1921 20th Street – Unfried House

Advocacy Alert: Save the date: October 27, 7 pm. In September, the Landmarks Commission heard the Santa Monica Conservancy’s application for the designation of 1921 20th Street as a landmark. In spite of the Conservancy’s advocacy and over 130 letters from the community, we are deeply dismayed to report that the nomination was denied in a 4:2 vote. It was a sad day for preservation and especially for an amazing resource like 1921 20th which so beautifully tells the story of the early days of the Pico Neighborhood. However, an appeal of the determination has been filed and City Council will re-hear the application on October 27, 2026. It will be important to show city council through letters and in-person testimony at the hearing that historic preservation in critical to the cultural well-being of Santa Monica and that 1921 20th Street is an integral part of our heritage. Please monitor our website or join our mailing list to receive updates on what you can do and when to do it!

The residence at 1921 20th Street is an exemplary example of a Craftsman Style Airplane Bungalow with a very high degree of architectural integrity that manifests many key features of the type, including a complex, low-pitched roof, flared wood cladding, windows, and doors, an irregular plan based on a core volume strategically embellished with additional volumes, a sleeping porch, a small glassy second story reminiscent of an airplane’s cockpit, exposed support beams above the front porch that extend to form a trellised port-cochere with a built-in planter box, and brick accents on the porch face, piers, fireplace, and chimney.

1921 20th Street, Unfried House, 2024

1921 20th Street is also significant for events associated with its builders, Simon and Anna Unfried who were pioneer residents of Fairview Heights, known today as the Pico Neighborhood. The Unfried’s built three pioneering structures on there three-acre parcel that extended from the corner of Delaware Avenue and 20th Street to just past the Airplane Bungalow. Only the Airplane Bungalow at 1921 20th Street remains as a representation of their hard work, excellent planning, quality workmanship, and unfortunate departure from the City of Santa Monica.

1921 20th Street, Unfried House, 1913, photo courtesy of the Unfried Family

Simon and Anna Unfried completed construction of 1921 20th Street in 1913 and moved in with their family. Seven years later, they sold it to start a dry goods store nearby. In 1927, the Unfried’s built a 2-story brick business block at a cost of $15,000, which included 4 ground floor shops, and on the second floor a banquet room called Unfried Hall and an apartment, a pioneering commercial block in Fairview Heights/The Pico Neighborhood.

1921 20th Street, Unfried House, view from rear, 2023

In 1932, the police unexpectedly shut down the hall because it was revealed that its use was a violation of the city’s zoning ordinance which didn’t allow dance halls in that part of the city. In 1922, the City of Santa Monica had supported efforts of the racist Santa Monica Protective League to shut down a successful Black-owned jazz club by passing a restrictive no-dancing law. The ill-intentioned provision did not anticipate that harming the economic well-being of some harms the economic well-being of all. Anna Unfried led a group of other neighborhood-based banquet room owners in a 2-year battle with the city to save her hall from foreclosure. These events in the lives of the Unfried’s that began with the construction of the subject property, are significant in the history of Santa Monica as a tangible manifestation of the far-reaching negative impacts of systemic racism. Unfried Hall foreclosed and was purchased by the Calvary Baptist Church, which conducted its Sunday services upstairs and rented the ground floor retail spaces to black-owned businesses, which thrived for thirty years.

Fairview Heights Branch Library was originally located in one of the storefronts in Unfried Hall. photo: Santa Monica Public Library Imagine Santa Monica Collection

Unfried Hall’s final chapter occurred when the City of Santa Monica demolished it to complete a freeway related roadway project that widened 20th Street by taking eight feet from the properties on both sides of the street. The impact of that change, which devalued property for the majority Black owners, is visible today in the foreshortend front yards held back by uniform, utilitarian cinderblock retaining walls.

Cinder block retaining wall on 20th Street between Virginia and Delaware Avenues installed by City of Santa Monica in 1964 after taking 8 feet from each parcel to widen 20th Street for freeway access, 2024