The Formosa Apartments & Cottages: 7139 Hollywood Boulevard
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The Formosa at 7139 Hollywood Boulevard was “the prettiest Japanese bungalow cottages in Southern California.”
In addition to a three-story apartment house with 20 units, there were eight single-family cottages, each named after a flower: Begonia, Daisy, Ivy, Pansy, Poinsettia (pictured above, right), Poppy, and Rose (pictured below), and Wisteria.
Across the three acres (just west of La Brea Avenue), it was an unrivaled scenery of exotic gardens; courts for tennis and croquet. From the property, one had views of the boats on the ocean and the snow on Mount Baldy.
When the Formosa opened in 1913, apartments with “delightful balconies and sleeping porches” ranged from $50 to $125/month; cottages started at $80.
Socials features included musical programs with “dainty refreshments,” tennis tournaments, afternoon teas on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Saturday night card games.
During the holidays, a Christmas tree in the lobby was decorated with dozens of tiny stockings filled with candy for each of the Formosa children, who also received a toy from Santa Claus at the Christmas Eve party.
Considered a retreat for “writers and artistic people,” early tenants include novelist Harold Bell Wright, actor Rudolph Valentino (before he moved to Whitley Heights), director William Wellman, actress Constance Bennett, and music teacher Mrs. Artie Mason Carter.
In fact, it was a midnight conversation that Carter had in the Formosa lobby that led to the construction of the Hollywood Bowl.
Christine Wetherill Stevenson, founder of Pilgrimage Play, owned 65 acres in the Hollywood foothills, at the junction of Highland and Cahuenga, that she had hoped to use for an amphitheater in 1919. When those plans fell through, developers began circling, so Stevenson approached Carter, president of the Hollywood Community Chorus. “She told me she hadn’t been able to sleep, and had come to see me because she had just recently attended one of our community sings,” Carter told the Los Angeles Record on July 24, 1929.
“Tomorrow I am going to sell this property… unless you can help me,” Stevenson pleaded to Carter, offering the 65 acres at cost. “I believe the spirit I felt and saw in your community sing will carry the project to success.” The money was raised to purchase the acreage — “and we decided to hold an Easter Sunrise Service as our first Bowl experiment” in 1921,” Carter recalled to the Los Angeles Record.
As for The Formosa, the enchanting property was torn down in 1962 and replaced with the 14-story Hollywood Versailles Tower, the tallest apartment building in Hollywood at the time when it opened in 1966.
If I remember correctly, there was a Classical-revival Christian Science church on the N/W corner of LaBrea and Hollywood Blvd. and just west of the Formosa complex was an elegant mansion that lasted until the late 1950s.