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AN INTRODUCTION TO HANCOCK PARK IS HERE
460 South June Street
- Built in 1925 on Lot 10 in Tract 7040. (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 10 was originally Lot 158 of Tract 6388)
- Original commissioner: attorney Victor Ford Collins
- Architect and contractor: Jack Olerich
- On May 5, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued Victor Ford Collins permits for a two-story, nine-room brick-veneer residence and a one-story, 20-by-20-foot garage at 460 South June Street
- Born in Kansas City on September 22, 1891, Victor Ford Collins moved to Pasadena with his parents at the age of 10. He'd go on to Oxy and Cal before receiving his law degree from U.S.C. in 1916. On June 26, 1918, he married Frances Isabel Richards—nickname Tiny—in the parlor of her mother's house at 500 West Adams Street in Los Angeles. The Times described Frances a "young society girl" who was "as well known in the ballroom as she is on the golf links or at the wheel of her own machine." The Collinses moved into an apartment at the northwest corner of Third Street and Hobart Boulevard, from which they would be moving into 460 South June Street upon its completion by early 1926. It seems that Mrs. Collins wanted the new house to be decorated to her satisfaction before the housewarming, which didn't take place until December
- On May 18, 1936, the Department of Building and Safety issued Victor Ford Collins a permit to add a pool-shower room in the garage; on February 26, 1943, a permit was issued to Collins for a small three-by-four-foot extension of the powder room located to the right of the front door
- Crime is not new in Hancock Park; the neighborhood, as were all affluent Los Angeles districts, was the scene of numerous burglaries from its beginnings. In May 1937, the Collinses were robbed of $4,500 worth of furs and jewelry. The incident didn't dissuade Frances Collins from wearing expensive items such as the $4,000 platinum and diamond bracelet she lost at Santa Anita in March 1952
- For efficiency the name "Victor Ford Collins" might as well have been cast in lead as a ligature to be used by the press over the decades, usually in reference to the dogged Mrs. Collins's social pursuits. References to Victor Ford Collins himself were fewer and usually in reference to his considerable professional, sports-related, and philanthropic endeavors. The Collinses' every move seems to have phoned in to editors by a public relations operative. Not having children allowed time for her luncheons and teas and the couples' appearances at Southwest Blue Book–caliber parties and balls. Victor Ford Collins made a name for himself as an attorney, sometimes representing wives suing for divorce, but more often over the years as counsel for the Los Angeles Turf Club, operator of the Santa Anita track, of which he was also a director. He served as attorney for the Brown Derby Corporation and in December 1938 purchased the recently established Hollywood Stars baseball team with Robert H. Cobb, owner of the Hollywood and Beverly Hills Brown Derbys. Collins and Cobb recruited major film personages as stockholders in the Stars, greatly increasing the the team's profile; Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, George Burns and Gracie Allen, William Powell, George Raft, Raoul Walsh, William Frawley, Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Harry Warner, William Frawley, and Gail Patrick (then Mrs. Robert Cobb) were all involved in the venture
- After 30 years, the Collinses decided to leave Hancock Park, placing 460 South June on the market in the summer of 1955. A classified in August advertised a sale of furniture at 460 and noted "home sold," though sales ads for the vacant house were still appearing in April 1956
- The Collinses were moving to a prime Beverly Hills neighborhood above Sunset Boulevard; 933 North Rexford Drive, built in 1924 and now replaced, had once been occupied by, among other notables, Metropolitan Opera star and film singer Lawrence Tibbett, actor Ed Wynn, composer Harold Arlen, and, briefly if allegedly, Bugsy Siegel. Press references to the Collinses continued to within days of his death at Good Samaritan on October 25, 1956, following a heart attack. (There was much crosstown movement of Collins's corpus from Rexford Drive, where the attack took place, to Good Sam, back to Beverly Hills for funeral services at the Church of the Good Shepherd, then east again for interment at Calvary Cemetery; Frances Collins continued her well-chronicled social life until she died on May 14, 1963)
- Automobile salvage operator Oscar Shankman succeeded the Collinses at 460 South June Street
- 460 South June Street was on the market in early 1966 asking $129,500. The house was on the market again in the summer of 1969, in late 1971, and in the summer of 1997; that August a "complete upscale household sale" of furnishings was being advertised. For sale again 20 years later, the asking price was $3,995,000; the house sold for $3,500,000 in June 2018. Owners since the departure of the Shankmans appear to have made only minor alterations to the property, including pool and interior renovations
Illustration: Private Collection