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674 South June Street



  • Built in 1926 on Lot 166 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: lumberman Brooke Williams Cadwallader Jr.
  • Architect and contractor: Lester G. Scherer
  • On October 11, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued B. W. Cadwallader permits for a two-story, 11-room residence and a two-story, 20-by-35-foot garage at 674 South June Street
  • Born in Macomb, Illinois, on June 5, 1873, Brooke W. Cadwallader had been based in Manila for decades, where he was in the lumber exporting business with his older brother Frederick. He married his first wife, visiting from Connecticut, in Manila in 1905; the couple had two children before divorcing and each remarrying by 1919. Cadwallader and his new wife, née Rose Maritzen, had a daughter, Helen, born in San Francsico on June 8, 1920. He opened a lumber yard in Los Angeles by 1924 to market his Asian hardwoods; deciding to return to the U.S. to live, he commissioned 674 South June Street. He and his wife Rose do not appear to have moved in, however, instead moving to 126 South Beachwood Drive, a smaller house in New Windsor Square, selling 674 to oil and mining broker Edgar T. Wallace. As with any house built by a lumberman, one might presume that the house still contains the best in the way of woods. The same might be true for the house the Cadwalladers built at 447 North June Street in 1928, for which the original building permit indicates as owner Mrs. Cadwallader's widowed mother Helene Martizen. The Cadwalladers appear to have moved from Beachwood Drive to 447 North June by 1930. The next year, Rose took out a permit to build 3653 Shannon Road in Los Feliz; Brooke Cadwallader died of uremia in Switzerland on November 20, 1936, age 63


As seen in the trade journal Pacific Coast Architect, September 1927


  • Missouri-born Edgar Thomas Wallace and wife, née Mabel Hogg, born in Oakland, were in residence at 674 South June Street by 1928 and were perhaps the first actual occupants of the property. Mr. Wallace was described in the San Francisco Examiner announcement of the couple's marriage in Los Gatos on April 2, 1919, as having "extensive mining and oil interests in California, Mexico and South America"
  • On February 23, 1928, E. T. Wallace was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for a three-foot extension to the rear of the northerly wing of 674 South June, one that included a new fireplace  
  • While the Wallaces were playing golf at the Bel-Air County Club on July 15, 1934, daylight porchclimbers invaded the house at 674 South June and somehow made off with a 500-pound safe containing $10,000 worth of diamonds and other gems as well as rare antique Irish linens, apparently family heirlooms. (Mrs. Wallace had, at least at one time, maintained "large interests in various properties in Belfast" per a 1919 passport application.) The perps entered via a ladder up to a second-floor French window. Three years later, splitsville. Dateline Reno, December 6, 1937, per the Times the next day: "Mabel H. Wallace, prominent in San Francisco and Los Angeles society, won a divorce on charges of cruelty at a private trial late today from Edgar T. Wallace of Los Angeles." Edgar moved to the Biltmore while Mabel retained the house until selling it in 1941
  • Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Gabriel Brownhill were the owners of 674 South June Street by late 1941, per a social note in the Times describing their Christmas Day plans. Born in St. Louis on May 13, 1899, Ray Brownhill had come to Los Angeles with his family from Missouri by 1917, going to work as a salesman for the downtown dry-goods firm Cooper, Coate & Casey. The Brownhills first lived just east of Hancock Park in Larchmont Heights; in June 1926 he married Marjorie Young, daughter of Alfred B. Young, a New York advertising man who, having married a Los Angeles girl in 1899, had come west by 1917 to go into the retail shoe trade. Alfred Young put his previous experience to work when he created a catchy name for his wares, the Young Shoe Company on Broadway expanding to six downtown stores and becoming known as Young's Speedy Shoes, with "Speedy Shoes" a patented brand. Anticipating his wedding, Ray Brownhill pulled a permit in March 1926 to build a six-room house at 6436 Maryland Drive in what is today known as Beverly Grove. The Brownhills' daughters Bette Allene and Jean Mae were born on June 5, 1927, and September 19, 1933, respectively. The family was renting 460 North Las Palmas Avenue in Hancock Park by the spring of 1940; it was from there that they moved to 674 South June Street. Having gone to work for his father-in-law, Ray had become president of Young's Speedy Shoes after his boss's death in May 1938, with Marjorie and her mother Allene Young as vice-presidents of the firm. During Ray Brownhill's presidency the firm began to de-emphasize the "Speedy" in its advertising and continued to add or remodel stores, a new Hollywood Boulevard outlet opening in 1946 and another on the Miracle Mile in 1948. By the end of 1952 the three remaining Young's shoe outlets had closed, two being taken over by other shoe dealers, with Ray Brownhill apparently having retired. Describing its style oddly as "California Monterey," a classified ad appeared in the Times on July 29, 1951, offering 674 South June for sale; Ray and Marjorie Brownhill were moving to Newport Beach. The Times of November 25, 1951, reported that 674 had just been sold for $50,000
  • Born in Santiago, Cuba, on April 27. 1914, Dr. Luis Eduardo Esteban Duthil y Somodevilla had emigrated from Havana to Miami in September 1942, going to work at Doctors Hospital in New York as an anesthesiologist. Dr. Duthil moved to Los Angeles in December 1945, going to work at California Hospital and soon taking an apartment at 357 South Kenmore Avenue. On December 11, 1948, he married Argentinian-born Margarita Isabel Wilkinson of San Francisco, a daughter of the consul general of Paraguay there. Twin daughters, Margarita Estelle and Eloise Isabel, arrived on December 11, 1950, while the Duthils were still living on Kenmore Avenue; it was time to look for a house, which led them to Hancock Park. The Duthils lived a typical upper-middle class life at 674 South June Street during the 1950s, though the house, the exact arrangements unclear, was listed as the residence of the honorary consul of Paraguay in some publications. Dr. Duthil attended to patients while his wife involved herself in various ladies' committees such as the Women's Auxiliary of the County Medical Association and, with her Evita vibe, serving for many years as a board member of the much more prestigious International Committee of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mrs. Duthil was hostess at many a tea at 674 in connection with her various causes, dutifully noted and sometimes appearing fashionably dressed in pictures with other matrons on women's pages of the press, though life at home appears to have been less than a social diarist's confection
  • Margarita Duthil filed for divorce in November 1960. Until the decree she continued to be known as Mrs. Luis Duthil in mentions of her civic activities, afterward styling herself as "Mrs. Wilkinson Duthil" in the old-fashioned way of divorcées, though she would list herself at 674 as Margarita I. Duthil in city directories. She got the house while Dr. Duthil moved to an apartment at 929¾ South Hobart Boulevard, later moving to Miami. Her entertainments continued; in March 1963 she gave a reception at 674 for Mrs. Bernice Pons—a public relations operator whose best work seems to have been promoting herself as a socialite—to which twin sisters Lady Thelma Furness and Gloria Vanderbilt came. If he wasn't pursuing other relationships, perhaps Dr. Duthil had simply gotten tired of his wife's tireless social pursuits and didn't much mind when she married again on July 20, 1963. Austrian-born Frederick Oliver Gebhardt moved into 674 with his bride. He had been an executive with Fox West Coast Theaters who'd become a producer of such schlockbusters as 12 to the Moon and Assignment—Outer Space. Their son Frederick De Fouché Gebhardt was born on July 22, 1964 
  • While their directory listing at 674 South June Street disappears after 1964 and social columns refer to them as living in Beverly Hills, the Gebhardts were listed at the address in the 1968 Los Angeles Blue Book
  • It may be that it was the Gebhardts who put the house on the market in early 1973, when it was being advertised as a "fixer-upper." No price was mentioned, but a large, nearly 50-year-old stucco house needing work at the nadir of real estate values in central Los Angeles after the Watts riots and Manson murders probably went, when it did, for a song. Perhaps the house was rehabilitated; at any rate, 674 was on the market again in April 17, 1977, asking $187,500. A permit issued by the Department of Building and Safety on July 22, 1981, to Charles Veal Jr. authroized the addition of a carport and conversion of the garage into accessory living space. Reflecting a house in better condition and/or improved market conditions, it came on the market yet again in late 1984. It was still for sale in June of the following year, now asking $649,500. A new owner in 1988 added a 15-by-35-foot pool to the property and replaced the roof


Illustrations: Private Collection; Pacific Coast Architect