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  • Built in 1920 on Lot 7 in Tract 3446
  • Original commissioner: insurance executive Danford Morse Baker
  • Architect: Arthur Rolland Kelly
  • One of the earliest houses built in Hancock Park, the Department of Buildings issued a permit for its foundation to Danford Baker on March 16, 1920; on April 2, he was issued a permit for a 13-room house and, on June 18, for a 21-by-34-foot garage also designed by Arthur Kelly. The project was a family affair: Baker's son-in-law Arthur Letts Jr. was at the same time having Kelly design a house just across Fourth Street at 356 South Rossmore Avenue
  • Danford Baker was an insurance man in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles in 1906 to take up a new position in the field. In late 1905, the Conservative Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles had bought controlling interest in the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, based in San Francisco, the latter firm's name becoming that of the combined operation. Frederick H. Rindge, president of Conservative Life at the time of his unexpected death in 1905, had built 2263 South Harvard Boulevard in West Adams Heights in 1902; his successor at Conservative, Wilbur S. Tupper, lived at 2237 and a Conservative vice-president, George I. Cochran, at 2249. (The street was named in honor of Rindge's alma mater.) In 1906 Tupper was forced out of Pacific Mutual in the wake of a much-publicized personal scandal, with Cochran assuming the firm's presidency; it is Cochran who drafted Baker to become a vice president of the company. With his formidable local backing and social guidance, Baker wasted no time in establishing his own family on Harvard Boulevard, hiring no less than the firm of William A. O. Munsell and Frank Dale Hudson to design 2118 South Harvard. Baker was issued a permit for this house on February 1, 1907 (it would be demolished for the 10 freeway by 1963)


As seen in the Los Angeles Evening Express on
April 15, 1921, Daniel Baker is "togged up
on his way to the Los Angeles Country
Club.... He is a southpaw. It is the
policy of his company to urge
all their officers...to play
golf at least every
Wednesday...."


