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  • Built in 1951 on Lot 9 in Tract 7040 (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 9 was originally Lot 159 of Tract 6388)
  • Original commissioner: real estate developer and builder Benjamin B. Karger as his own home
  • Architect: none indicated on the original building permit; the design would have been that of a draftsman employed by the Karger Construction Company
  • On January 23, 1951, the Department of Building and Safety issued Benjamin Karger a permit for a six-room residence with attached garage at 604 South June Street, a corner site that was among a good number of Hancock Park lots that remained undeveloped through the Depression and war years. A permit issued on March 20 called for a revision of the floor plan and alterations to the house's foundation, caissons now being specified due to filled ground
  • Benjamin Bernard Karger, born in Montreal in 1898, came to the U.S. at the age of eight. He married Hazel Trenholme, a North Dakota native, in Chicago in May 1925 and moved to Amarillo, where Ben went into real estate; their son Joseph Bernard, who'd be known as Barney, was born there in October 1928. Continuing in business in Texas for several more years with his Amarillo firm, the Beverly Realty Company, Karger spent three months in early 1930 looking into market conditions farther west, for a time taking an apartment at the recently completed Ninon at 5712 La Mirada Avenue in Hollywood, where the family was enumerated in the 1930 Federal census. It seems that Karger set his sights on Southern California, a permanent move delayed by the deepening economic crisis after Wall Street laid its egg


Channeling Groucho, tailor Ben Karger was seen in the
Los Angeles Times on June 6, 1938, the day after
his arrest on charges of running a lottery.


  • Ben Karger persevered through the Depression, eventually making it to Los Angeles and reinventing himself as an innovative tailor, setting up in a South Broadway storefront with his older brother Maurice. The innovation had less to do with the clothing and more to do with how the Kargers sold them, which landed them in hot water after the Better Business Bureau tipped off the police. On June 4, 1938, the bunko squad raided the Karger establishment and arrested them for operating a lottery, which, per the Citizen-News, "investigators said was identical in many respects to the New York numbers racket." Ben Karger boasted after being busted that he had "paid out more than $125,000 to satisfied customers," apparently in the form of new suits, in recent years. Prosecutors countered by claiming that he had taken in over $750,000 from customers for lottery tickets, a difference which might explain a small-time haberdasher's return to dealing in real estate and his later move to Hancock Park. Of the eight men arrested in the initial raid, only Ben Karger and his "credit manager" stood trial; convicted in September, small fines in lieu of short jail sentences were collected from the men. Then, in December, the charges were dismissed on appeal. Within the year Ben had set up the B. B. Karger Company, with an office at 155½ North La Brea Avenue. His display ads in the Times read "BUILD YOUR OWN HOME—$150.000 Down $23.50 per mo. is all you need. Less than rent." A tagline appearing in the ads, one perhaps of dubious meaning, was "RATED BUILDER" 
  • In 1948 Ben, Hazel, and Barney Karger were still living in a small bungalow at 238 North Gramercy Place, bought after renting 207 North Windsor Boulevard, a small house in high-end New Windsor Square. By 1950 the Kargers were living in an apartment in a duplex on North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills. It was from there, confident in his postwar real estate success, that Karger built his family a new house at 604 South June Street
  • On August 9, 1953, Ben and Hazel Karger were injured along with another couple riding with them along Telegraph Road in Downey when their car collided head-on with one driven by a 32-year-old South Gate man who was killed in the accident, per The Mirror the next day. Six months later there was an apparent road-rage incident on the northbound Hollywood Freeway; the three Kargers, Barney at the wheel, and a car driven by Thornton Harby, his wife, small daughters, and his parents, City Councilman Harold Harby and Mrs. Harby, collided, according to the councilman, after Barney cut them off as they were decelerating to exit at Vermont Avenue. Both drivers pulled off the road, after which Thornton Harby, egged on by his father, punched Barney in the face. ("And my son was wearing glasses, too," Hazel told police.) Both parties then went to the Central Police Station; there, the senior Harby threw his position around and rather cynically played up the effects of the accident on his grandchildren and blamed the whole incident on Barney Karger, who wanted Thornton arrested. Police told Barney that the incident was a misdemeanor at most and to either make a citizen's arrest or let the matter drop, which seems to have been the end result of the kerfuffle
  • On August 29, 1955, the Department of Building and Safety issued Ben Karger a permit to add a 17-by-41-foot swimming pool behind 604 South June Street; on April 3, 1956, a permit was issued for an 8-by-29-foot cabana. The Kargers were were still living at 604 when Hazel died at the age of 89 on December 5, 1989. When he died at 95 on September 23, 1993, Ben Karger was still in possession of the house 42 years after building it
  • 604 South June Street was on the market in the spring of 2000 asking $1,099,000; it sold for $944,000 in January 2001. On the market again in the spring of 2005 priced at $1,895,000, it sold for $2,001,000 that May
  • 604 South June Street has had at least three owners since Ben Karger left the property and the planet. On March 5, 2013, the Department of Building and Safety issued a permit for a 2,670-square-foot addition and a major remodeling of the house, resulting in the transformation of its façade from a Midcentury style into a retro red-tile-roof Mediterranean design, the dramatic change seen in our illustration above       


Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT