PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1927 on Lot 13 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: oil investor Charles E. Smith
  • Architect: Charles M. Hutchison
  • Contractor: Stanton, Reed & Hibbard (Forrest Q. Stanton, Harold E. Reed, and Lester H. Hibbard) 
  • On April 21, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued permits to "C. E. Smith" for a 15-room brick-veneered residence and a 22-by-39-foot, 1½-story garage with servant's quarters at 500 Muirfield Road
  • Charles Edmond Smith appears to have done well in the shoe manufacturing business in Detroit; after retiring he came to Los Angeles in 1909, investing his capital in oil shares. He became a director of the United Oil Company before it merged with Richfield in 1923 and also held a sizable interest in Midway Northern Oil. Smith had been widowed in 1895 and came west with his only child Florence; it was for her family as well as himself that he built 500 Muirfield Road
  • Florence Smith married wholesale lumber dealer LeRoy Hamilton Stanton at her father's Westlake Avenue apartment on December 7, 1911. Stanton was then working for his father, Erastus J. Stanton, in the lumber business; his son, LeRoy Junior, born in 1915, would succeed his grandfather and father in the business in due course. LeRoy and Florence's daughter Jane was born in 1918. The Stantons had moved into a house they built at 408 South Harvard Boulevard in early 1914 and remained there until moving to Muirfield Road. Charles Smith appears to have lived in apartments until the extended family moved into 500 in the latter half of 1927. Smith's stay in house he financed would be short: He died there on July 29, 1928, at the age of 79
  • LeRoy Stanton does not appear to have been related to Forrest Q. Stanton of the firm that was contracted to build 500 Muirfield Road, although given their trades, they were likely to have known each other


English Revival domestic architecture had a vogue in Southern California during the decade or so after
the Victorian era came to a close, with arriving easterners still unused to the idea of letting sunshine
indoors. This cohort still wasn't quite ready in the 1920s when the style rose again, competing
with Mediterranean revivals that at least externally acknowledged the climate. It would
be yet another decade before glassier, more open Californian models would
start to become popular. Here one leaves afternoon sunshine for the
interior shadows of 500 Muirfield Road, which it must be
admitted might have been welcomed before the age
of central air conditioning. More interior
views may be seen here below.


  • After Erastus Stanton died in 1913, LeRoy became president of E. J. Stanton & Son, Incorporated, and would remain so until his death in 1940. LeRoy's sister Lillian had married Henry W. Swafford in 1913, Swafford later becoming vice-president of the company. The Swaffords had been living in a 1921 house at 123 South Irving Boulevard before moving to a grand new residence at 4110 Woodleigh Lane in Flintridge in 1929; Lillian and LeRoy's mother Fannie moved with them. After Mrs. Stanton died on August 23, 1931, reports varied as to the location of her demise, citing both Flintridge and 500 Muirfield Road; the Federal census enumerated in April 1930 has her living with her daughter and son-in-law, though, curiously, indicates her marital status as "Divorced." While Fannie Stanton does not actually appear to have remarried after the death of her husband in 1913, much less to ever have been divorced, it was Florence and LeRoy Stanton who were headed for the rocks
  • An item regarding Florence and Roy Stanton appeared in the Los Angeles Times on February 12, 1935, headlined "Long Marriage Called Mistake": "Their twentieth wedding anniversary was a thing of the past when one day Leroy H. Stanton, lumber company executive, informed his wife, Mrs. Florence S. Stanton, that he thought their marriage had been a mistake, according to her complaint in filing suit for divorce in Superior Court yesterday." The filing noted that a property settlement had been reached out of court; somehow quicker than Reno, an item appearing in the paper the next day noted that the divorce had been granted. Both Roy and Florence remarried within a few years, he to a widow 17 years his junior and she to a stockbroker five years her junior
  • It appears that LeRoy Stanton held on to 500 Muirfield Road after the divorce, leasing it for the next seven years to Hollywood producer William LeBaron, or at least to his wife, British-born former Broadway musical comedy star Mabel Hollins. After a magazine career in New York—he was for a time managing editor of Collier's—LeBaron became director general at Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions before moving to Hollywood at the suggestion of Joseph P. Kennedy. There he became head of production at R.K.O. Transferring to Paramount, he was an associate producer before succeeding Ernst Lubitsch as production chief in 1936. The LeBarons changed residences frequently, including stints in Hancock Park at 356 South Hudson Avenue and 615 South Rossmore before they took 500 Muirfield. While the couple remained married until her death in 1955, they do not appear to have often occupied the same house. William preferred various rentals in Los Feliz, including that of W. C. Fields, a stone's-throw from Paramount director Cecil B. DeMille's house. It was Mabel who lived at 500, along with housekeeper, maid, cook, and secretary, and Austrian-born screenwriter Peter O. Helmers. Mrs. LeBaron appears to have remained at 500 Muirfield until it was put up for sale in 1943. (Curiously, Helmers and William LeBaron, but not Mabel, were registered to vote at a Beverly Hills house recently vacated by the mother of Gloria Vanderbilt)
  • On October 17, 1943, an advertisement appeared in the Times offering 500 Muirfield Road for sale for $37,500, reduced from $39,000 just a few weeks before. Noted were a championship tennis court, a playroom, a bar, and the "finest construction throughout," an indication of the care a lumberman would have taken in building his father-in-law's—and his own—residence
  • Ward Rolland, an orthopedist, and his wife Charlotte occupied 500 Muirfield Road until late 1950. The house was on the market that summer for $49,500
  • Potato-chip manufacturer Cyril Cecil Nigg, "a leading Catholic layman" as the press called him, bought 500 Muirfield Road in late 1950; his family would retain the property for over 50 years. During the '50s Mr. Nigg, U.C.L.A. '27, served as a member of the University of California Board of Regents, as well as on the boards of a number of local businesses and educational and philanthropic organizations. His own Bell Brand Foods, which he founded in 1925, specialized in bagged potato snacks and Bell Brand peanut butter; he also had interests in cattle ranching in Nevada. Edith Nigg worked tirelessly for Catholic organizations and would be rewarded with the title of Dame of Malta, apparently a high honor
 

A magazine advertisement circa 1950; Bell Brand Foods were produced for many years in a Vernon factory


  • Cyril Nigg and his wife Edith entertained at 500 almost as soon as they took up residence; on February 21, 1951, the couple hosted "A Night in Hawaii" for members of the Hollywood Bruin Club, alumni of U.C.L.A. On December 20, 1952, their daughter Nancy Ann married Leon W. Doty at the Cathedral Chapel of St. Vibiana, with a reception afterward at 500 Muirfield. Their son Cyril Peter Nigg married Geraldine Gorey at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in West Hollywood on January 31, 1953
  • On February 28, 1958, the Department of Building and Safety issued the Niggs a permit for a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool. It appears that a cabana was also added to the property at this time
  • By 1967, Cy and Edith Nigg began spending most of their time in Santa Barbara, turning 500 Muirfield Road over to Peter and Geraldine. Dame Edith Nigg, as she was referred to in her Times obituary, died on March 27, 1988. The next year, Cyril Nigg married the widowed Dorothy Von Der Ahe, who died on August 30, 1994. Apparently not one to want to live alone, Cyril Nigg married yet again. Josephine Sáenz Wayne had been divorced from actor John Wayne in 1945 after having four children with him. Interestingly, after Nigg died on March 25, 1999, it was asked in his obituary that contributions be made to the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica
  • On September 15, 1975, the Department of Building and Safety issued C. Peter Nigg a permit for a kitchen remodeling at 500 Muirfield. A permit was issued to Peter Nigg on April 14, 1988, for another kitchen update; authorization for roof repairs was issued to the Niggs on October 20, 1998. Yet another permit was issued to them on April 5, 2000, for a small storage addition to the garage building
  • C. Peter Nigg had become chairman of Bell Brand Foods and of Bell Brand Ranches, and, like his parents, was active in many Catholic organizations. After operating for 70 years, Bell Brands Foods went out of business in 1995. Peter died August 27, 2006, age 76, having sold 500 Muirfield Road a few years before
  • Owners of 500 Muirfield Road since the early 2000s have remodeled the kitchen yet again (2005), added a conservatory to the rear of the house (2015), and appear to have backfilled the swimming pool in 2020, presumably in preparation for the construction of a new one


It seems that Americans have always aspired to Downton Abbey and Romeo and Juliet




Views of the library; the picture on the desk may be one of LeRoy Stanton Jr.



In a view toward the dining room, the architect appears to have had a
Mediterranean moment, the decorator one with puddling curtains.



Illustrations: CSL; Private Collection