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  • Built in 1926 on Lot 167 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Chicago real estate operator Frederick J. Fadner
  • Designer and builder: Walter F. Olerich
  • On April 7, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued F. J. Fadner permits for a two-story, 11-room residence and a one-story, 22-by-36-foot garage at 684 South June Street
  • Frederick Fadner built 684 South June Street as a retirement home, moving from an apartment on Chicago's North Side  
  • Born in Ava in central New York State on May 28, 1867, Frederick Jacob Fadner had migrated to the Midwest by 1900, where he settled for a time in Joplin, within a few years moving on to Chicago to join his older brother George in real estate development. Fred Fadner would be credited in his 1935 obituary with building the first large apartment building in that city. He was married to the former Florence Agin, until, it seems, they separated, with she remaining in Joplin and referring to herself as a widow, as separated and divorced women often did in those days. When Fred remarried in July 1913 at the age of 46, his 23-year-old bride Kathryn came as a package with her six-year-old sister Dorothy, who appears to have been adopted by Fred Fadner, Kathryn henceforth frequently being referred to as her sister's mother, which, fairly or not, brings the movie Chinatown to mind. By the spring of 1930 Fred, Kathryn, Kathryn and Dorothy's widowed father John Thompson, and Dorothy and her husband were living in the house on June Street in Hancock Park. Dorothy had married Warren Keefe, an attorney who was also, like his father-in-law, in the building trade. The Keefes' two small sons were also part of the household at 684. A daughter, Debra, arrived on June 23, 1932. Kathryn and Dorothy Fadner had a brother, Jack C. Thompson, who was killed after his car overturned several times on the Roosevelt Highway—now known as the PCH—in Malibu on August 9, 1935. His obituary in the Daily News referred to Dorothy as his sister rather than as his niece
  • On December 9, 1935, four months to the day after the death of his brother-in-law, Fred Fadner died at 684 South June Street at the age of 68. It seems that there may have already been a plan to sell the house by this time; it was listed for sale by January 12. Although the Depression had eased considerably by 1936, there wasn't a rush to snap up the white elephants of Hancock Park, even those less than a decade old. It would be over three years before the Fadner house would change hands
  • The property having lingered on and off the market for over two years, Kathryn Fadner decided to put 684 South June Street and its contents up for auction. Large display ads placed by auctioneer Lewis S. Hart appeared in the Times in early July 1938 pictured the house and gave an extensive room-by-room description of its furnishings, to be sold piece-by-piece in a sale scheduled for July 12 and 13. It seems that this auction did not take place, or that house and much of its contents were no-sales. On July 20 a small classified ad invited prospects to "Investigate & make [an] offer" for the house, calling it a "best buy." Six months later another large ad appeared in the Times for another auction of the house and what remained of its furnishings, this one scheduled for January 26, 1939, and to be held by auctioneer W. C. O'Connor. This seems to have resulted in a sale of the property more than three years after the death of Fred Fadner  



As seen in the Los Angeles Times on July 10, 1938,
and, below, on January 22, 1939: Note the original Monterey-
style balcony at the right side of the house that has been replaced
with an ironwork arrangement and the less-than-pleasing second-
floor window alterations as compared to these details as
seen in the recent rendering of the house at top.



