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  • Built in 1925 on Lot 197 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: automobile parts and accessories wholesaler Edward A. Featherstone
  • Architect: Clarence J. Smale
  • Contractor: Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle
  • On October 15, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued E. A. Featherstone permits for a two-story, 11-room residence and a two-story, 18-by-42-foot garage at 366 South Hudson Avenue
  • As seen below, 366 South Hudson Avenue was illustrated in the Los Angeles Times real estate section on August 29, 1926, in an item headlined "Four of Many Mansions Southern California is Acquiring." The house was described as one of several designed by C. J. Smale and recently completed by Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle, including two others illustrated in the Times article: 635 Muirfield Road and 400 South June Street, the latter originally addressed 406 South June


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on August 29, 1926


  • In addition to his automotive-supplies business, Edward Featherstone was also, in the Southern California tradition of the era, an oil investor. As was unsurprising with the onset of the Depression, many homeowners in barely-a-decade-old Hancock Park faced having to downsize and rent their houses, built in a boom, for a pittance, or sell them at bargain prices—or lose them in foreclosure. The Featherstones may have been among the latter, with the Citzens National Trust & Savings Bank acquiring 366 South Hudson in 1931. The bank then found a buyer with deep enough pockets to rescue the property
  • A man with a recognizable name was the next owner of 366 South Hudson Avenue; Walter William Ralphs, president of the grocery chain bearing his surname, bought the property from Citizens National Bank for $50,000, as reported in the Times on May 22, 1932. Ralphs—who was then secretary-treasurer of the family firm—and Ione Weaver had been married in April 1912. Her father, Pliny Everett Weaver, manager of the Farmers & Merchants Mortgage Company and a designer and builder, was the contractor on a six-room house the newlyweds moved into in late 1912; it was at 917 El Molino Street, which became 917 South Kenmore Avenue by 1914. (It would be demolished in 1963.) After the Ralphses' daughter Alaine came along in March 1913 and son Walter William Jr. in February 1916, a bigger house would be necessary. With his father-in-law having moved on to other endeavors, Ralphs acted as his own contractor for a nine-room Frank M. Tyler design built for his family in 1923 at 762 South Serrano Avenue at the northeast corner of Eighth Street in the Pellissier Square Tract. The family would remain there until the purchase of 366 South Hudson Avenue in 1932. By this time, anything east of Wilton Place in the Wilshire Corridor, while generally still perfectly respectable, had become déclassé for the those with serious residential aspirations. While Hancock Park certainly had its share of Depression-induced white elephants, its cachet remained and bargains such as 366 could be found. Interestingly, Walter Ralphs retained 762 South Serrano after moving his family to Hancock Park and would in 1935 have it moved to a lot at 745 South Plymouth Boulevard, where he would add a new garage. That house was replaced in 1954 with an eight-room apartment building that was, interestingly again, a project of grocery pioneer Charles Von Der Ahe, part of whose surname became the name of the famous Southern California supermarket chain that was a chief rival of Ralphs. Von Der Ahe lived in Hancock Park at 5250 West 2nd Street; his daughter Dorothy Olsen lived at 324 Muirfield Road
  • After a Stanford-campus romance, Walter W. Ralphs Jr. married Joanne Polhemus in the chapel of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on November 18, 1939. The couple would have a daughter and two sons and have Gregory Ain design 1350 Linda Ridge Road in Pasadena for them in 1950 before a messy divorce granted in January 1953. In Paris in November 1954 Walter married a divorced San Marino woman, Gertrude Brawner Newell, who had three children of her own. Both ex-spouses sued their former mates in regard to support and child-custody matters, all covered in detail in the press. Joanne Ralphs admitted in court that she had had weekend trysts with Olympic pole vaulter Sabin Carr but was still demanding money as late as 1958, apparently seeking a guarantee of support even if future marriages failed. Meanwhile, Walter and Gertrude had a daughter of their own, born in December 1956
  • Alaine Ralphs married Phillip Randolph Hoffman at 366 South Hudson Avenue on the afternoon of May 23, 1942. The Hoffmans had one son before she filed for divorce in April 1947
  • Other members of the Ralphs family also lived in Hancock Park; among them were Walter W. Ralphs Sr.'s first cousin Albert George Ralphs, who owned 136 North Rossmore Avenue; in 1948, he built and moved to 322 North June Street, turning 136 North Rossmore over to his son Albert George Jr. The latter's brother Richard Robert Ralphs lived at 138 South Hudson Place
  • By the spring of 1950, Walter and Ione Ralphs were living at 366 South Hudson Avenue with his 95-year-old father, Walter B. Ralphs, and her 82-year-old mother, Jennie Weaver. Before her death in 1940, Walter B. had lived with his daughter and son-in-law Hazel and Daniel True at 22 Berkeley Square; he died at California Hospital on May 20, 1954, at the age of 99. (Jennie Weaver would expire on October 18, 1958, month shy of her 91st birthday.) Walter and Trudy Ralphs and their blended family were living at 366 by 1955. On October 17 of that year Walter Ralphs Jr. was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for an 18-by-42-foot swimming pool in the back yard of 366. The house was burglarized on September 13, 1956; a strange father-son burglary team was apparently responsible for the theft of $17,000 worth of furs from 366. William Ellis, described in the Times as a "wealthy Bel-Air grocery store and apartment house owner," and his son Harold were arrested after police recovered the loot 
  • By 1952 Walter and Ione Ralphs, now in their 60s, decided to leave 366 in the hands of their son; that year the couple built a 10-room hilltop house at 2750 Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz. Walter Jr. and Trudy decamped for Rolling Hills, where by 1960 they were living in a house with an ocean view that included Catalina. A son was born to them in April 1962; they divorced in April 1971. After a short-lived third marriage, Walter took a fourth wife in 1976
  • Occupying 366 South Hudson by 1960 was another famous food-related name: Theodore Erwin Van de Kamp and his wife, née Mary Patricia Glen. Van de Kamp was a son of the founder of Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery, whose trademark windmill logo—often with motorized blades—became part of the Los Angeles streetscape for generations. It is unclear as to how long the Van de Kamps remained at 366. The house was on the market in the spring of 1969; priced at $180,000 ($1,300,000 in 2020 currency), it appears to have sold in June, just in the nick of time: on August 8, the Manson gang murdered Sharon Tate and her friends and two days later killed supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in their hilltop Los Feliz residence, which further chilled the Los Angeles residential real estate market, especially in its central districts including Hancock Park, already reeling after the Watts Rebellion four years before
  • The next owners of 366 South Hudson Avenue were furniture designer (and occasional movie producer) Martin Perfit and his wife June. In the late 1950s Perfit, a Brooklyn native, established the Corsican Furniture Company, makers of wrought iron and brass pieces. The Perfits occupied 366 for decades; in the past decade the house appears to have been sold in 2011 and again in 2020, in the interim having become one of a number of Hancock Park and Windsor Square residences being redeveloped by a firm that declared bankruptcy in December 2016


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT