PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES



415 South Las Palmas Avenue




  • Built in 1926 on Lot 97 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: real estate investor George Taylor, on spec
  • Architect: none specified on building permits; uncredited independent designers appear to have been employed as George Taylor moved from project to project, working westward through Wilshire subdivisions
  • On March 4, 1926, George Taylor was issued permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 18-by-28-foot garage at 415 South Las Palmas Avenue. Taylor was a prolific builder in the Wilshire corridor. He had recently completed five speculative houses on South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square; at the time of starting 415 South Las Palmas Avenue he was completing projects in Hancock Park at 436 and 344 South Las Palmas and 427 South McCadden Place. Future projects in the subdivision would include 172 South Hudson Avenue
  • Ads were running in the Times by November 1926 for a "Model Spanish Home" at 415 South Las Palmas, "The last word in architectural beauty and completeness of appointments."
  • The first owner of 415 South Las Palmas Avenue was mortgage banker Gomer Mansfield Thomas, who'd come to Los Angeles in 1922. Thomas, born in Emporia, Kansas, on March 19, 1873, grew up to became the circulation manager of The Kansas City Journal before joining the mortgage business begun by his father in Emporia in 1911. The firm grew to include branches in Dallas and Detroit, the latter run by Thomas before he moved to open a west coast office. His brother Howard west came from Emporia to join him in the Los Angeles operation. Thomas had married Emma Barber of Lawrence, Kansas, on October 9, 1899; Dorothy, Gomer Jr., and Oliver would arrive in due course. The family would first settle in Country Club Park at 1047 South Wilton Place, a house built in 1919; it was from there that the Thomases moved to Hancock Park
  • Gomer M. Thomas Sr. died at 415 South Las Palmas Avenue on October 19, 1937, after an illness of two years. In 1939 Emma Thomas sold the house, she and Oliver Thomas moving to half a duplex at 357 North Mansfield Avenue
  • Winberg Page Frambes, the western manager of the Masonite Corporation, bought 415 South Las Palmas Avenue in 1939. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in May 1884, Page Frambes arrived in Los Angeles in 1913, going into business with Joseph W. Fletcher, a manufacturers' agent. Fletcher also became Frambes's father-in-law when in September 1917, Frambes married 23-year-old Kentucky-born Ethel Fletcher. The couple moved into her parents' house on East 28th Street. Joseph Fletcher built a house at 2510 Eighth Avenue in 1921, into which the extended family would move. It was from that residence that Page and Ethel Frambes moved to Hancock Park with their son William, who had been born in April 1923. The Frambeses did not stay at 415 South Las Palmas for long; the house was on the market again in July 1942
  • Banker Henry Morgan Craft Sr. was the next owner of 415 South Las Palmas Avenue, moving in with his wife, Mary, daughters Margaret and Helen, and son Morgan Jr. The Crafts had the house on the market by the summer of 1959 and would remain at 415 until not long after
  • By early 1960, 415 South Las Palmas Avenue had been acquired by the family of neurologist Alan J. Friedman, which remained in possession of the property until January 28, 2022, closing that day for $4,179,000


Illustration: Private Collection