XXXVI. CENTENARY OF THE CITY--ELECTRIC LIGHT
1881-1884
The year 1881 opened with what, for Los Angeles, was a curious natural phenomenon--snow falling in February and covering the streets and plains with a white mantle. So rare was the novelty that many residents then saw the oddly-shaped flakes for the first time. It was about that time, according to my recollection, that another attempt was made to advertise Los Angeles through her far-famed climate, an effort which had a very amusing termination. Prominent men of our city invited the California Editorial Association, of which Frank Pixley of the Argonaut was President, to meet in Los Angeles that year, with the far-sighted intention of having them give wider publicity to the charms and fame of our winters. During this convention, a banquet was held in the dining-room of the St. Elmo Hotel, then perhaps called the Cosmopolitan. After a fine repast and a flow of brilliant eloquence, principally devoted to extolling our climatic wonders, the participants dispersed. But what was the surprised embarrassment of the Los Angeles boomers, on making their exit, to find pieces of ice hanging from all points of vantage and an intense cold permeating and stiffening their bones. Thus ended, amid the few icicles Los Angeles has ever known, the first official attempt to extend the celebrity of our glorious and seductive climate.
In February, Nathaniel C. Carter, to whom I have referred as a pioneer in arranging railroad excursions for tourists coming to California, bought from E. J. Baldwin some eleven hundred acres of the Santa Anita Ranch, comprising the northern and wilder portion which sloped down from the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains. This he subdivided, piping water from the hills; and by wide advertising he established Sierra Madre, appropriating the name already selected by a neighboring colony.
In 1881, J. M. Guinn, who for a decade or more had been Principal of the schools at Anaheim, was made Superintendent of Los Angeles City Schools.
A tragedy attracted unusual attention in the early eighties, owing, in part, to the social connections of the persons involved. Francisco, or Chico Forster, as he was popularly called, the sporting son of Don Juan Forster, had been keeping company with a Señorita Abarta, a young woman of superb stature, whose father was French and mother was Mexican; and having promised to marry her, he betrayed her confidence. Her insistence that Forster should keep his word had its dénouement when, one day, at her behest, they visited the Plaza church; but Forster so far endeavored to postpone the ceremony that he returned to the carriage, in which he had left her, declaring that no priest could be found. Then they drove around until they reached the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets, half a block from H. Newmark & Company's. There the young woman left the carriage, followed by Forster; and on reaching the sidewalk, she said to him in Spanish, "¿Chico, que vas hacer?" ("What are you going to do?") Forster gave some evasive answer, and Señorita Abarta shot him dead. She was arrested and tried; but owing to the expert evidence in her behalf given by Dr. Joseph Kurtz she was exonerated, to the satisfaction of nearly the entire community. Among those who followed the proceedings closely with a view to publishing the dramatic story was George Butler Griffin, traveler and journalist, who, having recently arrived, had joined the staff of the Express, later becoming somewhat noted as a student of local history.
At a meeting in Turnverein Hall, on March 24th, the German Ladies' Benevolent Society of Los Angeles, so long known for its commendable work, was organized. Mrs. John Milner was elected President; Mrs. D. Mahlstedt, Vice-President; Mrs. John Benner, Secretary; and Mrs. Jacob Kuhrts, Treasurer.
Savarie J., alias Professor Brewster, was a simple-minded freak of the freakish eighties, who dropped into Los Angeles--as such characters generally do--without anyone knowing much about his origin. It was during the time that walking matches were much in vogue, and whenever one of these took place, Savarie J. was sure to participate. He was the only man in town that took Savarie J. seriously, and I assume that he was generally entered rather to attract spectators than for any other purpose. One day the Professor disappeared and no clue to his whereabouts could be discovered until his dead body was found far out on the desert. He had walked once too often and too far!
Fabian was a Frenchman and a jack-at-all-trades doing odd jobs around town, whose temperament and out-spoken way of expressing himself used to produce both amusement and surprise. On one occasion, when he took offense at the daughter of a prominent family for whom he was working, he sought out the lady of the house and said to her: "Madam, your sons are all right, but your daughters are no good!"
Two other names not forgotten by householders of an earlier day in Los Angeles are John Hall and Henry Buddin. The former, whose complexion was as black as his soul was white, came to Los Angeles a great many years ago. He was a whitewasher by trade and followed this calling for a livelihood, later giving it up to run an express wagon; and I can still see John plying about town and driving in summer between Los Angeles and Santa Monica, his wagon piled high with household effects, as our good citizens moved from one dwelling to another or went on their way to the shore of the sea. I remember, also, that one day some unnatural parent left a newborn, white infant on John Hall's steps. He was never able to locate the mother of the little fellow, and therefore took the foundling into his home and raised him as his son. Moses was the name John very appropriately bestowed upon the baby; and the white lad grew into manhood in the midst of this negro family. Like Fabian, Buddin proved himself handy in doing odd jobs of carpentering and upholstering, and was in frequent demand.
On September 5th, at the conclusion of the City's first century, or, more strictly speaking, one hundred years and a day after the founding of Los Angeles, a noteworthy celebration was undertaken. A population of about twelve thousand was all that Los Angeles then boasted; but visitors added greatly to the crowd, and the town took on a true holiday appearance. Main Street was decorated with an arch, bearing the inclusive figures, 1781-1881; and the variegated procession, under the grand marshalship of General George Stoneman, was made up of such vehicles, costumed passengers and riders as suggested at once the motley but interesting character of our city's past. There were old, creaking carretas that had seen service in pioneer days; there were richly-decorated saddles, on which rode gay and expert horsemen; and there were also the more up-to-date and fashionable carriages which, with the advent of transcontinental railroading, had at last reached the Coast. Two Mexican Indian women--one named Benjamina--alternately scowling and smiling, and declared to be, respectively, one hundred and three and one hundred and fourteen years old, formed a feature of the procession. Clouds of dust, from the crowding auditors, greeted the orators of the day, who spoke not only in English and Spanish, but also in French; there were festal games and sports characteristic of the olden time; and the celebration concluded with a Spanish baile, at which dancing was continued until the following morning.
One of the musical celebrities of her time, and a native of Los Angeles of whom the city was justly proud, was Miss Mamie Perry, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Perry. In 1880, she went to Italy and studied under Sangiovanni and in September, 1881, made her début, singing in Milan, Florence, Mantua and Bologna the title rôle of Petrella's opera, Contessa d'Amalfi. In other cities, she attained further distinction. A musical career was interrupted by her marriage, in 1883, to Charles W. Davis; but, after his untimely death in 1889, Mrs. Perry-Davis returned to Italy, a notable musicale in Turnverein Hall being given, as a farewell honor, on April 22d. Still later, she returned to Los Angeles and married C. Modini Wood.
When the funeral of President Garfield took place at Washington, on September 27th, his memory was also honored in Los Angeles. A procession started at two o'clock from Spring Street and marched to the Plaza, Colonel John O. Wheeler acting as Grand Marshal and George E. Gard, Chief of Police, leading the way. A catafalque, draped with black, star-bedecked silk and green smilax, and surmounted by a shrouded eagle and a little child--Laura Chauvin, daughter of A. C. Chauvin, the grocer--kneeling and representing Columbia lamenting the loss of the martyred chief, was drawn by six horses, followed by the honorary pallbearers and by civic and official bodies. Judge Volney E. Howard, as President, introduced Dr. J. P. Widney, who read the resolutions of condolence, after which A. Brunson delivered the eulogy. Mrs. Garfield, the President's widow, who first came to winter in California in 1899, finally built her own winter home in Pasadena, in October, 1904.
S. A. and M. A. Hamburger, who were engaged in business in Sacramento, concluded they would do better if they secured the right opening in the Southland; and having persuaded their father, Asher Hamburger, to join them in the new enterprise, they came to Los Angeles in November, 1881, and established their present business, under the firm name of A. Hamburger & Sons. D. A. Hamburger, who had been reading law, joined them in January, 1883. For years, until his death on December 2d, 1897, the elder Hamburger participated actively in all the affairs of the concern. They first opened on Main Street near Requena--close to the popular dry-goods store of Dillon & Kenealy, conducted by Richard Dillon & John Kenealy--what was known as the People's Store, occupying a one-story building with a room containing not more than twenty-five hundred square feet; but having outgrown this location, they moved to the Bumiller Block. Again obliged to seek more room, the Phillips Block, at the corner of Spring and Franklin streets, was built for their use on the site of the old City and County Building and the Jail. In 1908, the Hamburgers moved to their extensive building on Broadway and Eighth Street.
Owen Brown, son of the famous John Brown of Ossawatomie, and long the only survivor of the little party that seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, came West late in 1881 and settled with his brother Jason, already at Pasadena. A horseback trail up one of the neighboring mountains still leads the traveler to speak in friendly spirit of this late pioneer, who died in 1889 and is buried near the foothills. Five years later, Jason Brown returned to Ohio.
The Daily Times, a Republican sheet started by Nathan Cole and James Gardiner, began on December 4th to be issued six days in the week. Both publishers within a month were succeeded by Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, owners of the Mirror. So successful was the paper that it soon grew to be a nine-column folio.
In the height of the Winter season of 1881-82, when the semi-tropical glory of Southern California was most appealing, Helen Hunt Jackson, exploring the Southwest for materials of value in the study of the Indian, came to Los Angeles and met, as I have already related, Abbot Kinney, himself a student of the aborigines. She also met Don António F. and Doña Mariana Coronel; and finding in the latter a highly intelligent and affable lady, she passed some hours each day at the hospitable Coronel mansion, driving out there from her hotel and reclining under the broad palm trees. When Mrs. Jackson first came, with her pencils and note-books, the retiring Señora (as she used to tell me), having little comprehension of the Eastern lady's ambitious plans, looked with some suspicion on the motives of her enthusiastic visitor; but fortunately this half-distrust was dispelled by the warmth of the author's geniality, and Doña Mariana, opening both her house and heart, contributed inestimably to the success of the now famous Ramona, most of the rough notes for which were written at a little table on the Coronel veranda. On Doña Mariana's advice, Mrs. Jackson selected the Del Valle ranchhouse at the Camulos, as the best-preserved and most typical place for a background; although, disappointed in not finding the Del Valles at home, and consequently seeing the imagined headquarters of Ramona for but an hour or two, she was compelled to rely upon her Los Angeles hostess for many of the interesting and singularly accurate details. On departing from Southern California, Mrs. Jackson wrote for the Century Magazine a charming description of life at the old Coronel adobe, whence she never departed without a carriageful of luscious fruit. She also added her tribute to the attractions of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. Now the world at large has been made more conversant with the poetical past of Los Angeles for the most part through the novel Ramona.
In 1882, the telephone was first introduced here, H. Newmark & Company so early subscribing for the service that they were given 'phone No. 5, the old River Station having No. 1. But it may amuse the reader to know that this patronage was not pledged without some misgivings lest the customary noises around the store might interfere with hearing, and so render the curious instrument useless!
On January 20th, Don Juan Forster died at his Santa Margarita rancho, in San Diego County; followed to the grave but a few months later by Mrs. Forster, a sister of Pio Pico.
As rugged as the climate of his native State of Maine, A. T. Currier, after the usual hazardous life of the pioneer on the plains and in mines, proved his good judgment when, in the late sixties, after riding through California in search of the best place to found a home, he selected a ranch close to that of Louis Phillips. For years, I had pleasant relations with Currier; and I must confess that it was not easy to decide, in 1882, when two such friends as he and Billy Rowland were the opposing candidates, how I should vote for Sheriff. Currier was elected.
The Arroyo Vista--later and more correctly named the Vista del Arroyo--kept by Mrs. Emma C. Bangs, was the only hotel in the Pasadena settlement in 1882, and not infrequently passengers who journeyed there by the narrow, stuffy stage, running every day except Sunday, found on arriving that they could not be accommodated. So small, in fact, was the hostelry that it became necessary to advertise when all the rooms had been taken. The stage left for Los Angeles at nine o'clock in the morning and returned at three; and the driver, who was a student of the classics from the East, doled out to the passengers both crossroad data and bits of ancient lore.
Fire having destroyed the State Normal School at San José, in 1880, then the only institution of its kind in California, the Legislature, on March 14th, 1881, provided for the establishing here of a branch; and the following March George Gephard, a German who had come in 1875, raised eight thousand dollars to purchase the orange grove at Bellevue Terrace, near Fifth Street and Charity, for a site. On August 29th, 1882, the school was opened with Charles H. Allen of San Francisco as first Principal, two other teachers and sixty-one students. In 1883, Allen was succeeded by President Ira More and the school became an independent institution. Edward T. Pierce, who followed Professor More, retired in 1904. An instructor there for twenty-two years was Professor Melville Dozier, who made for California, by way of Panamá, in 1868. Largely through the devotion of these pioneer teachers, as well as through those qualities which have marked the administration of Dr. Jesse F. Millspaugh, scholar and pedagogue, for nearly the last decade, this Normal School has grown, each year, from a very humble beginning until now it sends out hundreds of men and women into one of the noblest of all professions.
A commencement of the Los Angeles High School of particular interest to me was celebrated in June in the old Turnverein Hall, on Spring Street--Superintendent James M. Guinn presenting the diplomas--when my daughter Ella graduated. Among her instructors had been Mrs. Chloe P. Jones, for three years Principal of the school and for one year Superintendent (having been the last incumbent, at the same time, of both offices), and the late Mrs. Anna Averill, a noted club woman. Mrs. Jones came to California from Ohio in 1873, taught for a while in Santa Rosa and, after a year of grade work here, began to instruct in the new high school; and there, after a service of nearly four decades, she is still a highly esteemed member of the staff. Mrs. Averill was the first woman to enter the Board of Education; and in her honor a bell was placed on the Mission Road, El Camino Real, to celebrate her seventieth birthday.
Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, who had been a farmer's boy, printer, Union soldier, foreman of the Government printing office, newspaper correspondent and editor, and had first visited Los Angeles late in 1874 or 1875 to familiarize himself with local conditions, on August 1st, 1882 joined the firm of Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, thereupon assuming the management of both the Times and the weekly Mirror. In October, 1883, Yarnell and Mathes retired. A year later, the Times-Mirror Company was incorporated with a capital stock of forty thousand dollars.
Notwithstanding the failure of the Evening Republican, in 1878-79, Nathan Cole, Jr. started another afternoon daily, the Evening Telegram, on August 19th. It was very neatly printed; was delivered by carrier at sixty-five cents a month; and was a pioneer here in inserting free advertisements for those desiring situations.
In the spring of 1882, my attention had been called to the public need of proper facilities for obtaining a drink of good water; and no one else having moved in the matter, the following communication was sent, during the heated summer, to the City authorities:
LOS ANGELES, August 25, 1882.
To the Honorable, The Council of Los Angeles City:
GENTLEMEN:--
The undersigned hereby tender to the city a drinking fountain, as per the accompanying cut, to be placed on that portion of Temple Block fronting the junction of Main and Spring streets, for the free use of the public, and subject to the approval of your honorable body.
Respectfully, H. NEWMARK & CO.
About the same time Stephen H. Mott, Secretary of the Los Angeles City Water Company, promised enough drinking water, free of charge, to supply the fountain.
The unpretentious gift having been accepted, the fountain was installed. The design included an iron pedestal and column, surmounted by a female figure of attractive proportions; while below, the water issued from the mouth of a lion's head. Though but seven feet in height and not to be compared with more ambitious designs seen here later, the fountain may have given some incentive to city service and adornment.
It has been shown that Remi Nadeau bought the southwest corner of Spring and First streets at what I then considered a ridiculously high price. On that site, in 1882, he commenced building the Hotel Nadeau--the first four-story structure in town. This fact is not likely to escape my memory, since he acquired the necessary funds out of the profit he made in a barley speculation involving the sale, by H. Newmark & Company, of some eighty thousand bags of this cereal; his gain representing our loss. It thus happened that I participated in the opening festivities (which began with a banquet and ended with a ball) to a greater extent than, I dare say, the average guest ever suspected. For many years thereafter, the Nadeau, now comparatively so deserted, was the center of social and business life in Los Angeles.
On October 11th occurred the death of Don Manuel Dominguez, his wife surviving him but a few months.
In 1882, F. H. Howland, representing the Brush Electric Lighting Company, made an energetic canvass in Los Angeles for the introduction of the electric light; and by the end of the third week in August, forty or more arc lamps had been ordered by business houses and private individuals. He soon proposed to light the city by seven towers or spliced masts--each about one hundred and fifty feet high--to be erected within an area bounded by the Plaza, Seventh, Charity and Main streets, and supplied from a power-house at the corner of Banning and Alameda streets. The seven masts were to cost seven thousand dollars a year, or somewhat more than was then being paid for gas. This proposition was accepted by the Council, popular opinion being that it was "the best advertisement that Los Angeles could have;" and when Howland, a week later, offered to add three or four masts, there was considerable satisfaction that Los Angeles was to be brought into the line of progress. On the evening of December 31st, the city was first lighted by electricity when Mayor Toberman touched the button that turned on the mysterious current. Howland was opposed by the gas company and by many who advanced the most ridiculous objections: electric light, it was claimed, attracted bugs, contributed to blindness and had a bad effect on--ladies' complexions!
In 1883, Herman Flatau came to Los Angeles from Berlin and soon entered the employ of H. Newmark & Company. His first duty was to bale hides; in a year, he was a porter in the grocery department; and by another year he had advanced to a place in the billing-office. Since then, he has risen step by step until he is now a stockholder in M. A. Newmark & Company and is taken into the most confidential and important councils of that firm. On the nineteenth of February, 1888, Flatau married Miss Fanny Bernstein, a lady distinguished as the first girl graduate of a Los Angeles high school to enter the State University, receiving therefrom the Ph.B. degree.
Dr. Elizabeth A. Follansbee registered in Los Angeles in February, 1883, and as one of the earliest women physicians here soon secured an enviable position in the professional world, being called to the chair for diseases of children in the College of Medicine of the University of Southern California.
J. W. Robinson in 1833 established a small dry goods shop at the corner of Temple and Spring streets, which he named the Boston Dry Goods Store.[36] A couple of years later he moved into the Jones Block opposite the Court House, the growth of his business having warranted such a change. In 1895 the block next to Blanchard Hall was built by this firm, and this he has occupied ever since. In March, 1896, the present manager, J. M. Schneider, became associated with the Boston Dry Goods Co., which was incorporated in 1891. N. B. Blackstone, a kinsman of Robinson, once in business with him, in time withdrew and set up for himself, under his own name, on Broadway.
One of the most shocking railroad accidents in the history of California blotted the calendar for January 20th, when over twenty persons were killed and sudden grief was brought to several happy Los Angeles circles. About three o'clock on a cold wintry night, an express train, bound south, stopped at the Teháchepi Station, near the summit; and while the engineer and fireman on the detached locomotive and tender were busy loading water and fuel, and the conductor was in the office making his report, the brakeman, with what proved to be uncalculating gallantry, was hastening to escort a young lady from the car to the railway station. In his hurry, he had forgotten to apply the brakes; and before he could return, the entire train, started by a heavy gale, had begun to move away--at the outset slowly, then dashing, with ever-increasing momentum, down the heavy mountain grade!
The conductor, upon leaving the depot, was the first to discover that the cars had started away; the disappearing lights having become so faint as to be scarcely visible. The passengers, too, had noticed nothing unusual until too late; when the train, plunging along at fearful velocity, leaped the track and fell in a heap to the ravine below. The old-fashioned lamps and stoves set fire to the débris; with the result that those who were not crushed were burned. The dead and wounded were brought to Los Angeles as quickly as possible; but the remains of some were never identified. Governor Downey, who was on the train, was rescued, though for years he suffered from the nervous shock; but among those lost was his charming wife.
Marshall & Henderson established themselves, in 1883, in the wholesale iron and wagon-supply trade; whereupon we sold that branch of our business to them. Shortly after, we vacated the storerooms in the Arcadia Block, which we had continuously occupied since the establishing of H. Newmark & Company in 1865, and moved to the two-story Amestoy Building on Los Angeles Street, north of Requena, but a few paces from the corner on which I had first clerked for my brother.
At a meeting in the office of the Los Angeles Produce Exchange, in the Arcadia Block on Los Angeles Street on March 9th, presided over by C. W. Gibson when J. Mills Davies acted as Secretary, the Board of Trade of Los Angeles was organized, M. Dodsworth, C. W. Gibson, A. Haas, J. M. Davies, Eugène Germain, J. J. Mellus, John R. Mathews, Walter S. Maxwell, I. N. Van Nuys and myself being the incorporators. Six directors--Gibson, Van Nuys, Haas, Dodsworth, Mathews and Newmark--were chosen. On March 14th, 1883, the Board was formally incorporated for fifty years. After a while the Board met in the Baker Block, and still later it assembled in a two-story brick structure at the northwest corner of Fort and First streets. In October, 1906, the Board of Trade and the Wholesalers' Board of Trade were consolidated, the new organization becoming known as the Wholesalers' Board of Trade. This move was initiated by Herman Flatau.
The republication, in the Los Angeles Express of March 23d, 1908, under the caption, "Twenty-five Years Ago To-day," of several paragraphs, savoring of village gossip such as the following--
Some very fine nugas [nougats?] are to be seen at Dol's Commercial Restaurant. They are meant for the silver-wedding feast at Mr. Newmark's--
calls to mind an event of March 21st, when my wife and I celebrated our silver wedding at our home on Fort Street. At half-past six in the evening, all of my employees sat down at dinner with us, having come in a body to tender their congratulations. A reunion of three generations of the Newmarks, some of whom then saw one another for the first time, came to a close a week or two later.
As the anniversary approached, I prepared a surprise for my wife, arranging that her brother, Abraham Newmark of St. Louis, should be present in Los Angeles for the occasion. His visit, however, had a grievous termination: while in San Francisco on his way home from Los Angeles, death came to him suddenly in the home of a friend.
In May, the Los Angeles Board of Education sold the northwest corner of Spring and Second streets--a lot one hundred and twenty by one hundred and sixty-five feet, where the City, in 1854, had built the first schoolhouse--to the city authorities for thirty-one thousand dollars; and the next year the Council erected on the inside sixty feet the first municipal building of consequence. When the Boom was at its height in 1887, the City sold the balance of the lot with its frontage on Spring Street and a depth of one hundred and five feet for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, to John Bryson, Sr., an arrival of 1879 and ten years later Mayor of Los Angeles; and George H. Bonebrake (who came a year earlier than Bryson, and was in his day a prominent financier) opened, if my memory serves me correctly, the first agency for Eastern vehicles. Together, they built the Bryson Block.
This sale and purchase reminds me that when the lot was cleared to make way for the new City Hall, ten or twelve fine black locust trees were felled, much to the regret of many old-timers. These were the same shade trees for the preservation of which Billy McKee, the early schoolmaster, had risked bodily encounter with the irate waterman.
When the Board of Education sold this lot, it bought another, which extended from Fort Street to Spring between Fifth and Sixth streets and had a frontage of one hundred and twenty feet on each street. The price paid was twelve thousand five hundred dollars. This is the lot now known as Mercantile Place, whose retention or sale has been so much debated and which, with its many small stores, reminds the traveler not a little of those narrow but cosy, and often very prosperous, European streets and alleys on both sides lined with famous shops.
August 22d was the date of the City ordinance creating Elysian Park, the act leading the early settler back to pueblo days when the land in question passed from Mexican to American control and remained a part of the City lots, already described, and never subdivided and sold.
The last companies of volunteer firemen were organized in 1883, one being in the Morris Vineyard, a district between what is now Main, Hill, Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets, and the other in East Los Angeles, where a hose company was formed.
During September or October, a party of distinguished German bankers and statesmen, who had come to the United States to investigate certain branches of business, visited Los Angeles. The most important of this commission was Dr. Edward Lasker of the German Reichstag, other eminent members being Henry Villard, President of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and Judge Siemens, President of the German Bank of Berlin. A committee, consisting of I. W. Hellman, C. C. Lips, M. Morris, A. W. Edelman, Conrad Jacoby, Dr. Joseph Kurtz and myself took charge of these gentlemen, as well as a number of others, whose names I forget. Dr. Lasker, during his brief stay, accepted the hospitality of my home, and there received considerable honor at the hands of his German admirers, a large body of enthusiasts serenading him. Even while with us, it was evident that Dr. Lasker was an ailing man; and on the fifth of the following January, while riding in a carriage in Galveston, he suddenly died.
General George H. Stoneman, when he retired from the army in 1871, settled near San Gabriel; and continuing more or less in public life, he was elected in 1883 Governor of California.
In December, 1883, Eugene Meyer sold out to Nathan Cahn and Leon Loeb, his partners in the City of Paris store, and engaged in banking with Lazard Frères, in San Francisco, in which enterprise he continued until 1892, when he moved to New York and became one of the managing partners of the same institution in that city, retiring from active business nearly a decade later.
When Meyer left, he sold his home on Fort Street, which had originally cost him six thousand, to Moses L. Wicks for sixteen thousand dollars; and his friends told him that so successful a sale proved the Meyer luck. Wicks in time resold it to John D. Bicknell, whose heirs still own it.
With the coming at Christmas in 1883 of Robert N. Bulla, began a career that has made itself felt in local legal, political, commercial, social and scientific circles. In 1884, he joined the law firm of Bicknell & White; nine years later, he was representing his district in the State Assembly; in 1897, he was a State Senator; and his efficient activity as a director of the Chamber of Commerce, together with his forensic talent, lead one to anticipate his rise to further distinction in that body. As a director of the Southwest Museum, Bulla performs another of his services to the community.
After an unsuccessful canvass made by Judge Noah Levering, which resulted in the attendance of just four persons, the Historical Society of Southern California was finally organized at meetings in Temple Block, in November and December, 1883. J. J. Warner was the first President; H. D. Barrows, A. F. Coronel, J. G. Downey and John Mansfield, the Vice-Presidents; J. M. Guinn, Treasurer; and C. N. Wilson, Secretary. For a time, the Society's meetings were held in the City Council room, after that in the County Court room; and later at the houses of the members. On February 12th, 1891, the Society was incorporated.
Le Progrès, a seven-column paper, was started here, in 1883, as the organ of the French population, some rather prominent citizens of Gallic origin becoming the stockholders. Dr. Pigné du Puytren was the first editor, and he was succeeded, in a year or two, by Georges Le Mésnager, the wine-grower.
On February 18th, another flood of unusual proportions, continuing until May, devastated the Southland. Following several days of heavy rain, the river rose and fifty houses and large sections of vineyards and orchards in the low-lying portions of the city were carried away by the mad waters; several lives being lost. In that year, the Santa Ana cut its new channel to the sea, deviating from the old course from one to three miles, but still holding to the southwest, a direction apparently characteristic of rivers in this vicinity.
Speaking of rains, reminds me that, in 1884, one of the difficulties in the way of solving the water problem was removed in the purchase, by the City of Los Angeles, for fifty thousand dollars, of Colonel Griffith J. Griffith's right to the water of the Los Angeles River.
Charles F. Lummis, long a distinguished and always a picturesquely-recognizable resident, walked across the continent "for fun and study," from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, by a roundabout route of 3507 miles in one hundred and forty-three days, in 1884, having made an arrangement with the Los Angeles Times to which he contributed breezy letters on the way. The day after his arrival he became city editor of that newspaper, and in the last Apache campaign, in 1886, he was its war correspondent. In 1887 a stroke of paralysis sent him to New Mexico; and recovering, he spent several years exploring and studying Spanish-America from Colorado to Chile, becoming acknowledged here and abroad as an authority on the history and the peoples of the lands he visited. In 1893, returning from Peru, he edited for a dozen years the Land of Sunshine magazine (later Out West); after that founding the Landmarks Club to which we owe the preservation, from utter ruin, of several of the old Missions. This club has lately been reorganized to care for all of the twenty-one Missions of the State. Later Lummis incorporated the Sequoya League which has so much bettered the condition of thousands of California Indians--securing, in particular, for the evicted Warner's Ranch Indians a better reservation than that from which they were driven. From 1905 to 1911 he was Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library. In 1903 he founded the Southwest Society of the Archæological Institute of America which conducted many scientific expeditions in Arizona, New Mexico and Guatemala, acquired valuable collections and maintained the first free public exhibits of science in Southern California. In 1907 he and others incorporated the Southwest Museum, whereupon the Society conveyed to it all its collections, a twenty-acre site and the fifty thousand dollars bequeathed by Mrs. Carrie M. Jones for the first buildings. Besides other and many literary activities, Lummis has published over a dozen notable books on the Southwest and Spanish America.[37] Clad in corduroys from Barcelona--coat and trousers, with very wide wales, of olive or green--wearing no vest, but having a shirt of heavy drawn-work of the Pueblo Indians (with whom he dwelt six years), a red-and-white faja or waist-band made by the same people, and a grey sombrero banded with Mexican braided horse-hair, Lummis roams the desert or is welcome at the most exclusive functions; having already been a guest many times at the White House and the palaces of Diaz and other presidents in Spanish America. "I don't change my face for company," he says, "then why my garb--so long as both are clean?" An interesting figure at scientific meetings and on the lecture platform, Lummis is equally so at home where, after twenty years' work with his own hands, he is still building his stone "castle," El Alisal; and as his house is a rendezvous for artists, musicians, authors and scientists, his guests often find him toiling as either carpenter or mason. The Alisal, by the way, is built around the huge sycamore under which Greek George camped with his camels on his first arrival in Los Angeles nearly sixty years ago.
In 1884, Colonel H. Z. Osborne--always a foremost citizen of the town and in 1912 a most energetic President of the Chamber of Commerce--and E. R. Cleveland bought the Express; and two years later they organized the Evening Express Company, J. Mills Davies, once Secretary of the Board of Trade, becoming business manager. In 1897, Colonel Osborne was appointed United States Marshal for the Southern California District, whereupon Charles Dwight Willard became general manager of the paper, to be succeeded by J. B. Abell. For a short time in 1900, the Express fell into the hands of a group of men, of whom John M. Miller acted as President and Richard Beebe served as Secretary.
O. W. Childs opened his new theater known as Childs' Opera House, on Main Street south of First, in what was then the center of the city, on May 24th, when the School for Scandal was given, Mlle. Rhea taking the leading part. This, the first theater of real consequence built in Los Angeles, had a seating capacity of eighteen hundred; and for some time, at least, an entertainment was booked there for every night of the week. Frequently, too, whenever anything of moment was going to happen there, Childs sent me an invitation to occupy his private box.
An interesting personality for many years was C. P. Switzer, a Virginian, who came in 1853 with Colonel Hollister, W. H. Perry and others. Switzer became a contractor and builder; but in 1884, in search of health, he moved to an eminence in the Sierras, where he soon established Switzer's Camp, which gradually became famous as a resort generally reached on burros. A few years ago, "Commodore" Switzer--or Sweitzer as he was also called--retired, but the camp, more than ever popular, has been continued as "Switzer's."
Toward the middle of the eighties, excitement among citrus growers throughout Southern California gave way to deep depression due to the continued ravages of the fluted scale, a persistent insect whose home, according to research, is Australia, and which had found its way, on Australian plants (and especially on Acacia latifolia) into South Africa, New Zealand and California, arriving on the Pacific Coast about 1868. This particular species, known to the scientist as the Icerya purchasi, resisted and survived all insecticide sprayings, washes and fumigation, and for a while it seemed that one of the most important and growing industries of the Southland was absolutely doomed. Indeed, not until 1889, when the result of Albert Koebele's mission to Australia, as a representative of the Department of Agriculture, was made known, did hope among the citrus orchardists revive. In that year, the tiny ladybird--styled by the learned the Novius cardinalis, but more popularly spoken of as the ladybug--the most effective enemy of the fluted scale, was introduced here, the Government establishing, among other stations, an experimental laboratory on the Wolfskill ranch under the charge of Professor D. W. Coquillett; and so rapidly was this tiny favorite of children propagated and disseminated, that the dreaded scale was exterminated and the crops were saved. Wolfskill, by the way, though he fought hard with the assistance of his foreman, Alexander Craw, to save his noted trees, lacked the coöperation of his neighbors; and the injury then inflicted largely influenced him to subdivide his famous citrus property.
With the arrival on March 1st, 1887, of J. O. Koepfli, a man came on the scene who during the next twenty-five years was to be not only one of the real forces in the development of the city, but, as a whole-souled gentleman, was to surround himself, through his attractive personality, with a large circle of representative and influential friends. As President of the Merchants' Association, his record was such that in 1896 he was elected a director of the Chamber of Commerce where, during twelve years, he performed valiant service on all the important committees. His work in behalf of the harbor and the Owens River aqueduct is especially memorable. He was President of the Chamber in 1905 and 1906. With such men as C. D. Willard and R. W. Burnham, he founded the Municipal League, whose President he was for seven years. His efforts were always free from the taint of personal aggrandizement, and he thus had the public confidence. He is a member of the well-known firm of Bishop & Company.
Among the present social organizations of the city, the Los Angeles Athletic Club takes second place in point of age. It was organized in 1879 by forty young men, among whom were Fred Wood, Bradner W. Lee, Mark G. Jones, Frank M. Coulter, Frank A. Gibson, John S. Thayer, M. H. Newmark, W. G. Kerckhoff, Alfredo Solano, J. B. Lankershim, W. M. Caswell, James C. Kays, Joseph Binford, and Samuel Dewey. The initial meeting took place in Wood's office in the McDonald Block, and a hall in the Arcadia Building was the Club's earliest headquarters. J. B. Lankershim was the first President. A few years later, the Club moved to the Downey Block; and there the boys had many a merry bout. In the course of time, the gymnasium was located on Spring Street, between Fourth and Fifth; now it occupies its own spacious and elaborate building on Seventh Street, at the corner of Olive, the Club's quarters being among the finest of their kind in America.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] May 1st, 1914, the J. W. Robinson Dry Goods Co. contracted to move to Seventh Street between Grand Avenue and Hope Street. This is one of the notable examples of leapfrog that real estate operators have played in Los Angeles, to the detriment perhaps, at times, of the town itself.
[37] In 1915, in recognition of historical work, the King of Spain conferred upon Lummis the dignity of a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica.
XXXVII. REPETTO AND THE LAWYERS
1885-1887
Ten or twelve months after the starting of the first cable railway here, Los Angeles, in 1885, resumed the march of progress, this time with an electric street car line. Poles--with huge arms stretching out into the middle of the street and often spoken of derisively as gallows-poles--and wires were strung along Los Angeles and San Pedro streets, down Maple Avenue to Pico Street and thence westward to what was known as the Electric Homestead Tract, just outside of the city limits. A company owned much land not likely to be sold in a hurry, and to exploit the same rapidly, the owners built the road. F. H. Howland, who introduced the electric light here, was a prime mover in this project, but ill fortune attended his efforts and he died a poor man.
On January 11th, my wife and I left for a trip to the City of Mexico, where we spent four or five days and were pleasantly entertained, before going to the New Orleans Exposition, by our old friend, Judge Ygnácio Sepúlveda and his wife. Previous to crossing the border, we stored our trunks in El Paso and received them upon our return, strapped as before. Some valuables, however, which I had hidden away in the linen were missing when I reopened the trunk, and have never been recovered. Among other companions on this outing were Fred, son of J. M. Griffith, and James S., son of Jonathan S. Slauson. By the bye, James himself has had an honorable public career, having served in one of his activities as President of the Chamber of Commerce.
Early in March, I believe, sewing was first introduced into the public schools of Los Angeles, the Board of Education consenting to it only as an experiment.
Two celebrities divided the honors in the spring and summer in local circles: United States Senator John Sherman, who visited Los Angeles on May 8th, 1885, and Sir Arthur Sullivan, the distinguished English composer, of Pinafore and Mikado fame, who tarried near the ocean in the hot days of August.
About 1885, a Dr. Sketchley, who enjoyed some reputation for his work in the natural history field and had been a traveler through many remote countries, brought to Los Angeles quite a collection of ostriches and opened, about where Tropico lies, an amusement resort known as "The Ostrich Farm." Having provided a coach to connect with the end of the Temple Street cable cars and advertised the strange peculiarities of his finely-feathered animals, the Doctor soon did a thriving business, notwithstanding the task of caring for the birds in their new environment. Later, Sketchley removed from Los Angeles to Red Bluff; but there he failed and lost all that he had.
Soon after Dr. Sketchley arrived here with his ostriches and three or four men and one woman from Madras, Edwin Cawston, an Englishman now retired and living in Surrey, happening (while on a tour through America) to glance at an article in Harper's Magazine pointing out the possibilities of successfully raising ostriches, returned to London, secured the necessary capital and in 1887 began shipping these camel-birds from South Africa to Los Angeles. Many of the easily-affected creatures died at sea; yet forty, as good luck would have it, survived, and with them Cawston and a partner named Fox opened a second "ostrich farm" at Washington Gardens. In time, Cawston transferred his establishment to La Habra, associating with himself E. H. Rydall as publicity agent; and in 1908 the Cawston Ostrich Farm, between Los Angeles and Pasadena, was incorporated.
Quite naturally with the advent of the settler from the East and the Middle West, the zanjas, in early years so serviceable both for domestic and irrigation purposes and, therefore, more or less venerable, came to be looked upon as mere surface-conveyers and public nuisances; a sign, in 1883, at the corner of Sixth and Olive streets warning teamsters against crossing the ditch. By 1885, such opposition had developed that most of the zanjas were condemned, the one extending from Requena Street to Adams via Figueroa being, if I am right, one of the last that was buried from view.
For some time, East Los Angeles maintained its character as a village or small town, and in 1885 the East Side Champion, started and edited by Edward A. Weed, voiced the community's interests.
This year was marked by the demise of a number of well-known Angeleños. On the second of March, John Schumacher, a man esteemed and beloved by many, died here of apoplexy, in the seventieth year of his age. Six days later, General Phineas Banning, who had been sick for several months, expired at San Francisco, his wife and daughters being with him; and on March 12th, he was buried in Rosedale Cemetery. In his declining years, illness often compelled General Banning to remain at home in Wilmington; and when needing the services of his physician, Dr. Joseph Kurtz, he would send a locomotive to fetch him. On June 5th, Dr. Vincent Gelcich, the pioneer surgeon, died here at the age of fifty-six years.
In 1885, the first medical school in Los Angeles was founded in the house once occupied by Vaché Frères, the wine-makers, on Aliso Street between Lyons and Center. For years the school was conducted as a part of the University of Southern California, and Dr. J. P. Widney was Dean.
In the fall of 1885 Dr. M. Dorothea Lummis, a graduate in medicine of the Boston University, settled in Los Angeles and in time became President of the Los Angeles County Homeopathic Medical Society. Distinguished in her profession, Dr. Lummis became a leader in humane endeavor, reorganizing here the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The first train of the Santa Fé Railroad to enter the city of Los Angeles ran from Colton over the rails of the Southern Pacific, on November 29th, the two corporations having come to an agreement to use the one set of tracks until the spring of 1887, when the Santa Fé finished building from San Bernardino to its junction with the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad. The locomotive bore the name, L. Severy--a prominent director in the Company, and the father of the well-known resident of Pasadena--and the number 354.
After twenty years' association with the wholesale grocery business, I withdrew, on December 5th, 1885, from H. Newmark & Company, and on that day the business was absorbed by M. A. Newmark, M. H. Newmark, Max Cohn and Carl Seligman, and continued as M. A. Newmark & Company. This gave me the opportunity of renewing my association with one of my earliest partners, Kaspare Cohn, the new firm becoming K. Cohn & Company; and the change in my activities found me once again shipping hides and wool.
Looking through the haze of years, many are the recollections--often vague, it is true--of those with whom I had business relations. In the picturesque adobe days, the majority of my customers were simple-mannered natives such as Manuel Carizosa, on South Alameda Street; José María Dávila, in Sonora Town next door to José María Fuentes, his competitor; and M. G. Santa Cruz, in the same district. Jordan Brothers, Americans, kept store on Aliso Street opposite the Aliso Mill, and G. Ginnochio, father-in-law of James Castruccio, on Macy Street, near the river; while Bernardino Guirado, Mrs. John G. Downey's brother, and Max Schwed supplied the wants of Los Nietos. J. B. Savarots, who went to South America when he sold out to J. Salaberri & Company--a firm composed of two Basques, Juan Salaberri and Domingo Oyharzabel--was in general merchandise in San Juan Capistrano. Hippolyte Cahen (whose widow is a member of the Lazarus Stationery Company,) had an up-to-date general store at Anaheim; and Simon Cahen, son-in-law of Bernard Cohn, was similarly occupied in the Azusa district. Others of about the same period, were Dominico Rivara, who established himself on Main Street near Commercial, shortly to be succeeded by Vignolo & Sanguinetti, in whose store--known as La Esperanza and near Castruccio Brothers' La Mariposa--Jim Moiso bought an interest. Two more Main Street merchants were A. C. Chauvin, who conducted his El Dorado Store in the Lanfranco Building, and his neighbor, Joe Lazarowich. And near them Francisco Vassallo had his little fruit stand. The erratic Lucas Sciscisch, who terminated his life as a suicide, attended diligently to business on First Street, near Los Angeles; and not so very far away Thomas Strohm was laying the foundation, in his grocery trade, for that popularity which caused him, in the eighties, to be chosen Chief of the Fire Department. António Valle, who built on the northeast corner of First and Los Angeles streets (calling the block in honor of his five sons, the Five Brothers), for a number of years had a grocery store on Main Street near Requena and not far from the butcher shop of Vickery & Hinds.
In view of the ravages of time among the ranks of these old-timers, it is a satisfaction to observe that at least some of those who were active before I retired are still in the trade. The first-comer was George A. Ralphs, who, reaching Los Angeles as a boy, learned brick-masonry and was known as the Champion Bricklayer of California until, while on a hunting expedition, he lost an arm.[38] With a man named Francis, he started, in 1877, the Ralphs & Francis Grocery, on the old Georgetown corner. This was the beginning of the Ralphs Grocery Company. In February, 1882, Hans Jevne, a Norwegian by birth, who had been associated with his brother in Chicago, came to Los Angeles, and a few months later he opened a small grocery store in the Strelitz Block at 38 and 40 North Spring Street. In less than no time, so to speak, the good housewives of the town were able to secure the rarest tidbits from all the markets of the world; and not only that, but Jevne, since his advent here, has been identified with most important steps in the evolution of the city. W. F. Ball for thirty years or more has been a tobacconist, and for thirty years, or somewhat less, has occupied the same premises on Spring Street, north of First. The Williams family came from England in 1882, and George soon established his grocery business out in what was then known as the University district, where he bought a block of land. George has given of his time for the public weal, having been for several terms a City Councilman. Another Los Angeles merchant who has attained success is Albert Cohn; and while his start in life, in an independent career, began a couple of years after my retirement, he had been in my employ as a clerk almost from the time of his arrival, in 1882. Marius Bellue has been located on South Alameda Street so long that it seems as though he must have arrived here in the Year One.
So much for the merchants of the city; among such tradesmen in the districts outside of Los Angeles, I can recall but three active in my day and still active in this. Alphonse Weil, a native of the sunny slopes of France, has grown up with the town of Bakersfield. John R. Newberry opened his doors in 1882, and, after moving to Los Angeles in 1893, commenced that meteoric career, during which he established stores throughout Los Angeles and its suburbs. George A. Edgar, about thirty-one years ago, brought a stock of groceries and crockery to Santa Ana and deposited the contents of his cases in the same location, and on the same shelves, from which he still caters to his neighbors.
