43 Westmoreland Place

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  • Built in 1905 on Lot 43 and the northerly ½ of Lot 45 of Clark & Bryan's Westmoreland Place Tract by the L. A. Building Company as a speculative venture; Oliver C. Bryant, a long-time Los Angeles developer and the manager of L. A. Building, was in charge of the project
  • Architect: Hudson & Munsell (Frank D. Hudson and William A. O. Munsell)
  • In its report of permits issued during the week of February 10, 1905, the Los Angeles Herald listed one pulled by the L. A. Building Company for a two-story frame house on Lot 43 of the Westmoreland Place Tract
  • Featuring a large photograph of the house, the Herald reported on March 1, 1908, that "Oliver C. Bryant's handsome home in Clark & Bryan's Westmoreland place has been sold for $75,000," inferring that Bryant had been in residence; he in fact lived a few blocks away on Magnolia Avenue and never occupied the house. The Herald went on to say that "The identity of the purchaser has not been disclosed, further than that he is an Ohio man who has extensive mining interests in Mexico. He arrived in Los Angeles some time ago with a view of making this city his permanent home." The paper revealed the name of the buyer on April 28: "Mr. and Mrs. Grant G. Gillette and their young son, Waldo A. Gillette of Fostoria, Ohio, have purchased a home at Westmoreland place, where they will make their home the greater part of each year."


George Grant Gillette appeared in a 1910 catalog of
Southern California movers-and-shakers, most of
whom managed their hustles with more grace.
That year, his latest scheme was exposed. 


  • While seductive and growing Los Angeles was the recipient of many a forthright Midwesterner who immediately got to work in the upbuilding of his new home, the city was also, of course, the recipient of many a scoundrel who sought to reinvent himself and live the high life. Grant Gillette was the latter. His checkered career as a mogul began in his native Illinois, where he was born George Grant Gillette in 1868. Known as Grant, and afterward often styling himself as Grant G. Gillette, he would go on to find ever more ways to slip in and out of towns and in and out of affluence. Living in Kansas City in 1898, with a large cattle operation on his Woodbine Ranch out on the plains toward Abilene, he left town early that year, "between two suns," owing creditors a reported $1,500,000 (more than $46,000,000 in current terms). He cabled his brother-in-law from New York on November 27 announcing his departure for Spain. A few days later he was spotted in El Paso, apparently about to cross the border. There were reports of his malfeasance in papers from coast to coast, including The New York Times, referring to him as a fugitive "cattle plunger" (a reckless gambler or speculator, per Merriam-Webster). He had mining interests around Chihuahua, where he proceeded to buy the Hotel Palacio. Being a moral man, he closed the hotel's bar, causing the business to fail. The Arizona Republican reported the collapse on April 7, 1899, adding that Gillette had had a quarrel with his attorney, a Mr. Troxel, "...in which pistols were drawn...there has been a state of absolute non-intercourse between the two men [since]...." Gillette and his wife, Amanda, and their son, Waldo (born on the ranch just before the Kansas City debacle), appear to have remained south of the border while he amassed a new fortune in Mexican mines and began to repay his debts, in fits and starts, as the Los Angeles Herald reported on February 1, 1904, along with the press in every state. The family returned to the U.S. and settled briefly in Fostoria, Ohio, where relatives lived, but a provincial railroad crossroads wouldn't suit the grand Grant Gillettes for long. Oliver Bryant's 20-room house (or, 28, in some reports) at 43 Westmoreland Place in Los Angeles would offer a fresh if hardly subtle start in a town that never asked questions, especially if you appeared to have money
  • The price the Gillettes paid for 43 Westmoreland Place apparently did not include a garage. On October 29, 1908, the Department of Buildings issued him a permit for the construction of a 1½-story, 24-by-34-foot building for automobiles and storage at the northwest corner of the property
  • Despite having a reputation that even in the 1900s would not have been difficult to verify, Gillette managed to ingratiate himself with some of the biggest of Los Angeles pooh-bahs. His business and personal associates would quickly come to include the likes of Harry Chandler, William May Garland, William H. Holliday, Charles A. Canfield and his son-in-law Jay Morris Danziger, Isidore B. Dockweiler, Mervin J. Monnette and his son Orra Monnette, Albert C. Bilicke, Robert Marsh, Russell J. Waters, Homer Laughlin, Leon T. Shettler, and William J. Batchelder. Oliver C. Bryant, who sold Gillette the house, went in on an oil deal with him. None of these Big Swinging Dicks seemed to have been bothered by rumor or to have given much thought to doing a little digging into the past of their friend from Fostoria, who must have been an epic smooth talker. He was even accepted into the always hard-to-crack California and Los Angeles Country clubs 
  • Once a gambler, always a gambler, once a grifter, always a grifter. Rather than rest on the laurels of his second chance, G. G. Gillette blew it just two-and-a-half years after arriving in Los Angeles and quickly and expertly maneuvering himself and his family into the top business and social drawers of the city. In large display advertisements appearing in the Herald during April 1910, Gillette and an impressive roster of others boasted of the oil companies they had organized, including the California Midway, the Wellman, the Cleveland, and the Merchant and Bankers', which placed the ads. The sky seemed the limit until December 21 of that year, when Gillette, a director of the Merchant and Bankers', and William J. Batchelder, secretary of the Cleveland, were arrested by a deputy Federal marshal on charges of misusing the mails to lure the unsuspecting into investing in worthless or overvalued oil lands. Books and records were seized. Gillette was released on a $15,000 bond guaranteed by Charles Canfield and Jay Danziger. Friends began to turn immediately: On Christmas Day, the Herald reported that Mervin Monnette had entered a suit the day before against Cleveland Oil, Batchelder, and Gillette. Unsurprisingly, Gillette pleaded his innocence. The esteemed Oscar Lawler was his attorney. The case would drag on for the next four years. A Federal grand jury indicted Gillette and Batchelder and others on charges of conspiring to use the mails "to defraud divers persons out of their money with letters, circulars, pamphlets and advertisements." Turning on the others, Batchelder plead guilty. Gillette plead not guilty and managed to escape jail, though in the meantime he had once again been reduced to relative (if, it seems, never actual) penury


While her husband worked on finding investors among his new
friends in California, Amanda Gillette worked a double shift
on the charm offensive. She cultivated the distaff side
at tea-time but was accused of not being above
employing certain wiles to induce the
the men to write big checks.


  • Within months of his arrest in December 1910, G. G. Gillette was relieved of his "palace"—as the press termed it—at 43 Westmoreland Place. On March 24, 1911, the Times reported that "...Federal authorities were informed yesterday that Grant C. [sic] Gillette, one of the directors of the defunct Cleveland Oil Company, who is under indictment in the Federal courts, is disposing of his property.... The officials were notified that Gillette has sold his palatial home at No. 43 Westmoreland Place to J. H. Miles, No. 701 Beacon street.... Efforts have been made to keep the transfer secret and some of the persons intimately concerned were very reticent about it. Miles is in Nebraska, but a member of his family confirmed the report of the transaction by telephone last evening." On July 16, 1911, with typical effrontery and signaling that they had no shame while he was out on bond, the Herald reported that "Mr. and Mrs. Grant G. Gillette, with their son and daughter, returned yesterday from New York, where they have been visiting for the past few weeks. They have taken a house at 1924 South Figueroa street, where Mrs. Gillette will be at home to her friends Wednesdays." More headlines in the Times on August 19: "SOCIETY LEADER CALLED CATSPAW—Mrs. Gillette Named Exploiter of Cleveland Oil." A director of the company, John Montgomery Jr., laid the entire blame for the affair "at the door of Grant G. Gillette, prime mover in the organization of the company, now at liberty on $15,000 bail." Amanda Gillette appears to have put on a little extra perfume when entertaining prospective investors. Montgomery claimed that he was "inveigled" into taking stock in the company "through the influence of Mrs. Gillette, alleged to have been used by her husband as a means of persuasion.... Mrs. Gillette was a very impressive advocate of the paying capacity of the stock....." Even being exposed as a shill in the press, with a large picture and the suggestion of having worn (in a sense) a low-cut dress to seduce investors wasn't enough to cause the grifting Gillettes to retreat. Still renting on Figueroa the next year, Gillette's listing in the 1912 city directory was typically unsubtle, his name appearing in bold caps (GEORGE GRANT GILLETTE) and indicating that henceforth he would be casting himself as a real estate dealer. In the summer of 1912, he managed to build a new house, intending to sell it, but occupied briefly by himself and his family—one gabled and half-timbered and resembling 43 Westmoreland Place, and still standing at 4440 Victoria Park Drive. After years of playing at being multimillionaires, the Gillettes were now settling into mere burgherdom, undistinguished, particularly so in their case
  • The press nevertheless remained fascinated with the Gillettes; perhaps it was the fame of a name that clever editors knew would draw eyeballs, with the unrelated inventor of the safety razor, King C. Gillette, prominent in the Southland at the time. Fingered by detectives after his car struck and severely injured Theodore and Maizie Kanouse on their motorcycle near Cucamonga on October 13, 1912, G. G. Gillette was arrested in Los Angeles the following January 28 and taken to San Bernardino to face charges. While his 1910 Pierce-Arrow had been repainted in the interim, Gillette, naturally, denied being the guilty driver, seeming to shift the blame to his chauffeur. The San Bernardino Daily Sun declared that "For the first time in the history of the California courts, an automobile is described as a deadly weapon." Gillette appears to have been held in custody until March 11, when, slippery as ever, he was released when it was judged that there was insufficient evidence against him. Ten days before, Amanda Gillette had been given more of her own serious ink. Bearing the initial tagline "Social Shock," the Times headlined a story on March 1, 1913, MRS. GILLETTE BANKRUPT; CREDITORS TAKE JEWELS. Accompanying the article was a two-column portrait of her, nearly a third of page tall, captioned "Mrs. Grant G. Gillette, Society matron and wife of the leading defendant in the forthcoming Cleveland Oil Company trial, who declared herself bankrupt in the United States District Court yesterday." And yet, within months, the Gillettes were entertaining, counted among the hosts at a large party at the Los Angeles Country Club in January 1914. On February 21 they threw a 16th-birthday party for Waldo, inviting 50 of his friends to their rented house at 1115 South Alvarado Street. As for Grant George or George Grant Gillette—his switches of names seem almost to have been attempts to give the world the slip—even having fraud charges against him finally dropped could not stop a basically corrupt and belligerent nature. On April 2, 1915, the Times reported that the Reverend Alfred Quetu of San Juan Capistrano, described as a Catholic priest, rancher, and ostrich farmer, had the day before sworn out a complaint in a Santa Ana courtroom against Gillette, who was once again being charged with getting property under false pretenses. It seems that Gillette was already facing criminal charges in Los Angeles in connection with his dealings with Quetu, who it must be said, had been sued himself for allegedly defrauding an Orange County bank
  • Finding little traction left for them socially or business-wise, at least for the time being, the Gillettes left Los Angeles after the Quetu fiasco to wind up in Tulsa, where G. G. set himself up as an oil producer, soon living as high as a place like Tulsa would allow. But with Oklahoma, like Fostoria, paling in comparison to Southern California, he zagged back west, reopened his real estate business, and bought a house on South Occidental Boulevard, where Amanda died on April 11, 1923. G. G. wasted no time in remarrying; his new bride was the former Mrs. Lillian Curtiss. Apparently never a good driver, Gillette died behind the wheel, as reported in the Times on December 5, 1925: "Grant George Gillette, president of the Gillette Realty Company, was fatally injured yesterday when his heavy touring car slid down a steep hill...and crashed into a tree at the bottom." The accident occurred in the Glassell Park neighborhood. The Times eulogized him as though he had never put a wrong foot forward and had no history in Los Angeles: "He was engaged in mining engineering in Mexico for ten years and later an oil operator in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. He came to Los Angeles in 1921, engaging in the real estate business." Exhibiting a familiar (and all-too-current) American trait, members of the ruling-class California and Los Angeles Country clubs, in which his affiliation was noted, appear not to have blackballed him and indeed to have had a grudging admiration—or perhaps not grudging at all—for a man with a lousy reputation and pretensions but able to charm those useful to him—his base. The urn containing his ashes placed in a Forest Lawn mausoleum niche did finally settle his name, engraved as it is "George Grant Gillette"


