A Place Where History Is Carved in Stone
Fred, Barney, Wilma, Pebbles and Bam-Bam would dig this place.
Enough big rocks to coax any caveman--or woman--out of a dark abode and into a charming tract home hewn from hefty granite boulders.
And, hey, we’ll even throw in a Ford Model T in your new garage.
Forget the Pleistocene era, this was 1924, and developer “Pep” Rempp was eager to market his lovely stone cottages in Roscoe--or what is now known as Sun Valley. So to sweeten the deal of his completely furnished homes, he added a Ford in the garage and an insurance policy.
To spread the word of his new development, Rempp handed out pamphlets, declaring “The New Foothill Community--Stonehurst--Where Life’s Worth While.”
More than 75 years later, Stonehurst is still a thriving hamlet of about 65 homes and buildings. And many of its residents will tell you that the quirks of living in a smallish house of boulders, a stone’s throw from Hansen Dam, is enchanting, albeit anachronistic.
You can’t put a dishwasher in these tight quarters, says Mary Knight, 42, who lives in the eighth Stonehurst home built by Rempp. She whirls around in her tiny Sheldon Street kitchen, a throwback to centuries BC--Before Cuisinarts, Before Coffee-makers, Before (any similar) Contraptions.
No room, the landscape contractor laments, even for a bottle of wine on the counter.
See, she motions with her hands, from the bottom of the kitchen cupboards to the counter is a scant 12 inches.
Put a bottle of wine there, open the cupboard, and wham, the guests are crying over spilt vino. “It happens all the time when people come over for dinner,” she said, chuckling.
Her husband, Al, 50, is less flustered by such inconveniences.
An archeologist, he’s tracked down much of the history of his not-quite suburban tract, which he has written up in a short treatise.
Yet it is the present that tugs at Knight with a sense of urgency. Some homes are falling into disrepair, and many more were modernized to the point of losing their Stone Age features.
Stone Community Remains Low-Key
Since Stonehurst, and Sun Valley, for that matter, isn’t on most people’s radar screens, the community has remained low-key, hidden. Sheltered from the Los Angelization of strip malls, cookie-cutter condos and banal cul-de-sac lifestyles.
Much of the community is horsy, despite the long-prevailing image of Sun Valley as the gravel pits.
It is true that this is the same town that was recently described, in this paper, as home to L.A’s “stone corridor,” because of its many distributors of marble, granite and other stone by-products.
But here in Stonehurst, the aging residential blocks with views of the foothills retain a rural feel.
Many people, the Knights included, hop aboard their horses to go to the local feed store or the corner market, where there’s a hitching post in the parking lot. Sometimes that means you have to keep an eye out for road apples.
The tract started out with 14 residences on Sheldon Street, and 28 more on Allegheny Street. The clusters of other houses and buildings bring the total to about 65, Al Knight said.
Though grander stone creations may exist in Altadena, Sierra Madre or Tujunga, Stonehurst is an entire graying village, with cottages perched on narrow, long lots that remind you of your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ suburbs.
The boulder bungalows may be humble--originally just 1,000 square feet or so--but they are on large lots that often stretch hundreds of feet from one street in the front, all the way back to another street beyond the backyard. Plenty of land for chickens, dogs, kitties, kids and other critters.
And what the homes lack in size, they make up for with character.
Some of the interiors are reminiscent of Craftsman-era bungalows, with their intimate spaces and simple floor plans. Some have boulder-to-boulder walls that need no paint or wallpaper, with hulking rock fireplaces of the kind in hunting lodges.
“Being interested in archeology, it pleases me to live in this house,” said Al Knight, brushing his hand across a flat rock in the fireplace, cleverly positioned as a shelf. “When you live in it on a day-to-day basis, it constantly reminds you that it should be treated in a special way.”
On a recent early evening stroll with the Knights, it’s easy to imagine the little ‘burb that Rempp had mapped out in his dreams.
Over on a nearby street, the couple point out a distinct boulder lodge that was to be the community’s service station and garage. Rempp hoped it would serve the Red Car trolley line, but the streetcars never made it out this far.
The original post office--with four graceful arches--has the feel of a monastery, but it serves a very earthly role as a private residence.
Around the corner, outside a lovingly restored Thelma Avenue house, James Lawrence, 55, describes being raised in the home. He recalls a big hayride wagon that used to amble past the front yard, and happy memories with his parents and a brother.
“It’s so peaceful here. It’s like being out in the country,” he said. “The houses are warm in winter and cool in summer.”
His parents, who moved here in 1947 from Eagle Rock when he was 2, have since died but the property stayed in the family.
A couple years ago, Lawrence gave up his big foothills home with the view and came back to the family homestead. Project after arduous project, he burnished the cottage back to its former beauty. His partner, Pamela Kent, nurtured a flourishing garden out of a former weedy lot.
The Knights are giddy to see such pride of ownership.
The same cannot be said for much of the neighborhood.
Many Houses Are Unkempt
House by house, Al Knight singles out subtle architectural details in precise rock walls, massive fireplaces and spacious, sit-for-a-spell porches.
But many owners, he sadly explains, have masked the elegant stone origins with ‘50s- and ‘60s-era stucco and add-ons.
It is not a community flush with cash or preservationist fever. In recent years, homes in the area have generally sold for between $150,000 and $230,000.
Much of Stonehurst’s charm, in fact, is its down-home, blue-collar sensibility. Aging eccentrics live across from young families. Conservative, church-going types are neighbors to actor look-alikes.
Restoration is grueling and time-consuming.
Mary Knight remembers when she and her husband bought their bungalow a decade ago. The work seemed never-ending: sandblasting the ghastly turquoise paint off the fireplace, dealing with a funky septic tank (also of stone) and excavating bushels of even more granite from the dirt just to plant flowers.
And so it pains Al Knight that Stonehurst is crumbling in some spots. One unkempt rock house was torn down a few weeks ago--a fact he’ll lamentably note in his research.
He plans to keep unraveling more of the village’s history, but he’s just not quite sure how the Stonehurst story will end.