The great flood of 1886 reached its first serious state on January 19th. All of Los Angeles between Wilmington Street and the hills on the east side was inundated; levees were carried off as if they were so much loose sand and stubble; and for two or three weeks railway communication with the outside world was impossible.
During this inundation on January 19th, Martin G. Aguirre, who was a deputy under Sheriff George E. Gard, gave an exhibition of great courage. So rapidly had the waters risen that many persons were marooned; and it was only by throwing himself on the back of his favorite horse that Aguirre, at very great risk, rescued twenty or more people from drowning, the number including many children. In the last attempt, Aguirre nearly lost his own life. Somewhat of a hero, in November, 1888, he was elected Sheriff, defeating Tom Rowan for that office.
Rebecca Lee Dorsey, another of the early women practitioners of medicine, came to Los Angeles in January, 1886, a graduate both of Eastern colleges and of a leading Vienna hospital. Peddling vegetables as a child, later working as a servant and hiring out as a nurse while finishing her course in Europe, Dr. Dorsey was of a type frequently found among the early builders of the Southwest.
Largely to a board of Commissioners, consisting of Mayor E. F. Spence, H. Sinsabaugh and the ever-ready Jake Kuhrts, appointed in 1886 when provision was made for a paid fire department, is due the honor of having successfully arranged the present excellent system in Los Angeles.
It was in 1886 that we bought the Repetto rancho, under circumstances of such interest that it may be well to tell something about the owner and his connections. Alessandro Repetto was an Italian of such immense size that he was compelled, when standing, to shift the weight of his body from one leg to the other. He was miserly in the extreme, but this was compensated for by his honesty and uprightness of character. He was also far from being neat, and I remember the way in which he dispensed hospitality when I visited his ranch to buy wool. He would bring out some very ordinary wine and, before serving it, would rinse out the glasses with his fat fingers; and it was courtesy alone that prompted me to partake of what he offered. He lived on his ranch, but when attacked by his last illness, he took a room at the New Arlington Hotel, formerly the White House, on the southeast corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets.
There, finding him alone and neglected, I advised him to go to the Sisters' Hospital on Ann Street; but the change did not save him and after a few days he died. A fellow Italian named Scotti, a knave of a chap who was with him in his last moments, knowing that I was Repetto's executor, soon brought to my house a lot of papers which he had taken from the dead man's pockets.
Repetto being a recluse somewhat on the misanthropic order, I had difficulty in getting pallbearers for his funeral, one of my applications being to James Castruccio, President of the Italian Benevolent Society and then Italian Consul, who said that Repetto had never helped anyone, but that if I would give, in his name, five hundred dollars to charity, the attendants would be supplied. To this I demurred, because Repetto had made no such provision in his will; and Castruccio giving me no satisfaction, I went to Father Peter, explained to him that Repetto had bequeathed six thousand dollars to the Church, and stated my needs; whereupon Father Peter arranged for the bearers. All the provisions for the funeral having been settled, I cabled to his brother and heir, then living in the mountains near Genoa, whose address I had obtained from Castruccio. Repetto had really hated this brother and, in consequence, he had very unwillingly bequeathed him his large estate.
In due season, the brother, a hunchback, appeared on deck as an intimate with Scotti, and I found him to be an uncouth, ignorant fellow and a man who had probably never handled a ten-dollar gold piece or its equivalent in his life. He had on shoes that an elephant might have worn, a common, corduroy suit, a battered hat and plenty of dirt. Wishing to take him to Stephen M. White, my lawyer, I advised the purchase of new clothes; but in this, as in other matters, I appealed in vain. So miserly was he indeed, that one day, having purchased a five-cent loaf of bread in Sonora Town, he was seen to hide himself behind a building while he ate it, doubtless fearful lest someone might ask him for a bite.
Alessandro Repetto had lived with an Indian woman by whom he had a son; and a Los Angeles attorney soon had himself appointed guardian, declaring that the property belonged, not to the brother, but to the boy. This, because the woman had never left her husband, was blackmail, pure and simple; besides Repetto had willed the lad some property in San Gabriel. Stephen M. White was the attorney for the estate; but when this lawsuit started, Scotti advised the unsophisticated brother to take other lawyers. Two men, accordingly, one named Robarts and the other Jim Howard, suddenly appeared at the trial; and when I asked why they were there, they replied that they had been engaged by Repetto's brother. Four hundred and seventy-five dollars settled this extortion, the lawyers taking all but twenty-five dollars, which was paid to the mother of the boy.
Early in the morning, a few days later--either on Christmas or New Year's--there was a knock at my door; and when the girl answered the call, the Sheriff was found there with the interesting news that Repetto had been arrested and that he wished me to bail him out! I learned that Robarts and Howard had presented him with a bill for three thousand five hundred dollars, for services; and that, since the money was not immediately forthcoming, they had trumped up some sort of a charge and had had the foreigner incarcerated. White advised a settlement, and after much difficulty we succeeded in having their bill reduced to three thousand dollars, which we paid.
Repetto's troubles now seemed at an end; but just as he was ready to leave for Italy, Scotti put in an appearance with a claim for benefits bestowed, which the much-fleeced Italian refused to pay. Scotti, knowing along which road the unfortunate man would travel, was early at San Gabriel with the Sheriff, to intercept Repetto and return him to limbo; and the Genoese being brought back, he again appealed to me. It was now my turn, as executor, to have an interesting inning with Scotti. While I was settling the estate, I was made aware that Repetto had loaned another Italian named G. Bernero, on his note, some three thousand dollars; but this document I missed, and it was only by accident that I traced it to Scotti. He had abstracted it from the papers found in Repetto's pocket, carried it to the borrower, and sold it back to him, for four hundred dollars! I recovered this note and collected the balance due; nevertheless, when Scotti had Repetto arrested, I threatened the former with prosecution on the charge of stealing and selling the note, with the result that Scotti did not press his suit and Repetto was released.
In connection with this move by Scotti, Robarts and Howard reappeared to defend Repetto, notwithstanding his previous announcement that he would have nothing more to do with them; and to bolster up their claim, they drew forth a paper certifying that Repetto had engaged them to attend to any law business he might have while he was in this country! Repetto, now really alarmed, once more quickly settled; but the crafty Robarts and Howard had another bill up their sleeves, this time for three or four thousand dollars, and poor Repetto was obliged to pay that, too!
Kaspare Cohn, J. D. Bicknell, I. W. Hellman and S. M. White, in conjunction with myself, bought the Repetto Ranch from the brother, before he left for Italy, for sixty thousand dollars. All in all, the heir, who survived the date of his windfall but a few years, carried away with him the snug sum of one hundred thousand dollars.
This fine domain, lying between Whittier and Los Angeles, was apportioned long before 1899, among the five purchasers. In that year, Kaspare Cohn and I, on the advice of William Mulholland, developed water on our undivided share, meeting with as great a success as has attended all of the operations of that eminent engineer. After an abundance of water was secured, we sold the property in five-acre and smaller lots, locating the town site of Newmark near the tracks of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, and naming the entire settlement Montebello.
It was in the spring of 1886 that Colonel H. H. Boyce, who had been business manager of the Times-Mirror Company, was bought out by Colonel H. G. Otis and became editor-in-chief and general manager of the Los Angeles Tribune, conducting the paper, during his short association, with some vigor.
One more reference to the Times-Mirror publishing house. On April 8th, the company was reorganized, with Colonel H. G. Otis as President and General Manager, Albert McFarland as Vice-President and Treasurer and William A. Spalding as Secretary. About the middle of July, the company bought the corner of Fort and First streets, and in the following May moved to its new home erected there. On February 1st, 1887, the Times began to appear seven days in the week.
After grinding away for ten years as the sole owner of the Los Angeles Herald, J. D. Lynch, in 1886, took into partnership his former associate, James J. Ayers, and once more the alliance of these puissant forces made of the paper a formidable bulwark for the Democracy.
Colonel John Franklin, or plain J. F. Godfrey as he was known in those days, was rather a prominent attorney in his time; and I knew him very well. About 1886, as chairman of a Democratic committee, he headed the delegation that invited me to become a candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles; but a contemplated European trip compelled me to decline the honor.
In the spring of 1886, a falling out between the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fé railroads brought on a rate-war, disastrous enough to those companies but productive of great benefit to Los Angeles. Round-trip tickets from points as far east as the Missouri River were hammered down to fifteen dollars, and for a few days, Charley White (who then conducted the Southern Pacific office in the Baker Block, and had full authority to make new fares) defied the rival road by establishing a tourist rate of just one dollar! When normality again prevailed, the fare was advanced to fifty dollars for first-class passage and forty dollars for second-class. The low rate during the fight encouraged thousands of Easterners to visit the Coast, and in the end many sacrificed their return coupons and settled here; while others returned to their Eastern homes only to prepare for permanent removal West. In a sense, therefore, this railroad war contributed to the Boom of a year or two later.
Freight as well as passenger rates were slashed during this spasmodic contest, and it was then that the ridiculous charge of one dollar per ton permitted me to bring in by rail, from Chicago, several carloads of coal, which I distributed among my children. Such an opportunity will probably never again present itself to Los Angeles.
Another interesting shipment was that of a carload of willow-ware from New York, the freight-bill for which amounted to eight dollars and thirty-five cents. These goods ordinarily bear a very high tariff; but competition had hammered everything down to a single classification and rate. I remember, also, that M. A. Newmark & Company brought from New York a train-load of Liverpool salt, then a staple commodity here, paying a rate of sixty cents per ton.
Stimulated, perhaps, through the setting aside of Elysian Park by the City Council, another pleasure-ground, then known as East Los Angeles Park, was assured to the public toward the middle of the eighties; the municipal authorities at the same time spending about five thousand dollars to improve the Plaza, one of the striking features of which was a circular row of evergreens uniformly trimmed to a conical shape.
On October 14th, H. T. Payne and Edward Records published the initial number of the Los Angeles Tribune, this being the first newspaper here to appear seven days in the week. The following January, a company was incorporated and for years the Tribune was well maintained.
Charles Frederick Holder, the distinguished naturalist, came to California in search of health,[39] in 1886, and settled in Pasadena, where he was appointed Professor of Zoölogy in the Throop Institute. An enthusiastic admirer of the Southland and an early explorer of its islands and mountain ranges, Professor Holder has devoted much attention to Pasadena and the neighboring coast. As early as 1891, he published Antiquities of Catalina; later he wrote his spirited Southern California book on Life and Sport in the Open; and with his gift for popularizing, probably no other scientific writer has contributed more to make known, both in America and abroad, this attractive portion of our great State.
Prudent and Victor Beaudry bought considerable land on the west side of New High Street, probably in 1887, including the site of one of the old calabozos; and as some of the purchase was a hill, he spent about one hundred thousand dollars grading the property, excavating fifty thousand or more cubic feet of earth and building the great retaining wall, finished in 1888, four hundred and sixty-five feet long and fifty feet high, and containing two hundred thousand cubic feet of stone. When he was ready, Beaudry began to advertise the superior merits of his land; and I still have in my possession one of the flaring circulars, printed in red ink, including such headlines as these:
NOW IS THE TIME!
DON'T SHUT YOUR EYES AND TURN YOUR BACK!
and the following:
Have a Home on the Hills! Stop paying rent in the Valleys! View from your own home the broad Pacific, the green hills and the model city! Best water supply. Drainage perfect. Best sunny exposures. Pure air, and away from fogs!
Have a Home on the line of the great Cable Railway system!
Mark your Catalogue before the day of sale!
February 15, 16 and 17, at 10 o'clock each Day.
Bear in mind that this property is on the HILLS, and on the line of the Cable Railway System! No such opportunity has ever been offered to the people of Southern California. Public School and Young Ladies' Seminary in the immediate vicinity.
Four years after he had built the Nadeau Block, Remi Nadeau died here, at the age of sixty-eight, on January 15th. The same month, another man of marked enterprise, Llewellyn J., brother of Reese and William Llewellyn, founded the Llewellyn Iron Works, attaining a success and fame very natural considering that the Llewellyns' father, David, and uncle, Reese before them had acquired a reputation as ironworkers both in Wales and San Francisco.
In January, Fred W. Beau de Zart and John G. Hunsicker established The Weekly Directory, whose title was soon changed to that of The Commercial Bulletin. Under the able editorship of Preston McKinney, the Bulletin is still fulfilling its mission.
Phineas, son of J. P. Newmark, my brother, came to Los Angeles in 1887 and associated himself with M. A. Newmark & Company. In July, 1894, he bought out the Southern California Coffee and Spice Mills, and in the following September, his younger brother, Samuel M. Newmark, also came to Los Angeles and joined him under the title of Newmark Brothers. On December 26th, 1910, the city suffered a sad loss in the untimely death of the elder brother. Sam's virility has been amply shown in his career as a business man and in his activity as a member of the Municipal League directorate.
Among the hotels of the late eighties were the Belmont and the Bellevue Terrace, both frame buildings. The former, at the terminus of the Second Street Cable Railway, was known for its elevation, view, fresh air and agreeable environment of lawn and flower-bed, and the first floor was surrounded with broad verandas. For a while it was conducted by Clark & Patrick, who claimed for it "no noise, dirt or mosquitoes." The latter hotel, on Pearl Street near Sixth, was four stories in height and had piazzas extending around three of them; both of these inns were quite characteristic of Southern California architecture. The Bellevue Terrace, so full of life during the buoyant Boom days, still stands, but alas! the familiar old pile has surrendered to more modern competitors.
The Tivoli Opera House, on Main Street between Second and Third, was opened by McLain & Lehman in 1887, and for a time it was one of the attractions of the city. It presented a curious mixture of Egyptian, East Indian and Romanesque styles, and was designed by C. E. Apponyi, an architect who had come to the Coast in 1870. The stage was the largest, except one--that of the San Francisco Grand Opera House--on the Coast, and there were eight proscenium boxes. The theater proper stood in the rear of the lot, and entrance thereto was had through the building fronting on the street; and between the two structures there was a pretty garden, with grottos and fountains, and a promenade gallery above.
In February, the Postmaster packed the furniture and other outfit--only two or three good loads--and moved the Post Office to the Hellman Building, at the corner of North Main and Republic streets; but it was soon transferred to an office on Fort Street, south of Sixth, a location so far from the center of the city as to give point to cards distributed by some wag and advertising rates for sleeping accommodations to the new office. In that year, the sum-total of the receipts of the Los Angeles Post Office was not much over seventy-four thousand dollars. During the twelve months of the Boom, mail for over two hundred thousand transients was handled; and a familiar sight of the times was the long column of inquirers, reminding one of the famous lines in early San Francisco when prospectors for gold paid neat sums for someone else's place nearer the general delivery window.
I have told of some incidents in the routine of court proceedings here, in which both judge and counselor played their parts. Now and then the juror also contributed to the diversion, as was evidenced in the late eighties when a couple of jurymen in a San Gabriel Cañon water case created both excitement and merriment through a practical joke. Tiring of a midnight session, and bethinking himself of the new invention to facilitate speaking at a distance, one of the jurors telephoned police headquarters that rioters were slashing each other at a near-by corner; whereupon the guardians of the peace came tearing that way, to the merriment of the "twelve good men and true" peeking out from an upper window. The police having traced the telephone message, the jury was duly haled before the judge; and the latter, noting the reticence of the accused, imposed a fine of twenty-five dollars upon each member of the box for his prank.
William H. Workman, who had repeatedly served the City as Councilman, was elected Mayor of Los Angeles in 1887. During Workman's administration, Main, Spring and Fort streets were paved.
About 1887, Benjamin S. Eaton, as President, took the lead in organizing a society designed to bring into closer relationship those who had come to California before her admission to the Union. There were few members; and inasmuch as the conditions imposed for eligibility precluded the possibility of securing many more, this first union of pioneers soon ceased to exist.
Professor T. S. C. Lowe, with a splendid reputation for scientific research, especially in the field of aëronautics--having acquired his first experience with balloons, as did also Graf Ferdinand Zeppelin, by participating in the Union army maneuvers during our Civil War--took up, in the late eighties, the business of manufacturing gas from water, which he said could be accomplished beyond any doubt for eight cents a thousand feet. C. F. Smurr, the capable Los Angeles agent of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, as well as Hugh Livingston Macniel, son-in-law of Jonathan S. Slauson and then Cashier of the Main Street Savings Bank, became interested with Lowe and induced Kaspare Cohn and me to participate in the experiment.
Accordingly, we purchased six acres of land on the southeast corner of Alameda and Seventh streets for fifteen thousand dollars, and there started the enterprise. We laid pipes through many of the streets and, in the course of a few months, began to manufacture gas which it was our intention to sell to consumers at one dollar per thousand feet. The price at which gas was then being sold by the Los Angeles Gas Company was one dollar and fifty cents per thousand, and we therefore considered our schedule reasonable. Everything at the outset looked so plausible that Smurr stated to his associates that he would resign his position with the railroad and assume the management of the new gas works; but to our chagrin, we found that gas was costing us more than one dollar per thousand, and as one discouragement followed another, Smurr concluded not to take so radical a step. Yet we remained in business in the hope that the Los Angeles Gas Company would rather buy us out than reduce their price fifty cents a thousand feet, and sure enough, it was not so very long before they did. The large gas tank now standing at the corner of Seventh and Alameda streets is the result of this transaction.
Late in the spring, Senator Stanford and a party of Southern Pacific officials visited Los Angeles with the view of locating a site for the new and "magnificent railroad station" long promised the city, and at the same time to win some of the popular favor then being accorded the Santa Fé. For many years, objection had been made to the tracks on Alameda Street, originally laid down by Banning; and hoping to secure their removal, Mayor Workman offered a right of way along the river-front. This suggestion was not accepted. At length the owners of the Wolfskill tract donated to the railroad company a strip of land, three hundred by nineteen hundred feet in size, fronting on Alameda between Fourth and Sixth streets, with the provision that the company should use the same only for railroad station purposes; and Stanford agreed to put up a "splendid arcade," somewhat similar in design to, but more extensive and elaborate than, the Arcade Depot at Sacramento. Soon after this, the rest of that celebrated orchard tract, for over fifty years in the possession of the Wolfskill family, was subdivided, offered at private sale and quickly disposed of.
The old-fashioned, one-horse street car had been running on and off the tracks many a year before the City Railroad, organized, in the middle eighties, by I. W. Hellman and his associates, W. J. Brodrick, John O. Wheeler and others, made its more pretentious appearance on the streets of Los Angeles. This, the first line to use double tracks and more modern cars with drivers and conductors, followed a route then considered very long. Starting as it did at Washington Street and leading north on Figueroa, it turned at Twelfth Street into Olive and thence, zigzagging by way of Fifth, Spring, First, Main, Marchessault, New High, Bellevue Avenue, Buena Vista, College, Upper Main and San Fernando streets, it passed River Station (the Southern Pacific depot on San Fernando Street), and ran out Downey Avenue as far as the Pasadena Railroad depot.
The year 1885 saw the addition of another Spanish name to the local map in the founding of Alhambra, now one of the attractive and prosperous suburbs of Los Angeles.
Sometime in the spring of 1885, or perhaps a little earlier, the Second Street Cable Railway was commenced when Isaac W. Lord turned a spadeful of earth at the corner of Second and Spring streets; and within a few months cars were running from Bryson Block west on Second Street over Bunker Hill along Lakeshore Avenue and then by way of First Street to Belmont Avenue, soon bringing about many improvements on the route. And if I am not mistaken, considerable patronage came from the young ladies attending a boarding school known as Belmont Hall. Henry Clay Witmer was a moving spirit in this enterprise. In course of time the cable railway connected with the steam dummy line, landing passengers in a watermelon patch--the future Hollywood.
Unlike Sierra Madre, so long retarded for want of railway facilities, Monrovia--founded in May, 1886, by William N. Monroe, at an altitude of twelve hundred feet, and favored by both the Santa Fé and the Southern Pacific systems--rapidly developed, although it did not attain its present importance as a foothill town until it had passed through the usual depression of the late eighties, due to the collapse of the Boom, of which I am about to speak.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] On June 21st, 1914, Mr. Ralphs lost his life in a deplorable accident in the San Bernardino Mountains, being crushed by a huge bowlder; although his wife escaped by springing from the rolling rock.
[39] Died on October 10th, 1915.
XXXVIII. THE GREAT BOOM
1887
Not as impulsively perhaps as on previous occasions, I left Los Angeles for Europe on April 30th, 1887, accompanied by my wife and our two children, Marco and Rose. Mrs. Eugene Meyer, my wife's youngest sister, and her daughter joined us at San Francisco and traveled with us as far as Paris. We took passage on the French ship Normandie, departing from the Morton Street Pier in New York on May 14th, and nine days later we landed at Havre, from which port we proceeded to the French capital.
On this trip we visited France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Austria--including Bohemia--and Italy. We also touched at points in Sweden, although we did not "do" that country thoroughly until a later voyage. While in Germany, where I met my nephew Leo--son of J. P. Newmark--then a student in Strassburg, I was impressed with the splendid hotels and State highways, and the advantage taken of natural resources; and from Ems on July 22d, I wrote a letter on the subject to Kaspare Cohn, which I later found had been published by one of the Los Angeles dailies. During this journey we traveled with M. J. Newmark and his family. It was also on this tour, on June 10th, that I returned to my native town of Loebau, both to visit the graves of my parents and once more to see some relatives and a few old friends.
In Paris we had an exciting experience as observers of a conflagration that might have terminated seriously for us. We had been thinking of going to the Opéra Comique in the evening, but instead had accepted an invitation to dinner at the residence of Alexander Weil, the well-known international banker, formerly of San Francisco; and only on our return to the Hôtel du Helder, a comfortable family hostelry in the Rue du Helder (within a couple of blocks of the theater), did we learn of a disastrous fire in the opera house which caused the loss of many lives. For blocks around, streets and sidewalks were roped in and great was the confusion everywhere. The following day a number of solicitous inquiries arrived from friends in America.
In connection with our departure for this tour of Europe, I am reminded of a unique gift to my wife of a diary in eight volumes, tastefully bound in Russian leather--the whole neatly encased for traveling. With almost painful regularity my wife entered there her impressions and recollections of all she saw, refusing to retire at night, as a rule, until she had posted up her book for the day. Glancing over these pages written in her distinct, characteristically feminine hand, I note once more the intellectual vigor and perspicuity displayed by my companion in this, her first contact with European life and customs.
It was during my absence, on May 2d, that Erskine Mayo Ross was appointed, by President Cleveland, Judge of the new United States District Court just established. He was then in partnership with Stephen M. White. A native of Belpré, Virginia, he had come to Los Angeles in 1868 to study law with his uncle, Cameron E. Thom. Soon admitted to the Bar, he was elected in 1879, at the age of thirty-four, to the Supreme Bench of the State. The Judge, with whom I have been on friendly terms since his arrival, is still living in Los Angeles, a familiar and welcome figure in club circles.
Speaking of this esteemed Judge, I am reminded of a visit here, in 1887, of Justice Stephen J. Field, when he sat with Judge Ross in the United States Circuit Court, the sessions of which were then held over the Farmers & Merchants National Bank at the corner of Main and Commercial streets. On that occasion the members of the Bar, irrespective of party, united to do him honor; and Justice Field, in turn, paid a warm tribute to Los Angeles and her hospitality.
D. W. Hanna, a Michigan pedagogue who had come to Los Angeles in 1884 to open Ellis College on Fort Street near Temple--burned in 1888--established on September 2d, 1885, the Los Angeles College, a boarding school for girls, in a couple of buildings at the corner of Fifth and Olive streets. In 1887 Hanna, having formed a stock company, erected a new school structure at the southwest corner of Eighth and Hope streets, where eighteen teachers soon instructed some two hundred and fifty students. But the institution failed, and the building, still standing, was finally bought by Abbot Kinney and named the Abbotsford Inn.
In a note regarding the life and accomplishments of Mme. Severance, I have referred to the distinguished rôle played by this Angeleña in the early advocacy of the kindergarten for America. It took three years, however, for the educational authorities here to awake to the significance of the departure, for it was not until 1887 that Froebel's plan was admitted for experiment into the Los Angeles schools.
A group of Presbyterian clergymen from Los Angeles and vicinity in 1887 joined in establishing Occidental College--now, as developed under John Willis Baer, one of the promising institutions of the Southwest--locating its site east of the city between First and Second streets, both lots and acreage having been donated with the usual Southern California liberality. There, the following year, the main college building was erected; but in 1896 that structure and most of its contents were destroyed by fire.
Early in June, as ex-Mayor E. F. Spence was about to leave for Europe, some enthusiasm was created in educational circles by the announcement that he would deed certain property, including the lot at the corner of Pearl and Sixth streets (on which the Gates Hotel now stands), to the University of Southern California for the establishing of a telescope on Mount Wilson. The matter had been communicated to President M. M. Bovard, who ordered a glass from the celebrated Cambridge grinders, Alvan Clark & Sons. When President Bovard died, Spence was too ill to arrange the details necessary to the further carrying out of his plans; the property that he had promised to give remained part of his estate; and the great glass, when ground, had to be resold, the University of Chicago becoming the lucky purchaser. As all the scientific world knows, the Carnegie Foundation at Washington some years later established, to the extension of California's fame, the celebrated Wilson telescopes on the mountain Spence once had in view.
Early in June, also, Smith & McPhee issued a directory of Los Angeles. But two weeks afterward, George W. Maxwell published another book of addresses with more than five thousand additional names! The second directory listed over eighteen thousand adults, from which fact it was estimated that Los Angeles then had a population of quite sixty thousand.
In 1887, Mrs. Charlotte LeMoyne Wills, wife of the attorney, John A. Wills, and daughter of Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne (who in 1876 erected at Washington, Pennsylvania, the first modern crematory in the world, notwithstanding that he was denied permission by the cemetery authorities there and was compelled to construct the furnace on his property outside of the town), inspired the establishing here of what is said to have been the second crematory in the United States and certainly the first built west of the Rocky Mountains. It was opened at Rosedale Cemetery by the Los Angeles Crematory Society, which brought to the Coast an incinerating expert. Dr. W. LeMoyne Wills, a son, was one of the leading spirits in the enterprise and among the first directors of the local organization. The first cremation occurred in June; and the first body so disposed of was that of the wife of Dr. O. B. Bird, a homeopathic physician. The experiment stirred up a storm of adverse, as well as of favorable criticism.
The brothers Beaudry were interested, doubtless through their undeveloped hill-property, in organizing the Temple Street Cable Railway, running from the foot of Temple Street at Spring out Temple as far west as Union Avenue, with cars operated every ten minutes. The Company had an office at No. 10 Court Street, and the Directors were: Prudent Beaudry, Victor Beaudry, Walter S. Maxwell, E. T. Wright, the surveyor, Octavius Morgan, Ralph Rogers, Thomas Stovell, John Milner and E. A. Hall.
About July, the trustees of James Lick sold Santa Catalina Island to George R. Shatto (who founded Avalon[40]--at first giving it his name--and after whom Shatto Street is called), the price fixed upon being one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Shatto making a partial payment; whereupon the latter agreed to resell the island to an English syndicate. Failure to find there the store of minerals they expected, however, led the English bankers to refuse the property; and in 1892, after a friendly suit had reëstablished the title of the Lick trustees, they disposed of that part of the estate (for about the same price offered Shatto), to William, J. B. and Hancock Banning--sons of my old friend, Phineas Banning--the three forming the Santa Catalina Island Company. Several years later, George S. Patton was admitted as a partner. Little by little Catalina became a favorite resort, although it was years before there was patronage enough to warrant a daily steamer service. In the summer of 1887, for example, at the height of the Boom, William Banning, manager of the Wilmington Transportation Company, ran the steamer Falcon (whose Captain was J. W. Simmie) only once every seven or eight days. Then the vessel used to leave San Pedro wharf at one o'clock in the afternoon and return the next day in time to connect with the three o'clock train for Los Angeles. The fare for the round trip was four dollars.
The year 1887 witnessed the completion of the Arcadia Hotel at Santa Monica, named after Doña Arcadia, wife of Colonel R. S. Baker. It was built on a bluff, was four stories high and had a great veranda with side wings; and with its center tower and cupola was more imposing than any hotel there to-day. Under the proprietorship of J. W. Scott, the Arcadia became one of the first fine suburban hotels in Southern California.
As late as 1887 there was no passenger service between the city and Santa Monica from six to seven o'clock in the evening, though I cannot say just how many trains ran during the day. I am sure, however, that there were not many. Merchants spending their summers at the beach were more inconvenienced through this lack of evening service than at any other time; and after repeated complaints, a coach was hooked onto a freight train. Later, the Board of Trade objected to this slow method, and arrangements were made for another passenger train.
Speaking of Santa Monica in the late eighties, I am reminded of a gravity railroad, somewhat on the principle of the present-day roller-coaster, which was opened near the Arcadia Hotel and as a novelty was a great success. The track was not more than fifteen feet above the ground at its highest point of elevation--just sufficient to give the momentum necessary for an undulating movement.
As the final sequence to the events of three or four preceding years, Los Angeles, at the time when I left for Europe, had already advanced beyond the threshold of her first really violent "boom;" and now symptoms of feverish excitement were everywhere noticeable in Southern California. The basis of real estate operations, heretofore sane enough, was quickly becoming unbalanced, a movement that was growing more and more intensified, as well as general; and as in the case of a mighty stream which accumulates overwhelming power from many feeders, there was a marshalling, as it were, in Los Angeles of these forces. The charms of climate and scenery (widely advertised, as I have said, at the Philadelphia Centennial and, later, through the continuous efforts of the first and second Chambers of Commerce and the Board of Trade), together with the extension of the Southern Pacific to the East and the building of the Santa Fé Railroad, had brought here a class of tourists who not only enjoyed the winter, but ventured to stay through the summer season; and who, having remained, were not long in seeking land and homesteads. The rapidly-increasing demand for lots and houses caused hundreds of men and women to enter the local real-estate field, most of whom were inexperienced and without much responsibility. When, therefore, the news of their phenomenal activity got abroad, as was sure to be the case, hordes of would-be speculators --some with, but more without knowledge of land-manipulation, and many none too scrupulous--rushed to the Southland to invest, wager or swindle. Thousands upon thousands of Easterners swelled the number already here; dealers in realty sprang up like mushrooms. It was then that the demand for offices north of First Street, exceeding the supply, compelled many an agent unwillingly to take accommodations farther south and brought about much building, even to--Second Street! It also happened that a dozen or more competitors occupied a single store-room. Selling and bartering were carried on at all hours of the day or night, and in every conceivable place; agents, eager to keep every appointment possible, enlisted the services of hackmen, hotel employees and waiters to put them in touch with prospective buyers; and the same properties would often change hands several times in a day, sales being made on the curbstone, at bars or restaurant tables, each succeeding transfer representing an enhanced value. Although I was abroad during the height of this period, psychologically so interesting, newspapers, letters and photographs from home--supplemented, on my return, by the personal narratives of friends--supplied me with considerable information of the craze.
As I have already remarked, the coming of the Santa Fé--as well as the ensuing railroad war--was a very potent factor in this temporary growth and advance in values; and soon after the railroad's advent, a dozen towns had been laid out on the line between Los Angeles and San Bernardino, the number doubling within a few months. Indeed, had the plan of the boomers succeeded, the whole stretch between the two cities would have been solidly built up with what in the end proved, alas! to be but castles in the air. Wherever there was acreage, there was room for new towns; and with their inauguration, thousands of buyers were on hand to absorb lots that were generally sold on the installment plan. More frequently than otherwise, payments became delinquent and companies "went broke;" and then the property reverted to acreage again. This sometimes led to serious complications, especially when the contract between the landowner and the so-called syndicate allowed the latter to issue clear title to those who paid for their lots. In such cases, the acreage when recovered by the original owner would be dotted here and there with small possessions; and to reinstate his property was, as a rule, no easy task. This, of course, refers to the failures of which there were more than enough; on the other hand, many of the towns inaugurated during the Boom period not only have survived and prospered, but have become some of our most attractive and successful neighbors.
If every conceivable trick in advertising was not resorted to, it was probably due to oversight. Bands, announcing new locations, were seen here and there in street cars, hay and other wagons and carriages (sometimes followed by fantastic parades a block long); and for every new location there was promised the early construction of magnificent hotels, theaters or other attractive buildings that seldom materialized. When processions filled the streets, bad music filled the air. Elephants and other animals of jungle and forest, as well as human freaks--the remnants of a stranded circus or two--were gathered into shows and used as magnets; while other ingenious methods were often invoked to draw crowds and gather in the shekels. The statements as to climate were always verified, but in most other respects poor Martin Chuzzlewit's experience in the Mississippi town of Eden affords a rather graphic story of what was frequently in progress here during the never-to-be-forgotten days of the Boom. As competition waxed keener, dishonest methods were more and more resorted to; thus schemers worked on the public's credulity and so attracted many a wagon-load of people to mass-meetings, called ostensibly for the purpose of advancing some worthy cause but really arranged to make possible an ordinary sale of real estate. An endless chain of free lunches, sources of delight to the hobo element in particular, drew not only these chronic idlers but made a victim of many a worthier man. Despite all of this excitement, the village aspect in some particulars had not yet disappeared: in vacant lots not far from the center of town it was still not unusual to see cows contentedly chewing their cud and chickens scratching for a living. In 1889, however, the Council governed this feature of domestic life by ordinance, and thenceforth there was less of the "cock's shrill clarion."
Extraordinary situations arose out of the speculative mania, as when over-ambitious folks, fearful perhaps lest they might be unable to obtain corner- and other desirably-situated lots, stationed themselves in line two or three days before the date of anticipated land-sales; and even though quite twenty selections were frequently the limit to one purchase, the more optimistic of our boomers would often have two or three substitutes waiting in a line extending irregularly far down the sidewalk and assuming at night the appearance of a bivouac. I have heard it said that as much as a hundred dollars would be paid to each of these messengers, and that the purchaser of such service, apprehensive lest he might be sold out, would visit his representative many times before the eventful day. Later, this system was improved and official place-numbers were given, thus permitting people to conduct their negotiations without much loss of time.
So little scientific consideration was given to actual values that they were regulated according to calendar and clock; lots in new subdivisions remaining unsold were advertised to advance to certain new prices at such and such an hour, on such and such a day. After these artificial changes, investors would gleefully rub their hands and explain to the downcast outsider that they had "just gotten in in time;" and the downcast outsider, of whom there were many, yielding after repeated assaults of this kind, would himself become inoculated with the fever and finally prove the least restrained boomer of them all. From what I read at the time and heard after my return, I may safely declare that during the height of the infection, two-thirds of our population were, in a sense, more insane than sane.
Syndicates, subdivisions and tracts: these were the most popular terms of the day and nearly everybody had a finger in one or the other pie. There were enough subdivisions to accommodate ten million people; and enough syndicates to handle the affairs of a nation. And talking about syndicates: the disagreement of members themselves as to values frequently prevented the consummation of important sales and resulted in the loss of large profits to the objectors as well as to their associates. In many a well-authenticated case, the property remained on the owners' hands until it became almost worthless.
Wide-awake syndicates evolved new methods, one of which--the lottery plan--became popular. A piece of land would be prepared for the market; and after the opening of streets, as many chances would be sold as there were lots in the tract. On the eventful day, the distribution took place in the presence of the interested and eager participants, each of whom made a selection as his number was drawn. To increase the attractiveness of some of these offers, cottages and even more elaborate houses were occasionally promised for subsequent erection on a few lots. The excitement at many of these events, I was informed, beggared description. Among others sold in this manner at the beginning, or possibly even just before the Boom, were the Williamson Tract, beginning at the corner of Pico and Figueroa streets and once the home-place of the Formans, and the O. W. Childs orchard on the east side of Main Street and running south from what is now about Eleventh. Both of these drawings took place in Turnverein Hall, and the chances sold at about three hundred and fifty dollars each.
Tricksters, of whom at such times there are always enough, could exercise their mischievous proclivities; and the unwary one, who came to be known as the tenderfoot, was as usual easily hoodwinked. Land advertised as having "water privileges" proved to be land under water or in dry creeks; land described as possessing scenic attractions consisted of--mountains and chasms! So situated were many of these lots that no use whatever could be made of them; and I presume that they are without value even now. One of the effects of subdividing a good part of the ten thousand or more acres of agricultural land in the city then irrigated from the zanjas was both to reduce the calls for the service of the city Zanjero, and to lessen considerably the importance and emoluments of his office.
Advertisers tried to outdo themselves and each other in original and captivating announcements; with the result that, while many displayed wit and good humor, others were ridiculously extravagant. The Artesian Water Company came onto the market with three hundred acres of land near Compton and the assurance that "while the water in this section will be stocked, the stock will not be watered." Alvan D. Brock, another purveyor of ranches, declared:
I mean business, and do not allow any alfalfa to grow under my feet.
A. F. Kercheval, the poet, to whom I have already referred, relieved himself of this exuberance regarding the Kercheval Tract (on Santa Fe Avenue, between Lemon and Alamo streets):
HE OR SHE That Hesitates is Lost! An axiom that holds good in real estate, as well as in affairs of the heart. Selah!
Another advertisement read as follows:
HALT! HALT! HALT! Speculators and Homeseekers, Attention! $80,000--Eighty Thousand Dollars--$80,000 Sold in a Day at the Beautiful McGarry Tract Bounded by Ninth and Tenth and Alameda Streets. Come Early, before they are All Gone!
Still another was displayed:
Boom! Boom!
ARCADIA!
Boom! Boom!
And now and then, from a quarter to a full page would be taken to advertise a new town or subdivision, with a single word--the name of the place--such as
Vernon and Vernondale were names given to subdivisions on Central Avenue near Jefferson Street. Advertising the former, the real-estate poet was called into requisition with these lines:
Go, wing thy flight from star to star, From world to luminous world as far As the universe spreads its flaming wall, Take all the pleasure of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years, One Winter at Vernon is worth them all!
while, in setting forth the attractions of the Lily Langtry Tract, the promoter drew as follows from the store of English verse:
Sweet Vernon, loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheers the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, And parting Summer's lingering blooms delayed;
concluding the announcement with the following lines characteristic of the times:
Catch on before the whole country rushes to Vernondale! Every man who wishes a home in Paradise should locate in this, the loveliest district of the whole of Southern California. This is where the orange groves are loveliest! This is where the grapes are most luxuriant! This is where the vegetation is grandest! This is where the flowers are prettiest!
With the Boom affecting not only Los Angeles but also each acre of her immediate vicinity, Pasadena and the district lying between the two towns took on new life. Five thousand inhabitants boasted a million dollars in deposits and a couple of millions invested in new buildings; while "gilt-edged Raymond," a colony surrounding the Raymond Hotel, became a bustling center. In March, George Whitcomb laid out Glendora, naming it (with the use of a couple of additional letters) after his wife, Ledora; and at the first day's sale, he auctioned off three hundred lots. In December, the old-established town of Pomona was incorporated. Whittier, started by Quakers from Indiana, Iowa and Illinois, and christened in honor of the New England poet, began at this time with a boom, two hundred thousand dollars' worth of property having been sold there in four months. This prosperity led one newspaper to say with extreme modesty:
Whittier is the coming place! It will dwarf Monrovia and eclipse Pasadena. Nothing can stop it! The Quakers are coming in from all over the United States;
and another journal contained an advertisement commencing as follows:
WHITTIER! WHITTIER!! WHITTIER!!! Queen of the Foothills and Crown of the San Gabriel Valley.
I. W. Lord established Lordsburg--or at least an elaborate hotel there, for in those days a good hotel was half of a town; and when Lordsburg slumped, he sold the building to a colony of Dunkers for a college. Nadeau Park was projected as a town at the junction of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé's Ballona road and the Southern Pacific. Santa Ana, too, after its sale in June of over eighty thousand dollars' worth of land, came forward in the summer with this confident salutation:
THIS IS PURE GOLD!!! Santa Ana, The Metropolis of Southern California's Fairest Valley! Chief Among Ten Thousand, or the One Altogether Lovely! Beautiful! Busy! Bustling! Booming! It Can't be Beat! The town now has the biggest kind of a big, big boom. A Great Big Boom! And you Can Accumulate Ducats by Investing!
Fullerton was started in July, when ninety-two thousand dollars changed hands within half a day; and conditions favoring the young community, it survived. Rivera, in the Upper Los Nietos Valley, also then came into being. The glories of Tustin (founded in 1867 by Columbus Tustin, but evidencing little prosperity until twenty years later) were proclaimed through such unassuming advertisements as this:
TUSTIN THE BEAUTIFUL Unexcelled in charm and loveliness. An Earthly Eden Unsurpassed in Wealth of Flower and Foliage. However, Imagination Cannot Conceive It: It must be seen to be realized,
supplemented by the following versification:
When the Angel of Peace to Earth first descended, To bless with his presence the children of men, 'Mid the fairest of scenes his pathway e'er tended, And unto his smile the glad earth smiled again. He joyed in the fragrance of orange and roses, And loved 'mid their glances to linger or roam, And he said: "Here in Tustin, where Beauty reposes, I also will linger or build me a home!"
In April, Jonathan S. Slauson and a company of Los Angeles capitalists laid out and started the town of Azusa, on a slope eight hundred feet high in a rich and promising country. Not so far away was Palomares, announced through the following reassuring poster:
Grand Railroad Excursion and Genuine AUCTION SALE! No Chenanekin!! Thursday, June 7, 1887. Beautiful Palomares, Pomona Valley! Lunch, Coffee, Lemonade, and Ice Water Free! Full Band of Music.
And here it may not be without interest to note the stations then passed in making such an excursion from Los Angeles to the new town: Commercial Street, Garvanza, Raymond, Pasadena, Lamanda Park (named, Henry W. O'Melveny tells me, after Amanda, wife of L. J. Rose), Santa Anita, Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Glendora, San Dimas and Lordsburg. Providencia rancho, consisting of seventeen thousand acres of mountain and valley, was opened up in 1887 and the new town of Burbank was laid out; J. Downey Harvey, J. G. Downey's heir, and David Burbank, the good-natured dentist and old-timer, then living on the site of the Burbank Theater (once the orchard of J. J. Warner), being among the directors. About the same time, twelve thousand acres of the Lankershim rancho, adjoining the Providencia, were disposed of. Sixty-five dollars was asked for a certificate of stock, which was exchangeable later for an acre of land. Glendale was another child of the Boom, for the development of which much dependence was placed on a new motor railroad. Rosecrans and its Addition were two other tracts relying on improved facilities for communicating with Los Angeles. Under the caption, Veni, Vidi, Vici! a motor road was promised for service within ninety days; and lots, from one hundred dollars up, were then to be advanced five hundred per cent! Excursions, accompanied by Colonel Bartlett's Seventh Infantry Band, to "magnificent Monte Vista, the Gem of the Mountains! the Queen of the Valley!" near San Fernando, fifteen miles from Los Angeles, were among the trips arranged.
Speaking of the Boom, I recall an amusing situation such as now and then relieved the dark gloom of the aftermath. When a well-known suburb of Los Angeles was laid out, someone proposed that a road be named Euclid Avenue; whereupon a prominent citizen protested vigorously and asked what Mr. Euclid had ever done for Southern California?
During 1887, and at the suggestion of George E. Gard, many neighboring towns--a number of which have long since become mere memories--donated each a lot, through whose sale a Los Angeles County exhibit at the reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic was made possible; and among these places were Alosta, Gladstone, Glendora, Azusa, Beaumont, Arcadia, Raymond, San Gabriel, Glendale, Burbank, Lamar's Addition to Alosta, Rosecrans, St. James, Bethune, Mondonville, Olivewood, Oleander, Lordsburg, McCoy's[41] Addition to Broad Acres, Ivanhoe, New Vernon, Alta Vista, Nadeau Park, Bonita Tract, San Dimas, Port Ballona, Southside, Ontario, Walleria and Ocean Spray. When the lots were sold at Armory Hall, some ten thousand dollars was realized--twelve hundred and seventy-five dollars, paid by Colonel Banbury for a piece of land at Pasadena, being the highest price brought. Not even the celebrity given the place through the gift of a lot to the Grand Old Man of England saved Gladstone; and St. James soon passed into the realms of the forgotten, notwithstanding that one hundred and fifty vehicles and five hundred people were engaged, in June, in caring for the visitors who made their way to the proposed town-site, five miles from Anaheim, and bought, when there, forty thousand dollars' worth of property in a few hours.
Ben E. Ward--a good citizen whose office was in the renovated municipal adobe--operated with Santa Monica realty during the Boom, somewhat as did Colonel Tom Fitch in the cradle days of the bay city. He ran private trains and sold acre and villa lots, and five-and ten-acre farms, for ten per cent. of the price "at the fall of the hammer;" the balance of the first quarter payable on receipt of the agreement, and the other payments in six, twelve and eighteen months. On one occasion in June, Ward was advertising as follows:
HO, FOR THE BEACH! To-morrow, To-morrow! Grand Auction Sale at Santa Monica. 350--Acres--350
One of the Grandest Panoramic Views the Human Eye ever rested upon, including Ballona, Lake and Harbor, with its outgoing and in-coming vessels, the Grand Old Pacific, the handsome new Hotel Arcadia, while in the distance may be seen Los Angeles, the Pride of All, and the coming city of two hundred thousand people.
Long Beach came in for its share of the Boom. In July, H. G. Wilshire (after whom, I believe, Wilshire Boulevard was named), as general manager of the new hotel at that place, offered lots at one hundred and fifty dollars and upward, advertising under the caption, "Peerless Long Beach!" and declaring that the place was "no new settlement, but a prosperous town of two thousand people," to be "reached without change of cars." The hotel was to be doubled in size, streets were to be sprinkled and bathhouses--with hot and cold water--were to be built. One of the special attractions promised was even a billiard-room for ladies! But the hotel was afterward destroyed by fire, and Long Beach dwindled away until, in 1890, it had scarcely a population of five hundred.
Besides the improving of Santa Monica and the expanding of San Pedro, several harbor projects were proposed in the days of the Boom. About the first of June, 1887, Port Ballona--formerly Will Tell's--began to be advertised as "The Future Harbor of Southern California" and the ocean terminus of the California Central Railroad, which was a part of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé system. In August, thousands of people assembled at the beach to celebrate the opening of La Ballona Harbor. The enterprise had been backed by Louis Mesmer, Bernard Mills, Frank Sabichi and others; and Mesmer, General Nelson A. Miles, ex-Governor Stoneman, Eugène Germain and J. D. Lynch were among the speakers. A syndicate, headed by J. R. Tuffree, which purchased the Palos Verdes rancho, announced its intention of creating the harbor of Catalina at Portuguese Bend. The syndicate was to build there a large hotel named Borromea, while a Mr. Kerckhoff, encouraged by the prospect of a railroad around Point Firmin, was to erect another huge hotel and lay out a watering place.
As the Boom progressed and railroads continued to advertise Los Angeles, the authorities began to look with consternation on the problem of housing the crowds still booked to come from the East; and it was soon recognized that many prospective settlers would need to roost, for a while, as best they could in the surrounding territory. The Hotel Splendid, an enterprise fostered by Hammel & Denker, proprietors of the United States Hotel, was then commenced on Main Street, between Ninth and Tenth, though it was never completed. Numerous capitalists and business houses encouraged the proposition; yet the site was sold, but a single generation ago, to O. T. Johnson, a local philanthropist, for about twenty-five thousand dollars--a conservative estimate placing its present value at not much less than two and a half millions.
But there are other indications of the strength, or perhaps the weakness, of the Boom. In 1887, the total assessment of the young City and County was three million dollars, or about one-third that recorded for the longer-developed City and County of San Francisco. In one day in July, real estate valued at $664,000 was transferred; on another day in the same month, $730,000 worth; and soon after, in one day, property to the value of $930,000 changed hands. From forty million dollars in March, 1886, the wealth of the county jumped, in just two years, to one hundred and three millions. So many, indeed, were the purchasers of real estate in Los Angeles at that time who soon left the town and were seldom or never heard of again, and so many were the sales effected by proxy, that even in August of 1887 one of the newspapers contained over three pages of taxes listed on property whose possessors were unknown.
During this wild excitement, few men of position or reputation who came to town escaped interrogation as to what they thought of the Boom. "Phil" D. Armour, head of the Armour Packing Company, was one who arrived late in July, and whose opinion was immediately sought; and his answer indicated the unbounded confidence inspired in the minds of even outsiders by the unheard-of development of land values. "Boom--will it break soon?" repeated Armour and proceeded to answer his own query. "There is no boom to break! This is merely the preliminary to a boom which will so outclass the present activities that its sound will be as thunder to the cracking of a hickory nut!" Nor was Armour the only one who was so carried away by the phenomena of the times: San Francisco watched Los Angeles with wonder and interest, marveling at all she heard of the magic changes south of the Teháchepi, and asking herself if Los Angeles might not be able to point the way to better methods of city-building?
I have thus endeavored to give a slight idea of the lack of mental poise displayed by our good people in the year 1887, when the crop of millionaires was so great that to be one was no distinction at all. But alas! the inevitable collapse came and values tumbled fully as rapidly as they had advanced, finding many (who but a short period before had based their worth on investments figured at several times their value) loaded with overwhelming debts and mortgages quite impossible of liquidation. Indeed, readjustments took years and years to accomplish; and so it happened that many an imaginary Croesus then became the bidder, often unsuccessful, for humble employment. Just as is always the case, too, in periods such as I have described, the depression, when it came was correspondingly severe and sudden. Many of our greatest boomers and speculators lost all hope; and more than one poor suicide so paid the price of his inordinate craving for wealth.
To be sure, some level-headed people, acting more conservatively than the majority, in time derived large profits from the steady increase in values. Those who bought judiciously during that period are now the men of wealth in Los Angeles; and this is more particularly true as to ownership in business sections of the city. Even at the height of the Boom but little property on any of the streets south of Fifth was worth more than two hundred dollars a foot. Following the Boom, there was an increase of building, much of it doubtless due to contracts already entered into.
Incidental to the opening of the Southern Pacific Railroad's route between the North and South by way of the coast, on August 20th, a great railway fête was held at Santa Bárbara, the first through trains from San Francisco and Los Angeles meeting at that point. A procession, illustrating the progress in transportation methods from the burro pack and stage coach to the modern train of cars, filed about the streets of the old Spanish town. On the return of the Los Angeles excursion train, however, a defective culvert near the Camulos Ranch caused the cars, with one hundred and fifty passengers, to plunge down an embankment--luckily with but few casualties.
L. E. Mosher, who had much literary ability and is still remembered as the author of the poem, The Stranded Bugle, joined the Times staff in August and became prominently identified with the conduct of that newspaper. Later, he left journalism and entered on a business career in New York; but experiencing reverses, he returned to Los Angeles. Failing here, he at length committed suicide, to the deep regret of a large circle of friends.
Late in August, the paving of Main Street, the first thoroughfare of Los Angeles to be so improved, was begun, much to the relief of our townspeople who had too long borne the inconvenience of dusty and muddy roadways, and who, after heavy rains the winter before, had in no uncertain fashion given utterance to their disgust at the backward conditions. This expression was the result of a carefully and generally organized movement; for one morning it was discovered that all of the principal streets were covered with mounds of earth resembling little graves, into each of which had been thrust imitation tombstones bearing such inscriptions as the following:
BEWARE OF QUICKSAND! FARE FOR FERRYING ACROSS, 25 CENTS. NO DUCK-HUNTING ALLOWED IN THIS POND! BOATS LEAVE THIS LANDING EVERY HALF-HOUR. REQUIESCAT IN PACE!
This year, the Sued-Californische Post, which had been established in 1874, began to appear as a daily, with a weekly edition, the Germans in Los Angeles in the eighties representing no mean portion of the burgher strength.
In 1887, the Turnverein-Germania sold to L. J. Rose and J. B. Lankershim, for removal and renovation, the frame structure on Spring Street which for so many years had served it as a home, and erected in its place a substantial brick building costing about forty thousand dollars. Six or seven years afterward, the society resold that property--to be used later as the Elks' Hall--for one hundred thousand dollars; then it bought the lot at 319 and 321 South Main Street, and erected there its new stone-fronted Turner Hall. On the occasion of the corner-stone laying, on August 14th, 1887, when the Turnverein-Germania, the Austrian Verein and the Schwabenverein joined hands and voices, the Germans celebrated their advancement by festivities long to be remembered, ex-Mayor Henry T. Hazard making the chief address; but I dare say that the assembly particularly enjoyed the reminiscences of the pioneer President, Jake Kuhrts, who took his hearers back to the olden days of the Round House (that favorite rendezvous which stood on the very spot where the new building was to rise) and pointed out how Time had tenderly and appropriately joined the associations of the Past with those of the Present. Turner Hall, with its restaurant, brought our German citizens into daily and friendly intercourse, and long served their rapidly-developing community.
How true it is that a man should confine himself to that which he best understands is shown in the case of L. J. Rose, who later went into politics, and in 1887 was elected State Senator. Neglecting his business for that of the public, he borrowed money and was finally compelled to dispose of his interest in the New York house. Indeed, financially speaking, he went from bad to worse; and the same year he sold his magnificent estate to an English syndicate for $1,250,000, receiving $750,000 in cash and the balance in stock. The purchasers made a failure of the enterprise and Rose lost $500,000. He was almost penniless when on May 17th, 1899, he died--a suicide.
Rose was an indefatigable worker for the good of the community, and was thoroughly interested in every public movement. For years he was one of my intimate friends; and as I write these lines, I am moved with sentiments of sadness and deep regret. Let us hope that, in the life beyond, he is enjoying that peace denied him here.
The Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad, begun the previous year by J. F. Crank and destined to be absorbed by the Santa Fé, was opened for traffic to Pasadena on September 17th by a popular excursion in which thousands participated.
With the increase in the number and activity of the Chinese here, came a more frequent display of their native customs and ceremonies, the joss house and the theater being early instituted. On October 21st, a street parade, feast and theatrical performance with more or less barbarous music marked a celebration that brought Mongolians from near and far.
On October 24th, Cardinal Gibbons made his first visit to Los Angeles--the most notable call, I believe, of so eminent a prelate since my settling here.
One of the numerous fires of the eighties that gave great alarm was the blaze of October 28th, which destroyed the Santa Fé Railroad depot and with it a trainload of oil. The conflagration proved obstinate to fight, although the good work of the department prevented its spread. A host of people for hours watched the spectacular scene.
The Raymond Hotel, commonly spoken of as belonging to Pasadena although standing just inside the city to the south, was completed in November; and catering exclusively to tourists, its situation on an eminent knoll overlooking the towns and orange-groves contributed to make it widely famous. In April, 1895, it was swept by fire, to be rebuilt on larger and finer lines. The hotel La Pintoresca, on Fair Oaks Avenue, burned four or five years ago, was another Pasadena hostelry, where I often stopped when wishing to escape the hurly-burly of city life. Now its site and gardens have been converted into a public park.
In November, following the efforts made by the Board of Trade to secure one of the veterans' homes projected by Congress, the managers of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers visited Los Angeles. A committee, representing business men and the Grand Army, showed the visitors around; and as a result of the coöperation of General Nelson A. Miles, Judge Brunson (representing Senator Jones) and others, three hundred acres of the old San Vicente rancho were donated by the Jones and Baker estates and the Santa Monica Land and Water Company, as were also three hundred acres of the Wolfskill Tract. Orchards were laid out, and barracks, chapel, hospital and extra buildings for a thousand men erected. Near this worthy institution, housing as it now does more than two thousand veterans, has developed and prospered--thanks to the patronage of these soldiers and their families--the little town of Sawtelle.
In November, local Democratic and Republican leaders, wishing to draft a new charter for Los Angeles, agreed on a non-partisan Board consisting of William H. Workman, Cameron E. Thom, I. R. Dunkelberger, Dr. Joseph Kurtz, Walter S. Moore, Jeremiah Baldwin, General John Mansfield, P. M. Scott, J. H. Book, José G. Estudillo, Charles E. Day, Thomas B. Brown, W. W. Robinson, A. F. Mackey and George H. Bonebrake; and the following 31st of May the Board was duly elected. Workman was chosen Chairman and Moore, Secretary; and on October 20th the result of their deliberations was adopted by the City. In January, 1889, the Legislature confirmed the action of the Common Council. The new charter increased the number of wards from five to nine, and provided for the election of a councilman from each ward.
As the result of an agitation in favor of Los Angeles, the Southwest headquarters of the United States Army were transferred from Whipple Barracks, Arizona, about the beginning of 1887, the event being celebrated by a dinner to Brigadier-General Nelson A. Miles, at the Nadeau Hotel. Within less than a year, however, General Miles was transferred to San Francisco, General B. H. Grierson succeeding him at this post.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Largely destroyed by fire, November 29th, 1915.
[41] Bearing the name of Frank McCoy, who died on March 4th, 1915.
XXXIX. PROPOSED STATE DIVISION
1888-1891
By agreement among property owners, the widening of Fort Street from Second to Ninth began in February, 1888. This was not accomplished without serious opposition, many persons objecting to the change on the ground that it would ruin the appearance of their bordering lots. I was one of those, I am frank to say, who looked with disfavor on the innovation; but time has shown that it was an improvement, the widened street (now known as Broadway), being perhaps the only fine business avenue of which Los Angeles can boast.
Booth and Barrett, the famous tragedians, visited Los Angeles together this winter, giving a notable performance in Child's Opera House, their combined genius showing to greatest advantage in the presentation of Julius Cæsar and Othello.
Toward the end of the seventies, I dipped into an amusing volume, The Rise and Fall of the Mustache, by Robert J. Burdette--then associated with the Burlington Hawkeye--little thinking that a decade later would find the author famous and a permanent resident of Southern California.[42] His wife, Clara Bradley Burdette, whom he married in 1899 and who is well known as a clubwoman, has been associated with him in many local activities.
George Wharton James, an Englishman, also took up his residence in Southern California in 1888, finally settling in Pasadena, although seven years previously he had been an interested visitor in Los Angeles. James has traveled much in the Southwest; and besides lecturing, he has written ten or twelve volumes dealing in a popular manner with the Spanish Missions and kindred subjects.
Through the publication by D. Appleton & Company of one of the early books of value dealing with our section of the State, progress was made, in the late eighties, in durably advertising the Coast. This volume was entitled, California of the South; and as a scientifically-prepared guide was written by two fellow-townsmen, Drs. Walter Lindley and J. P. Widney.
Very shortly after their coming to Los Angeles, in April, 1888, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Tomás Lorenzo Duque with whom I have since been on terms of intimacy. Mr. Duque, a Cuban by birth, is a broad-minded, educated gentleman of the old school.
Frederick William Braun established on May 1st, at 127 New High Street, the first exclusively wholesale drug house in Southern California, later removing to 287 North Main Street, once the site of the adobe in which I was married.
The same season my brother, whose health had become precarious, was again compelled to take a European trip; and it was upon his return in September, 1890, that he settled in Los Angeles, building his home at 1043 South Grand Avenue, but a few doors from mine.
The coast-line branch of the Santa Fé Railroad was opened in August between Los Angeles and San Diego.
W. E. Hughes has been credited with suggesting the second and present Chamber of Commerce, and J. F. Humphreys is said to have christened it when it was organized on October 15th. E. W. Jones was the first President and Thomas A. Lewis the first Secretary. In addition to these, S. B. Lewis, Colonel H. G. Otis, J. V. Wachtel (a son-in-law of L. J. Rose), Colonel I. R. Dunkelberger and William H. Workman are entitled to a great deal of credit for the movement. So well known is this institution, even internationally, and so much has been written about it, that I need hardly speak of its remarkable and honorable part in developing Southern California and all of the Southland's most valuable resources.
Late in the fall the Los Angeles Theater, a neat brick edifice, was opened on Spring Street, between Second and Third. At that time, other places of amusement were the Childs or Grand Opera House, Mott Hall, over Mott Market--an unassuming room without stage facilities, where Adelina Patti once sang, and where Charles Dickens, Jr., gave a reading from his father's books--and Hazard's Pavilion at Fifth and Olive, built on the present site of the Temple Auditorium by Mayor H. T. Hazard and his associate, George H. Pike. During the Boom especially and for a few years thereafter (as when in 1889, Evangelist Moody held forth), this latter place was very popular; and among celebrities who lectured there was Thomas Nast, Harpers' great cartoonist, who had so much to do with bringing Boss Tweed to justice. As Nast lectured, he gave interesting exhibitions of his genius to illustrate what he had to say; and many of his sketches were very effective. Doubtless alluding to the large audience gathered to do him honor, the artist said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I will now show you how to draw a big house," whereupon he rapidly sketched one.
On the morning of October 21st, the Los Angeles Times created one of the most noted surprises in the history of American politics, making public the so-called Murchison letters, through which the British diplomat Lord Sackville West, caught strangely napping, was recalled in disgrace from his eminent post as British Minister to Washington. In 1882, George Osgoodby located at Pomona. Though of English grandparents, Osgoodby possessed a strong Republican bias; and wishing to test the attitude of the Administration toward Great Britain, he formed the scheme of fathoming Cleveland's purpose even at the British Minister's expense. Accordingly, on September 4th, 1888--in the midst of the Presidential campaign--he addressed Lord West, signing himself Charles F. Murchison and pretending that he was still a loyal though naturalized Englishman needing advice as to how to vote. "Murchison" reminded his lordship that, just as a small State had defeated Tilden, so "a mere handful of naturalized countrymen might easily carry California." The British Minister was betrayed by the plausible words; and on September 13th he answered the Pomona farmer, at the same time indicating his high regard for Cleveland as a friend of England. Osgoodby gave the correspondence publicity through the Times; and instantly the letters were telegraphed throughout America and to England, where they made as painful an impression as they had caused jubilation or anger in this country. How, as a consequence, diplomatic relations between America and England were for a while broken off, is familiar history.
During the winter of 1888-89, Alfred H. and Albert K. Smiley, twin brothers who had amassed a fortune through successful hotel management at summer-resorts in the mountains of New York, came to California and purchased about two hundred acres near Redlands, situated on a ridge commanding a fine view of San Timoteo Cañon; and there they laid out the celebrated Cañon Crest Park, more popularly known as Smiley Heights. They also gave the community a public library. On account of their connections, they were able to attract well-to-do settlers and tourists to their neighborhood and so contribute, in an important way, to the development and fame of Redlands.
The City Hall was erected, during the years 1888-89, on the east side of Broadway between Second and Third streets on property once belonging to L. H. Titus. As a detail indicating the industrial conditions of that period, I may note that John Hanlon, the contractor, looked with pride upon the fact that he employed as many as thirty to forty workmen and all at one time!
Another effort in the direction of separating this part of California from the northern section was made in December, 1888 and here received enthusiastic support. General William Vandever, then a representative in Congress from the Sixth District, introduced into that body a resolution providing for a State to be called South California. Soon after, a mass meeting was held in Hazard's Pavilion, and a campaign was opened with an Executive Committee to further the movement; but--California is still, and I hope will long continue to be, a splendid undivided territory.
On January 1st, 1889, Pasadena held her first Rose Tournament. There were chariot races and other sports, but the principal event was a parade of vehicles of every description which, moving along under the graceful burden of their beautiful floral decorations, presented a magnificent and typically Southern California winter sight. The tournament was so successful that it has become an annual event participated in by many and attracting visitors from near and far. It is managed by a permanent organization, the Tournament of Roses Association, whose members in 1904 presented Tournament Park, one of the City's pleasure-grounds, to Pasadena.
Once outdistanced by both Main and Spring streets, and yet more and more rising to importance as the city grew, Fort Street--a name with an historical significance--in 1889 was officially called Broadway.
Fred L. Baker, who reached Los Angeles with his father, Milo Baker in 1874, designed in 1889, and when he was but twenty-four years of age, the first locomotive built in Los Angeles. It was constructed at the Baker Iron Works for the Los Angeles County Railroad, and was dubbed the Providencia; and when completed it weighed fifteen tons.
On February 16th, Jean Louis Sainsevain, everywhere pleasantly known as Don Louis, died here, aged seventy-three years.
I have spoken of L. J. Rose's love for thoroughbred horses. His most notable possession was Stamboul, the celebrated stallion, which he sold for fifty thousand dollars. At Rose Meade, toward the end of the eighties, there were about a hundred and twenty pedigreed horses; and at a sale in 1889 fifty of these brought one hundred and ninety thousand dollars. This reminds me that early in April, the same year, Nicolás Covarrúbias (in whose stable on Los Angeles Street, but a short time before, nearly a hundred horses had perished by fire) sold Gladstone to L. H. Titus for twenty-five hundred dollars.
General Volney E. Howard died in May, aged eighty years, just ten years after he had concluded his last notable public service as a member of the State Constitutional Convention.
One of those who well illustrate the constant search for the ideal is Dr. Joseph Kurtz. In the spring of 1889 he toured Europe to inspect clinics and hospitals; and inspired by what he had seen, he helped, on his return, to more firmly establish the Medical College of Los Angeles, later and now a branch of the University of California.
