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  • Completed in 1926 on Lot 207 in Tract 6388
  • Original commissioner: C. Antoinette Lichtenberger
  • Architect: Morgan, Walls & Clements (Octavius W. Morgan and Stiles O. Clements; John A. Walls had died in 1922)
  • On October 25, 1925, the Department of Building and Safety issued C. Antoinette Lichtenberger a permit for a 15-room residence at 626 South Hudson Avenue; on February 18, 1926, Mrs. Lichtenberger was issued a permit allowing for alterations to the roof design of the house's conservatory. On March 4, 1926, Mrs. Lichtenberger was issued a permit for a complementary Morgan, Walls & Clements–designed, two-story, 25-by-30-foot garage and chauffeur's quarters on the property. This design was not built; a permit for a second, one-story garage was issued to Mrs. Lichtenberger on August 12, 1926, this design being built at the northeast corner of the lot. The property changed hands soon after, perhaps even before completion of the garage, the new owner, Frederick W. Braun—about which more in due course—being issued a permit on December 1, 1926, for the addition of a second story to the building. That permit, erroneously citing the address as "616 So. Hudson Ave." though citing the correct lot number, indicates Morgan, Wall & Clements as architect and appears to renew that firm's design for Mrs. Lichtenberger: "A Chauffeur's quarters consisting of a Living Room, Kitchen, Bed Room and Bath, shall be added on top of an exisitng one story garage that was built with a view to adding a future second floor."
  • Clara Antoinette Denker Lichtenberger was the wife of George Lichtenberger, vice-president of the Lichtenberger-Ferguson Company, a saddlery and—keeping up with the times—an automotive-tire distributor. (George Lichtenberger's father, Louis, had arrived in Los Angeles in 1863 and became a local carriage manufacturer.) Mrs. Lichtenberger was a daughter of Louise Denker of 3820 West Adams Boulevard and a sister of Marie Lichtenberger, who was married to George's brother Louis, president of Lichtenberger-Ferguson, and who built 3701 West Adams in 1924 despite the clear eclipse of the neighborhood by newer subdivisions such as Hancock Park. Unlike her mother and sister, Antoinette Lichtenberger was acutely attuned to the westward drift of Los Angeles's residential fashions—within two years, she brushed off Hancock Park and began building a house in Pacific Palisades, selling 626 South Hudson even before it was finished, she and George living during construction at the Los Angeles Country Club and the Biltmore
  • Most likely never having moved in, the Lichtenbergers sold 626 South Hudson Avenue to Frederick William Braun, president of the Braun Corporation, in the fall of 1926. In 1888 Braun and Lucien Napoleon Brunswig, a New Orleanian whose firm headquartered there was said to be the largest drug wholesaler in the south, had founded F. W. Braun & Company, the first wholesale drug company "west of Kansas City and south of San Francisco." Braun sold his interest to Brunswig in 1907, the company becoming the Brunswig Drug Company; on June 5, 1907, the Times reported that Braun was taking over the part of the former business that supplied miners, assayers, and chemists, this endeavor prospering as the Braun Corporation and evolving into a leading manufacturer of scientific apparatus, laboratory appliances, and chemicals, the latter including a form of cyanide for the fumigation of orange groves. Braun was an ardent supporter in the development of the Los Angeles harbor and, being a prototypical capitalist of his era, "a strong sponsor of industrial freedom." Braun's civic boosterism was not entirely without self-interest—flush with funds to invest, Braun also, quite typically for rich Angelenos of the time, invested in real estate. In 1915, he bought the three-year-old Bryson Apartments, which would become part of the portfolio of his F. W. Braun Properties business. As for his domestic arrangements, Braun, who had married the former Kathryn Bear in 1892, bounced around quite a bit. From First and Pearl streets (Pearl became Figueroa in 1897) the Brauns moved to 1052 South Beacon in the Westlake District—their daughter June Elizabeth was born there on June 20, 1897—and then in 1902 to 15 Chester Place, that enclave not yet Doheny-dominated. Vascillating between emerging Wilshire Boulevard developments and the still fashionable West Adams district, it was on to 625 Shatto Place and then 2157 South Harvard Boulevard in West Adams Heights. Then, all the way up to Pasadena before a stop at the new Talmadge Apartments at Wilshire and Berendo while Braun completed his deal with Antoinette Lichtenberger for 626 South Hudson Avenue
  • On December 18, 1926, the Department of Building and Safety issued F. W. Braun a permit for alterations to a porch at 626 South Hudson Avenue, the Commercial Fixture Company in charge of the project; that permit erroneously indicated the address as "616 So. Hudson Ave." though citing the correct lot number. On April 1, 1929, Braun was issued a permit to add sleeping porches and a bath to the residence; Morgan, Walls & Clements was hired to design these alterations


It's in the eyes: Frederick W. Braun and his daughter June Braun Pike


  • Fred and Kathryn Braun appear to have spoiled June, their 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. Divorce number two came in October 1929, after which June went to work for her father managing Braun Properties
  • Kathryn Bear Braun died of pneumonia at 626 South Hudson Avenue on March 4, 1928. She was 67. Frank Braun was not in great health himself; he was reported in the Times of August 10, 1932, as having been confined to bed at 626 suffering from heart trouble. A sizable news obituary appearing on February 10, 1935, in the same paper, headlined "Life Closes" and illustrated with his picture, reported Braun's death at 626 the day before after suffering a heart attack
  • June Braun Schultz Pike carried on at 626 South Hudson. Although she hadn't the benefit of Google to find that he had been jailed after driving drunk and causing a serious accident at Third and Rossmore in September 1925, June no doubt knew of Hugh Smith Nesbitt's "racy" reputation. A soda-fountain-supplies manufacturer and racing-stable owner, Nesbitt's horses and cash from his Nesbitt Fruit Products Company, started in 1924 and now producing its famous orange drink, apparently made up for what he lacked in terms of physiognomy; he appears to have swept June off her feet. The author of the "Chatterbox" column in the Times of January 16, 1940, reported her third marriage in Riverside the week before, apparently a surprise to friends. (Nesbitt's first wife Marie had died at her parents' Detroit home in 1936 after a long illness.) Realizing she'd put her foot in it if he hadn't realized he'd put his in first, the honeymoon was over not long after the newlyweds—plus his daughter Patricia and son Charles and her children Barbara and Braun—returned from a Hawaiian vacation in August 1940. While it still looked like she would be living at Nesbitt's house on Palm Drive in Beverly Hills, she put 626 South Hudson on the market in December 1940. Once the end came, June quickly dropped her third married name and moved to the Talmadge, apparently having decided to throw in the marital towel. She made an impression on Nesbitt, however; he left her $10,000 in his will, which came into effect on November 18, 1943, after he grabbed a drink off another man's table in the bar of the Jefferson Hotel in St. Louis—he was there for a bottlers' convention—slugged it, and then got slugged himself and knocked to the floor. The death certificate indicated a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage and "excusable homicide." (Patty Nesbitt had married in New York six months earlier.) While June Pike most likely didn't need Nesbitt's money, administering as she still did Braun Properties, she decided to live in rented digs for the rest of her life. After the Talmadge, she moved to a new rented house in Brentwood. There would follow an apartment at the Westwood Towers, then one at Park La Brea, and by 1960 a flat at Country Club Manor back in Hancock Park 
  • Although she still had 626 South Hudson on the market in the early months of 1941, it appears that June Pike may have wound up renting 626 South Hudson Avenue for the time being. Occupying the house by early 1942 was automobile dealer turned finance man Stanley Woodruff Smith, who had been renting 679 South Hobart Boulevard. Smith had, interestingly, built 144 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park in 1921, selling and moving to San Francisco in the fall of 1926. Returning to Los Angeles by 1938, Smith rented 679 South Hobart before 626 South Hudson, repurchasing 144 South Rossmore in 1944. Smith's wife Florence was the daughter of real estate developer Percy H. Clark, who had built 3425 West Adams Boulevard in 1912. In a wedding featured in the Times and rating an item in the New York Herald Tribune as well, the Smiths' daughter Patricia was married at St. John's Episcopal in West Adams on May 2, 1942, with a reception afterward at 626 South Hudson Avenue
  • June Pike managed to sell 626 South Hudson Avenue to dress manufacturer James Wendell Hunt in 1944, although she might have rented it to him initially. Hunt and his wife Carolyn owned Hunt, Broughton & Hunt, which was known for its "Jean Carol" line, named after Mrs. Hunt and their daughter Jeannette. In 1936, Mrs. Hunt opened a subsidiary, the Jean Carol School, in Morgan, Walls, & Clements's Churrigueresque-detailed store-and-studio building at the northwest corner of Wilshire and Carondelet. The school was for the training of future dress designers. The Hunts moved to 626 from a rented house in Hancock Park at 125 North Las Palmas Avenue. On May 12, 1946, the Hunts threw a reception "for several hundred friends" in honor of Jeannette, who had recently eloped to Yuma, marrying Denis Alexander on May 4. The Hunts were advertising 626 South Hudson for sale in the spring of 1951, in the midst of the Korean War—"owners anxious to sell" noted classifieds. The Hunts still owned the house in the summer of 1954, though were getting ready once again to sell; in preparation, they had the house sandblasted, as was a commonly done to stucco houses in the heavy smog era
  • Arthur Towvim was a sales representative for a clock and watch manufacturer, as his father had been back east; he must have sold a lot of timepieces given that he became a property investor and was moving on up to Hancock Park. In 1954 Towvim and his wife Fay, a former stage actress, and their young daughters Dorothy and Joan moved into 626 South Hudson from a much smaller Hancock Park house at 520 North Las Palmas Avenue. By 1965, the Towvims had left 626 and moved to yet another house in the neighborhood, one at around the corner at 645 Rimpau Boulevard


A lizard and his protégé on the cover of Time's March 22, 1954, issue


  • While notorious for his role in the Army-McCarthy hearings as Roy Cohn's tall and attractive and adored right-hand man, Andover- and Harvard-educated Gerard David Schine was nothing if not ambitious, indefatigable, and entitled. Possessing a sense of self-worth fueled by family money derived from hotels, he managed to become a figure in Hollywood—despite his opportunistic red-baiting that had rated an appearance with Cohn on the cover of Time—producing among other films The French Connection. (While in later life Schine refused to comment on his Cohn/McCarthy associations, Cohn hoped it would lead his obituaries, which it did.) As a music producer he supplied material to well-known singers including Lou Rawls. Among his other business ventures was television post-production and tape-duplication services; he was listed as a "personal manager" by Billboard magazine. Schine was always interested in the latest technology, promoting in particular high-defintion TV. On top of all that, he was president of the Ambassador Hotel Company, though in 1967 he faced tax-evasion charges when it was discovered that funds from that enterprise were being used to bail out a hotel project of his in Pomona. (Do people overnight in Pomona?) On the domestic front, Schine and his Swedish-born wife, Hillevi Rombin—perhaps predicatably a former Miss Universe, and apparently a former girlfriend of Conrad Hilton—would have six children. After moving into 626 South Hudson Avenue in the mid 1960s, it is unclear as to how long the family occupied the house before moving on to Beverly Hills. The Schines, reportedly bankrupt, were killed when their single-engine plane piloted by their son Berndt crashed after takeoff from Burbank on June 19, 1996. Quite a life, if one unshakably highlighted by his Cohn connection. Described by its gimlet-eyed author as a "year-end roundup of deceased notable Americans," Tony Kushner's one-act play "G. David Schine in Hell" appeared in December 1996
  • Moving from Lucille Ball's longtime house at 1000 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills (now renovated in a bland, tan La Quinta–motel style), Richard and Judith were living at 626 South Hudson Avenue by 1995. The couple carried out interior remodelings and added a swimming pool. A subsequent owner has renovated and made additions to the house



Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT; Ancestry