Boyle Hotel

The brick building with the corner turret on the corner of Boyle Ave. and 1st St. in the Boyle Heights neighborhood is the Boyle Hotel. The Queen Anne style structure across the street from Mariachi Plaza was built in 1889 as a hotel with commercial spaces on the ground floor. The dilapidated hotel was in danger of being demolished when it acquired a new owner in 2006. The East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC) rehabilitated the building into affordable housing (Boyle Hotel Apartments). Designated a Los Angeles Cultural Monument in 2007, the Boyle Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. The corner storefront now holds La Monarca Bakery & Cafe, while the adjacent commercial space has become a lending library.

Architect William R. Norton designed the hotel building at the corner of Boyle Ave. and First St. for George Cummings, an Austrian immigrant who came to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and became a successful rancher. Finished in 1889, the Queen Anne/ Italianate style building was originally called the Cummings Hotel. A new streetcar, the Los Angeles Cable Railway, ran along First Street next to the hotel, connecting Boyle Heights to downtown Los Angeles. In 1903, Cummings died in a hotel fire in Kern County. His widow, Maria Sacramenta Lopez, a member of a prominent Mexican American family of Los Angeles pioneers, lived for thirty more years. The location of the future hotel was part of a gift of 46 acres from Maria's parents in 1872.

The upper floors of the building were built in a single-room occupancy configuration with shared bathrooms. The four-story building with commercial storefronts cost $22,000 to construct. The rounded corner turret with a cone-shaped cap shading an open-air balcony made the building easily recognizable. The front, along Boyle St., featured decorative brickwork across the facade and a half-sun roofline ornament. Known first as "Hotel Cummings," by the 1890s the name was changed to "Hotel Mount Pleasant." A school for Christian workers leased the hotel in 1901.

The building's upper floors were converted into a residential apartment hotel in 1918. Sometime after 1932, the name was changed to the Boyle Hotel. The building was nicknamed the Mariachi Hotel since a number of mariachi band members lived in the upper floor apartments. The traditional folk music from Mexico was often heard from Mariachi Plaza, across N. Boyle St. to the east of the hotel. Since the 1930s, mariachis would congregate at the plaza in hope of being hired to perform. In the early 1940s, the corner commercial space was filled by Gordon's Drug Store, while the neighboring space was Boyle Tailoring, a commercial laundry. The commercial spaces were known as the Cummings Block. By the mid-1970s, the balcony and roof of the corner turret were gone. The corner commercial space held Boyle Drugstore, and a dentist had offices in the building. The drugstore was gone by the late 1990s and the corner space was for rent; the other Boyle St. commercial space was the Boyle Heights Dental Center.

The dilapidated hotel was in danger of being demolished when it acquired a new owner, the East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC), in 2006. The Boyle Hotel was rehabilitated from 2007 to 2012 at a cost of nearly $25 million. Historic photos were used to reconstruct the corner cupola with its cone-shaped top, the former roofline ornament, and the decorative brickwork. The project received an award in 2013 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has been called the finest example of Victorian commercial architecture in the city, east of the Los Angeles River. The Boyle Heights Historical Society successfully nominated the building to become a Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Minument in 2007.

The 50-unit Boyle Hotel Apartments now contains 32 studios, one one-bedroom, and 17 three-bedroom apartments. Each unit now has its own bathroom and a kitchen with an electric range and mini fridge. The property is managed by the John Stewart Company of San Francisco.

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Epting, Charles. Victorian Los Angeles: From Pio Pico to Angels Flight. Charleston, SC. The History Press, 2015.

Kurland, Catherine L. Lamadrid, Enrique L. Hotel Mariachi: Urban Space and Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles. Albuquerque, NM. University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Los Angeles Housing Department. Boyle Hotel Apartments, Affordable and Accessible Housing Registry. January 1st, 2023. Accessed March 21st, 2023. https://lahousing.lacity.org/AAHR/ComCon/Tab/RenderTab?tabname=Property%20Detail&Id=426.

National Park Service. Case Study: Boyle Hotel, California, National Park Service: Articles. March 7th, 2023. Accessed March 20th, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/boyle-hotel-ca.htm.

Snow, Jenna. Trevis, Erika. NRHP nomination of Boyle Hotel - Cummings Block. National Register. Wasgington, DC. National Park Service, 2013.