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  • Built in 1922 on the northerly 100 feet of lot 28 in Tract 3668
  • Original commissioner: leather-goods manufacturer Clarence Ferguson
  • Architect: Edward Cray Taylor
  • On April 13, 1922, the Department of Buildings issued Clarence Ferguson permits for a two-story 10-room residence and a one-story 30-by-22-foot garage
  

As seen in the Los Angeles Times on July 23, 1922


  • Clarence Ferguson was that rare native Angeleno born before the Boom of the Eighties; his father William was born in northern Arkasas in 1832 and a farmer and blacksmith there until moving to California after the Civil War, settling in Los Angeles before 1870 as the proprietor, with Jacob Metzker, of livery stables. Clarence married Evangeline Florence Remick on September 8, 1903; they built a house at 750 North Rampart Boulevard in 1906, and lived there until building 200 Muirfield Road. Financing their rise was Clarence's Los Angeles Leather Company, the predecessor firm of which had been founded in 1900. He had gone into lithography after his schooling but, with his family knowledge of the livery business, he was by 1904 vice-president of Los Angeles Leather, which evolved into the Lichtenberger-Ferguson Company and took on automobile tires as transportation itself evolved. President of the firm was Louis Lichtenberger who, interestingly, would also be building a new house in 1922, one that, in comparison to Ferguson's choice of neighborhood, is notable for illustrating the pivot point where the primacy of the West Adams district as the city's best residential district began to give way to Wilshire-corridor development. While Lichtenberger's very pretty 3701 West Adams Boulevard still stands in good condition, even its westerly location at the corner of 7th Avenue in a neighborhood near West Adams's estate area would be passé by the end of the 1920s, the district's serious affluence mostly drained off by Hancock Park and other new subdivisions
  • On March 29, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued a permit to Mr. Ferguson for a two-story, 12-by-9-foot addition at the rear internal intersection of the north and east wings of the house
  • On November 15, 1926, the Los Angeles Evening Express reported that the Fergusons' elder daughter Helen married Barton Armin Hinckley at noon that day at 200 Muirfield Road. After a Cuban honeymoon, the newlyweds settled into a cottage her father had built for them at 1309 Cordell Place in the Hollywood Hills just south of the Bird Streets. Hinckley worked for his father's water-heater manufacturing business
  • Curiously, the Fergusons appear to have contemplated selling 200 Muirfield Road in 1928; a classified ran in the Times on January 17, 1928, advertising the property as "never offered for sale before." The family would remain for another decade
  • As reported in the Times on August 24, 1933, the Fergusons' younger daughter Charlotte married Walter Donald Douglas at St. Paul's Cathedral the evening before, with a reception following at 200 Muirfield Road. He was the son of Natalie Duell Douglas, who built 501 South Hudson Avenue in Hancock Park in 1930. (Mrs. Douglas was divorced from the groom's wandering Iowa-born father, George Camp Douglas, who died in France in 1925.) The Walter Douglases' daughter Natalie was born on May 31, 1934; her namesake grandmother had died at the age of 47 on November 13, 1933. Walter and Charlotte Douglas would move into his mother's house at 501 South Hudson and by 1940 would have two more daughters
  • With their children married and gone from the house, the Fergusons put 200 Muirfield on the market in 1935 and by 1938 had downsized to a cottage on Vista Street 20 blocks due west. (Mrs. Ferguson died on March 27, 1957, four days shy of her 76th birthday, her husband on December 11, 1960, at the age of 87)
  • Native Angeleno William Starke Rosecrans was in possession of 200 Muirfield Road by late 1935. Rosecrans was named by his father Carl Frederick Rosecrans for his grandfather, General William Starke Rosecrans, who became known for his Civil War battlefield successes until defeat at Chickamauga in September 1863. After Appomattox, Rosecrans moved west to California, stopping at San Rafael and soon moving south, buying 16,000 acres south of Los Angeles that became known as Rosecrans Rancho; the family developed much of the spread and farmed other parts and, inevitably, drilled for oil. Over the years the Rosecrans name became familiar statewide. William Starke Rosecrans II was born on March 13, 1889, and married Elizabeth Helm on August 30, 1916. The couple lived at Hermosa Beach until deciding to give up his long commute to his downtown Los Angeles office and buy 200 Muirfield Road. The Rosecrans had no children; still living at 200, he died there at 76 on July 28, 1965. Mrs. Rosecrans appears to have remained in the house until her death on June 8, 1981, just weeks shy of her 92nd birthday
  • On November 18, 1936, the Department of Building and Safety issued William Rosecrans a permit to convert a sun porch into a library and to rebuild a bay window; other work permitted included a brick retaining wall, presumably that at the Muirfield sidewalk, on March 15, 1938, and on March 24, 1941, an 8-by-12-foot barbeque at the rear of the garage 
  • Classified advertisements appeared in the Times in the spring of 1982 offering the house at $825,000. It was still on the market seven months later, now priced at $735,000
  • Attorney Bill E. Schroeder was the next owner of 200 Muirfield Road, he and his wife moving from 248 South Irving Boulevard in New Windsor Square. Their family appears to have retained ownership until 2013
  • Owners since 2013 have undertaken extensive renovations and made a two-story addition


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT