PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1926 on Lot 1 in Tract 6748 (originally laid out as Lot 27 in Tract 3668)
  • Original commissioner: Mrs. Richard Barry Fudger
  • Architect: Roland E. Coate Sr.
  • On April 28, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. Richard B. Fudger a permit for a 30-room residence at 211 Muirfield Road; the building's northerly four-car garage was connected architecturally to the house over a motor entrance from the street
  • Focusing on the Fudger house's full-width balcony, real estate salespeople tend to describe it as an example of the Monterey Colonial style; the architect himself, however, explained in his article "The Early California House: Blending Colonial and California Forms" in the March 1929 issue of California Arts & Architcture that his design for Mrs. Fudger was not so basic. The Monterey Colonial form, "when elaborated with wings and changing roof lines...has a more Spanish aspect. As developed in the Southern part of the state this [type of] house has numerous patios and courts and is excellently adapted to life in California as now lived."
  • Mrs. Fudger, née Eva Katherine Johnson, was a daughter of Alexander Parley Johnson Sr., who built 33 Westmoreland Place in 1908 and who was a younger brother of noted Angeleno Orson Thomas Johnson. The siblings were among the largest individual investors in property in Los Angeles during the Boom of the Eighties; their real estate ventures included construction of the Westminister Hotel on Main Street in 1887. The Illinois-born brothers had arrived in Riverside earlier that decade, later moving to Los Angeles to pursue property development together and individually. Born in Riverside on July 3, 1881, Eva Fudger was graduated from Marlborough in 1901 when the school was at West 23rd and Scarff streets in West Adams. She married Richard Fudger in Riverside on November 22, 1905. Fudger, born in 1880 in York, Ontario, before it became part of Toronto, was the son of a partner in Simpson's department store there and was a director of the company when he died at the Fudgers' summer residence near Clarkson, Ontario, on October 11, 1918


The motor entrance of 211 Muirfield Road separates the residence from the garage/staff quarters at
right; this view and those below appeared in the January 1929 issue of The Architectural Digest,
at the time a trade journal. Then as now, owners contemplating a sale in the not too distant
future saw the advantage of having their houses lavishly featured in shelter magazines,
seen by some as an endorsement. A stylized view of 211 appears as the signature
title image for Historic Los Angeles's survey of Hancock Park as much for
its self-effacing vernacular charm as for its remarkable pedigree.


  • Deciding to return to live in Los Angeles full-time by 1922 and well-supplied by funds from both her late husband and her father—and with the benefit of the latter's investment and building experience—Eva Fudger bought several lots in the new Hancock Park subdivison, which began homesite sales in late 1919. (It is interesting to note that in 1908 Mrs. Fudger's father had built his own residence in the failed gated Westmoreland Place subdivision, which opened in 1904 too close to downtown as the automobile took hold, the popularity of which led to farther-flung developments such as Hancock Park.) Mrs. Fudger built 212 Muirfield Road in 1923, across the street from the future 211, selling it to attorney John O'Melveny in 1927
  • Eva Fudger could be said to be fickle about houses and their architecture, or it may be that she simply enjoyed the process of building and had the funds to pursue her whims. No sooner had she moved into 211 Muirfield Road than she began to think about a new project. Moving temporarily with her daughter Katharine into a large apartment at the Town House overlooking Lafayette Park, Mrs. Fudger leased 211 to oil-industry-supplies heir and film producer Howard Hughes in 1928 via Archie A. MacDonald, who was general manager of the Hughes Tool Company's Los Angeles office and the man charged with managing and indulging (and bailing out when the need arose) the young scion of the family. It seems that the $1,000 a month MacDonald offered Mrs. Fudger as rent for 211 was a sum she couldn't refuse, as was the $135,000 (with some furnishings) he offered in late 1929 for its purchase by Hughes. It may have been that it was Howard's wife Ella who desired 211, hoping to settle into bourgeois domestic life after three years of marriage—she aspired to membership in the local chapter of the Junior League—and understanding that living in an elaborate compound with direct access to the Wilshire Country Club fairways might help entice her husband to do so. The naive 24-year-old Mrs. Hughes soon realized that she had no chance of domesticating a 23-year-old very rich and coddled narcissistic hedonist; she left Muirfield Road in late 1928 just as a Bekins van was bringing in actress Billie Dove's belongings


Three views of the exterior of 211 Muirfield Road; the gate at right is marked "Trade Entrance"


