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401 South Las Palmas Avenue




  • Built in 1926 on Lot 98 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: mortgage banker Lewis Curtiss Torrance Jr.
  • Architect: Paul Revere Williams
  • On July 16, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued L. C. Torrance permits for a two-story, eight-room residence and a one story, 22-by-32-foot garage at 405 South Las Palmas Avenue; the address was altered to 401 by the time of completion
  • In the Boom year of 1887, Lewis Curtiss Torrance Sr. had come to Southern California from western New York with his brother Jared Sidney Torrance, the brothers going into real estate development in Pasadena; Jared Torrance went on to found the city of Torrance. Lewis C. Torrance Jr. was born in Pasadena on October 16, 1894. After he was graduated from Stanford, he attended medical school, per his June 1917 draft registration, on which was noted his claim for exemption as he "desires to complete profession." Drafted anyway, he was employed as a telephone company manager after the Armistice—his father was president of the Santa Monica Bay Telephone Company—and living with his parents at their house at 426 South Kenmore Avenue (demolished in 1961). When Lewis Sr. opened the Torrance Finance Company in downtown Los Angeles in 1924, assuming its presidency, Lewis Jr. became vice-president of the firm. February 1926 was momentous and bittersweet: On the 10th, Lewis Jr.'s engagement to 22-year-old Salt Lake City–born Kathryn Keith was announced at a luncheon at her parents' house at 4032 Wilshire Boulevard. Seven days later, Lewis Sr., who had moved to Pasadena, died at Good Samaritan after suffering a stroke at his office. Lewis Jr. and Kathryn were married in a quiet ceremony at St. John's Episcopal on June 16. (The maid of honor was Elizabeth Jenkins, whose father, William O. Jenkins, often cited as the man who amassed the largest personal fortune in Mexico, was then building 641 South Irving Boulevard at Wilshire Boulevard in Windsor Square, a house that would go on to star in 1950's Sunset Blvd..) A small reception was held afterward at 4032 Wilshire; a month later, having hired Paul Williams, Lewis Torrance Jr. was issued the permits for 401 South Las Palmas Avenue. He assumed the presidency of the Torrance Finance Company
  • On July 17, 1926, the day after Lewis Torrance was issued permits for 401 South Las Palmas Avenue, his sister Katharine Torrance Peachy was issued permits by the Department of Building and Safety for a 10-room residence, also designed by Paul Williams, at 325 South Las Palmas Avenue. Mrs. Peachy's husband, Henry Kyd Douglas Peachy, was by this time vice-president of the Torrance Finance Company
  • Sheila Elizabeth Torrance was born to Lewis and Kathryn Torrance on September 29, 1927. She would attend Marlborough, become, in top-drawer Southwest Blue Book society, a Las Madrinas debutante, a member of the Spinsters (Los Angeles's exclusive social club was for the most prominent debutantes, membership revoked at marriage, in her case in 1952), and a Junior Leaguer. Lewis Curtiss Torrance III arrived on November 10, 1933. He attended Harvard Military Academy. Tim, as he was known, grew up to work at Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills and to become, per the Times at his death in 2015, an "an enthusiastic follower and supporter of cabaret performers such as Julie Wilson." He never married
  • The onset of the Depression appears to have hit the extended Torrance family rather hard. The Torrance Finance Company would close by 1933. The house Katharine Peachy was building at 325 South Las Palmas, which she may or may not have intended as a speculative project but which would have been an upgrade from the smaller house she was living in at 336 North McCadden Place (and where she would remain until 1965), was being offered for sale in March 1930, though it appears to have been rented out for the next several years. The Paul R. Williams Project quotes a source describing a lag in the completion of 325 North Las Palmas Avenue: "The depressed economy meant some of Williams' original design details were not realized in [Mrs. Peachy's] two-story 4,500 square-foot home until 1933."
  • Decamping with his family to his mother's house in Pasadena, Lewis Torrance was renting out 401 South Las Palmas Avenue by late 1933; the house was on the market by October 1935. By 1940 the Torrances were living at the Hotel Windermere in Santa Monica
  • Nat Levine, president of Mascot Pictures, distributors of films rejected by the major studios—he was soon to be the president of Republic Pictures, which absorbed Mascot—was renting 401 South Las Palmas at Christmastime 1933 when bandits invaded his crowded Christmas Even open house. After pistol-whipping Levine for refusing to reliquish his diamond ring, the perps made off with cash and jewelry demanded of guests
  • Dr. Clarence Robinson Welfer, a physician, became the owner of 401 South Las Palmas Avenue in 1938. Born in Pittsburg (as the name of the Pennsylvania city was spelled until 1911) on January 6, 1895, Welker came west to attend U.S.C., thus developing a taste for Southern California. After returning east to medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, he married native Pittsburgher Ida Richter on July 19, 1920. Within two years, the Welfers were settled in Los Angeles in a recently built cottage at 1032 Westchester Place along with his parents and his sister Grace Lloyd and her husband Charles, all of whom also came west
  • The Welfers stayed at 401 South Las Palmas for less than a decade. They had the property on the market by February 1945; it appears to have sold by the end of the year to a Vaughn Robinson, the Welfers moving to half a duplex nearby on Orange Avenue. Robinson appears to have done some remodeling on the house before putting it back on the market. While it may seem hard to imagine a Paul Williams house in prime Hancock Park lingering on the market for years, ads for it were still running in the Times as late as December 1948
  • John McClintick Reily, an executive with the Carnation Milk Company recently arrived from New York with his wife and three children, was the next owner of 401 South Las Palmas Avenue, in residence by mid 1949. Born in Fulton, Missouri, on July 12, 1907, John Reily moved with his family as a boy to Highland in San Bernardino County, where his physician father was superintendent of Patton State Hospital. John Reily was in the advertising business in New York City when he married Winifred Rule, daughter of Mrs. Jack Jevne of Beverly Hills, on May 18, 1935. (The Jevnes were seriously Southwest Blue Book sorts.) John Milner Reily was born a year later, Joan in May 1942, and Priscilla in November 1946, all arriving in Manhattan before the move west
  • 401 South Las Palmas Avenue appeared briefly on the market in September 1964, though the Reilys do not seem to have left the property until 1966. Snow-skiing enthusiast John Reily had founded Alpine Meadows of Tahoe in 1960 and would now be moving north
  • Czech-born Ladislaw Wintner arrived in the U.S. in September 1954, soon making his way to Los Angeles with his wife and five children. Living just west of Hancock Park, most recently at 139 South Mansfield Avenue, the Wintners moved to 401 South Las Palmas Avenue by 1967. The property was back on the market by December 1968 and lingered until at least the following May, though members of the Wintner family appear to have remained in residence into the 1980s including Ladislaw Wintner's son Steven (born Salamon in Antwerp in June 1948). Steven went on to buy 608 South Highland Avenue in Hancock Park
  • Owners of 401 South Las Palmas Avenue after the Wintner family have carried out earthquake retrofitings, remodelings including a large rear wing, and the addition of a swimming pool
  • Hancock Park has been subject to burglaries and confrontational robberies since its earliest days, including the robbery of Christmas Eve 1933 described above. On July 14, 2024, daring daylight burglars made off with jewelry and two Chanel pocketbooks from 401 South Las Palmas Avenue. Wearing ski masks, the perps were photographed fleeing out of the front door to their getaway car at the curb


Sunday, July 14, 2024: Plunderers of 401 South Las Palmas Avenue make their daytime getway


Illustrations: Private Collection; Hancock Park Homeowners Association