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  • Built in 1927 on Lot 332 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: building contractor Rasmus George Nielsen for resale
  • Architect and contractor: both cited on original building permits as Nielsen himself
  • On February 18, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued R. G. Nielsen permits for a two-story, 15-room residence with an attached garage at 217 South Hudson Avenue
  • During the 1920s, Danish-born Rasmus George Nielsen had been building large duplexes in the area across Wilshire Boulevard from Hancock Park including two on Harcourt Avenue, which was renamed as the southerly continuation of Hudson Avenue from Wilshire down to Pico in 1933. Nielsen had built and put up for sale the large duplex at 924-926 South Mansfield Avenue in 1926; in the habit of living briefly in his projects, Nielsen was residing there when he began building large single-family houses in Hancock Park including 365 South June Street and 217 South Hudson Avenue
  • R. G. Nielsen sold 217 South Hudson Avenue to the widow of banker Willard James Doran, who in 1905 had built 1194 West 27th Street in West Adams in the city's very fashionable University Park neighborhood. By early 1928, in what seems to have been a transaction involving a swap of properties, Sara Innes Doran bought 217 and Nielsen and his Norwegian-born wife Ragnhild moved their family into 1194 West 27th. The move, like most of the Nielsens', was temporary as Rasmus went on building through the Depression. No doubt fully aware of the West Adams district's decline as departures of the affluent for newer developments such as Hancock Park continued apace, Nielsen continued to build in the Park's environs. Among the projects to which Nielsen moved his family were a fourplex on North Sierra Bonita Avenue and the single-family dwelling at still standing at 1011 Longwood Avenue. Rasmus and Ragnhild Nielsen eventually settled within the boundaries of Hancock Park themselves, building 630 North McCadden Place in 1950
  • On May 17, 1929, the Department of Building and Safety issued Sara Innes Doran a permit to convert part of the billiard room of 217 South Hudson into a bathroom
  • Sara Innes Doran had spent her teenage and young adult years in the house her father, real estate investor Daniel Innes, had built at 1331 Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights, which he had a hand in developing in the 1880s. (The Innes residence stands today as 1329 Carroll and has become known in popular culture as the fictional San Francisco house of young witches in the early-2000s television series Charmed.) After the Dorans were married in the house on October 25, 1898, they lived there for a few years before building in University Park. The Dorans would have no children; after Sara's brother, downtown shoe merchant William Alexander Innes, was widowed in April 1914, he and his daughter Louise moved into 1194 West 27th Street from their home at 933 West 30th Street. After the death of 53-year-old Willard Doran at home on January 8, 1924, his widow and her brother began contemplating a move out of West Adams as it began to show signs of wear and the diaspora of their social cohort toward newer areas of Los Angeles as the city spread almost uncontrollably during the 1920s. Louise Iness was married to salesman Robert Daniel Cavanaugh at St. John's on February 4, 1931, with a small reception following at 217 South Hudson Avenue. Mrs. Cavanaugh died at the age of 40 on June 27, 1946; a funeral was held at 217 two days later. Her father took out display ads in the Times and other papers reading "In respect to the memory of my daughter, Mrs. Louise Innes Cavanaugh, Innes Shoe Stores will be closed Saturday, June 29." Mrs. Cavanaugh was survived by her husband and daughter Louise, who had been born in June 1935. Loyalty to Hancock Park remained strong among some families despite Depression, war, and the vicissitudes of crime in the 1960s and '70s: On August 17, 1957, Louise Cavanaugh Jr. was married in the garden of her father's house at 400 Rimpau Boulevard to Stephen Edward Griffith, son of the Benjamin Perry Griffiths of 121 Fremont Place. The Griffiths would later live at 136 South McCadden Place; their daughter Linda would marry a man whose family lived at 146 North McCadden Place
  • While Sara Doran owned the University Park property for which 217 South Hudson Avenue was swapped with Rasmus Nielsen, it is her brother William who is enumerated as the head of the household in subsequent Federal censuses from 1930. The siblings' mother, Kate Pease Innes, moved into 217 with her children; Daniel Innes had died in 1918, the Carroll Avenue house sold by 1920. In July 1931, still plucky at nearly 82, Mrs. Innes set out on a motor trip through Grand and Bryce canyons and north into Canada, with a friend, Jean Edgar, of 249 South Irving Boulevard in New Windsor Square. The ladies were involved in a serious road accident near Cranbrook, British Columbia; her son flew north to attend to the travelers and bring them home. Mrs. Innes died at 217 South Hudson on May 27, 1935, at the age of 85. The family was still in possession of 217 when William died at Good Samaritan on October 5, 1960, age 84. He had been hospitalized for two years with a respiratory ailment. Obituaries in the local dailies noted that he had opened his first shoe store at 258 South Broadway in 1898 and had formed what became the well-known Innes Shoe Company in 1902 after the retirement of his partner in the business. Innes wouldn't retire from the firm until 1951, by which time it had become a chain. Sara Doran died at the age of 94 on December 3, 1963, and appears to have still owned 217 at the time
  • Referred to in ads as a "stately modern mansion," 217 South Hudson Avenue was on the market by March 1965, its price $190,000 by midsummer; it lingered for sale into May of 1966. A G. M. Marco next owned the property; it was on the market again by the fall of 1971. By February 1972 the asking price was $175,000 and by August, $160,000 
  • The Commonwealth of Australia purchased the property as a residence for its consul general, who occupied it briefly and added a swimming pool in 1974
  • Controversial nursing-home operator Sam Menlo, born Moses Tessler in what is today Khust, Ukraine in 1928, bought 217 South Hudson on September 24, 1976 for $260,000. Menlo had arrived in the U.S. with his wife, born Veronika Schwartz in Budapest, in June 1957. On March 14, 1979, the San Pedro News-Pilot reported that Menlo had been charged with 78 criminal counts of neglect due to alleged filth at a Maywood home and that a civil suit filed by the District Attorney had "found more than 2,000 violations of law during the past three years at seven of the nine rest homes owned by Sam Menlo." The Times reported on March 22, 1980, that Menlo had recently lost his licenses to operate nursing homes in the county
  • On February 13, 1992, Sam Menlo was issued a certificate of occupancy by the Department of Building and Safety for a recently completed 245-square-foot den built over the porte cochère of 217 South Hudson Avenue
  • Later owning apartment houses, Sam Menlo applied his sparse standards of maintenance to them. Reports in the Times and other papers in 2000 and 2001 asserted that Menlo was thought to own about 65 properties in Southern California worth in the region of $62,000,000 and referred to him as a slumlord. The Menlo family was still in possession of 217 South Hudson when they added an elevator to the house on 2006 and appear to still own it as of 2023
    

Illustration: Private Collection