PLEASE SEE OUR COMPANION HISTORIES





  • Built in 1925 on Lot 203 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: bond broker John Harrison Pike
  • Architect and contractor: Jack Olerich
  • On April 20, 1925, the Department of Buildings issued businessman John Pike a permit for a two-story, 17-room residence and a two-story, 25-by-35-foot garage at 516 South Hudson Avenue. On some later documents, the room count is revised to 14. On June 15, 1926, June Pike was issued a permit by what was now called the Department of Building and Safety for the division of what was termed a gymnasium above the garage into two rooms; Jack Olerich was called back to do the work
  • The financing for 516 South Hudson likely came from John Pike's wife, née June Braun, whose father Frederick William Braun was the owner of the Braun Corporation, a venerable firm—venerable in Los Angeles terms—that was a leading manufacturer of scientific apparatus, laboratory appliances, and chemicals, the latter including a form of cyanide used in the fumigation of orange groves. Frederick Braun, who was also a serious real estate investor, bought 626 South Hudson Avenue a few months after his daughter and most recent son-in-law began construction of their house at 516 a block north


As seen, bee-stung, in the San Francisco Examiner
on November 15, 1922. June Braun Pike is also
seen, after her third divorce, in our story
of 626 South Hudson Avenue,
her parents' house.


  • Frederick Braun appears to have spoiled June, his only child, who would have three marriages before giving up on matrimony. Growing up to attract the press for what constituted good looks in the flapper era, June had married Lloyd George Schultz of San Francisco in December 1917; their daughter Kathryn was born in in April 1920 and their marriage was over in September 1921. Fourteen months later, June married bond broker and confirmed bachelor (per the Times) John Harrison Pike; their daughter Barbara was born in August 1924 and son Frederick Braun Pike (apparently known by his middle name) in December 1926, the family having recently moved into 516, coming from 510 South Arden Boulevard nearby in Windsor Square. In the spring of 1923, the recently-married Pikes had bought and expanded that house before June got restless and decided to build on Hudson Avenue in slightly more fashionable Hancock Park
  • June Braun Schultz Pike's second divorce came in October 1929, after which she went to work for her father managing Braun Properties. Her mother had died at 626 South Hudson in March 1928; post-divorce, June and her children moved into 626 with her father, who was not in good health. It is unclear as to whether she then rented or sold 516 South Hudson to Dr. John Moore Schmoele, who was then married to the second of his four wives, divorcée Nancy Bilicke de Roulet




  • While the owner is unclear, 516 South Hudson Avenue was on the market several times during the Schmoele's tenure. In the fall of 1933, while not naming it, classified ads in the Times claimed that "the price is right"; open houses were held in the spring of 1935; by March 1937, a price of $45,000—$810,000 in 2020 dollars—was given in ads
  • John and Nancy Schmoele left 516 South Hudson by 1937, having bought a house in South Pasadena. There was a move to Beverly Hills in 1940; Nancy, who went so far in her numbing upper-middle-class matronly duty as to serve as president of the Los Angeles Junior League from 1936 to 1938, shot herself in the heart while lying in bed at home in Beverly Hills on January 12, 1941, with her namesake daughter asleep in the next room. Two years and some months later, Dr. Schmoele married 18-years-younger Los Angeles real estate heiress Betty Janss. By 1947, he was divorced and married again
  • Attorney Harold W. Judson and his wife Marjorie owned 516 South Hudson Avenue by 1938; by early 1942 the couple had moved to Encino. On March 26, 1944, a large auction ad appeared in the Times describing the contents of the house being put on block by the Judsons, which the ad referred to as "Los Angeles Socialites." It appears that the house may have remained empty during the war and until it was bought by someone familiar with the neighborhood


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on March 6, 1944


  • By 1948, 516 South Hudson Avenue would be owned by Edward J. Bowen Jr., vice-president of the Standard Pipe & Supply Company, oilfield-equipment manufacturers. Bowen had grown up in Hancock Park just up the street at 336 South Hudson Avenue, which his namesake father had built in 1924. His parents were killed in the crash of a T.A.T.–Maddux Air Lines Ford Trimotor near Oceanside on January 19, 1930, when he was 17; he and his younger brother Jack remained at 336 with a guardian aunt until he married Joan Brandel in July 1937. The family would be selling 336; by the spring of 1940, Edward and Joan and his brother were renting 234 Muirfield Road. Edward Bowen III and Patrick would be born during the war years. Interestingly, Edward Bowen Jr. decided on a radical career change; moving east to attend New York Medical College, he would receive his M.D. in 1948. Jack moved to San Francisco and Edward and Joan bought 516 South Hudson, which, like 234 Muirfield, was an English-style house in the mold of his childhood 336 South Hudson 
  • Misidentifying the seller as "Dr. Edwin J. Bowen, who is on active duty in Japan with the Air Force," an item in the Times on February 7, 1954, announced the recent sale of 516 South Hudson Avenue to Copenhagen-born Otto K. Oleson, Postmaster of Los Angeles then on a homophobic crusade against the mailing of what he deemed to be obscene literature. His objections were eventually overruled by the courts. Oleson further distinguished himself by being charged with standing in the way of job promotion of African-American postal workers; this led to his censure and then, mercifully, his retirement in 1963. He died of undulent fever on January 5, 1964. (Leslie N. Shaw was appointed by President Kennedy to succeed the Oleson, becoming the first  African American postmaster of any major city in the U.S.) Before achieve infamy in his post office gig, Oleson had been a pioneer Hollywood lighting designer, having arrived in Los Angeles by 1916. According to the California Lutheran University website, which reported on Oleson's induction into the Scandinavian American Hall of Fame in February 2012, he became "the first lighting engineer for the Hollywood Bowl and Los Angeles Coliseum. He provided the lighting for the 1927 grand opening of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood and the 1937 opening ceremony of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, which utilized 500 searchlights fed by 30 miles of cable. He also lit expositions, parades, sporting events and parades." Oleson's wife had died in 1953; living with him at 516 was his daughter, Eleanor Baldwin, her husband Richard, and their daughter Karen, who all appear to have left the house after the death of Oleson
  • In the summer of 1964, classifieds appeared in the Times offering 516 South Hudson for sale; no price was specified. Ownership of the house is unclear until 1972; the property was on the market in the fall of 1971 and had found a new owner by late summer of the next year
  • Attorney John P. McNicholas, who would be representing the Roman Catholic Archdicese of Los Angeles in abuse cases, bought 516 South Hudson in 1972; his family was in residence for decades
  • 516 South Hudson Avenue was on the market in early 2013 priced at $4,350,000. A new owner remodeled and reroofed the house and built a new pool and had it back on the market in the fall of 2015 asking $8,845,000. It sold that December for $8,550,000. Done up in dazzling if impersonal blue shelter-magazine splendor, the house was being flipped again in the fall of 2020, asking $11,800,000. As covid-era real estate inflation cooled, the price dropped nearly $2,000,000 before 516 sold for $9,285,000 in August 2021



Illustrations: USCDL; San Francisco Examiner; LAT; Private Collection