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Eugene W. Britt House

Architect
Alfred Rosenheim
Style
Georgian
City
Los Angeles, CA
Eugene W. Britt House
Photo: Los Angeles, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Attorney Eugene W. Britt commissioned this three-story red-brick Georgian Revival-Colonial Revival mansion in 1910, designed by architect Alfred Rosenheim for the West Adams Terrace neighborhood. In 1984 it became a sports museum housing the Helms Athletic Foundation collection, and since 1986 it has served as headquarters for the LA84 Foundation and its Sports Library.

the building

The Sports Library. Since 1986 the house has held the LA84 Foundation Sports Library, described as the world's premier sports library, repurposing Britt's mansion from private residence to research archive.

the style

The house blends Georgian and Colonial Revival forms in red brick, a formal historicist idiom favored for substantial early-20th-century West Adams residences.

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the architect

Alfred Rosenheim, sometimes recorded as Alfred Faist Rosenheim, was a significant Los Angeles architect; this 1910 commission for Eugene W. Britt is the work documented here.

significance

Designated Historic-Cultural Monument #197 in 1978 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the house faced a demolition threat in the late 1970s when the Cultural Heritage Commission stepped in, and in 1980 its owner petitioned the City Council to remove the historic designation.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Los Angeles