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  • Built in 1921 on the northerly 100 feet of Lot 67 in Tract 4179
  • Original commissioner: automobile dealer Stanley Woodruff Smith
  • Architect and contractor: G. Lawrence Stimson Company of Pasadena; alterations in 1944 by architect Paul R. Williams and contractor Jack Olerichs
  • On August 11, 1921, the Department of Buildings issued Stanley W. Smith a permit for a two story, 10-room house at 144 South Rossmore Avenue. On March 4, 1922, Smith was issued a permit for one-story, 29-by-19-foot garage on the property
  • Stanley Smith was married to Florence Ellen Clark, the daughter of real estate developer Percy H. Clark, who had built 3425 West Adams Boulevard—today the Wilfandel Club—in 1912. Percy Clark was an early promoter of Beverly Hills, which at the time of the opening of its famous pink hotel in 1912 was the chief westernmost aborning suburb in the lengthy developing Wilshire Corridor, which included tracts such as Windsor Square and Fremont Place, both of which opened in 1911. In the decade after Percy Clark built his house, the fate of the leafy linear West Adams District would have been clear as crystal to a sharp real estate man operating in a city developing at warp speed. Within eight years, lots in Hancock Park went on sale, and it is likely that, though Clark didn't move from West Adams himself, he may well have advised his daughter and son-in-law to build their Rossmore Avenue house, seeing its neighborhood as the future locus of choice for affluent Angelenos
  • After a two-year engagement, Stanley Smith, Cornell '09, had married Marlborough girl Florence Clark at her parents' West Adams house on June 9, 1915. Stanley and Clarence Smith had opened Smith Brothers in 1912, purveyors of Stearns-Knights and Ohio electrics, soon taking on sales of Peerlesses and Paiges. Captain Clarence Fairchild Smith was killed in action in the Argonne on October 1, 1918, after which Stanley waited a respectful four years before changing the name of the business to Stanley W. Smith, Inc. In June 1924 Smith opened a Hollywood branch at Sunset and Gordon to complement his main Figueroa Street operations; Flint automobiles were added to Smith's Peerless line and in January 1925 he took on a Hudson-Essex franchise and that year began selling them at his Los Angeles locations. Smith advertised heavily and was adept at securing "advertorial" coverage. On June 27, 1926, the Times reported that Smith had closed his Los Angeles operations to open a Hudson-Essex dealership in San Francisco. That September the Smiths and their three young children moved north, selling 144 South Rossmore. The house was offered in a Times classified advertisement appearing in November 1926—one noting that the property was situated in "L.A.'s most exclusive residence section"—with an asking price of $47,500 ($800,000 in today's currency). Returning to the Southland by 1934, living at first in Balboa and then renting 679 South Hobart Boulevard before, briefly, 626 South Hudson Boulevard in Hancock Park, Stanley Smith would, interestingly, be repurchasing 144 South Rossmore in 1944


As advertised in the Los Angeles Times, 1924


  • Stanley Smith sold 144 South Rossmore Avenue to Harry Hayes Hillman, vice president of the National Supply Company of California, per its advertisements the manufacturer of oil and gas well supplies as well as boilers, steam and gas engines, pumps, cordage, and pipe. Hillman and his wife Maud moved into 144 with their daughter Helen and sons Harry Jr. and John; their elder daughter Eugenia had married real estate man George H. Coffin Jr. in July 1926. Harry Hillman died at 144 South Rossmore Avenue on February 3, 1935. Maud Hillman put the house on the market in 1937; after first listing it with a broker, she seems to have soon set about selling it herself, placing classifieds in the Times that summer with polite wording such as "I have reduced the price on my beaut. 11-room Med. home and will be pleased to show it to you." By August the price was down to $17,000—$350,400 in today's currency, less than half of its estimate value in 1926—which demonstated the lingering effect of the Depression on property values. Real estate man Arthur Hastings scooped up 144 just after Mrs. Hillman's last classified ad appeared on August 5, 1937
  • Purchasing 144 South Rossmore Avenue in August 1937 was Arthur Carroll Hastings, a general partner in Coldwell, Cornwall & Banker, as today's nationwide real estate firm was then known. In 1928, Hastings, who had been with the company since 1907, was sent to open in a branch in Los Angeles, the firm's first office outside of San Francisco. He and his wife Ida, their daughter Carol Arden, and son John Thomas rented successively 948 Tremaine Avenue and 803 South Mansfield Avenue, both just south of Hancock Park, before renting 656 South Hudson Avenue briefly prior to moving to 144 South Rossmore
  • On August 23, 1937, A. C. Hastings was issued a permit for a bathroom renovation at 144 South Rossmore
  • Arthur Hastings died of a heart attack at 144 South Rossmore Avenue on December 30, 1940. He was 56. Ida Hastings remained at 144 until 1944; her son Jack, now an attorney, moved into his own digs while Ida would be buying a duplex 130 North Mansfield Avenue with her daughter Carol, who seems to have never married. In an unusual transaction, Ida Hastings sold 144 South Rossmore back to its original owner
  • After his years in San Francisco, Stanley W. Smith returned to the Southland by 1934, living at first in Balboa and by 1936 renting 679 South Hobart Boulevard back in Los Angeles. Smith had gone into the automobile loan business, opening the Beverly Finance Company. Having built 144 South Rossmore Avenue in 1921, Stanley Smith would, interestingly, be repurchasing the house in 1944. Moving from Hobart Boulevard, the Smiths would retain possession of 144 for another 24 years
  • Hiring architect Paul Revere Williams for both projects, Stanley Smith was issued a permit on August 23, 1944, by the Department of Building and Safety to have the size of the garage at 144 South Rossmore doubled by adding 20 feet to its rear and, per a permit issued on August 25, to add a room to the residence, a bay window in the living room, and a terrace
  • Stanley Woodruff Smith died at 144 South Rossmore Avenue on March 18, 1961, age 74. His sizable obituary appearing in the Times two days later noted his days as a finance man, if not his years in the automobile business, as well as his memberships in the seriously establishment California and Los Angeles Country clubs and the Bohemian up north. Florence Clark Smith retained ownership of 144 until the year before her death on December 11, 1968, two weeks shy of her 82 birthday
  • Russell S. Miller was the owner of 144 South Rossmore Avenue by the fall of 1967. Mr. Miller appears to have been Oklahoma-born Russell Stough Miller Sr., a retired printer and label manufacturer who'd moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles by 1961 with his second wife, née Elizabeth Winburn Clay Hines. The Millers moved to 144 South Rossmore from 814 Rimpau Boulevard
  • On November 24, 1967, Russell Miller was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for the addition of a 17-by-30-foot swimming pool to the property; on June 22, 1972, Miller was issued a permit for the repair of unspecified fire damage  
  • Russell Miller died on December 16, 1977; Libby Miller died on March 11, 1981. A classified advertisement in the Times on September 3, 1981, titled "Probate Sale," offered 144 South Rossmore at an asking price of $650,000 ($2,122,000 in today's currency)
  • Budapest-born businessman Gyula Jancso and his wife Zsuzsanna had come to Los Angeles in 1976, and, naturalized as Julius and Susan Jancso, acquired 144 South Rossmore by 1982. Their daughters Susan and Katalin attended Marlborough; Julius invested in real estate and with his wife opened Csárdás, the now-shuttered Hungarian restaurant on Melrose Avenue just west of Rossmore, two minutes from home. Still in possession of 144, Julius Jancso died on January 20, 2017


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT