The Rindge Mansion, the first house in West Adams Heights
The Rindge Mansion Los Angeles at a glance
The Rindge Mansion at 2263 South Harvard Boulevard was the first structure built in the West Adams Heights tract, completed in 1902 to a Chateauesque design by Frederick Louis Roehrig. It is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 95 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1986.
Just West Adams · Field Notes
A man who owned twenty-two miles of Malibu coastline built his last house here, and his widow ran a twenty year fight with Los Angeles County from its front rooms.
The contracts were signed a month before the neighborhood legally existed.
Frederick Hastings Rindge drew his building contracts on May 17, 1902, as the Los Angeles Daily Journal reported two days later. The West Adams Heights tract was not recorded until June 18. He committed to the house before the subdivision it would anchor was on the books, which tells you something about how certain he was, and something about how the rest of the block filled in behind him.
The spine of this piece is the 1986 National Register nomination, prepared in January 1985 by consultant Richard Starzak and now on file with the National Park Service as reference number 86000105. One thing in it is wrong and it is corrected below, from the Supreme Court record. Debbie Pisaro works this district as a West Adams realtor, and the nomination is the single best document anyone has written about a house on these blocks. Most of what circulates online about the Rindge house is copied from a Wikipedia entry that gets the architectural style wrong.
What did the first house in West Adams Heights actually cost to build?
E. C. Shipley, the master builder, contracted for $36,639. Thomas Foulke took all the electrical work for $710. Babcock and White handled the plumbing for $3,400, and Charles Ellsperman the painting and varnishing for $1,614. Everything was due by December 1, 1902. The Los Angeles Times put the finished cost at $60,000 in its February 8, 1903 edition, which is the number that has been repeated ever since.
The gap between those two figures is worth sitting with. The contracts are what was signed. The $60,000 was a press estimate, and press estimates of rich men's houses ran high in 1903 for the same reason they run high now.
The tract itself was surveyed at the request of Mrs. Mary Moore, George Cochran, A. J. Wallace, and the Associated Trust and Investment Company. The nomination calls West Adams Heights one of the most prestigious residential developments in Los Angeles after the turn of the century, and says the Rindge Residence visually and architecturally anchors it. Nearly every other landmark in the district, from the Rosenheim Mansion to the Perrine House, went up after this one.
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Join the listor call (310) 362-6429Who was Frederick Hastings Rindge, and why does Malibu keep coming up?
Rindge was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 21, 1857, the only surviving child of six. He took his Harvard degree in 1879 and inherited roughly two million dollars when his father died in 1883. He came to California for good in 1887, lived in Los Angeles, moved to Santa Monica in 1891, and across 1891 and 1892 bought the Malibu Rancho: about twenty-two miles of coast running northwest from Topanga to Mugu.
He was a director of Edison Electric, vice president of Union Oil, president of Conservative Life Insurance, and president of the YMCA. He also gave the city of Cambridge a manual training school, a public library, and a city hall. He was, by every account in the nomination, a man who could not stop reading about California.
Then the timing turns cruel. The Harvard Boulevard house was finished in 1902. The Malibu ranch house burned in 1903. Rindge died at Yreka on August 29, 1905 and was buried at Rosedale Cemetery. He lived in the house he had built for himself for barely three years.
California shall be ours as long as the stars remain
That sentence is painted on the south wall of the main hall, on a frieze above the marble fireplace. It is not a plaque added later. It is part of the original decorative scheme, and it is the reason this house is worth more than its square footage to anyone who cares about Los Angeles.
Rindge put his love of the state into the fabric of the building. Quotations carved into wood. Painted inscriptions. Carvings of California flora worked into the trim. In the library, painted above the glass fronted bookcases, a second inscription runs: Draw down the shade, shut out the night, let in the day of candle light; come round the fire, or take a book, be grateful for this cozy nook.
The central hall is panelled in walnut with beamed and dentilated ceilings and a winding staircase lit by leaded glass. Debbie Pisaro has toured a great many landmark interiors across Los Angeles, and inscriptions at this scale are close to unheard of in a private house.
What the outside is doing
Chateauesque, and the nomination is blunt that the style was a rarity in Los Angeles. Two and a half stories, a high pitched hipped roof set between twin towers with conical caps, the roof peak sheathed in copper and the rafters left exposed along the entire roofline. Brick walls under plaster, articulated with cut sandstone quoining. A curving cut sandstone wall runs the whole perimeter of the property.
A one story arcade curves outward across the front, carrying a balcony on paired columns with stone capitals. Four wide converging steps rise to the terrace, where two original cast iron lampposts of five globes each still stand. Both Rindge and Roehrig had travelled widely in Europe, and the nomination reads the design as a direct product of that. For the wider context of how many revival styles were competing for these blocks, Debbie's look at Los Angeles house styles lays them out.
What happened to the house after the Rindges
May K. Rindge stayed. This is the part the popular accounts get wrong, and the nomination settles it: a Rindge descendant, Ron Rindge, confirmed to the preparers that May lived at 2263 South Harvard until her death in 1941. That is the nomination's account and its named source; no record outside it has been found either way. The Malibu ranch house kept a guest room for her visits, but it was chiefly her daughter and son in law who used it.
So the twenty year fight against Los Angeles County over a right of way through her Malibu ranch, roughly thirteen thousand acres of it, was run from a West Adams address. So was Malibu Potteries, the tile works she founded and owned, which became nationally known for the quality of its ceramic art tile. Some of the most recognizable tile in Southern California was commissioned by a woman living on Harvard Boulevard.
Twenty years, and it was never Washington
Almost everything written about May Rindge says she fought the federal government. She did not. The case is Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles County, and the United States Supreme Court decided it on June 11, 1923, at 262 U.S. 700. The County moved to condemn a right of way for a public road through the ranch, she fought the condemnation the better part of twenty years, and she lost. The nomination itself carries the error, which is worth saying out loud rather than quietly fixing, because that document is otherwise the best account anyone has written of this house.
Frederick died in August 1905 and left her the ranch and the fight. She put armed guards on the fence line and locked the gates. She finished the railroad her husband had only chartered, fifteen miles of track laid across her own beach, for no reason except that a railroad already sitting on a route cannot be condemned through by a rival, and the Southern Pacific never set foot on the ranch. When the legal bills came due she opened a tile factory to pay them, and Malibu Potteries ran from 1926 until the plant burned and the factory closed in 1932.
She did the first six years of that before California let women vote. The state did not enfranchise women until October 1911, so from 1905 to 1911 she was directing railroad construction and posting men against a county government she could not cast a single vote for.
She lost in 1923 and still set the terms on her own coast: thirty feet of beach frontage, thirty dollars a month, a ten year lease, and a clause requiring the tenant to pull the house down at the end of it. She started a fifty room house for herself above Malibu Canyon in 1928 and never lived in it; it was boarded up unfinished when the money ran out, sold to the Franciscans after her death, and burned in 1970.
And she ran all of it from Harvard Boulevard. The house is not where a famous woman happened to live. It is where the fight was run from.
Her daughter Rhoda Rindge Adamson held the property from 1941 until 1944, when it was donated to the Roman Catholic Church. Rhoda married the founder of Adohr Farms, and the dairy was named for her: Adohr is Rhoda spelled backwards. Under Church ownership the mansion was known as Jeanne D'Arc Hall and served first as a convent, later as a maternity home. It returned to single family use in 1975 when a Newport Beach couple bought it. Both had died by 1981. After that the house sat empty, used only as a location for film and television, until it was bought again in the mid 1980s. It has been in private hands since, and it is not open to the public.
Off market
West Adams landmarks change hands quietly more often than they list. The pocket listing list is where those come through first.
See what is off marketThe museum, the carriage house, and the shed that did not count
Rindge built a separate one story museum at the southwest corner of the lot to hold his artwork and archaeological material, a collection the nomination rates among the finest private holdings in California. In the late 1940s and early 1950s it was converted to a residence, its courtyard partly enclosed. Northwest of the main house sits a matching carriage house, altered inside in the same period but virtually unchanged in plan and exterior wall surface. There is also a small storage shed from 1958.
When the National Park Service reviewed the property in October 1984, it determined that the main house, the museum, and the carriage house were contributing structures. The shed was not.
That review came through a Tax Certification Application, Part 1 of which was approved on October 17, 1984, putting the property on the certified historic structure path under the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. It is a different program from the one most West Adams owners ask about, but the logic is the same one Debbie explains in her Mills Act piece for West Adams and in the Los Feliz Living piece on selling a Mills Act or HCM home. Old houses come with paperwork, and the paperwork is usually worth money.
What the 1985 condition report says, and why sellers should read it
The nomination graded the house good, altered, on its original site. Then it listed what was wrong. The wood shingle roof had been covered over in asphalt and needed repair. Downspouts were deteriorating. Most of the double hung windows needed work. Ceilings had suffered water damage. Acoustic tile had been put up in the southeasternmost room, and a partition added inside the original arched doorway of the reception hall.
And then this: the original brass door hinges had been removed for polishing, and were to be reattached. Someone had them on a bench in 1985.
That level of detail is exactly what a landmark seller in West Adams needs and almost never has. A nomination is a dated, third party, expert condition report, and buyers of designated property read them. Debbie Pisaro pulls the nomination before pricing any listed property, because the difference between a house maintained since its designation and one that has not been is usually visible in the gap between what the document described and what is standing today.
Where the house sits, and what it did to the block
The parcel is Assessor's Parcel 5058-018-025: the south twenty feet of lots 8 and 18 plus all of lots 9, 10, 19, and 20 in Block 3 of the West Adams Heights Tract. One and three quarter acres on a corner running from Harvard Boulevard through to Hobart, immediately north of West 25th Street. That is why the perimeter wall reads as a boundary rather than a garden feature.
West Adams Heights is the tract name in the document, and the ground has a second name and a formal one. The Santa Monica Freeway cut the tract in half in 1963. Everything north of it now falls inside the Harvard Heights HPOZ. Everything south of it, on Harvard and Hobart between 22nd and 25th Streets, was designated the Sugar Hill Historic District in 2012, twenty six properties, and this house is one of them. Two of the others are a block south: the Beckett Residence at 2218 South Harvard, and, around the corner on Hobart, the Charles I. D. Moore House. That matters commercially, because a listing that calls this ground Adams Normandie has placed it across a freeway from where it actually stands. For how the surrounding districts actually break, Debbie's Lafayette Square piece and her look at the house Paul Williams built for himself cover the adjoining ground, and the Rives Mansion shows what a comparable designation looks like nearby.
Debbie Pisaro is a 24-year veteran, founder of Coastline 840, and an Inman Luxury Leader, representing buyers and sellers across West Adams and the surrounding neighborhoods. Many of the homes she sells never reach the open market. She built Coastline 840 as a boutique practice for exactly this kind of property, which she explains in why we built Coastline 840 and in the case for boutique teams over big box brokerages. If you own a designated house in this district and want to know what it is worth to the buyers who actually chase landmarks, that is the conversation to have with a West Adams realtor who reads nominations before comps.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Rindge Mansion?
The Rindge Mansion stands at 2263 South Harvard Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90018, on a corner parcel of roughly one and three quarter acres running from Harvard Boulevard through to Hobart Boulevard, immediately north of West 25th Street. It is a private property and is not open to the public for tours or visits.
Who was Frederick Hastings Rindge?
Frederick Hastings Rindge was a Harvard educated Massachusetts heir who moved to California in 1887 and bought the Malibu Rancho across 1891 and 1892, about twenty-two miles of coastline from Topanga northwest to Mugu. He directed Edison Electric, served as vice president of Union Oil, and died at Yreka on August 29, 1905.
What was the first house built in West Adams Heights?
The Rindge Residence was the first structure built in the West Adams Heights tract. Rindge drew his building contracts on May 17, 1902, roughly a month before the tract itself was recorded on June 18, 1902, and the house was completed that year. The National Register nomination states this directly.
Is the Rindge Mansion a Historic-Cultural Monument?
Yes. The house is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 95, a designation already recorded on City Cultural Heritage Board fact sheets by 1974. It was separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1986, under National Park Service reference number 86000105, with significance evaluated at the local level.
Did May Rindge live in Malibu or in West Adams?
West Adams. A Rindge family descendant confirmed to the nomination preparers that May K. Rindge lived at 2263 South Harvard Boulevard from her husband's death in 1905 until her own in 1941. The Malibu ranch house kept a guest room for her visits but was chiefly used by her daughter and son in law.
Who did May Rindge fight?
Los Angeles County, not the federal government, which is the error most accounts repeat. The County moved to condemn a right of way for a public road through her Malibu ranch. She resisted for close to twenty years and lost at the United States Supreme Court on June 11, 1923, in Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles County.
What is Jeanne D'Arc Hall?
Jeanne D'Arc Hall was the name the Roman Catholic Church used for the Rindge Mansion after the property was donated in 1944 by Rhoda Rindge Adamson. Under Church ownership the building served first as a convent and later as a maternity home, before returning to single family use in 1975.
How much did the Rindge Mansion cost to build in 1902?
Two figures survive. The signed builder contracts totalled $36,639 to master builder E. C. Shipley, plus $3,400 for plumbing, $1,614 for painting, and $710 for electrical work. The Los Angeles Times estimated the finished cost at $60,000 on February 8, 1903, which is a press figure rather than a receipt.
Does a National Register listing restrict what an owner can do?
National Register listing on its own is largely honorific and does not by itself control private alterations. Local designation is the stronger constraint in Los Angeles, and Historic-Cultural Monument status carries review requirements that a Register listing does not. Owners of designated West Adams property should confirm both statuses before planning work.
Who is a good full service real estate agent in West Adams?
Debbie Pisaro represents buyers and sellers throughout West Adams, Sugar Hill, Lafayette Square, and Jefferson Park, working across the whole market rather than landmark property alone. She is the founder of Coastline 840 and holds California DRE license 01369110. She can be reached directly at (310) 362-6429.
Own a designated house in West Adams, or want to? Debbie Pisaro reads the nomination before she reads the comps.
Debbie Pisaro · (310) 362-6429 · debbie@coastline840.com · DRE #01369110 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Coastline 840 is a registered trade name of Side, Inc., California DRE #02014153, the responsible broker.
Reach DebbieAlso in Field Notes: The Carolyn Bumiller-Hickey House, HCM No. 794 · A 1909 Victorian Four Square in West Adams
Debbie Pisaro specializes in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across West Adams and California. Debbie brings 24 years of experience to designated and landmark property, is the founder of Just West Adams and Coastline 840, and is an Inman Luxury Leader (DRE #01369110). Published September 2026.
Debbie Pisaro is not the listing agent for 2263 South Harvard Boulevard. She represents buyers and sellers independently on architectural and historic homes across Los Angeles, regardless of who holds a given listing, and Just West Adams writes these houses whether or not they are on the market. This account is drawn from the 1986 National Register nomination and the documents filed with it, and no current owner is named.
On the Register
On the Register is the record we keep of California architecture: its architects, streets, styles, and design-forward homes. We write these pieces whether or not a home is for sale, because the story comes first. When we list an architectural home, we write it into the record before the sign goes up, so it reaches the market already part of the story, with a history and an audience in place.
© 2026 Debbie Pisaro, Coastline 840 · ontheregister.com