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  • Built in 1946 on Lot 302 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: industrialist William Brownstein
  • Design: The Bungalowcraft Company, a publisher of architectural pattern books
  • On February 2, 1946, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. and Mrs. William Brownstein permits for a two-story, nine-room residence and a 19-by-20-foot garage with an attached trunk room at 300 North June Street. A curious permit was issued for the property on August 8, 1946, reading "garage in wrong place on the lot & must be moved to become integral part of the house." A permit issued on December 3, 1946, authorized interior work to create an apartment "to be used exclusively by gardener & chauffeur"
  • The three lots at the northeast corner of June Street and Beverly Boulevard were among those Hancock Park building sites that remained empty until after World War II. A permit for 312 North June one lot north of 300 had been issued three days before those for 300; in 1991, 312 was demolished and replaced with a gargantuan (and now stylistically very dated) house. Permits for the next house north, 322, were issued in August 1948 
  • The Bungalowcraft Company—the name was originally styled Bungalow Craft—began to issue one-dollar architectural pattern books in early 1909. The publisher was Ohio-born Herman August Eymann, who had become a lumber dealer after arriving in San Bernardino County not long after the turn of the 20th century. Eymann partnered with Los Angeles architect Henry Menken in issuing the Bungalow Craft books, which offered half-tone and line engravings of Menken's houses in Los Angeles, Pasadena, and surrounding towns. As the name indicates, the designs were generally of the low-slug Craftsman style, often of the exposed-rafter-end variety, which became popular from San Diego to Bangor up to 1920, more or less. Bungalowcraft publications continued well beyond the Craftsman era and came to include larger houses, such as 300 North June Street; the last book was issued in the early 1950s. After Eymann died in 1911, Menken continued publication until his death in 1916. The firm continued under the direction of architect Rex Duffy Weston; if a particular architect is to be given credit for the design of 300 North June Street, it is probably him
  • Born in Bolgrad, Russia—what is today Bolhrad in southwestern Ukraine—on July 29, 1883, William Brownstein arrived in Boston from Liverpool on September 23, 1904, and made his way west following one of his younger brothers, Emil, who had arrived in the U.S. eight months before. Unlike his other brothers and his parents, all of whom arrived in Los Angeles by early 1907, Emil would choose to shorten his surname to Brown; he would become a very successful Los Angeles industrialist and a philanthropist who in 1928 bought 683 South June Street. Granted citizenship on May 4, 1910, William Brownstein would later work for his brother. Before that he went into dry goods, as did other of his brothers and as had his father-in-law; in 1913, he moved to Pomona, purchasing the oddly-named Racket Department Store, renaming it Brownstein's in August 1915. William and his wife, née Florline Hamerman, ran the store until selling it in February 1922 and moving back to Los Angeles. In late 1925 they began building a large 16-room duplex still at the southeast corner of Orange Drive and Beverly Boulevard. The Brownsteins would occupy 184 South Orange until moving into 300 North June Street in 1946
  • William Brownstein married Florline Hamerman, who'd been living in his south Los Angeles neighborhood, on August 6, 1911. Records vary as to her birthplace, but Fannie, as she was called by those close to her, appears to have been born in Russia on December 28, 1889, as her parents began to make their way to California via Winnipeg and Minneapolis. As a young woman in Los Angeles, Florline Hamerman became known for her operatic soprano; in later years she was active as a voice coach. The Brownsteins would have no children and live quietly on Orange Drive and at 300 North June Street. After his success as a store owner in Pomona, William became a real estate man, his first project being his own home on Orange Drive. With the deepening Depression putting the quietus on property development, he went to work for his brother Emil Brown, who had opened Dura Steel Products, Inc. as a separate operation to manufacture metal cabinetry and furnishings; William became its manager and would remain in that position until not long before his death at 70 on December 10, 1953. Two months earlier, classified ads appeared in the Times offering various household goods for sale at 300 North June Street, the Brownsteins apparently getting ready to move. While there seem to have been no sales ads for the house itself, a new owner was in residence by the summer of 1954. Though she would be moving to a newly built apartment in Westwood, Florline Brownstein remained listed, curiously, at 300 North June on voter rolls through 1956 alongside the new owners. She died on October 22, 1958, six days before her 69th birthday, in her apartment at the Wilshire Carlton, completed at 10635 Wilshire Boulevard in 1957 next door to her first address in Westwood
  • The next owner of 300 North June Street, Mark Alfred Pierce, was a partner in the well-known Los Angeles funeral business, Pierce Brothers, which had its beginnings as a livery stable in the early 1880s. The original brothers' transportation enterprise evolved into hearses, by 1924 becoming, when its new facilities opened on Washington Boulevard—according to the Times in 1998—the "first full-service funeral home in the city." The firm expanded by acquiring other mortuaries as well as cemeteries, including Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood. In 1958, the Pierce family sold the company to a Texas businessman for $6.5 million. Mark Pierce's cousin James R. Pierce, also in the business, would be buying 600 Muirfield Road in 1955; Mark's cousin and business partner Fred Doan would move in down the street to 335 South June by 1960
  • After suffering a heart attack in New York in March 1959, Mark Pierce died at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara on April 11, 1959, age 63. His obituary in the Times the next day noted that he had taken over leadership of Pierce Brothers in 1925 and that just 3½ months before his death he had sold his interest in Pierce Brothers and its associated insurance, cemetery, and crematorium businesses, all of which he was head and principal stockholder. Pierce had married Elvera Florentina Nordquist of Los Angeles in August 1919; they had no children. Elvera Pierce was still listed at 300 North June Street in the 1973 city directory. It is unclear as to how long she may have remained at, or retained possession of, 300 before her death at 86 on November 13, 1982
  • 300 North June Street was on the market by the fall of 1983 asking $525,000 
  • Succeeding Elvera Pierce at 300 North June Street by 1985 was construction executive Clarence E. Erickson and his wife, née Kathleen Standefer. Mr. Erickson died at Good Samaritan on October 27, 1987, age 75; his widow appears to have retained possession of 300 North June Street until her death on January 22, 2012, the day before her 88th birthday
  • 300 North June Street was on the market by March 2012 asking $1,899,000; by the fall the ask had risen to $2,495,000, dropping $200,000 by March 2013, after which it sold
  • In 2016, an owners after Kathleen Erickson added a 15-by-40-foot swimming pool  


Illustration: Private Collection