Stimson House - History - Convent For Sisters of St. Joseph

Convent For Sisters of St. Joseph

The property behind Stimson House (on Chester Place) was the home of Carrie Estelle Doheny, the widow of wealthy oil man, Edward L. Doheny. Mrs. Doheny had grown up in the neighborhood and had watched as the Stimson House was built. She recalled, "I remember when Mr. Stimson was building this house. When I was just a little girl, my father would take me for a walk on Sunday afternoons, and we’d always walk this way to see how far along the work had progressed." For eight years from 1940 to 1948, Mrs. Doheny lived behind the fraternity, and the boisterous parties in the house’s dungeon-like "catacombs" were an ongoing source of annoyance. Mrs. Doheny repeatedly complained to the university president, Rufus B. Von Kleinsmid, about disturbances, a former house president recalling that he was called before Kleinsmid "once a month or so" as a result of her complaints. By 1948, Mrs. Doheny had dealt with the fraternity for long enough and offered $75,000 to purchase the house that the fraternity bought eight years earlier for $20,000. The fraternity house was already struggling with the cost of maintaining the large house and accepted Mrs. Doheny’s offer. After the sale closed, Mrs. Doheny assured herself that she would have no further problems with noisy neighbors by deeding Stimson House to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for use as a convent. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted: "The parlor where merry parties reveled at the turn of the century will become a chapel where reverent nuns will now bow in humble devotion. The gay conversation of the festive past will yield place to solemn intonations of morning prayers."

When the fraternity brothers gathered for their reunion in 1996, the Los Angeles Times noted: "What a difference half a century makes. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet now say their prayers in those wood-paneled rooms where the PiKAs sang: 'He rambled down to Hades, To see the poor lost souls, Saw a bunch of Kappa Sigs a-roasting on the coals. . . .'"

The Sisters of St. Joseph operated the house as a convent from 1948 to 1969. From 1969 to 1993, the house was converted to use as housing for students at Mount St. Mary's College. In the fall of 1993, the sisters returned to Stimson House and resumed using it as a convent.