The Rives Mansion: A Rosenheim Landmark in Country Club Park
Just West Adams · Historic-Cultural Monuments
A 1913 Italian Renaissance brick house at the heart of Country Club Park, home first to a lumber baron and his wife, then to a working order of sisters for half a century, and a family again today.
What is the Rives Mansion?
The Rives Mansion is a 1913 brick estate at 1130 South Westchester Place in Country Club Park, designed by architect Alfred Rosenheim for lumber baron Judson Rives. The City of Los Angeles designated it Historic-Cultural Monument number 661 on June 22, 1999, recognizing it as a near-intact example of early Los Angeles residential grandeur.
Debbie Pisaro has spent twenty-four years learning to read houses like this one, and the Rives Mansion rewards a slow read. It sits at the northeast corner of Westchester Place and West 12th Street, in the part of greater West Adams known as Country Club Park, a pocket of the city where the housing stock has barely changed in a hundred and ten years. To stand on its wraparound terrace is to stand inside a specific moment in Los Angeles history, the brief window before the First World War when the city's wealth had not yet committed to Beverly Hills and was still building serious houses just west of downtown.
Who was Judson Rives, and why did he build here?
Judson Claudius Rives was a lumber baron from northwest Louisiana who came to Los Angeles around 1910 to marry and to put his fortune into the city's booming real estate. He chose a lot in the brand-new Country Club Park subdivision, and the location tells the whole story of why this neighborhood exists. The Los Angeles Country Club had occupied the corner of Pico Boulevard and Western Avenue before it decamped for the Westside grounds it holds today, and developers turned the vacated land into a residential tract aimed squarely at the affluent. Rives bought a lot near the center of it.
His timing was the kind of detail Debbie finds telling. In 1913, Wilshire Boulevard was still a respectable address, Windsor Square had just opened north of Wilshire, and Country Club Park was one of several developments competing for the same buyers as the older eastern West Adams district began to change. Rives, his wife Anna, and the house they built were part of that westward churn. The same wave produced the district's other great houses, from Paul Williams's own residence in Lafayette Square to the Phyllis Wheatley House, each one a marker of who was building where, and when.
What makes the architecture significant?
The Rives Mansion is the work of Alfred F. Rosenheim, one of the most accomplished architects practicing in Los Angeles in the early twentieth century. His commercial and civic work shaped the early city, including the Hamburger department store that became the May Company, the Hellman Building downtown, and Wilshire Boulevard Temple. The Rives house is one of his residential statements, and the contemporary trade press recorded it in unusual detail.
A March 1913 item in the journal Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer described a two-story brick residence of twelve rooms in the Italian Renaissance style, with a quarry-tile terrace wrapping almost the entire house, a porte cochere on the side, patterned brickwork laid in varied shades, terra cotta trim, and a clay tile roof. Inside, the specification called for a mahogany drawing room and an oak library, both with marble mantels, hardwood floors throughout, five bathrooms, a large solarium finished in green Grueby tile, and a circular breakfast room thirteen feet in diameter. The brocaded silk wall coverings, the article noted, had already been purchased in the East before the walls were finished.
Most of that survives. The home today still reads as Rosenheim drew it, which is precisely why the city protected it and why Debbie counts it among the most intact period interiors she has walked in West Adams.
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Join the list or call (310) 362-6429How did a private mansion become a convent?
Judson Rives died at home on November 16, 1940. As the Second World War wound down, his widow made plans to leave the house she had lived in for thirty years, and the Sisters of Social Service, a Benedictine order with Hungarian roots, acquired it. They were not a cloistered community. The sisters worked in the city as social workers, parole officers, and counselors, and they ran the house as a center for gatherings and reflection rather than a retreat sealed off from the neighborhood. One sister, interviewed years later, recalled choosing the order for its work and described its members as anything but conventional nuns.
The Sisters of Social Service held 1130 Westchester Place until 1994, roughly half a century. That single fact is why the house survived the decades when many of its grand neighbors were carved into apartments or lost outright. An institutional owner with a long horizon kept it whole.
What happened after the sisters left?
Film producer Jonathan Shestack bought the house and converted it back to a single-family residence, an unusual choice at the time for a family of movie means, given how far the surrounding neighborhood had declined. In 1995, Shestack and his wife Portia Iversen founded the advocacy organization Cure Autism Now and based it in the house. Their arrival marked the leading edge of a wider renewal, as buyers rediscovered the deep, intact housing stock of Country Club Park and old West Adams through the decades that followed. Debbie has watched that renewal accelerate across the district, and the Rives Mansion is one of its anchors.
Is the Rives Mansion the same as the American Horror Story house?
No. The American Horror Story house is the Rosenheim Mansion at 1120 South Westchester Place, the house next door, which the city designated Historic-Cultural Monument number 660 on the same day in 1999. The Rives Mansion at 1130 is monument number 661. The two are constantly confused online, partly because they are neighbors, partly because Alfred Rosenheim designed both: 1120 was the architect's own residence, completed in 1908, and 1130 is the Rives commission he completed five years later. So the houses are cousins by the same hand, one number apart on the city's list, but they are not the same building, and only one of them played the haunted house on television. It is a favorite stop on any tour of California's storied and reputedly haunted houses.
What does Historic-Cultural Monument status mean for an owner?
Historic-Cultural Monument designation is the City of Los Angeles program that protects a property's defining character, and the Rives Mansion carries number 661 of more than twelve hundred monuments citywide. In practice, designation means proposed exterior changes get reviewed by the city's Office of Historic Resources, and it opens the door to the Mills Act, the contract that can substantially reduce property taxes on a qualifying historic home in exchange for a commitment to maintain it. Debbie works with buyers and sellers on exactly these questions, from her guide to what monument status means for value to the practical steps of how a home earns designation. The official program details live with Los Angeles City Planning, and the Mills Act is documented there as well.
For a house like the Rives Mansion, designation is not a constraint so much as a feature. It is the reason the Grueby tile and the circular breakfast room are still here to see. Pricing a landmark of this kind is its own discipline, which Debbie covers in her piece on pricing a one-of-a-kind architectural home, because comparable sales rarely tell the full story of an intact monument.
Before it hits the market
Many of the finest historic homes in West Adams and across Los Angeles trade quietly, off-market. Ask Debbie to be told when one like the Rives Mansion comes available.
See off-market homesWhere Country Club Park sits in West Adams
Country Club Park is one node in a constellation of early planned neighborhoods that make greater West Adams the deepest archive of intact period architecture in Los Angeles. A few blocks and a few decades away, Leimert Park was laid out as a master-planned community, a story Debbie traces through the Olmsted Brothers master plan and the Life Magazine model house. The district's monument roster runs deep, from the Rives Mansion to the Carolyn Bumiller Hickey House, each one a chapter in how this part of the city was built and why so much of it endured. Debbie has represented architectural and historic homes across Los Angeles for twenty-four years, and as a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader she is regularly cited as one of the city's specialists in architectural and historic real estate, work that reaches back to the great early architects, Rosenheim among them and Paul R. Williams a few blocks south. For anyone drawn to West Adams real estate, the Rives Mansion is a good place to start, because it explains the whole neighborhood in a single corner lot.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Rives Mansion located?
The Rives Mansion sits at 1130 South Westchester Place in the Country Club Park neighborhood of greater West Adams, Los Angeles, at the northeast corner of Westchester Place and West 12th Street.
Who designed the Rives Mansion?
Architect Alfred F. Rosenheim designed the Rives Mansion. He was a leading early Los Angeles architect whose work includes the Hamburger department store that became the May Company and Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
When was the Rives Mansion built?
The house was completed in 1913. The building permit was issued in April 1913 and the Los Angeles Times described the brick mansion as recently completed in 1914, which is the year listed on the county tax record.
What is the Rives Mansion's HCM number?
The Rives Mansion is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument number 661, designated June 22, 1999. The neighboring Rosenheim Mansion at 1120 Westchester Place is number 660, designated the same day.
Is the Rives Mansion the American Horror Story Murder House?
No. The American Horror Story house is the Rosenheim Mansion next door at 1120 Westchester Place, HCM number 660. The Rives Mansion at 1130 is HCM number 661. Both were designed by Alfred Rosenheim, which is part of why they are often confused.
Who were the Sisters of Social Service?
The Sisters of Social Service were a Benedictine order with Hungarian roots who owned the Rives Mansion from the mid-1940s until 1994. They worked actively in the community as social workers and counselors rather than living as a cloistered order.
What architectural style is the Rives Mansion?
Contemporary trade press described the Rives Mansion as Italian Renaissance, built in patterned brick with terra cotta trim and a clay tile roof. Current listings describe it as Beaux-Arts Mediterranean, a related vocabulary for the same period grandeur.
Is the Rives Mansion in West Adams?
Yes. The Rives Mansion is in Country Club Park, a neighborhood within the greater West Adams district of Los Angeles. The area is known for one of the city's deepest concentrations of intact early-twentieth-century architecture.
What is Country Club Park?
Country Club Park is a residential subdivision developed on the former grounds of the Los Angeles Country Club at Pico Boulevard and Western Avenue after the club moved to the Westside. It was platted in the early 1910s for affluent buyers.
How can I learn more about owning a historic home in West Adams?
Debbie Pisaro specializes in architectural and historic homes across Los Angeles, including Historic-Cultural Monuments and Mills Act properties. Her contact details are below, and her West Adams resources cover designation, value, and the buying process.
Drawn to a landmark like the Rives Mansion? Debbie Pisaro and the Coastline 840 West Adams team know these blocks house by house.
(310) 362-6429 ·
debbie@coastline840.com
DRE #01369110 · 160 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
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Debbie Pisaro and the Coastline 840 West Adams team specialize in architectural, historic, and design-forward homes across West Adams and California. Debbie is the founder of Coastline 840, a broker with twenty-four years of experience, and a 2025 Inman Luxury Leader (DRE #01369110). More on her architectural and historic work. Published July 2026.
Debbie Pisaro · Coastline 840 · DRE #01369110 · (310) 362-6429