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452 South Las Palmas Avenue




  • Built in 1925 on Lot 121 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: contractor Bert M. Dale as a speculative project
  • Architect: Aloysius F. Mantz
  • On August 27, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued Bert Dale permits for a two-story, nine-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-20-foot garage at 452 South Las Palmas Avenue
  • In addition to designing houses and theaters, Aloysius F. Mantz was, in the early 1920s, an art director and production designer at Metro Pictures; he left the film industry to pursue his invention of a window-sash balance mechanism intended to replace traditional systems using lead weights. The innovation, marketed by his Acme Spring Sash Balance Company, was a success. By 1937 the company became known as Duplex, Inc., this evolving into the Paramount Acme Duplex Corporation, which continues to manufacture Mantz's design in San Bernardino. He also designed 334 Rimpau Boulevard and 634 South June Street in Hancock Park
  • Bert Milton Dale was a prolific builder of residences in subdivisions flanking Wilshire Boulevard west of Wilton Place as well as in Hollywood; in some references he is credited as a developer of Hancock Park
  • While he advertised 452 South Las Palmas Avenue heavily as a "model home"—along with the smaller 639 North Las Palmas, for which permits were pulled the day before those for 452—it appears that Bert Dale may not have sold the property quickly. Appearing to rent the house briefly was a Charles Wrightman, per the 1928 city directory
  • Purchasing 452 South Las Palmas Avenue by the spring of 1930 was Mrs. Elliotte K. Roberts of Chicago, who had divorced her her husband, Chicago grain broker William F. Roberts, and moved to California with their daughters Roberta and Merilyn. Mrs. Roberts appeared in social columns as a sportswoman who drove her own harness ponies competitively along with her daughters and was a member of the Ninety-Nine Club, an organization of women pilots. In early 1933, 452 South Las Palmas was being offered for sale. Unsurprisingly, it languished on the market in the depths of the Depression; it appears that the property was rented out by Mrs. Roberts beginning in 1938, she and her daughters in any case moving to a smaller house at 1535 Club View Drive in Westwood. The house was offered for sale during 1939 and as late as August 1941; that month ads noted an asking price of $17,500, the equivalent of $370,000 in 2024 dollars  
  • Real estate investor James Owen Sword and his family occupied 452 South Las Palmas Avenue during 1938 and 1939, after which they moved to Westwood. He was succeeded by retired fruit packer Arthur Hall Doble and his wife Lucy for a brief stay; the Dobles had previously rented 545 Rimpau Boulevard in Hancock Park and 515 South Windsor Boulevard in Windsor Square; they moved on to Pasadena
  • Insurance man Ernest Freeman Hanson and his wife, née Madeline Holyoke, both natives of Maine, purchased 452 South Las Palmas Avenue in late 1941. They were moving from 333 North Highland Avenue in Hancock Park along with Mrs. Hanson's divorced twin sister Marjorie Holyoke Dale and her two sons. The Hansons were still living at 452 when he died on September 18, 1962, at the age of 71. Madeline Hanson appears to have still been in possession of the property when she died at 76 on March 7, 1970
  • The owners of 452 South Las Palmas Avenue by late 1970 were Mr. and Mrs. George Nozawa. Born in Los Angeles on August 26, 1919, George Nozawa spent his childhood in Japan before returning to California in 1937. He would become an editor at Rafu Shimpo, Los Angeles's Japanese daily newspaper. Interned at Tule Lake during World War II, Nozawa would marry Kimiko Kusayanagi, who'd been born in Los Angeles on March 15, 1916, to prominent businessman Takejiro Kusayanagi and his wife Masako, a U.S.C.-trained dermatologist. Her family had bought the John Hauerwaas house at 3741 West 27th Street in West Adams in 1937. (Toward the end of their internment during the war, Dr. Kusayanagi sought reinstatement as a resident physician at County General in the spring of 1945 but was denied; it is unclear if she ever returned to the hospital's staff, but she continued to practice medicine.) Kimiko Kusayanagi married George Nozawa; their daughter Aimee was born on July 6, 1950. Per a tribute to Nozawa in the Los Angeles Times on December 29, 1963, noting the establishment of the George and Kimiko Nozawa Endowment in U.S./Japan Studies at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Management (now the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management), the Nozawas opened their Hakubun-Do Book and Gift Shop in Jefferson Park in 1952, which led to the formation of the Nozawa Trading Co., distributor of Japanese products. "Nozawa attributed his success to opportunities available to him in the United States and to following the advice of Konosuke Matsushita, founder of Matsushita Electric Industries Co., who made him sole distributor of the company's rice cooker."
  • George Nozawa died at the age of 63 on January 15, 1983. Kimiko Nozawa was 94 when she died on October 16, 2010. During their time at 452 South Las Palmas Avenue, the Nozawas had added a 60-foot-long fish pond in the back yard and added a family room to the rear of the residence. The Nozawas' daughter, now Aimee Seto, retained the property, in 2016 significantly remodeling the residence, making additions to it, and replacing the pond with a swimming pool
  • An interim owner had 452 South Las Palmas Avenue on the market in the summer and fall of 2019 asking an ambitious $7,650,000. With the pandemic having descended, it sold on December 10, 2020, for $6,126,000


Illustration: Private Collection