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  • Built in 1926 on Lot 150 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Harry H. Belden
  • Architect: brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon
  • Harry H. Belden was a prolific builder of houses in Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and elsewhere. His Hancock Park houses include 110 North Rossmore, 324 Muirfield, 317 and 624 Rimpau, and 152 North Hudson as well as 12 of the 14 houses on June Street between Third and Fourth streets. Advertisements for Belden-built houses appearing in the Times during November 1925 refer to several residences on the block being under construction; Belden's residences in the 300 block of June Street designed by the brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon include 335 and 336 as well as 346. Ray J. Kieffer designed Belden's 300, 305, 314, 315, 324, 325, 345, 355, and 356)
  • On April 10, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Harry H. Belden permits for a two-story, 14-room residence and a one-story, 34-by-30-foot garage at 346 South June Street
  • Purchasing 346 South June Street from Harry Belden was Oliver Perry Clark, secretary-treasurer of Title Insurance & Trust Company. He had arrived in Los Angeles in 1887 newly married; he and his wife, née Ella Estelle Gates, both Indiana natives, were in residence on June Street by the end of 1926. The Clarks, both in their 60s, were among a considerable number of prosperous empty-nesters—his son from a previous marriage, Oliver Harry Clark, was now 49—moving from dense older neighborhoods in the Westmoreland and West Adams districts to big statement houses in newer suburbs, Hancock Park among the choicest despite the still-raw nature of its development during the 1920s. The Clarks were moving from 943 Menlo Avenue, which they'd had built in 1906. Oliver Perry Clark was named for the distinguished American naval commander Oliver Perry Hazard; he had brothers named George Washington Clark and Thomas Jefferson Clark. As busy as her husband, Ella Clark had recently wound up her second term as president of the Friday Morning Club, bastion of Los Angeles's most prominent matrons, and was in the midst of a term serving as California's Republican National Committeewoman. It was under her leadership that the nonprofit Resthaven Psychiatric Hospital was established in 1912 for the treatment of women's mental issues. O. P. Clark had been secretary of the Los Angeles Abstract Company, title guarantors, when in December 1893 the firm was absorbed by the newly formed Title Insurance & Trust Company. Named secretary if the new organization, Clark would remain with Title until his death 38 years later. He died at Westlake Hospital on June 15, 1932, after a five-week illness. His funeral was held at 346 South June Street three days later, with a moving encomium by attorney Henry W. O'Melveny: "Gentle, unselfish, broadminded and modest, O. P. Clark was a credit to his community and country and an example to all men who would fashion their lives according to the pattern of good citizenship." Ella Clark remained active in her civic pursuits and was still living at 346 when she died on April 30, 1943. The house was on the market within six weeks
  • Born in Wakefield, Kansas, on the Fourth of July 1880, Joseph Reed Pearson had been with the Santa Fe Railway in his native state before going into the oil business there. Based in Wichita, he'd married Kentucky-born Gertrude Sellards of Lawrence on July 18, 1905. After a stop in Kansas City, the Pearsons, who had no children, eventually settled in Corsicana, Texas, from which they came west to Los Angeles in 1943. Gertrude Pearson had been a schoolteacher before her marriage; two of her sisters, Elizabeth and Myrtle, had preceded her west and were teaching school in L.A. and living at the Stuyvesant Apartments at 757 South Berendo Street, where Joseph and Gertrude were maintaining a pied-à-terre. Deciding to spend more time in California, the Pearsons bought 346 South June Street; how long the transaction took place after Ella Clark's estate placed the property on the market is unclear, though it may have been as early as by the end of 1943. That year, Joseph Pearson acquired another interesting property. After St. Louis brewer Adolphus Busch bought his Pasadena winter home, an existing house called "Ivy Wall," in February 1905, he created 36 acres of elaborate gardens that would become a major tourist attraction after being opened to the public in 1906. Closed in 1937, much of Busch Gardens was subdivided into residential lots. Pearson was the successful bidder at $23,000 when the Busch house and eight acres came up for auction on April 8, 1943. It is unclear as to whether the Pearsons might have had it in mind to make Ivy Wall their California residence or whether the purchase was simply an investment. At any rate, the couple would be settling on 346 South June Street as their California home, even as they continued to spend a good deal of time back in Corsicana. (Ivy Wall would be demolished in 1952)
  • Joseph Pearson died at the Mayo Clinic on August 16, 1955, age 75. Gertrude Pearson would retain possession of 346 South June Street until her death at 89 on June 15, 1968. The Pearsons had invited her sisters Elizabeth and Myrtle to live with them some time before Joseph died; it appears that Joseph and Gertrude also maintained a residence back in Corsicana, where it seems that she spent most of her time after her his death and where she was living when she died, her sisters occupying 346. The sisters' youngest sibling Frank Sellards, a Los Angeles building contractor who'd come west to work for Bendix in North Hollywood during World War II and who was married to another Gertrude, appears to have taken over 346 after his sister Gertrude's death, if only to prepare it for sale
  • 346 South June Street appears to have been sold by the summer of 1969; on June 23, 1969, a David McIntyre was issued a permit for a kitchen remodeling at 346
  • By early 1987, after at least one interim owner who added a south-facing bay window in the northerly wing of the house, the family still in possession of 346 South June Street as of 2021 was in residence. A swimming pool built in 1988 was replaced in 2012; the 1926 garage and a 1935 addition to it were demolished in 1988 and replaced with a new garage-cabana. A bedroom and bath addition was made in 1988 and in 2007 a large two-story addition was made to the rear of the house


Illustration: Private Collection