A citified Joseph Harvey Miles and his authoritative moustache: The signature
appears to be that of Los Angeles portrait photographer George Steckel.


  • On August 24, 1911, the Los Angeles Herald referred to the sale of 43 Westmoreland Place to Joseph Harvey Miles for $112,000 as the "largest individual property sale ever effected in this city." Though he physically worked his father's Nebraska cattle ranges totaling 10,000 acres before striking out on his own as a Pony Express rider and later a railroad telegrapher and dispatcher, Miles inherited a fortune in 1898, becoming a stock man in his own right and a financier, all apparently without resorting to grifting—or at least none that he was ever arrested for. His brother, Samuel, contended that he had destroyed or was suppressing a later version of their father's will, one less in favor of Joseph, resulting in a protracted legal battle. At any rate, Joseph and Sue Miles came west from Nebraska in 1901, establishing a presence in Los Angeles's Westlake district though retaining a residence back in Falls City while he and Samuel fought for their legacies. Victorious by 1911, the Joseph Mileses felt confident in moving west permanently. They celebrated by buying a grand new Los Angeles house in which they would remain for the next 24 years. (Unlike G. G. Gillette, Miles could actually afford 43 Westmoreland Place.) At the time of the purchase the Mileses had six children ranging in age from 10 to 28, though they would, sadly, lose one a year after moving into #43
  • Joseph T. Miles was the troubled second of three sons; he appears to have had a complicated relationship with the bottle as well as with women. His father tried to help him get a footing in life, but, after several other affairs—and possibly a marriage to a woman known to his family only as Myrtle—he became involved with the considerably older former wife of the postmaster of St. Joseph, Missouri. Mrs. Grace Taggart appears to have been well aware of the money her paramour came from, claiming to have been married to him two days before he shot himself in the head in an Oakland hotel room on August 16, 1912. A funeral was held at #43 four days later. Joseph's family rather artlessly tried to blame Grace for their son's "enslavement to the drink habit"; it is unclear as to whether she and Joseph were ever actually married, but, in any case, it seems a "severance package" was arranged to make her go away. After a suitable period of mourning, the life of the Mileses in Westmoreland Place settled into rounds of Sue Miles's card parties and musicales, nothing ostentatious, but often including such social dreadnoughts as Mmes Hancock Banning, James T. Fitzgerald, Homer Laughlin, Charles Wellington Rand, Oscar Lawler, and Frederick Hastings Rindge. Then there were two quiet weddings at home
  • Twenty-year-old Sueadele Miles married real estate man Edgar Dulin at 43 Westmoreland Place on November 10, 1915; Edna Miles, 24, and Sennet Gilfillan were married in a quiet evening ceremony at #43 on June 19, 1918. (Gilfillan was a Bakelite manufacturer and eventually a radio maker who during World War II would produce early aircraft radar systems)
  • By 1920, only Joseph and Sue Miles and their youngest son Warren, not so young at 29, were living at 43 Westmoreland Place. After Warren left home the next year to marry 16-year-old Margaret Kanaly, described as an employee on one of the Miles ranches back in Nebraska, and to farm there, his parents lived quietly in their big Los Angeles house, with press mentions mostly of her entertainments of and by her fellow matrons. Back east, the Miles spreads were faltering financially, but not to the extent that #43 needed to be sold. By 1928 the gates of Westmorland Place had been demolished, both literally and figuratively, its two drives then folded into the Los Angeles grid. The westerly drive became a segment of Menlo Avenue, the easterly drive part of South Westmoreland Avenue. The Mileses' address now became 1101 South Westmoreland Avenue. Most of the early householders were still in residence in what had been Westmoreland Place in early 1930, but with apartment buildings soon to invade the neighborhood and some of the nine original dwellings already turned into rooming houses and sanitariums—not to mention the personal bottom lines of the old guard having dropped after Black Tuesday—they began to leave. The Mileses, however, remained at 1101 South Westmoreland until their deaths in 1935. Sue Miles died on February 28 of that year at the age of 72; Joseph Miles was 84 when he expired on July 16
  • Two permits were issued by the Department of Building and Safety to the Mileses during their last years at 43 Westmoreland Place. One pulled on October 30, 1933, appears to have been for repairs after the Long Beach earthquake of the previous March 10. Repairs after a small fire—an event that cannot have been helpful to a grieving Mr. Miles—were made after a permit was issued on April 16, 1935 
  • Joseph Miles's estate appears to have retained 43 Westmoreland Place for the next decade, leasing it from the spring of 1937 into the war years to the Los Angeles chapter of the International Sunshine Society, founded in Brooklyn in 1900 to establish homes for blind children. Other organizations also held meetings while the society was in residence; the Miles house was joining the rest of the nine original houses of Westmoreland Place in their conversion to institutional use. On November 18, 1945, the house was dedicated as the Kolping House, "a home for Catholic workingmen," as the Times described it the next day. "The new Los Angeles house, recently purchased from the estate of a pioneer family, will provide accommodations here for Catholic workingmen of German descent." (The romantic phrase "pioneer family," here apparently referring to the Mileses, was commonly used for any family living in Los Angeles for more than two generations.) The home was sponsored by the Catholic Kolping Society of Los Angeles. Per the Times 10 days earlier: "Kolping houses here and abroad are dedicated to providing men between 17 and 25 with a "home away from home" while they pursue studies of trade craftsmanship. Founded [in Germany] by Father Adolph Koping in 1848...the Kolping movement teaches Christian principles to young craftsmen." A permit was issued to the Society on November 30, 1950, officially changing the use of #43 from a single-family dwelling to a "hotel." The Society's headquarters was moved to 1225 South Union in 1955, where it remains in 2020, with 1101 South Westmoreland being retained for the time being as a home for young men until 1968
  • On February 10, 1969, the Department of Building and Safety issued a demolition permit for 1101 South Westmoreland Avenue. It would soon be replaced by the three-story, 62-unit apartment building that stands on the site today, addressed 1111 South Westmoreland, for which a construction permit was issued on November 17, 1969


An image of 43 Westmoreland Place appeared in the Los Angeles Times
on March 24, 1911, at the time of its sale by G. G. Gillette to J. H. Miles. The
accompanying article described the big house in detail, as reproduced below. The
title image is from the book Greater Los Angeles & Southern California: Portraits
& Memoranda, published in 1910 and featuring Gillette just before his fall
among men who had similar ambition but a little bit more integrity.




Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; Miles Ranch Foundation;
Greater Los Angeles & Southern California: Portraits & Memoranda
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