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415 South June Street




  • Built in 1928 on Lot 137 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: building contractor, citrus rancher, and mortgage broker David Carnes Crookshank
  • Architect: Paul J. Duncan
  • On April 24, 1928, the Department of Building and Safety issued D. C. Crookshank permits for a two-story 12-room residence and a one-story 20-by-44-foot garage at 415 South June Street
  • David Crookshank's trajectory from a Pennsylvania farm to apparent senile erotomania in a genteel Los Angeles suburb is one of the riper tales of Hancock Park domesticity (if not not one quite as exotic as that of Jackson Barnett of 644 South Rossmore Avenue). Born in Philadelphia on January 10, 1851, Crookshank's measure in the years just prior to his move to 415 South June Street was described in a Pomona newspaper article promoting the launch of a capital campaign for Pomona College. Per The Bulletin of November 20, 1924: "David C. Crookshank is one of the Pomona Valley's most public-spirited and humanitarian citizens. He has ever given much of his time and influence, as well as his gifts, with the expansion of the district and the welfare of its people in view. Men possessing the fundamental characteristics to which he is heir are regarded as the bulwarks of the communities in which they live. Deprived of a college education he has always shown the deepest interest in the affairs of Pomona College." Among his gifts was the $100,000 Crookshank Hall of Zoology, built in 1923 by his construction firm, Crookshank & Somers, which he'd established 30 years before. He and his business partner, Fred L. Somers, also owned citrus tracts of a combined 600 acres, with Crookshank a dogged promoter of the industry
  • David Crookshank was indeed a big muckety-muck in and around Pomona once he arrived in 1905, his name appearing in the press constantly as he pursued his business endeavors. He'd married Pennsylvania-born Mary Ann Unger in 1873, the couple settling in Ionia, Michigan, where he went to work as a builder. Eventually partnering in a planing mill and contracting business in Ionia with Fred L. Somers, the firm of Crookshank, Somers & Company also manufactured doors and windows. Together the men decided to transfer their business acumen to California in 1904, setting up first in Ocean Park before settling in the Pomona Valley. The Crookshanks had two daughters, Mary and Clara Jane; the family would trade up in terms of their Valley housing as Mr. Crookshank's fortunes grew
  • Clara Jane and her husband William M. Steele burned to death in suspicious fire at their Live Oak Canyon house on June 9, 1921; a devastated Mary Ann Crookshank, already hobbled by Bright's disease, collapsed and died while on a walk with a friend near the Crookshank's Lytle Creek cabin a month and a day later. Her widower, now an energetic 70, saw no reason to delay rebuilding a domestic life. His plan involved a new spouse and a new house, the first satisfied by marrying the widowed Anna Powell Greene, an old friend and traveling companion of he and his first wife. There is some suggestion that Mrs. Greene might have been his mistress and that local society was less than keen to accept her in spite of his efforts to impress Pomona with some serious philanthropy and a grand new house. While he may have had a streak of genuine largesse, his donation of the Crookshank Hall of Zoology to Pomona College might have been seen as an attempt to placate the local Mrs. Grundys who in the end were not overly impressed by the gesture nor by his having had Los Angeles architect Robert H. Orr design a grand new house near the college campus to be ready for he and his new wife to move into after their marriage on March 1, 1923. That house, at 1109 North College Avenue in Claremont, has become a local landmark not for its Crookshank origins but for what might have been a bit of real estate–broker puffery. While more than a few sources have claimed that The Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum built the house or lived in it—a considerable trick since he died in 1919—it was its later ownership by Baum's son Robert that gave rise to the myth. (More here.) At any rate, Crookshank's hopes for acceptance appear to have been rebuffed, leading he and Anna, perhaps at her urging, to leave the "intellectually haughty" (as one reporter termed it) Claremont for (arguably) less uptight Hancock Park. The Crookshanks might have lived quietly in their new neighborhood as an elderly rich couple—there were more than a few such couples living there in impractically big houses as latter-day displays of success—were it not for the self-imposed ignominy that was to come
  • Having become active in the Metropolitan Building Finance Corporation, David Crookshank was 77 when he decided to build 415 South June Street. Anna Crookshank was 70. On July 5, 1928, the Pomona Progress-Bulletin reported that they had traded their Claremont house for a business property on Western Avenue in Los Angeles and that they were building "an Italian type home in the Hancock Park section [there], the address being 415 So. June street, about two blocks off Wilshire Boulevard." The Times reported the transaction on July 22. Crookshank remained active in business into his 80s, the press mentioning his activities from time to time. He and Anna do not appear to have been entirely shunned socially, items of their attendance at the occasional function, including a party on June Street they gave for his 81st birthday, still appearing in the Progress-Bulletin if not in the Times. While his personal life may have been gossiped about by their wives, Pomona Valley businessmen recognized Crookshank's clout, perhaps bound by fraternal-order oaths. Apparently the handsy sort, his overfamiliarities appear to have become more manifest with age, his arteries if not other organs hardening and bringing on paranoia as well as randiness. Headlines got especially large beginning in the summer of 1935
  • An item in the Post-Record, July 4, 1935, headlined "Wife Too Bossy, Claims Mate, 84, In Divorce," asserted that D. C. Crookshank was "master of his fate and household and wanted that much clearly understood.... When his wife began to usurp his authority, he hied himself to the divorce court" where he filed suit against Anna. "The power which Mrs. Crookshank usurped, he charged, included giving orders to workmen" and that their chauffeur was told not to take him out unless a trip was authorized by her. On October 1, Anna countersued, asserting in court that Crookshank was in the habit of "making advances to other women" and "annoying women friends and guests by caressing and fondling them." She denied nagging "her aged but active" husband. These beefs were nothing compared to the dirty laundry that would be hung out by each over the next year. The accusations intensified in May 1936, with daily press bulletins during the trial late that month. Crookshank, charging cruelty, maintained on the 21st that his 78-year-old wife had become too friendly with Thaddeus Child Pickens, "a boy acquaintance." This boy acquaintance had been born in 1914 and been married briefly, the union reportedly annulled due to his not being of legal age at the time. The one-time Mrs. Pickens herself turned up in court as a witness for Mr. Crookshank, testifying that Mrs. Crookshank had set Thaddeus up in a Hollywood apartment and lavished gifts on him


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1936: Thad Pickens and
his erstwhile wife Aurelia appear to have been working it from
both sides, knowing full well how to get two together-but-
lonely elders to need them. Even artists can be venal.


  • With Hancock Park buzzing, the Ebell ladies trading tuts over canasta, the tawdriness of the Crookshank affair only got worse. His paranoia increasing, Mr. Crookshank accused his wife of directing a servant to poison him. Anna replied that the substance was a tonic and admitted that she had joked with friends of needing to put a "love-depressant" in his coffee. On May 26 the Crookshanks' son-in-law testified under oath that Anna had "once made an offer to him to take the place of his wife, Mrs. Elder, who was prevented from having marital relations by reason of an operation." Mr. Elder also described how Anna had managed to get legal control of the couple's money, as had been charged by her husband. On May 27, the Long Beach Sun ran a story with a boxed headline reading "Now It's Grandma Crookshank's Turn to Smile." The unforgiving United Press reporter was clearly amused by the proceedings: "While Grandma Crooshank, 78, munched on her puckered lips with considerable satisfaction, her attorney charged her bald, toothless husband had 'improper relations' with Aurelia Gregory," who was none other than Thaddeus Pickens's one-time wife. This report identified Miss Gregory as the daughter of the Crookshanks' housekeeper and as the recipient of Mr. Crookshank's generosity, as Mrs. Crookshank's lawyer laid out: "I intend to show that for every dollar [my client] spent on Pickens...her husband spent $1000 on Aurelia" and that "for every kiss Mrs. Crookshank bestowed on Pickens, her husband gave Aurelia 1000 kisses." The usually self-important Times would be right up there with the tabloids and farther-flung press in its coverage of the trial, reporting on May 28 that Mr. Crookshank, exiled from June Street and living in a South Hobart Boulevard boarding house, had been asked to leave that establishment due to overfamiliarity with young women living there, the reporter referring to him as a "boarding house Casanova." The next day the Daily News noted the testimony of one woman roomer who claimed to have been pulled down onto a sofa by Crookshank, he telling her that what she "needed was a man. I boxed him on the jaw and called him an old voluptuary." 
  • Despite the obvious issues, the judge declined to grant a divorce decree to either Crookshank. The matter between them was instead settled with the unexpected death of 78-year-old Anna Crookshank at 415 South June Street on September 10, 1936. Even her demise was subject to speculation, with Thaddeus Pickens being detained in jail by police for questioning until it was determined by autopsy that she died of natural causes. Details vary in press accounts, but it seems that Mrs. Crookshank's half of the couple's assets included 415 South June Street
  • Pointedly leaving $1 to her husband, Anna Crookshank had bequeathed the bulk of her estate to Thaddeus Pickens. "I want him to reach the goal in life that he is aiming for. If it helps him succeed, I shall feel my life was not a failure. No greater glory do I crave than to be a stepping stone to his illustrious future. Seek his friendship, for to know him is to adore him. God gave me the privilege of knowing him for a little while." Though he would be rebuffed in court, the arty poet was still not above going after an additional $11,000 in cash he claimed was being withheld by attorneys. Continuing to call himself variously a poet, a writer, a painter, or combinations of these, and to live fairly modestly, Pickens died in 1950 at the age of 35, cause unclear. Mrs. Crookshank had also described in her will her purchase of a Forest Lawn burial site for herself. "Now, I also am paying for a crypt beside me for my husband, but it does not look now as if he would occupy it. I am not sure that I desire it at the present time. If he does not occupy it, I request you to have Thaddeus Pickens share it. He is alone." After David Crookshank died at 89 on May 29, 1940, he was buried next to his first wife in Pomona. Leaving Anna all alone, Thad Pickens was buried in Wisconsin


