Larchmont Chronicle Story Archive

Larchmont Chronicle Neighborhood newspaper representing Hancock Park, Larchmont Village
Miracle Mile, Park La Brea Fremont Place in the Wilshire center area of Los Angeles. Local News and
stories about the local Los Angeles Scene. Historical informattion regarding the Larchmont Chronicle and
Hancock Park area. Founded in 1963 on Larchmont Bouelvard, Los Angeles, CA, California

June 4, 2010

LORRAINE BLVD. NAMED FOR DEVELOPER'S DAUGHTER

Jane Gilman

This is the third in a series on street names in the community.

When Robert Rowan was developing the Windsor Square tract, he gave the streets English names such as Plymouth and Windsor. But he also gave his daughter recognition in this new beautiful area.

Thus, Lorraine Blvd. was named after Lorraine Rowan, probably when she was six–years old. The daughter of Robert Arnold Rowan and Laura Madeline Rowan (later the Princess Orsini), Lorraine was born in Pasadena in 1906. She was educated at Westbridge in Pasadena, St. Timothy’s in Stephenson, Maryland, and at Miss Nixon and Miss Sheldon’s School in Florence, Italy. She was a volunteer for the Inter-American Affairs Council in New York City (1943-1946) and at the first United Nations conference in San Francisco in 1945.

Two marriages, to Robert McAdoo and Thomas Shevlin, ended in divorce; in 1955 Lorraine married John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, and the couple departed immediately for India and Nepal, where he was ambassador. They returned to the U.S. in 1956; Cooper served in the senate from 1957 to 1973. The couple had no children and she died in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 1985.

Her father formed a real estate firm, R.A. Rowan & Co. at the age of 30 in 1904. When Robert A. Rowan unexpectedly died just 13 years later, his company was one of Los Angeles’s

R.A. Rowan & Co. built the Alexandria Hotel, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Rosslyn Hotel and a number of other historic Spring Street buildings. Rowan also initiated the original Windsor Square which ran from Wilshire Blvd. to Third St., and from Irving to Plymouth boulevards. This constituted a private square in which the property owners would own the streets as well as their homes.

Deed restrictions set a minimum cost of $12,550 on each home to be built, in order to assure handsome homes in an exceptionally beautiful setting.

Lorraine Blvd. only runs from Second St. to Wilshire Blvd. Noted houses include the Van Nuys mansion which was moved from Westlake (now MacArthur) Park in 1915.

Another mansion is the former Evans estate, modeled after a Southern Colonial home in Georgia.

Larchmont Chronicle
542½ North Larchmont Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90004

Editor & Publisher: Jane Gilman
Associate Publisher: Irwin Gilman

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Information about the Larchmont Village, Hancock Park, Miracle Mile, Park LaBrea areas of Los Angeles, california. The larchmont Chronicle provides information, news stories, local events, advertising, real estate information, real estate listing advertisings, Los Angeles area demographics and other neighborhood news.