In 1889, I built another residence at 1051 South Grand Avenue, and there we lived for several years. As in the case of our Fort Street home, in which four of our children died, so here again joy changed to sorrow when, on November 18th, 1890, our youngest daughter, Josephine Rose, was taken from us at the age of eight years.
The Los Angeles Public Library was once more moved in July from the Downey Block to the City Hall where, with some six thousand books and about one hundred and thirty members, it remained until April, 1906, when it was transferred by Librarian Charles F. Lummis to the Annex of the Laughlin Building. It then had over one hundred thousand volumes. In the fall of 1908, it was removed to the new Hamburger Building.
Colonel James G. Eastman, who arrived in Los Angeles during the late sixties, associated himself with Anson Brunson in the practice of law and, as a cultured and aristocratic member of the Bar, became well known. For the centennial celebration here he was chosen to deliver the oration; yet thirteen years later he died in the County Poorhouse, having in the meantime sunk to the lowest depths of degradation. Drinking himself literally into the gutter, he lost his self-respect and finally married a common squaw.
The early attempts to create another county, of which Anaheim was to have been the seat, are known. In 1889, the struggle for division was renewed, but under changed conditions. Santa Ana, now become an important town and nearer the heart of the proposed new county, was the more logical center; but although Anaheim had formerly strongly advocated the separation, she now opposed it. The Legislature, however, authorized the divorce, and the citizens chose Santa Ana as their county seat; and thus on August 1st, Orange County began its independence.
Although the cable lines on Second and Temple streets were not unqualified successes, J. F. Crank and Herman Silver in 1887 obtained a franchise for the construction of a double-track cable railway in Los Angeles, and in 1889 both the Boyle Heights and the Downey Avenue lines were in operation. On August 3d, 1889, the Boyle Heights section of the Los Angeles Cable Railway was inaugurated with a luncheon at the Power House--invitations to which had been sent out by the Boyle Heights Board of Trade, William H. Workman, President--preceded by a parade of cars; and on November 2d, the official opening with its procession of trains on the Downey Avenue line culminated, at noon, with speech-making at the Downey Avenue Bridge, and in the evening with a sham battle and fireworks. Some old-timers took part in the literary exercises, and among others I may mention Mayor Henry T. Hazard, Dr. J. S. Griffin, General R. H. Chapman and the Vice-President and Superintendent of the system, J. C. Robinson. The East Los Angeles line started at Jefferson Street, ran north on Grand Avenue to Seventh, east on Seventh to Broadway, north on Broadway to First, east on First to Spring, north on Spring to the Plaza, down San Fernando Street, then on the viaduct built over the Southern Pacific tracks and thence out Downey Avenue. The Boyle Heights line started on Seventh Street at Alvarado, ran along Seventh to Broadway, up Broadway to First and east on that street to the junction of First and Chicago streets. Quite a million dollars, it is said, was invested in the machinery and tracks--so soon to give way to the more practicable electric trolley trams--to say nothing of the expenditures for rolling stock; and for the time being the local transportation problem seemed solved, although the cars first used were open, without glass windows, and the passengers in bad weather were protected only by curtains sliding up and down. To further celebrate the accomplishment, a banquet was given Colonel J. C. Robinson on December 18th, 1889. Herman Silver, to whom I have just referred, had not only an interesting association as a friend of Lincoln, but was a splendid type of citizen. He achieved distinction in many activities, but especially as President of the City Council.
On November 4th, Bernard Cohn, one of the originators of Hellman, Haas & Company (now Haas, Baruch & Company, the well-known grocers), and a pioneer of 1856, died. During the late seventies and early eighties, he was a man of much importance, both as a merchant and a City Father, sitting in the Council of 1888 and becoming remarkably well-read in the ordinances and decrees of the Los Angeles of his day.
Like Abbot Kinney, Dr. Norman Bridge, an authority on tuberculosis, came to Sierra Madre in search of health, in 1890; lived for a while after that at Pasadena, and finally settled in Los Angeles. Five or six years after he arrived here, Dr. Bridge began to invest in Californian and Mexican oil and gas properties. Despite his busy life, he has found time to further higher culture, having served as Trustee of the Throop Institute and as President of the Southwest Museum, to both of which institutions he has made valuable contributions; while he has published two scholarly volumes of essays and addresses.
Thomas Edward Gibbon who, since his arrival in 1888, has influenced some of the most important movements for the benefit of Los Angeles, and whose activities have been so diversified, in 1890 bought the Daily Herald, becoming for several years the President of its organization and its managing editor. During his incumbency, Gibbon filled the columns with mighty interesting reading.
After living in Los Angeles thirty years and having already achieved much, I. W. Hellman moved to San Francisco on March 2d, 1890, and there reorganized the Nevada Bank. Still a resident of the northern city, he has become a vital part of its life and preëminent in its financial affairs.
Judge Walter Van Dyke was here in the early fifties, although it was some years before I knew him; and I am told that at that time he almost concluded a partnership with Judge Hayes for the practice of law. He was Judge of the Superior Court when the City of Los Angeles claimed title--while I was President of the Temple Block Company--to about nine feet of the north end of Temple Block. The instigator of this suit was Louis Mesmer, who saw the advantage that would accrue to his property, at the corner of Main and Requena streets, if the square should be enlarged; but we won the case. A principal witness for us was José Mascarel, and our attorneys were Stephen M. White and Houghton, Silent & Campbell. My second experience with Judge Van Dyke was in 1899, when I bought a lot from him at Santa Monica. This attempt to enlarge the area at the junction reminds me of the days when the young folks of that neighborhood used to play tag and other games there. Baseball, here called town-ball, was another game indulged in at that place.
Temple Block came to be known as Lawyer's Block because the upper floors were largely given over to members of that profession; and many of the attorneys I have had occasion to speak of as being here after our acquisition of the building had their headquarters there. Thus I became acquainted with Judge Charles Silent who, like his partner, Sherman Otis Houghton, hailed from San José in 1886, or possibly 1885, the two doubtless coming together. Judge Houghton brought with him a reputation for great physical and moral courage; and the two friends formed with Alexander Campbell the law firm of Houghton, Silent & Campbell. Judge Charles Silent, a native of Baden, Germany (born Stumm, a name Englished on naturalization), father of Edward D. Silent and father-in-law of Frank J. Thomas, once served as Supreme Court Judge in Arizona, to which office he was appointed by President Hayes; and since his arrival here, he has occupied a position of prime importance, not only on account of his qualifications as an attorney but also through the invaluable service he has always rendered this community. The judge now possesses a splendid orange orchard near the foothills, where he is passing his declining years. In the same way I had pleasant relations with the barrister, C. White Mortimer, for a long time the popular English Vice-consul, who came from Toronto. Among other attorneys whom it was a pleasure to know were Aurelius W. Hutton; John D. Bicknell (once a partner of Stephen M. White); J. H. Blanchard; Albert M. Stephens; General John Mansfield (who, by the way, was the first Lieutenant-Governor under the Constitution of 1879); Thomas B. Brown, District Attorney from 1880 until 1882; Will D. Gould; Julius Brousseau; J. R. Dupuy, twice District Attorney; and General J. R. McConnell. Most of these gentlemen were here before 1880. On the twentieth of January, 1889, M. L. Graff, a practicing attorney, reached Los Angeles, and until my family broke up housekeeping, he was a regular and welcome visitor in my home.
Ferdinand K. Rule came to Southern California in 1890 and soon after associated himself with the old Los Angeles Terminal Railroad. He was a whole-souled, generous man, and was henceforth identified with nearly every movement for the welfare of his adopted city.
Charles Dudley Warner, the distinguished American author, revisited Los Angeles in May, 1890, having first come here in March, three years before, while roughing it on a tour through California described in his book, On Horseback, published in 1888. On his second trip, Warner, who was editor of Harper's Magazine, came ostensibly in the service of the Harpers, that firm later issuing his appreciative and well-illustrated volume, Our Italy, in which he suggested certain comparisons between Southern California and Southern Europe; but the Santa Fé Railroad Company, then particularly desirous of attracting Easterners to the Coast, really sent out the author, footing most if not all of the bills. Mrs. Custer, widow of the General, was another guest of the Santa Fé; and she also wrote about Southern California for periodicals in the East.
News of the death, in New York City, of General John C. Frémont was received here the day after, on July 14th, and caused profound regret.
In the fall, Henry H. Markham stood for the governorship of California and was elected, defeating ex-Mayor Pond of San Francisco by a majority of about eight thousand votes--thereby enabling the Southland to boast of having again supplied the foremost dignitary of the State.
After several years of post-graduate study in higher institutions of learning in Germany, Leo Newmark, son of J. P. Newmark, in 1887 received his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Strassburg. He then served in leading European hospitals, returning in 1890 to his native city, San Francisco, where he has attained much more than local eminence in his specialty, the diseases of the nerves.
The public pleasure-grounds later known as Hollenbeck Park were given to the City, in 1890-91, by William H. Workman and Mrs. J. E. Hollenbeck, Workman donating two-thirds and Mrs. Hollenbeck one-third of the land. Workman also laid out the walks and built the dam before the transfer to the City authorities. Mrs. Hollenbeck suggested the title, Workman-Hollenbeck Park; but Billy's proverbial modesty led him to omit his own name. At about the same time, Mrs. Hollenbeck, recognizing the need of a refuge for worthy old people, and wishing to create a fitting memorial to her husband (who had died in 1885), endowed the Hollenbeck Home with thirteen and a half acres in the Boyle Heights district; to maintain which, she deeded, in trust to John D. Bicknell, John M. Elliott, Frank A. Gibson, Charles L. Batcheller and J. S. Chapman, several valuable properties, the most notable being the Hollenbeck Hotel and a block on Broadway near Seventh.
More than once I have referred to the Chino Ranch, long the home of pioneer Isaac Williams. In his most extravagant dreams, he could not have foreseen that, in the years 1890-91 there would grow on many of his broad acres the much-needed sugar-beet; nor could he have known that the first factory in the Southland to extract sugar from that source would be erected in a town bearing the name of Chino. The inauguration of this important activity in Southern California was due to Henry T. and Robert Oxnard, the last-named then being engaged in cane-sugar refining in San Francisco. Henry T., who had previously ventured in the beet-sugar field in Nebraska, while on the Coast was impressed with the possibilities in our soil and climate; and after a survey of the State, he reached the conclusion that of all California the South offered the conditions most favorable to his plans. Accordingly, he entered into negotiations with Richard Gird, then the owner of the Chino Ranch, who made some preliminary experiments; and the outcome was the factory started there in the season of 1890-91, under the superintendency of Dr. Portius, a German agricultural chemist. In this initial enterprise the Oxnards met with such success that they extended their operations, in 1898 establishing a second and larger factory in Ventura County, in what soon came to be called Oxnard, Dr. Portius again taking charge.
Five or six years after the Oxnards opened their Chino factory, J. Ross Clark and his brother, Senator William A. Clark, commenced the erection of a plant at Alamitos; and in the summer of 1897, the first beets there were sliced, under the superintendency of G. S. Dyer, now in Honolulu. Since then, under a protective policy, several more refineries have started up in the neighborhood of Los Angeles.
In January, 1891, the Home of Peace Society was organized by the Hebrew ladies of Los Angeles, largely through the exertions of Mrs. M. Kremer, who was the first to conceive the idea of uniting Jewish women for the purpose of properly caring for and beautifying the last resting-place of their dead.
Amos G. Throop, of Chicago, more familiarly known among his friends and fellow-citizens as Father Throop, founded at Pasadena in 1891 the institution at first called Throop University and now known as the Throop College of Technology, giving it two hundred thousand dollars and becoming its first President. The next year, when it was decided to specialize in manual training and polytechnic subjects, the name was again changed--remaining, until 1913, Throop Polytechnic Institute.
The Southern California Science Association, later called the Southern California Academy of Science, was organized in 1891 with Dr. A. Davidson as its first President, and Mrs. Mary E. Hart as Secretary. For five years, it struggled for existence; but having been reorganized and incorporated in 1896, it has steadily become a factor for intellectual progress.
The Friday Morning Club began its existence in April, 1891, as one of the social forces in the city, many of the leading lecturers of the country finding a place on its platform; and in 1899 the Club built its present attractive home on Figueroa Street.
As far as I was familiar with the facts, I have endeavored in these recollections to emphasize the careers of those who from little have builded much, and quite naturally think of William Dennison Stephens whom I came to know through his association as a salesman from 1891 until 1902 with M. A. Newmark & Company, after which he engaged with J. E. Carr on Broadway, between Sixth and Seventh streets, in the retail grocery business. Much of his success I attribute to honest, steady purpose and a winning geniality. By leaps and bounds, Stephens has advanced--in 1907 to the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce; in 1908 to the grand commandership of Knights Templars in California; in 1909 to the mayoralty of Los Angeles; and in 1910 to one of the advisory committee for the building of the aqueduct. At present, he is the Congressman from the Tenth Congressional District.
Three years before Congressman Stephens entered the employ of the Newmarks, Robert L. Craig had just severed his relations with them to form, with R. H. Howell of Louisiana, the third wholesale grocery house to come to Los Angeles. In the course of a few years, Howell & Craig sold out; but Craig, being young and ambitious, was not long in organizing another wholesale grocery known as Craig & Stuart, which was succeeded by R. L. Craig & Company. At Craig's untimely death, Mrs. Craig, a woman of unusual mental talent, took the reins and, as one of the few women wholesale grocers in the country, has since guided the destinies of the concern; still finding time, in her arduous life, to serve the public as a very wide-awake member of the Board of Education.
Four other names of those once associated with my successors and who have been instrumental in establishing important commercial houses here are, P. A., a brother of M. A. Newmark; E. J. Levy; Frank Humphreys, now deceased; and D. Wiebers. The first-named, for some years connected with Brownstein, Newmark & Louis--now Brownstein & Louis--inaugurated and is at the head of P. A. Newmark & Company; while Levy, Humphreys and Wiebers incorporated the Standard Wooden Ware Company.
In 1891, the Terminal Railroad was completed from Los Angeles to East San Pedro, and rapid connection was thus established between Pasadena and the ocean, the accomplishment being celebrated, on November 14th, by an excursion. The road ran via Long Beach and Rattlesnake, later known as Terminal Island--a place that might become, it was hoped, the terminus of one of the great transcontinental railroads; and since the island is now the end of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, that hope has been realized. It was in connection with this railway enterprise that Long Beach made the great mistake of giving away the right of thoroughfare along her ocean front.
FOOTNOTE:
[42] Dr. Burdette died on November 19th, 1914.
XL. THE FIRST FIESTAS
1892-1897
Accompanied by my family, I traveled to Alaska, in 1892, going as far as Muir Glacier and visiting, among other places, Metlakahtla (where we met Father William Duncan, the famous missionary and Arctander), Sitka, Juneau and the Treadwell Mines, near which the town of Treadwell has since developed. To-day, the tourist starts from Seattle; but we left Tacoma, sailing north about the seventh of July. I found much to inspire me in that rather extreme portion of the globe, where I was profoundly impressed with the vast forests and colossal rivers of ice, so emblematic of Nature's law of eternal change. Our party was especially fortunate in witnessing the rare sight of huge masses of ice as, with sound of thunder, they broke from the glacier and floated away, brilliantly-tinted bergs, to an independent, if passing, existence.
Having arrived in the Bay of Sitka, our ship, the Queen of the Pacific, struck a submerged rock. Instantly excitement and even frenzy prevailed. Levi Z. Leiter, a member of the firm of Field, Leiter & Company of Chicago, was so beside himself with fear that he all but caused a panic, whereupon the Captain ordered the First Mate to put the Chicagoan and his family ashore. Leiter, however, was shamed by his daughter, Miss Mary Victoria--afterward Lady Curzon and wife of the Viceroy of India--who admonished him not to make a scene; and having no desire to be left for a protracted stay in Sitka, he came to his senses and the commotion somewhat abated.
Meantime, not knowing how much damage had been done to the vessel, I hastily proceeded to gather our party together, when I missed Marco and only after considerable trouble found the boy in the cabin--such is the optimism of youth--with a huge sandwich in his hand, not in the least excited over the possible danger nor in any mood to allow a little incident of that kind to dissipate his appetite. When it became evident that the ship had sustained no vital damage, the Captain announced that as soon as a higher tide would permit we should proceed on our way.
In 1892, Abbot Kinney and F. G. Ryan, disregarding the craze for property along the bluffs of old Santa Monica, gave practical evidence of their faith in the future of the sand dunes hereabouts by buying an extensive strip of land on the ocean-front, some of it being within the town of Santa Monica but most of it stretching farther south. They induced the Santa Fé to lay out a route to Ocean Park as the new town was to be called; and having erected piers, a bath house and an auditorium, they built numerous cottages. Hardly was this enterprise well under way, however, when Ryan died and T. H. Dudley acquired his share in the undertaking. In 1901, A. R. Fraser, G. M. Jones and H. R. Gage purchased Dudley's half interest; and the owners began to put the lots on the market. One improvement after another was made, involving heavy expenditures; and in 1904, Ocean Park was incorporated as a city.
E. L. Doheny and a partner had the good luck to strike some of the first oil found in quantities within the city limits. They began operations in February on West State Street, in the very residence section of the town; and at about one hundred and sixty feet below the surface, they found oil enough to cause general excitement. Mrs. Emma A. Summers, who had been dealing in real estate since she came in 1881, quickly sank a well on Court Street near Temple which in a short time produced so lavishly that Mrs. Summers became one of the largest individual operators in crude oil. She is now known as the Oil Queen.
At the suggestion of Mrs. M. Burton Williamson, an interesting open-air meeting of the Los Angeles Historical Society was held on the evening of March 28th at the residence of Don António and Doña Mariana Coronel, near the corner of Central Avenue and Seventh Street. Three hundred guests assembled to enjoy the proverbial Spanish hospitality of this distinguished couple, and to hear reports of the activities of various Los Angeles societies. Don António possessed, as is well known, valuable historical and ethnological collections; and some of his choicest curios were that evening placed at the service of his guests. Professor Ira More participated, presiding at a table once used by the first Constitutional Governor, Echeandia, and I still recall the manner in which António chuckled when he told us how he had swapped "four gentle cows" for the piece of furniture; while, instead of a gavel, Señora Coronel had provided a bell long used to summon the Indians to Mission service.
As early as the height of the great Boom, Professor T. S. C. Lowe (to whom I have referred in the story of an experiment in making gas) advocated the construction of a railroad up the mountain later officially designated Mt. Lowe; and almost immediately financiers acted on the proposal and ordered the route surveyed. The collapse of the Boom, however, then made the financing of the project impossible; and the actual work of building the road was begun only in 1892. On the Fourth of July of the following year, the first car carrying a small party of invited guests successfully ascended the incline; and on August 23d the railway was formally opened to the public, the occasion being made a holiday. In 1894, the Mt. Lowe Astronomical Observatory was built. At one time, the railway was owned by Valentine Peyton, my agreeable neighbor and friend then and now residing on Westlake Avenue.
In June, 1893, the Los Angeles Post Office was moved from its location at Broadway near Sixth Street to the National Government Building at the southeast corner of Main and Winston streets, which had just been completed at a cost of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Seized with the same desire that animated many thousands who journeyed to Chicago, I visited the World's Fair in the fall of 1893. Everywhere I was impressed with the extraordinary progress made, especially by Americans, since the display in Philadelphia; and I was naturally proud of the exhibits from California in charge of my fellow-townsman, Ben Truman.
Russell Judson Waters, a well-known banker and member of Congress from the Sixth District between 1899 and 1903, came from Redlands in 1894 and another Southern Californian who has turned his attention to literary endeavor: his novel, El Estranjero, dealing with past local life.
Joseph Scott, who has risen to distinction in the California legal world, alighted in Los Angeles in June, having tried without success to obtain newspaper work in Boston, in 1887, although equipped with a letter of introduction from John Boyle O'Reilly. In New York, with only two dollars in his pocket, he was compelled to shoulder a hod; but relief came: as Scott himself jovially tells the story, he was carrying mortar and brick on a Tuesday in February, 1890, and but two days later he faced a body of students at St. Bonaventura's College in Allegany, New York, as instructor in rhetoric! Within ten months after Scott came to Southern California, he was admitted to practice at the Los Angeles Bar; and since then he has been President of the Chamber of Commerce. He is now a member of the Board of Education, and all in all his services to the commonwealth have been many and important.
The existence of the Merchants' Association, which was organized in 1893 with W. C. Furrey as President and William Bien (succeeded the following year by Jacob E. Waldeck, son-in-law of Samuel Hellman) as Secretary, was somewhat precarious until 1894. In that year, Los Angeles was suffering a period of depression, and a meeting was called to devise ways and means for alleviating the economic ills of the city and also for attracting to Los Angeles some of the visitors to the Midwinter Fair then being held in San Francisco. At that meeting, Max Meyberg, a member of the Association's executive committee, suggested a carnival; and the plan being enthusiastically endorsed, the coming occasion was dubbed La Fiesta de Los Angeles. Meyberg was appointed Director-General; and the following persons, among others, were associated with him in the undertaking: Mayor T. E. Rowan, F. W. Wood, R. W. Pridham, H. Jevne, J. O. Koepfli, Leon Loeb, H. T. Hazard, Charles S. Walton and M. H. Newmark.
The Fiesta lasted from the 10th to the 13th of April and proved a delightful affair. The participants marched in costume to the City Hall during a meeting of the Council, usurped the Government, elected a Queen--Mrs. O. W. Childs, Jr.--to preside over the destinies of the City during the Fiesta and communicated to everybody a spirit of uncontrollable enthusiasm based on a feeling of the most genuine patriotic sentiment. The result was thoroughly successful, the carnival bringing out the real Californian fellowship--whole-souled and ringing true. Indeed, it is conceded by all who have seen Los Angeles grow, that this first Fiesta and the resulting strengthening of the Association have been among the earliest and, in some respects, the most important elements contributory to the wonderful growth and development of our city. A few evenings after the conclusion of the celebration, and while the streets were brilliantly illuminated with Bengal fire, the leaders again marched in a body, this time to the hall over Mott Market, where they not only laid plans for the second Fiesta, but installed J. O. Koepfli as President of the Merchants' Association.
So enthusiastic had the citizens of Los Angeles really become that in the years 1895 and 1896 the Fiesta was repeated and many prominent people supported the original committee, assisting to make the second festival almost equal to the first. Among these patrons were John Alton, Hancock Banning, W. A. Barker, A. C. Bilicke, L. W. Blinn, W. C. Bluett, R. W. Burnham, John M. Crawley, James Cuzner, J. H. Dockweiler, T. A. Eisen, J. A. Foshay, John F. Francis, A. W. Francisco, H. W. Frank, Dan Freeman, Mrs. Jessie Benton Frémont, W. M. Garland, T. E. Gibbon, J. T. Griffith, Harley Hamilton, R. H. Howell, Sumner P. Hunt, A. Jacoby, General E. P. Johnson, John Kahn, F. W. King, Abbot Kinney, E. F. C. Klokke, J. Kuhrts, Dr. Carl Kurtz, J. B. Lankershim, General C. F. A. Last, S. B. Lewis, H. Lichtenberger, Charles F. Lummis, Simon Maier, D. C. McGarvin, John R. Mathews, James J. Mellus, L. E. Mosher, Walter S. Newhall, J. W. A. Off, Colonel H. Z. Osborne, Colonel H. G. Otis, Madison T. Owens, W. C. Patterson, Niles Pease, A. Petsch, John E. Plater, R. W. Pridham, Judge E. M. Ross, F. K. Rule, Frank Sabichi, J. T. Sheward, Colonel W. G. Schreiber, John Schumacher, Professor P. W. Search, Edward D. Silent, Alfredo Solano, George H. Stewart, Frank J. Thomas, D. K. Trask, Ben C. Truman, I. N. Van Nuys, K. H. Wade, Stephen M. White, Frank Wiggins, C. D. Willard, Dr. W. Le Moyne Wills, W. B. Wilshire, H. J. Woollacott and W. D. Woolwine.
This second Fiesta brought into the local field two men then unknown, but each destined to play an important part in the affairs of Los Angeles. J. O. Koepfli, President of the Merchants' Association, and M. H. Newmark, Chairman of the Finance Committee, selected Felix J. Zeehandelaar (a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald during the short ownership of John Bradbury) as financial and publicity agent; with the result that more than thirty thousand dollars was collected and valuable advertising was secured. At that time, the Finance Committee also discovered the undeveloped talent of Lynden Ellsworth Behymer, since so well known as the impresario, who, in managing with wonderful success the sale of tickets for the various events, laid the foundation for his subsequent career. Commencing with Adelina Patti, there have been few celebrities in the musical world that Behymer's enterprise has not succeeded in bringing to Los Angeles; his greatest accomplishment in recent seasons being the booking of the Chicago Grand Opera Company, in February, 1913, under a guarantee of eighty-eight thousand dollars.
Second in chronological order among the larger societies of women, and doubtless equal to any in the importance of its varied activities, the Ebell Club was organized in 1894, due time providing itself with a serviceable and ornate home, within which for years broad courses of departmental study have been prosecuted with vigor.
After worshiping for more than fifteen years in the old Synagogue on Fort Street, and five years more after that name was changed to Broadway (during which period, from 1881 until I started, in 1887, on my second European trip, it was my privilege to serve as President of the Congregation), the reformed Jews of Los Angeles built, in 1894, the Temple B'nai B'rith on the corner of Hope and Ninth streets. In the meantime, following the resignation of Dr. A. W. Edelman, in 1886, Dr. Emanuel Schreiber for two years occupied the pulpit; and then Reverend A. Blum came from Galveston to succeed him. From the early part of 1895, Rabbi M. G. Solomon held the office until 1899. It was during his administration, it may be interesting to observe, and while Herman W. Hellman was President, that the present Temple was consecrated.
In 1894, Homer Laughlin, of Ohio, during a visit purchased from Mrs. Mary A. Briggs the property on Broadway between Third and Fourth streets, where she had lived. Three years later, he moved to Los Angeles and began the erection of the Homer Laughlin fire-proof building, adding to the same, in 1905, a reinforced concrete annex.
At midnight, on April 17th, Don António Franco Coronel died at his home in Los Angeles, aged seventy-seven years. In less than four months, his life-long friend, Don Pio Pico died here--on September 11th, aged ninety-three years.
The Belgian hare aberration was a spasmodic craze of the nineties and when I remember what the little rabbit did to our judgment then, it brings to mind the black-tulip bubble of Holland though, in point of genuine foolishness, I should award the prize to the former. A widely-copied newspaper article, claiming for the flesh of the timid Belgian rodent extraordinary qualities and merit, led first hundreds, then thousands, to rig up hare-coops for the breeding of the animal, expecting to supply the world with its much-lauded meat. Before long, people abandoned profitable work in order to venture into the new field, and many were those who invested thousands of dollars in Belgian hare companies. During the wild excitement attention was also given to the raising of hares for exhibition, and fancy prices were paid for the choicest specimens. At last, the bubble burst: the supply far exceeded the now-diminishing demand and the whole enterprise collapsed.
A lively election in 1895 was that which decided the immediate future of a suburb of Los Angeles where, on April 27th of the same year, Don Juan Warner, who had lived there with his daughter, Mrs. Rúbio, went to his rest. This was University Place, in 1880 a mere hamlet, though three years later it had a post office of its own. In 1895, an effort was made to annex the community, with Vernon, Rosedale and Pico Heights; but the measure was defeated, and only on June 12th, 1899 was the college district annexed to Los Angeles. For some years, the boundary line of the town at that point followed such a course through house-lots that residents there, still at home, often ate in the county and slept within the city!
The early nineties were full of the spirit of accomplishment, and notwithstanding the failure of the Electric Homestead Tract Association and its street car line, already described, a successful electric railway system for Los Angeles was at length installed. In 1892, a route was laid out to Westlake Park, the company having been encouraged by a subsidy of fifty thousand dollars pledged by owners of property most likely to be affected by the service; and by 1895 the electric traction system was so general that even the bob-tailed cars on Main Street gave way to the new order of things. At this early stage in the application of electricity to street cars, some of the equipment was rather primitive. Wooden poles, for example, were a part of the trolley; and as they were easily broken, conductors were fined a dollar for any accident to the rod with which they might have to do! Electricity--when it was forthcoming at all--was only harnessed to impel the vehicle; but there were no devices for using the current to warm the car, and instead of an electric light, an oil lamp, hung onto the dashboard, faintly illuminated the soft roadbed of the irregular tracks. The most active promoters of the improvements of 1895 were the two brothers, William Spencer and Thomas J. Hook, who operated mainly in the southwestern part of the city, developing that rather sparsely-settled district and introducing what was the best and most handsome rolling stock seen here up to that time.
B. F. Coulter, who from 1881 to 1884 had preached here as a clergyman of the Christian Church, in 1895 built a place of worship at his own expense, on Broadway near Temple Street, costing twenty thousand dollars--no inconsiderable sum for that time.
Sometime in March appeared the first issue of the Los Angeles Record, a one-cent evening paper started by E. W. Scripps as "the poor man's advocate." It was really another one of the many enterprising Scripps newspapers scattered throughout the country and championing, more or less, Socialistic principles; in accordance with which Scripps, from the outset, distributed some of the stock among his working associates. At the present time, W. H. Porterfield is the editor-in-chief, and W. T. Murdoch the editor.
Thomas J. Scully, a pioneer school teacher who came to Los Angeles the same year that I did, died here in 1895. For some time Scully was the only teacher in the county outside of the city, but owing to the condition of the public treasury he actually divided his time between three or four schools, giving lessons in each a part of the year. After a while, the schoolmaster gazed longingly upon a lovely vineyard and its no less lovely owner; and at last, by marrying the proprietress, he appropriated both. This sudden capture of wife and independence, however, was too much for our unsophisticated pedagogue: Scully entered upon a campaign of intemperance and dissipation; his spouse soon expelled him from his comfortable surroundings, and he was again forced to earn his own living with birch and book.
Inoffensive in the extreme, yet with an aberration of mind more and more evident during twenty years, Frederick Merrill Shaw, a well-informed Vermonter born in 1827, shipped for California as cook on the brig Sea Eagle and arrived in San Francisco in September, 1849, where he helped to build, as he always claimed, the first three-story structure put up there. Well-proportioned and standing over six feet in height, Shaw presented a dignified appearance; that is, if one closed an eye to his dress. Long ago, he established his own pension bureau, conferring upon me the honor of a weekly contributor; and when he calls, he keeps me well-posted on what he's been doing. His weary brain is ever filled with the phantoms of great inventions and billion-dollar corporations, as his pocketful of maps and diagrams shows; one day launching an aerial navigation company to explore the moon and the next day covering California with railroad lines as thick as are automobiles in the streets of Los Angeles.
On September 21st, my brother, J. P. Newmark, to whom I am so indebted, and who was the cause of my coming to California, died at his home, in the sixty-ninth year of his age; his demise being rather sudden. During the extended period of his illness, he was tenderly nursed by his wife, Augusta; and I cannot pay my sister-in-law too high a tribute for her devoted companionship and aid, and her real self-sacrifice. Mrs. Newmark long survived her husband, dying on January 3d, 1908 at the age of seventy-four.
The reader will permit me, I am certain, the privilege of a fraternal eulogy: in his acceptance and fulfillment of the responsibilities of this life, in the depth and sincerity of his feeling toward family and friend, my brother was the peer of any; in his patient, silent endurance of long years of intense physical suffering and in his cheerfulness, which a manly courage and philosophical spirit inspired him to diffuse, he was the superior of most; and it was the possession of these qualities which has preserved his personality, to those who knew him well, far beyond the span of natural existence.
In May, 1896, the Merchants' Association consolidated with the Manufacturers' Association (of which R. W. Pridham was then President), and after the change of name to the Merchants & Manufacturers' Association, inaugurated the first local exhibit of home products, using the Main Street store of Meyberg Brothers for the display. On August 1st, 1897, Felix J. Zeehandelaar, later also Consul of the Netherlands, became the stalwart, enthusiastic and now indispensable Secretary, succeeding, I believe, William H. Knight.
This same year Major Ben. C. Truman, formerly editor of the Star, together with George D. Rice & Sons established the Graphic, which is still being published under the popular editorship of Samuel T. Clover. In 1900, Truman was one of the California Commissioners to the Paris Exposition. After his foreign sojourn, he returned to Los Angeles and, with Harry Patton, started a weekly society paper called the Capitol. Rather recently, by the advantageous sale of certain property early acquired, Ben and his good wife have come to enjoy a comfortable and well-merited degree of prosperity. Clover came to Los Angeles in 1901; was editor and publisher of the Express for four years; and in 1905 started the Evening News, continuing the same three years despite the panic of 1907. A year previously, he purchased the Graphic, more than one feature of which, and especially his "Browsings in an Old Book Shop," have found such favor.
W. A. Spalding, whose editorial work on Los Angeles newspapers--dating from his association with the Herald in 1874, and including service with both the Express and the Times--in 1896 assumed the business management of his first love, the Herald. After again toiling with the quill for four years, he was succeeded by Lieutenant Randolph H. Miner.
The magnificent interurban electric system of Los Angeles is indebted not a little to the brothers-in-law, General M. H. Sherman and E. P. Clark--the former a Yankee from Vermont, and the latter a Middle Westerner from Iowa--both of whom had settled in Arizona in the early seventies. While in the Territory, Sherman taught school and, under appointment by Governor Frémont as Superintendent of Instruction, laid the foundation of the public school system there. Both came to Los Angeles in 1889, soon after which Sherman organized the Consolidated Electric Railway Company. In 1896, the old steam railroad--which about the late eighties had run for a year or so between Los Angeles and the North Beach, by way of Colegrove and South Hollywood--was equipped with electrical motor power and again operated through the enterprise of Eli P. Clark, President of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad Company. Together, Sherman and Clark built an electrical road to Pasadena, thus connecting the mountains with the sea.
In 1896, I dissolved partnership with Kaspare Cohn, taking over the hide business and, having fitted up a modest office under the St. Elmo Hotel, revived with a degree of satisfaction the name of H. Newmark & Company.
A notable career in Los Angeles is that of Arthur Letts who in 1896 arrived here with barely five hundred dollars in his pocket and, as it would appear, in answer to a benign Providence. J. A. Williams & Company, after a brief experience, had found the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street too far south, and their means too limited, to weather the storm; so that their badly-situated little department store was soon in the hands of creditors. This was Letts' opportunity: obtaining some financial assistance, he purchased the bankrupt stock. His instantaneous success was reflected in the improvement of the neighborhood, and thereafter both locality and business made rapid progress together.
Meredith P. Snyder, who became a resident in 1880 and started business by clerking in a furniture store, in 1896 was elected to the office of mayor, on a municipal water-works platform.
During the presidential campaign of 1896, when the West went wild over "16 to 1," and it looked as if W. J. Bryan would sweep aside all opposition here, an organization known as the Sound Money League undertook to turn the tide. George H. Stewart was elected President, the other members of the Executive Committee being John F. Francis, Frank A. Gibson, R. W. Burnham and M. H. Newmark. So strenuous was the campaign, and so effective was the support by the public, that when the sun set on that memorable Tuesday in November, Los Angeles was found to be still strong for sound principles. Perhaps the most remarkable outpouring in the political history of the city took place during this period when business men, regardless of previous party affiliations, turned out to hear Tom Reed, the "Czar" of the House of Representatives.
It was in the Christmas season of 1896 that Colonel Griffith J. Griffith so generously filled the stocking of Los Angeles with his immensely important gift of Griffith Park, said to be, with its three thousand and more diversified acres, magnificent heights and picturesque roadways--some of which, with their dense willow growth, remind me of the shaded lanes described in earlier chapters--the second largest pleasure ground in the world.
On July 1st, 1897, the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was absorbed by the Santa Fé; Charles W. Smith, the receiver, having brought order out of chaos after the former road in 1895 had met with disaster.
Dr. Henry S. Orme, H. W. O'Melveny, J. M. Griffith, J. W. Gillette, A. L. Bath, J. M. Guinn, M. Teed, J. M. Elliott and W. A. Spalding on August 2d met in the office of the Daily Herald, in the Bradbury Block on Third Street, to consider the organization of an Old Settlers' Society. At that meeting a committee, consisting of Dr. J. S. Griffin, Henry W. O'Melveny, Benjamin S. Eaton, H. D. Barrows, J. M. Guinn, Dr. H. S. Orme, J. W. Gillette and myself was appointed to direct the movement. On August 10th, we selected the Los Angeles County Pioneers of Southern California as the name of the society and decided that eligibility should be limited to those who had resided in the county twenty-five years. A public meeting was held at the Chamber of Commerce on September 4th, 1897 and the twenty-five persons present signed the roll. The first President chosen was Benjamin S. Eaton and the first Secretary, J. M. Guinn.
Dr. William F. Edgar, who had resided here continuously for over thirty years, died on August 23d, at the age of seventy-three; a sword given to him by General Phil Kearney resting among the floral tributes. The tenth of the following November witnessed the death of George Hansen, the surveyor, whose body (in accordance with his expressed wish) was cremated. On the same day, J. J. Ayers died.
This year, when the town was full of unemployed, hundreds of men were set at work to improve Elysian Park, a move suggested by Judge Charles Silent.
Frank Walker, who had been here for a while in the middle of the eighties and had gone away again, returned to Los Angeles about 1897 and set himself up as a master builder. While contracting for certain unique bungalows, his attention was directed to the possibility of utilizing the power of the sun, with the result that he soon patented a solar heater, similar to those now extensively built into Southern California residences, and organized a company for exploiting the invention.
XLI. THE SOUTHWEST ARCHÆOLOGICAL SOCIETY
1898-1905
A cloud, considerably larger than a man's hand, flecked the skies at the dawn of 1898 and troubled many who had been following the course of events in Cuba. So, too, like the thrill sent through the nation at the firing on Fort Sumter, the startling intelligence of the destruction of the United States battleship Maine electrified and united the people. Along the Coast, intense excitement scarcely permitted Westerners to keep themselves within bounds; and instant was the display of patriotic fervor, Southern Californians willingly shouldering their share of the unavoidable war burdens.
On January 22d, John G. Nichols, several times Mayor of Los Angeles and always a welcome figure on the streets, died here at the age of eighty-five years.
Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, soldier, Union officer, Government official in Alaska and President of the Los Angeles Times publishing company, was appointed by President McKinley, on May 27th, a Brigadier-General of the United States Volunteers, following which he was assigned to a command in the Philippines, where he saw active service until honorably discharged in 1899, after the fall of Malolos, the insurgent capital. During General Otis's absence, his influential son-in-law, the large-hearted, big man of affairs, Harry Chandler, Vice-President of the corporation, was general manager of the Times; while L. E. Mosher was managing editor. In 1897, Harry E. Andrews joined the Times staff, in 1906 becoming managing editor and infusing into the paper much of its characteristic vigor. In 1899, Hugh McDowell, who had entered the employ of the Times four years before, began his long editorship of the Times' magazine, a wide-awake feature which has become more and more popular. During many years, Mrs. Eliza A. Otis, the General's gifted wife, now deceased, also contributed to both the Times and the Mirror. From the beginning, the paper has been Republican and in every respect has consistently maintained its original policies. Especially in the fight for San Pedro harbor, it was an important element and did much to bring the energetic campaign to a successful termination.
Paul De Longpré, the French artist who made his mark, when but eleven years old, in the Salon of 1876, was a distinguished member of a little group of Frenchmen arriving in the late nineties. In 1901, he bought a home at Hollywood and there surrounded himself with three acres of choicest gardens--one of the sights of suburban Los Angeles--which became an inspiration to him in his work as a painter of flowers. De Longpré died in Hollywood, on June 29th, 1911.
On August 23d, my excellent friend, Dr. John Strother Griffin, for nearly fifty years one of the most efficient and honored residents of Los Angeles, died here.
A career such as should inspire American youth is that of Henry T. Gage (long in partnership with the well-known bibliophile, W. I. Foley,) a native of New York who in 1877, at the age of twenty-four, began the practice of law in Los Angeles, to be elected, twenty-one years later, Governor of California. A handsome man, of splendid physique--acquired, perhaps, when he started as a sheep-dealer--he is also genial in temperament, and powerful and persuasive in oratory; qualifications which led to his selection, I dare say, to second the nomination at Chicago, in 1888, of Levi P. Morton for the Vice-Presidency. Ex-Governor Gage's wife was Miss Fannie V., daughter of John Rains and granddaughter of Colonel Isaac Williams.
April 27, 1899 was printed large and red upon the calendar for both Los Angeles and San Pedro, when the engineers, desiring to commence work on the harbor in true spectacular fashion, brought a load of quarried rock from Catalina to dump on the breakwater site. President McKinley sent an electric spark from the White House, intended to throw the first load of ballast splashing into the bay; but the barge only half tilted, interfering with the dramatic effect desired. Nevertheless, the festivities concluded with the usual procession and fireworks.
Movements of great importance making for a municipal water-system occurred in 1899, the thirty years' contract with the assigns of John S. Griffin, P. Beaudry, S. Lazard and others having expired on July 22d, 1898. An arbitration committee, consisting of Charles T. Healey for the Company and James C. Kays--long a citizen of importance and Sheriff from 1887 to 1888--for the City, failed to agree as to the valuation of the Los Angeles City Water Company's plant, whereupon Colonel George H. Mendell was added to the board; and on May 12th, 1899, Kays and Mendell fixed their estimate at $1,183,591, while Healey held out for a larger sum. In August, the citizens, by a vote of seven to one, endorsed the issuing of two million dollars of City bonds, to pay the Water Company and to build additional equipment; and the water-works having been transferred to the municipality, five commissioners were appointed to manage the system.
During August, 1899, the Reverend Dr. Sigmund Hecht of Milwaukee took into his keeping the spiritual welfare of Los Angeles Reformed Jewry; and it is certainly a source of very great satisfaction to me that during his tenure of office his good fellowship has led him, on more than one occasion, to tender the altar of the Jewish temple for Christian worship. Scholarly in pursuits and eloquent of address, Dr. Hecht for sixteen years has well presided over the destinies of his flock, his congregation keeping pace with the growth of the city.
Incursions of other jobbing centers into Los Angeles territory induced our leading manufacturers and wholesalers to combine for offensive as well as defensive purposes; and on October 11th, 1899, in answer to a call, an enthusiastic meeting was held in Room 86, Temple Block, attended by J. Baruch, J. O. Koepfli, J. Saeger, R. L. Craig, L. Kimble, L. C. Scheller, George H. Wigmore, F. W. Braun, C. C. Reynolds, I. A. Lothian, W. S. Hunt, A. H. Busch, M. H. Newmark and others, who elected Baruch, President; Koepfli, First Vice-President; Reynolds, Second Vice-President; Scheller, Treasurer; and Braun, Secretary. A couple of weeks later, A. M. Rawson was named Secretary, Braun having resigned to accept the Third Vice-Presidency; and on November 3d, the Associated Jobbers of Southern California, as the organization was called, was re-christened the Associated Jobbers of Los Angeles. Meanwhile at a quiet luncheon, Koepfli and Newmark had entered into negotiations with Charles D. Willard, with the result that, when Rawson withdrew on February 28th, 1900, Willard assumed the duties of Secretary, holding the office for years, until compelled by sickness, on January 18th, 1911, to relinquish the work. On February 21st, 1900, Baruch having resigned, M. H. Newmark began a service of twelve years as President. The strength of the organization was materially increased when, in March, 1908, F. P. Gregson, well up in the traffic councils of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, assumed the management of the recently-established traffic bureau.
