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  • Built in 1926 on Lot 162 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: insurance executive Kellogg Van Winkle
  • Architect: Aloysius F. Mantz
  • On May 24, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued Kellogg Van Winkle a permit for a two-story, 17-room residence with attached garage at 634 South June Street
  • In addition to designing houses and theaters, Aloysius F. Mantz was, in the early 1920s, an art director and production designer at Metro Pictures; he left the film industry to pursue his invention of a window-sash balance mechanism intended to replace traditional systems using lead weights. The innovation, marketed by his Acme Spring Sash Balance Company, was a success. By 1937 the company became known as Duplex, Inc., this evolving into the Paramount Acme Duplex Corporation, which continues to manufacture Mantz's design in San Bernardino
  • San Francisco–born Kellogg Van Winkle was a mining man before moving his family south to Los Angeles not long before building 634 South June Street. In Los Angeles Van Winkle assumed the position of agency manager for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Van Winkle had married upstate New Yorker Helen Chubbuck in December 1909 and the couple had four children before her death at the birth of a fifth on April 9, 1917. Five days after a year's mourning, Van Winkle married Frances Baxter Janson, a divorcée with a daughter, Lucile, who had just turned seven. Kellogg Van Winkle would adopt Lucile, the family of eight settling into a house in Berkeley
  • The Van Winkles would remain at 634 South June Street for 19 years. The Times reported on February 19, 1936, that the Van Winkles had as a houseguest Count Byron de Prorok of Paris. A certain breed of Angeleno has always been susceptible to foreign titles, their authenticity un-Googleable. Apparently Mexico City–born Hungarian-American Byron Khun de Prorok conjured his title himself; while he carved out a considerable reputation as an amateur archeologist, anthropologist, and author, he was also a tireless self-promoter whose reputation was in the 1930s devolving into that of a tomb raider. He appears to have made films of his expeditions, which may be why he was in California, perhaps being acquainted with the man Lucile Van Winkle had married a few months before
  • There were the usual bourgeois rituals at 634 South June Street. On October 30, 1935, Lucile Van Winkle married Gordon Jones, a character actor who would rack up a considerable filmography and who today has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; the ceremony was at St. James' Episcopal on Wilshire Boulevard nearby, with a reception following at 634. The marriage lasted less than four years before the Daily News reported on its demise on September 16, 1939, with the headline "Mrs. Lucille Jones, of Social Note, Awarded Divorce from Gordon Jones." Meanwhile, Helen Van Winkle had married Robert Wheeler Stickrod—a most interesting name—at St. James' on Thanksgiving Eve 1937, their reception also taking place at 634
  • Though they would change their minds, the Van Winkles put 634 South June Street on the market in the fall of 1938, with ads appearing in the Times that October and November
  • Rachel Van Winkle's wedding itself took place at 634 South June Street on June 3, 1942, when she married Leslie Wellington Dallis II of LaGrange, Georgia. Their nest emptier, Kellogg and Frances Van Winkle moved to a smaller house at 906 North Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills in 1945
  • Succeeding the Kellogg Van Winkles at 634 South June Street was attorney Ezra Beer Neff, his wife Leona, daughters Mary and Laude, and Mr. Neff's widowed mother, Henrietta Neff
  • The Neffs had 634 South June on the market in June 1952; ads did not specify an asking price but claimed that it was a "terrific value"
  • Ben Krinitt, a liquor retailer turned furniture manufacturer, was the next owner of 634 South June Street. Newark, New Jersey–born Krinitt (née Benjamin Krinitsky) started the very successful Filbar Furniture Manufacturing Company of Lynwood in 1950 and would by 1961 be named president of the Furniture Manufacturers Association of California. Krinitt's wife Bess had died in August 1951 just shy of her 37th birthday; by 1954 he was remarried and looking for a bigger house for a blended family
  • 634 South June Street was on the market in the spring of 1962 listed at $89,500
  • An item in the Valley Times of February 7, 1964, refers to Mr. and Mrs. Herbert S. Adair as residing at 634 South June Street. Adair appears to have been the attorney son of a prominent dentist of the same name though progeny seems to have led a less staid life than parent; married more than once, Junior's name appeared in the press over the years in a 1959 scandal involving the death of a woman who was a fellow member of the Los Angeles Tennis Club and later in connection with serious business fraud that resulted in a prison stretch. No listings for 634 South June appear in available city directories between 1962 and 1969, nor do any building permits appear to have been pulled on the property between 1962 and 1978, though several social and business directory listings during that period refer to Adair at 634 during the '60s
  • Ads offering 634 South June Street for sale appeared in the Times in the summer of 1968; the asking price was $155,000 
  • Native Chicagoan Edward Albert Shay bought 634 South June Street in 1968. In addition to being a philanthropist through a family foundation, Shay was founder and president of Pacific Architects & Engineers Inc. Described by the Times as having built the firm into "a leading worldwide engineering and facilities management organization," Shay had served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer since 1955, when he established the firm in Tokyo. The company's projects would extend through Asia, to Korea and, during the war, into Vietnam, where it became the largest facilities engineering support company in the world, per the Times. Shay "was seen more often amongst the troops in the jungles of Vietnam than at his corporate headquarters in Tokyo." The firm would eventually operate in 15 countries around the world. He moved the firm to Los Angeles in 1968, leading to his purchase of 634 South June Street; one might presume that, given his skills, he deemed the house structurally very sound
  • Edward Shay married Ai-San Oizumi, who after World War II had become entrepreneurial, exporting goods from Japan. She brought a son into her marriage to Edward Shay and the couple had their own son and daughter. Still living at 634, Edward Shay died at Cedars-Sinai on May 11, 1995, at the age of 72. Mrs. Shay remained at 634 until her death at Cedars 20 years later at the age of 92. The Shay family would own the property for over 50 years
  • 634 South June Street appeared on the market in late summer 2017 with an asking price of $4,995,000; it sold on December 5, 2019, for $4,885,000
 

Illustration: Private Collection