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365 South June Street




  • Built in 1927 on Lot 139 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: building contractor Rasmus George Nielsen for resale
  • Architect and contractor: both cited on original building permits as Nielsen himself
  • On September 27, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued R. G. Nielsen permits for a two-story, 13-room residence and a one-story, 28-by-40-foot garage at 365 South June Street
  • During the 1920s, Danish-born Rasmus George Nielsen had been building large duplexes in the area across Wilshire Boulevard from Hancock Park including two on Harcourt Avenue, which was renamed as the southerly continuation of Hudson Avenue from Wilshire down to Pico in 1933. Nielsen had built and put up for sale the large duplex at 924-926 South Mansfield Avenue in 1926; in the habit of living briefly in his projects, Nielsen was living there when he began building large single-family houses in Hancock Park including 365 South June Street. Earlier in 1927 he had built 217 South Hudson Avenue, selling it to the widow of banker Willard James Doran, who in 1905 had built 1194 West 27th Street in West Adams in the city's very fashionable University Park neighborhood. In what seems to be a transaction involving a swap of properties, Sara Doran bought 217 South Hudson and Nielsen and his Norwegian-born wife Ragnhild moved their family into 1194 West 27th. The move, like most of the Nielsens', was temporary as Rasmus continued building through the Depression. No doubt fully aware of the West Adams district's decline as departures of the affluent for newer developments such as Hancock Park continued apace, Nielsen continued to build in the Park's environs. Among the projects to which Nielsen moved his family were a fourplex on North Sierra Bonita Avenue and the single-family dwelling at 1011 Longwood Avenue. Rasmus and Ragnhild Nielsen eventually settled within the boundaries of Hancock Park themselves, building 630 North McCadden Place in 1950
  • John Pusey Gordon, a large-scale manufacturer of automobile accessories in Columbus, Ohio, was the first owner of 365 South June Street. A native of Hamilton, north of Cincinnati, 26-year-old Gordon had married 24-year-old Margaret Daugherty in Franklin, Ohio, in June 1899. Ruth arrived on November 17, 1901, Louise on June 27, 1907, and Marjorie on June 3, 1918, after which plans were made to spend more time in Southern California. On April 6, 1919, the Times reported that Gordon had bought 611 South Ardmore Avenue in Los Angeles; when the house was built in 1911, its block just off Wilshire was coveted and in a particularly fashionable subdivision, Normandy Hill, that had begun to absorb many of the affluent from denser declining neighborhoods such as West Adams. After Windsor Square and Fremont Place opened in 1911 in what was then termed the West End of the city, westward migration of the rich heated up, development only to be interrupted by the war. When Hancock Park was laid out after the Armistice, care was taken in the language of its covenants to bar density (i.e., multifamily housing), as had been done in the planning of adjacent Windsor Square and Fremont Place. It may be that the Park's developer G. Allan Hancock noticed that the heretofore premium Wilshire subdivisions to the west such as Normandy Hill were not only denser to begin with but, envisioning postwar housing demands, might be threatened by the intrusion of apartment house development. In February 1921 the Times ran reports that John P. Gordon had filed suit to block an apartment building on Kingsley Drive behind his Ardmore property. While he appears to have successfully prevailed in his NIMBY fight, Gordon apparently realized that Hancock Park was a neighborhood in which he could feel more secure in his sovereignty. His Ardmore Avenue block was being abandoned by the seriously fashionable by 1927; two years before, his neighbor, department-store owner John G. Bullock, had even moved his house and garage at 627 South Ardmore to Windsor Square, where they still stand at 605 South Plymouth Boulevard. Rasmus Nielsen's 365 South June Street became the answer to John Gordon's housing anxieties


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on November 16, 1952


  • Ruth Gordon helped to cement, at least for a time, the Southern California social connections of her snowbird Ohio family when on July 7, 1920, she married Albert Hays Busch in a ceremony at St. John's Episcopal Church on Adams Boulevard, bastion of the Old Guard, attended only by the immediate families and a few close friends. A reception was held at 611 South Ardmore. Albert Hays Busch Jr. was born nine months and eleven days later. Hays Busch Sr. proved undependable except for providing a listing in the Southwest Blue Book; within a few years of his marriage he was getting drunk regularly and canoodling with other women. The Busches separated in the fall of 1925, he taking an apartment at the Gaylord. In June of the following year Ruth filed suit for divorce charging her husband with cruelty, habitual intoxication, and infidelity. The unseemly proceedings were no doubt embarrassing to the Gordons as well as to Hays's very social sister Amy, Mrs. Van Buren Jarvis, of 314 South Rossmore Avenue. Hays went on to marry at least two more times and would die a few weeks shy of his 37th birthday. On August 14, 1929, at home at 365 South June Street, Ruth married again, her second husband no less top-drawer than her first, at least in terms of local social rank. Fred Le Blond Jr. was a real estate investor, as was his predecessor. In 1925, while still married to Hays Busch, Ruth had been among the city's most social post debutantes and young matrons (including her sister-in-law Mrs. Jarvis and ladies with such names as Braly, Woolwine, Phillips, Seeley, Guasti, Wellborn, and Brant) who founded the Children's Convalescent League, which became the Junior League of Los Angeles the next year when the group was admitted to the national association of Junior Leagues. Ruth tried hard to fit into local provincial society but seems not have been a well woman. Per the Times, she died at the age of 40 at home—then 721 North Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills—on September 13, 1942, "following an illness of several years" per the Times
  • On September 26, 1932, the Department of Building and Safety issued John Gordon a permit to enclose a porch at 365 South June Street
  • Louise Gordon married Indianapolis condensed-milk executive William Nixon Wilson—no matter a family's social rung, the Midwest was always part of Los Angeles culture—at the Beverly Hills Community Church (now Beverly Hills Presbyterian) on January 14, 1931, with a reception following at 365 South June Street. In February 1936, having charged Mr. Wilson with cruel and inhuman treatment, Louise obtained a divorce and moved back into 365, as she would after the post–World War II collapse of her second of what would be three marriages. Louise was still listed on voters rolls at 365 in 1952. Louise Gordon Wilson Kirkland Emanuel died in April 1995, age 84
  • In May 1937, 18-year-old Marjorie eloped with big social fish William Hook III. Marrying in Las Vegas on May 17, they had a second ceremony and a reception the next day at 365. Bill Hook was the son of street-railway magnate William Spencer Hook Jr., who in 1931 he had divorced Bill's mother to marry Leatrice Joy, who had been married to fellow silent-screen star John Gilbert. Bill Hook's mother was Mrs. Carlton Burke of 6 Berkeley Square. The Hooks' marriage produced a daughter, Melinda, but was not a success otherwise; like her sister Louise, Marjorie would marry three times, her second husband, William Bowles Smith of Pasadena, having adopted Melinda. Marjorie Gordon Hook Smith Geddes died in August 1974 at the age of 56
  • While continuing to maintain a residence in Ohio, John Gordon retained 365 South June Street into the 1950s. Margaret Gordon died at the age of 75 on August 20, 1949. In classified advertisements that began to appear in September 1952, an "absentee Eastern owner" desired a "quick sale." By November, John Gordon, back in Ohio, resorted to putting 365 up for auction. Apparently not selling while on the block, the house was still being advertised for sale well into 1953
  • Minneapolis-born attorney Samuel Louis Kurland was the next owner of 365 South June Street, moving in with his wife, née Kathleen Cummings, and their three children by 1953. Mrs. Kurland was a descendant of Claudio López, superintendent of San Gabriel Mission for more than 30 years who became mayor of the Pueblo de los Ángeles, kernal of the modern city, in 1826. The Kurlands settled into 365, apparently living quietly during their near-20-year stay. Samuel Kurland, a Democrat, was appointed as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in December 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. In 1972 U.S.C. gave him the Fred B. Olds Award, presented on special occasions to alumni for "extraordinary and unparalleled service to the university over a long period of time"; bestowal on Judge Kurland's was for his aid to the schools of law and music. He also received the university's Alumni Service Award. Judge Kurland died at 66 on August 15, 1975
  • The family of Dr. Peter J. Thaler, an orthopedist, would be occupying 365 South June Street for more than 45 years until its sale for $6,225,000 on February 23, 2023  


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT