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  • Built in 1929 on Lot 75 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: building contractor Donald Witherbee as a speculative project
  • Architect: Robert Finkelhor
  • On June 15, 1929, the Department of Building and Safety issued Don Witherbee a permit for a two-story, 10-room house with attached garage at 179 South McCadden Place
  • Donald Witherbee and Robert Finkelhor had been collaborating on residential projects in Pasadena for several years; soon after their project at 179 South McCadden Place, the men briefly formalized their business as Finkelhor & Witherbee, with offices at 8425 West Third Street
  • 179 South McCadden Place was being advertised for sale in the fall of 1930 asking $49,500
  • Attorney Franklin Knight Lane Jr. was the first owner of 179 South McCadden Place. Born in San Francisco on April 5, 1898, his namesake father, who had come to California from his native Prince Edward Island as a child, was elected city attorney of San Francisco that year, serving for five years; President Wilson appointed him Secretary of the Interior in 1913, in which cabinet position he served until 1920. After leaving government service, the senior Lane became vice president and legal counsel of Edward L. Donehy's Mexican Petroleum and Pan American oil companies. Lane-Doheny family ties extended to the next generation: When Franklin Jr. married Catherine McCahill in her hometown of Lake City, Minnesota, in April 1921 his best man was Edward L. Doheny Jr., whose sensational death was to come eight years later. Franklin and Catherine Lane were living in Los Angeles by 1923, he having opened a downtown office as a tax attorney. They moved to a small rented house in the Van Ness Square subdivision and then to a larger rented one at 701 South Ardmore Avenue. It was from that house that the Lanes, now with two sons (Franklin Knight Lane III born in January 1924 and James Patrick Lane born in September 1926), moved to Hancock Park
  • With the family's long California presence and high profile in Washington, the Lanes were quickly taken up by Southwest Blue Book society. Local family associations aside from the Dohenys included William Gibbs McAdoo, who had been Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury (as well as his son-in-law); the McAdoos lived at 5 Berkeley Square. When the Lanes' friend First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made her first transcontinental trip by air in 1933, stopping briefly in Los Angeles to visit her son Elliott, who was preparing to divorce the first of his five wives, she was honored by the Lanes at a small dinner at 179 South McCadden Place on June 7. The party included Mrs. Lane Sr., Elliott Roosevelt, C. R. Smith, vice-president in charge of the southern division of American Airways, and Amon G. Carter, publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (the latter two dinner guests had accompanied Mrs. Roosevelt on the trip west, Mr. Smith no doubt especially grateful for the publicity surrounding the First Lady's apparent confidence in the fledgling commercial air travel industry)
  • The Lanes' marriage hit the rocks by the fall of 1934; they separated on October 23 after, she alleged in court, he struck her. Mrs. Lane told the court that her husband was a "chronic fault finder." She was granted her divorce on May 6, 1935. Catherine Lane left 179 South McCadden three years later, moving to half a duplex at 253 South Mansfield Avenue and later to Beverly Hills. She appears to never have remarried; her ex remarried in October 1939
  • Succeeding the Lanes at 179 South McCadden Place, assuming ownership by early 1939, was advertising executive Z. Wayne Griffin, born in Kentucky in 1907, and his family. Mrs. Griffin, a native Angeleno born in 1900, was better known as the internationally known pianist and composer Elinor Remnick Warren. (Elinor Warren was previously married to Los Angeles obstetrician Raymond W. Huntsberger; soon after their marriage in 1925, she was issued the permit to build 410 South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square. The couple's son James Warren Huntsberger arrived in 1928; they divorced in 1932.) The Griffins were married in 1936 and would have a son of their own in February 1938 and a daughter in November 1940, with Wayne Griffin adopting and giving his surname to James Hunstberger. The Griffins' stay at 179 was brief: Having bought 154 South Hudson Avenue, they had the house on the market by the spring of 1942, priced it at $19,500. (Wayne Griffin became a movie producer after leaving 179 South McCadden, bringing to the screen Family Honeymoon with Claudette Cobert and Fred MacMurray (1948), Key to the City with Clark Gable and Loretta Young (1950), Lone Star with Ava Gardner and Broderick Crawford (1952), episodes of television's General Electric Theater)
  • Arkansas-born engineer Alfred Ryley Gaggs, his wife Mary, and her son William C. Mellenthin Jr. followed the Griffins at 179 South McCadden Place. (Mrs. Gaggs had previously been married to homebuilder William C. Mellenthin Sr., who was known and is still celebrated for his distinctive style of California ranch house.) The Gaggs moved on to Pasadena by 1950
  • Dr. Keith Palmer Russell was the next owner of 179 South McCadden Place, moving in in 1950 with his wife née Betty Jane Stratton, their daughters Susan and Donna Lynne, and son Keith Jr. Dr. Russell, long associated with California Hospital, would become an early advocate of better birth control, including the pill, and abortion, which he considered to be a right of privacy and a decision to be made by the pregnant woman and her physician. The Russells put 179 on the market in April 1960, where it lingered until the fall. They would be moving to 244 South Irving Place in New Windsor Square
  • Dr. Clifford D. Harrison, a dentist, succeeded the Russells at 179 South McCadden Place. In Las Vegas in August 1959, Harrison, widowed in 1954, had married divorcée Constance Ruddick Fiasca, whose recently widowed mother lived across the street at 180 South McCadden. Florence Tyrrell Ruddick had 180 on the market by the summer of 1961 and would be moving in with her daughter and son-in-law
  • Florence Ruddick appears to have financed renovations and additions to 179 South McCadden Place. It was her name that appeared on permits issued by the Department of Building and Safety, the first of which was pulled on December 16, 1960, for a kitchen remodeling, an additional bath, and a back porch with stairs. On January 18, 1961, Mrs. Ruddick was issued permits to convert the garage section of the house to a rumpus room and to build a new detached two-story, 29-by-30-foot garage with accessory living quarters. A permit for a 15-by-32-foot pool was issued to Mr. and Mrs. Harrison on February 9, 1961  
  • 179 South McCadden was on the market again in the spring of 1965. The Harrisons would be be divorcing, he remarrying in Las Vegas in 1971, she appearing to have had a third husband before eventually remarrying her first
  • The turnover at 179 South McCadden Place was considerable; after at least three other occupants, including Mr. and Mrs. Ray Olinger during the 1980s, by 1995 the property came into the hands of the owners still in residence as of 2023


Illustration: Private Collection