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  • Completed in 1928 on a parcel comprised of Lot 45 and the northerly 50 feet of Lot 44 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: retired real estate investor Edwin S. Rowley
  • Architect: Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle (Alexander D. Chisholm, William H. Fortine and Evan L. Meikle). The firm, as did similar organizations, employed draftsmen to execute designs or subcontracted them out to independent architects
  • On November 1, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued E. S. Rowley permits for a 12-room residence and a two-story, 41-by-25-foot garage at 335 Rimpau Boulevard
  • The Rowleys' house was actually part of a two-dwelling project with their daughter and her husband, Grace and Thomas Ridgway, who had begun building 355 Rimpau Boulevard next door to the south of 335 two months before; Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle were the designers and contractors for 355 as well as 335
  • Edwin S. Rowley was born in Oshkosh on February 18, 1857. Coming of age in Dakota Territory, he worked as a loan broker in the town of Canton there—in today's South Dakota—before moving to Omaha to pursue the same career. By 1888 he was spending time in California, having become vice-president of the California Loan & Trust Company of Los Angeles while still maintaining his Omaha residence. By 1893, Rowley was living in L.A. full-time, staying at the Hotel Lincoln while readying a house at 2432 South Figueroa Street in the prime West Adams district for his family. He continued to expand his real estate development business, purchasing an 800-foot-deep parcel with 450 feet of West Adams Street frontage at the corner of Adams and Vermont Avenue and began subdividing it as the Rowley Tract. He built his own house there at 2621 Menlo Avenue, where he and his wife Kate and their daughter Grace, and evenutally Grace's own family, would live until they all moved to Hancock Park in 1928
  • Grace Rowley married attorney Thomas Ridgway on June 2, 1910; their wedding was featured prominently in the Times, which noted that "more than 10,000 rosebuds were used to decorate the smart and beautiful wedding...in Immanuel Presbyterian Church." Grace had been born in 1883 in Dakota Territory. Although the Times noted in its wedding coverage that "among the wedding gifts to the young people is a new home, presented by the bride's parents," the Ridgways in fact remained living in her parents' house at 2621 Menlo Avenue until the extended family moved into their adjacent houses on Rimpau Boulevard 18 years later
  • Edwin Rowley died at 335 Rimpau Boulevard on November 26, 1934, at the age of 77. His son-in-law died at St. Vincent's Hospital on August 11, 1938, from complications following an appendectomy. Mother and daughter widows Kate Rowley and Grace Ridgway would remain in their commodious adjacent residences for the rest of their lives, Mrs. Rowley at 335 until her death at nearly 98 in March 1963. Mrs. Ridgway was still in possession of 355 until her death at nearly 102 on October 29, 1985

  • Real estate developer Norman Shanahan acquired 335 Rimpau Boulevard by late 1963 after the death of Kate Rowley. After having been in the same family for 35 years, there would be updates needed; in addition to repairs and repainting, the Department of Building and Safety issued Norman Shanahan a permit on January 8, 1964, to add a one-story, 23-by-26-foot family room extension to the southwest corner of the house
  • A gossip item in the Times on September 27, 1964, noted that Mrs. Shanahan—known as Bert—had been "trying to get the plasterers and painters OUT and the family IN before fall" and the start of the school year
  • With no asking price cited in classified advertisements, the Shanahans, apparently deciding to flip 335, had it on the market by November 1965; it was still being offered the following July
  • Judge Conrad Jacobs Moss, appointed to the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles in December 1966, became the next owner of 335 Rimpau Boulevard. While the judge's own stay at 335 would be brief, his family would remain for at least two decades. Forty-five-year-old Judge Moss died of a heart attack, sadly in the presence of his wife and four children, at his Malibu Colony beach house on April 27, 1969
  • Chicago-born Carol Sperry Moss, a woman with her own estimable biography, survived a heart attack of her own at the Malibu house six months after her husband's death. Raised in a progressive household by her mother, Vicci Sperry, a noted painter, and Albert F. Sperry, an engineer and musician, she would be putting 335 Rimpau Boulevard to good use as a fundraising venue over the next two decades. During the mid-1970s, the Times was running what the editors called "an occasional series of articles profiling people of Los Angeles and their relationship to the city—how they see it, how they feel about it and how they cope with the day-to-day challenges of life in this sprawling urban area." Carol Moss was the subject of a large revealing article on March 4, 1976, in which she described her upbringing and shared her thoughts on the Los Angeles of the day. She found West Los Angeles "stultifying and homogeneous [if] pretty and comfortable" while being no less direct in her opinion of her own neighborhood: Hancock Park, while an affluent neighborhood, is "a discordant note in its part of town." The Times quotes her as saying that "Hollywood, which is rapidly becoming a slum, is to the north, Fairfax is to the west, downtown to the east and the black ghetto to the south. That's the real Los Angeles, the place where people with real needs are." According to the Times, she claimed not to be rich—not like her friend Norton Simon—"although there's enough income to keep her houses and to support her four children, who suffer little of the drabness of urban life." It wasn't just inherited wealth that kept her going; she would obtained a law degree in 1976 and put 335 Rimpau where her progressive mouth was by offering it up as a frequent venue for benefits. In June 1979, the 20th annual A.C.L.U. local fundraiser was held in the garden; in February 1980, a benefit was held at 335 for the Western Law Center—proceeds going to provide legal services for the disabled—at which Jane Fonda spoke. In January 1984, the Los Angeles Piano Quartest played at a benefit concert for the Thursday Night Group, a nonprofit concerned with nuclear issues. (Having become known affectionately as "The Mayor of Malibu," Carol Moss, a ceramist as well as a legal professional, continued her advocacy on behalf of the disadvantaged into her tenth decade. She died at 91 on April 24, 2021. Supermarket-buyout king and house collector Ron Burkle bought the Mosses' Malibu Colony house in 2022) 
  • Owners of 335 Rimpau Boulevard since the mid-1990s, which include interior designer Nate Berkus and his husband Jeremiah Brent, have carried out numerous interior revisions; a pool was added in 1994. Berkus and Brent bought the house for $8,185,000 in 2016, did their number, and flipped it three years later for $11,347,742
  • An amusingly-narrated video of 335 Rimpau Boulevard dating from before the Berkus-Brent makeover is here



Illustration: Private Collection