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  • Built in 1926 as 131 Hudson Place on Lot 374 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle as a speculative project
  • Architect: Clarence J. Smale
  • On August 24, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story 30-by-30-foot garage at 131 Hudson Place. In the early 1920s Alexander D. Chisholm had formed a contracting, building, and real estate development company, Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle, in partnership with William H. Fortine and Evan L. Meikle; Chisholm formed his own firm, the A. D. Chisholm Company, after the partnership was dissolved in 1929
  • Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle built 131 Hudson Place along with two other spec houses nearby: 141 Hudson Place next door (permits issued in September 1926) and 164 South Hudson Avenue around the corner (permits issued in August 1926). The latter two residences were sold by the following spring. The Chisholm firm also began building 132 Hudson Place for grocer William G. Young in late 1926
  • For reasons that are unclear—could it be aesthetics, overbuilding of expensive houses even as the 1920s still roared, or price?—131 Hudson Place languished on the market for more than three years after completion and then completely missed the boat with the Wall Street debacle in October 1929. Classified ads appeared regularly in the press such as those in the Times during 1929: "Drive to 131 S. Hudson Place, facing Wilshire golf course. See this beautiful home. Built by Chisholm-Fortine Co." The price in June 1929 was $65,000; no price was mentioned in ads after October, sales pitches still appearing during 1930
  • As even newly built Hancock Park houses turned into white elephants, they would often be rented to at least have their property taxes covered. While presumably prosperous, Shell Oil executive William Reinhardt chose to rent when it came to his domestic arrangements; he and his family were leasing the 1925 house at 123 North McCadden Place when they decided to exchange an English-style residence for what ads had taken to calling a "Spanish masterpiece." Interestingly, by the time that Reinhardt moved in in 1933, 131 Hudson Place had been renumbered 135. This move may have been to avoid the mailman's confusion with 131 South Hudson Avenue, built around the corner in 1928, or perhaps to freshen the listing; at any rate, while Reinhardt might have bought what was now 135 Hudson Place, it appears likely that he leased it given his stay of just a few years and that he would be moving to another rented Hancock Park house, one built at 132 North Las Palmas Avenue in 1927
  • While citing no asking price and the room count having, perhaps for real estate advantage, climbed to 12, classified ads began appearing in the press in the summer of 1937 and into mid-1938 offering the now-vacant 135 Hudson Place for sale
  • Insurance broker Byron Howes Farwell became the owner of 135 Hudson Place by late 1938. A native Angeleno, Farwell was a son of architect Lyman Farwell, whose partnership with Oliver Perry Dennis had been one of the best-known design firms in Los Angeles. (Lyman Farwell, who died in 1933, had designed and built his own home at 444 Lorraine Boulevard in Windsor Square in 1923.) Byron Farwell, his wife née Martha Allan Fleming, and their two young daughters, Allan Jean and Marcia, were moving from 119 North Windsor Boulevard in New Windsor Square; the family had recently built a beach house at Balboa. Allan Farwell married Frank Hood Trane on September 6, 1951; a reception was held at 135 Hudson Place following a ceremony at St. James Episcopal witnessed by 500 guests. By the spring of 1958 the Farwells had moved to their Balboa house and would be selling 135 Hudson Place, keeping an apartment in town at Park La Brea
  • On November 19, 1943, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. Byron F. Farwell a permit to replace the roof of the garage at 135 Hudson Place. On May 9, 1951, a permit was issued to Mr. and Mrs. Farwell to build a 10-by-38-foot addition to the library, adding a bar and covered terrace. The Farwells were issued a permit in April 1954 for a kitchen remodeling and one that December for minor alterations upstairs. On April 13, 1956, B. F. Farwell was issued a permit to add a 15-by-32-foot swimming pool to the property and on June 26 of that year one to convert part of the garage into a cabana
  • Real estate operator Max Lynn Green Jr. and his wife were the next owners of 135 Hudson Place. Mrs. Green was Jeanette McAlpin Barton, whose mother had married veteran real estate man Roy C. Seeley, with whom Max Green was partnered. Roy Seeley and Flora Benjamin McAlpin Barton, both divorced, had married in 1936. Per the Hollywood Citizen-News of May 21 of that year: "Scarcely 20 hours after his daughter's marriage, Roy C. Seeley, Los Angeles realty broker, and Mrs. Flora McAlpin Barton, of a prominent New York family, were to be married today at 1 p. m. at the home of his sister, Mrs. J. Kingsley Macomber, 14 Berkeley Square.... His daughter, Mrs. Virginia Seely [sic] Harrison, and Kinney Smith Jr., Chicago businessman, were married at the Macomber home yesterday afternoon.... Mrs. Barton...is a member of the family which built the McAlpin Hotel in New York City." (Virginia Smith's first husband, who died in 1934, was a great-great-grandson of President William Henry Harrison.) The Seeleys moved into the 1926 house at 227 South Hudson Avenue after their marriage. He had lived at the California Club after his messy 1925 divorce from his first wife—per the Times, he charged Mahala Calvin Seeley with "'Licentious carousals' in Baltimore, Washington and New York"—then resided with his sister in Berkeley Square and then at 850 South Windsor Boulevard, where his later Hancock Park neighbor Lionel Ogden also lived at one time. After Max and Jeanette Green were married at St. John's Episcopal in West Adams on September 26, 1942, they would live in Baldwin Hills before moving to Hancock Park where, before settling at 135 Hudson Place around the corner from her father and stepmother, they lived at 542 North Las Palmas Avenue
  • On June 8, 1971, the Department of Building and Safety issued Max Green a permit for a kitchen remodeling and on July 3, 1975, for a bathroom update
  • Succeeding the Greens at 135 Hudson Place by late 1982 were real estate broker Gene Prindle and his wife, née Patricia Henry Stern, who were married the year before. The Prindles replaced the roof in 1982 and carried out a remodeling of the second floor in 1997. Their family was still in possession of 135 when Mrs. Prindle died in June 2010 and Mr. Prindle in February 2012. The house was on the market by the spring of 2012 for $3,250,000, selling for $3,210,000 on May 31 of that year
  • The Prindles' successor at 135 Hudson Place built an addition to the rear of the residence, converted part of the garage into a recreation room, and replaced the 1956 pool with a new one


Illustration: Private Collection