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  • Built in 1927 on Lot 35 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: insurance executive Wilmer Mitchell Hammond and his wife Lulu Hammond
  • Architect: Roland E. Coate
  • On January 19, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued permits to the Hammonds for a 14-room residence and a one-story, 33-by-29-foot garage at 523 Rimpau Boulevard
  • An item in the Los Angeles Times on January 23, 1927, reported that the "contract to build a $60,000 residence at 523 South Rimpau Boulevard for W. M. Hammond has been awarded to Houghton & Anderson, general contractors.... The dwelling...will contain fourteen rooms and four bathrooms. Architectural design to be embodied in the residence will resemble the old Spanish-Italian period [sic], according to architect Roland E. Coate, and it will be built of wood frame construction, with plaster exterior facing...and the roof will be covered with shakes. The contract also provides for erecting a two-story, three-car garage."  
  • Wilmer M. Hammond, born in Centreville, Maryland, on February 26, 1877, was by 1900 living in Chicago working as a railroad cashier. He married Lulu Estelle Loughman of Washington, Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh on June 25, 1903; Thomas Denton Hammond was born in 1909 and Wilmer Jr. in 1915, with their father having gotten into the insurance business by this time. Hammond moved his family to Los Angeles by the summer of 1925, renting 858 South Windsor Boulevard while planning and building their new house in Hancock Park
  • On August 8, 1935, the Hammonds hosted a reception at 523 Rimpau Boulevard after their niece Kathryn Loughman's marriage to James Scott Webster at nearby St. James' Episcopal Church. Both Hammond sons were married in 1936, Denton to Cornelia Waite in Chicago on May 6. Wilmer Jr. married Beverly Hills debutante Carolyn Church at St. James' on August 18
  • Lulu Hammond died at age 60 on July 27, 1941; her funeral took place at St. James' Episcopal three days later
  • Wilmer Hammond remained at 523 Rimpau Boulevard after the death of Lulu, though he wasted little time in marrying again. In June 1942, 65-year-old Hammond married 24-year-old student nurse Louellen Martin, she perhaps—in something right out of a period melodrama—having attended her predecessor. Their daughter Virginia Marie arrived on February 1, 1945
  • The Hammonds placed 523 Rimpau Boulevard on the market in February 1950. Classifieds in the Times noted that the "condition of this property is like new." Rather than the earlier description of its architecture as "Spanish-Italian," some of the ads, which ran into May, referred to the house as "Georgian Colonial" and named among its features a "poudre" room and a rumpus room. The Hammonds were moving to Brentwood; Wilmer Hammond died in Honolulu on July 21, 1955
  • Attorney Paul Elliot Iverson was the next owner of 523 Rimpau Boulevard, moving in with his wife Joy and their young daughters Ann and Jane. The Iversons had built a six-room house at 1743 Club View Drive in Westwood in 1946 (demolished in early 2021); it seems that the expectation of another child had them seek out 523 Rimpau, which also had the advantage of being closer to Paul Iverson's downtown office. Around the time the family would have been moving into the new house, Peter Charles Iverson arrived on August 30, 1950
  • Both Paul and Joy Parke Iverson were born in Utah. Her maternal great-grandfather John Taylor, who succeeded Brigham Young as president of the Mormon church, reportedly had at least seven wives and was the father of 34 children. His son John Whittaker Taylor, Joy Iverson's grandfather, was also a staunch polygamist and also served the church until he was excommunicated for his opposition to the church's 1904 decision to no longer sanction plural marriage (he was later rebaptized). Joy Iverson's parents, the Dale H. Parkes, had moved to Los Angeles from Utah after their marriage in 1910, eventually building a house on Buckingham Road in Lafayette Square; after the Iversons were married in Salt Lake City on July 13, 1936, the couple settled there until within a few years moving to Los Angeles, where he set up his law practice. Despite the past controversy in her family regarding plural marriage, the Iversons were strong supporters of Mormonism in Los Angeles, he becoming a "high priest" in the church's Wilshire Ward and, in January 1952, the church's general legal counsel in Southern California. That year he was instrumental in building the landmark Los Angeles Mormon temple tower in Westwood. Iverson would also serve terms as president of the Los Angeles Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. It wasn't all civic duty; his establishment cred also included memberships in the California Club and the Los Angeles Country Club and he and Mrs. Iverson were from time to time mentioned in the breathless social diarists' columns in the Times as having been seen at this function or that one, or on the links


March 8, 1967: As seen in the Times, Paul Iverson, then president of the
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, chats with William Pereira, right,
on the occasion of the architect being named "Man of Year" by
the construction industry of Southern California. Pereira,
who lived at 135 North Rossmore Avenue, had
recently designed the now-destroyed
LACMA, opened in March 1965.

 
  • On July 13, 1955, the Department of Building and Safety issued Paul Iverson a permit for an "ornamental metal porch" to be added to the façade of 523 Rimpau Boulevard; this does not seem to have ever been built
  • On December 14, 1960, five generations of the Parke family gathered to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Mrs. Iverson's parents. The Times ran a large picture of various family members under a portrait of John Whittaker Taylor and reported that the clan had gathered at the Dale Parkes' house on Buckingham Road before a dinner for 75 at 523 Rimpau Boulevard
  • The Iversons gave a reception at 523 Rimpau on April 13, 1963, honoring their recently married daughter Ann and her husband Martin Nielsen of American Fork, Utah. Jane married Andrew Prentiss of Los Angeles in June 1970
  • On November 27, 1974, the Department of Building and Safety issued Paul Iverson a permit for a 15-by-30-foot swimming pool at 523 Rimpau Boulevard; a certificate of occupancy was issued to him posthumously on January 15, 1976
  • The Iversons retained 523 Rimpau Boulevard until the late 1970s. Apparently never having gotten to enjoy his pool, Paul Iverson died at home on April 8, 1975, six weeks before his 68th birthday. In September 1981 Joy Iverson married Elbert S. Hartwick, a retired senior executive of the Carnation Company; they moved to an apartment just north of the house she and her first husband built in Westwood in 1946. Elbert Hartwick died in 1990 and she at the age of 101 on September 21, 2014
  • Owners since the Iversons appear to have made only interior updates to 523 Rimpau Boulevard



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT