1659 S Hobart Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90006

Amestoy house, built in 1906 by John B. Amestoy, member of a well-known pioneer family who owned the Rancho Encino in the San Fernando Valley, now the city of Encino. The architect for the house was Samuel Tilden Norton, an early Jewish resident of LA, who designed a number of buildings across LA in the early 1900s, including the Greek Theatre. The house is in the Colonial Revival style, specifically the "foursquare" variant, with a high-pitched roof, narrow clapboard siding, wood molding at the ceiling level throughout the house, and paneled front door. An Assessor's report from 1915 reports a single two-story residence with brick foundation, nine plumbing features, ornamental buffet, fireplace, and barn. The 3,285 sq. ft. structure included four living rooms and kitchen on the first floor and five bedrooms and bathroom on the second, with "three wooden floors". The house maintains its original floor plan as well as those original wooden floors, which although now refinished still bear the scars of decades of use, including a period as boarding house. Neighborhood Description Harvard Heights is rapidly "up and coming" neighborhood of brick apartment buildings and Victorian and Craftsman houses built on the hills southwest of downtown, primarily between 1900 and 1910. It is currently home to Southern California's oldest high school, Loyola High School, a highly-selective all-boys Jesuit institution. Harvard Heights is part of West Adams and is a middle-class neighborhood that contains some of LA's most notable landmarks including St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox church. Drawn by the area's abundance of classic architecture at bargain-basement prices, many "bourgeois bohemian" Anglos are moving into the district. Since the late 1990s, the city of Los Angeles has erected numerous signs and billboards commemorating the area's Greek heritage and highlighting its present ethnic majority with the name Byzantine-Latino Quarter. The area has also been designated as a Los Angeles Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. It's only 12 minutes to the beach, 15 minutes to the west side and 10 minutes to downtown! This house was built by famed Angeleno, John B Amestoy - note Amestoy blvd, park, schools, etc in the Valley.