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  • Built in 1948 on Lot 378 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: Clara Mercereau Swigart
  • Architect: Griswold Raetze
  • On August 12, 1948, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. R. F. Swigart a permit for a two-story, 10-room residence with an attached garage at 120 Hudson Place
  • Clara Swigart was the widow of Robert Frederick Swigart, a Toledo attorney she'd married on June 1, 1911, at the house her parents built in 1907 at 1201 Westchester Place in the Country Club Park district. Recently developed as an exclusive precursor to Hancock Park, the neighborhood was named for its proximity to the Los Angeles Country Club before the opening of its new clubhouse on the far side of Beverly Hills in May 1911. Lawrenceville- and Princeton-educated, Mr. Swigart had practiced law back in Ohio but managed to spend winters in Southern California; five months after he and Clara married, he was issued permits for an eight-room house at 1237 South Van Ness Avenue two blocks from her parents. The Swigarts had two children, John and Sally, by 1920. Curiously, Mr. Swigart was reported in the Federal census of that year, and the one 10 years later, as having no occupation; it seems that he may have been of a delicate constitution. The Swigarts traveled to Germany in 1934 for Robert to receive treatment for a heart ailment. Having docked back in New York on September 20, he and Clara were met by their son John, who was at Princeton; while the three were having dinner at their hotel in Manhattan that evening, Robert Swigart died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 57. The Swigarts had by this time moved into 1201 Westchester Place, her father having died in 1912 and her mother in 1928. Clara would remain living there until her new house at 120 Hudson Place was completed. (1201 Westchester Place, designed by Hunt & Eager, still stands, well cared for)
  • Clara Swigart was still in possession of 120 Hudson Place when she died on July 29, 1963, two weeks shy of her 86th birthday 
  • Retired Arkansas-born investment broker Ernest Milton Clark and his wife née Alma Lee Fleming succeeded Clara Swigart at 120 Hudson Place by late 1964 after the apparent brief ownership of a Steve Owens. The Clarks were moving from 357 North McCadden Place; two months after their wedding in Los Angeles on June 21, 1915—on August 26—Alma Fleming Clark had been issued a permit by the Department of Buildings for a seven-room cottage at 961 Westchester Place a few blocks north of Clara Swigart's parents' house in Country Club Park (like the Mercereau house at 1201, 961 Westchester still stands). Mr. and Mrs. Clark were nearing their 72nd and 67th birthdays, respectively, when they bought 120 Hudson Place but would proceed to make two small additions (for which the Department of Building and Safety issued permits on December 30, 1964) and to add a 17-by-36-foot swimming pool, a permit for which was issued on June 30, 1965. Alma Clark died at the age of 75 on September 8, 1972. Ernest Clark appears to have remained in possession of 120 until his death on November 7, 1980, a week shy of his 89th birthday
  • 120 Hudson Place was on the market by the late summer of 1981 asking $780,000
  • The next owner of 120 Hudson Place, and one now of nearly four decades as of this writing, was real estate investor Russell Davis Keely, a man from a long line of Angelenos and one quite familiar with the immediate neighborhood. Having grown up at 11 Berkeley Square, he was up at Stanford when his parents moved from there to 100 Hudson Place, a house, interestingly, very similar in appearance to their previous residence but not in a long-fading West Adams holdout neighborhood soon to be torn asunder by the Santa Monica Freeway. Russell Keely's father, Clark Keely Sr., was still living two doors to the north when his younger son and his wife Carlotta Brant Keely bought 120. The couple have carried out interior alterations over the years and added a large rear addition in 1988


Illustration: Private Collection