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  • Built in 1923 on a parcel comprised of Lots 18 and 19 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: real estate investor Philip Louis Wilson
  • Architect: John L. De Lario, whose contemporaneous 620, 630, and 638 South Rossmore Avenue are just around the corner to the east. In 1927, De Lario designed 654 Rimpau Boulevard around the corner to the west for Wilson's sister-in-law Lillie McCusker
  • On November 9, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Philip L. Wilson permits for a 14-room residence and a one-story, 22-by-50-foot garage at 644 Muirfield Road
  • Philip L. Wilson was the president of Traders' Bank of Los Angeles until it merged with the California Savings Bank in 1915. Wilson was by that time devoting his attention to real estate development. He lived at 19 Chester Place from 1907 until demolishing it in 1916, then moving his family from one of Los Angeles's best neighborhood to the unlikely and unfashionable, then-largely-rural precincts of East Florence Avenue. Wilson gave his occupation as "farmer" when he registered for the draft in 1918, perhaps indicating that the area was ending its days as a citrus belt; the Union Realty Company, in which Wilson was partnered with William W. Mines and others, had been developing vast bungalow tracts to the city's southwest for several years. The Wilsons would remain living in Bell the new development area until, it seems, the educational needs of their children brought them to Hancock Park, one of the newer subdivisions rapidily draining Chester Place and other West Adams neighborhoods of the affluent
  • Philip and Maud Wilson would remain at 644 Muirfield Road until the early 1940s. During the 1930s Wilson turned his attention to being the Federal receiver for the Maier Brewing Company, which entered bankruptcy in 1932. The firm operated under receivership, with Wilson becoming its general manager, until December 1940. That year, the company's former president, Edward R. Maier, regained control after successfully suing Wilson, contending that the books had been cooked. Maud Wilson, Philip Wilson Jr. (now an attorney), Mrs. Wilson's sister Lillie McCusker, and rising Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer were also named in the suit
  • On September 17, 1932, the Wilsons' daughter, Catherine Newell Wilson, married San Diego attorney Victor Charles Winnek in the garden of 644 Muirfield Road
  • On September 28, 1941, the Los Angeles Times reported that Philip Wilson had just traded 644 Muirfield Road—"a two-acre estate improved with a residence"—as partial payment to investor Glaucus E. Kinsey for the Yale Apartment Hotel at 971 Wilshire Boulevard (this building appears to have soon been resold by Wilson and was later demolished for the Harbor Freeway)
  • The Wilsons may have been contemplating a move to the Yale Apartment Hotel; instead, they moved to the Hallsworth Apartments at 1720 Taft Avenue in Hollywood. On October 9, 1942, following a long illness, Maud Wilson's sister, Lillie Newell McCusker, died at 654 Rimpau Boulevard, which she built around the corner from the Wilsons in 1927. The Wilsons decided to acquire that house—also designed by John De Lario—from her estate, if Mrs. Wilson was not bequeathed it, and move back to Hancock Park. Their son-in-law became ill around the time of the death of Mrs. McCusker; after he died in December 1943, Catherine Winnek and her two young sons moved up from San Diego and into 654 Rimpau with the Wilsons
  • Glaucus (a.k.a. George) E. Kinsey's real estate specialty was owning and operating Los Angeles apartment houses. He was already a Hancock Park resident, living at 161 North Hudson Avenue. His reasons for acquiring 644 Muirfield Road appear to have been strictly transactional; by early 1942, he'd flipped the house to loan operator Abraham B. Cohn. Two years before Kinsey had flipped Judge Russ Avery's 1924 house at 214 North Rossmore Avenue 
  • Abraham Bushke Cohn ran A. B. Cohn & Bro., pawnbrokers, with his brother Maurice downtown on West Seventh Street. In 1903 he'd married Louise Rauber Aymong, a divorcée with an eight-year-old daughter, Geraldine; the couple's son, Jacob (known as Jack) was born in 1906 and daughter Elizabeth in 1910. After over 30 years at 985 Menlo Avenue, the Cohns moved to Hancock Park, Louise Cohn remaining at 644 Muirfield Road until her death in 1958. Jack Glaser lived with his parents after divorcing Alice Day, an actress in silent films, in 1939; he died on July 26, 1947. A. B. Cohn died at California Hospital on October 22, 1951. The Cohns' daughter Elizabeth Glaser and her family lived at 644 during the '50s. Louise Cohn died on February 11, 1958
  • Amy Dupont Phillips was a third-generation real-estate investor, 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 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. By early 1959 she was the owner of 644 Muirfield, having acquired it after the departure of Louise Cohn, as well as of 600 Muirfield next door to the north
  • 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 next door to 600 when she rented 644 for part of every year to Governor Pat Brown, who was in office from 1959 to 1967
  • Governor Brown and his family—including his son Jerry, the future governor—were recognized yearly by the press from 1961 to 1966 when they were in residence at 644 Muirfield Road. During Brown's bid for a third term in 1966, his challenger from the Hollywood B-list, Ronald Reagan, charged publicly that the liberal Brown was a hypocrite for renting a house that was covered by a deed restricting occupancy to Caucasians, which was rich coming from a man influenced by the views of a notoriously racist, anti-Semitic, and snobbish stepfather-in-law. Although Brown would lose the election in November, he responded in the Times on September 14, 1966, saying that Reagan "is a complete charlatan on the subject of racial covenents," taking the opportunity to remind readers of his long record of opposing such covenents. He added that "Every person with even a passing knowledge of the subject knows that all these covenents lost their legal effect in a 1948 ruling by the United States Supreme Court."
  • After the death of Amy Phillips, 644 Muirfield Road was acquired by prolific and indefatigable television producer Dick Wolf, whose best-known effort is the celebrated Law & Order franchise, the first installment of which premiered on September 13, 1990. On October 12 of that year, Wolf was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for a kitchen and bath remodeling and an enlargement of the dining room of 644
  • On December 16, 1992, the Department of Building and Safety issued Wolf a permit to add a porte-cochère and for a second-story addition; on March 18, 1993, a permit was issued for fencing along the front and sides of the property
  • In January 1996, 644 Muirfield Road was sold to a businessman who owns another Hancock Park house, the 1923 Albert Ralphs residence at 136 North Rossmore Avenue. The garage was replaced in 1998
 

Illustration: Private Collection