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  • Built in 1924 on a parcel comprised of Lots 36 and 37 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: Dr. Isaac H. Jones
  • Architect: Johnson, Kaufmann & Coate (this firm's principals, Reginald D. Johnson, Gordon B. Kaufmann, and Roland E. Coate, would separate by the end of 1924, each going on to distinguished practices on their own)
  • On July 16, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Dr. Isaac Jones a permit for a 20-room residence with a four-car garage; the address on the permit is 501 Rimpau Boulevard, which became 515 by the time Dr. Jones moved in
  • Dr. Jones, a surgeon, and his wife appear to have enjoyed the house-building process; in 1920 the couple bought the newly built 448 South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square and then proceeded to acquire adjacent lots facing Lucerne Boulevard onto which they moved 448's original garage and on which they built other structures. They were barely finished alterations to that property when they commissioned Johnson, Kaufmann & Coate to build 515 Rimpau
  • At least two permits were issued to Dr. Jones while 515 Rimpau was under construction, these altering plan details and material specifications such as substituting steel structural members in place of wood and concrete
  • Dr. Jones remained at 515 Rimpau Boulevard until 1931; on June 9 of that year the Times reported that he had just sold the house for $250,000 ($4,807,00 today), which seems even more remarkable for a residential sale deep into the Depression


A schematic based on a 1951 Sanborn insurance map indicates the pre-1959 plan of the
house built in 1924 at 515 Rimpau Boulevard. By 1960, the building had become
two separate dwellings. A dramatic alteration of the garage at left resulted
in it assuming the 515 Rimpau designation, with the reconfigured
original house itself becoming 505 Rimpau Boulevard.


  • The next owner of 515 Rimpau Boulevard was James W. Clune, only son of theater owner and film pioneer William H. Clune. W. H. Clune opened a film exchange as early as 1907, distributing the works of Essanay and Biograph, among other pioneer film production companies, and became well-known in Southern California for his movie theaters including Clune's Auditorium. Clune was behind bringing Time Square–style electric lights to Los Angeles's own Broadway and along the way set up a film production studio and acquired serious holdings in downtown real estate. His only son James William Clune, born on December 19, 1892, tried his hand at stock raising, mortgage lending, and oil prospecting; in 1923 he married divorcée Dorothy Trask Goodrich and adopted her three-year-old son Benjamin F. Goodrich Jr., who was renamed Walter Trask Clune. That year the Clunes bought 4555 Finley Avenue in Los Feliz, the next year building an elaborate house not far to its north at 2250 Chislehurst Drive. The Clunes had two more children: James Jr. was born on June 3, 1924, and Dorothy Agnes on October 12, 1925
  • William H. Clune died on October 18, 1927, leaving his widow Agnes and James well taken care of. On April 14, 1929, the Times reported that James had just bought five acres in Holmby Hills for a residence to be designed by Wallace Neff. It is unclear as to whether ground was ever broken for this house, James and Dorothy Clune appearing to have instead purchased 515 Rimpau Boulevard in June 1931
  • The Clunes appear to have lived uneventfully at 515 Rimpau Boulevard during the 1930s. The '40s and '50s were a different story. On November 13, 1942, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that "investment broker" James W. Clune had shot himself at home the day before; the body was discovered by "a neighbor who forced open the door of a laundry room" of 515. No one else appears to have been home at the time; the Clunes' sons were away in the service. Mrs. Clune told police investigators that "ill health occasioned his act." Waiting not quite a year, Dorothy Trask Goodrich Clune married attorney Francis Forrest Murray in early November 1943; Murray, an attorney, had once been a deputy district attorney and on the team that prosecuted William Edward Hickman, notorious for his abduction and murder of 12-year-old Marion Parker in 1927. James W. Clune Jr.'s engagement to Leila Longan of Beverly Hills was announced in August 1943, though he does not appear to have married her before he was was killed in action in France on November 13, 1944
  • The property's apparently original rear recreation room was upgraded per a permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety to James Clune on June 19, 1936; a permit issued five days later authorized the construction of a 16-by-9-foot playhouse. On November 17, 1950, Dorothy Murray was issued a permit to build a 20-by-14-foot guest house at 515 Rimpau Boulevard
  • As a memorial to her son, Dorothy Murray established the Olive Hill Foundation in January 1946 to fund the restoration of Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Park in East Hollywood after it had fallen into disrepair. Lloyd Wright, collaborating with his father Frank Lloyd Wright—who'd designed the house for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall in 1919—was hired to oversee the project. The Olive Hill Foundation was headquartered at Hollyhock House until 1956 ⁣
  • Forrest and Dorothy Murray remained at 515 Rimpau Boulevard into the mid 1950s, when the rest of the wheels came off the family wagon. On July 25, 1953, Dorothy Agnes Clune married James Anthony Ciccolo at the Cathedral Chapel, with a wedding breakfast afterward at 515. The bride was "given in marriage by her godfather, Forrest Murray," the Times reported the next day, perhaps meaning to refer to him as her stepfather. The Ciccolos would have two sons, the first of whom was James William Clune Ciccolo, born on August 11, 1954. The family's dirty laundry hit the fan when a large article appearing in the Times on November 24, 1956, reported that Dorothy Ciccolo, apparently now an invalid, had filed suit the day before against her mother's guardian, the Bank of America, in an attempt to compel her mother to contribute $1,500 a month to her family's support. It seems that Dorothy and Forrest Murray had by this time divorced and that Mrs. Murray had for reasons unclear been declared incompetent in 1955. "Mrs. Ciccolo said that prior to her marriage...her mother supported her in luxurious surroundings at 515 S. Rimpau Blvd.... but that since her marriage...her husband's savings have been exhausted in caring for her and in paying for medical attention," so much so that Mr. Ciccolo was unable to keep a permanent job while devoting his time to her care at their 10-room Pacific Palisades residence. In trying further to make her case, Mrs. Ciccolo told the court that her mother had given her brother Walter generous amounts of money in the past and that that Mrs. Murray still owned vacation houses in Hawaii and at Lake Arrowhead. The resolution of the suit is unclear, but perhaps the Ciccolos wound up sitting in clover, their bank account full and her health restored: their son Douglas Clune Ciccolo was born on October 6, 1957. Or perhaps Dorothy Ciccolo's health was not restored: She died on July 10, 1958
  • As did the fortunes of the descendants of William H. Clune evolve dramatically, so did the house at 515 Rimpau Boulevard. It would, in a sense, give birth in 1958 when its double-lot parcel was cut in two, right through the southerly kitchen wing of the house, in fact, with the bulk of the original 515 Rimpau Boulevard becoming 505 on a separate parcel comprised of Tract 5640's Lot 37 and the northerly 10 feet of Lot 36, resulting in a frontage of 110 feet. The dwelling to be designated 515 in the future would be created out of its southerly garage and sit on the southerly 90 feet of Lot 36, with major alterations being made to the original residence to develop the two separate houses
  • On July 11, 1958, the Times reported that real estate operator Maurice A. Toomin had acquired 515 Rimpau Boulevard for $74,000 at a court-ordered sale, presumably from the estate of Dorothy Murray. The article stated that Toomin had protesting the property's $33,530 tax assessment because he considered the house to be "obsolete." The assessor disagreed, claiming that it was "rapidly appreciating in value." As it turned out, the property was in new hands even before the article appeared
  • Dr. James Vernon Luck, an orthopedic surgeon, acquired the garage and servants' quarters of a reduced 515 Rimpau Boulevard after Maurice Toomin. Irving Asher—the proprietor of an auto-wrecking business rather than the film producer married to silent star Laura La Plante—had acquired the original house, which, with some demolition and major revisions started in April 1958, was to become 505 Rimpau Boulevard. Dr. Luck was no ordinary orthopedist; he reportedly was the first surgeon to reattach a patient's arm, in this case one that had been severed in a construction accident. His other contributions to the field would include the Luck bone saw, the first motorized saw and drill unit, and the Luck Cup, used surgically to treat certain forms of hip deterioration 




