When E.P. Janes was the P. T. Barnum of L.A. Real Estate
In this article for Atlas Obscura, I tell the story of E. P. Janes, a fast-talking huckster whose Coldswold-inspired cottages in Altadena, CA, are as charming now as they were in the early 1920s–as implied by the title, “Many Houses in LA Were Part of a Scam by A Con Artist Who Disappeared…Yet the Homes are Still in High Demand.” I’ve spent several years tracing the catch-me-if-you-can escapades of Elisha Paul Janes, the youngest of the five siblings whose remarkable story I am chronicling in a forthcoming book. His oldest sister was the novelist Elizabeth Dejeans (see my post “Do…
