Verdugo Views

Katherine Yamada

Photo: Jane Bashor in front of adobe

Credit: Courtesy Special Collection, Glendale Public Library

Caption: Jane Bashor sits near the fountain she and her husband built

in front of the historic adobe on Bonita. The Bashors used the adobe as a

country retreat for several years.

The historic adobe that stands in the Verdugo Woodlands became a

country hideaway for a city doctor in 1946. Dr. Ernest Bashor, who worked

in downtown Los Angeles and lived in the Silver Lake area, longed for a

place to escape from the rigors of medicine and began looking around for

a little hideaway and eventual retirement cottage.

Through a fellow Kiwanian, Park Arnold, the manager of a lumber

company, he met F.P. Newport, who then owned the rustic property in the

Verdugo canyon.

Bashor loved the quiet and secluded setting -- only 20 minutes from

Silver Lake -- and he and his wife, Jane, purchased the adobe and 11

surrounding lots. Doris McKently, daughter of the Bashors, said that when

her parents bought it, the adobe was just a “tumbledown mud house.”

The adobe had two main rooms and a wooden addition. McKently recalled

that the kitchen was just a lean-to shack with a cement floor and no

plumbing facilities.

McKently, who still lives near the historic adobe, said in a phone

interview that the family tore down the lean-to and put up a proper

kitchen and bathroom.

They also redid the interior of the old adobe, covering the walls with

a smooth plaster. Before they patched a huge crack in the wall, Jane

Bashor wrote down all their names, stuffed the list into a bottle and

placed it in the crack.

When they moved in, the huge stone fireplace in the main room was

blocked up with a pot belly stove. The Bashors removed the stove and

unblocked the fireplace while they were redoing the interior.

On the first cool night, they built a fire and realized to their

dismay that the room was filling with smoke. After it was repaired, the

fireplace worked well.

“Those old adobes had no heat other than the fireplace,” McKently

said. “They were cool in the summer, but cold in the winter.”

While taking the crumbling whitewash off the exterior, they realized

that people might worry that the original adobe was gone. McKently dashed

down to her house, found a frame that held her mother’s medical diploma

(both of the Bashors had medical degrees) and rushed back up the hill.

She placed the frame in the newly stuccoed wall so that people could

look through the glass and see a portion of the original adobe.

Later, they had to replace the old tar-paper roof with cedar shingles,

since the century-old rose bush that covered the front of the house had

grown through it.

Bashor, a farmer at heart, planted rows of corn and boysenberries on

one side of the adobe, while his wife nurtured native plants on the

other.

The family used the adobe as a family gathering place until Bashor

died in 1969. Two years later, Mrs. Bashor left her Silver Lake house and

moved to the adobe. After she died in 1988, the adobe and some of the

acreage was sold to the city of Glendale.

KATHERINE YAMADA is a volunteer with the Special Collections Room at

the Central Library. To reach her, leave a message at 637-3241. The

Special Collections Room is open from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturdays or

by appointment. For more information on Glendale’s history, contact the

reference desk at the Central Library, 548-2027.