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  • Built in 1929 on Lot 136 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Thomas Costain Palmer Sr.
  • A member of a politically prominent family of Price Edward Island, Thomas Palmer emigrated to Boston, where, according to the Long Beach Sun, "he felt the lure of Horace Greeley's advice" and proceeded to Seattle and then San Francisco before arriving in Southern California in 1904. In Los Angeles he started at The Broadway and then began a long association with the Steele-Faris & Walker department store soon after it opened in 1905, the establishment's official name evolving through the decades but popularly known as the Fifth Street Store. Beginning there in the advertising department, Palmer would rise to the presidency
  • Palmer's August 12, 1909, marriage to Lucile Erwin Shultz, a Manhattan-born Glendale schoolteacher, encountered a glitch when it was discovered that the license was invalid, having been issued in Orange County and not valid in Los Angeles County. The Express carried the wedding announcement the day of the ceremony, reporting that the newly-not-weds were leaving for an east coast honeymoon. A telegram appears to have reached the couple enroute, a legal ceremony then taking place in Buffalo on August 20. On their return to California, the Palmers settled into a cottage they bought in Burbank. After her physician father died in January 1911, the Palmers moved to Echo Park with her mother Lydia. Lois Jean Palmer arrived on February 10, 1914. In 1920, the Palmers bought the recently built bungalow at 1027 Fourth Avenue in Country Club Park, where they remained until moving to the considerably grander 425 South June Street in January 1930


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1930


  • On January 19, 1930, the Los Angeles Times featured 425 South June Street prominently in its real estate section. Along with a drawing by the architect was an extensive description of its interior design rendered in typical Timesspeak of the era: 
"A home in which great attention was paid to details, both in its construction and interior furnishings was completed last week at 425 South June street, for T. C. Palmer, vice-president of Walkers, Inc. The residence is of the Renaissance period.
The home was planned by Vincent Palmer, architect, and interior decorations designed by Arthur W. Royce.
'This home is outstanding for the attention paid to details,' declared Royce in describing the residence. 'The furniture was selected with great care and thought and particular attention was paid to harmonizing decorations. In the bedrooms, for instance, the character of the occupant determined the type of decorations, each room being designed in a style to best harmonize with the nature of the one occupying it.'
Economy of space features the interior, all rooms opening from an oval-shaped entrance hall. The front door is of cast steel surmounted by a porte cochere of Tufa stone. A cast steel balustrade follows a winding stairway from the hall to the second floor, where the stair ends on an oval-shaped balcony. All bedroom entrances are off this balcony.
The entrance floor is of natural Ancaster stone of golden tone. This same material forms the stair. The hall extends to the second-floor ceiling, which is beamed and ornamented by decorated panels.
On entering the front door the visitor is able to view the dining-room and breakfast room straight ahead and through the windows of this room view the sunken garden in the rear.
A living room 20 by 30 feet of Italian design is located to the left of the entrance hall. Here decorations are carried out with intimate detail, the same design ornamenting rugs and furnishings even to the knobs of doors.
The dining-room is furnished in finely carved rosewood and walnut and opening from it to the rear is the Pompeian room, used as a breakfast room. Here the floor is of tile and the table rests on a solid bronze base. A scroll of hand-chased steel borders the walls at the top. The library is located at the front of the house at the right. It has a panelled ceiling and is decorated in an blue and amber tone.
Directly above the living-room is the main master bedroom. It is furnished in Louis XIV period. Two dressing-rooms and bath adjoin it. A second master bedroom is finished in the Venetian period with a blue-and-peach color scheme. The home has four master bedrooms with private baths and dressing rooms in addition to maids' rooms with private bath."

  • Lydia Shultz moved to live with her widowed daughter Dora Wood before the Palmers moved to Hancock Park. Orville V. Wood had died in December 1922 at sea on the way home from the Philippines, where he was a planter and U.S. government official. Wood was also apparently a cousin of Major General Leonard Wood, Governor-General of the Philippines at the time of Orville's death. The Woods' daughter Dora had been born in Asia; her mother and she resettled at 316 South Wilton Place in Los Angeles. One might assume that there was some anxiety on the part of the Palmers as they moved their belongings into 425 South June just a few months after Wall Street laid its egg; compared to their house on Fourth Avenue, this was a serious extravagance. The Depression would begin to turn Hancock Park houses into white elephants just a decade after the subdivision opened. Owners forced to sell during the worst years of the downturn had a hard time finding buyers, and the prices asked, as many ads noted, were only a fraction of building costs. The Palmers managed to hold off selling until 1937  
  • The actual financial effects of the Depression on the Palmers themselves are unclear, but they cannot have helped sales at the Fifth Street Store. Thomas Palmer retained his position at the retailer until May 1934, when he resigned. Reportage of his departure in the Evening Post-Record read something like an obituary, outlining his business career and noting his marriage of nearly 25 years and his three children, adding that "His residence is a very attractive, modern home" and that "During the 29 years he has lived here he has seen the city grow from a population of 175,000 to more than a miilion and a half." Lois, who was graduated from Los Angeles High in 1932, was mentioned as attending Vassar, from which she'd be graduated in 1936. Her wedding to Millen G. Stevens of Poughkeepsie, New York, would take place in the garden of 425 South June at 4:30 on August 12, 1937, noted by the Times as her parents' 28th anniversary, the Palmers apparently sticking to the date of their invalidated initial ceremony. The wedding was a last celebration before the house went on the market two months later


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1937


  • Classified ads during October 1937 did not cite an asking price for 425 South June Street but claimed that $80,000 was spent on construction, and that it was built "without thought of cost." Thomas, Lucile, Thomas Jr., and Florence would be moving into the Woods/Shultz house on Wilton Place, where in the 1940 census they would be listed as "lodgers." Dora Wood died in 1952, Thomas Palmer in 1955 at the age of 77. His actual obituary included his extracurricular business endeavors such as a term as president of the Los Angeles Retail Dry Goods Merchants Association and vice-presidency and directorship of the National Retail Dry Goods Association based in New York. Also noted were his social memberships, which included the California, Los Angeles Athletic, and Los Angeles Tennis clubs. Lucile Palmer remarried and would die at 92 in 1979. After Dora Wood's death, Lydia Shultz maintained her own residence nearly to end of her life in 1965, when she died at 104
  • While the American economy had come a long way back by 1937, the market for big Hancock Park houses was by no means robust. While the Palmers' 425 South June Street did sell within weeks, it seems to have been an impulse purchase by Mrs. Lee Mantle, who lived in Hancock Park a few blocks away. Mrs. Mantle was the widow of the Montana politician, he having been 46 years her senior when they married in 1922. (Rather creepily, the groom told reporters at the time that he had watched Miss Daly grow up and had patiently waited until she finished her degree at the University of Nebraska; the Mantles' story is told more fully in our history of 635 Rimpau Boulevard here.) As for 425 South June, Mrs. Mantle spent many months renovating the property before putting 635 Rimpau on the market in July 1938. While she'd moved to June Street by September, ads for 635 Rimpau were still running a year later. Those in August 1939 carried this notation: "The house was built for owner about eight years ago at great expense. To effect a quick sale the property offered at approx. 1/3 of owner's cost." Recovery of the U.S. economy was interrupted by recession in 1938; a sale of 635 Rimpau finally came through by the first half of 1940. War production would end the Depression once and for all, but the conflict did nothing for the Hancock Park housing market, which did not improve until after V-J Day
  • On December 17, 1937, the Department of Building and Safety issued Etta Mantle a permit to convert the loggia off the living room into a sunroom and to expand an upstairs sitting room, alterations for which she had hired architect Ray J. Kieffer as designer; another permit issued the same day was for the addition of a 7-by-13-foot laundry room to the rear of the garage. On July 19, 1938, Mrs. Mantle was issued a permit for alterations including the relocation of doorways and partitions, the replacement of fireplace mantels, and the replastering of ceilings
  • Etta Mantle remained at 425 South June Street until 1950, with the house placed on the market by February of that year. She remarried in Mexico in June 1947, apparently reporting her age to the Chihuahuan registrar as 28 rather than her actual 49; her second husband, homebuilder Edgar John Laing, had been born in 1918. Etta died in Las Vegas in 1993, age 95
  • Harold Henry Gartner, president and general manager of Gartner Printing and Lithography Corporation, was the owner of 425 South June Street by the fall of 1950. On October 11, 1950, the Department of Building and Safety issued H. H. Gartner a permit for a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool on the property. His wife Vivian, known as Betty, served as the firm's secretary-treasurer. Apparently sampling Los Angeles's most fashionable suburbs, the Gartners were moving from San Marino, having lived in Beverly Hills before that. They do not seem to have been keen to stay on June Street for long either, with classified ads offering 425 for sale appearing by November 1952 and continuing into the next year. They would be moving nearby to an apartment at the El Royale. It is unclear as to how long the Gartners may have actually retained possession of the house before actually unloading it; sales ads for the house appeared in the Times in the fall of 1957
  • In March 1958 a "Pri. pty." at 425 South June was offering for $2,100 a Steinway "B" Grand piano with an ebonized case in like new condition—noted as having once been owned by Metropolitan Opera star and film singer Lawrence Tibbett
  • William Franklin Wolf Jr., proprietor of the W. F. Wolf Machinery Company in Vernon, was the next owner of 425 South June Street. Wolf and his wife, née Gertrude Roth, had founded the business in October 1953. Both born in Cincinnati, the Wolfs lived in Whittier after marrying in 1943, moving to the Palos Verdes peninsula before settling in Hancock Park, where they would raise seven children. Bill and Trudie Wolf would become the longest-term owners of 425 South June, remaining for nearly 50 years before moving to Tarzana in 2002 


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT