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  • Built in 1924 on Lot 38 in Tract 5640
  • Original commissioner: real estate investor Brenton Stanley Carr 
  • Architect: Austin & Ashley (John C. Austin and Frederic M. Ashley); the firm of Austin & Ashley is the designer of record of the Memorial Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library on Olympic Boulevard (five blocks south of 435 Rimpau Boulevard) and of the Griffith Park Observatory. Austin & Ashley also designed the nearby quite similar 533 Muirfield Road for Brenton Carr's sister Bernice and her husband Hugh Miller Kice
  • On August 5, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued Brenton S. Carr permits for a 12-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-27-foot garage at 435 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Stanley Carr, as he was known, was the son and business partner of real estate investor Joseph Elmer Carr; their Carr Realty & Mortgage Company operated during the 1920s and into the Depression. Indiana-born Joseph Carr had arrived in Los Angeles by 1896 and gone into the retail grocery business, in 1902 partnering with William D. Stephens, who would become governor of California in 1917. Carr did well enough to begin purchasing downtown property, by the spring of 1899 having acquired parcels in the 600 block of Broadway that he would redevelop over the next two decades. In 1909 he sold his grocery business and went into real estate full time. To celebrate his acumen he hired architect Robert B. Young to build the J. E. Carr Building that year, which still stands at 646 South Broadway. In 1912, having employed John C. Austin—then teamed with Woodbury C. Pennell—Joseph Carr built his own house at 143 Westmoreland Place in Westmoreland Place, a gated subdivision that would soon fail, with only nine residences built on its 65 lots. Its close-in location was decided upon by its developers before the automobile—and in particular the affordable Model T—made living ever farther west from downtown feasible. The failed geography of Westmoreland Place was no doubt a lesson to the Carrs, with Stanley Carr—and his sister Bernice Kice of 533 Muirfield Road—choosing carefully when deciding to build in what was being touted as the city's most exclusive new neighborhood out on Wilshire Boulevard. While ultimately Hancock Park was eclipsed by even father-flung developments and would have its ups and downs in terms of appeal over the decades, it has managed to hold its own among the high-end residential districts of the city. Joseph Carr is thought to have financed both 435 Rimpau for his son and 533 Muirfield for his daughter; as for himself, he would remain in Westmoreland Place even as it was de-gated and turned into an apartment district. Widowed in 1934, he remarried in 1937, afterward leapfrogging Hancock Park to resettle in Westwood
  • In June 1917 Stanley Carr married Margaret Cuzner, the daughter of Robert L. Cuzner, a partner in and treasurer of the Kerckhoff-Cuzner Mill & Lumber Company, which reportedly supplied materials for the construction of 435 Rimpau Boulevard. Their son Brenton Jr. arrived in 1919 and daughters in 1922 and 1929. Brenton Jr. married in 1949 and Margaret on February 24, 1951; her husband was attorney David Noble Barry III, whose namesake grandfather developed Fremont Place. Their wedding took place at St. Alban's Episcopal in Westwood, with a reception following at 435 Rimpau. (In 1955, the Barrys built a house in Brentwood that would later become famous as the Miami home of The Golden Girls.) Barbara became a respected child psychologist after her graduation from Marlborough and U.S.C. and four years spent in London studying at the Anna Freud Centre. The Carr family would retain 435 Rimpau Boulevard until after Brenton Stanley Carr's death at Good Samaritan Hospital on June 4, 1957, at the age of 66
  • Longtime Los Angeles builder and developer Louis Peter Pozzo and his wife Marjorie bought 435 Rimpau Boulevard from Margaret Carr; they were in residence by late 1960. Social diarist Christy Fox reported in the Times on October 21, 1960, that Dr. and Mrs. Keith Russell of 179 South McCadden Place were throwing a party to welcome the Pozzos to Hancock Park. Louis Pozzo's grandfather had arrived in America in 1880, establishing himself as a builder in New York; reportedly persuaded to move to California by vintner Secondo Guasti, Pietro Pozzo had opened a carpentry shop in Los Angeles by late 1900. Pozzo's three sons worked in the trade with him, middle son Emile having obtained a degree in architecture and engineering from New York's Cooper Union; Emile's younger of two sons Louis, born in 1912, eventually joined the firm, prolific in terms of its projects, and would have been able to vet the 35-year-old 435 Rimpau Boulevard as well-built before buying it. Louis Pozzo married Florice Marjorie Moore in Beverly Hills on June 6, 1943; known as Marjorie Moore, the new Mrs. Pozzo was described as an established illustrators' model who appeared on national magazine covers, though so far none of these have surfaced in research. The Pozzos' son Louis was born on Christmas Day, 1944, Victor, who would one day become president of Pozzo Construction, on February 1, 1947. It is unclear as to how long the family retained ownership of 435 Rimpau Boulevard
  • Owners succeeding the Pozzos have carried out various interior remodelings, including the addition of a breakfast nook in 1988. A 145-foot-long block wall was erected on the north side of the lot in 2000. A swimming pool was added to the property in 2002 and a 475-square-foot single-story rear addition to the house was started in 2004; according to building permits, neither of these projects were fully completed until 2014


Illustration: Private Collection