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  • Built in 1949 on a parcel comprised of the southerly 80 feet of Lot 13 and the northerly 10 feet of Lot 12 in Tract 7040. (7040's Lot 13 was originally Lot 155 of Tract 6388 and Lot 12 was originally Lot 156 of Tract 6388)
  • Original commissioner: Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Levine
  • Architect: David Freedman, who in 1949 was becoming involved in residential development in the Valley with such distinguished names as Paul R. Williams, Gerald Colcord, Gregory Ain, and Sumner Spalding
  • Classified ads appearing in the Times in the spring of 1945 offered a 90-by-200-foot vacant lot "north of 440 South June Street"—"finest lot in the city." There remained a considerable number of empty lots in Hancock Park, its development having been curtailed by the Depression less than a decade after the subdivision opened for sales, and then by war. As the economy normalized and then began to boom, with material shortages abating, interest in the neighborhood returned, new housing infilling the prewar neighborhood. The site of 428 would be purchased by Hyman and Emma Levine, who had been living at a beach house in Malibu, apparently renting out their previous residence at 345 South Rossmore Avenue to which they'd moved from Highland Park in 1939
  • Hyman Levine had arrived in Los Angeles by 1910, purportedly with $2.40 in his pocket, from his native Skidzyel, now in Belarus but historically in Polish territory long occupied by Russia when he was born on April 25, 1883. He was accompanied by his wife Emma and their sons Isadore and Max, who'd both been born in New York before the family came west to first settle in Boyle Heights, with third son Sid arriving in 1912. Hyman went to work as a peddler before establishing a cooperage in Boyle Heights by 1914
  • While Max became a physician, Isadore and Sid Levine would work with their father in the family business. In a Times feature on February 15, 1992, Sid remembered when his father "ventured all the way to Saugus to capture a wild horse to pull the cart used in his Boyle Heights cooperage." The business prospered greatly, becoming one of the largest steel-drum reconditioning operations in the country. After World War II the business was moved to more expansive facilities in Vernon and in 1954 a subsidiary was opened to manufacture a variety of steel containers. Fires at the cooperage in 1956 and 1958 and Hyman Levine's retirement led to the announcement of the sale of the business to an Oakland firm in January 1959; his sons would continue to run the H. Levine Cooperage Division of the Myers Barrel Company for at least another decade
  • By the time he left his business, Hyman and Emma Levine had sold 428 South June Street and moved to 1124 Laurel Way in Beverly Hills. Ads in the Times in December 1957 offered 428's contents at auction. An illness may have precipitated Mr. Levine's retirement and the sale of his business; in any case he died at 76 on July 6, 1959. Despite his having expired at Cedars of Lebanon, part of his extensive philanthropy over the decades had been greatly to the benefit of the future Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Beverly Boulevard. By 1950 Hyman and Emma had established a family foundation, which that year bought 3½ acres of land at Beverly and La Cienega, the location of which reflected the city's population shift toward the Westside well beyond Hancock Park, itself considered the "West End" of Los Angeles less than 30 years before. The Levines donated the property to Mount Sinai Hospital under the auspices of their foundation, the hospital moving from City Terrace, well to east of downtown. The new Mount Sinai Hospital opened in 1955, in 1961 merging with Cedars of Lebanon to form the medical colossus we know today. Hyman Levine's obituaries outlined his civic and religious efforts beyond donations of money and property, noting his presidencies of the Jewish Home for the Aged and Temple Beth-El of Hollywood
  • Acquiring 428 South June Street in 1957 was Mervyn Arthur Hope, recently retired as president of the Hollywood Savings & Loan Association, which in April of that year had merged with Howard F. Ahmanson's Home Savings & Loan Association—Ahmanson bought his own Hancock Park house at 401 South Hudson Avenue around the time that Hope and his wife Evelyn moved into 428 South June. In 1962 the Hopes moved not far away to a newly built apartment building on the south side of Wilshire Boulevard at Windsor Boulevard and Eighth Street; Mrs. Hope now had just a two-block walk to her friends at the Ebell Club
  • On December 20, 1957, the Department of Building and Safety issued Mervyn Hope a permit for a 16-by-40-foot swimming pool at 428 South June Street; on September 30, 1959, Hope was issued a permit for the addition of a 7-by-12-foot storage room—originally intended as a study—at the southeast corner of the house
  • The recently widowed Mrs. Daniel David Stuart Sr., née Elgy May McIntosh, moved into 428 South June Street in 1962. Mr. Stuart, an attorney, had died at the age of 76 on March 7, 1961. Mrs. Stuart was downsizing from her home of 30 years at 260 Lorraine Boulevard in New Windsor Square, which she sold to Thomas J. Brant Jr., who had family connections to a good number of Hancock Park houses including 367, 515, and 644 South Rimpau, 340 North Las Palmas, and 175 North McCadden. The Stuarts had been married in Berkeley in August 1926, first living in Los Angeles in a fourplex at 232 South Alexandria. Reflecting the drift of the fashionable upper middle class westward along the Wilshire corridor, the Stuarts then rented the 1916 house at 721 South Norton Avenue before buying 260 Lorraine (built in 1921) and hiring Paul R. Williams to remodel it. Though her family's tenure at 428 South June Street would span over 50 years, Elgy Stuart's final stop along the Wilshire corridor was Hancock Park; she was six weeks or so shy of her 81st birthday when she died on September 4, 1978
  • Elgy Stuart's younger of two sons, James, took over 428 South June Street after his mother's death, occupying the property with his family for until 2015
  • After the departure of the Stuarts, 428 South June Street was purchased along with eight other properties in Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and Fremont Place by Canadian developer Robert Quigg, who had grandiose redevelopment plans for each that in some cases involved demolition and replacement (such as 344 Rimpau Boulevard) and in others major expansions, such as at 428 South June, which was among his projects that called for the excavation of large new basements. In December 2016, Quigg's L.L.C. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, which required liquidation of all of its work including that on 428. Quigg himself was reported to have fled not long before, in the dark of night, the project house he and his family had been living in at 347 South Arden Boulevard. (Other of his affected properties were 317 and 434 South Windsor Boulevard and 73 Fremont Place)
  • A new owner benefiting from the Quigg bankruptcy proceeded with additions to 428 South June Street totaling 2,275 square feet; the streetside suburban charm of the house has been preserved with behind it seriously attractive, ultracontemporary design rendered by June Street Architecture. Images of the firm's renovation are here 


Illustration: Private Collection