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  • Built in 1925 on Lot 124 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: builder Bert Dale as a speculative project
  • Architect: Bert Dale
  • On April 14, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued Bert Dale permits for a two-story, 10-room residence and a one-story, 21-by-36-foot garage at 683 South June Street
  • The Los Angeles Times of June 6, 1925, reported that Bert Dale had just sold the unfinished property at 683 South June Street to dyeworks owner Abraham Kornblum "for a consideration of approximately $45,000 cash." (The broker noted was Bertha Wolfstein, widowed sister of the widowed Mrs. Philip Newmark; the sisters lived at 316 Lorraine Boulevard in Windsor Square)    
  • Abraham Kornblum's father Morris had first bought the City Steam Dyeing and Cleaning Works, later establishing the Berlin Dye Works—renamed American Dye Works after the Lusitania—with branches all over Los Angeles and in many Southern California cities. Morris's success allowed him to invest extensively in real estate and to move before long from East Washington Street to the house he built at 3143 Wilshire Boulevard. That same year, Morris financed a house for his newly married son (and employee) at 966 South Westmoreland Avenue, just north of Westmoreland Place, a gated development struggling to attract the very rich but which still had the reputation to attract affluent-enough homebuilders to its periphery. Morris died in 1916; by the early 1920s Abraham, like his father a man with a keen sense of real estate, understood that the seriously successful were fast migrating west along the Wilshire Corridor as far as the Pacific; among new destinations, and the most convenient of the newest, was Hancock Park. Abraham Kornblum's new house at 683 South June perhaps turned out to be too close to increasing traffic along Wilshire Boulevard; just three years later, Kornblum decided to move again. Auctioning off 683 in 1928, he bought 109 South Las Palmas Avenue nearby, recently completed by homebuilder David Perel. While 109 was in a quieter block, the restless Kornblum would sell it within a few years and move to Beverly Hills


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1928


  • Large display ads for the auction of 683 South June Street to be held on May 3, 1928, began to appear in late April, describing the property fully; industrialist and philanthropist Emil Brown and his wife Anna were the apparent high bidders
  • On October 7, 1928, a social item in the Times noted that "Mr. and Mrs. Emil Brown will be at home to their friends today from 2 to 5 p.m., and from 8 to 11 p.m. in their new home at 683 South June Street." Born on September 10, 1884, in Bolgrad, now in southwestern Ukraine, Hanina Brownstein arrived penniless in New York via Antwerp on January 4, 1904; that August he declared his intention of becoming a U.S. citizen as Emil Brown. As he told a Times reporter 54 years later, he was escaping "a tremendous wave of anti-Semitic feeling sweeping Russia." After making his way west to Los Angeles, he married Romanian-born Anna Hershkowitz, daughter of a junk dealer, on April 5, 1908; a notice of the couple's having taken out a marriage license in the names of Emil Brownstein and Annie Hershkowitz had appeared in the Record on April 1. While he would use the name Emil Brown from 1904, his name change didn't become official until April 20, 1917, when his citizenship was finally granted. The Browns lived with her parents on Clanton Street (years later renamed East 14th Place after the street became known for gang violence). While the 1910 census enumerated him as a cornice maker at a cornice works—perhaps he was fabricating the ornately stamped tin ceilings of the day—Emil was listed in the city directory of that year partnered with Henry Fisher as tinsmiths on South Main Street. Two years later he opened his own sheet-metal works as Emil Brown & Company at 114 East 14th Street. Mrs. Brown tended to customers up front while Emil worked in the back of the room. Later company history had it that the business started in 1908, a date incorporated into the big sign atop the five-story loft building Brown's success allowed him to build at the southeast corner of East Ninth and Santee streets in 1922. It opened the next year


The Brown building at East Ninth and Santee streets was also home to other businesses including a
firm that produced men and boys' clothing, Topper-Knewbow & Company, advertised here
up along the parapet. Emil Brown had an interest in Topper-Knewbow and served as
its vice-president. The building still stands, in recent times with a Starbucks
coffee shop in the corner space. Now a century old, the building's
original flagpole and rooftop sign framework also survive.
Also still in place is the twin-globe lamppost, if 
not the iconic semaphore traffic signal.


