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345 South June Street




  • Built in 1925 on Lot 141 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: builder Harry H. Belden for resale
  • Architect: Ray J. Kieffer
  • On October 27, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued Harry H. Belden permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 20-by-30-foot garage at 345 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, 305, 314, 315, 324, 325, 355, and 356 as well as our subject here, 345. (Belden's projects at 335, 336, and 346 South June were designed by brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon)
  • John Maclean Rugg, a vice president and director of Citizens National Trust & Savings Bank, bought 345 South June Street from Harry H. Belden and was in residence with his wife by early 1927. Born in Bloomington, Illinois, in October 1871, John Rugg moved west with his widowed mother and was living in Pasadena by 1900 with her and his brother, the siblings working as bank bookkeepers. John Rugg was living in San Francisco when he married Ivy Grace Correll in her native Hebron, Nebraska, on September 16, 1904; the couple, who would have no children, were living in Los Angeles's West Adams district by 1907. The Ruggs' move from 2629 Budlong Avenue to one of the westernmost Wilshire corridor developments that were beginning to drain West Adams of affluent residents came when they built 341 South Norton Avenue in 1912. John Rugg would not have long at 345 South June Street; he died at home on the afternoon of August 9, 1931, age 57. An avid gardener, Rugg was working among his flowers that Sunday when he had a heart attack. A funeral was held in his garden on the following Saturday with his close friend Dr. Rufus B. von KleinSmid, president of U.S.C., giving the eulogy. Pallbearers in addition to Dr. Von KleinSmid was a large sampling of some of the most prominent members of the Los Angeles establishment, including Charles G. Andrews (who live just up the street at 400 South June), Dr. Welsley Wilbur Beckett, Eugene P. Clark, William May Garland, Willits Hole, Willis G. Hunt, Dr. Edwin Janss, J. B. Leonis, Reese Llewellyn, William W. Mines, Dr. Seeley G. Mudd, Joseph F. Sartori, and Chester Rude. Ivy Rugg was still living at 345 South June Street when she died at the age of 61 on December 10, 1937
  • 345 South June Street was on the market by the summer of 1938, an early ad reading "The [unspecified] price will sell this charming Hancock Park home at 60% less than its original cost," indicating the ravages of the Depression that had been exacerbated by the severe 1938 recession that was only just beginning to lift. There would be many other valleys to come in terms of the Park's real estate values before the stratospheric prices being commanded for its large suburban houses in the 21st century. Mrs. Rugg's price in 1938 seems to have indeed been right, with a new owner in residence by August
  • Investment banker Donald Hay McKee, born in Los Angeles on November 19, 1902, was the son of banker Henry S. McKee. Mrs. McKee had been born Natalya Sharp in Dallas in December of the same year; having arrived in Los Angeles with her divorced mother by 1911, she would be graduated from Hollywood High in 1919. The Santa Ana Register reported on January 19, 1923, that she and Shannon Crandall Jr. had just been issued a marriage license, though a ceremony does not seem to have taken place. On June 2, 1923, The Honolulu Advertiser reported that George Ruttman, a junior at the University of Hawaii, where he was a football star, and Miss Natalya Sharp had been married on Oahu on April 29; this marriage appears to have been short-lived, perhaps annulled, the bride reverting to her maiden name. Miss Natalya Sharp and Donald McKee were issued a marriage license on August 5, 1926, and were married quietly within days. Shirley McKee arrived 13 months later. Iris McKee was born on May 20, 1930, and a son, Henry Stewart McKee III—nicknamed "McGoo"— on March 22, 1937. (It appears to have been decided that Henry Stewart McKee Jr., Donald's older brother, was by now a confirmed bachelor.) After their marriage the McKees moved to Hancock Park almost immediately, by early 1927 occupying the house at 440 North McCadden Place her mother had hired Gerald Colcord to design; permits for it were issued in October 1926. Leaving Mrs. Sharp at 440, the McKees soon bought at house in San Marino. In a move that appears to have been prompted by the effects of the Depression on his career as a stockbroker, the McKees at first rented and then sold the San Marino house and moved back to 440 North McCadden. It was from there, his business apparently having recovered, that the family moved into 345 South June Street. (Mother-in-law Sharp would occupy a small house nearby and then an apartment) 
  • Henry Stewart McKee III was named for his grandfather, who had built 434 Rimpau Boulevard in Hancock Park, two blocks from 345 South June, in 1926. Donald McKee hired Albert McNeal Swasey, the architect of his father's house, to make additions to 345 in the summer of 1938, with the Department of Building and Safety issuing a permit on August 19 authorizing interior alterations and general repairs. The McKees would remain in residence for the next 36 years, though it seems that in 1948 they did considered a move, going so far as to put the house on the market from February to July of that year, with some ads referring to a badminton court on the property. Natalya McKee appears to have been as keen a gardener as had been John Rugg, who may have been the one who built a small greenhouse behind the garage. On July 12, 1949, Mrs. McKee was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a new 16-by-30-foot greenhouse just at the southwest corner of the house; a permit issued on November 8, 1950, authorized a 40-foot extension of it toward the back of the lot. None of the greenhouse buildings appear on the schematic accompanying a permit issued to Donald McKee on March 22, 1974, for an irregularly shaped 15-by-30-foot swimming pool 14 feet from the southerly rear of the house. It may be that the McKees, in contemplating the eventual sale of the property, understood that 345 would be more marketable with a pool in the back yard rather than a large greenhouse. It is unclear as to where they were living when Donald McKee died at home on New Year's Day 1977, age 74. Natalya McKee died at 79 on August 15, 1982
  • The owner succeeding the McKees at 345 South June Street by early 1978 and in residence until 2006 carried out various renovations to the house including the addition of a bay window in the family room at the rear of the house. The owner moving in by early 2007 added a large rear two-story addition, filled in the 1974 pool and built a new rectangular one at the rear of the lot, and remodeled the garage 


Illustration: Private Collection