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  • Built in 1924 on Lot 2 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: real estate operator Bert O. Miller as his own home
  • Architect and contractor: Jack Olerich
  • On May 17, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued B. O. Miller permits for an 11-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-30-foot garage at 314 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Born on November 16, 1882, in Sparta, Illinois, southeast of St. Louis, Wilbert Osborne Miller moved with his parents to Corona in Riverside County before arriving in Los Angeles a few years after the turn of the 20th century. In 1903 Bert went to work as a bookkeeper for W. I. Hollingsworth & Company, an established real estate firm to the presidency and board chairmanship of which he would rise during a long career. Miller married Janet Wherry on July 2, 1914, their only child, Barbara, arriving promptly on March 28, 1915, the Millers having moved into the house her parents had built at 1707 South Hobart Boulevard in 1906. Writeups of the wedding had the newlyweds living with the Wherrys temporarily, but with the death of her father William Wherry in December 1915 they would remain at 1707 South Hobart until moving into 314 Rimpau Boulevard in late 1924
  • Over the next two decades the Millers lived the lives of typical Hancock Park burghers, ones of a not particularly social sort. On May 14, 1938, Barbara married William Geyer Schweitzer, a drug-company salesman, at the Shatto Chapel of the First Congregational Church, the Reverend James Fifield Jr. officiating. A reception for 200 followed at 314 Rimpau Boulevard
  • On August 26, 1926, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued Bert Miller a permit to add a bathroom to 314 Rimpau; on June 13, 1928, Miller was issued a permit to enclose a sunroom and extend it by four feet. Both alterations were designed by Jack Olerich
  • Bert and Janet Miller decided to downsize in 1946; leaving 314 Rimpau they moved into the Talmadge apartments that had been built on the site of Earle C. Anthony's 1910 Greene & Greene house at the southeast corner of Wilshire and Berendo Street, which had been moved to Beverly Hills—where it remains—in 1922. Three-fourteen Rimpau was still on the market in August 1947 at an asking price of $52,500, which was attractive enough to interest the next owner, printer Allerton Hubbell Jeffries


The jobs carried out by the Jeffries Banknote Company included everything from stock certificates
to checks, currency, and event tickets, such as this one for the 1949 U.S.C.–Ohio State game.


  • Allerton Hubbell Jeffries, whose parents had lived at 355 South June Street, was at the time of his move to Hancock Park from North Hollywood president of his family's Jeffries Banknote Company, engravers, lithographers, printers, and bookbinders. His first marriage ended in divorce after three years. In the meantime, socialite Louise Little—known as Lola and the woman who was to become the second Mrs. Jeffries—had had to drop plans for a big Beverly Hills wedding in May 1931 to Orson Tracy Johnson, scion of the family of Orson Thomas Johnson, who was among the largest individual owners of property in early Los Angeles, and elope to Reno under police protection after kidnapping and murder threats directed at her that were perhaps a hoax, perhaps not. After all the hoopla, the marriage was very short-lived; she and Allerton Jeffries apparently soon found each other and, according to Los Angeles County records, were married in May 1932. The wedding, however, seems to have been premature, legal details of her divorce not properly nailed down. Another ceremony was required, which was officiated by a superior court judge in Arizona in June 1933—and, for good measure, another was performed in Los Angeles in May 1934. Two sons and a daughter had arrived by 1940
  • On February 18, 1954, A. H. Jeffries was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for repairs to the garage following a fire 
  • The Jeffrieses remained at 314 Rimpau Boulevard until 1960. Allerton and Lola were going their separate ways after 30 years. (He married again in 1964 and divorced again in 1969 and before he died in 1975 had acquired a fourth wife)
  • Louisiana-born, Los Angeles–raised attorney Marion Lewis Lehman bought 314 Rimpau Boulevard from the Jeffrieses. Lehman, who died at 90 in October 1991, appears to have retained possession of the house into the late 1980s; it was on the market in the spring of 1985, listed at $604,250. The next owner appears to have remained for at least 28 years, during that time expanding the garage/guest house. The property was being offered for sale in the spring of 2014, asking $4,499,000; with no buyer, it would reappear on the market four years later priced at $5,975,000 and sell for $5,450,000


Illustrations: Private Collection; 247Sports