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366 South June Street




  • Built in 1927 on Lot 152 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Dr. Percival Gordon White
  • Architect: None listed on the original building permits; later unverified sources cite the firm of Webber, Staunton & Spaulding (Walter I. Webber, William F. Staunton, and Sumner M. Spaulding) as the designing firm. In any case, the lack of an architect's name on the original documents suggest that the designer would have been hired from the outside by the builder, Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle, if not in its direct employ. In the early 1920s Alexander D. Chisholm had formed a contracting, building, and real estate development company with William H. Fortine and Evan L. Meikle; Chisholm formed his own firm, the A. D. Chisholm Company, after the partnership was dissolved in 1929
  • On October 28, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued P. G. White permits by for a two-story, 14-room residence and a two-story, 21-by-31-foot garage at 366 South June Street
  • Born in Woodstock, Ontario, on June 13, 1880, Percy White moved across the border in 1909 to settle in Los Angeles. Here he became associated with father-and-son physicians Melvin L. and Edward C. White, Moore, with the Moore & White practice eventually becoming the Moore-White Clinic after the death of the senior Moore in 1928. Dr. White married Jessie May Rosene at the Church of the Angels in February 1911, the couple living first at the Hotel Alvarado. After some years at 2317 Scarff Street, the Whites picked up on the trend away from West Adams, buying a house a 508 South Serrano Avenue; they remained there until the completion of 366 South June Street (508 South Serrano was replaced in 1928 with the apartment building on the site today)
  • Percy and Jessie White were among the considerable number of childless or empty-nest couples who chose to build or buy large Hancock Park houses. They lived quietly at 366 South June Street until their deaths in 1942, he at home of a heart ailment on April 28, age 62, and she on November 2. Per the Times the next day:

"Mrs. Jessie R. White, 52, widow of Dr. Percival G. White of the Moore-White Medical Clinic, yesterday fell or leaped to her death from the fifth floor of a hotel at 615 S. Alexandria Ave., it was reported to police.

The woman, who had been despondent since Dr. White's death last April, registered at the hotel Friday with her brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. John Rosene of Vancouver, B.C., after selling her home at 366 S. June St.

Rosene told the hotel's manager that as he entered his sister's room to take her to lunch he saw her feet vanish over the window ledge.

F. R. Harper and J. H. Wiseman, police investigators, reported that Rosene had come to Los Angeles to take Mrs. White back to Vancouver. Mrs. Rosene had been staying with the widow since Dr. White's death."

  • Attorney Isidore Bernard Dockweiler bought 366 South June Street from Jessie White in 1942. Born three days after Christmas of 1867 on Broadway—then Fort Street—near First Street when Los Angeles was still a dusty town of less than 5,700 people, he was baptized at the Old Plaza Church. As had multitudes, the Dockweilers came to California for the gold and the sun if not the tuna. After progenitors Henry Dockweiler and Margaretha Sugg arrived in upstate New York, separately from Bavaria and Alsace, respectively, they no doubt wondered where the promised land was. The two met in Buffalo, with Henry then setting out to seek his fortune with the Forty-Niners. The odds of success in the High Sierra were about as good as winning the Powerball today, and Henry didn't succeed. But his pioneer drive and reports of California gold in other forms wooed Margaretha to Los Angeles—the tiny, dusty antithesis of Buffalo—and they were married in the Old Plaza Church in 1861. Henry's great vitality was then put toward establishing the family name in civic, political, and religious endeavors. His business interests came to include the Lafayette Hotel near the Plaza and, despite serious Catholic piety, a saloon, before he died of tuberculosis in February 1882. Two of Henry and Margaretha's four sons were no less builders of Los Angeles than was their father: John Henry dealt in the supply and drainage of water, building the city's first sewer. He served as City Engineer for much of the 1890s. He and his wife Mattie had no children. But that's where his brother Isidore came in. Destined to become a powerhouse attorney in Los Angeles and a serious force in California and national Democratic politics as well as in local Catholic politics, he married London-born Gertrude Jane Caroline Reeve in San Francisco on June 30, 1891; she had arrived in Los Angeles from England with her parents in 1884. The Dockweilers would have 13 children. Of the 11 who survived infancy, many took up the family call to civic duty. Very few families anywhere could count on such discipline from even one child, much less many. Isidore and Gertrude would eventually live with their brood at 957 West Adams Street


1938: Isidore Dockweiler is flanked in the first row by daughters Ruth, Rosario, Mary and
son John; standing are George, Henry, Robert, Louis, Thomas, Edward, and Frederick.


