Attorney Delphin Michael Delmas (1844-1928) was one of Harry H. Culver‘s initial investors in establishing Culver City in 1913, and he was by far the most famous of the bunch: In 1907, Delmas defended millionaire Harry K. Thaw after Thaw murdered architect Stanford White in public in a cracked attempt to avenge Thaw’s wife, model Evelyn Nesbit. It was dubbed “the trial of the century” (the first of many!) and later inspired the novel, film, and musical Ragtime. Delmas himself was born in France and raised in San Jose. A Yale Law School graduate, he was elected Santa Clara County DA in 1867, then moved his practice to San Francisco in 1883. Despite his West Coast notoriety – he was nicknamed “the Napoleon of the California Bar” – Delmas was an unexpected choice for Thaw’s New York trial. Indeed, he would relocate to the Empire State, but settled in L.A. in 1911. Harry Culver himself lived on Delmas Terrace until 1926.
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