Home of Black Architect Paul Williams, Who Designed Many Significant Pasadena Residences, Recommended For Monument List

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission Thursday recommended for the Historic-Cultural Monument List the 30-year home of master architect Paul Revere Williams, who designed more than 3,000 buildings, including homes in Pasadena, during his nearly six-decade career and was the first African-American architect to be a member and fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

The home at 1271 W. 35th St. in Jefferson Park is for sale for $1.2 million and initially advertised as a “Student Housing Development opportunity.”

He designed many homes in Pasadena. The Linda Vista Area of West Pasadena has many Spanish Colonial and French Country homes of his design, including many commissioned by business magnates and actors.

Earlier this year, Pasadena Heritage presented a photographic exploration of Williams’ work.

The L.A. Conservancy submitted the application requesting that the Craftsman-style house where Williams lived from 1921 to 1951 be added as a Historic-Cultural Monument, saying that it “illustrates a part of Paul Revere Williams’ life and story that is rarely told or fully understood.”

Adrian Scott Fine of the L.A. Conservancy told commissioners that the group’s hope is to attract a preservation-minded buyer instead of a developer.

Following the commission’s vote on Sept. 2 to take up consideration of the house as a Historic Cultural Monument, the property’s listing was updated to advertise it as a “rare single-family residence, a historic nominated monument, which belonged to the most influential African American architect, Paul Revere Williams.”

The listing price was also lowered from $1.6 million.

“While this is not architecturally significant … it’s really about the story and his association with this place and what it illustrates about him as a Black man, as a Black architect and his family in terms of where they could live and where they could not,” Fine said.

The Cultural Heritage Commission received hundreds of letters regarding the designation, and several people called in to support the nomination during the meeting on Thursday. During the council’s meeting on Sept. 2, one person called in to oppose the property’s nomination, instead recommending that pieces of the home be donated to a museum.

Commissioner Gail Kennard responded saying that the location is more part of the story than the physical house, given that Williams, who designed homes for celebrities in white neighborhoods, had to live in Jefferson Park, one of the few areas in Los Angeles where Black people were allowed to buy
homes.

“It’s part of the story of why he had to live there — restrictive covenants — the location is all wrapped up in that. He did not design that home, he lived in that home. The story is that he designed a lot of other homes that other people could live in that he couldn’t live in. So it’s very important that we preserve this cultural history,” Kennard said on Sept. 2.