11 - Kinney-Tabor House 1310 Sixth Avenue

11 - Kinney-Tabor House

1310 Sixth Avenue

Abbot Kinney built the oldest part of the Kinney -Tabor House circa 1906 as a bunkhouse for canal workers. It was then leased by the Cosmos Club for a women’s group, used as a grade school and as a meeting place for a fraternal organization known as The Owls.

In 1917, Abbot Kinney added on to the structure to make a large clapboard house as his family home at One Grand Canal. After Kinney’s death in 1920, Irvin Tabor, his black chauffeur, friend and confidante, inherited the house arranged through an oral agreement.

Tabor moved into the house in 1925, but neighbors did not like the idea of a black man living among them. Racism was strong enough that, although he went through great effort to stay there, he never felt at home. Eventually, he decided to move and took the house with him. The Tabor brothers pooled their talents, resources and knowledge to transport the house in three pieces to its present location where Irving Tabor lived until his death on January 9, 1987, at the age of 93.

The property was purchased in 2003 by local restoration enthusiasts and became Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #926 on 7/9/2008.