While somewhat complicated to follow, the transformation of
515 Rimpau Boulevard was accomplished by separating the original
residence from its garage; what is indicated above as a "4 car gar–1 family
dwell" on a rough schematic taken from a 1959 building permit is what became
the new 515, completed after the demolition of the original house's kitchen wing
(indicated by "DEM" above) and a northerly addition (shaded area below).
The bulk of the original 1924 house north of the new lot line became
a residence newly designated as 505 Rimpau Boulevard.



  • On May 1, 1959, the Department of Building and Safety issued "V. J." Luck a permit for the new configuration of 515 Rimpau Boulevard. The document indicates that the new building's "present use" was as a four-car garage and servants' quarters, its "new use' to be a dwelling and garage. After the large southerly kitchen wing of what was becoming 505—formerly the dwelling designated 515—was demolished, a large shingled northerly wing was added to Luck's transformation of the garage, one that straddled the original residence's herringbone-brick driveway. A second brick driveway was laid along 505's newly established southerly lot line and, after the original building's southerly 27-foot-wide kitchen wing as demolished, a remaining overhang was extended five feet to create a porte-cochère through which could be reached a new three-car garage at the rear of the property for which Irving Asher was issued a permit on April 29, 1958
  • Even before work on the new 515 Rimpau began, Dr. Luck was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety on July 29, 1958, for a 16-by-30-foot swimming pool in the backyard. On October 2, 1961, Dr. Luck was issued a permit to slightly expand 515's one-story south-side loggia. He and his wife Ramona had a son, James Vernon Luck Jr., and a daughter named Diane; the family remained at 515 until moving temorarily to Los Feliz (where they'd been living prior to Hancock Park) before moving to 318 North Windsor Boulevard
  • On January 22, 1961, the Times reported that a stealthy intruder had stolen $82,000 worth of jewelry—a single diamond-and-ruby ring among the loot was said to be worth $80,000—from the unattended purses of guests of the Lucks during a dinner party 
  • Hancock Park having long been a preferred district of the downtown establishment, Louise Brant, the widow of businessman Thomas James Brant Jr., was in residence at 515 Rimpau Boulevard by 1977. A Hancock Park veteran, she was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Eloy Duque, who'd built 367 Rimpau Boulevard in 1925. He was the son of the senior Brants of 175 North McCadden Place; his grandmother was Mrs. James McAlister, who'd built 644 Rimpau Boulevard in 1924 and whose daughter Mary had been married to one of Ernest Eloy Duque's brothers, Gabriel C. Duque, who lived at 340 North Las Palmas Avenue
  • On March 17, 1977, the Department of Building and Safety issued Louise Brant a permit to build a 21-by-18-foot carport attached to the northwest corner of the house. Mrs. Brant re-roofed the house in 1982
  • Louise Brant remained at 515 Rimpau Boulevard until 1987
  • In 2000, an owner succeeding Louise Brant added significantly to the square footage of 515 Rimpau Boulevard; a one-story 35-by-17-foot rear pentagonal addition provided more space for dining and living areas, with a 39-by-16-foot second-floor addition expanding the master suite
  • Despite its truncation and massive yet sensitive alterations to the original 515 Rimpau Boulevard over the years, the house, or rather houses, have somehow managed to retain charm, at least from the sidewalk
  • Please also see our history of 505 Rimpau Boulevard here


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAPL; LADBS