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  • Built in 1929 on Lot 380 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: business executive and oilman Walter B. Allen
  • Architect: Arthur Rolland Kelly
  • On August 1, 1929, the Department of Building and Safety issued Walter B. Allen permits for a two-story, 14-room residence and a one-story, 28-by-38-foot garage, both with exterior walls of brick veneer, at 138 Hudson Place
  • Walter Allen moved into 138 Hudson Place with his wife, née Anne Meyer of Wisconsin, daughters Marjorie and Leanore, and three-year-old son Walter Jr. The family was moving from 261 South Plymouth Boulevard in New Windsor Square
  • After starting, per the paper's 1966 obituary of him, as the youthful driver of the Los Angeles Times's first motor truck, Walter Bradford Allen, born in Bellingham, Washington, on February 13, 1892, established a Los Angeles trucking and construction-rigging firm with his year-older brother Cornel Garrett Allen in 1912. Allen Brothers soon became one of the Southland's largest heavy trucking and rigging firms, its slogan being "No Load Too Heavy to Haul" with its feats of moving enormous pieces of equipment often chronicled in the press. In March 1924 Allen was appointed a member of the city's Board of Harbor Commissioners, of which he would later serve terms as president. The Allen brothers began to invest in oil interests, a favorite sideline of Angelenos who had acquired capital in other lines of business. Controversy over Walter Allen's property dealings began to come to a head in 1932 when he was sued by three men claiming to have been defrauded in land and oil-promotion deals; his refusal to answer court summonses and irregularities surrounding the sale of Wilmington property to Doheny interests resulted in his resignation as president of the board in 1932 and his ouster from the Harbor Commission altogether by Mayor John C. Porter in January 1933. It was under this cloud at the nadir of the Depression that Allen Brothers appears to have disappeared as a business entity; Walter Allen's domestic life also began to change
  • Details of the transaction are unclear, but it seems that in 1936, rather than 138 Hudson Place having been placed on the market, Walter Allen swapped the property for one built in 1919 at 2200 Canyon Drive in East Hollywood owned by attorney Byron C. Hanna, who moved into 138. (The Allens seem to have separated by 1940 but not to have divorced)
  • Born in Kansas City on January 2, 1887, Byron Calvin Hanna was brought to Los Angeles at the age of four by his mother and father, a Wells Fargo messenger. Philip Hanna built a house on Ruth Street just east of downtown for his wife Florence, Byron, and Byron's brother Phil Townsend Hanna, whose name would become familiar to Southern Californians as the editor of the Automobile Club's magazine, Touring Topics, which was later renamed Westways. Having begun his career as a newsboy, Byron Hanna received his law degree from U.S.C. Admitted to the bar in 1908, he would serve two years as chief deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County and eight as the city attorney of Venice in the days before its annexation by the city of Los Angeles, then entering private practice. Hanna married native Angeleno Fannie Lange in October 1908; after catching him with another woman in a San Bernardino hotel, she won a divorce in July 1916 and received custody of their six-year-old daughter, Ruth. While it is not known if Mrs. Daisy May Finlay was the woman Hanna was found with in flagrante, she became his wife after a Congregational pastor agreed to marry them in Riverside on July 16, 1917,  the judge the engaged couple first approached having declined to perform the ceremony because of their divorces
  • Reactionary in politics, Byron Hanna would oppose the New Deal and was anti-union while at the same time an ardent civic booster. As such he was a key part of the Los Angeles and California power structures of his day, cemented by memberships in clubs such as the California, the Bel-Air Bay, the Los Angeles Athletic, and San Francisco's Bohemian, as well as in his neighborhood Los Angeles Tennis Club and even the Wilshire Country Club, whose members' errant golf balls seemed to make life less than it might have been at 138 Hudson Place
    • On July 10, 1942, the Hollywood Citizen-News reported that Hanna had appeared before members of the board of county supervisors that day appealing for a reduction of the city's $21,150 assessment on 138 Hudson Place. "The increased imposition of income taxes," he claimed, "reduces the number of persons who can live in homes like mine, and therefore it is increasingly difficult to sell them." Per the paper, Hanna asserted to the board that the dearth of domestic help during wartime made it "difficult to maintain such a home..... I would rather have a smaller home in which to face the future.'" Supervisor John Anson Ford remarked that the eastward view of the Wilshire Country Club greens from the Hanna residence added to the value of the property. To this Hanna replied that the view was indeed beautiful but that "It's got so my family can't go in the yard on week ends because of the flying golf balls," he said, claiming that on average of once every two months windows in his home were broken "by the slices and hooks of wild golfers." Hanna won a $200 reduction in his assessment
    • On October 14, 1946, the Department of Building and Safety issued Byron Hanna a permit for termite remediation
    • The future Byron Hanna had to face after seeking his property-tax reduction in 1942 would be limited to six years and did not, after all, involve a smaller home. It would, apparently, involve at least 36 more broken windows at 138 Hudson Place, where he was still living when he died of a heart attack on a bathroom floor while working late at his office in the Pacific Mutual Building on the evening of October 9, 1951. He was 64. Within a few years, Daisy May Hanna moved from 138 Hudson Place to a Park La Brea apartment
    • Grocery executive Richard Robert Ralphs and his family succeeded the Hannas at 138 Hudson Place. Ralphs, born on St. Patrick's Day 1925, grew up in Hancock Park at 136 North Rossmore Avenue. He was a Naval Reserve ensign stationed in Florida when he married Joyce Scott in Coral Gables in August 1945. The couple would have two sons and two daughters, the youngest of the latter born around the time the family moved into 138; they had been living at 119 South Highland Avenue across from the western edge of Hancock Park. After receiving business degrees from U.C.L.A. and U.S.C., Ralphs went to work for the family firm, in 1949 becoming a vice-president of Ralphs Grocery Company, which had its beginnings in downtown Los Angeles in 1873. Somewhat confusingly, he alternated the vice-presidency and presidency of the firm with his older brother Albert Ralphs Jr. for a number of years. After Ralphs was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1968, Richard Ralphs became chairman of the board of Ralphs Grocery Company. After retiring in 1975, he pursued new business ventures; he served terms as a regent and board chariman of Pepperdine University, was a director of KCET, and was on the boards of Orthopaedic and City of Hope hospitals. Ralphs died at the age of 57 on August 24, 1982, two days after suffering a stroke. Joyce Ralphs would remain at 138 Hudson Place for decades; as of 2018, the Ralphs family was still in possession of the property. It is not known how many of the house's east-facing windows may have been broken, or how many golf balls their pool may have collected, during the family's 60-plus years of ownership 
    • On March 3, 1960, Richard Ralphs was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a 28-by-42-foot swimming pool to the property at 138 Hudson Place; on May 19 of that year Ralphs was issued a permit to convert part of the garage into a cabana
    • On June 19, 1975, a fire broke out at 138 Hudson Place; family members at home at the time escape unharmed. Press reports the next day—the item was even picked up by U.P.I.—described the house as having been "completely destroyed" or "heavily damaged"; the permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on August 20 indicates that the damage was more along the lines of 30 percent of the structure. The Times ran a picture of neighborhood children, attracted to the excitement, surrounding a slightly injured fireman, the house appearing unscathed behind them




    As seen in the Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1975: A glimpse
    of 138 Hudson Place seen from the curb just north of the driveway and,
    below, the corresponding section of the house more recently.




    Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT