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  • Built in 1940 on Lot 14 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: Marion D. Osburn  
  • Architect: Wallace Neff
  • On October 15, 1940, the Department of Building and Safety issued Marion Osburn a permit for an 11-room residence with attached two-car garage
  • Marion Davidson Osburn was the widow of Morris Roy Osburn, a lawyer turned land developer who had died on December 21, 1939. As president of the Domiguez Land Corporation after arriving in Southern California after the Armistice, he oversaw considerable development in Torrance in the early 1920s before creating his own investment entity, the Osburn California Corporation, in 1923. The Osburns—with their daughter Elaine, born in 1902, and son Davidson, born in 1910—rented half a duplex in Hollywood before, with business apparently booming, they decided to build the first of their three houses in Hancock Park. The Osburn California Corporation appears as owner on the building permit issued for 322 South Las Palmas Avenue on October 3, 1924. On February 10, 1927, the Times reported that the Osburns had moved slightly to the northeast, having bought a house at 164 South Hudson Avenue just completed by developers Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle. Elaine Osburn married Harmon Elgin Hubble of Niagara Falls in the garden of 164 on September 11, 1929; the Osburns were still living there when Roy died at the age of 69 on December 21, 1939. Apparently intended just for herself, Marion Osburn decided to build her new 11-room house at 516 Rimpau Boulevard not long after the death of her husband. Their Niagara Falls honeymoon over, Elaine and Harmon Hubble had divorced by 1936, she returning to Los Angeles to build 601 Loring Avenue in Westwood that year for herself and her daughter Marion 
  • Marion Osburn was still living at 516 Rimpau Boulevard at the time of her death at the age of 84 on December 26, 1962
  • Mrs. Osburn's children inherited 516 Rimpau Boulevard; Davidson Osburn was listed at the address in the city directory issued in July 1963. In the next two issues, Samuel Salisbury Perry, who Elaine Osburn Hubble had married in 1945, was listed. In June 1966, classified ads appeared in the Times for a "private estate sale" on June 29 and 30 and July 1 offering the contents of 516
  • Edwin S. Phillips—known as Ted—and his wife Joan Gilfillan Philiips were owners of 516 Rimpau Boulevard by the spring of 1971. Phillips had been president of his father-in-law's Gilfillan Corporation, a Los Angeles radio manufacturer that before World War II had produced receivers under its own name and for other nameplates such as Packard-Bell and RCA. In 1942 Gilfillan was given a government contract to produce the first ground control approach radar for the military, later adapted for civilian aviation. The company became a division of ITT in 1964. (Phillips's business associations are unclear from that time until 1977, when he joined the insurance business founded by his father in 1914)
  • On May 10, 1971, he Department of Building and Safety issued Ted Phillips permits to convert 516's existing attached garage into a recreation room and for a new 20-by-20-foot carport
  • The Phillipses had 516 Rimpau Boulevard on the market by August 1976 at an asking price of $325,000. It sold sometime after the price had dropped to $298,500 by mid October
  • William Lyddon Jr. bought 516 Rimpau from the Phillipses. On April 15, 1977, he was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a 17-by-38 swimming pool to the property
  • 516 Rimpau Boulevard was on the market again in early 1989 asking $2,224,000; early ads took note of the house's prominent architect though referred to him as "William Neff." While Hancock Park real estate had rebounded significantly from the dark days of the '70s, the price was clearly ambitious. It was reduced incrementally, reaching $1,595,000 by September 1990
  • Owners in recent decades appear to have maintained the original integrity of the house, performing only interior updates  


Illustration: Private Collection