By Fame Rybicki (Daughter of Giles E. and Evelyn Ratkowski)

Fremont Avenue, south of Valley Blvd. was undeveloped and overgrown with weeds in 1926, when my sister, Modest Ratkowski Schwartz and I enrolled at Fremont School. Each morning, our mother stood at the corner of Fremont and Valley and watched us walk the four blocks to school. When the weeds stopped moving, my mom knew we had reached school.

My parents, Giles E. and Evelyn Ratkowski bought the Chinese house at the northeast corner of Fremont and Valley in 1926. The 15-room house was built in 1906 by an engineer, Antonio Cajal, after he returned from Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. He brought a collection of sketches with him to authentically copy the construction of a Chinese temple--lion's heads, serpents, and curved Oriental eaves. He sold the house in 1915 to Harry and Ada Bran. Mr. Bran died the following year and the house was then purchased by three sisters, Annie and Daisy Patterson and Mary Patterson Knight, an Alhambra school district teacher.

The University of Southern California listed the house on its architectural tour list for many years and the Resources Agency of the State of California's Department of Parks and Recreation included the house in its "Historic Resources Inventory."

Originally, Fremont was named Fair Oaks Avenue and then it was renamed Monterey Pass Road in 1914, and finally Fremont Avenue. Valley Boulevard also was renamed a number of times. At first, it was El Monte Road; then Ocean-to-Ocean Highway in 1913; then renamed San Bernardino Road, and finally, Valley Boulevard in 1923.

When the City of Alhambra widened Valley Boulevard in 1927, Mr. Ratkowski removed 16 palm trees, 20 acacia trees, six avocado trees, and rows of orange trees from the double lot surrounding the house. He had been a civil engineer who designed and constructed bridges and railroads during World War I, and his father had been a contractor in Chicago who built churches and schools. So, he put his construction knowledge to work by building a gasoline service station at the corner and Alhambra's first mini-mart.

In the late 1930s, he became president of Alhambra Moulding Company, and he served on Alhambra's Planning Commission for 25 years.

The house was badly damaged during the 1987 Whittier earthquake and was demolished the following year. The family sold the property for commercial use in 1998.