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  • Completed in 1924 on Lot 8 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: attorney Andrew J. Copp Jr.
  • Architect: Lester H. Hibbard of Stanton, Reed & Hibbard (Forrest Q. Stanton, Harold E. Reed)
  • On November 1, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Andrew J. Copp Jr. permits for a 10-room residence and a 19-by-20-foot garage at 414 Muirfield Road
  • Andrew James Copp Jr. was, at least technically, Andrew James Copp III; early on, the family, of New England origins, would adhere to the old practice of reassigning suffixes as the senior holder of the name expired. The namesake grandfather of the builder of 414 Muirfield Road died after fighting at Antietam in 1862; the soldier's son, Yale '69 and Columbia Law, assumed the suffix "Senior" and had settled at Millerton, New York, before bringing his family to Los Angeles in 1884. Andrew J. Copp Sr. practiced in the city until retiring in 1895, having begun investing in Los Angeles real estate; a big project of his was the purchase that year of the city's first synagogue—precursor of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple—and replacement of it with the Copp Building at 218 South Broadway. (This was demolished in 1931, the family retaining the lot.) Andrew J. Copp Jr., born in Millerton on October 15, 1880, was sent east from California to the Boston Latin School, from which he was graduated in 1899. A degree from Stanford followed in 1902 and one in law from the University of Michigan in 1903. Admitted to the bar on October on 18, 1904, he worked for famed attorney Oscar Lawler for a year before opening his own practice
  • Andrew J. Copp Jr. married Cora Eastman Lord on November 26, 1912, at the home of her aunt and uncle, the Herbert Davises, in Highland Park. The bride was a New Hampshire–born orphan; the groom, always martial-minded and a staunch arbiter of rank, was at the time with the Judge Advocate General's Department of the California National Guard holding the rank of Major, which he was not averse to using as a prefix in civilian life. The Copps settled at 314 South Union Avenue in Westlake and would remain there until moving into their new house at 414 Muirfield Road
  • The Copps had two children by the time they moved to Hancock Park. The fourth Andrew James Copp was born on December 3, 1913; starting out with a "III" after his name, he simplified things by becoming known simply as James Copp and followed a path other than that laid down by his lawyerly father and grandfather. The first few paragraphs of his lengthy obituary in the Times after he died on April 7, 1999, describe his interesting life:


  • James Copp was living in New York in 1940, singing at Greenwich Village's famous Café Society, a venue somewhat ironic considering his father's aggressive stance when Nat King Cole moved into 401 Muirfield Road across the street from 414 in 1948, as described below. The nightclub's owner, Barney Josephson, became a legend for breaking down racial barriers by integrating the front of the house and backstage and bringing recognition to Holiday, Horne, Alberta Hunter, and others. James moved back to Los Angeles after serving in the Army Signal Corps in Europe during World War II—he was adjutant to the commander of an intelligence unit that participated n the Normandy invasion—and re-embraced the antibohemian values of the city's Old Guard. The Bachelors and The Spinsters were that cohort's exclusive clubs for young unmarrieds, memberships revoked after their weddings; the very attractive and popular James took part in The Bachelors' annual balls and its other activities, presumably never being dropped from the roster, and then became a society columnist for the Times in 1950. One in a series of inane gossip columns that appeared in the paper from the '30s to the '70s, "Skylarking with James Copp" ran until 1956. Copp followed up "Skylarking" with a somewhow even sillier column in the Women's Section of the Times called "The Eyes of Argus," which was described opaquely as "a fanciful game of mock-forecasting" that was intended "to provide its readers with a chuckle while manufacturing its omens each day." "The Eyes of Argus" lasted five months during 1957. Referencing his subsequent career in his obituary, the Times described Copp as "an 'unsung genius' of the peculiar idiom of children's recordings."
  • James Copp, "The Forgotten Virtuoso of Children's Storytelling," was the subject of a lengthy and illuminating profile in The New Yorker of December 12, 2018. Copp and his creative partner and lover Ed Brown are also profiled here and here


James Copp, right, and his partner Ed Brown are pictured in Copp's recording studio at home at
414 Muirfield Road. Copp's father had wanted him to become a lawyer in the tradition
 of prior Andrew J. Copps, but confident self-determination won out.
Copp and Brown's recordings are still available here.


  • Andrew and Cora Copp's daughter Jayne was born on August 7, 1917. After being graduated from Los Angeles High School and Stanford, she lived with her parents at 414 Muirfield Road until she married Texan Lieutenant Nathaniel G. Guiberson in Lubbock on July 3, 1942. He was also a graduate of Stanford and attended the University of Texas law school; in June 1943 he was declared missing after his B-24 was shot down in the Pacific. Two months after he was declared dead in January 1946, Jayne married 42-year-old Ukrainian-born David Daniel "Tex" Feldman in Bogotá. Feldman was an oilman; the couple would live in Bel-Air and become serious partygivers. They celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary on New Year's Eve of 1957 by throwing a legendary party at Romanoff's covered by Life magazine at which famous photographs of Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart in white-tie were taken
  • Tex Feldman died in Los Angeles in November 1980. Jayne Copp Guiberson Feldman married Henry Berger, developer of the Cricket disposable lighter, bachelor-about-town, and host-with-the-most, in December 1981. She is apparently still living in Los Angeles in 2022
  • During the ownership of the Copp family, several alterations were made to the property. On May 9, 1933, the Department of Building and Safety issued Andrew J. Copp Jr. a permit for a 10-by-18-foot addition to the garage. On May 24, 1938, Copp was issued a permit for a similarly sized addition to the south side of the garage. A tennis court existed at this time between the residence and the garage structure. On July 30, 1945, Copp was issued a permit to add a bedroom and bath to the second floor among other alterations; called on to design was the house's original architect, Lester H. Hibbard, now practicing with H. Scott Gerity 
  • When it was revealed in the summer of 1948 that the buyer of 401 Muirfield Road—across the  street from Andrew Copp's house—was the very famous singer Nat King Cole, Hancock Park's champions of Caucasian hegemony had a collective heart attack. Copp Jr., who in 1924 had completed 414 Muirfield Road just as 403/401 was being started and who still lived there, gathered a group of the like-minded to form the Hancock Park Property Owners Association (today known as the Hancock Park Homeowners Association). Copp was elected chairman of the organization. According to reports in the Los Angeles Sentinel on August 12, 1948, the group appeared to include Rhoda Agatha Rindge Adamson, the daughter of the historically very rich and powerful couple Frederick Hastings Rindge and Rhoda May Knight Rindge, the latter famous in her own right as a Malibu firebrand. Rhoda Junior had married Merritt H. Adamson, the foreman of her family's ranch, and with him had founded the large local dairy that incorporated her first name spelled backward in its own name, Adohr Milk Farms; the couple lived at 355 Muirfield Road, which they'd built in 1922. Being among the earliest builders in the Hancock Park subdivision, Copp and Adamson would have well remembered that their lot deeds included 50-year racial covenants that excluded any nonwhites from living in the neighborhood unless they were employed as servants. The Hancock Park Property Owners Association was founded to "seek a solution to the problem" of the interloping Coles. Interestingly, the fight came just months after the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision on May 3 in the case of Shelley vs. Kraemer that "the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from enforcing restrictive covenants that would prohibit a person from owning or occupying property based on race or color." (Los Angeles civil-rights attorney Loren Miller had argued the case in Washington alongside future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.) Attorney Copp appears to have been of the opinion that the Supreme Court decision did not apply to Hancock Park; he and Adamson and their group tried to prevent the secretive sale to Cole, with the seller of 401 and the real estate brokers involved being harrassed to the point of needing police protection. Copp went to see Cole and offered a $25,000 premium over the purchase price if he would relinquish the house, funds reportedly offered, per the Los Angeles Sentinel of August 5, 1948, by attorney Harold C. Morton, a member of the Property Owners Association who lived at 514 Muirfield Road. (The arrogant Morton would bring Hancock Park even more disrepute when his ne'er-do-well son was found guilty of killing his wife in front of his children in 1961.) It was considered by many that Cole's neighbors influenced the sudden and highly publicized seizure of 401 in a 1951 I.R.S. claim that Cole owed a reported $146,000 in back taxes, the tax agency threatening to sell the house in less than three weeks unless the lein was satisfied. To their everlasting credit, Nat King Cole's family would not budge and would retain their property into the 1970s
  • James Copp, for whom the 1945 bedroom addition appears to have been made, moved into 414 with his parents after demobilization and was still listed along with his father at 414 in city directories of the early 1970s; perhaps it was his cosmopolitan experience that softened his father's racist stance: to Andrew Copp's credit, he did not leave Hancock Park as Nat King Cole and his growing family remained living across the street
  • By early 1942, one of Andrew Copp Jr.'s three brothers, Dr. Joseph P. Copp, bought the 1922 house next door to the south—424 Muirfield Road—from Florence Sevier, widow of its original builder, Lawrence Sevier, a dentist and banker. (In 1944 Dr. Copp hired Paul Revere Williams for a major renovation to 424, including a signature Williams makeover of its façade.) Joseph Copp's middle of three sons was named Andrew James Copp, born in 1913, 4½ months before his first cousin James. While James usually went by his middle name, he was officially Andrew James Copp III despite being the fourth to bear the name; for some reason Joseph's son was styled not "IV" but Andrew James Copp "V"
  • Cora Lord Copp suffered a fatal heart attack after a family Thanksgiving dinner at 414 Muirfield Road on November 26, 1954. Her widow remained living in the house until his death
  • Still working at the age of 90, Andrew J. Copp Jr. suffered a fatal heart attack on May 11, 1971, while being driven downtown from 414 to his Hill Street office
  • According to her brother's profile in The New Yorker, Jayne Copp Feldman forced the sale of 414 Muirfield Road after the death of their father; James then moved in with his partner Ed Brown
  • A classified advertisement in the Los Angeles Times of June 24, 1973, offering 414 Muirfield Road for sale read, "Do it yourself—Xlnt colonial on best Hancock Prk. St. Tennis ct. $150,000"; apparently the house needed work. The identity of the buyer of 414 from the Copps is unclear, but, based on the significantly higher price being asked three years later, the party appears to have renovated the house thoroughly before running ads in the Times in October of 1976: "Outstanding Southern Colonial w/N-S tennis court...$275,000"
  • Frank E. Mullen Jr., son and namesake of the radio pioneer, was in possession of 414 Muirfield Road by early 1977. Mullen made significant changes to the property starting that year
  • On February 22, 1977, the Department of Building and Safety issued Frank Mullen a permit for kitchen remodeling. Mullen was issued a permit for a 10-by-36-foot swimming pool on March 21, 1984; this addition appears to have involved sfhiting the tennis court to the north side of the backyard. Authorizing an addition to the residence that unfortunately altered the streetside visage of the house from a typical 1920s Colonial to one appearing to have been built 30 years later was a permit issued on April 25, 1984, for a 20½-by-22-foot garage attached to the south side of the building. This change appears to have involved an alteration of the twice-expanded original garage into a gameroom/poolhouse
  • The owner of 414 Muirfield Road as of 2022 has been in possession for at least 25 years
 

Illustrations: Private Collection; The New Yorker; Playhouse Records