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  • Built in 1923 on Lot 61 in Tract 4179
  • Original commissioner: real estate developer Harry H. Belden, whose office was at 260 South Larchmont Boulevard 
  • Architect: Ray J. Kieffer
  • On August 2, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Harry H. Belden permits for a 10-room residence and a 20-by-28-foot garage at 110 North Rossmore Avenue
  • The first occupant of 110 North Rossmore appears to have been insurance man Joseph W. Walt, who had arrived in Los Angeles in 1923, bringing with him his Union Automobile Insurance Company and several dozen of its employees and their families. The Los Angeles Times of September 11, 1926, reported that the business had been "incorporated in 1918, under the laws of the State of Nebraska, with the home office at Lincoln.... Attracted by the favorable business conditions of Southern Calififornia, Mr. Walt reincorporated the institution under the laws of California in January, 1925." It is unclear as to whether Walt and his family had bought or were renting the house; in 1926 he built a large office building for his company at 1008 West Sixth Street (now reskinned and in use as a self-storage facility) and the next year began planning an elborate new house in Flintridge designed by Lester G. Scherer. (It was there that Walt died on April 20, 1929, his death at first being reported as an accident while he was shooting woodpeckers on his property; a suicide note was found soon after)


Edith Walt is seen at the wheel of her new seven-passenger Cadillac Custom Suburban emerging
from the porte-cochère of 110 North Rossmore Avenue. The item, which appeared in the
Los Angeles Times on October 18, 1925, appears to be something of a product
placement by Don Lee, the well-known West Coast distributor of
the make who would soon be branching out into radio.


  • On July 1, 1928, the Times reported that 110 South Rossmore had been sold to Frederick W. Sutterle Jr.: "A resident of China for many years, Mr. Sutterle recently brought his family to Los Angeles and [has] decided to make this his permanent home." Philadelphia-born Sutterle had moved with his parents at the age of eight to China, where his father had varied business interests, which the son continued. Sutterle Jr. had married Philadelphia-born Eleanor Forrest in Yokohama in 1912, with their two sons Frederick III and Forrest and daughter Mary being born in China within five years. The childrens' schooling may have prompted the moved to California, though the family's stay at 110 South Rossmore was brief. It appears that Fred Sutterle spent as much time working back in Shanghai as he did in the States; it may be that the Depression's effect on business or the failing health of his father—he would die in Shanghai in 1935—may have prompted a return of the Sutterles to live full-time in the Far East and to dispose of 110 South Rossmore. Though they would be returning to live in Westwood by the end of the decade, the house and its contents were auctioned off on August 17, 1931


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on August 16, 1931


  • It is unclear who may have bought 110 North Rossmore at auction in 1931; with market conditions for big Los Angeles houses definitely dismal, it may be that the Sutterles were forced to retain it. Whomever the landlord may have turned out to be, the house appears to have been rented by several parties during the next decade
  • Occupying 110 North Rossmore briefly in 1932 was Polish-born voice teacher William Thorner, who had come to Hollywood from New York at the advent of sound to coach actors transitioning to talkies; the Times of April 3, 1932, reported that he had just moved his "residence-studio" into the house. Thorner had been among opera star Rosa Ponselle's coaches and is said to have worked with Al Jolson once he came west. To supplement his film-related work, Thorner advertised in the press for private clients to come to 110 for training in a studio he set up there, as he had at his previous short-term rental at 637 Lorraine Boulevard in Windsor Square—a house that had been moved to that address in 1925 and would in 1980 be moved again to 600 South Rossmore Avenue
  • Insurance man Jay J. Jacobs was the next brief tenant at 110 North Rossmore. On September 19, 1933, Jacobs's niece LaVerne Peterson married Donald LaMotte in the house "in the presence of relatives and a few close friends," per the Times's coverage of the event a week later. "Mrs. Peggy Davis sang 'I Love You Truly,' accompanied at the piano by Pearl Woodruff." 
  • During 1936 manufacturer Eli P. Fay and his family occupied 110 North Rossmore. Fay was president of the Battery Separator Manufacturing Company, which utilized his patented machinery to produce wooden cell dividers for automobile and industrial batteries. His father had been a wheelbarrow manufacturer in Ohio before the family moved west; Mrs. Fay had grown up at 900 West Adams Boulevard as the daughter of banker Russell Judson Waters, who had founded Redlands, where he became a serious citrus grower, and who was later a U.S. Congressman. The Fays were listed in the 1938 city directory at 515 North Highland Avenue, where they were awaited the completion of a new house at 502 North Arden Drive in Beverly Hills. (Curiously, Eli Fay was enumerated there in the 1940 Federal census and in voting records as a "tree surgeon")
  • Purchasing 110 North Rossmore in the spring of 1937 was wholesale food broker Alexander W. Adams. Longtime scribe Juana Neal Levy of the Times penned one of the classic inane descriptions typical of the paper's various society writers and gossip columnists between the wars and into the 1960s when she covered the gruesome-sounding housewarming of the Adamses in July 1937:
"Invitations from Dr. and Mrs. Galen S. Goodson to Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Adams, who recently moved into their new home on Rossmore Avenue, took a funny turn when, instead of a dinner and dance at the Ambassador, they were greeted as they came down the stairs, all gowned and cloaked for the evening, to find a motely crew awaiting them in their own drawing room. 
"The surprise party was planned by Dr. and Mrs. Goodson, and guests were in costumes as ridiculous and funny as they could make them. Taken entirely by surprise, Mr. and Mrs. Adams began to worry about refreshments, but the guests, all seated on the floor, opened their 'picnic' lunch boxes, bringing forth fried chicken, potato salad and sandwiches. As they finished a wagon drove up with ice-cream-on-a-stick and cakes. Dancing and cards completed the evening.
"Cinderella's slippers arranged on a table in the entrance hall, each belonging to one of the ladies in he party, solved the problem of partners for the supper when the slippers were fitted to the foot of a lovely lady by the men."

