About

“Frederick A. Hanson Residence”

Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1031, declared 5/22/2013.

Click here for Los Angeles Department of City Planning Recommendation Report, which has additional details on the property’s architectural and historic significance.

History:

Architect and owner was Fred Hansen. Hansen’s widow still lived there in the ’90’s.  From Sunset Magazine: November 1927, “The Home of F.H. Hansen, 5867 Tuxedo Terrace,” by Persis Bingham.

Where else would you expect to find so quaint a retreat on this side of the Atlantic as the sequestered home in California of F. H. Hansen? For there are canyons within the proverbial stone’s throw of certain coast cities that seclude many a devotee of peace who happily combines his aloofness with nearness to town and business demands. The Hansen home is a charming case in point. You approach it on a narrow winding lane that meanders up a quiet canyon bearing the somewhat pretentious name of Tuxedo Terrace.

“The house it self might well be a cottage in Letchworth, England, so striking is the effect of permanence on the beholder. It has the inimitable texture wrought by hand craftsmanship, always an irresistible appeal to the appreciative. It is a half-timbered, gray plaster dwelling, reminiscent of rural England. The exterior wall is fancifully scrolled and decorated in fantastic designs executed before the plastering was entirely set. On the steep roof the long, slender, red-brown leaves of eucalyptus trees flutter down and gather in drifts along the valleys. Over the front door hangs a sweet-toned rusty copper bell, rung by pulling a rawhide strap fastened at the left hand side of the Gothic entrance arch. Deep red window ;hangings in the dining-room contrast brightly with the green shrubbery outdoors, the natural plaster and warm brown half-timber.

“A big old weather blackened wagon wheel, patriarch of a tribe fast falling into decay, leans with quiet dignity against the sun flecked background, harkening back to days when speed and mechanical perfection were not the only ideals worth attaining in life—perhaps in its superannuated solitude a bit scornful of the thick, fat, rubber-shod automobile wheels that whirl along the boulevard below. Machines and speed we must have, of course, in our work-a- day world, but blessed be those who can return at nightfall to homes that have been fashioned by hands; homes with floors like those in the Hansen house, of thick red tiles with ends lifting occasionally out of wide gray mortar joints; or a hand-blended pale blue ceiling with vaulted soffits in light rose and ivory; or leaded glass windows that ignore straight edges and stock de- signs; or maybe a hearth that grew up itself and didn’t have to be poured into a greased mold and turned out the replica of those sold in wholesale lots to wholesale builders. Individuality has found interesting expression in this unusual little canyon cote.”