Robert H Spurgeon Jr

Robert Spurgeon, Jr., was born in New York. His parents, Robert Senior and Lillian Maguire met and married in Chicago in 1891. Robert’s father had a successful legal career. He moved the family to New York City, where became the attorney for the U. S. Steel Corporation.

As a young man, Robert Junior traveled in Europe and Asia with friends and family and attended Columbia University, where he graduated in 1916 as an architect. He then studied in the Beaux Arts Institute in Paris, before joining the U. S. Navy during World War I.

Spurgeon built 33 houses in Riverside, some of which were commissioned and some of which he built on speculation and later sold. Noted among these are the Arthur Holden House on Magnolia; the rebuilding of the Porter house, originally designed by Arthur Benton and damaged by fire; the Ladera Lane home he built for his father, and the Elijah Parker House, also on Ladera Lane. He died suddenly in 1931 of a ruptured appendix.