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  • Built in 1927 on a parcel comprised of Lots 297 and 298 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: building-materials executive Willis H. Mead
  • Architect: Lester G. Scherer
  • On June 10, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued Willis H. Mead a permit for a 28-room residence with attached garage at 350 North June Street
  • Work on Lester G. Scherer's English design for 340 North June Street on southerly adjacent Lot 299 was underway when the permit for 350 was issued


The architect's rendering of 350 North June Street as seen in the Times on November 27, 1927


  • Born not far west of Chicago on November 5, 1873, Willis Howard Mead was brought to California as an infant and grew up in Eureka, Sacramento, and Fresno. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1895, setting up as a shingler. In February 1896 he married 16-year-old Lucile Irene Parish; a native of Auburn, New York, she had come west with her family during the Boom of the '80s. A news item in the Herald on February 27, 1896, reported that a man stormed into the marriage-license bureau inquiring about the Meads' documentation, issued two days before, and claiming (correctly) that the bride's age was incorrectly written on the license as 18. It was unknown if the complainant was a "a buncoed lover or brother of the girl," but it seems that he let the matter drop and that the Meads were by that time duly married. Mead had gotten into legal trouble as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles, in November 1895 having been arrested on charges of disturbing the peace after threatening a romantic rival with a gun; he served a stint in jail
  • As Willis Mead settled into married life and began to channel his energy into work, he went into house painting and decorating, building a respectable business. Early on in this endeavor he met Perry Whiting, a real estate investor turned lumber dealer, the two becoming fast friends, Mead known to Whiting affectionately as "Billie." By 1904, with Mead having bought a quarter of Whiting's business, the men were collaborating on construction projects and, seeing the value in recycling as Los Angeles expanded and replaced its older structures, incorporated the separate Whiting Wrecking Company in 1905 with Mead installed as president. This enterprise would be among a number of firms the partners started. As their business evolved, Whiting and Mead began dealing in commercial trucks as well as in new and recycled building materials. The Whiting-Mead Pottery Company began production of vitreous china products in March 1923. By 1931, with Whiting as president and Mead as vice-president, their companies were doing $4,000,000 of business a year. Apparently to counter rumors of a sale, ads boasted that Whiting-Mead was "strictly a California industry with all stock owned by its two heads and 800 employees...that has an annual payroll of $1,500,000 and nine branch stores with a main plant covering 40 acres at Vernon and Santa Fe avenues." On April 20, 1936, the Meads gave Perry Whiting a 68th-birthday dinner at 350 North June Street. Within a few years Whiting's grip on his personal and business life business was being questioned to the point that in February 1939 he was committed long-term to a sanitarium, with Mead assuming the presidency of Whiting-Mead
  • In 1930, apparently impressed with his friend Willis Mead's new house in Hancock Park, Perry Whiting had commissioned Lester G. Scherer to design a new residence for himself at 5120 Linwood Drive in Laughlin Park


The Meads' 1932 Lincoln KB sedan is seen leaving 350 North June Street towing a three-wheel
 motorcycle of the type that dealers once used to pick up and deliver cars needing service.


  • Willis and Lucile Mead's only child, Ruby Lucile, had been born on February 8, 1901. Her engagement would be announced at a garden party at La Casa de las Campanas ("House of the Bells")—as the Meads had christened 350 North June for its three-story bell tower—on May 22, 1929. Ruby's fiancé was 30-year-old Warren Francis Lamb, an employee of her father. On September 22, 200 people were invited to the wedding ceremony in La Casa's living room, which had been transformed into a chapel, an additional 500 guests attending the reception afterward in the garden. After their honeymoon, the Lambs moved into the commodious La Casa de las Campanas. Their daughter Jean Carmen, born on May 5, 1931, lived only a day. Warren Mead Lamb was born on September 22, 1932
  • Still president of Whiting-Mead, Willis H. Mead died at home on September 12, 1950, after a brief illness. In an interesting turn of events, Lucile Mead remarried the next year. Her second husband was Arthur Platt Campbell, who in November 1938 had been sentenced to a term of not more than five years at San Quentin for a violation of the State Corporate Securities Act, apparently having sold oil properties without proper authority. Lucile left 350 North June Street to live with him in Las Vegas, keeping the Meads' longtime vacation house on Catalina. (Willis Mead had been a founder of the Catalina Island Yacht Club.) The Lambs continued to occupy La Casa de las Campanas; after Mrs. Campbell died in Las Vegas on September 10, 1959, her funeral was held at 350 six days later. She was placed in a Forest Lawn mausoleum next to her first husband. The inscription on her crypt reads "Lucile Irene Mead 1879-1959"
  • On June 20, 1944. services were held at 350 North June for Willis Mead's mother, Lucy Andrus Cook, who had died six days before at the age of 92. She had been living with her daughter, Ivy Anemone Mead Peterson, in Silver Lake. Mrs. Cook had divorced Willis's father James Mead, marrying Horatio Nelson Cook in Fresno in 1900 and divorcing him within just a few years
  • On September 24, 1944, Warren and Ruby Lamb gave a dinner in the garden of 350 North June to celebrate their 15th anniversary
  • Still living at 350 North June Street, 65-year-old Warren Francis Lamb died in Los Angeles on October 3, 1964. Funeral services were held at home five days later. Ruby Lamb remained at La Casa de las Campanas, her home of 56 years, until her death at the age of 84 on June 18, 1985
  • Succeeding Ruby Lamb at 350 North June Street was native Angeleno Leonard Hill, who was in residence by the summer of 1986. After a long career as a television-movie producer and long interested in older Los Angeles architecture, Hill began to undertake the repurposing of Arts District loft buildings in the 1990s, which greatly contributed to the rediscovery of a long neglected neighborhood. Leonard Hill died at 350 North June Street on June 7, 2016, at the age of 68 


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; USCDL