CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif. — The John Rowland Mansion sits landlocked in a sea of concrete and asphalt, hemmed in by warehouses, nearly invisible to the public, and accessible only through the parking lot of the La Puente School District’s administrative offices. Make your way inside, however, and you’ll find photographs, artwork, furniture, and other objects that offer windows into the history of California in the mid-19th century, before it was even part of the United States. And now, a series of contemporary art interventions is breathing new life into the building.
Unveiled this past weekend, the project is the result of months of collaboration between the House Museum, a nonprofit founded in 2022 whose mission combines historic preservation, community engagement, and site-specific installations, and the La Puente Valley Historical Society (LPVHS), which oversees the John Rowland Mansion.
“It fit the qualifications for a project site: listing on a historic register, some form of physical vacancy, and an openness to conceptual art intervention,” House Museum founder Evan Curtis Charles Hall told Hyperallergic. The organization has previously collaborated with the Henry O. Tanner House in Philadelphia; the Jesse A. Tilge House in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania; and the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine.
In 1841, John Rowland and William Workman led a mule train from Taos, New Mexico to Southern California, one of the earliest instances of American settlement in the region. Rowland settled in the San Gabriel Valley just east of Los Angeles, becoming a prominent rancher and merchant (the unincorporated community of Rowland Heights is named after him). Despite his Anglo surname, Rowland had dual American-Mexican citizenship — he was often referred to as Don Juan Rowland — and his family were considered Californios, or Latino residents of California, whose presence here predates the state’s annexation by the United States in 1848 following the Mexican-American War.
In 1855, he built a home for his family in what is now the City of Industry, which still stands as the oldest surviving brick structure in Southern California and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Originally, the solitary Greek Revival house stood out amid acres of bucolic landscape that made up Rowland’s sprawling rancho. Now, it has been reduced to a modest oasis of bygone eras amid strip malls and shipping facilities.
Hall first reached out to Amy Rowland, a sixth-generation descendant of John A. Rowland I and the president of LPVHS, in January, the start of discussions about the specific conditions and needs of the site.
“Each historic landmark requires its own approach to revitalization, which in this case involved social practice in addition to the creation of physical artworks,” Hall said.
“We’ve been very fortunate to respect each other and really listen,” Rowland told Hyperallergic. “I’ve been apprehensive about certain things, but [Hall] reassures me. He’s been a wonderful support.”
After several site visits and conversations with the LPVHS, Hall tapped LA-based artists David Horvitz and Emily Barker to create site-specific works. “They both have generous art practices that have been used in service of others,” Hall said. “When working with sensitive material, like family history, it’s important for the artists to conceptualize works that support the people whose legacies will be impacted by them.”
Horvitz’s contribution involved planting several native California walnut saplings on the property, with symbolic objects buried underneath. He collaborated with landscape firm Terremoto to create a meandering path of vintage bricks found onsite. The surrounding area was previously a major walnut growing hub, with the city of La Puente Valley being home to the largest walnut packing factory in the world in the early 20th century. (There is even a nearby city named Walnut.)
“In the future, it can be a place of meeting, congregation, discussion, reflection,” Horvitz told Hyperallergic. He placed a plaque bearing a line from a poem by Scottish author Maria Sledmere: “Let’s make a new garden from old wounds.”
Barker often addresses disability and access in their works, subjects that come from their personal experience of using a wheelchair. Buildings in California must adhere to ADA regulations, however buildings with historical designations can be exempt.
“My first thoughts interacting with any space are always the same: ‘Is there a safe way to get in?’” Barker said in an interview with Hyperallergic. “I try to gauge the level of personal investment that space has. In a lot of instances, the organizers of a space will not want to make any accommodations, but they were open to my suggestion for accessibility.” Barker’s piece “Access is a need not a gift” (2024) includes a designated handicapped accessible parking space and a wheelchair ramp leading into the building.
“I just want this community space to be accessible to the community,” they said.
On the mansion’s second floor, Hall created readymade artworks using period furniture and doors found on site, reframing these domestic items within a contemporary context. A permanent exhibition of Rowland family history curated by Amy Rowland can be seen on the ground floor, featuring objects, paintings, photographs, and ephemera that tell the intertwined stories of the family and the surrounding area as they developed over the past nearly two centuries.
The House Museum collaboration kicked off last Saturday, July 20, with performances by the traditional Mexican dance troupe Ballet Folklorico Popurri and singer-songwriter Taylor Sackson.
Rowland hopes this transformation will bring more attention, and funding, to the historic site, so that it can better serve the needs of the local community, providing tours and education to groups of students and other visitors.
“This place feels like it’s outside of time. It’s not 2024, not 1855, somehow in the middle of all those different times,” Hall said. “You pick up an object and you’re transported, you put it down and you’re back here. There’s another reality that’s taking place.”
