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  • Completed in 1928 on Lot 149 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Harry H. Belden
  • Architect: brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon
  • Harry H. Belden was a prolific builder of residences in Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and elsewhere. His Hancock Park houses include 110 North Rossmore, 324 Muirfield, 317 and 624 Rimpau, and 152 North Hudson as well as 12 of the 14 houses on June Street between Third and Fourth streets. Advertisements for Belden-built houses appearing in the Times during November 1925 refer to several residences on the block being under construction; Belden's projects in the 300 block of June Street designed by the brothers Kurt and Hans Meyer-Radon include 335 and 346 as well as 336. Ray J. Kieffer designed Belden's projects at 300, 305, 314, 315, 324, 325, 345, 355, and 356 South June
  • On December 10, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued Harry H. Belden permits for the addition of a two-story, 12-room residence and a one-story, 40-by 27-foot garage at 336 South June Street
  • Harry Belden was still in possession of 336 South June Street in March 1929 when on the 21st of that month he was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety to add a 13-by-18-foot room to the garage for use as a workshop. This addition may have been made at the behest of the first purchaser
  • Born in Gowanda, New York, south of Buffalo, on September 3, 1883, Byron Leslie Graves grew up to become an industrialist. By 1905 he was a traveling representative for Oldsmobile out of Lansing; before long he was hired by the Ford Motor Company to work in its Cleveland branch before being transferred to Dallas to manage Ford's operations there. His success in establishing dealerships and manufacturing facilities made him the ideal candidate to become manager of Ford operations in Los Angeles as the company sought to expand Model T sales on the west coast, assembly-line production of the popular car to come within a few years. By the fall of 1911 Graves and his young family were living a bungalow built in 1908 (and still standing) at 3929 South Normandie Avenue
  • Byron Graves had married Leah Frances Searle in her hometown of Perrysburg, New York—just a few miles west of his native Gowanda—on New Year's Day 1907. Mrs. Graves was with her family in western New York when she gave birth their daughter Helen the following September 26, after which she joined her husband in Cleveland. John—to be known as Jack—arrived in Dallas on August 14, 1911. Dorothy Jane was born in Los Angeles on July 9, 1913, and Virginia in Los Angeles on September 20, 1915, by which time the family had moved into a three-year-old house at 209 South Wilton Place, which still stands and from which the Graveses would be moving to 336 South June
  • In early 1925, Byron Graves resigned as Ford's Los Angeles branch manager to devote his time to Western Air Express. The airline had been awarded the airmail route from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City the previous October soon after the company's incorporation on July 13, 1925, by Graves, who would be serving as treasurer, along with others including prominent real estate man William May Garland, San Quentin–bound oilman James A. Talbot, and George M. Holley of Holley carburetors. As it grew Western Air Express lent its name to form, in a brief merger, Transcontinental & Western Air, which became T.W.A. (the initials later standing for Trans World Airlines). Western Air Express became Western Air Lines in 1941 and was popularly know in its primary domain west of the Mississippi by its slogan, "The Only Way to Fly" until its merger with Delta Air Lines in 1987. In addition to his involvement with Western Air Express, Byron Graves took a position as western district manager of the American Car & Foundry Company, builders of railroad equipment. He became a director of the Kinner Aircraft & Motor Corporation of Glendale. By early 1929 he had resigned from American Car & Foundry, that June becoming president of Bach Aircraft Corporation, formed to produced 10-passenger trimotor transports for newly forming airlines; George M. Holley was a director. As Western Air Express evolved, Graves, seemingly indefatigable, next went into the petroleum industry as an executive with the Associated Oil Company
  • What took the wind out of the Graves family's sails, at least as far as their interest in 336 South June Street went, was the death of Virginia after an unspecified 10-week illness. She died at Golden State Hospital on January 4, 1934, having been graduated from Marlborough the previous June. Before long the Graveses put 336 on the market and by early 1936 would be renting the upstairs of a newly built (and extant) duplex at 1145 Rimpau Boulevard
  • German-born Wiliiam G. Graupe had been living in Salt Lake City since he was a teenager. There he became associated with his mother's in-laws, the Watterses, and his brother Albert in Auerbach's, a leading department store. By 1913 the brothers had moved to New York City to go into the manufacture of hospital supplies with two nephews. William married his niece, Martha Watters, in Newport, Rhode Island, popular for a time as a sort of Gretna Green, in March 1909; she died in New York in August 1918 at the age of 45. In June 1920 Graupe married 33-year-old Pauline Stern of Middletown, New York. The couple would live with his brother Albert first on West End Avenue in Manhattan and then on the Upper East Side until the the siblings decided to retire to Los Angeles in 1934, apparently setting their sights on Hancock Park. Soon after arriving out west the family rented 624 Rimpau Boulevard—built in 1924 and notably another Harry Belden spec house designed by Ray J. Kieffer—from which they moved to 336 South June Street in 1935
  • William Graupe died at home on June 11, 1938; he was 72. His widow and brother remained at 336 South June Street. Albert Graupe, who never married, died at Cedars of Lebanon on February 19, 1957, at the age of 94 after a month-long illness. Forty years after moving in, Pauline Graupe was still living at 336 South June Street when she died at the age of 88 on June 19, 1975. Her sizable obituary in the Times two days later referred to her as a noted Los Angeles horticulturalist who was the director of the Los Angeles district of the California Garden Club and as a founder of Los Angeles Beautiful, which for at least 25 years promoted the horticultural improvement of residential blocks, vacant lots, and civic institutions as well as sponsoring flower shows in cooperation with local department stores. Pauline Graupe as well as her husband and his first wife and his brother Albert were all buried in an extended-family plot in Salt Lake City
  • 336 South June Street was placed on the market by August 1975 at an asking price of $199,500, with an elevator in the house noted
  • As of 2020 the family of Jacob and Lea Friedman was still in possession of 336 South June Street after several decades. A swimming pool was added to the property in 1982 and a carport in 1986. A first-floor open porch and a balcony above at the center rear of the house were enclosed in 1988 and a dining area at the southeast corner of the house extended in 2003


Illustration: Private Collection