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4107 Troost
There are still lovely pockets of Los Angeles that seem untouched by time. 4107 Troost was built in 1936 on a 25,800 square foot lot, just to the east of Colfax Avenue. Its overgrown backyard slopes down to the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. It is now for sale.
It is so old (71 years) that it was already there to witness the devastating February 1938 flood that killed 115 people and destroyed over 5600 homes. Three years later, the Flood Control Act of 1941 brought the concrete entombment of the LA River to fruition and allowed real estate development to proceed after the end of World War Two.
The home looks to be unoccupied. What one sees is a property of mature trees, a picket fence, and a wonderful hybrid blending of an American Ranch with French, Spanish and Western architectural features.
There is a sentimentality, emotionalism and fantasy life to many old homes in this old section of the San Fernando Valley. They are survivors of a time when horses and orange groves briefly lived next to automobiles and movie palaces. Los Angeles grew out of the movies, and the homes that were built here are cinematic in their storytelling.
But this property, like so many around it, will fall into the hands of the bulldozer and be subdivided into five lots of ostentatious and cheap ugliness. Hummers will sit behind electronic gates under the glare of halogen. Another corner of this city will be forever changed.
Here in Van Nuys 
Joe-
Your items impress me. Thank you for this!
Andy
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Here’s a rather morbid factoid about the house..from the 11/14/52 L.A. Times..
A caretake of the property was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the guest house to the rear of 4007 Troost. Norman Masi, 42, had been hired to remove some plants in the vacant house and had been missing for a week. Police believed the death was accidental…
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Thanks for posting it, it’s such a moving story. These sweet older houses surrounded by big trees are some of the best things about L.A.
The LA Times’ LA Land blog also picked it up.
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But this property, like so many around it, will fall into the hands of the bulldozer and be subdivided into five lots of ostentatious and cheap ugliness.
I’m actually going to do a blogpost about this sometime, because I was recently up in Sylmar and saw dozens of lots like this. I’ll probably head up there with my camera sometime this weekend.
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Have you ever been to a part of Van Nuys called Victory Park? Silly name (don’t look at me, it wasn’t my idea), but still a fairly nice little slice of Van Nuys suburbia (I guess that’s redundant, right?). It’s tucked into the southern armpit of Victory and Sepulveda. The loop of Sylvan and Friar off of Erwin is particuarly charming (said by a denizen of one of those homes on Sylvan).
Stop by sometime…I’ll show ya’ around. We still have some original owners in the area, and, oh…the stories they tell! Apprently, our little corner of Van Nuys was quite the Peyton Place in the sixties and seventies!
Alas, it’s all too peaceful now!
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But this property, like so many around it, will fall into the hands of the bulldozer and be subdivided into five lots of ostentatious and cheap ugliness. Hummers will sit behind electronic gates under the glare of halogen.
Try being the planner forced by law to approve such hideousness.
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