#AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal

The Little House on Plummer Street

By fast-tracking a charter school project, the city is ignoring a chance to celebrate its history and preserve some badly needed green space.

“People were moving faster and faster.

No one noticed the Little House any more.

They hurried by without a glance.”

– Virginia Lee Burton

The San Fernando Valley was a very different place when the house at what is now 15526 Plummer Street was built 108 years ago. In 1914 “the modest one-story house” was constructed in an area that “was a sparsely populated agricultural hinterland”. After World War II the area began to change rapidly. Farmland gave way to residential developments. The construction of the freeway system, including the 405 freeway just west of the property, increased the pace of growth. Today the Valley has “more than 1.7 million inhabitants” and if it were separated from the rest of Los Angeles, it “would be the fifth largest [city] in the nation.”

Recognizing that the Plummer Street House offers a unique opportunity to connect with the history of the San Fernando Valley, it was recently designated as a Historic Cultural Monument by the City of Los Angeles. As “one of the oldest survivors of the early period of development in…North Hills”, it presents an opportunity to look back into the area before it was part of a sprawling megalopolis. It is so closely tied with the area, that the street it sits on is named after its builder, rancher John L. Plummer.

The North Hills Preservation Consortium is responsible for ushering the Plummer Street House through the process of its designation and it had grand plans for the house that would greatly benefit the neighborhood. Protected by its status, the house would anchor a park that would protect urgently needed green space. The structure would be restored and house a museum depicting early California settlement. The result would be a resource to the 24 schools that currently exist in the area.