Ann Dvorak’s Los Angeles Pt 3 – 733 N. Harvard Blvd.
Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 238
Today’s Ann Dvorak location takes us out of Downtown and into the East Hollywood area. When Ann’s mom, Â Anna Lehr, abandoned live theater for films, she split her time between Los Angeles and New York, usually opting to leave her young daughter on the east coast with relatives. By the early 1920s she had found a new squeeze, an advertising man named Arthur Pearson, was winding down her career and had decided to settle in Los Angeles permanently with her only child.
The trio would live in a handful of places between 1922ish and 1932. Their first recorded residence was 733 N. Harvard Blvd. which was a stone’s throw from the Robert Brunton Studios, known to you and me today as Paramount Pictures. To look at a Google street view today is to see a charming 1920s duplex. However, in my eight years as a reference librarian, I’ve learned a thing or three about property searching and know better than to trust any current address in my evolving City of Angels.
Above is a snippet from a 1950 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map which shows our charming duplex whose street address at one time was 735 & 737. What this magnificent map reveals is that once upon a time, 733 N. Harvard was actually a two story dwelling/auto garage sitting at the back of the property. So, when Ann Dvorak, Anna Lehr, and Arthur Pearson were first living in L.A. they were resided above a garage. Modest beginnings for our fair Ann, don’t you think.
In looking at the satellite view, we can see that the unit/garage is still there, though there have been some additions made from when Ann lived there. So, when I become rich and eccentric and begin offering bus tours of Ann Dvoraks’s Los Angeles, we’ll be able to visit.