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  • Built in 1949 on Lot 7 in Tract 7040 (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 7 was originally Lot 176 of Tract 6388)
  • Original commissioner: California State Builders, Inc.; the firm's president, Eddy D. Field, was building the house as his own home
  • Architect: Arthur W. Hawes 
  • On April 5, 1949, the Department of Building and Safety issued permits to California State Builders, Inc., for a two-story, 10-room residence and a two-story, 32-by-36-foot garage at 613 South Hudson Avenue; on June 9, 1949, a permit was issued to Mr. and Mrs. Eddy D. Field for an 18-by-38-foot swimming pool on the property


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1950


  • Born south of Fort Worth on April 18, 1903, second youngest of nine siblings, Erskine D. Field arrived in Los Angeles from Abilene with his family in 1911. Apparently not fond of his given name, Field began making a name for himself as Eddy D. Field in Los Angeles real estate while a young man. In September 1929 he married 21-year-old Helen Naomi Johnson, whose short-lived previous marriage appears to have been annuled. Their daughter Helen Joan was born on April 9, 1932, their son Eddy D. Field Jr. on February 10, 1937; the family lived to the west of Hancock Park at 109 South Formosa Avenue until moving into 613 South Hudson. Field was prospering; in addition to the new house, there was a 10-week family trip to Europe in the summer of 1952. Joan married Thomas Emerson Riach on June 30, 1953, at the Westwood Community Methodist Church, with a reception following at 613 South Hudson. Eddy and Helen threw themselves at 25th-anniversary party at 613 in September 1954. After 21-year-old Eddy Field Jr. married Cornelia Curtis at Wilshire Methodist Church nearby on June 27, 1958, their reception was held at the Fields' house rather than at hers parents' home in Santa Monica. Their nest now empty, Eddy and Helen sold 613 South Hudson in 1962 and moved to the new Majorca apartments at 531 North Rossmore Avenue. While he matriculated at U.S.C., Eddy Field became a benefactor of Pepperdine University and would serve on its board of directors. He was given an honorary doctor of law degree in 1976; the school's Waves Park baseball venue was renamed the Eddy D. Field Stadium in 1980. The Fields also funded Pepperdine's Helen Field Heritage Hall, which houses athletic offices. Helen Field died at 81 on October 3, 1989; Eddy was 91 when he expired on November 7, 1994
  • George Franklin Getty II, eldest grandson and namesake of the founder of the legendary Getty oil business, had moved his family down to Los Angeles from Atherton in the summer of 1958, choosing Hancock Park to live in, first renting 543 Muirfield Road. Fifty years before, his grandfather had built 647 South Kingsley Drive at the northwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard, where his father, J. Paul Getty, had grown up. On September 8, 1958, social diarist Christy Fox reported in the Times that Mrs. Getty was about to move into 543 with the couple's three daughters, the elder two starting new schools. "George Getty follows later when the Tidewater Building is completed and the home office settles here. He's [the] new president, you know." The Gettys left 543 in 1962 to move into 613 South Hudson Avenue


Gloria and George Getty with Anne, Claire, and Caroline circa 1962


  • George Getty chose to settle his family near—but not too near—his new office in the Tidewater Building, which replaced the William O. Jenkins house at 641 South Irving Boulevard. His grandfather had bought the house in 1936, sitting on the property and letting it moulder to the point where it became the cinematic locus of the 1950 tale of Hollywood decay, Sunset Boulevard. In an aggressive, megalomaniacal bid to acquire the entire square block between Irving and Lorraine boulevards from Wilshire north to Sixth Street, and more, J. Paul Getty, in the guise of Tidewater—later known as Getty Oil—wound up owning 605 South Irving in 1959. Seventeen years later, two months before he himself died, J. Paul named that house in memory of George—he'd committed suicide on June 6, 1973—and donated it to the city for use as the official mayor's residence. George and Gloria Getty lived together at 613 South Hudson only briefly, separating in 1965. They were divorced on January 22, 1968. He remarried two years before he died; she received 613 in the divorce settlement but it was put on the market even before the decree was granted


Walter O'Malley by Boris Chaliapin, Time magazine, April 28, 1958

   
  • Among Los Angeles's most famous New York émigrés, Walter O'Malley and his Brooklyn Dodgers were on hand by 1958 to usher in the 1960s, a chronological arc from jet-age boom to Manson despair, the latter mitigated by the legendary team's vibrant presence in its new hometown. Frustrated by Robert Moses's roadblocks to building a new Brooklyn stadium to replace Ebbets Field and eyeing fan potential likely with Major League baseball's expansion to the West Coast, Bronx-born O'Malley became something of a local hero alongside Sandy Koufax and Maury Wills. After a 1957 interview during team transfer negotiations, Times sportswriter Braven Dyer found Penn- and Fordham Law–educated O'Malley to have "personal charm, wit and tremedous drive to go with an alert mind." The commotion surrounding New York's loss and Los Angeles's gain rated O'Malley the cover of Time magazine on April 28, 1958. He and his wife Kay had two grown children by that time. It is unclear as to where the couple may have hung their hats in Los Angeles before 1967, but that year they acquired 613 South Hudson Avenue from the Gettys
  • On January 12, 1968, the Department of Building and Safety issued Walter O'Malley a permit for a 14-by-30-foot greenhouse at 613 South Hudson Avenue. The O'Malleys would have a bit more than a decade at 613; with her husband hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic since June 28, Kay O'Malley died at home on July 12, 1979, age 72. Walter O'Malley died in Minnesota on August 9, two months shy of his 76th birthday
  • Wholesale jeweler Charles M. Ligeti, recently divorced and remarried, succeeded the O'Malleys at 613 South Hudson Avenue in 1980. He and at least two subsequent owners have carried out various remodelings of 613 South Hudson Avenue


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; Watson-De'Atley; Time