Linear Mode