  • Curiously, Howard Hughes's elderly grandfather Felix Turner Hughes and grandmother Jean, living until recently back in Keokuk, had come west by 1923, moving into a new house at 204 North Rossmore Avenue—just around the Muirfield corner and up Rossmore from 211—in 1923. In their dotage, Felix and Jean Hughes were living there with their son Felix Thomas Hughes, Howard's uncle, a voice and music teacher. At least one source cites an estrangement between Howard and these relatives and speculates that he gloated over his house on Muirfield being grander than theirs; this seems slightly ludicrous in that 204 North Rossmore was no hut and was designed by the sophisticated Hollywood architect Gene Verge. (Grandfather Felix died in 1926, grandmother Jean 10 months after Felix Jr. eloped with actress Ruth Stonehouse in January 1928. Felix Jr. remained at 204 North Rossmore until his death there in 1961; his widow stayed six years longer)
  • From 211, Mrs. Fudger moved even father west than her father had perhaps ever dreamed—all the way to Beverly Hills, where she had Roland Coate build a new house in a French style at 1103 San Ysidro Drive. (In the late summer of 1939, Mrs. Fudger left that house and bought 631 North Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills, where she was still living when she died in 1960; the vintage Colonial 631 North Crescent was demolished by early 2015 and replaced, in the now-common manner, with a house of considerably more bulk and considerably less architectural distinction—a nod to the Mediterranean in beige, beige, and more beige)
  • All of Howard Hughes's girlfriends believed that he would change for them, until they began to notice undergarments not theirs strewn around 211 Muirfield Road. One after the other shacked up with him in Hancock Park for a night, or two, or a week or a month, though Katharine Hepburn, with her shared enthusiasm for golfing and inverted glamour, was a particular favorite, sticking around until she got bored. It seems that like A-Rod of a latter day, all ambitious starlets had to try him. Eventually 36-year-old Hughes zeroed in on 16-year-old Faith Domergue—a pursuit happily enabled by her parents in exchange for a house—until the starlet finally got tired of not being the only one on the producer's casting couch and was managing to get some (fairly forgettable) film roles on her own. Some sources cite the priapic producer's continued pursuit of Domergue as the reason he left 211 Muirfield in early 1942, leasing 619 Sarbonne Road in Beverly Hills as a carrot to lure her back, with other sources citing his objection to the state of California's claim that his ownership of 211 made him liable for higher income taxes than he was interested in paying; his residence was Texas, he maintained. At any rate, Hughes and his revolving harem moved on to rented digs and hotel suites, though he still owned 211 in 1945, when, on November 5 of that year, the Department of Building and Safety issued him a permit for termite remediation
  • It is unclear as to when Howard Hughes gave up 211 Muirfield Road, but banker and philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Sr. and his wife Dorothy were in residence by 1948. Returning to Los Angeles after serving in the Navy during the war, Ahmanson began investing in savings banks, a smart move as the postwar real estate market boomed in Southern California. In 1947 he bought what became Home Savings & Loan Association, many of the branches of which he was clever enough to distinguish with the mosaic architecture of Millard Sheets starting in the mid '50s. The Ahmansons left 211 in 1959, moving to the equally sprawling but English-style 401 South Hudson Avenue a few blocks away


The south-side courtyard


  • Defense attorney Anna Zacsek, who had been an actress in silent pictures as Olga Grey, bought 211 Muirfield Road in 1958. In San Francisco on September 1, 1960, she married Istvan Kalman Kopcso, who had arrived in the U.S. as a Hungarian refugee in early 1957. In his January 1962 petition for naturalization, he asked that his name be changed to Stephen Windsor (his first choice of a surname appears to have been Jory). The couple was still living at 211 when Anna died on April 25, 1973, at the age of 76. Mr. Windsor to left 211 a few years later
  • Classified advertisements appeared in the Times in the fall of 1976 offering 211 Muirfield Road as the "Former Estate of Well Known Personality,'" with an asking price of $395,000
  • Hollywood agent Robert Heller and his clothing-designer wife Nancy Heller bought 211 Muirfield Road in 1977. That year, the couple refurbished the house, Mrs. Heller now turning from her signature rhinestone T shirts to interiors. On July 31, 1980, the Hellers were hosts for the marriage of Kathleen Brown Rice, then a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education and a sister of then Governor Jerry Brown, and television executive Van Gordon Sauter; the ceremony took place on the rear lawn. No sooner had the little gold chairs been taken away and the grass given a chance to recover, items appeared in the press announcing the sale of 211. On November 28, 1980, Aileen Mehle, then writing her "Suzy" column in the New York Daily News, referred to the property's Hughes history and reported that "The present owner is said to be selling because her marriage has broken up...." The asking price after just four years was now $2,500,000. According to permits, the Hellers had done some remodeling but did not expand the house's square footage during their tenancy; Mrs. Heller's talent for interiors was becoming known, and perhaps she brought about a transformation of 211 that justified the price. Also perhaps a factor in the rise was that by 1980 Hancock Park was becoming attractive again after its serious decline in the riotous and Manson-tinged years of the 1960s and during the national inflationary malaise of the '70s
  • Hollywood agents Robert Bookman and Amy Grossman Bookman were the next owners of 211 Muirfield Road. During their occupancy, the Bookmans were issued permits by the Department of Building and Safety for interior refurbishments and the addition of stairs from the main house to staff quarters over the garage
  • On December 9, 2012, an ad appeared in the Times announcing an estate sale at "Howard Hughes Former Large SP Colonial Hancock Park Estate"
  • An owner in recent years has added to the complexity of 211 Muirfield Road by adding even more rooms—and that aspirational must-have, a pizza oven. One new room at the rear of the house overlooks the pool, which in 2014 was replaced with a new one; another addition altered the street façade by raising the roofline of the south end wing for a new family room.


An interior from the library reveals the luxury of simplicity



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAPL; The Architectural Digest