PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES



305 South June Street




  • Built in 1925 on Lot 145 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: builder Harry H. Belden for his brother and business partner Louis C. Belden
  • Architect: Ray J. Kieffer
  • On January 29, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Harry H. Belden permits for a two-story, nine-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-30-foot garage at 305 South June Street 
  • 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 Ray J. Kieffer are 300, 314, 315, 324, 325, 345, 355, and 356 as well as our subject here, 305. (Belden's projects at 335, 336, and 346 South June were designed by brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon)
  • Over the years Harry Belden would work with his 9½-years-younger brother Louis and their father Sanborn Belden in constructing and marketing many houses in central Los Angeles subdivisions flanking Wilshire Boulevard that were to drain affluent residents away from the city's older neighborhoods, such as, in particular, West Adams. As was not uncommon with builders, the brothers would sometimes live in their projects themselves before moving on to the next; once the brothers and their father formalized their partnership into the Harry H. Belden Company, the elder sibling taking the lead, the firm began planning a series of large houses in New Windsor Square and in Hancock Park, where, with economies of scale in play, the 300 block of South June Street became its principal showcase. After Louis Clifford Belden married Irene Bigelow on August 29, 1916, the couple moved into a cottage he was completing at 143 North Ridgewood Place. There would be several moves before the Beldens settled into 305 South June Street for the next 27 years. (In 1923 Irene Belden's parents—her father was Herbert M. Bigelow, a top executive at Bullock's—built a house at 209 South Irving Boulevard in New Windsor Square, a project overseen by Harry Belden)
  • Louis Clifford Belden Jr., Louis and Irene's only child, was born on May 14, 1927. The family would remain at 305 South June Street until Louis Jr. went off to college after being graduated from the Harvard School and serving in the military. A champagne party was held in October 1950 to announce his engagement to fellow U.C.L.A. student Ethel Goebel. The wedding, set for December 27, does not seem to have taken place; Louis Jr. married another woman two years later, by which time his parents, preparing to move to an apartment, had put 305 South June on the market
  • On July 10, 1946, the Department of Building and Safety issued Louis C. Belden a permit for 305 South June Street for the addition of a new detached 16-by-22-foot playroom at the southwest corner of the lot 
  • Advertisements offering 305 South June Street for sale began to appear in late 1951 offering it as an "owner-built" property. Still not sold by the following June, it was being offered as a "sacrifice," which resulted in a sale
  • The Reverend Robert Pierce Shuler Jr., son of "Fighting Bob" Shuler, the well-known local loudmouth fundamentalist, was occupying 305 South June Street by late 1952. Shuler took over the pulpit of Trinity Methodist Church after his father retired in June 1953, with he and his wife Audrey and their children remaining at 305 for two years before he swapped pulpits and private residences with those of the Reverend Alec G. Nichols of Santa Ana's First Methodist Church. While it might have been a private deal between the ministers, it may also have been that the governing board of Southern California Methodist churches was the actual owner of the 305 South June Street. At any rate, Shuler indeed moved into Nichols's Santa Ana residence and Nichols into 305. The Reverend Nichols was listed at 305 in the 1956 Los Angeles city directory and remained there until his transfer to a pastorate in Long Beach in June 1958 and the sale of 305 to its next owner by whomever may have been the actual seller
  • On January 17, 1946, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. Bob Shuler a permit for an exterior sandblasting, common maintenance during Los Angeles's smog era
  • James Joseph Shelton, who might have shared distant Kentucky roots with banker James Errett Shelton of 355 South June just down the block, was the owner of 305 by the summer of 1958. Born to tobacco and corn farmers in southwestern Kentucky on October 7, 1916, Joe Shelton had come west to attend to attend Occidental, where he met and, as an ensign in the Naval Reserve, married his first wife, née Jeanne Maxon, in June 1943. The Sheltons would have two sons. After earning a graduate business degree from Harvard in 1948, Joe became an automobile salesman, the family settling in Mar Vista before Joe and Jeanne divorced. Both remarried in early 1953. On March 30 of that year he married Sarah Belle Goodwin Elliott, who lived with her parents, the Guy Leonard Goodwins—he was an investment banker—in Hancock Park at 214 South McCadden Place, where the ceremony took place, a small reception following at the Wilshire Country Club. Sarah Belle Shelton's first husband had died in a plane crash in India in November 1944 leaving her with two-month-old Sarah Belle Jr. Arrangements regarding with whom the Shelton sons lived are unclear, but Joe and Sarah Belle would remain at 305 South June Street for 37 years. The classic upper-rung Hancock Park daughter even through the vicissitudes of 1960s Los Angeles—the unrest of 1965, the Manson murders, all of which terrorized even seemingly safe bastions such as the Park—Sarah Belle Jr. matriculated at Marlborough, Mount Vernon College in Washington, and U.S.C. and made her Las Madrinas debut in 1962. She became a member of the Junior League and in July 1972 relinquished her membership in the very selective Spinsters when she married businessman Douglas Minge Brown. By this time, after a stint as an executive with the Ducommun Metal & Supply Company, Joe Shelton was a vice president and director of Baker Oil Tools Inc.
  • On July 22, 1958, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mr. and Mrs. Joe Shelton a permit for a kitchen remodeling; on November 18, 1959, the Sheltons were issued a permit for the addition of a covered 20-by-20-foot porch to the southwest corner of the house
  • The Sheltons placed 305 South June Street on the market in late 1992 asking $995,000. They were still the owners in 1994 when Sarah Shelton was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety on February 26 for chimney repairs following the Northridge earthquake the month before; the house, appearing already to have been sold, closed on March 24 at just $640,000. (Hancock Park values were still in the doldrums compared to their rise to come by the 21st century, but 305's location on a busy Third Street corner was no help.) The Sheltons would be moving to a smaller Hancock Park house, one at 151 North Hudson Avenue that had been built in 1949
  • Dr. Ronald Earl Ricker, a psychiatrist, was the owner of 305 South June Street from March 1994 until early 2003. (An extensive obituary of Dr. Ricker is here.) Real estate sources in 2023 report that the last sale of 305 was on March 24, 1994, for $640,000, although a developer's name appears on numerous alteration permits issued by the Department of Building and Safety from February 2003 
  • Extensive alterations to 305 South June Street ongoing from early 2003 have included the addition of a new garage attached to the rear of the residence, one with a new driveway off busy four-lane Third Street, a 70-foot lap pool, extensive landscaping, and elaborate paving that does no favors aesthetically to Ray Kieffer's 1925 façade. The property was on the market in the summer of 2020 asking $5,875,000 but appears not to have been sold as of June 2023 


Illustration: Private Collection