  • Kathryn Fadner and the Keefes moved to 8375 Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood; Mrs. Fadner was listed there in city directories as a studio worker, her specific role in the film industry unclear. Dorothy Keefe died at St. Vincent's Hospital on December 22, 1940, a month shy of her 34th birthday
  • Succeeding Kathryn Fadner and the Keefes at 684 South June Street, apparently having acquired the property in the January 1939 auction, were Una V. Mayell, a widow born in Iowa as Una Verda Peters. She and her Canadian-born husband Arthur Wellesley Mayell, a real estate operator, had settled in Long Beach in 1909. Their son Lionel Vincent was born in London, Ontario, in February 1897; the Mayells' son Cormen died in Long Beach in January 1910. Arthur would expire in November 1925 leaving $1 each to his widow and son Lionel, who contested the will claiming that Mr. Mayell was mentally incompetent when he signed it. It may be that he was; two big Long Beach projects, the Artaban and the Cooper Arms, opened in May 1922 and early 1924, respectively, were reported to be the earliest cooperative apartment buildings in the west and as being built by Una Mayell and Lionel, Arthur, it seems, not active in these large projects. Lionel Mayell then built a third co-op, the towering Villa Riviera, which opened in the spring of 1929; it, along with the Artaban and the Cooper Arms, still stands
  • Lionel Mayell married Marjorie Doolittle in Pasadena on October 19, 1922. On December 13, 1923, The Long Beach Press reported that Mrs. Mayell was claiming in a divorce suit that her husband told her that "a very pretty" girl had offered him $200,000 if he would leave Mrs. Mayell for her. Marjorie Mayell asserted that she and Lionel had separated less than year after their marriage. She would get her decree and remarry in 1926. It seems that Lionel may have been a mama's boy; he was still living with Una in the spring of 1930 in the house Arthur Mayell had built in Long Beach in 1912. Lionel was noted as widowed in the 1930 census, a euphemism usually used by divorced women rather than men; what is more curious in that document is that 22-year-old Miss Carma E. Lee was enumerated as a "lodger" at 41 Kennebec Avenue with Lionel and his mother. On March 10, 1929, the Long Beach Press-Telegram had run a photograph including "Miss Carma Lee, daughter of Mrs. Lionel Mayell of Villa Riviera." (Curiously, the Mayells' Cooper Arms apartments was originally slated to be called the Carma-Leon.) The confusion was cleared up when the Long Beach Sun reported on August 29, 1930, that Lionel and Miss Carma Emille Lee had been married in London on the first of the month. "The bride, who is a charming young singer, is favorably known in Long Beach, where she made her first appearance at the concert given to celebrate the opening of the Villa Riviera, of which Mr. Mayell was the promoter." Una Mayell had accompanied the couple to England for the marriage, and they would return with her to California after a continental honeymoon somehow having been managed without mama in tow
  • Lionel Vincent Mayell Jr. was born on December 2, 1931; Myrna Yvonne Mayell arrived on December 20, 1933. Three years later, the lid blew off the Mayell household at 41 Kennebec Avenue, still very much ruled by Una. In a telling turn of events, the Long Beach Sun reported on August 12, 1937, that "damages of $350,000 [$7,285,000 in 2023 currency] for alleged alienation of affections of her husband, Lionel Vincent Mayell, long time local resident and real estate operator, are asked by Mrs. Carma Mayell in a suit filed yesterday afternoon in Superior court against Mrs. Una Verde Mayell, her mother-in-law." The Mayells had separated in November 1936. The complaints in Carma's pending divorce suit against Lionel included that she had been coerced into signing away custody of Lionel Jr. and Myrna to their grandmother in the face of threats of public scandal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tables were turned on Carma. Having charged her husband with extreme cruelty and adultery, Lionel countersued alleging Carma's own extramarital affairs; both had employed private detectives. Creepy details of the relationship between Lionel and his mother emerged, including Carma's claim that Una cuddled Lionel physically and treated him like a baby. Lionel claimed poverty, having allowed his mother to control all the family finances; their real estate business had indeed crashed after October 1929. Lionel rather than Carma won the divorce and was awarded custody of the children. Bloodsucking Una had won it all. Triumphant but no doubt the butt of gossip in Long Beach, Una decided to move her son and grandchildren to Los Angeles, which was also less convenient in terms of Carma's visits with the children
  • The co-op building trade having recovered by the late 1930s, Lionel Mayell built more apartments, including projects in Pasadena, Phoenix, Tucson and in Florida. Una Mayell appears to have been the high bidder for 684 South June Street in the auction of it held in January 1939, probably scooping it up at a bargain price, possibly fully furnished. Hancock Park was a familiar destination; her sister Iva Hamlin had once lived around the corner at 656 South Hudson Avenue. In August 1939, the wedding of Mrs. Hamlin's daughter Joy Laverne took place in her aunt's garden at 684. Una Mayell and her son and grandchildren were still living at 684 when she died at the age of 76 on February 25, 1943. One wonders what she might have thought of Lionel's next marriage, at 47, which took place with some urgency in November 1944; his third wife was 26-year-old Dorothy Bernice Anderson, who'd worked recently as a saleswoman at a Kress five-and-ten-cent store. Their daughter Dorothy Bernice Mayell arrived on May 30, 1945. The Mayells would be moving to Altadena in 1951 and would have two more children. After three marriages, Lionel found salvation with his third wife and became a promoter of Billy Graham, inviting the young preacher to headline youth rallies in Los Angeles as early as 1949. (Graham would in time officiate at Dorothy Jr.'s wedding in 1971.) Mayell would later become involved with the controversial evangelical organization Campus Crusade for Christ, later notable for its paradoxically intolerant views on race and sexual identity
