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  • Built in 1924 on Lot 204 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Vermont marble company executive and future Vermont governor Mortimer R. Proctor as, apparently, part of a divorce settlement
  • Architect: Webber, Staunton & Spalding (Walter Webber, William F. Staunton Jr., and Sumner Spaulding)
  • On June 6, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Mortimer R. Proctor a permit for an 18-room residence with attached garage at 526 South Hudson Avenue
  • Per the Los Angeles Times of July 6, 1924: "Royce H. Heath, specializing in small-house construction, has the contract to erect a sixteen-room [sic] dwelling of the English type at the corner of Sixth street and Hudson avenue for Mortimer R. Proctor. The house was designed by Webber, Staunton & Spaulding, local architects, and will cost approximately $55,000. The exterior will be stucco with hollow tile with a brick trim and rustic shingle roof. The interior finish, which will be of an elaborate character, will include hardwood paneling and trim, hardwood floors, leaded glass and tile baths and mahogany trimmings." (Curiously, other mentions of Royce H. Heath in the press at the time refer to him as a builder of large houses and other sizable buildings, such as the Beverly Hills Women's Club)
  • As well as a future one himself, Mortimer Robinson Proctor was the son and grandson of Vermont governors; he had inherited controlling interest in the  Vermont Marble Company based in Proctor, Vermont, from his father. While he was believed by friends and family to be engaged to Dorothy Chisholm of Proctor, an item in The Rutland News of May 2, 1916, caused confusion: "Mrs. Maud Chisholm of Proctor has announced the engagement of her daughter, Margaret, to Mortimer R. Proctor of Proctor. Miss Chisholm is attending Miss Wheelock's kindergarten school at Boston. The wedding will not take place for a year or more." The wedding in fact took place in less than a month: Mortimer Proctor married Margaret in Proctor on May 30, 1916; Mortimer Robinson Proctor Jr. was born in San Francisco on the following November 11. Immediately after Mortimer and Margaret were divorced in Nevada in early 1924, he married Dorothy in Elkton, Maryland, on March 6, 1924, and sailed for Europe. Margaret had been renting 427 South Kenmore Avenue while Mortimer was occupying himself with the quarry—and Dorothy—back east. The Rutland Daily Herald covered the Proctor marital rearrangements in detail; it also covered the divorce from Dorothy he was granted in Reno on February 24, 1931. (Proctor charged his second wife with mental cruelty and extreme incompatibility, claiming she was nagging, fault-finding, and unreasonably jealous; he would be married two more times)  
  • A recently published paperback history of Hancock Park contends that 526 South Hudson Avenue was built by the Park's founder, G. Allan Hancock, but no connection between him and the house has been found by the editors of Historic Los Angeles
  • In 1929 Margaret Proctor adopted a daughter she named Nancy Elizabeth, born on March 10 of that year. Somewhat confusingly, the California Birth Index lists Chisholm as the child's mother's maiden name as though she gave birth to her
  • Margaret Proctor, Mortimer Jr., and Nancy remained living at 526 South Hudson Avenue until the mid 1930s; after Mortimer left for Yale, Margaret decided to rent the house and move to New York City, where she had been born on February 12, 1897. She advertised 526 for rent in the Los Angeles Times in the fall of 1936 at a rate of $450 a month, furnished. She and Nancy took an apartment on Riverside Drive very near Columbia; perhaps Margaret had decided to attend classes at Barnard
  • Renting 526 South Hudson Avenue from 1938 until 1942 was wholesale furniture dealer Merritt M. Williams, who previously had been leasing 235 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park
  • Occupying 526 South Hudson Avenue from 1942 to 1948 was attorney Leland Dana Latham. Renting the house from Margaret Proctor, it seems, Dana Latham, as he was known, remained at 526 with his wife Olive and three daughters until after the eldest of these, Jeanne, married Richard F. Alden at St. Alban's Episcopal in Westwood on June 14, 1947; a reception was held afterward at 526. The Lathams then rented in Beverly Hills temporarily while they were having a new house built on Sierra Mar Place in the Hollywood Hills near what are today called the Bird Streets
  • Telephone company executive Donald Becker, his wife Margaret, and their two children occupied 526 South Hudson Avenue from 1948 to 1950. The house was placed on the market that spring, though exactly by whom is unclear; had the Beckers bought it only to sell it two years later, or could Margaret Proctor still have owned it? The Beckers moved to 626 South Plymouth Boulevard in Windsor Square
  • 526 South Hudson Avenue was offered for sale in classified ads in the Times in the spring of 1950 at an asking price of $49,500 ($620,000 in 2022 dollars)
  • Margaret Proctor had, meanwhile, returned to Los Angeles by 1942. She lived at 536 North June Street in Hancock Park before moving to a seven-room house in Brentwood. It is unclear as to whether she may have retained 526 South Hudson Avenue, renting it during the '40s, until its sale by mid 1951
  • Dr. Robert Xavier Morrell, a dentist, bought 526 South Hudson Avenue in 1951. Morrell and his wife, Margaret, moved in with their four young children and would remain for two decades. Dr. Morrell served as the president of the Wilshire Chamber of Commerce in 1953; for many years his office was at 643 South Wilton Place
  • On July 17, 1953, the Hollywood Citizen-News reported that a $500 diamond wristwatch had been stolen from the Morrell residence at 526 South Hudson Avenue
  • On July 16, 1958, the Department of Building and Safety issued Dr. Morrell a permit to add a 16-by-36-foot swimming pool to the property. A tennis court is also shoehorned onto the lot, within feet of the busy guard-railed highway of Sixth Street 
  • The Morrells put 526 South Hudson Avenue on the market in the fall of 1968 at an asking price of $137,500; like most large central Los Angeles houses at the time, it did not go quickly in the lingering real estate market after the Watts Rebellion. The Manson murders in the summer of 1969 only exacerbated the problem. Prices were rock-bottom (even adjusted for inflation) and properties could sit on the market for years; reduced to $129,500, 526 was still on the market in November 1969
  • Attorney Allyn Overton Kreps was living at 526 South Hudson Avenue during the 1970s before leaving Los Angeles, and O'Melveny & Myers, in 1977 to work for Senator Alan Cranston in Washington; he had managed Cranston’s 1968 senatorial campaign
  • The house was sold for $360,000 in July; the purchaser appears to have been elementary school educator Gwendolyn Roberts. Ms. Roberts would be in possession of 526 South Hudson Avenue for 40 years
  • 526 South Hudson Avenue was on the market in the summer of 2016 at an asking price of $5,199,000. This was soon reduced to $4,800,000 and in September to $4,000,000. It sold for $3,695,000 in February 2017  



Illustration: Private Collection