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214 North Rossmore Avenue




  • Built in 1923 on Lot 57 in Tract 3668
  • Original commissioner: Dolores Rivierre Caples
  • Architect and contractor: Neither are indicated on the initial building permits issued for 214 North Rossmore Avenue; Dolores Caples had, however, recently completed 631 South Arden Boulevard in Windsor Square, the architect of which was Anne Coble Scott, with Mrs. Caples acting as contractor. Mrs. Caples would be building 334 Muirfield Road simultaneously with 214 North Rossmore, pulling permits for 334 a month before being issued permits for 214; the two houses share some design characteristics
  • On August 25, 1923, the Department of Buildings issued Dolores Caples permits for an 11-room residence and a one-story, 24-by-29-foot garage at 214 North Rossmore Avenue
  • Dolores Rivierre Caples was the daughter of the crafty if resourceful Nellie Patterson Rivierre Higgins, who had become a builder in Los Angeles after a very messy marital career. A week after their marriage in Brooklyn in 1896, she presented her husband Emile Rivierre, apparently a champion bicyclist, with her apparently illegitimate daughter—Dolores—whom he accepted at first. With press reports painting Nellie as an unreliable wife, there was a divorce. She married William Bentley Higgins in Washington State in 1906, divorcing him after his incarceration at San Quentin on a 1919 forgery conviction. Dolores was by this time at odds with her husband Joseph A. Caples, the shiftless, already-once-divorced son of a former mayor of El Paso. Living in Long Beach, they divorced messily in January 1921, she keeping their son Robert and putting her settlement into property development. However Nellie and Dolores came by their capital, mother and daughter turned from developing small residential properties to building more ambitious ones
  • By mid February 1924, classifieds in the Times were advertising open houses at 214 North Rossmore Avenue: "Massive Italian Renaissance Mansion. You must see this beauitiful home built by an ARTIST BUILDER, its detail and beauty cannot go unwritten, downstairs is a large Italian granite entrance hall, living-room with 3 exposures, dining-room, breakfast-room, pass pantry, kitchen, laundry, two maids rooms and bath, there are 4 large bedrooms upstairs.... MODERN and UNIQUE APPOINTMENTS.... the lot OVERLOOKS THE WILSHIRE COUNTRY CLUB golf course, giving an UNOBSTRUCTED VIEW. SEE IT TODAY."
  • Prominent Progressive-era reformer and retiring Superior Court judge Russ Avery bought 214 North Rossmore Avenue soon after completion if not before; on May 12, 1924, the Times reported that he and his wife had "just moved into their beautiful new residence at 214 North Rossmore Boulevard [sic] where they are at home to their many friends." Judge Avery was born in Olympia, Washington Territory, on August 23, 1872. His family settled in Los Angeles by way of southwest Missouri in 1886 at the height of the Boom of that decade; Russ was graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1890 and Cal in 1894 and was admitted to the bar the next year. He received his LL.B. from Harvard Law in 1897, in December of that year opening an office in Los Angeles. He practiced alone until teaming with Samuel H. French, whom he'd known back in Missouri and who'd moved west in 1906, to form Avery & French in June 1907
  • Having become known as a staunch Progressive, Russ Avery was appointed to his Superior Court judgeship by Governor William D. Stephens on August 13, 1917, and would be re-elected for a six-year term in 1918, apparently specializing in divorce cases. Nine days after his appointment, Judge Avery eloped to Riverside with 40-year-old Indiana-born Angeleno May Orchard Smith. Avery turned 45 the next day; his bride, who'd grown up one of seven children, was 40. As the Herald began its report on the event, "The bachelor divorce judge of the Los Angeles superior court is a bachelor no longer." The press had been referring to the new judge as a confirmed bachelor, if not of the type whose sexual orientation was in question; while no children would be forthcoming, Avery had ready the 12-room house he'd built at 345 South Oxford Avenue in the Wilshire District's new Francisca Park tract in 1912. The house may have been intended as a new home for his mother Nellie, brother Kasson, and sister Yerva—neither sibling were married, and older sister Xora, 17 years younger than Russ, was married and living in Berkeley—after their William H. Avery died that year. As it turned out, Russ remained at home with his mother in the house his father had built in 1907 at 963 South Hoover Street—it still stands—and rented 345 South Oxford out until he and May moved in after their marriage. The house was roomy enough to provide a home for May's widowed mother, who would live with her daughter and son-in-law until she died there on August 24, 1923. It was from 345 South Oxford that the Averys would move to 214 North Rossmore Avenue, though, curiously, they are listed in the 1923 Southwest Blue Book at 24 Berkeley Square alongside the Francis Bacons. If there was any family relationship between the two couples it is unclear; perhaps it was a rental or perhaps the shelter was a gesture of friends, the Averys being between their Oxford Avenue and Hancock Park residences that year
  • Russ Avery did not seek re-election to the Superior Court bench in 1924, preferring to devote time to his own business matters and law practice as well as to civic and political endeavors. He would remain known as Judge Avery for the rest of his life. The Averys lived quietly at 214 North Rossmore Avenue, rattling around in its 11 rooms (or 12, depending on who's counting) and seeming not to entertain very much. They were still living there when May died at Cedars of Lebanon on June 17, 1935
  • Judge Avery waited the respectful year and change to remarry. His second wife was the widow of John Gillespie Bullock, the department store man who had died in September 1933. Louise Arms Bullock, born in Michigan on April 16, 1877, was living in a 1906 house that John Bullock had in 1924 moved to 627 South Plymouth Boulevard in Windsor Square from the southwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue (3200 Wilshire Boulevard was built by industrialist William Lacy, who later lived and asphyxiated himself at 401 Muirfield Road in Hancock Park). Judge Avery and Mrs. Bullock were married at St. Thomas Church in New York on November 17, 1936. The next day the Los Angeles Times reported that "The ceremony was performed by Dr. Otis Rice, Episcopal minister, in the presence of a small group of New York and Los Angeles friends." The newlyweds left soon afterward on a honeymoon that entailed motoring southerly and west home to California
  • Judge and Mrs. Avery appear to have decided before their wedding to live at her house in Windsor Square; 214 North Rossmore was rented until Judge Avery decided to dispose of it and its entire contents in an auction held over three days in late November 1939. Louise Avery had been busy with a six-month renovation of 627 South Plymouth Boulevard with the idea in mind, perhaps, of making her husband's move easier—without a mention of the Judge, the new design was covered in detail by society writer Christy Fox in the Times on February 15, 1939


"Supreme in Importance": As seen in the Times on November 26, 1939; it
wasn't unusual for Rossmore Avenue to be mistaken for a Boulevard,
parallel as it was to Arden, Lucerne, and Larchmont boulevards.


  • On February 18, 1940, the Times reported that 214 North Rossmore Avenue had just been sold by real estate operator Glaucus E. Kinsey—mercifully, with his first name sounding somewhat alimentary, he was known as George—who seems to have acquired the property in the November 1939 auction, to Amalia Bellino "for a reported consideration of $16,000." George Kinsey had a rather long connection to Judge Avery in that the parents of his business partner, James Lewis Stunston Jr., had bought 963 South Hoover Street from Russ Avery's family in 1927. Kinsey would later figure into the Hancock Park stories of 644 Muirfield Road, 161 North Hudson Avenue, and 624 South June Street
  • Panamanian-born Amalia Bernal Bellino appears to have been widowed by one husband and divorced from another, resuming her first husband's name after the latter event. A woman of independent means and a real estate operator, she had three children with Italian-born Ernesto Bellino and by her second spouse a son born on New Year's Day 1928, Norman Emery Fabrega, who later sometimes used Bellino as his surname. Amalia and Norman were in residence at 214 North Rossmore by the middle of April 1940, Mrs. Bellino remaining for 31 years. Norman married in July 1952, with both his original and adopted surnames being referenced in county marriage records
  • Amalia Bellino lived quietly at 214 North Rossmore Avenue, and apparently alone, until she died at the age of 83 on June 26, 1970. Two days later an obituary appearing in the Times mentioned only her name and that of the funeral director, no date or relatives noted. She was buried with her first husband Ernest in Calvary Cemetery. A curious item appearing in the Times and in other local papers on July 18, 1963, listed a Harry J. Ridley as having given 214 North Rossmore as his address; with something of a history of such conduct, 60-year-old Ridley (née Goldberg) had been arrested in Santa Monica along with others on bookmaking charges
  • It may be that Amalia Bellino had moved out of 214 North Rossmore Avenue before expiring elsewhere; the property was placed on the market just two weeks after her demise. Initial ads in the Times called it a new listing of a "Glamorous Mediterranean Home"; the asking price of $98,500—$777,000 in 2023 currency—reflected the depressed values of central Los Angeles real estate, including that of Hancock Park, in the wake of the civil unrest of 1965 and, most recently, the Manson murders. A broker's ad in early January listed the house as sold, but, a deal apparently having fallen through, it was soon back on the market. By late April the price had come down to $85,000. It is unclear as to the price the next owner, David Haim, may have paid, but he was in residence by the summer of 1971
  • Born in Istanbul in November 1920, David Haim was living in California by 1962 when he married 25-year-old Oklahoman Suda Jeanon Bobbitt in December 1962. The couple bought a house at 613 North June Street; Mrs. Haim soon went into real estate specializing in Hancock Park residences, which is how 214 North Rossmore might have come to their early attention when it came up for sale. Their tenure lasted at least 20 years
  • The Haims made several interior alterations to 214 North Rossmore; subsequent owners have added a pool, enlarged the kitchen, and added a conservatory


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT