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  • Completed in 1925 on Lot 17 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: industrialist Percy Mortimer Pike
  • Architect: Gene Verge
  • On December 17, 1924, the Department of Buildings issued permits to P. M. Pike for a residence, one noted as being of 22 rooms, and a 23-by-54-foot two-story garage at 604 Muirfield Road; the address would become 600 by the time Pike and his family moved in
  • Percy Pike was president of Republic Supply Company, purveyors of oil-field equipment, and president of Federal Drilling Company. Pike moved his businesses and his wife Elizabeth, their sons Thomas and Jack and daughters Wanda and Mary Elizabeth down from San Francisco in 1923. The family first occupied the Homer Laughlin residence at 666 West Adams Street; though it was only 25 years old, the Pikes soon decided that they'd rather have a new, more modern house, if they weren't among the earlier residents of West Adams who understood that the district was in the beginning stages of being eclipsed by newer subdivisions such as Hancock Park. In their choice of architect for 600 Muirfield Road, the Pikes would be going a step further, Gene Verge's designs often being more imaginative takes on traditional Southern California residential styles. Verge had recently designed the Willis G. Hunt house at 3 Berkeley Square and, considered by some to have a Hollywood flair, would soon be designing—apparently with considerable input from his client—Buster Keaton's "Italian Villa" in Beverly Hills. (Keaton would be leaving his upper-middle-class house at 543 Muirfield Road, just up from 600; while real estate brokers are fond of characterizing Hancock Park as an enclave of estates, in terms of actual land even its larger properties pale in comparison to those to the west)


The Pikes traveled far and wide: Percy and Elizabeth sit with Jack, Wanda, Mary, and Thomas for a
passport picture taken for a trip to Europe in the summer of 1929. Jack was at Harvard
Military School, then still at the northwest corner of Western Avenue and
Venice Boulevard; Wanda and Mary were at Marlborough, a
few blocks from home; Tom was up at Stanford.


  • The Pikes appeared often during the 1930s in social diarists' columns such as the Times's "Beau Peep Whispers," the progress of the family's racehorses being followed from track to track as well as the progress of his children in the marriage market. Thomas Pike married Katherine Keho of San Francisco hours after the two were graduated from Stanford in June 1931; they settled in San Marino. Thomas Pike would be founding his own oil-drilling firm and later serve as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense during the Eisenhower administration and as an assistant to the president himself. (Per his 1993 Times obituary, Thomas Pike's "own debilitating experiences with alcohol had brought him to Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups where, over the past four decades, he had spoken to thousands of fellow alcoholics of his own addiction, which he had controlled until he was in his 30s." He also founded the Alcoholism Council of Greater Los Angeles.) On December 29, 1934, Wanda Pike was married to John Harrison Kees at 600 Muirfield Road. Jack Pike, who would become president of Republic Supply, married San Francisco debutante, Stanford campus queen, and champion golfer Marion Hewlett in the gardens of Grand View, his family's ranch near Saratoga, on May 29, 1935. Her mother's marital career was perhaps a harbinger of the rocky road to come: In the process of divorcing her fifth husband, Mrs. Combs (as she was by then) committed suicide in San Francisco in November 1936. The Pikes would be moving to Hancock Park near his parents, occupying successively 667 South June Street and 243 Muirfield Road. The end for them came in December 1950 after, according to the Times, three unsuccessful reconciliations. (Jack remarried; Marion, who became a well-known portrait artist—her image of Ronald Reagan appeared on the cover of Time in October 1966—and remained at 243 Muirfield for decades.) The Percy Pikes announced the engagement of Mary Elizabeth, a teacher, to James De Puy of Tacoma in the Times in February 1939; the marriage, reported as scheduled for May at 600, seems not to have taken place, or at least not to have lasted very long beyond the altar. By 1940 Mary Elizabeth appears to have been living in Studio City with Anna Walker Wilson (nicknamed "Tony"), an older woman teacher recently widowed by suicide. Mary Elizabeth is curiously noted in the Federal census of that year as Wilson's "sister." Mrs. Wilson later became Lieutenant Colonel Anna Walker Wilson, distinguishing herself as the Women's Army Corp's staff director in the European theater during World War II, still known as Tony; Mary Elizabeth—John Burroughs, Marlborough, Stanford, and Sarah Lawrence—also became a WAC during the war. Though she flew her own plane, she was prevented from flying for the military by poor eyesight. Lieutenant Colonel Wilson remarried in 1946, while Mary Elizabeth settled as a single woman in Pasadena, distinguishing herself as a philanthropist and Junior League volunteer. Her 2008 obituary in the Times described a much-admired woman
  • Percy and Elizabeth Pike remained at 600 Muirfield Road until 1955, when they moved to a Park La Brea apartment. The house was advertised for sale in the Times in the fall of 1954, though no price was mentioned
  • Mortuary executive James R. Pierce bought 600 Muirfield Road in 1955, moving in with his second wife Edna—a Southern California golf champion in the 1930s—and their two daughters and three sons. (Pierce's first wife and the couple's three-day-old daughter had died of pneumonia in January 1932.) James Pierce was a partner in the well-known Los Angeles funeral business, Pierce Brothers, which had its beginnings as a livery stable in the early 1880s. The original brothers' transportation enterprise evolved into hearses, by 1924 becoming, when its new facilities opened on Washington Boulevard—according to the Times in 1998—the "first full-service funeral home in the city." The firm expanded by acquiring other mortuaries as well as cemeteries, including Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood. In 1958, the Pierce family sold the company to a Texas businessman for $6.5 million. Soon after, James Pierce's cousin Fred Doan, who had also been part of Pierce Brothers, bought 335 South June Street. Another cousin and business partner, Mark Pierce, had moved into 300 North June Street in 1954




  • The James Pierces would be leaving 600 Muirfield Road soon after the marriage of their daughter Lorna Gail to Dale Gene Thune on December 21, 1958. On January 13 the Times reported that the ceremony had been at the Shatto Chapel of the First Congregational Church—where her parents were married in 1935—with a reception afterward at 600 Muirfield Road. Lorna had graduated from Pierce Junior College; now called Los Angeles Pierce College, the school was founded in 1947 as the Clarence W. Pierce School of Agriculture in honor of Lorna's grandfather, a physician and principal in Pierce Brothers who had spearheaded efforts to develop the campus in Woodland Hills. The Pierces would be moving to the Westside; James Pierce would remain in the funeral business although on a smaller scale. In January 1960 he and his brother Clarence C. Pierce announced the James and Clarence Pierce Mortuaries, with locations downtown and in Westwood. James Pierce's cousin Mark Pierce, also in the business, had bought 300 North June Street in 1953; his cousin and business partner Fred Doan would move into 335 South June by early 1960




  • Amy Dupont Phillips, a third-generation Los Angeles real-estate investor, bought 600 Muirfield Road in early 1959 along with 644 next door. Miss Phillips was the granddaughter and daughter of Los Angeles real estate investors Ira and Ivar Phillips, whose soap-opera battle of wills was much in the news in the first years of the 20th century. Ivar, a lawyer known as the "Mayor of Garvanza" for his development efforts in that section of the city, was constantly at odds with his father. He felt the old man was parsimonious and overly susceptible to the attentions of younger women. After Ira eloped at the age of 89 with his 39-year-old nurse Matilda Bennett, Ivar had him committed. The Lunacy Commission released Ira in short order, with Ivar having quickly crafted an agreement to let Ira and Matilda stay together in exchange for Ira's signature on a will allowing Matilda a third of Ira's reported $300,000 estate ($8 million today), Ivar a third, and a third for the latter's four children, including Amy. Ira finally died on December 20, 1912. (The Phillipses' massive family dysfunction is chronicled in our story of 1150 West Adams Street)
    • Amy Phillips perhaps understandably remained unmarried her whole life, managing properties and becoming philanthropic. Among her inherited properties was the I. I. Phillips Building on Spring Street. Miss Phillips was a longtime apartment-dweller, moving from the Piccadilly on Irolo Street to the Arcady and then the Talmadge on Wilshire. She was living at the Nob Hill Towers just north of MacArthur Park before deciding, at the age of 62, to acquire two large single-family houses in Hancock Park
    • During her ownership of 600 Muirfield Road, Amy Phillips added a carport to the rear of the property, per a permit issued by the Department of Buidling and Safety on April 9, 1959. Another permit issued on the same day authorized interior alterations to the existing garage
    • Amy Phillips would retain ownership of 644 Muirfield Road until her death on July 5, 1989; the California Death Index gives her birthdate as August 25, 1901. Miss Phillips began taking as many as five years off her actual age as a young woman, with 1900 often given in official records as the year she was born despite the fact that the 1900 census, among other documents, gives her age as four and birthdate as April 1896. At any rate, Amy appears to have simply moved to 600 next door when she rented 644 for part of every year to Governor Pat Brown, who was in office from 1959 to 1967. After this period, Miss Phillips settled at 644 and put 600 on the market, selling 600 to pasta manufacturer Robert S. William by 1973
    • Of Russian Jewish heritage and an interesting antecdent, Brooklyn-born Robert Samuel William had worked as a Hollywood publicist representing stars including Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, James Cagney, and Ann Sheridan before selling helicopers and real estate, winding up making a pile instead in macaroni. Williams's socialist father was a dentist who was well-known for his interest in Communist China; he believed that his book The Social Interpretation of History, self-published in 1921 as an argument against Marxism, influenced the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen—a leader in the overthrow of the last of the Chinese dynasties—to reject Marx's economic priciples. Maurice William, who was quoted as saying "Marx was my god," had gained notoriety in the inter-war years, becoming the subject of even a lengthy profile in The New Yorker in 1942. Robert William's career was no less interesting than his father's; his domestic life, including his family's years at 600 Muirfield, chaotic. His 1946 marriage to one of the five daughters of another prewar figure, one much larger than his father, set him up financially. Mary Jenkins's father was the fascinatingly odious William O. Jenkins, who would be called a "mysterious buccaneer-businessman" by Time magazine in 1960 and who was often cited as the amasser of the largest personal fortune in Mexico. At the time of the Williams' marriage, Mary was an aspiring film actress. On September 27, 1946, The Hollywood Reporter ran this item: "Mary Jenkins has been tested and signed to a contract by 20th-Fox [sic] studio. She will use the name Susan Christie." Film work appears to have been one of Mary's whims (or her fiancé's); seven weeks after signing with Fox, she married Robert—who had converted to Christianity for the occasion—in a ceremony at her parents' Beverly Hills house on December 14. It may be that as a publicist in the industry Robert promoted Mary as a Hollywood newcomer as part of a seduction technique, or that he was smitten to the point of not realizing that at least some talent and drive was required to make it in pictures




    While the lives of the Williams and the Jenkinses
    were cinematically turbulent, there were also a great many
    happy times, one taking place at Mary Jenkins's parents' house
    on Doheny Road in Beverly Hills on December 14, 1946.
    The bride and her sisters beam wide for the camera.



    • Robert William was characterized in Andrew Paxman's excellent 2017 biography of William O. Jenkins, Jenkins of Mexico, as a good-looking charmer who was on the make for "a nice girl with money." Our own story of 641 South Irving Boulevard in Windsor Square offers a summary of Jenkins's life as a buccaneer who took the American promise seriously. That elaborate house, built by Jenkins in the 1920s just blocks from 600 Muirfield as a American base, gives an idea of the luxury to which the epically spoiled Mary Jenkins became accustomed, its Sunset Boulevard cinema fame only enhancing the frame through which she and Robert and their connections may be viewed 
    • In 1948 Robert William bought the struggling East Los Angeles macaroni manufacturer Miller Food Products. In a Los Angeles Times article appearing on December 18, 2000, William is quoted as saying that he stayed "seven awful years, and I looked at bankruptcy every day," even if seems that his father-in-law was most generous in offering financial support. William's Jenkinslike drive got him elected president of the National Macaroni Manufacturers Association—"in his words, 'because I was the least dangerous competitor'," according to the Times. Struggling with Miller or not, in 1955 William plowed ahead in pasta by purchasing the Culver City factory of Globe Mills, makers of A-1 macaroni, which was being sold by Pillsbury in 1955. William would sell the business, renamed Western Globe Products Company, to Borden in 1986, which contributed to his worth, as reported by Paxman, to be $40 million at his death 14 years later. After the sale to Borden, William, who was known for his white Lincoln Continental carrying vanity plates reading "BOB A-1," continued running the Brentwood mortgage company he'd started as a sideline, describing finance as "a lot simpler than macaroni." In a long article in the Times on August 9, 1989, he returned to a bit of press-agentry as he explained his mission "to gain for my father a final resting place in the intellectual archives of our own nation. He deserves to be recognized as a great influence on a great nation, China."
    • Robert and Mary William would have six children; Andrew Paxman describes her as wildly extravagant and as a compulsive Sears-catalog shopper who later became something of a cat lady. It seems that Mary had nervous breakdowns after the birth of her fifth and sixth children, with Robert having her institionalized twice at Menninger's in Topeka, a move initially disapproved of by the ever-controlling, psychiatry-averse W. O. Jenkins. Despite the chaos and philandering on the parts of both, Robert and Mary stayed together, at least on paper
    • It is unclear as to exactly when the Williams moved into 600 Muirfield Road, but they began work on the property beginning in the summer of 1973. On August 27 of that year, Robert William was issued a permit for a new swimming pool and cabana. On May 16, 1974, he was issued a permit for a 10-by-26-foot recreation room in the backyard, one with a rooftop deck. Two permits were issued to William on July 10, 1989, one for a 30-by-46-foot garage space attached to the south side of the house. The second authorization was for an 88-foot-long, eight-foot-high concrete block wall at the center of the south-side property line. In Jenkins of Mexico, Andrew Paxman describes a backyard feature that Mary Jenkins built (though it is unclear if this was put up at 600 Muirfield or at a prior residence) and called her "Catatorium"—perhaps way too suggestive of a crematorium—a two-story, air-conditioned brick structure housing 150 felines
    • Robert William's mother May died at 600 Muirfield Road on July 15, 1985, one month shy of her 100th birthday. Maurice William had died at the age of 92 on September 15, 1973
    • Mary William seems to have been a ghostly presence at 600 Muirfield Road in later years. In his large obituary appearing in the Times on December 18, 2000—he had died 11 days before—Robert was described as having been widowed since 1980. Mary, in fact, lived until December 29, 1992. She was 68 when she succumbed, apparently then residing in the Sunland district of the city. Her remains were interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena alongside those of the Williams' daughter Katherine, who had expired on February 16, 1991, at the age of 41. Robert was 86 when he died of leukemia and pneumonia at 600 Muirfield Road on December 7, 2000. Rather than burial in Altadena, he joined his parents at Mount Sinai Memorial Park, his marker carrying his nickname "Bobbo" and the epitaph "I put this off all my life."
    • Investors Leigh R. Crawford and Anne Marie Donoghue owned 600 Muirfield Road after the death of Robert William, staying until 2007
    • French fashion designer Christian Audigier appears to have acquired 600 Muirfield Road in 2007 in the midst of work to replace the swimming pool initiated by Leigh R. Crawford and Anne Marie Donoghue. According to permits issued by the Department of Building and Safety during 2007, the 1973 pool at the rear of the property was filled in and a new 18-by-50 pool built closer to the house. In 2010 Audigier was issued permits for a new roof and for interior alterations  
    • On the market for $6.995 million in December 2021, the Times described 600 Muirfield Road as having seven bedrooms and seven baths and as having remained "in touch with its over-the-top Old Hollywood style since it was built in 1925. A pair of stone elephants guard the entry, and the formal living spaces are designed for entertaining. Up top, a balcony surveyes a swiumming pool lined with azure tile."


    Canadian-born Gene Verge opened his own offices in 1923 after stints as a designer with the
    Milwaukee Building Company, builders of numerous Hancock Park and Windsor Square
     houses, and after a few years partnered with architect Joseph L. Feil. Verge
     announced his solo practice by having his business card reproduced
     as an advertisement in the Times on January 1, 1924. 



    Illustrations:     Private Collection; USCDL; LAT; Jenkins of Mexico/Jenkins Family Collection; Ancestry