PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1924 on Lot 21 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: insurance executive Orville Rey Rule
  • Architect: Arthur W. Tyler, who was the youngest son of Marcus S. Tyler, a retail shoe dealer who had transitioned into real estate development, forming the family property firm Tyler & Company in 1899 with his sons Walter, Bernard, Frank M. Tyler, and, in time, his youngest son, Arthur, who, like Frank, became a designing partner. Frank Tyler became the firm's principal architect and one of Los Angeles's most prolific residential designers of the early 20th century; he created individual plans for clients as well as a portfolio of stock designs for the firm that were replicated more than once in the city's early suburbs such as Westlake and those along Adams Boulevard 
  • On July 28, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Mrs. O. Rey Rule permits for an 11-room house and a one-story, 20-by-18-foot garage at 634 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Former railroad man Ferd K. Rule had opened Rule & Sons Inc., general insurance agents, with his sons Rey and Gerald in 1905. After Ferd Rule died in 1908, the business continued with Rey as president; it became one of the largest insurance agencies on the west coast and in 1920 became a subsidiary of Lee Allen Phillips's Pacific Finance Corporation
  • Rey and his wife, née Dorothy Bond, moved into 634 Rimpau Boulevard with their daughter Peggy and son Orville Rey Rule Jr., though it is not known if the house was completed and they were in residence when their son William arrived on Christmas Day 1924
  • On September 18, 1928, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued Dorothy Rule a permit to add a bedroom and bath; on October 1, Rey Rule was issued a permit for a new chimney and for interior alterations
  • Rey Rule retired young in 1930, the family decamping to their spread at Rancho Santa Fe. After a year's illness, per the Times two days later, Rey Rule died in San Diego on April 30, 1936, age 52. Dorothy Rule married again in October of the next year; her groom, Henry Ray Millard, was 10 years younger and was divorced with two children
  • After moving down to the ranch, the Rules rented 634 Rimpau for several years to leading film producer Samuel J. Briskin, who was with Columbia Pictures from its earliest days, becoming its general manager in 1932. Briskin would go on to R.K.O. and Paramount and back to Columbia and work as an independent producer in partnership with some of the biggest names in Hollywood including William Wyler, Frank Capra, and George Stevens. After Briskin and his wife Sara and their sons Gerald and Bernard moved on to an apartment at the El Royale, 634 Rimpau was sold
  • Shipping and lumber executive Donald Reid Philips acquired 634 Rimpau Boulevard by 1936. In 1929 Philips had formed the Lawrence-Philips Steamship Company with lumberman Theodore Lawrence to charter ships to bring board feet down from the northwest. Philips and his wife, née Dorothy Bond, moved into 634 with their daughter Jacqueline and sons Thomas and Lawrence
  • On May 18, 1939, the Department of Building and Safety issued Donald Philips permits for 634 Rimpau to enlarge the garage to accommodate three cars and for interior and exterior repairs and kitchen-window alterations; on September 10, 1941, Philips was issued a permit to extend the garage's front eave over the extended garage's new door
  • On October 3, 1942, Jacqueline Philips was married to Rex Shelton Oxford at the Chapman Park Orotorio; her parents gave a champagne reception afterward at 634 Rimpau
  • The Philipses remained at 634 Rimpau Boulevard until 1951 when they moved to an apartment in Westwood


As seen in a feature in the Los Angeles Times on December 30, 1951, honoring the paper's
Women of the Year, which included Emily Sims. Five-year-old Susan and Christopher,
(four) are at left; Emily Jane (three) and Kelly (four-year-old Louis Kelly Sims Jr.)
at right. The family had only recently moved into 634 Rimpau Boulevard.


  • Insurance agent Louis Kelly Sims was the next owner of 634 Rimpau Boulevard. The year he and his wife moved in, Emily Brinton Sims was given a 1951 Woman of the Year Award by the Los Angeles Times for her wartime efforts on behalf of chaplains serving abroad. (Among her fellow honorees were Buff Chandler, the actress Irene Dunne, and Mrs. Gabriel C. Duque, the Simses' next-door neighbor Josephine McAlister's daughter-in-law; Mrs. Duque and her husband lived in Hancock Park in a house at 340 North Las Palmas designed for them by Paul Williams and built in 1933.) Mrs. Sims had organized the Chaplains Service Corps in 1941 and had recently revived it to aid in the Korean conflict. The Corps gathered books, radios, and furnishings for wartime chaplains to enhance their care of servicemen. (The Corps' headquarters was in the former Frank Borzage residence at 3974 Wilshire Boulevard, only recently demolished.)
  • On August 10, 1951, Mrs. L. K. Sims was issued a permits by the Department of Building and Safety for alterations to the kitchen and a bedroom at 634 Rimpau Boulevard. Interestingly, Mrs. Sims hired for this work the Salt Lake City architect Georgius Young Cannon. The M.I.T.-trained Cannon had worked briefly in the Los Angeles office of Wallace Neff—he was also M.I.T. trained—before returning to Utah. Cannon was the 32nd child of Mormon leader George Q. Cannon; his mother was a daughter of Brigham Young
  • Moving from their house at 950 South Gramercy Drive, the Simses moved into 634 Rimpau Boulevard with their four young adopted children, Susan, Christopher, Kelly, and Emily Jane
  • On May 1, 1959, the Department of Building and Safety issued Louis Sims a permit for a 20-by-42-foot swimming pool at 634 Rimpau Boulevard
  • On March 12, 1968, 71-year-old Emily Brinton Sims died in her sleep at 634 Rimpau Boulevard; she was buried in Salt Lake City. Her sizable obituary in the Times three days later described her war work and other philanthropic and civic endeavors. Louis Sims Sr. was still listed at 634 in the city directory of 1973; he died in Los Angeles on February 25, 1982, and rather than being returned to Salt Lake for burial with his wife, he was interred at Forest Lawn
  • In recent decades, owners of 634 Rimpau Boulevard have made numerous changes in addition to various interior alterations and updates. In 2003, an 18-by-27-foot, two-story rear addition extended the living room and created a new upstairs bedroom. A carport was added in conjuction with part of the garage being converted into a recreation room, and an elevator has been installed


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT