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  • Built in 1927 on Lot 313 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: building contractor George B. Reichart for resale
  • Architect: none listed on original building permits; George B. Reichart is noted as contractor for the project
  • On October 28, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued George B. Reichart a permit for a two-story, 14-room house and a one-story, 22-by-34-foot garage at 120 South June Street. Reichart would likely have hired an independent draftsman for the designs
  • A sizable classified ad in the Times on April 8, 1928, touted the "just completed" 120 South June street as "A Masterpiece" 
  • Oil man Bernard Frederick Alfs would be the first owner of 120 South June Street. Born in Germany on February 13, 1879, Alfs arrived in the U.S. as a child; he would live in Chicago and San Francisco before settling in Los Angeles by 1911. Alfs had married 16-year-old Anna Wagner in 1899; in July 1902 he left Chicago telling her was going to California to make a new home for them. Instead of sending for Anna, he returned east with another woman. Divorce ensued. It is unclear as to what became of the girlfriend, or if Alfs married her, but in June 1910 he married 19-year-old San Francisco native Rose Eldridge, who had been working as a telephone exchange inspector. The couple moved south to Los Angeles not long after the honeymoon, he continuing his career in the oil business. Their first child, Bernard Jr., died at the age of 10 in 1922; a second son had died in 1914 at six weeks. Three surviving children would be moving into 120 South June with their parents from 1649 South Hobart Boulevard, a 1903 house the Alfses had moved into in 1919. At the time of moving into 120 Bernard Alfs was president of the East-West Refining Company and manager of the Crescent Refining & Oil Company. The Alfs led fairly quiet lives at 120, Bernard at the office and in the fields and Rose holding up their social life. They remain at 120 until 1941 when they move to what had been their country house at the Uplifters Club on Latimer Road in Pacific Palisades, the western reaches of Los Angeles having now been suburbanized and being considered commutable even to downtown offices. They had sold 120 South June to another oil operator, likely one known to Bernard through business
  • Oil man Julius Fried began making upgrades to the property at 120 South June Street by the end of 1941. Building permits were issued to him by the Department of Building and Safety in December for foundation work on the residence and for the addition of an 18-by-50-foot greenhouse
  • Born to California pioneers in Healdsburg on September 26, 1872, Julius Fried grew up to work as a bank cashier in his hometown and then as a Union Pacific passenger agent in San Francisco before achieving success in the oil fields at Coalinga by the mid 1900s and setting up various oil companies over the ensuing decades. He married Iowa native Dorothy Cramer in July 1910; the couple, who would not have children, lived on Manhattan Place for a few years before moving to Santa Monica. In 1926 the Frieds bought 729 South Hobart Boulevard, a spec house built by miner Andrew Getty in 1919—he was not related to J. Paul—who had recently completed 651 South Hobart at the southwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard (Getty would just miss being able to read the tea leaves regarding the commercialization of Wilshire that would be sweeping west in the next decade). Silent-screen superstar Mae Murray occupied 729 South Hobart before the Frieds, who would remain there until moving to 120 South June Street. (Pellissier Square, site of 729 South Hobart, was an example of a number of high-end subdivisions east of Wilton Place that fast fell out of favor with the local gentry over the years as westerly developments such as Hancock Park and those farther afield opened; film-industry sorts generally moved west, Mae Murray, for example, out to Brentwood)
  • Julius and Dorothy Fried were still living at 120 South June Street when they were enumerated in the 1950 Federal census that April. That year they would, however, be buying 10231 Charing Cross Road in Holmby Hills, which then as now was among the deluxe westerly precincts that give perspective on the pecking order of suburban Los Angeles neighborhoods; for example, as reported by the The Real Deal in December 2022, 10231 Charing Cross Road had recently sold for $120,000,000 while less than $3,000,000 was the average price of a Hancock Park house in 2023   
  • Henry Herbert and his wife Faye, he yet another oil man, would occupy 120 June Street after the Frieds moved on, the house apparently being rented to them by the Frieds until a buyer for the property was found in 1954
  • Homer Mendel Toberman worked in real estate development alongside his father, Charles E. Toberman, who had in 1902 arrived from Texas in a Los Angeles familiar with his surname. Charles's uncle James R. Toberman had come west in 1864 having been appointed as a U.S. Revenue Assessor by President Lincoln; he would go on to be elected mayor of Los Angeles from 1872 to 1874 and again from 1878 to 1882 and is credited with inaugurating the city's first street lighting and paving. Charles Toberman had first arrived in Los Angeles as an independent and ambitious 23-year-old in 1902. Managing to parlay funds from selling life insurance policies by going around town on his bicycle, he bought up Hollywood property and was well on his way to success by the time the town was annexed to the city on February 7, 1910. Charles's son was born on March 19, 1907, and given a name doubly familiar to Angelenos: Intending to provide a starting shelter for impecunious young women newly arrived in the city, former Mayor James Toberman and his wife Emma had founded the Homer Toberman Deaconess Home in 1903, honoring their late son. (The endeavor still operates as the Toberman Neighborhood Center in San Pedro in support of struggling families and at-risk youth)
  • After having been graduated from Stanford, Homer M. Toberman married 18-year-old Mary Ford on April 20, 1930. After the honeymoon he went to work for his father, who had by this time become very rich developing property in Hollywood, credited now as a force behind the Hollywood Bowl, Grauman's Chinese and Egyptian theaters, the Roosevelt Hotel, and Outpost Estates, among other projects. The Tobermans appear not to have had children; in October 1947, Homer would gain a Nevada divorce from Mary. His next wife, Lucy Guild Quirk, was still being referred to in the press as Mrs. Akeley Quirk as late as September 1948 in the Daily News, for which she wrote a social column; she had married Mr. Quirk in 1936. Another mention of Lucy as Mrs. Akeley Quirk appeared again in the Citizen-News in November, though surely by this time she was a divorcée. During 1948 she had been mentioned in a Times social column alongside Homer Toberman in reportage on Hollywood Bowl board activities while Akeley Quirk, an attorney, began to be mentioned in the press as a couple with recent divorcée Helen Moore Black. Akeley Quirk and Mrs. Black would be married on January 12, 1949. Homer Toberman and Lucy Quirk married on the Janss family's Canejo Ranch in Thousand Oaks on March 12. He moved into the Quirks' house at 427 Muirfield Road, to which he added a swimming pool. The Tobermans remained there until putting it on the market for $42,500 in 1954 and moving to 120 South June Street
  • The Toberman household included at first her three children, Lucy Ann, George, and Erik Quirk; Patricia Toberman arrived on St. Patrick's Day 1953 and John Charles Toberman not long after. Erik Quirk was a war orphan who Lucy and Akeley Quirk had heard of while on a business trip in Norway in the summer of 1946; they arranged for an adoption, the three-year-old arriving in Los Angeles the following February. Lucy Ann and Patricia went to nearby Marlborough and became Las Madrinas debutantes. Lucy Toberman, who had degrees from U.C.L.A. and Duke and pursued a doctorate in French at Stanford, somehow also found time to do tireless volunteer work, help found numerous charitable organizations, to teach journalism at and serve as chairman of the media and arts department at Los Angeles City College, and to write social columns for the Daily News and the Larchmont Chronicle. She was given the U.C.L.A. Alumni Association's Community Service Award, honored as the California Mother of the Year in 1973, and as the Times's Woman of the Year in 1976
  • The Toberman family would retain possession of 120 South June Street for over 40 years. It wouldn't be until 1985 that Homer and Lucy would add a swimming pool to the property, perhaps to attract their many grandchildren. Homer Toberman, who had taken over his father's business after Charles Toberman's death in 1982, died at the age of 85 on April 20, 1992. Lucy Toberman was two weeks shy of her 85th birthday when she died at 120 South June Street on October 25, 1994. Building permits were issued to Toberman family members in May 1994 for repairs to a chimney damaged by the Northridge earthquake the previous January and in May 1995 for earthquake retrofitting pending the sale of the property, which had come on the market earlier in the year priced at $1,195,000; one of the Coldwell Banker brokers involved was Lucy Ann Toberman, now married to Stanford man Angus McBain
  • On June 16, 1995, 120 South June Street was sold to owners who retain the property as of 2024


Illustration: Private Collection