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  • Built in 1923 on Lot 15 in Tract 3446
  • Original commissioner: Ralph Hamlin, a Whittier rancher turned contractor, apparently as a speculative venture; he built his own house at 656 South Hudson Avenue nearby in 1925. (Hamlin is not to be confused with the higher-profile Los Angeles automobile dealer Ralph C. Hamlin, to whom he appears unrelated)
  • Permits were issued to Ralph Hamlin for 530 South Rossmore by the Department of Buildings on March 8, 1923 (for a 20-by-27-foot garage) and  on March 13, 1923 (for a $13,500 10-room residence). Neither document indicates an architect, although it might be assumed that the designer was Hamlin's nephew, G. Vincent Palmer; Hamlin is noted as contractor on the house permit. House-building was a family affair: Palmer designed Hamlin's own residence at 656 South Hudson Avenue and is known to have designed the residence of his parents—Dr. and Mrs. George L. Palmer—at 427 Muirfield Road (built 1923, demolished 2002) as well as 400 Muirfield Road and a speculative project of his and his father's at 514 Muirfield Road




  • On November 25, 1923, the Los Angeles Times ran a photograph of 530 South Rossmore headlined "New Home of Colleen Moore." The Los Angeles Record had reported two days before that the film star and her husband, producer John McCormick, had purchased 530 from Hamlin for $50,000, which would have meant an enormous profit even considering Hamlin's purchase of the lot; it could also be that the price reported was a bit of press-puffery planted by John McCormick, who had been a publicist before becoming a producer
  • Despite reports of the sale of 530 South Rossmore to the McCormicks in 1923, a lawsuit filed seven years later indicate that Ralph Hamlin, or a subsequent party other than the McCormicks, may have actually owned the house during the '20s and been the film couple's landlord. On February 20, 1931, the Times ran a photograph of Colleen Moore, right hand raised as she swore her oath, during a trial resulting from her being sued for damages to the property to the tune of $10,000 by John W. Mykrantz. The Times reported that "The McCormicks moved out of the house [on] July 1, 1929, after Mykrantz bought it from their landlord. The plaintiff testified that the house wasn't what it had been when he inspected it prior to buying. Fixtures had been removed, window canopies ripped down, an electric grate taken, rose bushes uprotted [sic], a garage and a dog house torn down, and goldfish 'abducted' from the garden aquarium." The judge was largely dismissive, awarding Mykrantz just $100
  • Despite the unclear ownership of 530, on October 31, 1928, what was now called the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit for what is described as a second garage, one measuring 18 by 18 feet on a dirt floor, to Mrs. J. E. McCormick, who was noted as the owner of the property. This building was supplied by Pacific Ready-Cut Homes—incorporated in 1909 as Pacific Portable Construction Company—which was a large purveyor of prefrabricated and portable buildings. It seems likely that this is the "garage and...dog house" John Mykrantz claimed in his suit to have been removed by the McCormicks
  • By January 1929, the McCormicks decided to leave Hancock Park almost whimsically, so the legend goes, after eyeing an extravagant house under construction at 345 St. Pierre Road. In what was perhaps a press-agent echo of their acquisition of 530 South Rossmore, in comparison a thoroughly middle-class dwelling, the couple offered a reported $250,000 to persuade the owner of the unfinished Bel-Air house to turn the project over to them. (A history of 345 St. Pierre Road by historian Steve Vaught is here)
  • The McCormicks had been married on August 18, 1923, as 530 South Rossmore was nearing completion; Miss Moore would be moving from her previous residence at 1231 South Gramercy Place, which also still stands. Gone from 530 and living in Bel-Air, Moore filed for divorce on April 30, 1930; McCormick was reportedly engaged to another woman even before Moore was granted her divorce on May 13. (He remarried 10 days later in Hawaii, his new wife apparently unaware of the rumors of his alcoholism; she left for Reno two months later claiming that McCormick was still in love with Colleen, who married the second of her four husbands in February 1932)
  • According to Joseph Yranski, the Senior Film and Video Historian at the New York Public Library for over 30 years, producer Irving Thalberg and actress Norma Shearer rented 530 South Rossmore from John Mykrantz (who had not yet moved from his San Diego County cattle ranch to live in Los Angeles full-time) after the departure of the McCormicks until their new Santa Monica beach house was ready for them in 1931
  • John Mykrantz, his wife Elizabeth, their son and two daughters moved into 530 South Rossmore by 1932.  On September 8 of that year, elder daughter Harriette Elizabeth married building contractor Warren L. Hanby in the garden at 530
  • The Mykrantzes appear to have left 530 South Rossmore after 1936, John taking a room downtown at the Angelus Hotel and Elizabeth going to live with her daughter June Scarbery near San Diego. A classified advertisement appeared in the Times on May 25, 1937, offering 530 for sale for $18,500
  • Parking-lot proprietor Matthew M. Codon purchased 530 South Rossmore by 1939, moving in with his wife Eva and their daughters Corryne, Iryne, and Helayne. The family would retain the house for nearly 50 years
  • Matthew Codon was issued permits by the Department of Building and Safety in 1952 and again in 1959 for sandblastings of the house's exterior, which may have been a testament to the extreme smog conditions present in the Los Angeles Basin at the time. Permits were issued to Codon in 1963, 1966, and 1968 for various bathroom and window alterations
  • Based on building permits issued since 1968, owners succeeding Matthew Codon appear to have made only minor alterations to 530 South Rossmore. A new pool was built in 2018 and, also that year, the 1923 garage was converted into a dwelling unit
  • 530 South Rossmore was on the market in the summer of 1995 for $699,000 ($1,252,159 today). A recent sale of the property (on December 2, 2020) brought $4,625,000


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT