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  • Built in 1923 on Lot 27 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: attorney John Edward Biby
  • Architect: Charles E. Wolfe
  • On September 5, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued John E. Biby permits for a two story, 11-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-28-foot garage at 645 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Born in Carbondale, Illinois, on June 20, 1882, John E. Biby moved to Los Angeles from southern Illinois in 1908. He eloped with Grace Rita Burnett Raleigh, widow of architectural draftsman Carleton Raleigh, the couple marrying in San Bernardino on August 4, 1910; Biby moved into her house at 2307 Michigan Avenue in Boyle Heights. Having received his law degree from U.S.C. that year, Biby formed Trippet, Chapman & Biby with two colleagues. By 1916 he was practicing on his own. In addition to her daughter Marjorie Raleigh, two of Grace Biby's aunts lived with the couple; Marie Murdoch died in 1911 while Grace R. Murdoch, a Los Angeles public-school treacher for nearly 40 years, would be living with the Bibys for most of her life. Apparently using her own funds, Grace Biby commissioned a house at 333 South Manhattan Place in 1913 to which the family, now comprised of John, Grace, Marjorie—who had been adopted by John Biby—Aunt Grace, John E. Biby Jr., born in February 1912, and John Biby's youngest sibling Harry. The brothers would be forming Biby & Biby, attorneys, by 1920
  • While 333 South Manhattan Place was in Westminster Square, one of many Wilshire-corridor subdivisions attracting the upper middle classes from older districts of Los Angeles, the neighborhoods east of Wilton Place soon began to lose cachet once Hancock Park opened and as Westside development took off with better road connections to central Los Angeles. By 1923 John Biby's law practice was flourishing and the family had grown with the birth of Janet Biby on January 15, 1917. The lots of Hancock Park were larger than those of denser Westminster Square; just 10 years after building a house on Manahattan Place, the Bibys repeated the process on Rimpau Boulevard. The family would retain 645 Rimpau for nearly 40 years
  • On October 7, 1949, the Department of Building and Safety issued John E. Biby a permit to convert a closet into a half bath  
  • Marjorie Biby married surgeon John Stewart Stephens at 645 Rimpau Boulevard on March 26, 1926. In September 1935, 23-year-old U.C.L.A. graduate John Biby Jr. eloped with fellow student Florence Morrison, the newlyweds living at first with her parents in Beverly Hills. On May 25, 1940, at 645 Rimpau, Janet Biby married attorney—and fellow Stanford graduate—Peter Donnell Knecht. Only John and Grace Biby and Aunt Grace Murdoch remained at 645. Grace Biby was a typical Hancock Park matron, continuing to be active outside of the house in ancestor-worship organizations such as the D.A.R. and the Huguenot Society and in the Ebell Club, which, following the trajectory of its members, had in 1927 moved from Figueroa Street to its new clubhouse at Wilshire and Lucerne boulevards, where Windsor Square, Hancock Park, and Fremont Place converged at its front door. Grace Biby died on April 9, 1951, a week shy of her 72nd birthday. Soon after, Aunt Grace Murdoch returned to Boyle Heights to live at the Hollenbeck Home for the Aged, where she would die on February 13, 1959, having recently turned 98; born in San Jose on January 24, 1861, her father had come west in the Gold Rush. John Biby would not be living alone at 645 South Rimpau; on February 7, 1953, he married Archa Kilgore Arthur, a widow with four grown children. Archa Biby died at home at 645 on November 27, 1960, after a long illness. It seems that John Biby was developing cerebral arteriosclerosis; he would be moved to St. John of God Hospital on Adams Boulevard, where he died on June 8, 1962, just shy of his 80th birthday
  • 645 Rimpau Boulevard was on the market by August 1962; classified advertisements appearing in the Times that month did not specify an asking price. By early October, ads noted that the price, whatever it may have been, had been "drastically reduced." Also noted was that the house needed work, which would not have been surprising considering that only one family had occupied it since building it in 1923
  • While it is unclear as to whether they bought it or were renting 645 Rimpau Boulevard, mortuary executive John T. Knobel and his wife Marie occupied the house for a few years after the departure of the Bibys. By 1965, Arthur Towvim, a sales representative for a clock and watch manufacturer, was in residence with his wife Fay, who had at one time been a stage actress known as Fay Life. The Towvims had been living in Hancock Park for some years, early on at 520 North Las Palmas Avenue. In 1954 they and their young daughters Dorothy and Joan moved from there to 626 South Hudson Avenue, from which they relocated around the corner to 645 Rimpau Boulevard. By the late 1960s, the Towvims had left Hancock Park to move to an apartment on Alandele Avenue nearby
  • The Philippines consulate occupied 645 Rimpau Boulevard during the 1970s, consul general Pacifico Evangelista residing in the house by 1971. During the 1980s, Robert and Liane De Young owned the property, adding a 16-by-38-foot swimming pool and a cabana in 1986. The house was on the market in March 1997 and still in November for $1,195,000; a subsequent owner carried out an extensive renovation of the house in 2019


Illustration: Private Collection