FOR AN INTRODUCTION TO WINDSOR SQUARE, CLICK HERE

South Arden Boulevard
600 block




601 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 22 less westerly 65'
  • Built in 1950; BPs for house and garage issued 6-15-1950
  • Original commissioner: trucking executive Edgar Morgan Stanley
  • Contractor: Wesley N. Taylor & Associates Inc.







604 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; the northerly 50' of the westerly 130.09' of Lot 11
  • Built in 1937; BPs for house and garage issued 8-26-1937
  • Original commissioner: Surety Building & Finance Company for resale
  • Architect: W. George Lutzi
  • Contractor: Surety Building & Finance Company
  • 604 and 606 South Arden Boulevard and 4618 West Sixth Street were on lots subdivided from the original Lot 11, apparently a corner not previously built upon







606 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; the southerly 50.05' of the westerly 130.09' of Lot 11
  • Built in 1937; BP for house and attached garage issued 8-26-1937
  • Original commissioner: Surety Building & Finance Company for resale
  • Architect: W. George Lutzi
  • Contractor: Surety Building & Finance Company
  • 604 and 606 South Arden Boulevard and 4618 West Sixth Street were on lots subdivided from the original Lot 11, apparently a corner not previously built upon







615 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 21
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 3-13-1922
  • Original commissioner: builder John N. Straub as, temporarily, his own home
  • Architect: Daniel C. Messinger
  • Contractor: John N. Straub


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on 7-20-1924







616 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 12
  • Built in 1921; BPs for house and garage issued 10-4-1921
  • Original commissioner: builder John N. Straub for resale
  • Architect: Daniel C. Messinger
  • Contractor: John N. Straub
  • Furniture merchant Edward W. Goodan was the first owner; he added a porch to the rear of the house, with Straub acting as contractor, in 1923 (BP issued 10-22-1923)







623 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 20
  • Built in 1922; BP for garage issued 4-22-1922; for house 5-3-1922
  • Original commissioner: Florence Emden, wife of merchandise broker Victor C. Emden
  • Architect and contractor: listed on both original BPs as "same" to indicate Mrs. Emden; both BPs, however, were signed by building contractor I. Charles Richards
  • Two bedrooms were added to the rear of the house in 1924; BP issued to "Mr. and Mrs. Emden" on 10-22-1924. Architect: S. Charles Lee; contractor: Peter Caron
  • A bay window was added to west side of house in 1925; BP issued to Victor C. Emden on 5-6-1925. No architect indicated; contractor: Harry Burleigh


A view in recent years with landscaping cleared away while the house was undergoing renovations
reveals more architectural detail; the curious Churrigueresque entrance and upper window
treatment suggest that S. Charles Lee, the architect recently arrived in Los Angeles
who would go on to design many elaborate movie theaters, and who added
rooms to 623 South Arden two years after its first building permits
were issued, may have had more of a hand in the design
of the house than records reveal.







624 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 13
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 3-9-1920
  • Original commissioner: builder John N. Straub for resale
  • Architect: Daniel C. Messinger
  • Contractor: John N. Straub
  • Straub, with Messinger, added a conservatory prior to first sale; BP issued 3-29-1920
  • Sale of 624 by Straub to William Lee Karnes reported in the Los Angeles Times on 11-27-1921


John N. Straub, who would build 615 and 616 South Arden as well as 624, marketed the latter through
the Frank Meline Company, which ran this display advertisement in the Los Angeles Times
on 6-26-1921. The paper reported the house sold five months later.







631 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 19 and northerly 10' of Lot 18
  • Built in 1922; BP for garage issued 10-9-1922; for house 10-10-1922
  • Original commissioner: Dolores Rivierre Caples for resale
  • Architect: Anne Coble Scott
  • Contractor: Dolores Rivierre Caples
  • Dolores Rivierre Caples was the daughter of the crafty if resourceful Nellie Patterson Rivierre Higgins, who had become a builder in Los Angeles after a very messy marital career. A week after their marriage in Brooklyn in 1896, she presented her husband Emile Rivierre, apparently a champion bicyclist, with her apparently illegitimate daughter—Dolores—whom he accepted at first. With press reports painting Nellie as an unreliable wife, there was a divorce. She married William Bentley Higgins in Washington State in 1906, divorcing him after his apparent incarceration at San Quentin on a 1919 forgery conviction. Dolores was by this time at odds with her husband Joseph A. Caples, the already-once-divorced son of a former mayor of El Paso. Living in Long Beach, they divorced in January 1921, she putting her settlement into property development. However Nellie and Dolores came by their capital, mother and daughter turned from developing small residential properties to building more ambitious ones. After building 631 South Arden Boulevard, Dolores turned to a project at 334 Muirfield Road in Hancock Park in 1923
  • Removing almost any exterior trace of the original design was a large southerly second-floor addition made in 2002; BP issued 7-8-2002


A 1968 aerial view to the northwest reveals 631 South Arden Boulevard, at center of the view just above
the parking lot, in its original configuration. The lot replaced 639 South Arden, demolished in 1954.







632 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 14
  • Built in 1937; BPs for house and garage issued 11-20-1936
  • Original commissioners: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Shonk; he was an electrical engineer
  • Architect: Richard M. Bates Jr.
  • Contractors: William H. Shonk
  • William H. Shonk died in the house on 12-16-1950






639 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; southerly 85' of Lot 18
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 7-6-1922
  • Original commissioner: Anna M. Calhoun, wife of tile merchant John C. Calhoun
  • Contractor: Walter F. Leiner
  • Demolished for a parking lot 1954; demolition BP issued 2-23-1954 (same day as 645)
  • No full image of 639 South Arden has been found as of yet; the sliver of it seen at far left sits just south of 631 in a circa-1929 view of a banner being hung on a newly installed Wilshire Boulevard streetlamp






640 South Arden Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 15
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 11-25-1919
  • Original commissioner: Kathryn V. Barclay, wife of real estate investor Wallace Ward Barclay; apparently for resale
  • Architect: Calvin S. Albright
  • Contractor: Hollywood Construction Company, of which Albright was manager
  • The original BPs indicate that the exterior walls and interior construction of the house are of hollow tile; the garage exterior walls are of the same material






4451 Wilshire Boulevard


  • Wilshire Heights Tract 1476 addition to Windsor Square; Lot 17
  • Built in 1913 at 635 South Western Avenue on a parcel comprised of Lot 3 and the southerly three feet of Lot 4 in Block H of the Westminster Place Tract; BP issued 6-6-1913
  • Original commissioner: Althouse Brothers, developers, for resale; Althouse Brothers listed as architect and contractor on BP
  • Acquired by its third owners, Superior Court Judge Charles S. Crail and his wife Bernice and their three children, by 1920
  • Relocated by the Crails from Western Avenue to the northwest corner of Wilshire and Arden boulevards in 1922 for continued use as his own home; relocation permit issued 12-24-1921. While the address of the new lot was at first 645 South Arden Boulevard, and Wilshire Heights deeds stipulated that houses themselves must be oriented to the side street, the Crails were permitted to adopt the address of 4451 Wilshire Boulevard
  • Judge Crail died in 1939, Mrs. Crail in 1945; afterward, the property appears to have been used as a school
  • Demolished in 1954; BP issued 2-23-1954 (same day as 639 South Arden)
  • The image above appeared in the Los Angeles Times on November 18, 1917, at the time of the house's sale to film star Margery Wilson. The house is seen at center of the image below taken after its move. A diagonal walkway leads to it from the northwest corner of Wilshire and Arden; the garage was entered from Wilshire
  • FOR A COMPLETE HISTORY, PLEASE SEE 4451 Wilshire Boulevard








Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; LAPL; USCDL