PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1925 on a parcel comprised of Lots 25, 26, and 27 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: tailor, drugstore owner, and real estate investor Isidor Eisner
  • Architect: Gordon B. Kaufmann
  • On May 22, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Isidor Eisner a permit for the foundation of the house; on June 6, he was issued a permit for the house itself, noted on the document as being one of 40 rooms with exterior dimensions measuring 106 by 175 feet. The combined valuation of the work outlined in these permits was $177,452, which in 2021 is the equivalent of $2,818,424. At least one source claims that the house's west elevation was designed by Richard Neutra when he was employed as a draftsman in the office of Gordon Kaufmann. The day after Eisner was issued a permit for the foundation of 611 Muirfield, his son-in-law, attorney Louis Lissner, was issued a permit for his own Hancock Park house, one also designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann and still standing at 505 South Hudson Avenue




In the title view, the house's easterly façade is seen from the corner of
Muirfield Road and West Sixth Street, circa 1927, before the rise of today's tall
obscuring hedges, as seen in the near-identical perspective just above. The opposite
façade below includes the westerly main door accessible by a driveway that encircles
the building. Farther below here are a number of views of the original configuration
and elaborate decoration of 611 Muirfield Road, including vintage images from
the book Mansions of Los Angeles by Michael Regan (1965/2017) and from
the trade journal The Architectural Digest, volume 6, #3 (1927).



  • Polish-born Isidor Eisner arrived in New York in March 1897 and proceeded directly to Los Angeles to settle. He became associated as a tailor with the Buffalo Woolen Company at 248 South Broadway. He married Theresa Klein in 1900; the couple had a daughter, Myna, and divorced in 1905. Eisner sobbed openly in court as he described Theresa's cruelty to him. He claimed that she criticized his English and abused him physically. Per the Los Angeles Herald of April 13, 1905, "...it appears that Mrs. Theresa Eisner, his pretty wife, pinched him until he cried for mercy." At other times Mrs. Eisner pulled her husband's ears until they were sore. Isidor married again in 1908; in divorcing him in 1911, Elsie Eisner claimed that her husband nagged her constantly, criticizing her dress and appearance, before deserting their home in 1910. Eisner's progress in the business world was unaffected by his domestic upheavals. Within a few years, he opened Eisner & Company, tailors on Spring Street. He began investing in downtown real estate and in the Sun Drug Company, a chain of Los Angeles drugstores founded in 1901; by 1913, he was vice-president of the concern, Milton E. Getz the president, and Melville Jacoby, general manager and treasurer. Jacoby's sister, Lelia, would become Isidor Eisner's third wife when they married in October 1914, the union lasting until his death in 1947 after being struck by a car in San Francisco. Eisner was the president of Sun Drugs by 1918, only then retiring from the tailoring business. The Eisners remained at 611 until 1937, when they moved to Beverly Hills
  • Illinois-born industrialist and publisher Ira Clifton Copley, Yale '87, studied to become an attorney at what is today the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He was admitted to the Illinois bar but instead of becoming a lawyer chose to expand his father's small utilities business, eventually creating a conglomerate. Copley began buying small Illinois newspapers in 1905, expanding into Southern California with the purchase of 24 papers after selling his Western Utilities Corporation in 1926, finding time between 1911 and 1923 to hold an Illinois seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His Copley Press, Inc., was based in San Diego, where he maintained a winter home at Coronado until deciding on a change. He and his second wife Chloe bought 611 Muirfield Road in 1937 as a new winter home and, according to an item in the Times, were in residence by that fall. Another social note appeared in the Times on February 10, 1938: "Honoring Col. and Mrs. Ira Clifton Copley, who recently moved into a home on South Muirfield Road, Mrs. [Godfrey] Holterhoff will entertain this evening with a dinner party for twelve at her home on West Adams Boulevard. Bridge will follow." Ira Copley and his first wife had adopted two sons, one of whom, James, became a publisher when he took over his father's business upon the latter's death in 1947. William Copley, also known by his signature "CPLY," combined Surrealism and Pop Art in his often humorous and frequently erotic work
  • The Copleys hired the house's original architect, Gordon Kaufmann, to make alterations soon after taking possession of 611 Muirfield Road. The Department of Building and Safety issued permits pertaining to the house and garage on March 30, 1938, and August 30, 1939, calling for the rearrangement of partitions and for the addition of a second story over the servants' quarters
  • Ira Copley died in his hometown of Aurora, Illinois, on November 1, 1947, at the age of 83. His lengthy obituary in the Times two days later recorded his business accomplishments as well as his extracurricular passion: ""Col. Copley"—his honorific came from staff work for the Illinois National Guard—"was one of the Pacific Coast's leading yachtsmen. In 1927, he paid $250,000 for a yacht built for him by the Krupp works in Germany and which he sailed across the Atlantic. (The Happy Days was taken over by the U.S. government after Pearl Harbor.) Nearing 62, Chloe Copley died at 611 Muirfield Road on August 1, 1949
  • The property was advertised for sale in the Times on June 18, 1950,  described as "Heavenly for entertaining. 2 Acres! Under 1/3rd cost!"
  • Oilman Joseph C. Shell and his wife Barbara Morton Shell bought 611 Muirfield Road in October 1951. The Times had several rather inane gossip columns covering establishment Los Angeles from the 1930s into the '60s, including "Christy Fox." On January 20, 1952, Miss Fox reported that "Barbara and Joe Shell are in their new, big house on Muirfield Road—the former Col. Copley place. They better drop bread crumbs till they get oriented." The Shells had married in 1940 at St. James' Episcopal on Wilshire Boulevard nearby, with a reception afterward at her parents' house at 514 Muirfield Road, a block north of 611
  • Joseph Shell sold off the southernmost lot of 611's parcel in 1955; 625 Muirfield Road was built by Samuel and Martha Carpenter on Lot 25 that year. It would be demolished in 2001, the Lot reverting to the property occupied by 611
  • Barbara Shell was the eldest of three daughters of power couple Harold and Dorothy Morton, who had been living at 514 Muirfield Road since 1934. Harold Morton was a prominent attorney and oilman; Mrs. Morton was trained in the law herself and served for many years on the city's Recreation and Parks Commission. The Mortons also owned racehorses. Barbara Shell's brother Lynn Morton created a sensation when he was convicted of beating his wife to death in front of one of their children in a drunken brawl at their home on Norton Avenue in June 1961; he served 13 months of a 1-to-10-year sentence, suggesting the influence of the downtown Los Angeles Establishment—much of it residing in Hancock Park— as it still held sway in the early '60s
  • On August 4, 1964, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to Joseph Shell for a 16-by-37-foot swimming pool at 611
  • Joseph Shell challenged Richard Nixon in the Republican gubernatorial primary in California in 1962, receiving support from the John Birch Society; he lost to Nixon and Nixon to incumbent governor Pat Brown, who during this period leased the house at 644 Muirfield Road, just across the street from the Shells. Joseph and Barbara Shell divorced in 1969; 611 Muirfield Road was still in his possession in 1971. On December 7 of that year, he was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to repair minor fire damage to a bedroom
  • Dr. James B. Miller and his wife Valerie, a local interior designer, became the owners of 611 Muirfield Road in October 1972. Mrs. Miller maintained an office in Larchmont Village
  • On December 31, 1975, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit to Dr. snd Mrs. James B. Miller for remodeling; the architect for this work was A. Quincy Jones. This permit was expired. The project was revived with a permit issued on August 8, 1979, with Jones cited as architect; however, on November 14, a new permit indicating "structural revisions" was issued, indicating as architect T. Scott MacGillivry (not to be confused with Canadian television home-renovation-show host Scott McGillivry).
  • 611 Muirfield Road remained in Valerie Miller's possession until her apparent death in the early 1990s; the property was on the market by the summer of 1993, offered at $2,295,000
  • Interior designer John Cottrell owned 611 Muirfield Road from November 1994 to March 1997
  • Husband-and-wife film producers Lila Cazes (Leaving Las Vegas) and Jean Cazes bought 611 Muirfield Road in March 1997 but sold it two years later to Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas
  • Undertaking an extensive renovation to the house and grounds of 611, Griffith and Banderas bought the house next door at 625 Muirfield, which had been built in 1955 on Lot 25—split off from 611 by Joseph Shell—and demolished it in 2001, the lot reverting back to the original parcel of 611. After the movie couple divorced in 2015, the property was put on the market. A real estate advertisement in the Times on January 9, 2016, boasted that the recent sale of 611 Muirfield Road for $16,100,000 was the highest price ever paid for a Hancock Park property. (Variety had reported in June 2015 that the house was sold for $15,947,000)
  • Apparently unrelated to the original owners of 611 Muirfield Road, Michael Eisner—the attorney, not the Walt Disney C.E.O.—and partners were in possession of 611 Muirfield Road after Griffith and Banderas. The property was resold by them in 2017


A westerly view of garden walls between the easterly façade—essentially the rear of the house—
and Muirfield Road. Pasadena-based Paul G. Thiene was the original landscape designer.


The motor entrance


The living room


The double-height banquet hall


The library


The dining room


The south façade from the site upon which 625 Muirfield Road was built in 1955 and
removed in 2001, its lot reverting back to the parcel originally occupied by 611.


The courtyard featuring an elaborate wellhead became the site of a swimming pool in 1964



Illustrations: Private Collections; Mansions of Los Angeles; The Architectural Digest