Historic Status Sought for House of City Father

Yellow paint is peeling off the wood-frame rooming house at 227 N. Everett St. in Glendale.

Inside are 10 bedrooms, two bathrooms and a communal kitchen. For most of its tenants, the residence is “a stop between stages,” owner James R. Myers said.

Although the house is more than 100 years old, city staff members say it is not architecturally significant.

Nevertheless, Glendale’s Historic Preservation Commission has decided that the house is an important piece of the city’s heritage. Because it was the original home of Ellis T. Byram, one of Glendale’s founding fathers, the commission Monday urged the City Council to grant the Everett Street house protective landmark status.

Glendale’s historic preservation ordinance would require city approval before major renovation or demolition of the Byram House.

“I accepted the structure because of the Byram name, more than anything,” Commissioner William E. Dodson said Tuesday. “The ordinance provides for that, regardless of the condition of the structure.”

The landmark status was requested by Myers, who has owned the Byram House with his mother since 1979. During Monday’s hearing, Dodson warned the owner that Glendale will expect a landmark building to be maintained in good condition.

“He has some work ahead of him, and I think he knows that,” Dodson said.

Under conditions imposed by the commission, Myers must remove the modern solar water-heating panels from the roof and allow a city building and safety inspection.

In 1981 and 1982, city inspectors and a Municipal Court judge ordered Myers to correct plumbing, wiring and other hazards in the rooming house. Myers said he was forced to evict his tenants and close the house for two years while he completed the repairs. By 1985, however, city inspectors said they found no further violations.

Historic listing in the Glendale General Plan would give Myers a tax break and allow him to maintain the house under the city’s more flexible historic building code. Myers hopes that the historic status will qualify the house for restoration grants to help pay for repainting and new hardwood floors.

“I’d like to see it spruced up,” he said.

Myers said he applied for landmark status to preserve a piece of Glendale’s history and to protect a rooming house that provides badly needed affordable housing. For single occupancy, Myers charges $125 a week or $350 a month.

His application was endorsed by the Glendale Historical Society. That group disputed the city staff’s view that the house’s exterior design is not noteworthy.

“We feel it is architecturally significant,” Andrea Humberger, a society board member, told the commission at Monday’s hearing. “Architecture doesn’t have to be highly ornamental to be significant.”

In an interview before the meeting, historical society President David L. Smith said, “it is one of only a handful of farmhouse-type buildings still standing in Glendale. Buildings can be important because they tell the story of the development of the city. If the city started in a mud hut, then the mud hut is significant.”

Neither the city staff nor the historical society challenged the importance of the man who first occupied the Everett Street home.

Byram moved his family from Iowa to the Los Angeles area in 1882 and 1883 because of his wife’s health problems. With two partners, Byram purchased 123 acres on the east side of Glendale Avenue in 1883. The partners began selling 10-acre parcels, and Byram built his own home near the northern end of the tract.

Byram helped to establish the Glendale Hotel, a school district, the town’s first water company and the Bank of Glendale. He was also active in efforts to bring railroad service to the town.

His wife, Huldah, persuaded the U.S. Postal Service to recognize Glendale as the community’s official name.

“He was extremely important,” Smith said. “Mr. Byram at one time was the exclusive land agent for the city of Glendale. At one time he had carriages to take prospective buyers from Los Angeles to his house. He had a lot to do with who purchased land here and who settled in the original township.”

City Planner Dana Ogden told the Historic Preservation Commission that a General Plan amendment will be drafted to designate the Byram House as a landmark. That measure will be returned to the commission for review before it is given to the City Council for final approval.

Smith said the Byram House would be the first first new addition since 33 landmark buildings were listed in the General Plan’s historic preservation section in 1977. Several of those sites were lost to fire or demolished before the commission was established in 1985 to oversee preservation.

The historical society has proposed that dozens of older Glendale buildings be added to the preservation list, although city commissioners say they must exercise discretion in designating landmarks.

“We’re thrilled to see that the first one is moving forward,” Smith said. “And we hope this will be the first of many.”