  • Succeeding the Mayells at 684 South June Street was Alfred Edwin Poulsen, owner of a firm producing machinery for the agricultural industry. He moved into 684 with his wife, née Sonia Turney, and their son and two daughters. The Poulsens would remain at 684 until selling the property to real estate developer Alexander Haagen, who was in residence by mid 1958. Alfred Poulson, known as Nugget—or to even more intimate friends as Nug—would die at the age of 49 on March 4, 1960, his widow remarrying less than a year later 
  • Born in Denver in 1919, Alexander Haagen Jr. moved to Hollywood as a child with his parents, backers of carnivals and vaudeville acts. Haagen and his wife Charlotte became important real estate operators in Southern California, early on selling residential properties but with a particular talent for developing commercial lots along nascent freeway corridors. With their all-business drive and willingness to take flyers, the Haagens would go on to build over 100 shopping centers, including projects in South Los Angeles, among them the Vermont-Slauson Shopping Center and a 1985 center in Watts along what had come to be known as "Charcoal Alley" after the 1965 riots. A lengthy profile of Alex Haagen in the Times on October 7, 1987, was by turns laudatory—almost to the point of being a puff piece—and backhandedly complimentary ("A man whom friends seem to understand only in the context of business"; "A chronicle of the Alexander Haagen Company is the story of urban sprawl"). The Haagens moved into 684 South June with their two sons, Alex III and Charals [sic]; the family's tenure is unclear, with a Dave Schneider—possibly the Southland real estate dealer—listed at the address in the 1973 city directory; 684 would appear on the market five years later
  • The Haagens and their two sons had been living with his mother at 332 Lorraine Boulevard in Windsor Square before moving nine blocks west to June Street in 1958. In a reminder than Hancock Park was only a stone's throw from Hollywood both geographically and figuratively, Alex Haagen III got into a scrape in June 1961 when he was arrested along with another 18-year-old after being accused of attacking and seriously injuring a police officer searching for Lana Turner's 17-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane, who had gone on a bender and was missing. No motive for the alleged attack was described in the Hollywood Citizen-News, which carried the only item found describing the arrest; no follow-up reportage on the incident has been found. (Earlier in the year Miss Crane had been released from El Retiro, a juvenile detention facility in the Valley, after serving time for stabbing to death her mother's lover, underworld figure Johnny Stompanato, in the star's Beverly Hills bedroom in 1958)
  • After leaving Hancock Park, the Haagens moved to Palos Verdes Estates, with Alexander being appointed to the board of the California Museum of Science & Industry in May 1983. He later served as president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission
  • 684 South June Street was on the market by early 1978, with classifieds appearing in the Times: "Italian Villa. Newly decorated and landscaped." The price was $390,000. By April, it had come down by $15,000. By July, despite being "newly decorated," it was "Needs your decorating talent; make offer." Perhaps the house did receive some sort of fluff—in June 1980, the price was $685,000, which within weeks was dropped all the way down to $575,000. Rather perversely, in an ad appearing on August 3, 1980, the price had gone back up to $685,000. The value of the house was uncertain, with the large parcel next door soon to be occupied by the three-story, block-long concrete-and-black-glass office building that stands today at the northeast corner of June Street and Wilshire Boulevard  
  • The family of scandal-plagued nursing-home owner Lazare Hendeles was the next occupant of 684 South June Street, having assumed ownership by February 1981. They would remain for over 20 years. In May 1975, Lazare Hendeles, president and owner of the Garden of Lebanon Sanitarium in Downey, and his brother Fred, vice-president and co-owner—he lived at 115 North Rossmore Avenue—were each charged with "two [misdemeanor] counts of failure to report an injury and one count of neglecting duty toward a mentally retarded patient," per the Long Beach Press-Telegram. This was following a three-month investigation into the facility's operations; the Times reported that a total of 25 felony and misdemeanor counts had been issued against employees and owners of the Garden of Lebanon. Lazare Hendeles died in 2001 at the age of 91
  • There have been several owners of 684 South June Street in the intervening years. The property was on the market in early 2013 asking $3,895,000, dropping by $200,000 twice by June. It is reported have sold for $4,948,000 on August 16, 2019 


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT