Photo of our house in the 1940’s

Mrs. O. sent us some wonderful old photos of our house. She didn’t include a date but I am guessing they were taken in the mid to late 1940s. The front porch was enclosed with glass window panes. Several houses in our area still have their front porches enclosed in this fashion. I have to confess that I like the way it looks. It reminds me of a greenhouse.

After I first met Mrs. O. a year ago last spring, we shared a phone conversation in which she asked if the “little picket fence” was still outside the upstairs bedroom window? That had been Mrs. O’s bedroom when she lived in the house. I got excited because there is no “little fence” now but I had seen a few on houses in our area. I couldn’t exactly picture how it would have looked and wondered if it was an original feature of the house or something added later? After seeing these pictures I am convinced it was original to the house because it matches the porch railing in style and proportion.

Mrs. O. on her wedding day coming down the front steps of our house

This photo clearly shows the “little picket fence” outside the upstairs bedroom window. The house had been painted white but did not yet have asbestos shingle siding. It also shows more detail of how the front porch was enclosed. That is Mrs. O. coming down the front steps on her wedding day!

Mr. and Mrs. O.

This is a photo of Mr. and Mrs. O taken on their wedding day in our front yard. She wrote on the back of the photo that the little flower girl lived in the apartments across the street. You can also catch a glimpse of Mrs. O’s dog in the lower right hand corner.

The little bungalow and palm trees in the background are no longer there. The little bungalow has either been torn down and replaced or altered beyond all recognition by an unattractive peach and cream stucco style track house.

It has been a very exciting week for us. Through our website we were contactd by the great granddaughter of John L. Welsh, the man who built our house.

Spending so much time restoring the house and peeling through all the layers to learn about it’s history, I thought a lot about how the house was when it was originally built. It was natural that this would develop into a curiousity about the family who lived in this house 92 years ago. Who were they and what were they like? What happened to them after they sold the house?

Of course, we would LOVE to see some old pictures of the house and the family. Sometimes I hope that maybe the Welsh family or John L. Welsh himself are looking down at us and glad that we are working so hard to restore the house.

I think that a house is more than a place to live. To me a house is about family roots, beginnings and endings, a context for our lives.

We received an Easter greeting from Mrs. O’Connor. She is the daughter of the Santos, the second family to own our house. We sent her a quick note thanking her and updating her on the work we are doing on the house. Today.s mail brought the sweetest letter from her. She is such a lovely woman. I’ll post some of the letter here:

Dear Heather,

That house has a lot of good memories I will never forget, they were the best years of my life and I loved that house. My mother and father, two brothers and I had a lot of good times. Even though there was a war on, those times will never be forgotten.

It feels good to know that there was so much love and a happy family living in our house.

I was working in the yard today when I was surprised by the daughter of the Santos, the second owners of our house. I was thrilled to meet her, her son, son-in-law, daughter and granddaughter. They had come from a restaurant in the area and she had asked them to drive by the house.

All of her childhood memories are wrapped up in this house. She lived in the house until she was married. That fact was interesting to learn because I had been told by neighbors that the Santos had rented out the house and never lived here. She shared a few amusing stories about her childhood, her family and the neighborhood.

She thought her family had purchased the house in the 1940’s. She recalled that this area was considered one of the elite neighborhoods in Los Angeles during that era. She seemed saddened by the current state of this area and not entirely convinced when I told her that things were getting better and that people were buying these old homes to restore them.

She told me that when she was young the house was painted white and that later her father put on the asbestos siding. I just smiled. Her family had enclosed the front porch with glass.

I couldn’t wait to take her inside. She seemed very surprised. I imagine all the woodwork was painted white when she lived here. I showed her the kitchen and asked her where her family had placed the stove? The kitchen looked very different to her than the way she remembered it. She didn’t recall the built-in cupboards being there. She thought that the stove was placed along the wall between kitchen and back porch where one of the built-in cupboards is now. Hmmm, another mystery to be figured out. She said that there was a table in the middle of the kitchen and her family used to eat there.

What we have been referring to as the den was a library. The family also used it as another bedroom at times. Her bedroom growing up is the room we are using as our master bedroom.

She asked me if I had found Ray and Roy’s names in the cement outside? I haven’t and I suspect that the cement has been removed or covered over by the slab of concrete that is currently our backyard. Ray and Roy were the grandsons of John Welsh who built this house.

She was excited to see Lulu because her son had given her a female corgi two years ago that she named Baby Girl. Her son thought it was an interesting coincidence that we both owned corgis.

She spoke of photographs taken on the front lawn after her wedding. I want to stay in touch. I would love to see some old photographs of the house. She and her family were so nice. It was a pleasure to meet them. I don’t think they realize how exciting this was for me.

It just occured to me that we are the 4th family to own this house.

“Whereas, we the undersigned, are the owners of the following described lots and parcels of lands in the Charles Victor Hall Tract of land, as per Map Book 26 at page 65 of Miscellaneous Records of Los Angeles County, California, and whereas, we the undersigned, are desirous of prohibiting the use, or occupancy and possession of the lots and parcels of lands of the said Chas. Victor Hall Tract as aforesaid, by any person or persons other than of Caucasian or white race.
- August 22, 1924″

520 signatures were signed in agreement. J. L. Welsh, the man who built our home, was one of 20 who personally appeared before the notary public as the document was signed and notarized. The Declarations of Restrictions was to be in effect until January 1, 2023.

In its heyday, between 1900 and around 1920, West Adams was a center of fine living for Los Angeles and became a district of architect-designed mansions and charming bungalows. Residents included an oil magnate, a millionaire wine maker, and socialites as well as lawyers, doctors, and businessmen who filled in the smaller streets. Architects Charles and Henry Greene, Frank M. Tyler, and Alfred and Arthur Heineman built homes for clients living in West Adams. In 1948 racial covenants were outlawed and by the 1960’s West Adams was primarily made up of people who were “other than of Caucasian or white race.”

The idea that my husband, who is Asian American, could not have owned our home is very troubling to me. David is less bothered by the racial covenant. I asked him why and he said because it was a different time.

Our home inspection turned up many things, none of them good, but the strangest discovery was, to quote my husband, “a body-sized hole” in the crawl space underneath the house. I never actually saw the hole but made my husband describe it to me several times in detail. The hole was as wide as a man’s shoulders and at least 6 feet deep. How did David know it was that deep? Because the building inspector crawled over to the hole and poked a long stick into it. They didn’t discover a body, just some discarded rubble.

All old houses hold their mysteries but a body-sized hole wasn’t exactly one we wanted to know more about. Lying in bed that night, David and I speculated why anyone would dig a big hole underneath their house? Being a secret fan of true-crime murder novels (a guilty pleasure) and Court TV’s Forensic Files (a morbid fascination), all kinds of wild thoughts sprang to mind. The home’s present owner, Mr. Jolly, said he inherited the house from his grandmother and his uncle. Did we really know what happened to them? Plus, who has the last name of Jolly anyway? Maybe it was an alias or an attempt to hide a darker side? What if there were bodies buried under the house?

In the light of day, rationalism took over and we pushed those thoughts aside. We requested that Mr. Jolly have the hole filled and forgot all about it during the hectic time surrounding the move into our first home. Going back through the paperwork we recieved from the title company a contract to lease subsurface oil and gas caught my eye.

On February 1, 1957, John V. E. Santo and Antonia N. Santo entered into an agreement for the duration of 10 years with Union Oil Company of California “for the purpose of prospecting, exploring, mining, drilling and operating the land leased for oil, gas and other hydrocarbon substances” lying below a depth of 500 feet. The Santo’s would collect a royalty share of 1/6th of whatever was found. Although we don’t know for certain, we speculate that the body-sized hole was where they drilled for oil. For those of you who are wondering if it would be noisy or troublesome to have a search for oil going on underneath your dining room, the Santos owned the house but they didn’t live here. Their residence was in Pico, CA. This is probably around the time the upkeep on our house started to decline.

The house changed hands again and on April 20, 1964, Mr. Jolly’s grandmother,
Winona M. Jolly, entered into the same contract with Union Oil Company of California for the duration of 10 years.

I don’t know if any oil or gas was discovered during those 17 years? Judging from the condition of our house, there didn’t seem to be a lot of money available to make necessary home repairs. I don’t think anyone struck it rich!

Ida K. Welsh was born on August 12, 1872, in Pennsylvania. That would actually make her 4 years older than what she reported to the census takers in 1920. She died on May 1, 1962, in Los Angeles. Her maiden name was Boll and the “K” in her middle name may have stood for Kuhler, her mother’s maiden name.

