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  • Built in 1928 on Lot 377 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: real estate operator John R. King as a speculative project
  • Architect: Henry J. Knauer
  • On October 23, 1928, the Department of Building and Safety issued John R. King permits for a two-story, 11-room house and a one-story, 20-by-40-foot garage at 108 Hudson Place
  • 108 Hudson Place appeared on the market by late February 1929, with the first classified advertisements in the Times placed by the firm of O'Connell & White reflecting a real estate broker's way with words: "Dreams seldom come true, but if you lok at this beautiful Eng. 2-sty. backing up to the Wilsh. Country Club golf course, you will realize that your dream has been realized. It's a wonderful home and a wonderful buy. Better see it today. Tomorrow may be too late." No price was cited in these ads; tomorrow wasn't too late. April 14th's variation was more sober: "Overlooking the WILSHIRE COUNTRY CLUB. Slate roofed Eng. type. 12 rms., 5 master bdrms. 2 maids' rms. Beautiful mahog. lib and black walnut dining rm. Reduced $10,000. See this marvelous home today." Other Hancock Park houses of similar size were going for less than $50,000 (the equivalent of which today is $880,000). Though still not indicating a price, by June ads for 108 merely gave other particulars such as room count—there were now, apparently, 12. A buyer appears to have come along that summer
  • Missouri-born John Lawrence Knorpp was the president of the Southwest Cattle Loan Company, his brother Roger Atwood Knorpp vice-president. The firm had been established in Los Angeles in 1916 as an expansion of the Knorpps' similar operations in Kansas City. Knorpp moved into 108 with his wife, née Lillian Carnes of Independence, daughter Lillian, born in Texas in 1910, and son John Jr., born in Los Angeles in 1924. The Knorpps' stay at 108 Hudson Place would be brief. While Wall Street's famous egg-laying just months after the family moved into the house would have undoubtedly affected the cattle-loan business, the loss of a big lawsuit against Kern County cattleman Roland Hill in July 1930 may have been what caused Knorpp to decide to leave the domestic arrangement he had taken on a year before; in the suit the Knorpp brothers had claimed that Hill had reneged on a deal for them to acquire half of Hill's operation, but the judge disagreed. As the Depression deepened, houses in Hancock Park, the oldest of which was just 10 years old, had become white elephants, though this would create bargains for those who'd had better luck financially than the Knorpps. Enter cotton-industry executive Allen Lamberth
  • Allen Houston Lamberth, who seems to have gone by "Houston," was born in the remote Sabine Parish hamlet of Negreet in the cotton belt of Louisiana on April 18, 1882. He and his Texas-born wife Suda Jack Stuart Lamberth moved from Waco to Los Angeles in 1921, taking up residence at the Rex Arms downtown. From there the Lamberths lived for a time at the Los Angeles Country Club before taking an apartment at the Town House, from which they moved to 108 Hudson Place, settling in by early 1932. Lamberth had come west as local manager of the Houston-based Anderson, Clayton and Company, on its way to becoming the largest supplier of cotton in the world. By the time he moved to Hancock Park, Lamberth had added the presidencies of two cotton-oil concerns to his responsibilities. The Lamberths, married in February 1917, do not seem have had children. They were still living at 108 Hudson Place when they died a month apart in 1941. Houston expired at the age of 59 on May 15 after an illness of three months. Suda left to stay with relatives in Texas after her husband's funeral at Forest Lawn only to die of a heart attack in Waco on June 19, age 55. Her body was shipped back to Los Angeles for burial at Forest Lawn alongside Houston
  • Acoustics engineer Harold Emerson Shugart and his wife Irene were the next owners of 108 Hudson Place, moving in by mid 1942. Born in Des Moines on August 7, 1894, Shugart moved to Los Angeles with his family at the age of 13 and would be graduated from Hollywood High and Caltech. He appears to have met his wife, a twin born Irene Wixon in  Kansas in 1896, through their church activities, Harold recently having been a regular soloist at the Wilshire Boulevard Christian Church, the couple later becoming much involved with Wilshire Presbyterian at Western Avenue and Third Street. With Irene's first husband, to whom she was married in 1919 and from whom she was divorced fairly amicably in 1921, much in the news at the time, the Shugarts were married quietly in August 1925. That first husband was none other than Chief Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County Buron R. Fitts, who would soon serve a term as California's lieutenant governor before being elected as a long-serving L.A. County District Attorney on his notorious path to becoming, during the 1930s—as one historian put it—"one of the most corrupt public officials in California history." After moving several times on the fringes of Hancock Park, by 1938 the Shugarts, getting closer, bought 603 South Highland Avenue; it was from there that they would move to 108 Hudson Place, solidly in the middle of the prized Park. Harold Shugart died on August 19, 1947, still at 108 and just 53 years old; never having had any children, his widow remained living in the house for decades, apparently until her death at the age of 83 on May 12, 1979 
  • William Dallas Schulte, local managing partner of the accounting firm Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Company (known since 1981 as KPMG), was the next owner of 108 Hudson Avenue, moving in with his family for a 35-year stay. In 1980 the Schultes added a pool and converted the south end of the garage into a poolside patio
  • 108 Hudson Place was on the market in the spring of 2015 for $5,295,000; a considerable price reduction resulted in a sale that July 9 for $4,450,000
     

Prior to its most recent ownership, the wood detailing of 108 Hudson Place hadn't been whitewashed



Illustrations: Private Collection