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  • Built in 1922 on a parcel comprised of the southerly 20 feet of Lot 43 and northerly 80 feet of Lot 42 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: attorney James Horton Shankland
  • Architect:  William T. Williams
  • On July 6, 1922, the Department of Buildings issued J. H. Shankland a permit for an 11-room house with an integral garage at 321 Muirfield Road 
  • James Shankland was a pioneer Los Angeles attorney who joined the existing firm of Graves & O'Melveny (Jackson Graves and Henry O'Melveny) in 1888 to form Graves, O'Melveny & Shankland, which evolved into O'Melveny & Myers and is today known simply as O'Melveny. (O'Melveny's son John would be moving into 212 Muirfield Road in 1927.) Commissioning architects Theodore A. Eisen and Sumner P. Hunt, Shankland had built 715 West 28th Street in 1895, West 28th then becoming known as Bankers' Row, a bon-ton neighborhood within the larger bon-ton West Adams District. A widower since 1889, Shankland moved into 715 with his teenage son and daughter. Elizabeth married attorney Jefferson P. Chandler in 1904 and moved to 639 West 28th, six doors to the east; a year later Fowler married Isabel Davenport in New York, the couple returned to Los Angeles to live with his father before moving around the corner with their growing family to 701 West 30th Street
  • The planning of 321 Muirfield Road appears to have been part of a reorganization of family domiciles. The Chandlers would be remaining as the West Adams District began to lose its appeal to the affluent as new Wilshire-corridor subdivisions such as Hancock Park opened and even after Bankers' Row began to evolve into U.S.C.'s Fraternity Row; the new house at 321 Muirfield Road appears to have been intended for Fowler and Isabel and their now five children even if it seems to have been financed by his father. As whatever exact plans played out, James Shankland died at 715 West 28th Street on January 24, 1923. The Chandlers moved into his house. Elizabeth Chandler was still living at 715 when her husband died in 1948—and would, in fact, remain until her own death in August 1970. (Interviewed  in 1950, she told the Times that she enjoyed "the excitement of life among the collegians—except, perhaps, the bonfires." 715 West 28th remains standing as the Andronicus chapter of Alpha Rho Chi, a fraternity for architecture students; 639 West 28th became the Alpha Nu chapter of Delta Gamma in 1924 and was replaced with a new house in 1969, one still occupied by the sorority)
  • On July 1, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Fowler Shankland a permit to add a bedroom and bath to the attic level of 321 Muirfield Road; on July 25, 1928, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued Shankland a permit to add a maid's room and enlarge the garage
  • On September 12, 1941, the Fowler Shanklands' youngest child, Louisa, married Robert John Zonne at St. Albans' Episcopal in Westwood, with a reception afterward at 321 Muirfield
  • The Shanklands had 321 Muirfield Road on the market in early 1942, asking $17,500 ($310,000 today); there apparently being no takers in wartime even at that price, the family decided to stay
  • Having retired from his real estate, insurance, and banking career earlier in the decade, Fowler Shankland died at 321 Muirfield Road on November 28, 1948; he was 73. Isabel Shankland remained in possession of the house until September 1965. She died in Los Angeles at the age of 90 on August 21, 1969
  • Succeeding the Shankland family at 321 Muirfield Road were John Jay Corley and his wife, née Beverly Edgerton of Brentwood. The couple had married in June 1957; they were moving into 321 with three sons and would have two more before divorcing in February 1973. Mrs. Corley retained the house. She married Sidney A. Adair, a recently widowed attorney, in January 1975; he moved into 321 with his two sons, putting 457 South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square, where he'd lived since 1965, on the market. (The Arden Boulevard house had been built on Berendo Street just south of Wilshire in 1906 and moved to Windsor Square in 1923)
  • Curiously, the name "Adair" is crossed out on a permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on September 26, 1985, with John Corley's name appearing instead as the owner of 321 Muirfield Road; the authorization was for a small pool
  • An owner in recent decades has carried out interior refurbishments and alterations; the house appears from the street to remain as it was built a century ago


Illustration: Private Collection