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  • Built in 1941 on Lot 372 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: mattress manufacturer Kenneth F. Carraher
  • Architect: John S. Butler
  • On January 21, 1941, the Department of Building and Safety issued Kenneth F. Carraher permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story 21-by-26-foot garage at 149 Hudson Place
  • Kenneth Ferrin Carraher was born on Catalina, where his father was a curio dealer, on October 26, 1900. His family was living in Hollywood when his father, still in the retail novelty trade, died in 1916. Carraher was working for the C. B. Van Vorst Company, a furniture manufacturer, when he met and in November 1921 married the boss's daughter Helen Maude Van Vorst and rose to the vice-presidency of the firm, which later specialized in mattresses. By the time the Carrahers' daughter Camille was born on November 3, 1923, they were living in a recently-built house at 132 North Vine Street, Vine Street in the Windsor Heights subdivision being renamed Arden Boulevard almost immediately. Kenneth Ferrin Carraher Jr. was born on November 8, 1926. By 1935, the family had moved to Hancock Park, having bought 408 North Las Palmas Avenue; it would be from there that the Carrahers would move into 149 Hudson Place when it was completed
  • On August 23, 1944, after matriculating at Marlborough and Mills, Camille Carraher married Harry Pershing Carten Jr. at Wilshire Methodist Church; a reception followed at 149 Hudson Place. In November 1945 Kenneth Jr. became engaged to Mary Katherine Dawson, the daughter of his parents' friends the Owen Lafayette Dawsons; Mr. Dawson was a diplomat, then the U.S. Agriculture attaché in Shanghai. The affianced couple does not seem to have gone through with their plans. In August 1948 Kenneth, who'd been graduated from Los Angeles's Harvard Military School and was now a sophomore at the recently opened Claremont Men's College, married Duane Joy Prince of Pasadena. Kenneth and Helen Carraher remained at 149 Hudson Place until moving to Palos Verdes Estates, selling their Hancock Park house in the fall of 1953
  • The Los Angeles Times reported on October 25, 1953, that Dr. John Dexter Camp had just bought 149 Hudson Place. Dr. Camp had been born in western Massachusetts on March 9, 1898. A graduate of Boston University School of Medicine, Camp was a roentgenologist—a clunky early term for a radiologist—practicing at Mass General in Boston when he married Blanche Eiffe in her hometown of Salem in 1927. The newlyweds moved to Minnesota, where Dr. Camp joined the staff of the Mayo Clinic, where he'd received further training after receiving his M.D. and where John Dexter Camp Jr. was born on February 16, 1932. Elizabeth Jane Camp was born at Mayo on November 12, 1941. The Camps moved to Los Angeles in 1951 when Dr. Camp became the chairman of the department of radiology at Good Samaritan Hospital, settling at first in West Los Angeles before realizing that Hancock Park offered an easier commute to Good Sam. Having been graduated from Dartmouth just a week before, John Jr. married Jean Boyd of Wilmington, Delaware, in June 1953 and would settle in Los Angeles; his parents and sister Elizabeth moved into 149 Hudson Place that fall
  • Dr. Camp was elected president of the American College of Radiology in February 1963. Retiring in January 1968, he became emeritus consultant to Good Samaritan's Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. He was still living at 149 Hudson Place when he died at Good Samaritan on March 5, 1969, four days before his 71st birthday and after what the Times described as a long illness. Blanche Camp remained in possession of 149 until it went on the market in late summer 1970
  • Robert Jordan Brookes and his wife, née Valentine McMillan, were the next owners of 149 Hudson Place, moving from nearby 511 South Lucerne Boulevard in Windsor Square. Brookes was president of the E. Jordan Brookes Company, a Los Angeles metal-products distributor and manufacturers' representative firm founded by his father. The Brookes family was still in possession of 149 after 52 years of ownership when it was listed for sale at $4,599,000 in March 2022. By April 22 someone decided that it was somehow worth $7,101,900 and paid that for the property, well north of its estimated value as of April 2023


Illustration: Private Collection