History
The Hoover Hotel occupies 7035 Greenleaf Avenue in downtown Whittier, a Quaker-founded city in southeastern Los Angeles County. Although Whittier was platted in the 1880s by colonists from the East and Midwest rather than by Californios, the city's commercial core was rebuilt in Spanish Colonial Revival forms after the destructive Long Beach earthquake of 1933, which damaged many of the brick storefronts along Greenleaf Avenue. The Hoover Hotel is one of the larger surviving products of that reconstruction.
Stylistically the building is Spanish Colonial Revival rather than true adobe construction. The wall surfaces are smooth stucco over a wood and masonry frame, washed in pale tones to evoke the lime-plastered adobe walls of the missions. Defining features include arched openings at street level, decorative wrought-iron grilles and balconies, projecting wood-bracketed bays, and a low-pitched roof finished with mission-style red clay tile. The interior preserves a small lobby with tiled flooring and beamed ceilings, common to commercial hotels of the era that drew on the broader California Mediterranean vocabulary popularized at the 1915 San Diego exposition.
The hotel was named for Herbert Hoover, the Quaker-raised future president who spent part of his youth in Whittier, and it served the local agricultural and oil-field economy as a commercial lodging house through the middle decades of the twentieth century. Its association with the local Hoover family and with the Greenleaf Avenue commercial district was the basis for its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 under reference 02000074.
The property continues in use as a hotel and contributes to the protected historic commercial streetscape along Greenleaf Avenue, one of the most intact Spanish Colonial Revival downtowns in southeastern Los Angeles County. Within the broader California adobe tradition, the Hoover Hotel belongs to the early-twentieth-century revival phase in which stucco, tile, and ironwork were used to give Anglo-built commercial cities a romantic visual link to the Spanish and Mexican past that had once occupied the land.
Common questions
What is the Hoover Hotel?
The Hoover Hotel is a historic Spanish Colonial-style hotel building in Whittier, Los Angeles County, Southern California. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places under reference number 02000074.
When was the Hoover Hotel built?
Construction records for the Hoover Hotel are incomplete. The building's historical significance is recognized through its National Register of Historic Places listing under reference number 02000074.
Where is the Hoover Hotel located?
The Hoover Hotel is located at 7035 Greenleaf Avenue in Whittier, California, in Los Angeles County.
Is the Hoover Hotel open to the public?
No, the Hoover Hotel is currently a private residence and is not open for tours. Its historical record is preserved through its National Register of Historic Places nomination.
What architectural style is the Hoover Hotel?
The Hoover Hotel is built in the Spanish Colonial style. The style typically features stucco walls and Mediterranean-influenced detailing characteristic of Southern California's revival-era architecture.
Why is the Hoover Hotel historically significant?
The Hoover Hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places under reference number 02000074. The listing recognizes the building's historical importance as a surviving hotel structure in Whittier's historic core.