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South Plymouth Boulevard
300 block



303 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 70.1' of Lot 1
  • Built in 1937; BP for house and attached garage issued 5-11-1937
  • Original commissioner: real estate developer Paul L. Corrigan as his own home
  • Architect: Herbert G. Reisenberg
  • Contractor: Pell Construction Company 







304 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 46 and northerly 10' of Lot 45
  • Built in 1949; BP for house and attached garage issued 4-11-1949
  • Original commissioner: Coachella Valley grape farmer Harry Carian Sr.
  • Architect: Yandell W. Nibecker
  • Contractor: Harry Carian Sr.







309 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 50' of Lot 2 and southerly 20' of Lot 1
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 7-28-1922
  • Original commissioner: Mabel C. Chappellet, widow of oilman Felix Chappellet Sr., then living at 2525 Wilshire Boulevard
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor
  • The youngest Chappellet son, Henry, married the niece of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. on Valentine's Day 1935
  • Felix Chappellet Jr. had been engaged to screen actress Genevieve Tobin but instead married girl-down-the-street Helen Bullock Fewel, divorced daughter of department-store executive John G. Bullock; the wedding took place on 4-19-1935 at Mrs. Fewel's childhood home that had been from Ardmore Avenue to 605 South Plymouth in 1925. (Staying with old Los Angeles merchant stock, Mr. Chappellet later married the former Annabelle Ralphs, daughter of grocery-store executive George A. Ralphs)
  • Mabel Chappellet remained at 309 as late as 1969, and perhaps was there at the time of her death on 7-7-1972







314 South Plymouth Boulevard
  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 90' of Lot 45 and northerly 10' of Lot 44
  • Built in 1920; BP for garage issued 12-4-1919; for house 12-27-1919
  • Original commissioner: Jerome L. Hirsch
  • Architect and contractor: Henry L. Wilson
  • Hirsch appears to have built 314 as a speculative project, possibly selling it to another party for further resale


The completed house was offered in newspaper display advertisements appearing during
the summer of 1922; the one above ran in the Los Angeles Times on 6-14-1922.

315 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 50' of Lot 2 and northerly 25' of Lot 3
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 6-27-1922
  • Original commissioner: Arthur C. Davis, a salesman for the S. M. Cooper Company, builder of 315 as a speculative project
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor






322 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 90' of Lot 44
  • Built in 1920; BP for house issued 8-11-1920; for garage 9-22-20
  • Original commissioner: Leona Marshall, wife of tire dealer Walter P. Marshall; the Marshalls rented 426 South Lucerne around the corner while awaiting completion of 322
  • Architect and contractor: Arthur R. Kelly
  • The Marshalls left 322 for Pasadena by 1924 and were divorced within a few years







325 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 75' of Lot 3 and northerly 10' of Lot 4
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 12-13-1919
  • Original commissioner: Leona H. Tyler, wife of J. Garnett Tyler, manager of the S. M. Cooper Company, builders; it appears to have been the practice of S. M. Cooper to sometimes apply for building permits for its spec projects in the names of employees or, it seems, their wives; Mr. Tyler was listed in both the residential and business sections of the 1922 Los Angeles city directory at 325 South Plymouth, apparently awaiting resale, as advertised prominently that year
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor
  • Thomas J. Washburn had moved from the house he built in 1911 at what is now 2203 South Harvard Boulevard—later the home of actress Hattie McDaniel—to the Cooper-built house at 422 South Alexandria Avenue by 1917; by 1923, he was at 325 South Plymouth. On 4-22-1924, Washburn was issued a BP to add extend the roof over the second-floor front balcony, thus altering the house's original appearance; William R. Phelps, rather than Cooper, was the contractor for the remodeling
  • On 10-25-1937, while living at 325, banker Lloyd M. MacDonald either jumped or fell from the 11th story of the Wilshire Professional Building; he died two days later
  • Acquired by real estate investor Albert Dippell, apparently as a project to flip; Dippell was issued a BP for further façade renovations including new windows and the replacement of the 1924 porch redesign with a two-story-column arrangement. Dippell then marketed the house in March 1941 as a "smart-modern-correct" Southern Colonial residence
  • House purchased in 1941 by oil operator William De Witt Waltman, who would die there on 2-14-1955


Large display advertisements in the Los Angeles Times during April 1922 offer a view of the original
façade of 325, one more in the Mediterranean tradition of many Windsor Square houses; the
odd attempt to transform it into a Colonial style popular around 1940 might be best
characterized as a lesson in understanding when to leave well enough alone.







332 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 43
  • Built in 1920; BP issued 11-18-1919. Combined garage, laundry, tool room, and chauffeur's quarters not built until 1929; BP issued 8-1-1929
  • Original commissioner: securities dealer Edgar S. Dulin
  • Architect and contractor of house: Meyer & Holler (Mendel Meyer and Philip W. Holler), a.k.a. the Milwaukee Building Company
  • Architect of garage building: Lester H. Hibbard, a principal with Forrest Q. Stanton and Harold E. Reed in the contracting firm of Stanton, Reed & Hibbard
  • Noting the popularity of a recently introduced board game, the Los Angeles Times reported on 4-19-1936 that "Miss Marjorie Dulin, debutante daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Dulin, entertained with a luncheon at the home of her parents, 332 South Plymouth Boulevard, Wednesday afternoon. Bridge and Monopoly furnished entertainment."


A rendering of Meyer & Holler's proposal for 332 South Plymouth Boulevard was
featured in the Los Angeles Times real estate section on 10-5-1919. 







333 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 75' of northerly 85' of Lot 4
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 1-20-1920
  • Original commissioner: Augusta Blaine Nelson, widow of Illinois politician Theodore Nelson. Mrs. Nelson died at 333 South Plymouth on 1-14-1928. Her daughter, Mary Lina Nelson, remained living in the house until at least 1952, after which she moved to Park La Brea; 333 was then for many years the home of Dr. Octavio S. Servin
  • Architect: Frederick J. Soper
  • Contractor: Glenn O. Winget
  • The house in its original condition was pictured in the trade journal Architecture in February 1922, along with a lengthy description by Charles Alma Byers:

    The English-style house is coming into much favor in this country, and, if well handled architecturally, it always makes a very attractive home. The little house of this style illustrated herewith is of exceptionally excellent design, both as to outside structural lines and in respect to interior planning. The roof, characterized by a steep pitch and a graceful sweep of long lines, is especially full of character, and the manner in which the front window bay is extended upward from the ground to the full height of the second story, to help provide room for the semi-winding staircase, lends particular charm to the front. Other delightful and enhancing features of the exterior are the open vestibule-like entrance porch on the front, the porte-cochère that provides complete protection to a side vestibuled entrance, and the two cement-paved terraces—one on a front corner and accessible from the living room, and the other on a corner in the rear and accessible, through either French doors or windows, from both the living-room and dining-room.
    The house is mainly of frame construction, with the outside walls finished with light buff cement-stucco. Bright-red brickwork, however, is liberally represented about the entrance and in facing the front walls. The roof is of wood shingles, painted green, and all wood trimming is done in dark brown.
    The arrangement of the interior will be observed from the the accompanying floor plans. Particular notice should be taken of the large living room, which reaches entirely across the front, and of the manner in which the staircase arises therefrom. The dining-room, it will be seen, is set sort of diagonally in the plan, and French doors connect it both with the [living]-room and with a little breakfast-room, as well as with the rear terrace. On the first floor is, in addition to the other usual divisions, a conveniently located maid's room, with bath, and on the second floor are three bedrooms and two bath.
    The closets and built-in features indicated in the plans particularly deserve notice. The closets, for instance, include a closet for wraps off one corner of the living room, a broom-closet on the kitchen-entry porch, a little storage closet in the kitchen, a clothes-closet for each of the bedrooms and for the maid's room, a large storage off one of the bedrooms, a large closet in the upstairs hall, and a linen-closet in each of the second-floor bathrooms and in the hall. The built-in features consist of china cupboards in the dining-room and breakfast-room, excellent cupboards and other customary conveniences in the kitchen and pantry, and a medicine-case in each of the three bathrooms.
    The interior woodwork consists of pine, finished in old ivory style, with mahogany trim, in the living-room and dining-room, and of pine alone, finished in either old ivory or white enamel, in all remaining divisions. The plastered walls of the living-room are given a hard finish and painted in oil, with stencilled decoration, and in the dining-room, breakfast-room, maid's room and the bedrooms they are papered. Hardwood floors prevail throughout, except in the bathrooms, kitchen and kitchen-entry porch. The two second-floor bathrooms have tile floors, and their walls are finished with a four-foot tile wainscot.
    The house has a large basement, reached by a stairway off he dining-room, and off the pantry there is a back stairway to the second floor. The equipment includes a furnace and all other modern conveniences....



As seen in the trade journal Architecture, February 1922,
before 21st-century enlargements and without the Victorianesque
turret topper; the house's original floor plans are seen below.







340 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 90' of Lot 42
  • Built in 1926; BP for house issued 6-2-1926; for garage 7-22-1926
  • Original commissioner: automobile dealer Myron C. Albertson
  • Architect and contractor: Arthur R. Kelly
  • Albertson was still living at 340 when he died on 12-26-1945







343 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 75' of Lot 5 and southerly 15' of Lot 4
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 3-16-1922
  • Original commissioner: law printer and publisher Charles H. Stone
  • Architect and contractor: The Frank Meline Company
  • The garage was replaced with a garage–recreation room in 1996; BP issued 9-4-1996
  • Among 1990s alterations to the house was a rear second-floor addition in 2005; BP issued 2-24-2005


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on 3-5-1922







354 South Plymouth Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 41 and southerly 10' of Lot 42
  • Built in 1919; BPs for house and garage issued 5-1-1919
  • Original commissioner: mortgage banker Lynn W. Denison
  • Architect: Frederick J. Soper
  • Contractor: Frank L. Meline
  • After his wife, Adelaide, died on 2-22-1951, Lynn Denison sold the house






355 South Plymouth Boulevard

  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 6 and southerly 25' of Lot 5
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 8-10-1922
  • Original commissioner: Harry C. Keefe, oil operator and promoter of the recent innovation of four-wheel hydraulic brakes for automobiles
  • Architect and contractor: The Preston S. Wright Company
  • Keefe was moving from the house he had built in 1918 at 629 South Lucerne Boulevard using the S. M. Cooper Company as architect and contractor; between houses, he lived at the Bryson Apartments
  • Keefe moved out of 355 by 1930; the house was then rented by oil operator Walter B. Pyron
  • By 1932, 355 had become the home of attorney and banker Charles E. Donnelly and his wife, née Margaret Dorcas Metcalf; she had lived at one time with her uncle and aunt, George and Elizabeth Bishop, in a house they had moved to 332 Lorraine Boulevard from South Manhattan Place
  • Donnelly expanded the original eight-room house in 1933 by adding two bedrooms and two bathrooms (BP issued 3-6-1933). In 1941, he enlarged the garage (BP issued 6-30-1941). In 1946, along with further expansion, he added a fireplace at the rear of the house (BP issued 2-15-1946)
  • In 1960, the Donnellys turned 355 over to their daughter, Peggy, and her husband, attorney Ellsworth H. Kendig; the Kendigs had been married in the garden of 355 on 4-27-1946. On the brink of a decade of serious demographic changes in central Los Angeles, they were making an unusual eastward move from the Westside. The house was prepared to accommodate their four children by expanding an upstairs bedroom (BP issued 6-9-1960). Mrs. Kendig was elected president of the Junior League in 1962; 355 seemed set to continue as an exemplar of upper-middle-class domesticity. The family remained at 355 for about a decade before the Kendigs divorced in 1971


A view of 355 South Plymouth Boulevard in 1926, before expansion and before front yards were
commonly paved over to accommodate automobiles that were once confined to the rear of
houses along with garages. Seen in the distance is one of the utility poles along
the rear lot lines of west-side Plymouth Boulevard properties between
Tracts 1390 and 1476. The power lines remains today; another
clue to the tract transition is that the original concrete
streets of easterly Tract 1390, opened in 1911,
meet the asphalt of the later Tract 1476.







Illustrations: Private Collection; CDNC; LAT; USCDL; Architecture