On April 10th, 1908, after many years of hardship, financial trouble and disappointment, during which the Executive Committee and Secretary Willard had frequent conferences with J. C. Stubbs and William Sproule (then Stubbs's assistant) of the Southern Pacific, and W. A. Bissell, of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, it became evident that more equitable rates for shippers into the San Joaquín Valley and elsewhere could not peaceably be obtained. A promised readjustment, lowering Los Angeles rates about twenty per cent., had been published; but at the request of the San Francisco merchants, the new tariff-sheet was repudiated by the transportation companies. A rehearing was also denied by them. The Associated Jobbers then carried the case before the newly-created Railroad Commission and obtained concessions amounting to fifty per cent. of the original demands. Guided by their astute Traffic Manager, F. P. Gregson, the jobbers, not satisfied with the first settlement, in 1910 renewed their activity before the Commission; and on the 15th of the following February, still further reductions were announced. The last rates authorized in 1912 are still in effect.
In 1899, James M. Guinn, after some years of miscellaneous work in the field of local annals, issued his History of Los Angeles County, following the same in 1907 with a History of California and the Southern Coast Counties. As I write, he has in preparation a still more compendious work to be entitled, Los Angeles and Environs.
At half-past four o'clock on the morning of December 25th, a slight shock of earthquake was felt in Los Angeles; but it was not until some hours later that the telegraph reported the much greater damage wrought at San Jacinto, Riverside County. There, walls fell in heaps; and a peculiar freak was the complete revolution of a chimney without the disturbance of a single brick! Six squaws, by the falling of their adobes at the Reservation some miles away, were instantly killed. When day dawned and the badly-frightened people began to inspect the neighborhood, they found great mountain-crevices, into some of which even large trees had fallen.
Toward the end of the nineties, Henry E. Huntington sold much or all of his large holdings in the San Francisco railways and began both to buy up Los Angeles railway stocks and to give his personal attention to the city's traffic-problems. At the same time, he bent his energies to the crowning work of his life--the development of the various interurban electric systems focusing in Los Angeles. In 1902, the road to Long Beach was completed; and in the following year electric cars began to run to Monrovia and Whittier. In 1903, the seven-story Huntington or Pacific Electric Building at the corner of Main and Sixth streets was finished. The effect of these extensive improvements on local commerce and on the value of real estate (as well as their influence on the growth of population through the coming of tourists seeking the conveniences and pleasures of social life) cannot, perhaps, be fully estimated--a fact which the people of this city should always remember with gratitude.
During the winter of 1899-1900, business cares so weighed upon me that I decided temporarily to cast off all worry and indulge myself with another visit to the Old World. This decision was reached rather suddenly and, as my friends insist, in a perfectly characteristic manner: one morning I hastened to the steamship office and bought the necessary tickets; and then I went home leisurely and suggested to my wife that she prepare for a trip to Europe!
About the first of January, therefore, we left Los Angeles, reached Naples on February 1st and traveled for nine months through Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I returned to my birthplace, Loebau, which in my youth had appeared of such importance; but although somewhat larger than it used to be, it now nevertheless seemed small and insignificant.
While making this tour of Europe, I revisited Sweden and renewed my acquaintance with the families that had been so kind to me as a boy. Time had lamentably thinned the ranks of the older generation, but many of the younger, especially those of my own age, were still there. Those only who have had a similar experience will appreciate my pleasure in once again greeting these steadfast friends. I also reviewed numerous scenes formerly so familiar. It is impossible to describe my emotions on thus again seeing this beautiful country, or to convey to the reader the depth of my respect and affection for her intelligent, thrifty and whole-souled people, especially when I remembered their liberal encouragement of my father about forty years before.
Thanks to the indefatigable labors of Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes of Los Angeles, the beautiful ceremony of strewing flowers upon the restless ocean waters in honor of the naval dead was first observed at Santa Monica on Memorial Day in 1900, and bids fair to become an appropriate national custom.
Señora António F. Coronel entrusted to the Chamber of Commerce, on June 6th, the invaluable historical souvenirs known as the Coronel Collection; and now[43] for years these exhibits, housed in the Chamber of Commerce Building, have been one of the sights of the city, a pleasure and a stimulation alike to tourist and resident.
A good anecdote as to the transfer of this collection is related on the authority of Miss Anna B. Picher, President of the Boundary League and the lady who made the first move to secure the interesting League mementos now preserved and displayed at the County Museum. When the matter of making the Coronel heirlooms more accessible to the public was brought to Señora Coronel's attention, she not only showed a lively interest, but at once agreed to make the donation. She imposed, however, the condition that Miss Picher should bring to her M. J. Newmark and John F. Francis, then directors, in whose integrity and acumen she had great confidence. This was done; and these gentlemen having pledged their personal attention and sponsorship, the Señora committed the historic objects to the Chamber of Commerce for the benefit, forever, of all the people.
The Los Angeles Herald, on July 7th, passed into the hands of a group of stockholders especially interested in petroleum, Wallace R. Hardison being President and General Manager, and R. H. Hay Chapman, Managing Editor. At the same time the newspaper's policy became Republican.
The Harvard School was opened, on September 25th by Grenville C. Emery and was the first notable military academy for youth in Los Angeles. After many terms of successful work under Congregational auspices, the School has passed to the control of the Rt. Reverend J. H. Johnson, as trustee for the Episcopal Church, which has acquired other valuable school properties in the Southland; Professor Emery remitting fifty thousand dollars of the purchase price in consideration of a promise to perpetuate his name.
A tunnel was put through Bunker Hill--by the way, one of the highest of downtown elevations--from Hill Street to Hope on Third, in 1901, bringing the western hill district into closer touch with the business center of the town and greatly enhancing the value of neighboring property. The delay in cutting through First and Second streets, which would afford so much relief to the municipality, is a reproach against the good sense of the City.
The Los Angeles Express, which enjoys the honor of being the oldest daily newspaper still published in Los Angeles, and which, for fifteen years, has been so well managed by H. W. Brundige, was sold in January to Edwin T. Earl, who moved the plant to a building erected for it on Fifth Street between Broadway and Hill. Earl came to Los Angeles in 1885, having previously for years packed and shipped fruit on a large scale. In 1890, as a result of the obstacles handicapping the sending of fresh fruit to the East, Earl invented a new refrigerator car with ventilating devices; and unable to get the railroads to take over its construction, he organized a company for the building of the conveyors. On selling out to the Armours, Earl made large investments in Los Angeles real estate. A few years ago, the Express was moved to Hill Street near Seventh. Possibly owing to the renewed interest in local historical study, the Express, in 1905, commenced the republication of news items of "Twenty-five Years Ago To-day"--a feature of peculiar pleasure to the pioneer.
William F. Grosser, who died on April 15th, was long active in Los Angeles Turnverein circles, having popularized science before institutions and lecture-courses existed here for that purpose. A native of Potsdam, Prussia, Grosser came to Southern California via Panamá, and on settling in Los Angeles, laid out the Grosser Tract. Having been an advanced student of astronomical science and microscopy, and possessing a good-sized portable telescope, he was soon in demand by societies and schools, for which he lectured without financial remuneration. One of Grosser's sisters, Mrs. A. Jelinek--whose husband, a Boston cabinet-maker, had an interesting part in the carving of the chair made from "the spreading chestnut tree" and presented to the poet Longfellow by the school children of Cambridge--has been for years an honored resident of Ocean Park, where she was one of the early investors. A granddaughter is Fräulein Elsa Grosser, the violinist.
On April 24th, Samuel Calvert Foy died, aged seventy-one, survived by his wife and six children.
A little town in Ventura County, bearing the name of the famous student and author, recalls the death near here in July of Charles Nordhoff, whose pioneer book, California: For Health, Pleasure and Residence, published in the early seventies, did more, I dare say, than any similar work to spread the fame of the Southland throughout the East.
Charles Brode, who died in August, first saw Los Angeles in 1868, when he came here to nurse Edward J., my wife's brother, in his last illness. He then opened a grocery store at South Spring Street near Second, and was active in Turnverein and Odd Fellow circles. The mention of Brode recalls the name of one who has attained distinction here: even as a messenger boy at the California Club in the eighties, Oscar Lawler gave promise of an important future. He had come from Iowa as a child, and his personality, ability and ambition soon brought him prominently before the Bar and the people. He served as United States Attorney for this district from 1906 until 1909, when he became Assistant to the Attorney-General of the United States. He is high in Masonic circles, being Past Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of California. In 1901, he married Miss Hilda, daughter of Charles Brode.
Catalina Island, in the summer of 1902, established wireless connection with the mainland, at White's Point; and on August 2d, the first messages were exchanged. On March 25th of the following year began the publication of the Catalina newspaper known as the Wireless.
After graduating from the University of California in 1902, my son Marco attended for a while the University of Berlin; after which he returned to Los Angeles and entered the house of M. A. Newmark & Company.
The women of California, in the late eighties, wishing to pay Mrs. John C. Frémont an appropriate tribute, presented her with a residence at the northwest corner of Hoover and Twenty-eighth streets, Los Angeles where, on December 27th, 1902, at the age of seventy-eight years, she died. Mrs. Frémont was a woman of charming personality and decidedly intellectual gifts; and in addition to having written several meritorious works, she was engaged, at the time of her death, on her autobiography. Her ashes were sent East to the banks of the Hudson, to be interred beside those of her distinguished husband; but her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Benton Frémont, has continued to reside here in the family homestead.
On the site of one of my early homes, the corner-stone of the new Chamber of Commerce was laid on March 28th with impressive Masonic ceremonies. The principal address was made by Jonathan S. Slauson. Ferdinand K. Rule was then President of the Chamber; and the Building Committee consisted of M. J. Newmark, Chairman; A. B. Cass, Homer Laughlin, F. K. Rule, H. S. McKee and James A. Foshay--the latter for sixteen years, beginning with the middle nineties, having demonstrated his efficiency as Superintendent of City Schools.
Early in 1903, G. A. Dobinson, a Shakespearian student and teacher of elocution, induced me to build a hall on Hope Street near Eleventh, connected with a small theater; and there, in the spring of 1904, he opened the well-known Dobinson School, which he conducted until 1906. Then the Gamut Club, an organization of 1904--whose first President was Professor Adolph Willhartitz,[44] the artistic German pianist--moved in.
The pioneer experiments with the navel orange have already been referred to; a late episode associates the luscious fruit with a President of the United States. On May 6th, amid great festivity participated in by all Riverside, Theodore Roosevelt replanted, in front of Frank Miller's Mission Inn, one of the original, historic trees.
William K. Cowan came to Los Angeles as a jeweler in 1887, later embarked in the bicycle trade and was one of the first men in Los Angeles to sell automobiles, at length building in 1903 at 830 South Broadway the first large garage here.
Some months later, if I recollect aright, witnessed the advent on our streets of a number of horseless carriages, and I was seized with a desire to possess not one, but two. My acquisitions were both electric, and soon I was extending, right and left, invitations to my friends to ride with me. On the first of these excursions, however, one of the machines balked and the second also broke down; and to make a long story short, no mechanic in town being sufficiently expert to straighten out the difficulty, I soon disposed of them in disgust for about seven hundred dollars.
In 1903, a notable change was made, and one decidedly for the better interests of the public schools, when one hundred citizens, pursuant to a change in the City's charter, selected a non-partizan Board of Education consisting of John D. Bicknell, Joseph Scott, J. M. Guinn, Jonathan S. Slauson, Charles Cassatt Davis, Emmet H. Wilson and W. J. Washburn.
On October 23d the Southwest Society was founded here by Charles F. Lummis with Jonathan S. Slauson as its first President; Charles F. Lummis, Secretary and W. C. Patterson, Treasurer. Associated with these officers were J. O. Koepfli, M. A. Hamburger, General H. G. Otis, Henry W. O'Melveny, Major E. W. Jones, J. A. Foshay, the Right Reverend Thomas J. Conaty, J. D. Bicknell and others. In the beginning, it was a branch of the Archæological Institute of America; but so rapid was the Society's growth that, in three years, it had fifty per cent. more members than belonged to the thirty-year-old parent organization in Boston, with which it remained affiliated until 1913 when it withdrew in order that all its funds might go toward the maintenance of the Southwest Museum, a corporation founded in 1907 as the result of the Southwest Society's labors.
The first plant of the Los Angeles Examiner, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, was installed in 1903 by Dent H. Robert, then and now publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. The paper, illustrated from the start, made its first appearance on December 12th and sprang into immediate favor. R. A. Farrelly was the first managing editor. The office of the paper was on the west side of Broadway near Fifth Street, where it remained for ten years, during which it rendered valuable service to the community, notably in conducting a successful campaign for the sale of seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars' worth of school bonds which had hitherto proven unmarketable. In the meantime, Robert had been succeeded, first by a Mr. Strauss, and then by Henry Lowenthal and William P. Leech, while Farrelly was followed by Foster Coates, Arthur Clark and W. P. Anderson. In 1908, the enterprising Maximilian F. Ihmsen assumed the responsibilities of publisher, and at the same time Frederick W. Eldridge became the efficient managing editor. Under the able direction of these experienced men, this morning daily has attained its highest prosperity, marked by removal in the fall of 1913 to the Examiner Building at Broadway and Eleventh Street.
Abbot Kinney, foreseeing a future for the tide-flats and lagoons south of Ocean Park, in 1904 purchased enough acreage whereon to build the now well-known Venice, which, as its name implies, was to be adorned with canals, bridges and arcades. Through Kinney's remarkable spirit of enterprise, a wonderful transformation was effected in a single year. Such in fact was the optimism of this founder of towns that, in order to amply supply the necessary funds, he closed out important city holdings including the Flat Iron Square, lying between Eighth and Ninth, and Main and Spring streets, the Abbotsford Inn property and the large southeast corner of Spring and Sixth streets, at present occupied by the Grosse Building. Kinney's foresight, courage and persistence have been rewarded, the dreams of his prime becoming the realities of his more advanced age.
The task of building here a King's Highway--El Camino Real--intended to connect all the missions and presidios between San Diego and Sonoma was undertaken in the troublous days of Don Gaspar de Portolá and Father Junípero Serra; but time in a measure obliterated this landmark. Since 1904, however, such kindred spirits as Miss Anna B. Picher--for nearly twenty years a zealous toiler for the preservation of our historic monuments, and whose zeal in behalf of the royal road was paramount--Mr. and Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes, Dr. Milbank Johnson, R. F. Del Valle, Mrs. C. R. Olney of Oakland and Frank Ey, Mayor of Santa Ana, have so caused the work to prosper that at the present time much of the original highway is about to be incorporated with the good State roads of California. The first bell for one of the mission-bell guide posts (designed, by the way, by Mrs. Forbes) was dedicated at the Plaza Church on August 15th, 1906; and since then some four hundred of these indicators have been placed along the Camino Real.
An interesting attempt to transplant a small Eastern town to California was made in 1904 when Alfred Dolge, the founder of Dolgeville, New York (and the author of the elaborate work, Pianos and their Makers, published in 1911 at little Covina), established Dolgeville in Los Angeles County, opening there, with three hundred or more operatives, a felt works for piano fixtures. The experiment had been undertaken because of expected advantages in the supply of wool; but changes in the tariff ruined the industry, and after some years of varying prosperity, Dolgeville was annexed to Alhambra.
A syndicate, styled the Los Angeles Herald Company, whose President was Frank G. Finlayson, in 1904 bought the Herald, at that time under the editorial management of Robert M. Yost.
Future generations will doubtless be as keen to learn something about the preserving of albacore, commonly spoken of as tuna, as I should like to know how and by whom sardines were first successfully put into cans. The father of this industry is Albert P. Halfhill, a Minnesotan drawn here, in 1892, through the opportunities for packing mackerel on this southern coast. In 1894, we find him organizing the California Fish Company, soon to be known as the Southern California Fish Company. In 1904, Halfhill, while experimenting with various western sea-foods, accidentally discovered the extraordinary quality of the albacore, a briny-deep heavyweight so interesting to the angler and so mysterious to the scientist. As a mere bit of gossip, Halfhill's assurance that M. A. Newmark & Company purchased the first canned tuna is entitled to mention.
The Turnverein-Germania took a notable step forward this year by buying a lot, one hundred by three hundred feet, on South Figueroa, between Pico and Fifteenth streets; and on September 3d, 1905, the new club building and gymnasium were formally opened.
William H. Workman in 1904 was elected Treasurer of the City of Los Angeles for the third time, his first term of office having begun in 1901. This compliment was the more emphatic because Workman was a Democrat and received four thousand five hundred votes more than his opponent--and that, too, only a month after Roosevelt had carried Los Angeles by a majority of thirteen thousand.
In a previous chapter, I have described the vender of tamales and ice-cream, so familiar through his peculiar voice as well as his characteristic costume. About 1905, another celebrity plying a trade in the same line, and known as Francisco, appeared here and daily made his rounds through the more fashionable Westlake district. He had a tenor voice of rare quality and power, and used it, while exquisitely rendering choice arias, to advertise his wares. Such was his merit that lovers of music, as soon as his presence was known, paused to listen; with the natural result that business with Francisco was never dull. Whenever a grand opera company came to town, the Italian was there, in a front seat of the gallery; and so great was his enthusiastic interest in the performance of those whose voices were often inferior to his own, that he could be seen, with gaze fixed on the proscenium, passionately beating time as if to direct the orchestra. Seven or eight years ago, the long-favorite Francisco was foully murdered, and under strange circumstances; leading many to believe that, having perhaps degraded himself from his former estate and fleeing, an alien, to an unknown land, he had fallen at last the victim of a vendetta.
In 1905, I took part in a movement, headed by Joseph Mesmer, to raise by subscription the funds necessary to buy the old Downey Block--fronting on Temple and North Main streets, and extending through to New High--for the purpose of presenting it to the National Government for a Federal Building site. Unusual success attended our efforts, and the transfer to Uncle Sam was duly made. In the meantime, an appropriation of eight hundred thousand dollars had been secured for the building, and it was with no little surprise and disappointment when the bids for construction were opened, in May, 1906, that the lowest was found to be nearly a million dollars. This delayed matters until the following fall. In October, the site at the corner of Main and Winston streets was sold for three hundred and fourteen thousand dollars; and the deficiency having thus been supplied, it was not long before the new building was in course of construction.
Desiring to celebrate the fifty years which had elapsed since, perched upon an ox-cart, he rode into Los Angeles for the first time, William H. Workman on January 21st gave a banquet to five hundred pioneers in Turnverein Hall, the menu being peculiarly mejicano. The reminiscences, speeches and quips were of the friendliest and best; and the whole affair was one that recalled to both host and guests the dolce far niente days of dear old Los Angeles.
On February 21st, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad was completed--the fourth transcontinental line, with its connections, to enter Los Angeles.
In the spring, A. C. and A. M. Parson bought a tract of land on Alamitos Bay and there, at the mouth of the San Gabriel River, founded Naples, with features somewhat similar to those at Venice; but unlike the latter town, the new Naples has never developed into a crowded resort.
Arriving in California in 1869, at the age of seven, Frank Putnam Flint, a native of Massachusetts concerning whom much of importance might be related, was elected in 1905 United States Senator from California. His brother, Motley H. Flint, high in Masonic circles, has also enjoyed an important career, having long been associated with many local public movements.
An optimist of optimists, still young though having passed more than one milestone on the road to success, Willis H. Booth came to Los Angeles a mere lad and is a product of the Los Angeles High School and the State University. Before, while and since filling the office of President of the Chamber of Commerce, Booth has been identified with nearly everything worth while here and gives promise of an important and interesting future. He is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the Security Trust and Savings Bank.
In August, Juan B. Bandini, second son of the famous Don Juan, died at Santa Monica. Two of Bandini's daughters were noted Los Angeles belles--Arcadia, who became the wife of John T. Gaffey, of San Pedro; and Dolores, who married into the well-known literary family, the Wards, of London.
Strenuous efforts were made in 1905 to house the Historical Society of Southern California, which, incorporated on February 12th, 1891, boasts of being the oldest organization of its kind on the Coast and the only one doing State work; and the Legislature appropriated one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for a building. Governor Pardee, however, vetoed the bill--an act which later contributed to the endowment, by the State, of the comely County Museum in which the Historical Society now has its home.
In the spring of 1905, the then eight-year-old town of Redondo, with her large hotel and busy wharf, and famed for her fields of carnations, became the scene of one of those infrequent, but typically American, real estate frenzies which come suddenly, last a few days and as suddenly depart. This particular attack, not to say epidemic, was brought on by one or two newspaper headlines announcing to the breakfasting reader that Henry E. Huntington had decided to spend millions of dollars in making immense railroad and other improvements in the seaside town, and that this would at once raise Redondo from the humble status of a village to almost metropolitan dignity. In about as little time as is required to relate it, the astonished beach-dwellers found themselves overwhelmed by a surging mass of humanity struggling for the privilege of buying lots. The real estate offices were soon surrounded by hundreds of people, fighting, pushing and shoving, all possessed of but the one idea--to buy.
And they bought. They bought corners and they bought in the middle of the blocks; they bought heaps of sand and holes in the ground; they bought in one breath and sold in the next; they bought blindly and sold blindly. Redondo had become a huge, unregulated stock exchange, lots instead of stocks for five days becoming the will-o'-the-wisps of the fated bidders, until the boom collapsed leaving hundreds with lots they had never seen and which, for the time being, they could not sell at any price.
Huntington did not spend his millions--at least then and there. Redondo did not suddenly become a big center. Yet, in passing through the experience of many a town, Redondo has gradually grown in population and importance, even developing something of a suburb--Clifton-by-the-Sea. Such was the famous boom of 1905; and such will probably be the story of similar California booms to come.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] Installed, of late, in the County Museum.
[44] Died on January 12th, 1915, aged seventy-eight years.