PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1925 on a 200-by-228-foot parcel comprised of Lots 201 and 202 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: attorney Asa V. Call
  • Architect: Lester Hudson Hibbard of the firm Stanton, Reed & Hibbard (Forrest Q. Stanton and Harold E. Reed)
  • Contractor: Stanton, Reed & Hibbard
  • On January 28, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Asa V. Call a permit for a two-story, 17-room house at 500 South Hudson Avenue. On February 10, Call was issued permits for a one-story, 32-by-28-foot garage and a one-story, 26-by-14-foot laundry building on the property
  • Asa Call hired swimming-pool pioneer Pascal P. Paddock to add one of his rectangular designs to the property, situating it perpendicularly to the street in the center of Lot 202, which lay to the south side of the residence. On June 12, 1927, a permit was issued to Call for Paddock to build a 12-by-60-foot cabana alongside south side of the pool
  • On November 3, 1928, Mrs. Call, née Margaret Fleming, was issued a permit by what was now known as the Department of Building and Safety for a two-story, 31-by-23-foot six-room-and-bath addition to the rear of the house. Lester Hibbard was called in to design it in keeping with his original plan


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1926


  • The Calls had three sons by the time they moved into 500 South Hudson Avenue; Thomas and Harry were twins born in 1919; Richard came along in 1924. (The three would be be enumerated as Tom, Dick, and Harry in the 1940 Federal census.) Edward was born in 1928, which may have been what prompted Mrs. Call to build the addition to 500 that year. While the arrival of a fifth child on June 14, 1935—the perhaps long-awaited birth of their daughter, Janet—might have been what caused the Calls to decide to leave 500, it was more likely the considerable power that Asa V. Call was acquiring as a California mover and shaker that had him move his family from upper-middle-class Hancock Park to the physical, social, and metaphoric heights of Bel-Air. Ten years after his death in 1978, the Times would write that Call "was not a man for the limelight. But for sheer behind-the-scenes clout, he was unmatched. Skill and endurance made Call an institution, a living link between generations. His first major foray into state politics came in 1934 when he joined with Louis B. Mayer, William Randolph Hearst and the rest of the state’s business establishment to fund a ferocious and successful campaign against Socialist Upton Sinclair’s bid for the governorship. Later, Call served as president of the state Chamber of Commerce, the Southern California Auto Club and the USC Board of Trustees. He was a leading fund-raiser for the Music Center and for successive waves of Republican politicians. Major political and civic endeavors simply weren’t considered without Call’s counsel." There would be the Asa V. Call, a Standard Oil  tanker launched in 1962 and the Asa V. Call Law Library at U.S.C., from which the honoree received his J.D.
  • Asa Call bought 1155 Angelo Drive in Bel-Air the year his daughter was born. He proceeded to make alterations to 1155, including changing the front elevation of Carleton Winslow's 1927 design; 500 South Hudson was on the market by May 1936. No price was given in classified ads for the property but the presence of a swimming pool and tennis court were noted. The Depression was lingering in Hancock Park: 500 was still on the market three years later. Renting the house in 1940 was real estate operator Ida Lewis. Finally, in 1943, a buyer came forward
  • While the Calls had moved west, Iowa-born attorney Russell Dwight Garner and his Arkansas-born wife Mary sold their Westwood house in September 1943 and moved east to Hancock Park. While the Calls had a succession of sons before a daughter was born, the Garners had three daughters when they moved into 500 South Hudson, a perhaps long-awaited son arriving on Valentine's Day 1945. The Garners would retain possession of 500 for nearly 60 years. Cherron Garner—known as Cheri—was the first of the very pretty sisters to marry, at Wilshire Methodist Church, in June 1956. Her groom was Robert Paxton McCulloch Jr. They were divorced by the time Gayle married Edward Phillip Roski Jr. at St. Bernadette's Catholic Church in May 1962. (Cherron remarried in 1965.) The Garners' announcement of the engagement of Mary Ann, whose nickname was Peppy, to Robert Daniel Radcliffe was featured prominently in the Times in December 1960, though the marriage does not seem to have taken place. She instead married McKenzie Moss II at St. Brendan's Catholic Church in June 1963. The sisters' receptions were all held at 500 South Hudson Avenue. Tucker Dwight Garner married Pasadena girl Janette Trudeau in December 1967
  • Perhaps no longer needing a whole Hancock Park lot's worth of extra yard with the children gown, or perhaps seeing an economic opportunity and willing to accept a closer south-side neighbor and to endure the noise of construction, the Garners sold Lot 202 to Valley real estate developer Frank Horny, who in 1962 built his own house on it in 1962, one designed by Wallace Neff late in his career. This became 506 South Hudson Avenue
  • On August 22, 1967, Russell D. Garner was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for a new kitchen, library, and bath designed by architect Harry Londelius
  • Russell Dwight Garner died at the age of 88 on February 2, 1993. Mrs. Garner appears to have remained at 500 South Hudson for at least a few years, or to at least still to be in possession of it, before the house was sold; she would died at 93 on March 16, 2005
  • Tucker Garner's name appears on building permits issued in the fall of 2001 for interior alterations at 500 South Hudson and for a new 15-by-30-foot pool. The property had been on the market since at least June of that year at an asking price of $1,999,000; perhaps Garner's investment in the property was to upgrade a house that had been comfortably lived in by a family for decades but that needed updates to make it more marketable to younger buyers. The work seems to have done the trick, a new owner being recorded on permits issued in January 2002. That owner enclosed a porch on the southerly wall of the 1928 addition, among other work. By 2005 another owner was in possession who was issued a permits to "remodel [the] entire house," make more interior alterations, and, it seems, to replace the pool, though it may be that Tucker Garner never carried out his pool installation in 2001. Yet another owner by 2012 received permits to carry out more work on the property including, somehow, on the pool
  • The Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, art purveyors, was advertising as operating out of 500 South Hudson Avenue in the later 2000s


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT