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  • Built in 1928 on Lot 28 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: Montana politician Lee Mantle 
  • Architect: Leslie M. Polson, per the original building permits, about whom little is known; the contractor cited, J. Rex Davis, is equally obscure
  • On September 20, 1928, the Department of Building and Safety issued Lee Mantle permits for a 15-room residence and a two-story, 30-by-22-foot garage at 635 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Born in Birmingham, England, as Theophilus Washington Mantle on December 13, 1851, Lee Mantle came to the United States as a child with his widowed mother, stopping in Salt Lake City. Repelled by Mormonism after all, they moved on to the territories of Idaho and then Montana, where in Butte he worked for Wells Fargo and started publlshing the Daily Inter Mountain and entered politics. Mantle served in the Montana territorial house of representatives and, after statehood, as mayor of Butte for a term before being a becoming a U. S. senator in 1895. (William Andrews Clark, Mantle's fellow Buttean, family friend, and possible role model in alliances with young brides, was elected to Mantle's unexpired term in 1899 though charges of corruption and bribery caused his rejection by the Senate; more on Clark's Los Angeles family connections is here.) Mantle sold his newspaper in 1901 (it became The Butte Inter Mountain and then The Butte Daily Post) and concentrated on his business interests, which included real estate, insurance, and, this being Butte, mining. Retiring to California at the age of 69, he was married for the first time a few months after his 70th birthday; his wedding to Butte-born Mary Henrietta Daly, who was 24, took place on February 25, 1922, in Chicago. Mantle told reporters he had watched Miss Daly grow up and had patiently waited until she finished her degree at the University of Nebraska, delayed by an apparent attack of nerves requiring treatment in Baltimore


Etta Mantle and Lee Mantle Jr. as seen in the The Butte Miner, July 15, 1923


  • Lee Mantle Jr. arrived in San Francisco on October 12, 1922, a tad early. The family began dividing their time between Butte and San Francisco. Sojourns to visit Etta's parents in Southern California convinced them of its superior climate; by 1926 they were renting 269 Lorraine Boulevard in New Windsor Square in Los Angeles. The Mantles decided to settle in the city, which led to their building 528 South Plymouth Boulevard in Windsor Square in 1926
  • It seems that the 11-room Windsor Square house turned out to be too small; not only would Etta's mother Mary Daly be moving in with the Mantles, but so would Etta's three unmarried siblings—Lorraine, Cecile, and Robert—which led to the building of 635 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Mrs. Daly died on July 17, 1929, her funeral being held from 635 Rimpau Boulevard; her husband Patrick, a pioneer Montana miner, had died in Los Angeles in May 1924
  • Lee Mantle Sr. died at Good Samaritan on November 18, 1934, a month shy of his 83rd birthday. The Associated Press described him as "one of the last of the picturesque group of frontier capitalists who made history in the days of he northwest's booming development." Rather dramatically, his body lay in state at 635 Rimpau Boulevard, perhaps under its entrance hall rotunda. He was sent north for burial in Butte
  • 635 Rimpau Boulevard was on the market in July 1938. Classified ads in the Times had no asking price, though whatever it might have been, there were no takers despite the country coming off the 1937-38 recession. Etta and Lee Jr. and her siblings would be living in a new house she bought nearby at 425 South June Street by September, though ads for 635 Rimpau were still running a year later. Those in August 1939 carried this notation: "The house was built for owner about eight years ago at great expense. To effect a quick sale the property offered at approx. 1/3 of owner's cost." Etta Mantle was getting closer to a sale. In time, Lee Jr. went off to Dartmouth; he would die in 1985 at the age of 62. Etta remarried in Mexico in June 1947, apparently reporting her age to the Chihuahuan registrar as 28 rather than her actual 49; her second husband, builder Edgar John Laing, had been born in 1918. Etta died in Las Vegas in 1993, age 95
  • Retired attorney Ernest Elwood Ford and his wife née Louise Ione Haynes bought 635 Rimpau Boulevard from Etta Mantle. The couple had married in 1895 in Arizona, where his father had made money as a miner and hotel owner. He and Ione and his parents moved to Southern California after the turn of the century, settling in Alhambra. After the deaths of his father in 1927 and his mother a year later, Ernest and Ione bought a house at 1245 South Arlington Avenue in Los Angeles, where they stayed until moving to 635 Rimpau. The house was clearly too big for an older childless couple, but it could be that they saw it as a good investment at the reduced price Mrs. Mantle would have wound up accepting after it sat on the market so long
  • Despite its size, the Fords pulled a permit from the Department of Building and Safety on July 23, 1940, to add a 17-by-21-foot upstairs room to 635 and a porte cochère. The couple presumably did well when they sold the house in the postward market in 1947 and moved to the somewhat smaller 425 South Irving Boulevard in Windsor Square. After Ernest Ford died at 425 in September 1952, age 82, his widow moved to a duplex at 162 North Orange Drive; the Fords were inveterate world travelers, Ione continuing on her own until she died at 81 in March 1955 aboard the Queen Mary enroute to Europe. (Her body was shipped home from Cherbourg for burial with Mr. Ford; her obituary in the Times noted her death at sea as well as her mystic-order affiliations, which included having been the first Worthy High Priestess of the Order of the White Shrine of Jerusalem)
  • Mr. and Mrs. William Henry McCausland moved into 635 Rimpau Boulevard in 1947. He was the owner of downtown shoe repair shops, though one might presume that there were other sources of family income. The McCauslands' middle of three daughters, Joan, married Charles Duane Young at 635 Rimpau on Valentine's Day 1948; Young had grown up nearby at 426 South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square. On November 19, 1947, W. H. McCausland was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for termite-damage repairs
  • William H. McCausland died in Los Angeles on April 12, 1949; the house was put on the market not long after
  • John Otto Kriehn and his wife Janet were the next owners of 635 Rimpau Boulevard. Kriehn had at one time been co-owner of Fullerton-Kriehn, a Hudson dealer in Santa Monica. The Kriehns' younger of two daughters, Sandra, married John R. Padden of San Marino at St. James Episcopal on February 8, 1958, with a reception afterward at 635. After Sandra's sister Patricia's marriage to James R. Cutler in Las Vegas in November 1960, the Kriehns gave the couple a party at 635. The house would be change hands again soon after
  • Industrialist Frank J. Vodhanel, president of Apex Pattern Company— producers of foundry patterns for aircraft and missle components—and his wife Evelyn were the next owner of 635 Rimpau Boulevard
  • On March 29, 1961, the Department of Building and Safety issued Frank Vodhanel a permit for a 24-by-40-foot swimming pool at 635 Rimpau; on January 5, 1962, he was issued a permit for the enclosure of a porch to enlarge a study
  • 635 Rimpau Boulevard was on the market in the fall of 1972; the asking price noted in advertisements in the stagflationary '70s: $169,500 ($1,169,000 in 2022). The Vodhanels would be moving to 376 South Hudson Avenue
  • Herbert W. Braham was occupying 635 Rimpau Boulevard by 1973; he served as a president of the neighborhood's Los Angeles Tennis Club. Braham and his predecessors at 635, the Vodhanels, were among those included in a November 1981 Town & Country magazine feature on Hancock Park and vicinity 


Illustrations: Private Collection; Boye Studios, San Francisco/The Butte Miner