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South Irving Boulevard
300 block



301 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 85.1' of Lot 139
  • Built in 1920 at 300 South Manhattan Place; BP for house issued 7-9-1920; for garage 7-7-1920
  • Original commissioner: Eleanor Tuttle Jamieson, wife of builder, contractor, and real estate investor Andrew Jamieson
  • Architect: Frank M. Tyler
  • House and garage moved to 301 South Irving in 1923 by banker Stephen W. Reddin for use as his own home; relocation BP for house issued 2-23-1923 (corrected 2-26-1923); for garage 2-23-1923; Kress House Moving Company in charge
  • Stephen W. Reddin died at 301 South Irving on 1-3-1928






302 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 184
  • Built circa 1912 at 580 South Western Avenue (later renumbered 550)
  • House and garage moved to 306 South Irving (lot subsequently renumbered 302) in 1925 by the Kress House Moving Company, which had acquired them for resale; company secretary Juel C. Coleman signed the relocation BPs issued 2-26-1925
  • Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Germain celebrated their 50th anniversary with a party at 302 on 9-26-1933. Mr. Germain was a wholesale produce dealer credited in his obituary with being among the first to ship Southern California oranges to eastern markets (he in 1883). Germain later became a wholesale liquor dealer, turning to lumber and then insurance brokerage during Prohibition. He died in Los Angeles on 11-2-1933. (His brother Eugene founded the famous Germain seed company in Los Angeles in 1871)


Los Angeles Times, 2-25-1926






310 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 75' of Lot 183
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 9-22-1920
  • Original commissioner: investor John B. Burton for resale
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor
  • Andrew H. Pepall, president of the Long Beach Glass Company, was living at 310 by 1924; on 1-24-1925, he was arrested at 310 in connection with embezzlement of funds while he was a financial officer of the Province of Ontario, from which he had moved to Los Angeles in 1921 and become an American citizen. Pepall was extradited to Canada to stand trial; he was acquitted on 11-19-1925. Returning to Los Angeles, he moved to Citrus Avenue and became the vice president of See's Candy






311 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 70' of Lot 140 and southerly 5' of Lot 139
  • Built circa 1911 at 607 South Hobart Boulevard by Dr. Edwin D. Stoddard; sold in December 1914 to music publisher and dealer Raymond W. Heffelfinger, who died in the house in January 1919; acquired by construction engineer William Scott Humbert later that year
  • House moved to 311 South Irving by Humbert in 1924. Relocation BP for house issued 12-5-1923; Kress House Moving Company in charge. Wood siding replaced with stucco as part of relocation renovation
  • William Humbert remained at 311 until his death on 11-11-1927; his widow, Blanche A. Humbert, died on 3-21-1941
  • Ida M. Leonard, a longtime teacher, acquired 311 in 1942. She was moving from her longtime home at 2611 Dalton Avenue in West Adams, another house that had been relocated. On 11-10-42, Miss Leonard was issued a permit for major structural work on 311 including the replacement of mudsills


311 South Irving Boulevard as seen in its original location in the Los Angeles Times, 12-6-1914






320 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 25' of Lot 183 and northerly 50' of Lot 182
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 8-24-1920
  • Original commissioner: real estate investor Jeanette N. Clark, who acted as her own contractor; she built 320 on spec, as she had 414 Lorraine Boulevard around the corner earlier in 1920
  • Architect: Henry J. Knauer
  • Occupying 320 South Irving by 1923 was wholesale produce broker Henry W. Stanley; he died at 320 on 12-16-1948 







321 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 45' of Lot 141 and southerly 30' of Lot 140
  • Built in 1922; BP issued 4-14-1922
  • Original commissioner: Math Rauen
  • Architect: Albert C. Martin
  • Rauen was a retiring Chicago general contractor building 321 as his winter home
  • The house was on the market in the summer of 1929
  • Occupying 321 by 1934 was insurance broker G. Nolan Bearden


As featured in the Times on 3-14-1937; note that regardless of the actual
tract in which a property might actually lie, the prestige of Hancock
Park was usurping that of Windsor Square as early as
1937, helped along by real estate interests.





