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  • Completed in 1942 on a parcel comprised of the northerly 80 feet of Lot 43 and the southerly 10 feet of Lot 44 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: Esther Molly
  • Architect: Alfred M. Lowenthal
  • On December 9, 1941, the Department of Building and Safety issued Esther Molly permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 40-by-21-foot garage at 315 Muirfield Road
  • Little has thus far been discovered about Esther Molly; the address given for her on the building permits for 315 Muirfield is 8819 South Figueroa Street in a small (extant) apartment complex. It may be that the house was built on spec and that Ms. Molly was an employee of the developer; the telephone number for architect Alfred Lowenthal on the permits is BRADSHAW 2-1552, which was the contact for Elliott Realty, apparently a small building firm. Lowenthal was a native of Los Angeles who appears to have been a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures before becoming an architect for real estate developers
  • It is interesting to note that building permits for 315 Muirfield were issued two days after Pearl Harbor and that the project proceeded despite what would have quickly been understood to be an uncertain real estate market; a buyer (or at least a long-term renter) did, however, move in not long after completion of the house
  • Retired Buffalo businessman Millard Hallenbake Dake and his wife, née Bessie Starr Wortman, were living at 315 Muirfield Road by mid 1944. The Dakes stayed until the recently widowed Mabel Crosland Simmons of 101 North Hudson Avenue sold that very large house and downsized to 315 Muirfield in 1952
  • Mabel Simmons had had only a short stay at 101 North Hudson Avenue, having bought that house in late 1950; her husband, Thomas Wyatt Simmons, an industrialist in the oil industry and racehorse owner, died of a sudden heart attack at 101 on the afternoon of May 20, 1952. The Simmonses had married in 1929, first renting 84 Fremont Place before buying 636 South Plymouth Boulevard in Windsor Square. They also spent time at their 400-acre Suzy Q thoroughbred ranch in La Puente. Mrs. Simmons had married her first husband, Louis Thompson, a Kern county oil man, in 1907 at the age of 21. After divorcing him she married, at 35, 72-year-old San Francisco attorney Henry Ach, who died three years later. In Montecito on September 25, 1956, Mabel Crosland Thompson Ach Simmons married yet again, taking gift-shop owner and interior decorator Theodore "Dore" Fouch as her fourth husband. Mr. Fouch moved into 315 Muirfield; much mentioned in social diarists' columns in the Times over the years, the couple would be spending weekends at their house at Lake Arrowhead. Moving to an apartment at Park La Brea by the early summer of 1959, the Fouches sold 315 Muirfield Road to banker L. Elden Smith
  • On June 29, 1953, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. T. Simmons a permit to convert one of four bays of the garage at 315 Muirfield into a workshop and to add to the building a half-bath for staff. On July 27, 1953, Mrs. Simmons was issued a permit to add a screen porch. On August 21, 1958, the now Mrs. T. A. Fouch was issued a permit to add a patio cover 
  • Lewis Elden Smith and his wife née Harriett Fullen were born 200 miles apart on the same day, September 12, 1906, he in Selma, Ohio, and she in Vincennes, Indiana. Mr. Smith was the eldest of five children of a Quaker farmer who moved his family to Whittier when Elden was 12. After being graduated from Whittier College, Smith went on to collect an M.B.A from Stanford. By 1931 he was working in the research department of Los Angeles's Security-First National Bank; he would rise to a vice-presidency of that institution. During World War II he served as assistant to the director of finance in the U.S. Maritime Commission. After the conflict he went back to Security-First before going to work for the newly renamed Case Construction Company—the San Pedro firm had become the Johnson Western Company—where he became president and stayed until joining in 1950 Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank of Riverside, which, full circle, would merge with Security-First in 1957. According to a Times profile of Smith in November 1960 describing him as standing six-foot-two and weighing 180 pounds, "In banking circles he is known as the banker Security First National wanted back in the fold...so badly that it bought a whole banking chain to get him." After retiring from Security-First in February 1963 as vice-chairman (though remaining on the board), Smith became president of KCET, in which capacity he served until his death
  • Harriet Louise Fullen Smith moved to Southern California with her family in 1912, being graduated from South Pasadena High School 10 years later. Matriculating at U.S.C., she was received her degree as a Phi Beta Kappa and then earned a master's degree there. She was working as Dean of Student Activities at Compton Junior College when she married Elden Smith at the Church of the Angels in Garvanza on August 12, 1934. The Smiths settled in Compton and had four children—two boys and two girls—with Harriet continuing her impressive service as a volunteer in many civic endeavors while also publishing books of poetry. She served two stints on the national board of World Learning Inc; her ninth-grade social studies textbook Your Life as a Citizen was published in 1952
  • The Smiths moved into 315 Muirfield Road with their younger children Deborah and Martin. Elden Smith died at home on November 11, 1964, at the age of 58. Harriet, Deborah, and Martin Smith were still listed at 315 in the 1973 Southwest Blue Book; Harriet was still listed there in the 1987 city directory. By the early 1990s, Hannah Smith Kully, Elden and Harriet Smith's elder daughter, seems to have been in charge of the house; on April 21, 1992, the Department of Building and Safety issued Hannah Kully a permit for a new roof. On July 1, 1996, in preparation of the sale of 315, "R. Kully"—an apparent reference to Hannah Kully's husband, Russel—was issued a permit for a seismic retrofit. Apparently having moved to San Marino, Harriet Smith died at the age of 100 on March 30, 2007
  • According to property records, the last sale of 315 Muirfield Road as of 2022 was by the Smith family on July 31, 1996


Illustration: Private Collection