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Dawn and LaMont Howard's courtship and marriage have centered on their 1905 home in Kinney Heights, a neighborhood of large Craftsman- style houses in the West Adams district of Los Angeles.
When LaMont Howard bought his 3,500-square-foot house in 1988, it was suffering from neglect and vandalism. Graffiti marred the house and pigeons roosted inside. Some of the floors had buckled when previous owners had allowed the bathtubs to overflow, and the plaster was badly damaged.
"It was a money pit," he said.
Dawn Harris saw the house for the first time when the two were dating. She arrived with wine and pasta for a supper in the unfinished living room. "The next week I was helping him Spackle," she said. Today, the Howards and their young son, Nicholas, live in the carefully restored six-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home.
"I appreciate the quality of the old, the character and the detail of the antique," said Dawn Howard, who grew up in a nearby neighborhood.
Kinney Heights is one of several neighborhoods that developed around Berkeley Square, an exclusive gated community of large mansions in turn-of-century Los Angeles.
Berkeley Square fell victim to the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway in the early 1960s, but about 200 large homes in three surviving contiguous tracts retain much of the pre-World War I ambience. The three are Kinney Heights and Gramercy Park on the south side of the freeway and Western Heights on the north side.
The three neighborhoods are bound roughly by Adams Boulevard on the south, Washington Boulevard on the north, Western Avenue on the east and Arlington Avenue on the west.
Hidden behind the mini-malls of Western Avenue, the palm-lined streets look much as they did 85 years ago and are frequently used as movie locations. Today, the neighborhoods are home to a mix of African American and White residents, including many who work in the entertainment industry.
In the early 1900s, Western Avenue was the western boundary of the city, and fields and orchards stretched beyond Arlington Avenue. Kinney Heights--named after Abbot Kinney, who developed Venice--Gramercy Park and Western Heights were suburban tracts that attracted the upper-middle class. Streetcars connected the area with downtown Los Angeles.
With the arrival of the automobile, newer neighborhoods...