323 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 55' of Lot 141 and northerly 22.5' of Lot 142
  • Built in 1921; BPs for house and garage issued 9-6-1921
  • Original commissioner: real estate broker George Y. Ridenbaugh
  • Architect: John J. Frankenfelder
  • George Y. Ridenbaugh remained at 323 until 1935
  • Investment broker John Van Hoesen Challiss arrived at 323 in 1937; born in Atchison, Kansas, Challiss was a cousin of Amelia Earhart. Still living at 323 South Irving nearly 50 years later, he died in Los Angeles on 12-15-1986






330 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; northerly 50' of Lot 181 and southerly 50' of Lot 182
  • Built in 1923; BP for house issued 2-13-1923; for garage 5-15-1923
  • Original commissioner: oil operator, builder and real estate investor Luther T. Mayo as his own home
  • Architect: Edward B. Rust
  • Among Mayo's many real estate ventures was the Los Altos, the apartment building—built as a co-op and also designed by Rust—still at the northeast corner of Wilshire and Bronson
  • Per the Los Angeles Times of 6-12-1931, "...[Mayo's] wife once admitted a man to her home on South Irving Boulevard at 1 a.m. and that the lights were turned off until the man departed an hour later." In January 1930, Luther filed for divorce against Marguerite Mayo, asserting (among other things) that his wife had been carrying on with the sales manager of the Los Altos, Neal Elder. The wrangling, well-covered by the Times and other papers topped by large headlines, continued for years. Calling her husband a "crack-brained lobster" and a "dirty cur," among Marguerite Mayo's counterclaims was that Luther had tapped the telephone at 330 to intercept her calls, running wires to the adjacent house at 311 South Norton Avenue, where he had installed a private detective. Though the court had suggested that Marguerite sell 330 to reduce expenses, she was still listed there as late as the city directory of 1936. (The 1934 edition refers to her as the "widow" of Luther, a confusing but not uncommon—perhaps wishful—self-description of divorced women of the era; Luther, though having sustained heavy losses during the Depression, was very much alive and would be going to the altar for the third time before the end of the decade) 


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, 4-1-1923






333 South Irving Boulevard

  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 77.5' of Lot 142
  • Built in 1920; BPs for house and garage issued 10-27-1919
  • Original commissioners: Benjamin F. and Bertha Hastings, apparently on spec
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor
  • Sold in late summer of 1920 to Walter Henry Rothwell, first musical director of the just-formed Los Angeles Philharmonic; he left 333 in 1926. (Feeling ill while driving in Santa Monica on 3-12-1927, he pulled to the curb and died at the wheel of his car.)
  • In 1930, 333 was being rented by New York architect Clinton M. Hill, who had come west for his health; he died in Los Angeles on 9-21-1930
  • Mrs. Frank B. Skinner, a Christian Science practitioner, was occupying 333 later in 1930; in October 1931, the house was being advertised for rent at $225 a month, furnished
  • Michael P. Hannin, an eastern railroad contractor who had retired to Los Angeles in 1922, was occupying 333 South Irving by late 1933; he died in the house on 8-24-1941. His wife, Alice, remained until at least 1948. (In an architectural sidenote, soon after arriving in California, the Hannins had hired well-known architect Albert C. Martin to design the large apartments-over-stores building still standing in good repair at the northwest corner of Vernon and Van Ness avenues. The Hannins retained ownership of the building after moving from there to 333 South Irving)


  • As advertised in the Los Angeles Herald in
    the spring of 1920, a house complete
    with "hand decorations in oil."






336 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 50' of Lot 181 and northerly 25' of Lot 180
  • Built in 1919; BP for house issued 11-1-1919; for garage 10-27-1919
  • Original commissioner: Edith W. Duncan, wife of William M. Duncan, as their own home
  • Architect/builder: Norman J. Nelson
  • Mr. and Mrs. Duncan were the president/treasurer and secretary, respectively, of the Duncan Vail Company, dealers in wholesale and retail artists' materials
  • Purchased by manufacturer Frederick Cummer in 1929, who had earlier lived at 524 Muirfield Road in Hancock Park
  • Purchased by Dr. Harry Welrose Coffin in 1932; his family would remain at 336 until at least 1956
  • Mayor Charles Norris Poulson's daughter Norrisa and her husband, real estate operator Alfred W. Brandt Jr., moved into 336 by 1960






342 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; southerly 75' of Lot 180
  • Built in 1922; BPs for house and garage issued 4-12-1922
  • Original commissioner: Justus A. Kirby
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor (Cooper listed as architect on house BP, Jones on garage BP)
  • Apparently engaging in a bit of localized speculation, Justus A. Kirby moved to 342 from 454 South Irving Boulevard, which he had built in 1920, also employing the S. M. Cooper firm; two years after building 342, he hired Cooper to build 322 Lorraine Boulevard, where he died, according to his gravestone, on Christmas Eve 1934  






343 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 143 and northerly 2' of east 120' of Lot 144
  • Built in 1922; BP for house and garage issued 9-1-1922
  • Original commissioner: Mrs. Sanson M. Cooper, wife of real estate investor and builder Sanson M. Cooper, for resale
  • Architect: Robert D. Jones in partnership with Sanson M. Cooper acting as contractor
  • Among the residents of 343 were Charles Hollenbeck in the mid 1920s, followed by real estate developer Albert J. Rigali and his wife, Florence; after Mrs. Rigali died in Los Angeles on 11-19-1929, her husband remained until circa 1933
  • Moving from 414 South Windsor Boulevard, insurance agent Walter Shepard was in residence by the spring of 1940; by 1943, he sold it to attorney Elvon Musick
  • Musick added a bay window to the south side of the house in 1950 (BP issued 9-21-1950)
  • Musick was involved in real estate development, including projects on the Palos Verdes peninsula. He was at one time chairman of the board of Barker Brothers, the Los Angeles furniture concern; later, he was president of the Pineapple Growers Association of Hawaii. On the U.S.C. campus today is the Elvon and Mabel Musick Law Building Center. His family remained at 343 South Irving until at least 1960





350 South Irving Boulevard


  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; Lot 189
  • Built in 1913 at 602 South Harvard Boulevard; BPs for house and garage issued 5-13-1913
  • Original commissioner: oilman Charles Landes Wallis
  • Architect: John C. Austin
  • House and garage moved to 354 South Irving (soon renumbered 350) by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Landes Wallis for continued use as their own home; relocation BPs for house and garage issued 10-23-1925; Kress House Moving in charge
  • The Wallis's eldest of three daughters was married in the house on 2-12-1927 to Philip Benjamin Kennedy; the newlyweds, both in their 40s, would be building a new house later in the year nearby at 91 Fremont Place
  • Charles Wallis died in Los Angeles on 8-4-1928; his widow, Jonnie, remained at 350 until 1932, after which the Wallis's youngest daughter, Byrd, and her banker husband George R. Martin moved in. They would remain until the mid 1960s, when they turned the house over to yet another generation, their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. James Neville (Neville had Wilshire Boulevard roots: His grandparents had built 4016 Wilshire Boulevard in 1918, one of the last single-family residences to go up on the thoroughfare and one of the tiny handful still standing)  




355 South Irving Boulevard

  • Windsor Square Tract 1390; easterly 120' of Lot 144 less northerly 2' belonging to Lot 143. Lot 144 vacant until after expiration of the tract's 50-year building restrictions in 1961, allowing for construction of two dwellings on the parcel: see also 4665 West Fourth Street
  • Built in 1961; original BP currently unavailable; C of O issued 8-17-1961
  • Original commissioner: William A. Lundeberg built 355 South Irving and 4665 West Fourth as all-electric "Gold Medallion" homes, popular across the country at the time; 355 was built for resale, 4665 West Fourth Street for immediate customers







Illustrations: Private Collections; LATCDNC