PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1933 on Lot 318 in Tract 8320
  • Original commissioner: clothing manufacturer William B. Malouf
  • Architect: Robert Finkelhor
  • On July 26, 1933, the Department of Building and Safety issued W. B. Malouf a permit for a 10-room residence with attached garage at 170 North June Street
  • With his brothers Bert and Anees (a.k.a. Ernest), William Malouf built their dress business into the nationwide chain of over 800 Mode O'Day stores. Bill, as he was known, was born in Beirut on December 15, 1891. Emigrating to the U.S. in 1907, he settled with his family in Provo, Utah. His father, Bosamra, went into dry goods there as B. Malouf & Sons, bringing Bert and Bill into the business. The operation soon expanded into wholesale as well as retail sales of ladies' and children's clothing, with the retail effort becoming known as The Leader Store, with a branch in American Fork. The Maloufs opened the Western Garment Manufacturing Company in Provo in 1913; the Provo city directory of 1915 noted that Bosamra and his sons had "moved to Salt Lake City," presumably to pursue a bigger market. Western Garment continued to produce women's wear, the Maloufs apparently beginning to concentrate on that segment of the garment trade. An even bigger market awaited them in California. The first stop was San Francisco, the 1927 Salt Lake directory indicating that Bill had moved there, as had some other family members. The stay up north was brief. Bill and Bert were in Los Angeles by 1928 operating Malouf Brothers, manufacturing washable dresses and underwear. By 1932, with inexpensive, easy-to-maintain day dresses just right for a Depression market, the Maloufs established their Mode O'Day retail stores, the first appearing in Glendale that year. In short order there were dozens of Mode O'Day shops across California, with expansion coming across the country. The family supplied stock both locally and from the factory it had established in Utah in 1913. Such was the success of the Malouf manufacturing operations and instant popularity of Mode O'Day that Bill Malouf and his wife, née Victoria Nassour and known as "Vicci," felt confident in building an extravagant house in Hancock Park in the very depths of the Depression, as did Bert and his wife, who, also employing Robert Finkelhor in 1933, had him design their house at 101 North McCadden Place. Ernest Malouf, having joined his brothers at Mode O'Day, would be building 159 Hudson Place in 1935
  • On October 29, 1934, William Malouf, having called back architect Robert Finkelhor for the design, was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a room and a bath to the second floor of 170 South June  Street. Finkelhor designed a 15-by-22-foot recreation room attached to the northeast corner of the house for which a permit was issued on July 23, 1936. A permit issued to William Malouf on December 13, 1937, authorized the removal of a corner fireplace in the den and the replacement of French windows in the living room with a bay window
  • The William Maloufs would be moving to Hancock Park from a rented house in Los Feliz, having lived before that in an apartment at the Hermoyne on North Rossmore Avenue. Bert and his wife had also been renting in Los Feliz. Their house there, built in 1929, was designed by Robert Finkelhor, whose architecture clearly pleased the Maloufs enough to give him the commissions for their two Hancock Park houses
  • Victoria Malouf, born on November 24, 1899, was a daughter of soap and cosmetics manufacturer Abraham Nassour and his wife Rhoda, who would be moving into Hancock Park themselves, buying 207 South Hudson Avenue in 1938. The Nassours' three daughters had all married men by the name of Malouf. On June 26, 1975, the Los Angeles Times ran a sizable article illustrated with photographs titled "Three Nonstop Malouf Sisters." Vicci and Bill Malouf were featured along with Marion, who had married Bert Malouf. Florence Nassour married the Maloufs' cousin Thomas, who worked for Mode O'Day. Florence and Tom Malouf were living with Vicci and Bill at 170 South June by 1940.  Per the Times, the three sisters became known for tireless volunteerism and philanthropy
  • Bill and Vicci Malouf had three children. Gary was born on November 12, 1932, Jerry on January 2, 1935, and Carol Laverne on November 17, 1936
  • The Maloufs would remain at 170 South June Street for less than a decade, moving on to Palm Springs. The house was on the market by August 1941 and lingered there into at least the spring of 1942
  • Insurance man John Quayle McClure purchased 170 South June Street in 1942, moving in with his wife, née Lillian Jean Weir, daughters Beverly and Barbara, and son John Jr., teenagers who were or would all soon be attending Stanford. The family was moving from a 1920 house at 3261 Country Club Drive; while Hancock Park and adjacent subdivisions above Wilshire Boulevard swiftly drew Angelenos from older neighborhoods such as West Adams and easterly Wilshire-corridor districts, it also appealed to those who had settled nearby but below Wilshire, a seeming social demarcation to some
  • John McClure's 23-year-old County Antrim–born father, also named John, arrived in Los Angeles in 1875, the year before the isolated town was connected by rail to San Francisco and the east, where he had come from after two years in and around New York. The senior McClure worked at a hardware store on Main Street before becoming an apiarist and then a large-scale vineyardist outside of the city, though he settled his family in town. One of four sons, his namesake carved a less rural path in what had become a sizable city by founding the National Automobile and Casualty Insurance Company in 1919. Branches were later opened in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, and St. Louis. McClure also founded several life insurance companies. As the distaff side of the sort of classic period haut bourgeois family that G. Allan Hancock had in mind when he planned Hancock Park, Lillian McClure concentrated on raising the children and, with help at home, working outside the home doing volunteer work. Her efforts included sitting on the board of the Assistance League, local rival of Los Angeles's chapter of the New York-based Junior League, and doing work for the Hollywood Bowl Association and the Opera Guild


The Desert Sun of December 1, 1970, ran a large feature on the McClures' 50th anniversary
celebration, which had taken place at the Cave des Roys restaurant in Los Angeles
on November 20. Having spent winters in the desert since 1941, the McClures,
native Californians to the core, had become fixtures in Palm Springs.


  • The McClure sisters both attended Marlborough before going up to Stanford, where they pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma, top of the sorority heap. After Beverly's engagement was announced in February 1943 before her fiancé went into the Army, she and Robert Bruce Errett were finally married on July 2, 1945, on the Harvard University campus. An item in Lucille Leimert's "Confidentially" column in the Times noted that Mr. and Mrs. McClure motored east for the event with Beverly but suffered an unfortunate event during at stop at the Drake in Chicago when their coupe was broken into. Stolen were part of the bride's trousseau and a box of stamped wedding invitations. "The thief had the good grace to leave the wedding dress and veil, though he did open the box and sprinkle cigarette ashes over them." A bad omen, perhaps: The Erretts were divorced within a few years, with Beverly returning west to live with her parents at 170 South June Street. Barbara's engagement was announced in the Times on February 10, 1946; she married William Newell West at Immanuel Presbyterian Church six months to the day later. John Jr. followed his sisters to Stanford, eventually being graduating from its medical school. His 1956 marriage would last 19 years
  • In 1950, John McClure, apparently acutely sensitive to the house's original design, hired architect Stiles O. Clements for alterations to 170 South June Street. Known for, among other styles, his Art Deco and Streamline designs such as the the lost Richfield Building and extant Thomas Jefferson High School, Clements designed a new staircase to the second floor of the residence, a permit for which was issued by the Department of Building and Safety on November 8, 1950, along with one for a new Clements-designed unattached 10-by-18-foot garage at the rear of the property. A decade later McClure recalled Clements, who was now in practice with his son Robert, to add an architecturally compatible window in the rear wall of the residence, a permit for the alteration being issued on June 27, 1960 
  • While the McClures bought a house in Palm Springs in 1941 and would spend increasing amounts of time there, the family appears to have retained 170 South June Street into the 1980s. Native Angeleno John Quayle McClure Sr., born on Washington's Birthday in 1895, died in Los Angeles on St. Patrick's Day in 1976. The house appears to remained in the family until it was put on the market in the summer of 1984 asking $725,000; ads referred to its design as "French Regency." Lillian McClure, also a native Angeleno, born on December 1, 1900, died in Los Angeles on June 11, 1994
  • Succeeding Lillian McClure at 170 South June Street was the family still in possession as of 2023. Extensive changes were made to the property during 1988, which may at that time have included the destruction of the house's original deft French-flavored façade by the application of an odd, overreaching neo-Deco/Postmodern central concoction with movie-palace-lobby light fixtures that all might have seemed au courant in the 1980s but does not feel authentic today, the unsubtle design suggesting the terminal of a small municipal airport of the W.P.A. era. The house would be significantly expanded on its north side; the 1950 garage has been replaced with a larger one and a swimming pool added at the rear of the lot 


The original delicate central façade of 170 South June Street has been obliterated by an unsubtle,
discordant 1980s idea of Art Deco at odds with Robert Finkelhor's sophisticated design.


Illustrations: USCDL; LAT; Private Collection