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  • Built in 1924 on Lot 16 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: J. M. Frazier
  • Architect: Hunt & Burns (Sumner P. Hunt and Silas Reese Burns Jr.)
  • On April 1, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued three permits to J. M. Frazier, one for a 12-room residence, the second for a 29-by-42-foot one-story garage with servants' quarters, and the third for a 12-by-18-foot garden teahouse. Curiously, the address "534" is scratched out on the garage permit in favor of "536"
  • The address of J. M. Frazier indicated on all three building permits is the Biltmore Hotel, indicating that he or she may have been from out of town and was perhaps building 534 as a city residence or on spec. No local information on this individual has surfaced thus far. No listings for a Frazier at 534 Muirfield Road appear in city directories during the 1920s, although J. M. Frazier may have been John M. Frazier, the prominent Riverside County fruit rancher and former president of the Hemet Canning Company
  • The first appearance of 534 Muirfield Road in the Los Angeles city directory was in 1928 after its purchase by Earl Bell Gilmore, president of the Gilmore Oil Company. Gilmore's father Arthur Fremont Gilmore acquired half-interest in a tract to the west of the future Hancock Park neighborhood in 1880, coming to own it outright and running it as a dairy farm, and then, drilling for water, striking oil after the turn of the 20th century. Early on Arthur and his family lived in what became known as the Gilmore Adobe, in which Earl was born on February 17, 1887, and which still stands on the property along with other family endeavors at the northwest corner of Third Street and Fairfax Avenue; most famous is the Farmers Market. Father and son ran the oil company, which would become a major west coast petroleum distributor. Earl is credited with creating the earliest self-serve filling station, which by eliminating attendants saved customers a nickel a gallon. He appears to have opened or acquired as many as 3,000 outlets in the west; in the 1940s the Socony [Standard Oil Company of New York]-Vaccum Oil Company acquired controlling interest in Gilmore Oil, its stations eventually becoming Mobil outlets. The original self-serve "Gas-A-Teria" was on at the north side of the Gilmore property on Beverly Boulevard. Along with the adobe, the market, and the Gas-A-Teria were other Gilmore endeavors such as the multi-purpose Gilmore Stadium (replaced with CBS Television City in 1952) and Gilmore Field for minor-league baseball and the Gilmore Drive-In Theatre




Earl Gilmore died in 1964 in the same room in which he was
born in 1887 in the Gilmore Adobe, which is preserved as part of
the Farmers Market. Once the Gilmore home in the midst of the family's
rural dairy farm, it sits today at the center of a vast urban plain. Cows gave
way to oil derricks early in the 20th century and the property came to include
what is reputed to be the first self-service filling station in the country; that
large facility is gone, but one of the many Gilmore stations covering
the west has been recreated on the grounds of today's market.



  • Earl Gilmore married the first of his three wives, Louise, in 1914; the couple lived in a house his father had built in 1912 at 317 South Wilton Place (demolished in 1964) and had two daughters. The marriage was not a happy one; by the fall of 1921, Louise had been committed to a private sanitarium. An item appearing in the Los Angeles Record on October 18, headlined "Sues Crazed Wife," reported that Earl was seeking a divorce, which he received along with the custody of Frances and Elizabeth. In 1926, he married divorcée Arbretta Emeis, who came with her 12-year-old son Calvin Emeis. The blended family moved into 534 Muirfield Road
  • On March 29, 1928, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. Gilmore a permit to add a bedroom and bath and to install a set of rear stairs at 534 Muirfield Road. On November 20, 1929, a permit was issued to Earl Gilmore for a new bay window
  • The Gilmores remained together at 534 Muirfield Road until divorcing in 1941. Bretta Gilmore moved to Beverly Hills; Earl married his divorced secretary of 14 years, Marie Dent De Longy, in Las Vegas in October 1944. That year the house was sold to radio personality Fleetwood Lawton


Fleetwood Lawton enjoying time with his son Peter and their collie at 534 Muirifeld Road and hard at
 work using his home Teletype machine. At right, Mrs. Lawton delivers a file stored upstairs
to her husband by air. As seen in Radio and Television Life, January 30, 1949.


  • British-born, Oxford-educated Albert Fleetwood Lawton, whose unhyphenated surname became his first and last names professionally, was an N.B.C. news commentator who had a high profile during World War II as a correspondent reporting from around the world. He and his wife Virginia would stay at 534 Muirfield for six years, in 1946 adopting a son. In her gossip column "Confidentially" in the Times, Lucille Leimert ran an item titled "IN THE MAIL": "A little white card with a baby-blue border brings this message: 'Virginia and Fleetwood Lawton present Peter Alan Fleetwood Lawton, born July 25, 1946, by authority of the Children's Home Society of California. Inaugurated Sept. 23, 1946, broadcasting on unlimited hours. Power: two lungs. Wave length: 534 Muirfield Road, Los Angeles.' Cute way of announcing the adoption of a baby." In May 1948 Lawton moved his office from the Mutual–Don Lee radio network's Hollywood facilities into 534, complete with two United Press Teletype machines. Virginia acted as his secretary. Lawton was either not asked to stay on at Don Lee when it moved into new facilities at Fountain Avenue and Vine Street (now the Pickford Center of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences) or chose not to. An impending change in the ownership of the Don Lee Network may well have had an impact on the Lawtons' finances, prompting them to put 534 on the market in the spring of 1949. One classified in the Times on April 24 advertised an open house for "Fleetwood Lawton's Home." The property languished on the market, advertised as "reduced" on June 18, 1950, and on June 7 thusly: "Owner slashing price; homey Eng. at ½ cost!" This resulted in 534 soon being unloaded to the next owner for $45,000. The Lawtons moved to smaller house at 909 South Highland Avenue. (Lawton was long estranged from his family. He hadn't spoken to his sister Alma Lawton, an actress who appeared in bit parts on television and in Mary Poppins, for 10 years when, in 1952, she and her both husband changed their legal surname Morrison in court for the more recognizable Fleetwood Lawton, which seems to have created an opening wedge in  a money-grubbing scheme. The next year, claiming poverty, she persuaded her parents to sue their son for support funds in proceeding well-covered by the Times)


534 Muirfield Road as seen in the Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1950


  • Albert S. Knies, a New York stockbroker, bought 534 Muirfield Road from Fleetwood Lawton. He and his wife Winifred and daughter Melinda moved in in late 1950, though his stay would be very short: He died at home on January 31, 1951, at the age of 46. Winifred remarried 3½ years later, her new husband Charles Babcock apparently adopting Melinda. Albert Knies had been employed by Reynolds & Company in New York, a firm that had been founded with a third partner by Babcock and Richard S. Reynolds Jr., a member of the Reynolds family whose father would later develop Reynolds Wrap and whose great-uncle had founded Reynolds Tobacco. The extended Reynoldses were a complicated bunch. Babcock's first wife was a daughter of the aforementioned tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds; she died on July 17, 1953. Babcock and Winifred Knies were married on September 8, 1954, afterward dividing their time between Los Angeles and Winston-Salem until his death in 1964
  • Winifred Babcock's parents, Holmes and Floyd Penn, and her brother also lived at 534 Muirfield Road during the 1950s. Holmes Penn Jr. married Natalie Howard of Pasadena on April 24, 1954, and settled into the household. They had a daughter, Natalie Jr., born in 1955. Holmes Penn Sr. died at 534 on December 16 of that year. Holmes and Natalie Penn moved to 605 South Irving Boulevard in Windsor Square by 1962
  • John B. and Mary Coker owned 534 Muirfield Road from 1962 until selling it on May 9, 1980
  • George B. Harb bought 534 Muirfield Road in 1980. He was the owner of G. B. Harb & Son, a custom tailor with shops at various times in the Gaylord Apartments on Wilshire Boulevard and downtown at the Biltmore, and in Larchmont Village, Beverly Hills, and Newport Beach 



Illustrations: Private Collection; Larchmont Chronicle; Radio and Television Life; LAT