  • Dan and Clara Baker had two children; Bessie Emeline Baker had been born in Kansas City on November 15, 1890, Danford Jr. in Chicago on April 1, 1896. On February 24, 1914, Bessie made what was considered a spectacular match when she married the very rich Arthur Letts Jr. The ceremony took place at the West Adams Methodist Church at Adams Street and LaSalle Avenue, a few blocks south of 2118 South Harvard, where a reception was held. Arthur's father was the English-born founder of The Broadway department stores—as well as the original moneybags behind Bullock's—who himself had been championed by the aforementioned George I. Cochran. (It was Cochran who had persuaded Letts to move south from Seattle in 1896 and banker George Bonebrake to lend Letts the money for the Los Angeles venure that began his meteoric mercantile rise.) Residing with his parents at their well-known 1905 estate, Holmby House in Los Feliz—designed by the architects of Cochran's Harvard Boulevard house, Train & Williams—Arthur and Bessie awaited the completion in late 1914 of their own residence on family-owned property nearby at 1834 North Kenmore Avenue (demolished in 1986). The Letts family and its Janss-family in-laws would be Dan and Clara Baker's guide in their real estate moves from, successively, fading West Adams to the raw Hancock Park subdivision to the raw Letts-owned Holmby Hills tract within eight years of their move to 400 South Rossmore Avenue
  • As mentioned, Arthur and Bessie Letts built their own house at 356 South Rossmore Avenue at the same time her parents were building theirs just across Fourth Street at 400, also employing Arthur Kelly to design; a permit for it was issued the day after that of 400 South Rossmore. Kelly apparently became quite well attuned to the domestic arrangements desired by the extended Letts family, designing not only 356 and 400 South Rossmore but, before long, two houses on adjoining properties for Arthur and Bessie and for Dan and Clara Baker in Holmby Hills, which Arthur Letts Sr. had developed on the 400 acres of the original Wolfskill Ranch he'd purchased in 1919. (An excellent overview of the spectacular rise and various falls of the Lettses is here)
  • While today Hancock Park strives mightily to associate itself with grander Westside subdivisions developed at the same time—Holmby Hills and Bel-Air in particular—rather than déclassé and territorially aggressive Koreatown adjacent to the east, the Lettses and the Jansses understood early on the distinction between mere upper-middle-class housing and more impressive arrangements. Arthur and Bessie Letts hired Arthur Kelly to design what was up to that time the city's most impressive residence, which would either evolve or devolve, depending on your perspective, into the Playboy Mansion. Completed in 1927, 10236 Charing Cross Road in Holmby Hills was adjacent to the site of Dan and Clara Baker's new 15-room house that Kelly was designing for them at 500 South Mapleton Drive and for which a building permit was issued by the Department of Building and Safety on September 13, 1928
  • Danford Baker died at 500 South Mapleton Drive on March 25, 1930, at the age of 67; Clara Baker remained at 500 until her death there on September 17, 1942. Bessie and Arthur Letts's twins, David and Diane, had been born as John and Alice Burke on April 20, 1924, and adopted on July 28, 1926; the couple was divorced on October 22, 1930, with both of them remarrying in short order. That New Year's Eve, claiming it was love at first sight, Arthur married a New York woman he'd met who was also awaiting a divorce at the Cal-Neva Lodge; two years after divorcing her in 1933, he moved on to a third wife. (Still living at 10236 Charing Cross Road, he died in 1959.) On February 12, 1931, in true Los Angeles style at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather chapel at Forest Lawn cemetery, Bessie married New York attorney Francis Hann and settled in Beverly Hills  
  • The Bakers sold 400 South Rossmore Avenue to Municipal Court Judge Elias V. Rosenkranz and his wife, Mildred
  • On September 13, 1929, the Department of Building and Safety issued E. V. Rosenkranz a permit for a remodeling that included a new room over a first-floor wing at the south end of the house and the replacement of traditional windows in a second-floor rear bedroom with a bay
  • Judge Rosenkranz did not live in the house for very long; just after leaving home for court on the wet morning of November 17, 1930, he died almost instantly at Third Street and Norton Avenue when, according to news reports, bald tires allowed his car to skid and crash into a third vehicle as he tried to avoid a truck. His widow, Mildred, and the couple's three daughters, aged 10, 7, and 17 months, left 400 South Rossmore by 1936
  • Anne Disney Conwell Thomson—known as Nancy—her husband James, her sickly brother David, and a maternal maiden aunt, Margaret Miller, moved into 400 South Rossmore in 1936; Mrs. Thomson was no relation to Walt but was apparently a descendant of Betsy Ross, the flagmaker. Nancy and James had arrived on the west coast by the middle 1920s, by 1929 settling into a small house they purchased at 423 South Swall Drive in Beverly Hills. The couple seems to have been socially ambitious, managing to get themselves included in the Southwest Blue Book soon after their arrival, their entry including a long list of obscure clubs as well as the D.A.R. and the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Nancy Thomson's widowed mother Sue and David had also arrived in Los Angeles by 1930, buying their own house at 1102 South La Peer Drive, in Los Angeles proper but just around the corner from the Thomsons. Mrs. Conwell died on October 6, 1934, leaving David, it seems, her money. David had been a private in the Army during the first World War and, apparently unwell since then, had been taken care of by his mother; his big sister, now his guardian, used his funds to purchase 400 South Rossmore for the extended family. The house was a considerable step up from the family's former bungalows and in a much better neighborhood


Images appearing in the Los Angeles Times on August 29, 1952, depict four officers and a matron
carrying 89-year-old Margaret Miller down from her bedroom at 400 South Rossmore Avenue
the day before; her her niece Anne Thomson had left her bedridden and alone save for
a Doberman pinscher. Sheriff's deputies gained entrance to the house using a
ladder in back. Part of the bay window added to the house in 1929
is seen, as it is in the second more recent image below.


