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South Lucerne Boulevard
300 block



300 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 64
  • Built in 1921; BP for house issued 5-17-1921; for garage 5-9-1921
  • Original commissioner, architect, and contractor: the firm of Stanton, Reed & Hibbard (Forrest Q. Stanton, Harold E. Reed, and Lester H. Hibbard), for resale
  • Immediately sold to insurance executive Arden L. Day
  • In 1928, Day hired Lester H. Hibbard of Stanton Reed & Hibbard to add two bedrooms and a bath (BP issued 4-18-1928)
  • Arden L. Day was still living at 300 South Lucerne when he died on 1-9-1962; his wife, Ruth P. Day, remained in the house until 1967






301 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 33
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 12-1-1922
  • Original commissioner: hotelier William Fischer
  • Architect: none indicated on BPs
  • Contractor: Noldow F. Stokes, who also built the very similar 317 South Lucerne two doors south
  • For unknown reasons, Fischer and his wife's stay was brief; their furnishings were auctioned off in the fall of 1923 and the house sold the next year to real estate developer Arthur S. Koyer and his wife Martha
  • Koyer died at 301 on 11-1-1940; Mrs. Koyer's brother, Julien K. Mitchell, died at 301 on 12-1-1958. Still living in the house, Martha Koyer died in Los Angeles on 9-20-1962


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on 11-14-1923






310 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 63
  • Built in 1919; the current 310 was apparently originally addressed 316 South Lucerne; BPs misidentifying the building lot as #62 were issued under the address 316 for house and garage on 9-29-1919 (see the BPs for the current 316 South Lucerne below)
  • Original commissioner: Robert L. Rayner, with either the intention of moving from 540 South Lucerne—not exercised—or as an investment
  • Apparently renumbered 310 when the dwelling on Lot 62 was built, the house, in the first of several of flips, passed from Rayner to hydraulic engineer Charles R. Rockwood ("The Father of the Imperial Valley") to real estate investor Kate H. Babcock (Los Angeles Times, 3-13-1921); on 3-12-1922, the Times reported that Babcock had recently sold 310 to Alice Cline Guthrie, wife of attorney Stanley W. Guthrie
  • The Guthries remained at 310 until 1927, when they moved to Beverly Hills. It seems that the Guthries may have retained ownership; stockbroker Lewis C. Babcock, whose relationship to Kate H. Babcock, if any, is unknown, was renting the house by the spring of 1930 and may have later purchased it
  • Attorney Bates Booth was the owner by 1942
  • Acquired by Jerome Ferreri, a businessman—of a sort—after the war. While many people have died of natural causes in Windsor Square houses, in one of the few grisly murders to ruffle the leafy district, Ferreri's wife, Betty, used a meat cleaver to finish him off with 23 blows in the butler's pantry of 310—after an accomplice's gunshots failed to do the job—on 10-26-1948. Ferreri is described in voluminous press coverage as a playboy and domestic abuser, she as the "carhop widow" and "ax-widow"; the definitive tale of the Ferreris is here
  • While it is debatable as to whether it was another crime (this one of an architectural variety), the Ferreris applied the present stone veneer to the façade of 310 in 1947 (BP issued 10-23-1947)
  • After her acquittal on March 19, 1949, and her remarriage six months later to a nightclub headwaiter, Betty Ferreri lost 310 to the bank in March 1950
  • 310 South Arden was soon sold to Dr. and Mrs. Norman L. Cardey. Dr. Cardey was still living in the house when he died in Los Angeles on 4-17-1987


Enhanced here, this image of 310 South Lucerne appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 10-28-1948,
two days after a modern-day Lizzie Borden finished off her husband in the butler's pantry. Among
his considerable provocations, including physical abuse, was his suggestion that she support
him by turning tricks. It being she who provided the funds to buy a house in a
neighborhood unused to such behavior, his mother-in-law's name was on
the deed. Her daughter's carhop tips may have provided the cash
for the stone veneer that had only just been added.






311 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 34
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 3-28-1922
  • Original commissioner: Florene S. Simmons, wife of necktie manufacturer Leo M. Simmons
  • Architect and contractor: Charles D. Wagner
  • The Simmonses remained at 311 until 1949, when they sold it to stockbroker J. Derry Kerr; Mrs. Kerr, née Maud Elswood Chaffey, lived as a child with her grandfather, engineer and land developer George B. Chaffey, at 3644 Wilshire Boulevard
  • Derry Kerr was still listed at 311 in the Los Angeles city directory issued in July 1987; Ellswood Kerr died on 11-16-1991; Derry Kerr died in La Jolla on 2-17-1995






316 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 62
  • Built in 1921; BP for house issued 11-19-1920; for garage 11-10-1920
  • Original commissioner: automobile battery dealer Earle B. Dunning
  • Sold in 1924 to interior decorator Gustav W. Placzek
  • Placzek made interior alterations to 316 in 1927; in 1935, he relocated the main staircase and added the bay window currently on the façade to the right of the front door (BP issued 5-27-1935)
  • Still living at 316, Placzek died in Los Angeles on 3-22-1951
  • Placzek's wife, Anne Dopkins Placzek, was still living at 316 when she died in Los Angeles on 8-30-1967






317 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 35
  • Built in 1921; BPs for house and garage issued 10-25-1920
  • Original commissioner: Minnie Stokes, wife of contractor Naldow F. Stokes, for resale
  • Architect: none indicated on BPs
  • Contractor: Naldow F. Stokes, who also built the very similar 301 South Lucerne two doors north
  • Sold upon completion to retired dry-goods merchant Willard A. Robertson
  • Still living at 317, Robertson died in Los Angeles on 3-28-1947. Mrs. Robertson left soon after; the house was on the market by March 1948






322 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 61
  • Built in 1923; BPs for house and garage issued 8-3-1923
  • Original commissioner: Isaiah F. Norton, of the venerable Los Angeles family and its clothing firm Klein-Norton
  • Architect and contractor: Kenneth Albright
  • Norton remained at 322 until the mid 1940s; Dr. Isaac Y. Olch, a cancer surgeon, was the next owner. Olch was still at 322 as late as 1980
  • Isaiah F. Norton's sister Mamie was married to Henry Klein, who was a partner with Norton and other family members in Klein-Norton; architect Albright would be building the Kleins' Mediterranean house nearby right after the Nortons'. The full story of the extended family is in the history of 125 Fremont Place






325 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 36
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 8-21-1922
  • Original commissioner: contractor George Taylor, on spec; no architect specified on BPs
  • Sold to building supplies dealer Mark P. Cane in 1923
  • Sold to businessman Girard Battelle and his wife Ida by early 1927; separated by 1937, Mrs. Battelle remained at 325. Still in possession of 325, she died in Los Angeles on 4-7-1942
  • Mrs. Battelle's son from a previous marriage, Peter Rosenfeld, was living at 325 in 1942; he moved out within a few years and his sister, child psychoanalyst Marjorie R. Leonard, moved in with her husband, music dealer P. Alfred Leonard. According to her 1992 obituary in The Boston Globe, in addition to her pioneering work—she was known for advocating stressing individual identities for twins, the Leonards having an identical set themselves—she had helped her husband, trained as an attorney, escape Nazi Germany in 1933
  • The Leonards left 325 South Lucerne after 1948 and were living in the Hollywood Hills by late 1950






332 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 60
  • Built in 1920; BP for garage issued 9-2-1920; for house 9-30-1920
  • Original commissioner: contractor Forrest Q. Stanton as his own home
  • Architect and contractor: Stanton, Reed & Hibbard
  • As did a number of Los Angeles builders, Stanton tended to move from project to project; a few years before, he had been living at the house he had built nearby at 427 South Arden Boulevard in 1915
  • Stanton, moving on to a new project in Flintridge, sold 332 to insurance man Clarence H. Smith, who remained in residence until at least the mid-1940s; the house was on the market in late 1949 and early 1950
  • Hugh Abernathy acquired the house in 1950, followed by Dickinson Ross by 1956






333 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 37
  • Built in 1923; BPs for house and garage issued 11-13-1922
  • Original commissioner: contractor George Taylor, on spec; no architect specified on BPs
  • Sold to Herman W. Frank in 1923; Frank was president of the venerable Los Angeles men's clothier Harris & Frank, the antecedent of which was founded on the Plaza in 1856 by Mrs. Frank's father, Leopold Harris
  • Sarah Harris Frank died at 333 South Lucerne on 9-15-1933
  • Herman W. Harris sold 333 to Dr. Samuel M. Alter in 1937
  • Dr. Alter, an internist, died at 333 South Lucerne on 4-6-1970






340 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 59
  • Built in 1920; BP for house issued 1-3-1920; for garage 2-4-1920
  • Original commissioner: Dr. James D. McCoy, an orthodontist
  • Architect and contractor: Arthur R. Kelly
  • McCoy, whose grandfather, father, and brother were also dentists, is credited in his 1965 Times obituary with being the first practitioner in Los Angeles to use X-rays in his work, circa 1908
  • In early 1944, McCoy sold 340 South Lucerne to Anne Elizabeth Wellborn Schieffelin, the divorced granddaughter of prominent Los Angeles drug distributor Lucien N. Brunswig; she remained at 340 until 1960. (She died in Los Angeles in 2011, age 106) 






345 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 38
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued for the original address of 341 South Lucerne Boulevard on 8-27-1920
  • Original commissioner: builder Harry H. Belden for resale
  • Architect and contractor: none listed on BPs; presumably the work of employees of Belden's development organization
  • Sold to advertising executive Joseph Walworth Sutphen in 1921
  • Sutphen died at 345 after a heart attack on 3-1-1933
  • Sutphen's widow, Georgie Babcock Sutphen, retained 345 South Lucerne until her death in Los Angeles on 9-13-1976






346 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 58
  • Built in 1919; BP for house issued 8-20-1919; for garage 7-29-1919
  • Original commissioner: building contractor W. Lloyd Morrow, as his own home
  • Architect: Frederick J. Soper
  • Contractor: W. Lloyd Morrow
  • During Morrow's short tenure at 346—he would move his family to a new project at 200 South Lorraine Boulevard by 1924—there would be a robbery, no less unusual in expensive, newly developed Los Angeles neighborhoods in the 1920s than today. On 10-25-1920, a Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Bandits Get $10,000 Loot in Mansion", reported that "While the family of W. L. Morrow was absent from the pretentious [then not a pejorative] family home...daring thieves...looted the place of pearls...diamonds, emeralds, turquoise, [and] rubies...."
  • 346 became the home of Mrs. Odell W. McConnell and her son, Harvard-trained attorney Odell S. McConnell, in 1928
  • Mrs. McConnell made several interior alterations in the 1930s, including the addition of a bedroom and bath in 1940 (BP issued 11-27-1939)
  • Except for two war years (1943-1945) when Mrs. McConnell closed the house, presumably as a wartime economy, and lived at the Town House with Junior, she remained at 346 until her death there on 9-18-1949
  • Before long, Odell, who never married, sold 346 and bought 454 South Windsor Boulevard, to which he moved in 1952 (he died there 40 years later)
  • After at least three interim owners, actor John Malkovich bought 346 in 1991. It was he who altered the character of the house from a classic Spanish style to something a little more southerly; among many interior changes in concert, Malkovich added a Moroccan second-story addition to the façade, one with a tower on top
  • In January 1999, Malkovich sold the house to actress Elizabeth Perkins, who remained until August 2006




Frederick Soper's design of 346 South Lucerne Boulevard, seen in
the 11-25-1921 issue of the trade journal Southwest Builder and Contractor,
was transformed into a Moroccan fantasy by actor John Malkovich in 1992. Unlike
some other original Windsor Square houses whose remodelings were less than
successful, that of 346 might be seen as mitigating the loss of an original.





Renderings of 346 South Lucerne since its 1992
makeover reveal that the addition of a Moroccan tower did
not obliterate the house's Spanish roots; the original 1919 design
remains evident at the northwest corner of the house, as seen here.
The hybrid can be seen as a pleasant departure from the usual
Southern California Mediterranean styles of the 1920s.








347 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 39
  • Built in 1921; BPs for house and garage issued 10-7-1920
  • Original commissioner: August C. Goodsight
  • Architect: Krucker & Deckbar (Frank G. Krucker and Henry C. Deckbar)
  • Contractor: August C. Goodsight
  • Goodsight, apparently a real estate investor, had been issued permits to build 411 South Norton Avenue—employing Krucker & Deckbar—as his own home two weeks before being issued BPs for 347 South Lucerne. It is unknown as to whether he planned to move into 347; in any event, he shot himself in the head in the garage of the Norton Avenue house in August 1921, apparently despondent over ill health
  • 347 South Lucerne was sold to oil operator John E. Elliott in 1924; by 7-4-1929, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that his wife, Lillian, was suing him for divorce, citing his habit of going on "gay yachting parties" without her. She had also found love letters in his pockets. He countered that domestic life no longer intrigued him and that he preferred women who were "merry and gay at all times." Lillian Elliott became a stalwart of the nearby Ebell Club and remained at 347 until 1962






354 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 57
  • Built in 1920; BP for house issued 10-18-1919; for garage 11-12-1919
  • Original commissioner: banker Trigg Garner
  • Architect and contractor: Arthur R. Kelly
  • Trigg Garner was first vice president of the Los Angeles Morris Plan, the local branch of a nationwide organization of financial institutions offering installment credit and affordable loans to industrial workers and the middle class. (Industrialist William Lacy was president of the Los Angeles Morris Plan; in 1906 he had built 3200 Wilshire Boulevard, which was moved in 1924 by department-store executive John G. Bullock to a lot at 627 South Plymouth around the corner from 354 South Arden)
  • Garner added a "conservatory porch" in 1924 (BP issued 10-1-1924)
  • Garner died at 354 South Arden on 3-16-1930
  • The house was sold in 1932 to attorney Denis H. Grady; his daughter Sally moved into 354 after World War II with her husband Paul Crawley. The Crawleys added a second-floor bath and dressing room at the northeast corner in 1964 (6-16-1964); they remained in the house into the 1970s
  • 354 South Lucerne Boulevard sold for $6,600,000 in November 2023




As seen in a brickworks advertisement in the Los Angeles Times on
6-12-1921 and in a contemporaneous issue of The Architectural Digest,
the original trellised façade and subtler entrance portico are evident.







355 South Lucerne Boulevard


  • Tract 2136 addition to Windsor Square; easterly 110' of Lot 40
  • Built in 1964 
  • Replaced a house moved to the lot in 1922 from 615 South Western Avenue by mattress and furniture manufacturer Charles B. Van Vorst, who built it circa 1912; he died in the original 355 on 5-29-1926. According to the demolition BP issued 3-15-1963, the house was acquired by automobile dealer Joseph E. Coberly Jr.; while he removed the house from Lot 40, it was his first cousin William B. Coberly Jr. who would move into the westerly of two houses that replaced it (see 4857 West Fourth Street)
  • The new 355 was heavily remodeled mid 2010s







Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; The Architectural Digest;
Southwest Builder and Contractor