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  • Built in 1925 on Lot 210 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Whittier rancher turned contractor Ralph Hamlin
  • Architect: George Vincent Palmer
  • On February 20, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Ralph Hamlin permits for a two-story, 11-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-30-foot garage
  • Ralph Hamlin is not to be confused with the higher-profile Los Angeles automobile dealer Ralph C. Hamlin, who lived nearby at 546 Rimpau Boulevard and to whom he appears unrelated. It seems that Dr. George L. Palmer—father of the architect of 656—and Ralph Hamlin were investing in similar house projects, employing Palmer's son as their designer; Mrs. Hamlin's sister Floy was Mrs. George L. Palmer. Vincent Palmer may have also designed Hamlin's speculative 530 South Rossmore Avenue. Other of Palmer's Hancock Park designs are 400 Muirfield Road and the house he built for his parents at 427 Muirfield Road, which was demolished by the owner of 401 Muirfield in 2002
  • While it may have seemed that Ralph Hamlin built 656 South Hudson as a permanent home for his family, seldom do builders regard their work as something other than a commodity. In advertisements in the Times in December 1926 and January 1927, Hamlin offered 656 through the O'Connell & White agency for sale for $65,000, though claiming it to be worth $85,000. Apparently there were no takers even at such a discount 
  • The Hamlins, their daughters Floy Louese and Joy Laverne, and Ralph's widowed 93-year-old father Aaron Hamlin, a retired farmer, were still living at 656 South Hudson Avenue in the spring of 1930 as hard times loomed. The contracting business suffered predictably during the Depression; at its nadir, Ralph Hamlin appears to have lost his shirt. On February 5, 1933, a large display advertisement in the Times called interested parties to 656 South Hudson on the 8th for an auction of the house and its contents. The Hamlins had decamped to a house they bought in the now-déclassé Westmoreland Place district, a demographic predecessor to Hancock Park—many single-family dwellings of which were being converted into rooming houses, as would be done to the Hamlins' 961 Elden Avenue. In the middle of the upheaval of the family's being routed out of Hancock Park, Aaron Hamlin died at 95 on March 28, 1933. To make matters worse, the house at 656 South Hudson appears not to have sold at auction: Classified ads in the fall offered the "just like new" house "on foreclosure sale" for $26,500. On May 10, 1936, a month shy of his 63rd birthday, Ralph Hamlin died. The family would revisit Hancock Park when Laverne married tax attorney Arthur Kimbrough in August 1939, the ceremony taking place in the garden of her widowed aunt Una Verda Peters Mayell—sister of Iva Hamlin and Floy Palmer—who'd recently moved into 684 South June Street, just around the corner from 656 South Hudson. Soon after, Iva Hamlin went to live with the newlyweds in Whittier


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on February 5, 1933

 
  • Arthur Carroll Hastings was a general partner in Coldwell, Cornwall & Banker, as today's nationwide real estate firm was then known; in 1928, Hastings, who had been with the company since 1907, was sent to open in a branch in Los Angeles, the firm's first office outside of San Francisco. He and his wife Ida, their daughter Carol, and son John rented successively 948 Tremaine Avenue and 803 South Mansfield Avenue, both just south of Hancock Park, before apparently renting 656 South Hudson Avenue briefly from Iva Hamlin. By 1938 the Hastings had bought 144 South Rossmore Avenue
  • Classified ads in the Times in the fall of 1937 offered 656 South Hudson for rent at $175 a month and then for sale at $18,500. The house was among those in Hancock Park that though barely a decade old were still considered white elephants even as the Depression eased
  • One man's white elephant is another's bargain: Oilman Earl Benton Kenney was the owner of 656 South Hudson by 1939, moving in with his wife née Esther Weible, son Earl Jr., and daughters Betty Alberta, Zelda Jane, and Dolores Anita. All four children were married after V-J Day, Betty first to Turlock Chevrolet dealer Donald Lee Smith on November 16, 1945. Their wedding was at the Beverly Vista Community Church (as would be the weddings of all four of the Kenney children), with a recepition afterward at 656 South Hudson. There was a rift in the household after the Smith wedding, however; it seems that the Kenneys separated, with Earl going to live with his sister in Torrance and Esther remaining at 656. When Zelda's engagement to pre-law student Dennis McCarthy was announced in late August 1947, she was noted in the Hollywood Citizen-News as "the daughter of Mrs. Earl B. Kenney." Perhaps there was a brief reconciliation when Earl Jr. married Dorothy Ingersoll in August 1948—writeups of their wedding referred to him as the "son of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Benton Kenney"—though the dance at 656 South Hudson at which Dolores's engagement to U.C.L.A. senior John Daniel Manhart was announced was hosted, per the Times, by "Mrs. Esther W. Kenney"; likewise no mention of Earl Kenney was made in the press in other reportage surrounding the Manharts' marriage on January 29, 1949. The newlyweds were living with Esther at 656 South Hudson when the Federal census was enumerated in April 1950. On the document listing Mrs. Kenney, she is noted as "married," while on his Earl was noted as living down in Torrance with his sister Florence and marked as "separated." It is unclear as to whether there was ever an actual divorce, but Esther appears to have retained possession of 656 until 1956, with the Manharts still in residence
  • By the summer of 1956, 656 South Hudson was being offered for sale for $45,000, with, apparently, no takers. Classified ads then began running in the Times in August 1957 offering 656 South Hudson for rent at $750 a month, unfurnished, though exactly by whom it was being offered is unclear. It appears that someone did lease the property since by early 1959 ads were running offering a sub-lease on it at $500 a month, which was taken up by Charles R. Brown, a vice-president of Tidewater Oil, for at least the next several years
  • Charles R. Brown and his wife Rubye were moving down from San Francisco with the December 1958 opening of the Tidewater Building, which was built on the site of the Jenkins-Getty house—occupied by Norma Desmond in 1950's Sunset Blvd.—at 641 South Irving Boulevard in Windsor Square, just eight blocks east of 656 South Hudson. Brown was elected to Tidewater's board of directors in 1963, a seat he would retain after his retirement in 1967
  • It is unclear as to whom may have occupied 656 South Hudson Avenue during the 1970s and '80s. The owner since the mid '90s has carried out remodelings and made additions to the house that do not seem to have altered its 1925 appearance, although it now suffers from the unfortunate trend to fence off Hancock Park residences from the street. This trend seems to be due to the need to create estates out of ordinary suburban dwellings to keep up with Beverly Hills and Bel-Air as much as for security concerns


A pre-2011 view of 656 South Hudson reveals its appearance from the street before being fenced off;
the house's proximity to Wilshire Boulevard is indicated by the looming Wilshire Hudson Building
at right, built in 1969. Office buildings and condominiums began to effect the southerly
blocks of Hancock Park and Windsor Square after the rise of Tidewater Building.
 


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; HistoricPlacesLA