  • The Thomson household appears to have been coming apart at the seams by the middle of 1950, by which time David was confined to a Veterans' Administration psychiatric facility in Palo Alto and his guardianship transferred to, for some reason, a court-appointed Alhambra real estate man, who had permission to sell the house, the proceeds intended to be used for David's upkeep. The Thomsons, behind in whatever rent they were required to pay to David's trust and no longer overseeing David's care, managed to evade eviction notices until August 1952. The couple was still on the lam when county sheriff's deputies broke into the house on the orders of the Superior Court and, finding only 89-year-old Aunt Maggie and Jinx, a Doberman pinscher—both docile—proceeded to pack up all furniture and personal belongings to be taken for storage and inventory. An illustrated article in the Times on August 29, 1952, included the sad image of Miss Miller being carried down the front stairs from her bedroom. What might have happened to aunt, dog, or the scoundrel Thomsons does not seem to have been reported in the press beyond that day. Nancy and James were, however, dropped from the Southwest Blue Book. It is unclear as to how much longer Aunt Maggie might have lived; Nancy and James Thomson both died years later in Ojai, she in 1966 at the age of 76 and he in 1974 at 83. Outliving them all was David T. D. Conwell, who was 95 when he died on January 20, 1990
  • Retired antiques merchant William Lafayette Fly and his wife Nellie were living at 400 South Rossmore Avenue by 1954. On October 3, 1955, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mrs. Fly, indicated as the owner of 400, a permit to add a storage shed to the garage
  • Ownership of 400 South Rossmore after the departure of the Flys circa 1958 is unclear; a Bernard Spiegel is listed at the address in the 1960 Los Angeles city directory and through the April 1965 edition. He appears to have married Adele Lehrer in New York in 1954; it is not known if there was a divorce or a demise, but an "A Spiegel" is listed in the city directory of July 1965 until at least the book issued in January 1969. Mrs. Spiegel appears to have reverted to her maiden name by that year, during which she had a 10-month marriage to a William Rabinovitz; she is listed in the 1973 city directory as Adele Lehrer and seems to have remained at 400 until her death in January 1995. After that time, under the ownership of the Adele Lehrer Trust, a number of major alterations were made to the property in preparation for sale
  • The roof of 400 South Rossmore was replaced in 1993; a permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety to the Adele Lehrer Trust of Calabasas on April 3, 1997, allowed for a 15-by-25-foot addition to the garage to create an accessory living space. On May 14, a permit was issued for an interior remodeling and the addition of a fireplace and a yard shed. A permit issued on July 7, 1997, allowed for the addition of an eight-foot, 130-foot-long block wall along the Fourth Street side and rear of the property
  • Prolific songwriter Robert S. Crewe, known as Bob, purchased 400 South Rossmore from the Adele Lehrer Trust in 1997, becoming owner of the house by November 19, 1997, when he was issued a permit to make a major architectural change to the façade of 400 South Rossmore; Arthur Kelly's original, delicate semicircular entrance portico was replaced with the current version with an out-of-proportion gable. Crewe added a pool to the property, a new patio, and a three-foot wall along the south and sidewalk edges of the property in 1998. Today, tall dense hedges planted just behind this wall block the view of the house, as they do many residences along extremely busy Rossmore Avenue. (Just a few of Crewe's hits include "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," "Rag Doll," "Silence Is Golden," "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," "Bye, Bye, Baby," "Let's Hang On!," "My Eyes Adored You," and "Lady Marmalade")
  • 400 South Rossmore Avenue has in recent years served as the Consulate of the Principality of Lichtenstein for the western United States




A recent real-estate image reveals the overscaled entrance
porch that replaced the 1920 original in 1997; stone lions seem to
have become a common cliché of updated Hancock Park houses. Details
of the rear of 400 South Rossmore can be compared to the 1952 Los
Angeles Times image seen above. The farthest window at left is
to a room added to the south end of the house in 1929.





The wrought-iron stair and landing railings appears to be all that
is left of the now-bleached-out and overlit entrance hall's original interior
decoration. Below is a recent view of the southeast corner of Rossmore Avenue
and Fourth Street taken from an angle similar to that at top, taken decades ago;
only the northerly chimney of 400 can be seen over tall hedges, versions of
which line what has become a suburban highway through Hancock Park.




Illustrations: Private Collection; USCDL; LAT; MLS; GSV