John’s Daughter and Son-in-law
Upon further research I’ve discovered that John L. Welsh’s son-in-law Don Catudal, of 91345 Mission Hills, Los Angeles, CA, born on May 26, 1896, died in November of 1976. John and Ida’s daughter, Mary “Magdalen” Welsh Catudal was born on December 2, 1897. She died on December 14, 1957 at 60 years of age.

John’s Grandsons
Ray Catudal died in September of 1986. His birth date is listed as December 30, 1925. Roy F. Catudal died on November 9, 2002, just two months after we closed escrow on the house. His last residence was listed as 96051 Lakehead, Shasta, CA. The odd thing is his birth date is listed as October 6, 1924. In the 1930 Census both boys were listed as age 5 so I had assumed they were twins. Being born 14 months apart may have felt almost like being twins? Another interesting fact is that their social security numbers were 1 digit apart so they were obviously applied for at the same time.

It saddens me a little to discover that all the people who first lived in our house have passed on, along with their memories.

Something about living in this old, neglected house makes me wonder about who lived here before me? What were they like? Were their years here happy ones? Maybe I.ve seen too many episodes of HGTV’s “If These Walls Could Talk”?

Their original building permit was applied for by Henry Gatz, who is also listed as contractor, on November 23, 1911. The house was completed in 1912. The entire cost of the building is listed as $1950, about what we pay for our mortgage every month. The home was built for John L. Welsh. He lived on our street at 2938 Hobart Blvd at the time this house was being built. I wonder if the 2938 Hobart house was an earlier home that John Welsh had built or if the family was renting?

In 1916, a sleeping porch was added by extending the present dormer on the rear of the house. That work was done by H. V. Wright of 3933 S. Hill St. John L. Welsh applied for a permit to build a private garage with a dirt floor and a paper roof in April of 1919. He is listed as the contractor and architect. The garage is no longer standing so we can’t see his handiwork.

Those are the facts but they don’t shed much light on the personalities of our house’s original family. I can get a sense of their preferences or at least the prevailing tastes of their day by peeling through layers of old paint and wallpaper to the home’s original color palette. They chose fairly dark, masculine colors: a dark orange-brown color that looks like the spice cinnamon for the living and dining room walls with a dark, dark brown-black mission stain on the douglas fir woodwork. The den was a medium orange, terra cotta color with a similarly colored wallpaper ceiling that has hand painted silver designs on it. It’s still intact but badly damaged and more than likely unsalvageable. The kitchen, in 1912 a woman’s domain, was a more feminine salmon-pink color – at least on the ceiling.

I get the feeling of a strong male presence having lived and left his mark in this house. Maybe because John L. Welsh’s name was the only one listed on the paperwork we received when we purchased the house, that’s who captured my imagination? I wonder if he would have approved of the choices we are making?

According to the 1920 Federal Census John L. Welsh was the head of the household, a white male aged 53. He was born in Pennsylvania (I guess around 1867). His parents were also born in Pennsylvania. He was a furniture salesman. By the 1930 Census, he had begun selling carpets. I wonder what beautiful furniture and rugs our house was decorated with? I would love to see a few photos of what our house looked like in its heyday or to be able to put faces with the names. Ida K. Welsh was listed as John’s wife. She was a white female aged 44 in 1920. Her place of birth as well as her parent’s was Pennsylvania. There was no occupation listed for her.

Magdalen Catudal was listed as what appears to be wife’s daughter or perhaps it is wife/daughter, white female aged 22. Her place of birth was Pennsylvania. Her occupation was listed as music teacher with own students. There is a beautiful piano window in our den which I can imagine an upright piano sitting under. Dan (or Don) F. Catudal was listed as son-in-law, white male aged 23 with a birth place of Nebraska. His father was from Canada (English) and it looks like his mother may have been from California or perhaps Canada? It’s very hard to make out since all the records are hand written. Dan was a shipping clerk in the automobile industry.

By the 1930 census Magdalen and Dan had 2 five year old boys, Ray L. and Roy F. This might explain all the marbles I find as I open up long ago sealed walls, remove layers of linoleum from the floors and once while digging in the yard. The house has only two bedrooms. I wonder how a family of 6 managed to live within its 1800 square feet? Maybe the downstairs den was converted into a bedroom? Or maybe the boys slept on the sleeping porch? The boys would have been born in 1925 and they could still be alive at almost 80 years old. Catudal is a fairly uncommon last name so maybe I.ll be able to get in touch with either Ray or Roy to find out what happened to the family who built our home?