Ernest L. Webster

Ernest L. Webster (1889–1984) was a pioneer automobile dealer in Los Angeles, California, and representative of the 3rd District on the Los Angeles City Council between 1927 and 1931.

Biography Webster was born in 1889 in Youngstown, Ohio, to Warren Webster, originally from Pennsylvania, and Jane William Webster, from South Wales. As a youth he worked for the Youngstown Sheet and Tubing Company as a pattern maker. In 1914 he became an automobile salesman and moved to California in 1917, where he worked at early automobile agencies both in Los Angeles and San Diego. He formed the Landsdale-Webster Company, dealing in automobile accessories, in 1925, and then the Startomatic Company, which was later leased to the Bendix Corporation.

In 1934, he said his hobbies were his bungalow home at 5139 Maplewood Avenue, in today's Larchmont District, "with its rock pool, rose garden, barbecue and outdoor clubroom." but it actually lay mostly south of the Santa Monica Mountains east of Sawtelle, with its eastern boundary at Western Avenue, and its southern boundary running along Washington Boulevard to embrace the Palms area. It included the Los Angeles Country Club and the Sawtelle district, and all the Santa Monica Mountains west of Sawtelle to the Ventura County line, including Pacific Palisades and Topanga Canyon.

During his two terms, he was instrumental in installing a traffic-signal system on Wilshire Boulevard and unsuccessfully advocated legislation for public nurses in parochial schools.

Webster was among six council members who in May 1930 unsuccessfully opposed allocating funds to make a study of leveling Bunker Hill, "which stands as a hindrance to traffic and a bar to development in the northwestern downtown territory."

He ran for reelection again in 1931 but was beaten by James Stuart McKnight, 7,866 to 4,861. He was appointed secretary of the city's Building and Safety Commission in 1934.