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461 South Las Palmas Avenue




  • Built in 1927 on Lot 91 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: retired merchant Ellis L. Zemansky
  • Designer: David Frost Picken
  • On March 8, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued Ellis Zemansky a permit for a 10-room residence with attached garage at 461 South Las Palmas Avenue
  • Born in Chicago to Russian émigrés on August 17, 1875, one of an eventual 10 children, Ellis Louis Zemansky was brought west to Portland as a baby, his parents soon moving to Sacramento. There he would grow up to join the family business of pawnbroking, though he would be moving to Southern California with other ambitions, which included acting in films. While it is unclear as to where they might have met, Ellis married Sophia Tankenoff in St. Paul on June 15, 1910—her parents were also Russian émigrés, her father a hotel proprietor in St. Paul—and settled in Los Angeles. In 1910 they bought the four-year-old bungalow (still) at 1527 South Wilton Place from which, 17 years later, they would move to 461 South Las Palmas Avenue. (Ellis's father Nathan had also moved south around 1910, he and his sons going into pawnbroking in downtown Los Angeles. Nathan lived with his daughter Belle Reynolds at 622 South Kenmore Avenue in Chapman Park, one of the many Wilshire-adjacent subdivisions that would be eclipsed by development west of Wilton Place; he died at 622 on December 10, 1932, age 90. His sons Joseph, Sol, and David continued as pawnbrokers after their father's retirement, running Los Angeles's largest such operation, until their eventual bankruptcy in 1939 after being charged with unethical business practices and having become involved with underworld gambling figures)
  • In the 1920s Ellis Zemansky's career as a merchant evolved away from his father and brothers' pawnbroking business into becoming a supplier of props for the film industry—renting "everything for the movies, guns, revolvers, and blank cartridges our specialties." His Ellis Mercantile Company was downtown on Main Street. Per The Whittier News of November 3, 1936, 
"A former player of sheriff roles in early western pictures operates one of Hollywood's stangest businesses. He's short, round-faced Ellis Zemansky, who rents 'hand props' to studios. Hand props are portable items used in action or for decorating sets. They include everything from harps and hip flasks to marriage licenses and mummies. You can rent a real mummy for only $2.50 a day.... Zemansky advertises 33,333 objects for rent, but by the time you read this he will be in Europe on a combination vacation and collection trip. Whenever he see something he hasn't got, he buys it. It was his urge for collecting things that took him out of acting into the property business nearly 28 years ago.... He has made a fortune, and now has a staff of eight men who do nothing but classify and keep in repair the stock in the warehouse..... Zemansky says he never has failed to fill an order from a studio, whether for antique churns, beer steins, African war clubs, 5000 army rifles, loving cups, corsets, roulette wheels, toy sail boats, mechanical horses, ice skates, medals, or anything else the movie makers have been able to think of."

  • The Zemanskys had two daughters and a son. Lois Leah was born on March 28, 1911, Olive Shirlee on March 8, 1918, and Herbert Ray on November 12, 1941. Lois's engagement to Allan J. Stampa of San Francisco was announced at a party at 461 South Las Palmas on May 18, 1930; the couple was married in September. After some years up north, the Stampas and their son Allan D. Stampa would be living with her father and brother at 461 North Las Palmas Avenue by 1940. Mr. Stampa became a stockbroker
  • Sophia Zemansky died in Los Angeles on July 31, 1933, at the age of 51
  • Shirlee Zemansky married department-store buyer Joseph Amstater of El Paso at 461 South Las Palmas on July 26, 1939, the couple settling in Texas. Herbert Zemansky married Shirley Louise Brodie of Tarzana in 1946 and moved to Encino
  • Noting that it was "priced to sell" and that there was a tennis court on the property, 461 South Las Palmas Avenue was advertised for sale during the summer and fall of 1948, though it was taken off the market soon after. Seventy-four year-old Ellis Zemansky was still in residence at 461 in the spring of 1950, with Allan Stampa enumerated as head of the household in the Federal census of that year along with Shirlee and their son and daughter Sandy
  • Ellis Zemansky died at 461 South Las Palmas Avenue on May 14, 1955. He was 79. His obituary in the Times called him "a pioneer in supplying props to the motion-picture studios."
  • Within months of the death of Ellis Zemansky, 461 South Las Palmas Avenue appeared on the market with ads noting that it was being sold to close his estate. A buyer came forward by early the next year
  • Dr. Sheldon Charles Mandel was in residence at 461 South Las Palmas Avenue by the spring of 1956. As only the second family to own the property since 1927, Dr. Mandel's descendants appear still to be in residence as of 2024


Illustration: Private Collection