Foy House - Figueroa Street

Figueroa Street

The original site of the house was part of the original Pueblo de Los Angeles lands at the corner of 7th Street and Figueroa Street (then known as Grasshopper Street) in Downtown Los Angeles. In 1872, Samuel Calvert Foy (September 23, 1840 - April 24, 1901) purchased the property from Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Foster for $1,000. Foy moved to Los Angeles in 1854 and operated a successful harness business at 217 Los Angeles Street, which was the oldest business establishment in the city at the time of his death. Foy also served as the city's Chief of Police for a time. He built the Foy House at the corner of Grasshopper and 7th Streets in either 1872 or 1873, and it was there that Foy and his wife, Lucinda Macy Foy, raised their son and four daughters. The house was reportedly "the first three-story building in the city." At the time the Foys built their house, the site was considered to be "way out in the country."

Foy's daughter, Mary Foy, was the city's first woman librarian from 1880-1884, a leader in the California Women's suffrage movement, a leader of the Democratic Party, and the first woman to be a member of one of the major parties' national committees.

Foy suffered from "dropsical trouble" during the last two years of his life and was eventually confined to the home. He died in April 1901, but his wife Lucinda Macy Foy remained in residence at the house. As the city's business district exapanded rapidly in the 1910s, the one-and-a-half acre site became one of the choicest building sites in the business district with 217 feet of frontage on Figueroa Street and 236 feet on Seventh Street.

The Wilshire Grand Hotel is located at the building's original site.