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  • Built in 1926 on Lot 355 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: builder Harry H. Belden for resale
  • Architect: Meyer-Radon Brothers (Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon)
  • On October 26, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Harry H. Belden a permit for a two-story, 12-room house with attached garage at 152 North Hudson Avenue
  • On March 25, 1928, the Los Angeles Times reported Harry H. Belden's sale of 152 North Hudson Avenue through the Benjamin Barry Company, real estate brokers, for $70,000. The purchaser was Raymond S. Macmillan, president of the Macmillan Petroleum Products Company
  • The architects, brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon, were born in Berlin in 1885 and 1891, respectively, settling in Glendale after arriving in the U.S. in October 1923. According to descendants of Kurt Meyer-Radon, the architect had earned a doctorate in architecture and was called "Herr Doktor" in Germany and "Doctor" after emigrating, sometimes causing him to be identified as a physician. Meyer-Radon reportedly had run an architecture firm in Germany; his brother Hans was identified in immigration papers variously as an architect and as a draftsman. The siblings set up an office on Hollywood Boulevard and received several important commissions including the 1927 Chateau des Fleurs apartments at the southeast corner of Franklin and Cherokee avenues in Hollywood. The firm apparently became known as specialists in the French Norman Revival Style, which was reflected in the Chateau des Fleurs as well as in their commission by Harry Belden for 152 North Hudson Avenue. Hans Meyer-Radon was later an art director at Paramount Pictures
  • Raymond Shakespeare Macmillan and his wife née Helen Fraser, their daughters Jean (age 12) and Ruth (age 10), and three-year-old son Fraser moved into 152 North Hudson Avenue in the spring of 1928. Born in Winnemucca in 1890, Macmillan began his career as a roughneck as oil prospecting at Signal Hill began, famously culminating with Shell Oil's strike there in July 1921. According to his 1963 obituary in the San Pedro News-Pilot, Macmillan borrowed the capital to open an oil dehydration plant, which he would expand into refineries at Signal Hill and in El Dorado, Arkansas, these operations becoming the Macmillan Petroleum Products Company, which by 1930 was known as the Macmillan Petroleum Corporation. Raymond would remain president of the firm until his retirement in 1958. His brother Herbert was a Los Angeles attorney later drafted by his younger sibling to become Macmillan Petroleum's vice-president. Herbert lived with his family at 75 Fremont Place, not far from Raymond's house in Hancock Park


The power of a good advertising catchword, even if its meaning to most people is vague:
Macmillan Petroleum marketed its motor oil as "Ring-Free"—referring to your piston
rings, which even the cheapest of oils will keep free of their cylinder walls.


  • Jean Macmillan married fellow Stanford graduate Robert Mangan at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills on June 28, 1939. A reception followed the ceremony in the garden of 152 North Hudson Avenue. Ruth Macmillan had a quieter wartime wedding when she married Samuel McAfee Thompson Jr. at All Saints' in September 1943
  • An item in the Los Angeles Times on June 4, 1944, reported the sale of 152 North Hudson Avenue by the Macmillans to wholesale radio dealer Charles F. Sexton and his wife Gwendolyn. The Sextons would remain at 152 until selling it in October 1953
  • On July 18, 1944, the Department of Building and Safety issued C. F. Sexton a permit to add a shower and to enlarge a kitchen window. On May 20, 1953, Mrs. Sexton was issued a permit to add a 38-foot kidney-shaped swimming pool close to the rear of the house; seven days later, a new permit for a 38-foot installation was issued with a different engineer cited. At any rate, a rectangular pool is on the property today at the rear of the lot. Curiously, this work seems to have been done just prior to the Sextons' sale of the property
  • On October 25, 1953, the Times reported the sale of 152 North Hudson to 34-year-old oil man Harold J. Barneson Jr.; the price cited was $82,500. Barneson was a grandson of Captain John Barneson, founder of General Petroleum, which was sold to Standard Oil Company of New York in 1926. A Stanford Deke, Harold Barneson was a yachtsman and was involved with the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve from the time of his service during World War II; he would rise within its ranks to become a Rear Admiral. The Barneson's daughter Nancy was seven and their son Lee was six when the family moved into 152. Stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Citizen-News in January 1963 tell of the unusual home life of the Barnesons in Hancock Park. The press was reporting that Mrs. Barneson had received the March of Dimes' 1963 Mother of the Year award. In 1953, the same year the family moved into 152 South Hudson Avenue and a year and a half before the Salk polio vaccine was introduced, Lorraine Barneson was stricken with polio, paralyzing her from the neck down. The Times reported on her fortitude: "Despite her disabililty, Mrs. Barneson oversees the housekeeping, cooking and recreation at her home, as well as caring for her daughter Nancy, 16, and son Lee, 15." The Citzen-News ran a large picture of a reclining Mrs. Barneson with her children standing by, an iron lung in the background, and reported that she still enjoyed activities such as going out on the family boat. In April 1968 Nancy Barneson, a Marlborough graduate and a 1963 Las Madrinas debutante, married James S. Moore, a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve
  • The Barnesons retained 152 North Hudson Avenue for at least 20 years and may have still been in residence at the time of the Rear Admiral's death on March 15, 1981, a month shy of his 61st birthday. Mrs. Barneson died at the age of 71 on November 26, 1990 
    • Attorney Arthur Avazian owned 152 North Hudson Avenue by at least the mid 1990s, if not by as many as 20 years earlier. His identical twin brother Eric Avazian, who was also an attorney, lived two blocks away at 149 North Las Palmas Avenue. Arthur, who was a Deputy District Attorney in the mid 1970s, once found himself assigned as prosecutor in a drug case in which his brother represented the defendant. It was decided that Arthur would step aside "to save the judge, defendant and court reporter courtroom confusion," per the Times


    Illustrations: Private Collection; Google Images