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  • Built in 1929 on Lot 376 of Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: Mary M. Griffith
  • Architect: Jonathan Ring
  • On May 18, 1929, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. Mary M. Griffith permits for a two-story, 14-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-33-foot garage at 100 Hudson Place
  • Mary Matthews Griffith was the widow of paving contractor George Perry Griffith. Natives of the opposite ends of northern Pennsylvanian, he was born in Erie in 1868, she three years later in Scranton, where in 1893 they married and settled. Mr. Griffith went into the asphalt business and continued in the trade when he moved his family—there were now two sons, Richard and George Jr.—to California in 1901, first to San Francisco. His work had taken him to Cuba after the Spanish-American War; he would become involved in projects in Philadelphia and Tacoma before settling permanently in Los Angeles in 1906. There he became vice-president of a large paving firm that, in association with his son George and a cousin, became the Griffith Company in 1923. George Griffith became part of the local establishment as a bank director and a member of the California and Los Angeles Country clubs and of the Bohemian up north. Having started out in Westlake, the Griffiths bought a large house on a double lot at 2801 Orchard Avenue in West Adams, where George, still president of his family firm, died at the age of 59 on February 12, 1928


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on December 1, 1929


  • George Griffith left his widow well provided for; it was time for her to consider a move to Hancock Park, one of the chief destinations of her Southwest Blue Book cohort as it decamped from the rapidly declining West Adams district
  • Mary Griffith's sons were both married with families of their own by the time she built 100 Hudson Place. Now living in San Marino, Richard, a banker, had married in 1925 and had a son and a daughter. George Jr., married in 1919, had four children; vice president of the Griffith Company, he was only 32 years old when he died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home on March 10, 1930. His mother had just moved into 100 Hudson Place with her unmarried older sister Flora Matthews  
  • On September 1, 1935, one of Mrs. Griffith's servants, 39-year-old Sigrid Fredrickson, was killed by a car at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and June Street
  • On June 25, 1947, Mary Griffith was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to replace a dumbwaiter with an "invalid elevator" between the first and second floors
  • Mary Griffith and Flora Matthews would remain at 100 Hudson Place into the 1950s. Mrs. Griffith died on December 3, 1953, a month shy of her 83rd birthday; her funeral was held at 100. Afterward Flora moved to an apartment at Park La Brea, where she died on July 10, 1960, three weeks shy of 92 
  • Moving into 100 Hudson Place in 1956 was Charles Clarke Keely, known by his middle name, who had grown up at 11 Berkeley Square, a 1911 brick Colonial house not unlike 100 Hudson Place in appearance. He'd married proper Junior Leaguer Beatrice Louise Sargeant on June 30, 1933, the wedding taking place in her native Denver. After the honeymoon, the young Keelys moved into 2404 Sixth Avenue in Los Angeles, not far from Berkeley Square in a traditional starter-house neighborhood for young social Los Angeles couples. Clarke Junior was born in short order the following April 6. Russell Davis Keely arrived on September 7, 1935, with Ann Virginia Keely arriving on Valentine's Day 1937. Berkeley Square was a block-long gated enclave opened in 1905 that was a last holdout of the Southwest Blue Book cohort in West Adams. By 1956, the California Department of Highways had been working on finalizing the route of the Santa Monica Freeway across Los Angeles, and it would be taking aim directly through the site of 11 Berkeley Square. It seems fortuitous that Clarke Keely found a not dissimilar house in a neighborhood to which many of the city's old guard had long since retreated from West Adams, a district that by 1956 was tattered, many of its larger old residences having become, starting in the 1920s, boarding establishments or U.S.C. fraternity houses. West Adams would be essentially walled off by the freeway, which along with redevelopment on its north side would wipe away almost every trace of Berkeley Square
  • Ann Keely married Robert Morrow Matthiessen of Pasadena at St. James Episcopal Church on February 20, 1960, with a reception taking place afterward at 100 Hudson Place
  • Still living at 100 Hudson Place, Beatrice Keely died at the age of 64 on June 26, 1974. Clarke Keely Sr. was still in possession of 100 when he died at 87 on August 14, 1990; Clarke Jr., a Copley News Service correspondent, had died suddenly in Los Angeles on May 28, 1985, age 51. Russell Davis Keely has occupied 120 Hudson Place, two doors south of his parents' old Hudson Place address, for many years, giving us a family with—as of 2020—nearly 140 years in Los Angeles. Who says this city has no history?
  • The owners of 100 Hudson Place between Clarke Keely and its most recent sale in September 2009 for a reported $6,010,060 carried out interior remodelings and created an addition by enclosing a patio cover. The current owner (as of 2020) has added compatible two-story additions to the north and east sides of the house among other alterations  


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT