So we all know the story of the Hershey house—how Almira took her pad at Fourth & Grand and in 1907 hauled it a couple blocks west down Fourth to Hope, had Neher & Skilling enlarge it, and it became the Castle Apts, looming over Flower Street and parts beyond.
lapl &
Christina Rice
I'd always sort of wondered, since the Castle Towers is much larger, and we don't have an image of 350 S Grand on the Fourth St side, exactly what Neher & Skilling did. I just came upon a newspaper image that elucidates somewhat—I'm not sure what paper it's from as the image doesn't turn up in the
Herald or the
Times in newspapers.com. Take a look:
They cut it in two parts (about 3/4 of the western part of the Fourth St side, 1/4 of the eastern part of the Fourth St side), hauled it down Fourth and propped it up on the cliff, and built around it from the ground up, filling in the middle, until it looked like this:
Note the black lines in the image above showing the demarcation between the old building and the new, becoming the building we all know and love (did y'all see
this post by John Bengston?).
Leaving the question, though, who designed 350 S Grand? I think it was Oliver Perry Dennis, of Dennis & Farwell fame.
First off, Mira Hershey gets a permit to build a two-story dwelling at the NE corner in May of '96, that's 350. Don't know the architect. But, Mira buys the lot across the street in October of '98 and by early '99 she's got OP Dennis-designed buildings going up at 355 and a "ten-room frame and stone residence" on the same lot at 356 S Bunker Hill. These three:
(Do we have a good image of 356?) Anyway, look at the similarities between 355 (which we know as Dennis) and 350.
lapl
They're the only two Chateauesque buildings on the Hill, commissioned by the same woman, two-1/2 years apart. (You have to imagine 355 as having more ornamentation, of course; in the 1930s pic it looks like it's had a reroofing which removed some of the ornamentation. Compare:
)
usc
Also interesting, Mira builds 350 in '96 and in '97 Cornelia Hill has Dennis & Farwell build this house in Redlands (later known as Kimberly Crest):
pacifichorticulture
Now it's said that Cornelia wanted the house to look like the architecture she'd seen in the Loire Valley. My theory is Cornelia saw what Mira had built and asked her "Who are your architects? I want something like that!"
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