  • The Browns had worked hard, meanwhile producing three children: Louis was born in September 1909, Sylvia Ruth in January 1913, and Harry in December 1914. The Browns bought 308 South Hobart Boulevard, an eight-room Wilshire District house built in 1914; the couple held a joint housewarming and 10th-anniversary party there on April 14, 1918. The burgeoning Wilshire District straddled the eponymous boulevard over a large swath of a rolling plain west of Vermont Avenue; seeing rapid and dense development since the turn of the century, the district was receiving many variously affluent homeowners moving on from West Adams and other areas that were Los Angeles's first suburban districts. In turn, the density of such new subdivisions as the Browns' Francisca Park—"The Beauty Spot in the Heart of the Wilshire District," as tract ads had it—soon drove their richest homeowners a little farther west toward developments with roomier lots such as Windsor Square and Hancock Park. It was from 308 South Hobart—which would stand until 1958—that the Browns would move to 683 South June after less than a decade; their purse had also grown with the great success of Emil Brown & Company. While that firm was going strong supplying copper and sheet metal, Brown's Dura Steel Products line, established by the early '30s, was no less of a success as a separate entity supplying metal cabinetry and furnishings
  • Emil and Anna Brown prospered through their hard work to not only move west from Clanton Street to live in Hancock Park but with the consciences to give back in the form of serious philanthropy. Per a Times encomium at his death, Mr. Brown was "grateful for the opportunities which had been afforded him in the United States" and as such "devoted himself to charitable causes, stating that helping others was his way of expressing thanks for fortune's favors." On September 4, 1926, the Evening Express featured his efforts as chairman of the building committee for the new Sinai Temple at Fourth and New Hampshire streets, to be dedicated the next day; established in 1906, Sinai Temple had become the oldest and largest conservative congregation in Southern California sponsoring traditional Judaism. In September 1947, the Eastside Journal reported on the dedication of the new Emil Brown Annex Building of the Jewish Home for the Aged in Boyle Heights on the 21st of that month. A testimonial dinner was to be held that evening honoring the Browns, whose outright donation had made the Home's expansion possible. The entire December 31, 1954, issue of the California Jewish Voice was dedicated to Emil Brown and, in articles and photographs, cited his many causes including Mount Sinai and Cedars of Lebanon hospitals and the United Jewish Welfare Fund and the Home for the Aged. Brown was a founder of the City of Hope and on the boards of numerous organizations. All this, per the Citizen-News, while still, at the age of 75, going to the office every morning to supervise Emil Brown & Company and Dura Steel Products
 

As seen in the Evening Express on September 4, 1926


  • Louis Brown was graduated from U.S.C. (where he was later a law professor) in 1930 and from Harvard Law on June 10, 1933. He would go on to have a distinguished career as a scholar whose books laid the groundwork for preventive law, which became a legal discipline and specialty that counseled unmarried couples living together and led to the 1979 California court decision in the case of actor Lee Marvin and his companion Michelle Triola Marvin that set a precedent for "palimony." In June 1937 Louis Brown married the equally remarkable Syracuse-born Hermione Kopp of Beverly Hills, who became a trust and estates lawyer via Wellesley, George Washington Law, and U.S.C.; during her career she counseled Hollywood notables including Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, and Steven Spielberg. After many prenuptial entertainments during the summer of 1933, Ruth Brown married Cincinnati-born attorney Leo Daniel Epstein at 683 South June Street on August 27. The Record reported delightedly that the ceremony ended with the ritual stamping of a crystal goblet. Working for the family businesses, Harry Brown remained living with his parents at 683 South June Street until he married Thelma Harriet Rubenstein of New York at the Ambassador in January 1942; they would live at 621 North Las Palmas Avenue in Hancock Park


As seen in the Los Angeles Times, April 6, 1958


  • Emil and Anna Brown celebrated their 50th anniversary with a large gathering at 683 South June Street on April 5, 1958. The Times and Citizen-News covered the milestone with articles extolling the good works of the couple and cited the many citations received for the support of organizations such as the Red Cross (from President Truman) and Israel (from Israeli president David Ben-Gurion). The Browns flew to Hawaii the next day to celebrate on their own. Emil Brown was still living at 683 South June Street when he died at Cedars of Lebanon only a few months later on July 15. He was 79. On October 22, 1958, Mrs. Brown was issued a permit for termite remediation at 683; she appears to have then offered the property for rent, asking $600 a month, and move to a smaller house at 521 Hillgreen Drive in Beverly Hills
  • The Norwegian government was renting 683 South June Street as its consulate by early 1961. Occupants during the 1960s included real estate developer Arnold Lorber
  • In mid 1981, the builders of the new office complex at 4801 Wilshire Boulevard next door had bought 683 South June Street as part of its development plan. Over the next three years, the Condo West Corporation would replace the original garage with one for three cars with a guest house above and add a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool. Later owners have carried out various interior remodelings




As seen in the Los Angeles Times on March 10, 1984, and October 5, 1986 




Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; California State Library; Evening Express