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1938


  • 415 South June Street was placed on the market within weeks of the death of Anna Crookshank, ads for it beginning to appear in early November 1936. The house lingered for sale into the Roosevelt recession that began in May 1937 and well after it abated a year later; ads for it ran throughout the downturn with the phrases "Forced sale to settle estate" and "Estate trust must liquidate." Hancock Park houses were white elephants in this era, the ones that did sell going practically for pennies on the dollars their builders had invested. An auction of Anna Crookshank's furniture and possessions was held in February 1938. There were still no takers for 415 by October of that year. The property was eventually being handled by real estate operator Grace Eaton, whose name appeared at the address in the 1940 city directory. As the economy picked up with war production, a few buyers got into the Hancock Park market before Pearl Harbor, though prices remained low. The next owner of 415 is likely to have gotten a bargain
  • Having been renting the locally famous castle nearby at the northeast corner of Longwood Avenue and Ninth Street, Lithuanian-born investment banker Isaak Leon Vidisch bought 415 South June Street and was in residence by the spring of 1940. He, his Polish-born wife, née Cheina Mitropolitanski, and their three daughters Helene, Dora, and Yvette had emigrated to Southern California from Paris in July 1937, stopping first in Pasadena. Mrs. Vidisch would later call herself Sonia and, after her husband died, use the surname Vides, apparently a more phonetic spelling. Helene Vidisch married accountant Albert Greenfield in October 1944; otherwise the family lived quietly at 415 until selling the house in 1951
  • Retired Minnesota dentist Carl Robert Flandrick, born in St. Paul on November 22, 1893, bought 415 South June Street in 1951. Bessie, his first wife and the mother of his two young children, died in March 1930; he and daughter Marion and son John would be renting a house in the Hollywood Hills by 1939. A second marriage ended in divorce; in Las Vegas on November 7, 1949, Flandrick married the widowed Lena Whitchurch Rogers, who was eight years his senior. The Palm Springs Desert Sun ran an item on the nuptials, noting that the bride had been a winter resident of the Springs for several seasons; one wonders where the reporter go the idea that, as he wrote, "Dr. Flandrick is a retired brain surgeon," though it would certainly have been more glamorous to have been one in Palm Springs—and Hancock Park—rather than a Midwestern dentist. The Limelight News reported that Flandrick was a Past Potentate of the Osma Shrine in St. Paul and that Lena was "one of Palm Springs' most popular hostesses." Whatever kind of doctor he was, Flandrick had been living in an apartment on Orange Drive six blocks west of 415 South June before the wedding. He and Lena remained at 415 until 1960; after she died the next year on February 19, Dr. Flandrick would marry a fourth time
  • Classified ads for the sale of 415 South June Street appeared in the Times three months after the death of Lena Flandrick in February 1961; no price was mentioned. The house appears to have been rented instead 
  • Electrical engineer John Grimshaw Corrin and his wife, née Alice Turkington, occupied 415 South June Street in the early 1960s. The Corrins appear to have been renting 415 briefly while renovating 600 South Highland Avenue in Hancock Park, which they had owned since 1939 and to which they returned after work on it was completed. The Corrins were listed at 415 in the 1961-63 city directories and back at 600 South Highland in the 1964 edition
  • Rabbi Abraham Rubin and his wife Helen bought 415 South June Street in 1963; their family owned it for the next 60 years
  • Permits issued by the Department of Building and Safety in the Rubin name over the years authorized a kitchen remodeling (1964), a sun room with half-bath addition (1980), fire damage repairs in 1981 and 1983, and the conversion of a portion of the garage into a recreation room (2010)
  • Per the Los Angeles Times, July 9. 1997: "For a quarter of a century, [Rabbi Abraham Rubin] ran a small congregation out of his home on quiet June Street in the heart of Hancock Park; it was illegal, but nobody said anything. When [he] grew too old to hold services, his son took the flock three blocks away to a rented house at Highland Avenue and 3rd Street, a busy intersection traversed by thousands of cars each day." Rabbi Chaim Rubin was a son of Abraham and Helen Rubin; his continued use of 415 South June Street for religious services and his plans for the demolition of 303 South Highland Avenue, a residence built in 1925, for a greatly enlarged structure for his Congregation Etz Chaim were challenged by neighbors and the city in a long dispute
  • 415 South June Street sold for $7,075,000 on March 28, 2023 


The entrance to 415 South June Street as seen in the Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2003





Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT