The Pico House was completed in 1870 by architect Ezra Kysor for Don Pío de Jesús Pico, the last Mexican Governor of California, who sold his San Fernando Valley ranchland at age 68 to fund what would become the most luxurious hotel south of San Francisco. Born at Mission San Gabriel with mixed Spanish, African, and Native American ancestry, Pico envisioned this grand establishment as his entry into the rapidly Americanizing Los Angeles, just before the railroad's arrival would transform the former Mexican pueblo forever.
Kysor designed the city's first three-story building in the Italianate Victorian style, constructing it from brick with ornate cast-iron decorative elements and Romanesque-influenced deep-set rounded arched windows. The structure housed 82 bedrooms, 21 parlors, a billiard room, and remarkably for the era, two bathrooms with running water, gaslit interiors, a French restaurant, and an exotic bird aviary in the courtyard. An inner carriage house and open-air roof terrace completed the $85,000 structure, equivalent to over $2 million today.
