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  • Built in 1925 on Lot 24 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: real estate operator Harry L. Gilbert
  • Architect: Clarence J. Smale
  • Contractor: Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle
  • Building permits for a 10-room house and a two-story 20-by-34-foot garage were issued to Harry L. Gilbert by the Department of Buildings on August 22, 1925
  • 635 Muirfield Road was illustrated in the Los Angeles Times real estate section on August 29, 1926, in an item headlined "Four of Many Mansions Southern California is Acquring." The house was described as one of several recently completed by Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle and as belonging to Harry L. Gilbert. It is unclear if he intended the project as one of his more ambitious speculative ventures from the beginning; by the end of 1927 he was having the Chisholm firm begin a new project nearby in Fremont Place, into which he would move by the summer of 1928, perhaps having lived with his family at 635 while awaiting its completion. (The story of the Gilberts and their son Irving's embarrassments are told in the story of 122 Fremont Place)
  • Purchasing 635 Muirfield Road by the summer of 1928 was Thomas J. Murphy, president of Federal Refrigerating Company, ice manufacturers, and the Federal Cold Storage Company, which had large operations in Los Angeles's Central Manufacturing District. Murphy and his wife Anna and their seven children moved into the house; the couple's eighth child and sixth son was born in 1930. Per The Los Angeles Record, a third daughter, Sheila, born to the Murphys in 1919, was killed instantly in February 1923 when the family chauffeur back over her in the driveway of what was then the family residence at 680 South New Hampshire Avenue; it was from this house that the Murphys moved to Muirfield Road in 1928
  • Thomas J. Murphy was the younger brother and a business partner of Dan Murphy, referred to by the Los Angeles Times as "the city's richest and most powerful man." T. J. Murphy had been married on June 30, 1915, at the Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Los Angeles, as described in the Times the next day: "With the bestowal of an apostolic blessing, Marconigrammed by Pope Benedict XV to Bishop Conaty, the marriage of his cousin, Miss Anna Marie McDermott and Thomas John Murphy was made doubly significant...." After decades in mining, cattle-ranching, ice manufacturing, and cold storage operations T. J. Murphy retired from business by 1935; he died at 635 Muirfield Road on July 5, 1940, at the age of 68. His obituary in the Needles Nugget on July 12 had it that his death concluded "a career inextricably woven with the history of Needles' early settlement days from 1890 to 1922.... One of the west's leading capitalists and prominent in Los Angeles civic affairs, the deceased came to Needles following in the steps of his brother, Daniel J. Murphy, who with Thomas Monohan established the first business house in Needles about 1883.... Anna Murphy died at 635 on January 19, 1942, age the age of 53 
  • On July 31, 1928, T. J. Murphy was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to create two additional bedrooms out of rear sleeping porches and for a third bedroom over the north-side porte-cochère. Murphy was issued a permit on May 20, 1937, for architect Harold S. Johnson's alterations to accommodate an automobile elevator in the garage  
  • The Murphy family retained 635 Muirfield Road until 1955. Thomas Murphy's youngest sister Margaret joined the household after the death of her brother and Mrs. Murphy; her occupation in 1944 voting records is listed as "housekeeper." She had at one time lived in Needles while her family was active in business there, later moving to Denver before settling in Los Angeles. In 1955 she moved to Marycrest Manor in Culver City, founded by Cardinal McIntyre that year. Myrna Murphy, youngest daughter of Thomas and Anna, was the last of her siblings to leave Muirfield Road. In the fall of 1955 she moved four miles south to live with her brother Richard and his family in their newly completed house in Baldwin Hills Estates
  • Businessman Carroll C. Craig purchased 635 Muirfield Road from the Murphy family and was in residence by 1956 with his then-wife Avila, his sons Thomas and Tim, and their daughter Tami. Craig was president of Community Towel and Linen Supply, the plant of which remains at the northeast corner of Highland Avenue and Willoughby Avenue in Hollywood. Craig's father, Claude C. Craig, had founded the company as the Community Laundry Company in 1923; the senior Mr. Craig, who died in 1940 and whose obituary made even The New York Times, was a civic booster of Hollywood had been an early producer of Hollywood Bowl pageants. Carroll's elder son, Lance Corporal Thomas E. Craig, was killed in Vietnam in 1967
  • On December 31, 1958, the Department of Building and Safety issued Carrol C. Craig a permit for a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool; he was issued a permit on April 2, 1959, for alterations to a rear colonnade to provide what was apparently a cabana
  • It was after his divorce from Avila, his second of four wives, in 1970 that Carroll Craig left 635 Muirfield Road
  • Chiropractor Louis T. Smithson occupied 635 Muirfield Road during the 1970s; had lived previously at 746 Crenshaw Boulevard (demolished 1987) and was active in neighborhood affairs including service as a volunteer civil defense warden during the 1950s
  • Lebanese-born contractor Vardan Oundjian of Glendale owned 635 Muirfield Road by mid-1981; his business, the Virab Corporation, was listed at 635 on permits pertaining to renovations of the house in 1981. Permits were issued to Virab on June 16 and July 10, 1981, for an interior remodeling of the house and interior alterations to the garage. Curiously, the house next door at 645 Muirfield Road was acquired by an entity called the Varap Corporation by the spring of 1984; Varap appears to have been the business of Iranian-born contractor Hovik Khodabakhshian and was issued a permit for a kitchen remodeling at 645 on April 4 of that year
  • 635 Muirfield Road was on the market by late 1982 as a seven-bedroom "redone classic" priced at $1,485,000. By the sumer of 1983, the price was $1,250,000. Whether or not there was ever a buyer before it was offered again two years later is unclear; it was called a "new listing" in ads appearing in the spring of 1985 asking $1,150,000 and by November it had been "reduced" to $995,000. Hancock Park during the 1970s and '80s was not desirable and its fortunes wouldn't recover until after the 1992 riots
  • David and Debra Knowles became the owners of 635 Muirfield Road by 1988





Illustrations: LAT; Historic Places LA