  • Isidore Dockweiler's contributions to local civic and charitable efforts—notably the Los Angeles Public Library—as well as to state and national Democratic politics (he ran, if unsuccessfully, for lieutenant governor in 1902, was a delegate to Democratic national conventions in 1908, 1936, and 1940, and  served as California's Democratic national committeeman from 1916 to 1932)—were in addition to his full-time law practice, which would in time become Dockweiler & Dockweiler when three of his sons joined his firm. (A major fire in the Douglas Building at the northwest corner of Third and Spring streets on January 11, 1906, destroyed his fifth-floor offices including his law library and many legal papers, but he remained there until a move to the Van Nuys Building at Seventh and Spring in 1915)
  • The Dockweilers had bought 957 West Adams Street in 1906 and retained ownership of the house even after moving out in 1927, when, recognizing the decline of the district as newer suburbs were drawing away the rich, they followed the neighborhood trend of turning large houses over to rooming-house operators including U.S.C. fraternities and sororities. On May 2, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued John Dockweiler, Isidore's third-eldest son, a permit to add a three-story fire escape to 957 for its conversion into a boarding house, as the document described it. The family would not yet be leaving the declining West Adams neighborhood as were many of their social cohort for newer suburbs strung out along the Wilshire corridor but instead rent a residence nearby. As an über Catholic—meaning pious as well as rich, as determined by Estelle Doheny of Chester Place—Isidore Dockweiler was deemed worthy to rent one of the many Doheny houses collected to protect that family's Chester Place fiefdom. Isidore Dockweiler would remain at 2321 South Figueroa Street until moving to Hancock Park in 1942 
  • As a family the Dockweilers were about as old-guard Los Angeles as it got in terms of those without Spanish antecedents. Isidore and Gertrude's eldest son, Thomas Aloysius Joseph Dockweiler, married Katherine Stearns at the old St. Vincent's Church at Grand Avenue and Washington, where most solemn family occasions were celebrated, on December 10, 1917. The bride lived at just two blocks from 957 at 27 St. James Park, which her father, Colonel John Eldredge Stearns, built in 1900 and which remains an important survivor of old West Adams; the newlyweds moved into 27 and would live there for decades. On September 7, 1921, Mary, the Dockweilers' eldest daughter, married attorney William K. Young not, curiously, at St. Vincent's, but at home at 957 West Adams; deciding on a less threadbare neighborhood, they would settle on South Norton Avenue two blocks north of Wilshire. Among the family's other nine children, John served as a U. S. Congressman in Washington from 1933 to 1939 and as the District Attorney of Los Angeles County from 1940 to 1943. George became a Superior Court judge. Thomas, Henry, Fred, and Louis became attorneys. Edward became a Navy man and war hero, retiring as a Rear Admiral. In 1955 he was named Chief Harbor Engineer by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners. Robert became a physician
  • Gertrude Dockweiler, age 66, died of a heart ailment at 2321 South Figueroa Street on June 12, 1937. The long parade to the graveyard—in this case, Calvary Cemetery—would continue: Robert died after an unspecified five-month illness on February 21, 1941, a month shy of his 35th birthday; John of pneumonia January 31, 1943, age 47; and, after another "long illness," Louis, at his home in Pasadena on St. Patrick's Day 1944, age 32 
  • While it wasn't unusual for childless or empty-nest couples to want to live in big Hancock Park houses, widowed men or women were usually accompanied by unmarried children. Fred and Henry Dockweiler joined their father at 366 South June Street when he bought the property in 1942. Isidore made use of 366 for entertaining over the next five years, annually on December 28 for a family celebration of his birthday and for such gatherings as meetings of the Junior Philharmonic Committee, one of which took place two weeks before his death. Isidore Dockweiler died at St. Vincent's Hospital on February 6, 1947, "while being prepared for a minor surgical operation"—something not-so-minor-sounding to do with his kidneys—per the Times's front-page, above-the-fold, second- and third-column obituary, with photograph, the next day. Henry and Fred Dockweiler stayed on at 366 but, at the ages of just days after turning 54 and days away from 40, respectively, decided to marry. On May 20, 1947, three months after burying his father, Henry married Texas-born divorcée Clare McDonough Schneider in Archbishop John J. Cantwell's private chapel at 100 Fremont Place. Mrs. Dockweiler had separated from J. Walter Schneider, president of the J. W. Robinson department store (as had been his father), and was divorced from him on April 12, 1943. (Walter Schneider remarried the next day.) While his prior wife may have had some karmic satisfaction, insult was added to injury when he up and died of a heart attack at 39 on December 14, 1944, forcing ex-wife to have to take widow to court over alimony and child support arrangements. Presumably funds were wired to Rome for an annulment, granted, curiously, despite the fact of four Schneider children. Fred Dockweiler married Helen Rose Scully at St. Brendan's on December 14, 1948, and moved to Parklabrea, as the development's name was styled in its early years, and later lived at 626 North McCadden Place in Hancock Park. He would be the last surviving child of Isidore and Gertrude Dockweiler, expiring at 91 on August 1, 2000
  • Henry Dockweiler would continue to live at 366 South June Street, now with his wife and her four children, Mary, Clare, Janet—the latter two would become nuns—and Jay (J. Walter Schneider Jr.). Henry was still living at 366 when he died at St. Vincent's Hospital on June 29, 1970, age 77. Rosary for him was recited on July 1 at St. Vincent Church at Adams and Figueroa back in the old neighborhood, with a Requiem Mass there the next day. Clare Dockweiler made plans to sell 366 soon after. Later living at the Country Club Manor apartments in Hancock Park, she died in 1991
  • Described in advertisements appearing in the summer of 1972 as a "French Manor," 366 South June Street appears to have been on the market only for a few months, a short time span rare in the Hancock Park real estate market in the wake of the civil unrest of 1965 and, more recently, the Manson murders. The neighborhood had grown tired. How much the property might have sold for is unclear, but it soon found a buyer who was in possession by November after an estate sale by Clare Dockweiler in September 
  • Victor Bennett Rothschild was described variously as a filling-station operator, an "automotive service operator," a "car-wash developer," and a "wealthy oilman" but was perhaps better known as the second husband of dancer and actress Vera-Ellen, from whom he was divorced in August 1968 after 14 years. Rothschild married Swedish-born Ingela Hays, 20 years his junior, in Las Vegas in April 1970. In an article in the Times on March 9, 1980, on a revival of the real estate market of Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and Fremont Place, Victor was described as "a member of the Rothschild banking family"—a stretch, as he was born in Los Angeles in 1923—perhaps having been confused with the complicated and controversial Royal Dutch Shell executive Lord Victor Rothschild. In the same article Mrs. Rothschild described the couple's renovation of 366 South June Street: "We worked hard on it for two years. We tore down many walls, and I had all the floors redone." She described the third-floor ballroom as having "a kitchen and wet bar...they had lots of parties up there during Prohibition. But I use it as a billiard room and a play room for the children." (Permits issued to Victor Rothschild by the Department of Building and Safety in November 1972 and July 1974 refer only to kitchen and bath remodelings.) Another story related by Mrs. Rothschild is that Henry Dockweiler once entertained Winston Churchill at 366, although sites devoted to the statesman indicate that he visited Los Angeles only once, in September 1929. As its president in 1977, Victor Rothschild was credited with having revitalized Hancock Park's Los Angeles Tennis Club
  • 366 South June Street was listed for sale in late 1986 asking $1,350,000. It was on the market in March 2003 and again in the spring of 2010 asking $5,999,999. Per permits issued by the Department of Building and Safety since 2008, owners in recent years have carried out major renovations on 366 including a conversion of the attic into a bedroom—presumably a reconfiguration of the ballroom mentioned by Mrs. Rothschild—and have added a swimming pool to the property. With its interiors glacierized in glaring white, virtual staging, and a front-right first-floor window photoshopped onto images of its façade, 366 South June appeared on the market again in late 2023 with an asking price of $12,995,000, well above other estimates of its value


An advertisement in the Los Angeles Times on June 27, 2010, attributes the design of
366 South June Street to architects not indicated on the original building permits.



Illustrations: Private Collection; Jose Reyes/Dockweiler Family Papers at LMUDC; LAT