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101 South Hudson Avenue




  • Built in 1949 on Lot 344 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: Victor M. Carter
  • Architect: Lundeberg & Strawn (William A. Lundeberg and J. Cecil Strawn). William A. Lundeberg was primarily a developer, although he had worked during the 1930s as a draftsman in the offices of architect Paul Revere Williams from 1925 to 1939, as had J. Cecil Strawn. Lundeberg was among several developers who capitalized on original Hancock Park and Windsor Square properties that were being subdivided, sometimes building new residences on previously unoccupied sites—there were more than a few lots in the area whose prospects had been curtailed by the Depression and world war—and sometimes on sites on which larger houses had stood. (Lundeberg's other nearby projects include 602 and 606 South Lucerne Boulevard, 420 South Plymouth Boulevard, 355 South Irving Boulevard, 226, 414 and 526 Rimpau Boulevard, 4665 West Fourth Street, and 4518 West Sixth Street)   
  • On April 30, 1948, the Department of Building and Safety issued Victor M. Carter permits for a two-story, 10-room residence with attached garage and a 20-by-31-foot "pool pavilion" on the empty lot at the southwest corner of Hudson Avenue and West First Street. Major construction does not appear to have begun until well over a year later, after revised permits were issued to Carter on November 29, 1949, these calling for a seven-room residence with attached garage and a 16-by-31 foot cabana. A permit for a 20-by-45-foot swimming pool was issued on February 20, 1950
  • Russian-born Victor M. Carter arrived in New York as an 11-year-old; having changed the family name from Kartozinsky, his father settled the family in Los Angeles, opening a hardware store downtown, which Victor left school to work in at the age of 16. Before long he met New Jersey–born Adrea Zucker, the daughter of a customer, the pair applying for a marriage license in Los Angeles in July 1928. According to the later press record, Victor and Adrea instead eloped to Tijuana five days after meeting. Wherever they tied the knot, the newlyweds would move into half the duplex his father-in-law was building on Newdale Drive in Los Feliz, that house indicated as being owned by Victor in the 1930 census taken a month before the birth of Robert David Carter on May 15, 1929, when his parents were still just 18. The Carters' daughter Fanya arrived on July 23, 1933
  • Per the Times of April 2, 2004, Victor Carter "left [his father's] hardware store in his late 20s to go into business for himself—starting a firm that manufactured window sashes made from steel. As that business waned with changes in manufacturing needs during World War II, Carter moved into national sales and distribution of wall heaters and door locks" before in 1949 buying Builders Emporium, a struggling Van Nuys hardware and lumber dealer, turning it into, reportedly, the largest hardware store in the country. Selling Builders Emporium in 1956 to concentrate on his 1953 acquisition of Valley Market Town, a shopping center at Sepulveda Boulevard and Oxnard Street, Carter went on, in 1959, to acquire majority interest in yet another struggling concern, Republic Pictures, becoming its president and board chairman and turning it into a conglomerate within eight years. The indefatigable Victor Carter's hands-on philanthropy was similarly epic. He served as president of the United Way and headed numerous Jewish welfare, cultural, and educational organizations. In 2004 the Times laid out his many honors: "In 1984, the Greater Los Angeles United Way created the Victor M. Carter Humanitarian Award for someone whose life is a 'humbling example of public service and commitment to his fellow man.' Carter was the first recipient.... In 1987, the United Way of America presented Carter its highest honor, the Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award in ceremonies at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., citing his commitment to racial equality." On top of all this, he served as president and board chairman of the City of Hope in Duarte, which his father had headed previously. Victor Carter is credited with remaking the struggling operation into a renown cancer research hospital 
  • The Carters appear to have moved into 101 South Hudson Avenue between the time of their enumeration in the Federal census on April 8, 1950, at 4241 Newdale Drive in Los Feliz—next door to the 1928 house her father had built—and an item in the Citizen-News on May 9 giving their address as 101 South Hudson Avenue. The Carters' Los Feliz house is notable for them having hired as architect Milton J. Black to build it in 1935; still in excellent condition, it shares Streamline elements with Black's famous Mauretania Apartments, completed earlier that year at 520 North Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park. It may be that Carter manufactured the steel window frames of his new house, if not of the Mauretania
  • Among Victor Carter's philanthropy was support of the Muscular Dystrophy Appeal of Southern California, the disease having taken Robert Carter at the age of 16 on January 6, 1946. On November 5, 1950, six months after the family moved into 101 South Hudson Avenue, 17-year-old Fanya Carter married 20-year-old Leland Greenwald in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hiils Hotel with six bridesmaids and 400 guests in attendance. Following a divorce not long after, she traveled to Europe and went off to study sociology at the University of Miami in Florida. After she married Ronald R. Silverton in January 1954, Victor and Adrea Carter decided to leave 101
  • Moving from 400 South June Street, Mildred Siegel, the widow of real estate developer Irving Siegel, downsized to 101 South Hudson Avenue by early 1956. It seems likely that Mrs. Siegel knew the Carters through the Brentwood Country Club, of which her husband, who died in 1949, was a founder of the newly reconstituted club in 1948 (it had been established originally in 1916); Victor Carter had also served as a director. Mildred Siegel appears to have remained in possession of 101 South Hudson until her death at Cedars-Sinai on October 26, 1979
  • Marjorie Hamlin Rainey, daughter of the Ralph Cunningham Hamlins once of 546 Rimpau Boulevard, appears to have acquired 101 South Hudson Avenue after the departure of Mildred Siegel. The notably philanthropic and civic-minded Mrs. Rainey was president of the Junior League from 1942-43; the organization's current clubhouse on Larchmont Boulevard is named in her honor. Married in 1927, Mrs. Rainey had no children; she moved in with her parents, who had moved to Brentwood from Hancock Park, after being widowed in 1943. It appears to have been after her father died in 1974 that Marge Rainey returned to Hancock Park, where she was living when she died on December 18, 1992
  • Paying $800,000, Maria Joan Maddox bought 101 South Hudson Avenue from the estate of Marjorie Rainey on March 10, 1993. Miss Maddox was the daughter of real estate developer and bank director C. Albert Maddox; she'd married attorney Vaughn Charles Williams in 1971, divorcing in 1974 and becoming part of her father's Maddox Company property concern. The Maddox family was still in possession of 101 South Hudson as of late 2022


Illustration: Private Collection