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  • Built in 1927 on Lot 130 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: Maurice Mair Cohen, a furniture manufacturer who would become a film producer and founder of the Hollywood Palladium
  • Architect: S. Charles Lee
  • On January 13, 1927, the Department of Building and Safety issued M. M. Cohen permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 18-by-20-foot garage at 619 South June Street
  • Having chosen up-and-coming movie-theater designer S. Charles Lee as the architect of his new house, it seems that Maury Cohen, as he was sometimes known, may have developed an interest in making films well before he became a Poverty Row producer. Lee's first significant movie palace project, the 1,000-seat Tower Theatre downtown at Eighth Street and Broadway, was completed in 1927, the same year as was 619 South June Street
  • Maurice Cohen was vice-president and general manager of the local operations of S. Karpen & Bros., the Chicago-based furniture manufacturers. In 1921, soon after his arrival on the west coast from from Chicago, where he was a ladies' clothing retailer, Cohen and William N. Roberts founded the Roberts-Cohen Company, which started out as cabinetmakers and grew rapidly; in early 1927 the firm was acquired by Karpen, which had become a large supplier of stock for local stores such as Barker Brothers. The Roberts-Cohen operation in Huntington Park became Karpen's Los Angeles branch, adding to its plants in the Chicago area and in New York. It seems that Cohen decided to celebrate the sale of his firm by building 619 South June Street
  • Cohen moved into 619 South June Street with his wife Fannie, sons Herbert and Richard, and daughter Betty Jeanne. The family wouldn't be staying long. In the summer of 1927, just when the Cohens would have been moving into 619 if not before, Mr. Cohen was indicted along with 40 or so other big Southland muckety-mucks including Motley H. Flint, Harry M. Haldeman, Adolph Ramish, Charles F. Stern, his next-door neighbor David Gordon of 629 South June Street, and, perhaps most prominently, Cecil B. De Mille and Louis B. Mayer in the famous Julian Petroleum scandals that had recently been exposed. Cohen was indicted for conspiracy to violate the state usury act
  • In January 1929, just a year and a half after the Cohens moved into 619 South June Street, the house was being offered for sale by brokers O'Connell & White: "INSTRUCTIONS FROM OWNER Sell my residence quick: It's a wonderful new residence located at 619 SO. JUNE ST. in exclusive Hancock Park on a high lot 100x220', beautifully landscaped. This home was built by the owner for his own use with extreme care as to detail and construction. All steel sash plate glass windows, five unit heating systems, hand carved blk. walnut trim on first floor, hardwood finish, hand-rubbed, on the 2nd floor. 5 bdrms. and 3 refined colored bathrooms. Lge. living room, arched ceiling, dining rm. in blk. walnut, library with large picture window looking into beautiful gardens. Master brm. 18x30. Also billiard & amusement rm. If there is anything missing in this home we will let you tell us about it. This residence is sumptuously furnished & can be purchased with or without. We are prepared to offer you this magnificent home at a price that will astound you & if you mean business we will show you that we are ready and willing to meet you half way." The pitch did not work; the house went on the block
  • In March 1929, 619 South June Street was being auctioned off. Large illustrated ads appeared in the Times offering a "pretentious residence"—before "pretentious" had taken on negative connotations—at an "Auction Supreme" on March 19. The ad copy included a detailed room-by-room description of the building and of its garage and grounds. The auction reserve seems not to have been met; sales ads in the Times in April were offering it awkwardly as being a house "built for a home not to sell."  In any case, a buyer stepped up by the summer and the Cohen family moved not far way to 126 Fremont Place, which they leased, later moving to a rental in Beverly Hills


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on March 17, 1929


  • It wouldn't be until 1930 that charges against Maurice Cohen relating to the Julian scandal would be dropped, but by this time he seems to have backed off of stock speculation, perhaps understanding earlier than most that Wall Street was heading toward a reckoning. He had, however, left furniture manufacturing to form the Equitable Discount Corporation, specializing in commercial financing, in November 1928. And then, the business no doubt affected by the Depression, Cohen turned to a local industry that would do well in the downturn. He became a Hollywood producer. His Invicible Pictures, which operated along with Chesterfield Pictures in an arrangement whereby the companies were able to use Universal Studios, and later Pathé, for production and distribution, was among the Poverty Row studios that supplied theaters across the country during the '30s. Cohen moved on to found the renowned Hollywood Palladium, which opened on October 31, 1940 
  • Acquiring 619 South June Street by the summer of 1929 were Frank H. Nichols, a banker, and his wife, née Effie Dell Gillespie, who'd moved west from Des Moines in 1903. On August 10, 1929, the Evening Express reported that "Captain and Mrs. F. H. Nichols, who for many years made their home at 977 Menlo, have just moved into their newly completed home [sic] at 619 South June Street." Nichols's honorific appears to have come from his wartime service; he'd served as treasurer of the Iowa Association of Southern California. The Nicholses had built 977 Menlo Avenue in 1906 and were representative of the cohort now abandoning the fading West Adams district for newer, more fashionable neighborhoods such as Hancock Park. It was just the two of them in the big new house, apparently a retirement prize, Frank having recently left his vice-presidency at California Bank. Their daughter Marie Vivian had married in December 1923 and was living in Oklahoma. Effie continued as a proper Ebell matron, the club having moved from Figueroa Street to its current location on Wilshire Boulevard in September 1927. She and her husband were still living at 619 when she died at Alvarado Hospital on July 7, 1938. Frank stayed on at 619 for another year before placing the house on the market; an ad appearing in the Times on October 22, 1939, called the property "the best bargain in Los Angeles. This large Italian home...can be purchased so cheap it is unbelievable.... Owner retired & lives alone. Represents invest. on his part in excess of $60,000." The price was $22,000, "no dickering."
  • Apparently agreeing to pay $22,000 ($480,000 in 2023 currency) for 619 South June Street in 1939 was Brooklyn-born ladies' underwear manufacturer Samuel Bernard Goldberg, who within a few years of his move to Hancock Park changed his name to Samuel Bernard Gerry. Had he gone so far with wartime patriotism if not toward the subdivision's prevailing faiths as to take the name of Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence? Before his surname appeared on draft board records as Gerry in February 1942, Samuel Goldberg annexed the rear 79.98 feet of the northerly adjacent Lot 131 of Tract 6388 and built a swimming pool there (permits for the nine-room residence addressed 601 South June Street on the balance of Lot 131 were issued to owner Ruth Neuberger by the Department of Building and Safety on November 17, 1941). Permits were issued to Samuel Goldberg on September 30 for the addition of two eight-by-six-foot "bath lockers" poolside
  • Whatever his surname, Samuel Gerry was very much a capitalist in the Hancock Park vein; during his family's time on June Street he would be planning the expansion of his business real estate on South Los Angeles Street, commissioning a nine-story, late Streamline Moderne loft structure, though by the time of its completion the Gerrys were preparing to move to Beverly Hills. The Gerry Building survives as an especially distinctive Fashion District landmark


The Gerry Building, 910 South Los Angeles Street, soon after completion


  • Moving from 462 South McCadden Place, which they'd owned for the past five years, were attorney Frederick Ingleby Richman and his wife, née Lois Lovina McQuistion, their daughter Loisjane, and son Fred (known as Fritz), in residence by the fall of 1946. In odd items appearing annually in the Times over the next number of years, the first on December 12, 1946, there were variation of this social note: "Lois and Fred Richman have extended very clever invitations for the initiation of members of the He Man's Club at 619 S. June St.... Just in case you don't know, the Richmans give the following identification: 'A He Man is one who goes swimming in the pool at this time of year!' If contemplating the plunge, bring your suit and towel. Don't stay way because you lack the fortitude to become a He Man!" In 1949 the paper included the information that Mrs. Richman "is prominent in club and PTA circles, an Ebellite of long standing." Indeed, many dozen mentions of her club meetings, many held at 619 South June, appeared in the the press over the years, so many that it would lead to her husband's divorce filing in October 1952. An Associated Press item in various publications that month reported that Fred Richman portrayed himself as a "women's club widower...asserting that [his wife] devoted so much time to club duties that she neglected her own home." (It was not a good year at 619: Swimming would be over, too. In July, 12-year-old visitor Noreen Mink fell into the pool and, unable to swim, had to be rescued and given artificial respiration by Boy Scout Fritz Richman.) The Richmans presumably separated pending divorce, Lois remaining in the house until it went on the market in the spring of 1954. Ads running in the Times that May gave no asking price but were headed with the words "BARGAIN—cashout." Frederick was not letting grass grow under his feet. Divorce decree in hand, he married again on Thanksgiving Eve 1954; his bride was Mrs. Laurence Thayer Bourne, whose first husband had died in August 1950.  The ceremony took place at the Paul Williams–designed Beverly Hills home of her friend Errett Lobban Cord. The second Mrs. Richman, née Katharine Jean, had a daughter, Kay Gates, who served as her attendant at the wedding; Fritz Richman served his father as best man. After the honeymoon, the newlyweds would be be moving to 87 Fremont Place, which actress Sigourney Weaver's grandfather Sylvester Weaver had built in 1923 
  • 619 South June Street was not sold for some time after being placed on the market in the spring of 1954; it appears that Lois Richman retained possession until 1959. While she took an apartment at Park La Brea, being listed there in the 1955 Southwest Blue Book, she was listed in the 1956 city directory at 619 South June. The constant entertaining of various fellow club members seems to have slowed, Lois perhaps realizing what it had cost her. She advertised her 1952 Cadillac Series 62 sedan in the Times in January 1957, available to see at 619. Two years later, another classified ad appeared regarding a weekend sale at 619 South June: "Owner Must Sell 14 rooms of custom-built furniture & accessories from palatial Hancock Park home." An important new owner—unless he was a renter—would be moving in
  • Nebraska-born utilities executive Jack King Horton, his wife née Betty McGee, their daughters Judy and Sally, and son Harold moved into 619 South June Street in 1959; that February, Horton had been named president of Southern California Edison. Stanford '36, he was trained as a lawyer and entered the utilities business in 1944. Rising through the ranks of various power companies including P.G. & E., he would be advancing at Edison to become C.E.O. and chairman of the board; even still, the Hortons moved to the much more modest 315 South Windsor Boulevard in Windsor Square in 1964
  • Czech-born real estate developer Jan Czuker acquired 619 South June Street in 1964; on August 18 of that year he was issued a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for an interior remodeling of the house
  • Later owners of 619 South June Street have converted part of the original garage into accessory living quarters, added a second story to it, demolished the earlier pool on the flag replacing it with a tennis court, built a new pool behind the house, and made rear additions to the residence


Illustrations: LAPL