  • As Alexander Adams got into his car after leaving the Brown Derby at Wilshire and Alexandria on October 12, 1940, a pistol-wielding bandit climbed in after him. The car apparently already in gear, Adams decided to wrestle with the intruder for the gun, which went off, striking him in the hip, as the rolling "machine" (as Adams put it quaintly to a reporter later) ran into a parked vehicle. The struggle continued, the pair falling out of a sprung door as they grappled for control of the weapon on the pavement. Adams managed to seize it; the perp jumped back in the car to make a getway only to be stopped when his intended victim shot him the neck and shoulder, ending the fracas. The next day the Times reported "scores of witnesses" to the event
  • In May 1942, there was another cringey entertainment at 110 North Rossmore when Mrs. Adams gave a birthday party in honor of her mother, visiting from Burlingame. "Gibson girls and other fashionable belles of the era of the '90s" made their appearance—presumable it was a costume affair—according the Times's coverage

  • Moving to the Country Club Manor apartments up the street at 316 North Rossmore, the Adamses sold 110 to scandal-plagued businessman Nathan N. Sugarman and his wife Marjorie in 1952
  • The Sugarmans had been married in February 1949 two months after their engagement was announced in early December 1948 after his attempted murder on December 13 by an ex-girlfriend he had continued seeing. Forty-four-year-old Nate Sugarman and 25-year-old blonde bit actress Patricia Styles, daughter of local radio preacher Hal Styles, had had a rocky four-year relationship, which ended as they sat in Sugarman's big maroon sedan parked on a North Hollywood street. With one of her shots grazing his temple and another, possibly more carefully aimed, landing in his "pelvic region," Miss Styles turned the gun on herself. Press reports leave the impression that it may have been a case of who-shot-whom first; in extensive coverage in the broadsheet and tabloid press, Styles's father—who had lost his 1944 Congressional race to represent California's 15th district after it was revealed that he had once been a Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan (then–Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman had endorsed him)—contended that Sugarman had threatened to kill his daughter on at least two occasions and discounted evidence of her instability. Previous suicide attempts had been reported, as had suggestions of her obsession with Sugarman including the odd detail that she carried around newspaper clippings describing the passionate love letters written by Beulah Louise Overell to her lover around the time the pair was charged with murdering her parents by dynamiting the family yacht in Newport Beach in 1947. Despite Mr. Styles's claims and curious conflicting eyewitness accounts, the coroner's jury was nevertheless persuaded to rule Patricia's death a suicide. In coverage of the scandal the press reported Marjorie Trusdell Burkhardt's name as "Margy Truesdale" and that she was a former San Francisco radio singer; 29-year-old Mrs. Burkhardt was a divorcée with a four-year-old son. Nate had charmed another one. The Times ran a large picture of her three days after her fiancé's brush with impotence if not death; going on to stand by the declaration, she claimed in the picture's caption that she was "still very much in love with Mr. Sugarman.... This will make no difference in our plans." 


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on November 26, 1950


  • Nathan Sugarman was managing a venerable and lucrative Los Angeles business investment firm started in 1906 by his father, who had recently retired; the J. J. Sugarman Company was a reorganizer, liquidator, and auctioneering enterprise with branches in New York and Chicago. Among Sugarman's acquisitions was the 1928 El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs, purchased with two partners in 1950 from the U.S. Army, which had used it as a hospital  during World War II. The Sugarmans retained 110 North Rossmore until their perhaps inevitable divorce in 1959. Marjorie moved on to her third husband the next year

  • Relocating from Monrovia, Jack D. Finch, founder and president of the California Land Title Company, and his wife Viola—a trained accountant—moved into 110 North Rossmore following the Sugarmans. The new house would be closer to their daughters' high school. Since its move from the West Adams district in February 1916 to a site at what was then the northwest corner of Windsor Square, a development opened in 1911—the eastern edge of not-yet-open Hancock Park—Marlborough had been a major factor in the subdivisions' successes, offering a sign of permanence that helped drain West Adams and other older Los Angeles neighborhoods of the affluent. Jack Finch's first marriage was short-lived; with his second wife Ruth he had Peter and Marcia, who in 1964 married Stephen J. Cannell, the prolific television producer of more than 40 series including The Rockford Files. (Cannell's family was the proprietor of Cannell & Chaffin, the high-end Los Angeles furniture and decorating firm that no doubt furnished many Hancock Park houses, perhaps including 110 North Rossmore)
  • Still living at 110 North Rossmore, Jack D. Finch died at the age of 62 on March 10, 1969
  • Viola Finch left 110 North Rossmore soon after her husband's funeral; the house was on the market by early 1970, an ad in the Times on May 24 citing a "reduced" though unspecified price. Neither was a price quoted in a Times ad appearing on February 23, 1975, though it did sell; that purchaser remodeled the kitchen and added a 16-by-36 swimming pool. The house was on the market in June 1983 for $695,000. It languished, by September 1984 having been reduced down to $549,000. Owners of 110 since that time have added a family room to the rear of the residence among other remodelings, no doubt enhancing the property's value, though the neighborhood has rebounded dramatically overall since the the doldrums of the 1980s



Illustrations: Private Collection; USCDL; LAT