When Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles started getting too congested in 1930, Henry O'Melveny, a founder of one of the city's most esteemed law firms, O'Melveny & Myers, picked up his English Tudor style mansion and moved it to South Plymouth Boulevard, where it remains in one of the nation's toniest neighborhoods.
Although it has changed hands over the years the house was most recently owned by actor and producer David Arquette it has become known in Los Angeles' excessive real estate world as the O'Melveny House.
So did the new buyers of the seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom house (fully loaded with a pool and mediation lawn) care much about O'Melveny's history with the house?
"Not really," said real estate agent Wesley Earley of John Aaroe Group, who represented the latest buyer, an unidentified television executive who planned to share the home with his partner, an architectural historian.
They probably did care, however, that the home has been landmarked by the city and will receive tax breaks as a result. The home's price tag was a hefty $8.3 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The sale price might have impressed O'Melveny as would his firm's current average profits per partner, which The American Lawyer pegged at $1.95 million in 2016. But the days when O'Melveny cared about money he died in 1941 are long gone.
Miriam Rozen covers the business of law with a focus on law firm-client relationships. Contact her at mrozen@alm.com. Twitter: @MiriamRozen.