Bolton Hall is a historic

American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. Its ...

-era stone building in Tujunga,

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. Built in 1913, Bolton Hall was originally used as a

community center Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole c ...

for the

utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...

n community of Los Terrenitos. From 1920 until 1957, it was used as an

American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is a non-profit organization of U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is made up of state, U.S. territory, and overseas departments, and these are in turn made up of ...

hall, the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

's second public library, Tujunga City Hall, and a jail. In 1957, the building was closed. For more than 20 years, Bolton Hall remained vacant and was the subject of debates over demolition and restoration. Since 1980, the building has been operated by the Little Landers Historical Society as a local history museum.

Los Terrenitos

In the early 1900s, the area now known as Tujunga was undeveloped land, the former

Rancho Tujunga Rancho Tujunga was a Ranchos of California, Mexican land grant in the western Crescenta Valley and northeastern San Fernando Valley, in present-day Los Angeles County, California. It was granted in 1840 by Mexican governor Juan Bautista Alvarado, ...

. In 1913,

William Ellsworth Smythe William Ellsworth Smythe, known as W. E. Smythe (1861–1922), was a journalist, writer and founder of the Little Landers movement, which aimed to settle small suburban lots with people who would farm their own properties, live off the land and sel ...

, working alongside M.V. Hartranft (they had purchased the land together), formed a utopian community called Los Terrenitos — Spanish for ''The Little Lands.'' Smythe was the leader of the

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island soc ...

n Little Landers movement and had already established colonies in

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Monta ...

and

San Ysidro, California San Ysidro (Spanish for " St. Isidore", ) is a district of the City of San Diego, immediately north of the Mexico–United States border. It neighbors Otay Mesa West to the north, Otay Mesa to the east, and Nestor and the Tijuana River Valley ...

. He advocated the principle that families settling on an acre or two of land could support themselves and create a flourishing community. Town lots in Tujunga were sold to settlers at $800 for an acre of land and a life of independence.Patricia Ward Biederman, "Tujunga's Pioneer Women Lived on the Rocks," ''Los Angeles Times,'' April 9, 1999
/ref> Bolton Hall was built in 1913 by George Harris, a self-described "nature builder", rock mason, and stone sculptor. He first named it "Bolton Hall Hall", after Bolton Hall (1854–1938), a New York City progressive activist and proponent of the

back-to-the-land movement A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-suffic ...

.Marlene A. Hitt, ''Sunland and Tujunga: From Village to City,'' Arcadia Publishing (2002). . Harris urged that the hall be built solely of native materials and selected a design that he said borrowed nothing from European architecture. Harris and the Terrenitos community built the hall using

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

chunks and stones from nearby fields and hillsides and from the

Tujunga Wash Tujunga Wash is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed March 16, 2011 stream in Los Angeles County, California. It is a tributary of the Los Angeles River, providing about a fif ...

. Stones were placed in position in the structure based on the positions in which they settled after falling from a cliff. The spacious main room has shiny hardwood floors and a massive rock fireplace in the center. The fireplace is spanned by a mantel fashioned from a single

eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as ...

tree. Beneath the mantel, Harris inscribed the words "To the Spiritual Life of Soil". The structure was built at a cost of $6,480. When Bolton Hall opened in August 1913, the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' reported that it marked the "awakening of the Vale of Monte Vista" (the former name of Sunland):

First settled nearly thirty years ago, the valley has shown more life in the past six months than in all its previous history. Los Terrenitos, the settlement of "'little-landers," has made wonderful progress since its inception, five months ago, about 200 families having purchased land, not all of whom are yet on the ground. But enough are here to make it a beehive of industry. The dedication of "Bolton Hall" last Saturday aroused much enthusiasm among the "little-landers."

The ''Times'' also reported that Bolton Hall was "built to stand for ages", and it has survived the 1971 Sylmar and

1994 Northridge earthquake The 1994 Northridge earthquake was a moment 6.7 (), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles. The quake had a duration of approximately 1 ...

s without a scratch. During the hall's early years, it hosted community meetings patterned after those held in old

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

town halls. Over the next decade, it was used for church services, musical performances, lectures, motion picture shows, the Women's Club, dances, and pot-luck suppers. It also was the site of the

's second public library.

City Hall

After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, the hall was used as an American Legion hall for several years. In 1925, Tujunga incorporated as a city, and Bolton Hall became Tujunga City Hall. In 1932, Tujunga was consolidated with the City of Los Angeles, and the building was used for the next 25 years for a variety of municipal services, including the San Fernando Valley's second public library and a jail. However, it remained known as Tujunga City Hall until its closure in 1957.

Vacancy and preservation efforts

With its closure in 1957, Bolton Hall was put up for sale. However, the city estimated it would take more than $42,000 to bring the building up to code, and two attempts to auction the site failed to draw any bids. When the city announced in 1959 that it intended to tear down the old building and convert the property into a neighborhood park, the Little Landers Historical Society of Sunland and Tujunga was formed to fight for the preservation of Bolton Hall. The group watered the trees during the summer and collected more than 400 signatures on petitions seeking to preserve the structure. The group brought in a representative of the National Trust, and the building was found to have historical value. However, the group had difficulty coming up with funding to maintain the structure and bring it up to current safety standards. Bolton Hall's future remained uncertain, and the property vacant, for more than twenty years as the "Save Bolton Hall" movement continued to have difficulty raising funds.

Historical museum

In 1976, an agreement was reached to have the City of Los Angeles renovate the building's exterior with the Little Landers Historical Society committing to renovate the interior for operation as a historical museum."Love for the Past Rescues Tujunga's Old City Hall," ''Los Angeles Times,'' December 12, 1976, Glendale-Burbank section, page 1
/ref> At the time, the building had been kept "tightly sealed" since 1957. However, by 1979, funding was still lacking, and the ''Times'' reported that "the vacant old building houses only cobwebs and dust." In late 1979, Los Angeles City Councilman

Bob Ronka Bob Ronka (born c. 1943) was a member of the Los Angeles City Council from the San Fernando Valley's 1st District between 1977 and 1981. Biography Ronka was born about 1943, the son of Ilmari Ronka, first-chair trombonist in the NBC Symphony Orc ...

secured $169,000 in federal funds to augment $23,800 raised by the Little Landers Historical Society. With nearly $200,000 in public and private funds, the building was finally restored after it had sat vacant for more than 20 years. The Bolton Hall Historical Museum opened in 1980. The artifacts displayed at the museum include the gavel used by the presiding officer during early town meetings, building tools used in the construction of Bolton Hall, old photographs, and the old clock from the first Tujunga Post Office. The museum also has a congratulatory letter from Bolton Hall, the New York lawyer and writer for whom the building was named. Near the front entrance of the museum, there is a tobacco-stained stone that juts out from the wall; it was used by early colonists to clean out their pipes when the building was used as a church. The museum is open to the public every Sunday and Tuesday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Admission is free.

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