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325 South June Street




  • Completed in 1925 on Lot 143 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: builder Harry H. Belden for resale
  • Architect: Ray J. Kieffer
  • On November 5, 1924, the Department of Building and Safety issued Harry H. Belden a permit for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-30-foot garage at 325 South June Street. On February 2, 1926, Belden was issued permits for the addition of a second-floor sleeping porch and for garage additions including a laundry room and a bath for servants 
  • 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, 305, 314, 315, 324, 345, 355, and 356 as well as our subject here, 325. (Belden's projects at 335, 336, and 346 South June were designed by brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon)
  • William C. Raymond, a banker having recently relocated from Oklahoma City, was the first owner of 325 South June Street, moving west with his wife, née Grace Kellogg of Tiskilwa, Illinois, son Samuel, and daughters Lucia and Florence. Born in Grundy Center, Iowa, on February 15, 1883, Raymond became an investment broker in Los Angeles. The Raymond household was typical of upper-middle-class Hancock Park—Midwestern origins, the head of the household a downtown professional, its glamorous daughters enrolled at Marlborough before attending Pomona and joining the Junior League. Samuel Rea Raymond II married his fellow Pomona College classmate Barbara Meier in April 1936 and went to work for his father in the investment business. In June 1938, 21-year-old Florence married Richard Babcock Sutphen, whose parents lived in a 1920 Harry H. Belden–built house at 345 South Lucerne Boulevard in Windsor Square; Sutphen was a salesman for his father's heating-and-air-conditioning concern. Lucia Raymond caught a live wire when she married John Wescott Myers in Yuma on March 21, 1941. Myers was the son of über-establishment attorney Louis Wescott Myers, chief Justice of the California Supreme Court from 1924 to 1926 and afterward the Myers of the fabled law firm O'Melveny & Myers (today known simply as O'Melveny). John Wescott Myers was an adventurer from childhood, having been featured in the Times in May 1924 at the age of 12 as "the youngest horse breaker on record in the State of California," an expert in fly fishing, and a fine marksman. His prior marriage had ended in divorce, the first Mrs. Raymond asserting that her husband "caused her great mortification and embarrassment by neglecting her while they were at social gatherings," apparently grounds enough to gain her a decree in October 1937. John and Lucia Myers would remain together until her death in May 1999. Lucia Myers was no mere privileged housewife, serving on corporate boards including that of Bank of America and becoming the first woman to be state president of the Children's Home Society of California and, in 1960, head of a national advisory committee on women in the military to the Secretary of Defense 
  • William C. Raymond died on February 26, 1945, less than two weeks after his 62nd birthday. His widow remained at 325 South June Street until 1955, when she moved to an apartment nearby at the El Royale on North Rossmore Avenue. (Grace Raymond would die on June 1, 1966, five days before her 84th birthday)
  • Born in Los Angeles on November 21, 1914, Richard Hampton Daum, the younger son of real estate operator William Howard Daum, had grown up at 101 Fremont Place from the age of seven. He went to work for the family firm, W. H. Daum & Staff, and married Virginia Bekins of the Bekins Van Lines Bekinses at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Westwood on January 24, 1942, a last large wedding celebration before war would put a damper on such things over the next several years. Dick Dam went off to serve in North Africa as an Army captain, returning in 1945 to go to work for Bekins Moving & Storage; Virginia had been awaiting his return with her parents, the Milo Bekinses, at 411 North Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills. Virginia Victoria was born in April 28, 1944, and Nancy Louise on September 23, 1946. In 1950, having been living in Malibu after the war, the Daums built 1564 Sorrento Drive in Pacific Palisades, which was presumably big enough for the addition of Lawrence James on April 30, 1951, and Patricia Bekins on April 16, 1952. With Dick Daum deciding to return to work for W. H. Daum & Staff, the headquarters of which was on the east side of downtown far from Pacific Palisades, the family decided on Hancock Park to ease his pre–Santa Monica Freeway commute. The Raymond house at 325 South June Street had become available
  • On November 22, 1955, Richard Daum was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to change out some wooden windows for metal units and a kitchen remodeling. On February 9, 1960, Daum was issued a permit for an exterior sandblasting, an operation not uncommon in an era of heavy smog in Los Angeles. Daum was issued a permit on August 10, 1962, for the conversion of a walk-in closet into a bathroom 
  • With the right amount of business and social drive, Midwesterners arriving not long before the turn of the 20th century (in the case of the Bekinses, from Michigan and Nebraska) and not long after (in the case of the Daums, from Kansas) were considered old-guard in burgeoning Los Angeles by the 1920s. While men pursued business in a wide-open town, the distaff side developed a society unencumbered by eastern class affectations. Its arbiters, such as the editor of the Southwest Blue Book and civic-minded social dreadnoughts such as Tennessee-born Kate Page Crutcher, wife of leading attorney Albert Hodges Crutcher, decided who was in and whose noses remained pressed against the glass. Mrs. Crutcher was devoted to Children's Hospital, of which she was an early organizer and its president for nearly 40 years. One of her projects to benefit the facility was a thrift shop, for which Mrs. Crutcher would importune her fellow matrons for contributions with the slogan, "What's unbecoming to you, should be coming to us"; she was also tireless in organizing guilds of volunteers and, of course, raising money with an open face and Southern charm that no one could refuse. Upper-middle-class ladies who supported her pet causes were definitely in. Their daughters would follow in their footsteps; after a charity ball for Children's organized in 1933 became a debutante presentation in 1939, the Daum demoiselles would be duly launched into the marriage market at the annual Las Madrinas ball in December, Vicky in 1962, Nancy in 1964, and Patricia in 1970, by which time Los Angeles was changing, Hancock Park along with it, in the wake of the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and the recent Manson murders. Though some provincial upper-middle-class societies managed to hold on to their tribal illusions and rituals through that turbulent era, even to the present day, Hancock Park real estate was to go through a period of severely diminished values echoing the Depression before rebounding hugely in the 2000s
  • Richard and Virginia Daum put 325 South June Street on the market by the spring of 1972 when Hancock Park values were at a low ebb. The house was sold by the summer of the next year
  • Banker Ralph C. Harpham, known as Ted, was in possession of 325 South June Street by the summer of 1973. That year, Mr. Harpham, who had been working in Europe for many years, became executive vice-president in charge of international banking with United California Bank. He retired to Palm Springs in 1977; while it appears that he and his wife Ruthmarie planned to divorce that same year, they were, per his obituary, still together at the time of his death in September 1983. The Harphams added a 26-by-40-foot swimming pool to the property at 325 South June Street per a permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on July 30, 1973
  • Restaurateur Giuseppe Bellisario—he had been maitre d'hotel of Scandia for 12 years—owned 325 South June Street by the early 1980s. On April 7, 1982, Bellisario was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for a 272-square-foot addition to the house's family room; on August 2, 1984, he was issued a permit for a two-story, 17-by-17-foot addition to the rear of 325
  • While 325 South June Street was advertised in the Times in September 2004 listed at $3,790,000, as of late 2023 its last sale was being reported on real estate websites as having been for $915,000 on February 13, 1996


Illustration: Private Collection