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616 South June Street (1st)




  • The first of three residences built on Lot 8 in Tract 7040 and numbered 616 South June Street was erected in 1928. (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 8 was originally Lot 160 of Tract 6388.) The second 616 was built in 1963 and the third in 2016
  • Original commissioner: property developer Bernard P. Rand as his own home
  • Architect: Vernon Winthrop Houghton
  • On October 17, 1928, the Department of Building and Safety issued Bernard P. Rand a permit for a two-story, 12-room residence with attached garage at 614 South June Street, an address revised to 616 South June before completion. The owner's Rand Construction Company was noted as the contractor. On July 21, 1930, a permit was issued to Rand to enlarge the house's foundation "to decrease settlement." The engineer in charge of this alteration was Zara Witkin of the Herbert M. Baruch Corporation
  • Born in Minneapolis as Bernard P. Rosenstein on July 19, 1884, Bernard Rand had taken his new surname by 1922 after moving his family to St. Paul's grandest residential thoroughfare, fabled Summit Avenue. He had married Nadine Lesem of Louisiana, Missouri, in June 1907, a rabbi officiating; it is unclear as to whether the name change was merely commercially pragmatic or involved a change of spiritual perspective. If social integration into the Protestant/Catholic establishments of St. Paul and then Los Angeles was the goal, the Rands achieved it, in time gaining a listing out west in the exclusive Southwest Blue Book. Bernard Rand was well established as a Twin Cities builder under his new name before moving full-time to Los Angeles, after winter visits, by 1927. The family's first house in Hancock Park involved renting 437 South Las Palmas Avenue, an English-style house built in 1924 and designed by popular architect Ray J. Kieffer. It is unclear as to how the Rands came to choose Vernon Houghton to design the English-style 616 South June Street; established for some time as a San Francisco architect, Houghton had begun to work in Los Angeles by 1925 but does not seem to have been known for residential work
  • Bernardine Rand married Henry Ullman of Detroit in January 1931; Richard, who would take over the Rand Construction Company from his father, was still living with his parents at 616 South June Street when he married Alice Kersten of Los Angeles in February 1947. Bernard Rand died on March 7, 1950; per obituaries in The Mirror and the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, he was en route back home to 616 from Palm Springs when death came. Nadine Rand remained at 616 for two years before putting the house on the market, with ads appearing in the Times in the summer of 1952. Mrs. Rand would be moving nearby to an apartment at Country Club Manor on Rossmore Avenue. She died there on July 30, 1964. During her decades in Los Angeles, she had become active enough in establishment-level civic endeavors, including in the Assistance League (a local rival to the Junior League), the Women's Committee of the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Opera Guild, and other organizations to rate a respectable editorial obituary in the Times
  • North Carolina-born Edward J. Sargent, production manager of the firm his late father had established in Huntington Park in 1920, the Sargent Engineering Corporation, a distributor of oil-well equipment, purchased 616 South June Street very soon after it was put on the market in the summer of 1952. In an article describing the new edition of the Los Angeles Blue Book (a seemingly redundant and also-ran rival to the Southwest Blue Book, likewise emulating the publications of the definitive New York–based Social Register), the Citizen-News of October 11, 1952, noted Sargent's move from 145 North Highland Avenue, at the edge of Hancock Park, to 616 South June. One of seven sons (and three daughters) of Sumner B. Sargent of Huntington Park, he had married Pennsylvania-born Marie Patricia Murphy of Venice in June 1932. At the time of its move to June Street, the Sargent family included 13-year-old Timothy, 6-year-old Terrence, and 2-year-old Norah
  • The Edward J. Sargents were still living at 616 South June Street but apparently away when, on the afternoon of November 19, 1962, fire broke out on the second floor of the house following what a witness described as an explosion. The roof and entire second floor was reported to have been destroyed; it seems there was no saving the building. In the aftermath the Sargents sold the property to a developer and moved to an apartment at the recently built Majorca on North Rossmore Avenue
  • On July 17, 1963, permits were issued by the Department of Building and Safety to the Concord Development Company for the construction of a two-story, 70-by-58-foot residence and a detached one-story, 20-by-20-foot garage on the site of the original burned 616 South June Street. A demolition permit for the remains of that house was issued on August 27, though for some reason in the name of a Mell Kaufman, with Carlos Construction Company contracted for the work. A certificate of occupancy for the completed new house was issued to Concord Development on February 18, 1965; there was a new owner of the property by spring


Illustration: Citizen-News