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  • Built in 1925 on a parcel comprised of the southerly 70 feet of Lot 14 and the northerly 20 feet of Lot 13 in Tract 7040. (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 14 was originally Lot 154, Lot 13 originally Lot 155 of Tract 6388)
  • Original commissioner: Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle as a speculative project
  • Architect: Clarence J. Smale
  • On April 16, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle a permit for a two-story, 12-room residence and a 1½-story, 21-by-37-foot garage at 418 South June Street. In the early 1920s Alexander D. Chisholm had formed a contracting, building, and real estate development company, Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle, in partnership 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. Simultaneously with the construction of 418, Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle was building, also on spec, 440 South June Street two doors to the south. It too was designed by Clarence Smale
  • Born in Grimsby, Ontario, on March 15, 1876, George Gilray Young, president and publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner, was the owner of 418 South June Street by the fall of 1928. Young had married Kansas-born Juliette Hogan in her parents' Los Angeles parlor at 308 West 38th Street on June 18, 1908, he working at the time in newspaper advertising in New York. The newly married couple moved into an apartment there at 200 Claremont Avenue in Morningside Heights (where a pre-fame F. Scott Fitzgerald, working in advertising himself, would hang his hat briefly a decade later). Their son Guy arrived on April 4, 1909. By 1916 the Youngs had returned to Los Angeles, George having become business manager of the Examiner, which had been launched by William Randolph Hearst in December 1903. As Young was rising to the top of the paper's masthead, he moved his family into a house at 894 South Bronson Avenue, which had been built in 1920; it was from there that the move was made to Hancock Park
  • The Youngs remained at 418 South June Street for a decade, living quietly in terms of their social life. Juliette Young's widowed mother, who was living in San Gabriel, died at 418 on May 28, 1931. With George deciding to retire and move to Manhattan Beach, the house was put on the market in the spring of 1938. While the severe recession of 1937-38 that had interrupted recovery from the Depression was abating, the property lingered on the market into 1939. The values of Hancock Park houses, always subject to serious peaks and valleys—the economy, war, civil unrest, crime (i. e., the Manson murders)—wouldn't recover until after the war, and even then competition for upper-middle-class housing budgets became stiffer as the Westside and Valley filled in. Sales ads commonly noted that asking prices were, as in the case of those for 418 South June, "way below reproduction cost" of just the building itself. (Also often noted in ads was that Hancock Park, among other neighborhoods, was "highly restricted.") George Young collapsed and died on a Manhattan Beach sidewalk on July 2, 1950
  • The Youngs appear to have rented 418 South June Street while it languished on the market. Stockbroker Richard Fewel, a serial renter, occupied the house briefly during 1939 before moving to an apartment at the Town House; by early 1940, the property had been bought by a family that would retain ownership for nearly 70 years
  • William Walter Hartman, president of the Maine Machine Works—the plant of which was on 109th Street just east of Central Avenue—was in residence at 418 South June Street by April 1940. Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on April 6, 1885, Hartman married native Milwaukeean Evelyn Cooley Tylor in a quiet Pasadena ceremony on March 14, 1915. As had the Youngs who preceded them at 418, the Hartmans had one son. David Tylor Hartman was born on May 10, 1921. The family was then living with Mrs. Hartman's parents at 845 South Manhattan Place. After a few years at 636 North St. Andrews Place, the Hartmans built 905 South Burnside Avenue, moving in by late 1927. It was from there that they would move to 418 South June Street
  • Still living at 418 South June Street, Evelyn Hartman died at the age of 82 on October 4, 1970. William Hartman still owned the house when he died at 89 on October 29, 1974. David Hartman would continue family ownership of the property, at some point marrying a woman 13 years his senior with three children. Helen Hartman died in August 2006, nearing 98; Mr. Hartman died on February 26, 2009
  • A new owner has refurbished 418 South June Street and has added a swimming pool to the property. The streetside suburban charm of 418 South June Street has been preserved, with interior design rendered by June Street Architecture. Images of the firm's renovation are here


Illustration: Private Collection