Frederick Mitchell Mooers House, Los Angeles: style and history

Built in 1894 at 818 South Bonnie Brae Street, the Frederick Mitchell Mooers House — also known as the Wright-Mooers House — is an ornately detailed Victorian raised for May Gertrude Wright and F. L. Wright. The Wrights sold it in 1898 for $5,200 to Frederick M. Mooers, the "Yellow Aster mining king," whose name the house now carries. It is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

the building

Three styles, one facade. Architectural historians David Gebhard and Robert Winter describe the house's overall design as Queen Anne, with two pairs of small Richardsonian Romanesque columns and an elongated domed roof drawn from Islamic design — the Moorish Revival note that gives the house its name.

the style

The house is filed under Moorish Revival for its domed roof, but it's really a hybrid: Queen Anne massing carrying Richardsonian Romanesque columns and an elongated dome borrowed from Islamic design vocabulary.

significance

Designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the house survives as a rare 1890s specimen mixing Moorish Revival detailing into a Victorian frame.

nearby

Susana Machado Bernard House and Barn 0.2 mi · Art Nouveau · 1901
Young's Market Company Building 0.3 mi · Renaissance Revival
Mayfair Hotel 0.5 mi · Renaissance Revival
Iglesia Adventista Central 0.7 mi · Renaissance Revival · 1912
Felipe De Neve Branch 0.7 mi · Mediterranean Vernacular
The Town House 0.8 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1929

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