I am still a person somewhat young and lively who has had the strange
experience of seeing barley fields sprout houses like the magic
soldiers from the sowing of dragon’s teeth; of finding cactus and
gravel and sage turned over night into leagues of orange trees; of
watching my little city multiply itself a hundred fold. What wonder
that I cannot forbear to talk about it! to tell of how once upon a time
the street of sky-scrapers was a shaded way before a few rose-covered
cottages, or how the hills of Hollywood were bare brown velvet beyond
the vacant fields that lay west of Los Angeles’ Figueroa Street, itself
unfinished. When we looked over the town from our home on the Court
Street hill we saw a place of trees and cottages, of open spaces and
encircling groves. Only to our left were business houses, and they
neither high nor imposing. On Poundcake Hill, where now the County
Court House rises, was the square, two-storied high school building,
which a few years later crossed Temple Street on stilts, and went over
to its new abiding place on California Street.
Just below us was the old jail, enclosed by its high white fence which
may have shut in prisoners and shut out the curious who approached on
Franklin Street, but whose secrets were wide open to the sky. Once our
whole back yard and the top of our chicken house and barn were black
with men strangely eager to look down upon a fellow man whom we, the
public, were hanging high upon a gallows within that old stockade. We
children were shut in the house and did not see, but the next day my
small brother and another tiny boy were found trying to hang each other.
The jail was in the rear of the city buildings, a row of low adobes
on Spring Street, opposite the old court house, the one built by John
Temple. Nearby, the post-office occupied the first floor of the new I.
O. O. F. building, a little too far south to be sure,--nearly to First
Street,--but perhaps the spaciousness and freshness compensated for its
distance from the business center to the north. Across the way from it
there stood a small white cottage, with a hedge of cypress and a lawn.
My first school was around the corner in a similar white house, and on
my way home I was permitted to stop and get our mail from our box at
the post-office.
The shopping district ran from this “civic center” up to the plaza, the
very region that is now being retrieved for the heart of the public
life of Los Angeles city and county.
Not long ago I discovered, stranded high on the front wall of an old
brick building, the abandoned sign of “The Queen,” the store from which
came my “pebble-goat” school shoes, the store itself long ago having
followed the shoes “to the bone yard.”
In Temple Block were many offices, but I remember it as the abode of
Godfrey, the photographer, who, plentifully supplied with red velvet
fringed chairs and pronged head braces, took the pictures of the
Angelenos.
Over in the Downey Block, where now the U. S. Government Building
stands, and in the buildings to the north, were some of our most
frequented stores, among them Meyberg’s Crystal Palace, a source of
china and glassware, and Dotter and Bradley, whose furniture firm later
took the name of Los Angeles Furniture Co. A little Barker store was
born over near First and Spring, but that was so far from the center of
things, and chilly and lonely, that it moved nearer to the Plaza,--and
now Barker Brothers aspires to be the largest furniture “emporium” in
the world with a palace on Seventh Street!
I knew something of Commercial and Los Angeles streets as business
thoroughfares, but their importance was passing, and the new Baker
Block was the last word in elegance, and the pride of all the dwellers
in Los Angeles. Here Rev. B. F. Coulter opened a drygoods store that
continues to this day in the fourth location that I remember, moving
first to Second and Spring, then following the fashion up to Broadway
and later going to Seventh. Then as now this establishment specialized
in blankets, perhaps because Mr. Coulter had a woolen mill over the
hill where now is the corner of Figueroa and Fifth streets. There was a
little stream there that was called Los Reyes,--the Kings,--rather a
humble place for royalty in a city of the Queen of the Angels.
Two favorite shops of that time have disappeared, that of Dillon
and Kennealy, who carried a line of most lovely linens from their
Irish homeland, and the City of Paris, “the best place for lace and
trimmings,” I used to hear. That was before the time of ready-made
clothing, and real ladies were most particular about the quality of
materials used and the nicety of workmanship.
One day a small new store, with a fifty foot frontage, appeared at
the corner of Temple and Spring. Good shoppers soon recognized high
grade materials and efficient salesmanship, and the firm had to move a
few doors south to obtain larger space, and then, made bold by public
favor, it went pioneering way out among the residences on Broadway
near Third, to remain a few years until it set the fashion of Seventh
street,--J. W. Robinson & Co.
Mrs. Ponet supplied the ladies with bonnets, when Miss Daley didn’t,
and Mr. Ponet framed our pictures and buried our dead.
As I was only a little girl in those days, I do not know so much about
the shopping habits of the gentlemen, but I remember that they bought
hats from D. Desmond, cutlery from C. Ducommun and watches and jewels
from S. Nordlinger.
Not long ago I picked up an old map of Los Angeles showing a new
subdivision just west of Figueroa. The map was issued by Stoll and
Thayer, who with Hellman, Stassforth Co., were the chief purveyors
of school books, slates, Christmas cards with silk fringe, lace
paper valentines and other necessities. Here I bought those classics,
McGuffy’s Fourth Reader, Robinson’s Arithmetic, Harper’s Geography, and
Collier and Daniel’s Latin Book.
For years it was necessary for anyone desiring a book other than those
standard works known to druggists and stationers to send away for it,
so it was a great thing for lovers of literature when Mr. C. C. Parker
came to town and opened a book shop for books only,--no twine or glue
or notebooks or cosmetics or toys, not even text books admitted to his
shelves.
Over east of the shopping district lay Chinatown, at one time a very
interesting and picturesque part of Los Angeles, having at least
7,000 inhabitants, but owing to the Exclusion Act of the nineties now
dwindled to 2,000. With its going has come a distinct loss in color, to
say nothing of the much regretted race of competent and loyal household
servants.
There used to be three joss houses, or Chinese temples, and a theatre
with a large troupe of players, including a lady star, a rarity, as
usually all the actors are men. There was weird music to be heard,
there were feasts and fortune tellers and funerals where the chief
figure was rushed at break-neck speed to the cemetery, followed by a
spring wagon load of food while loyal friends scattered bits of paper
to distract the attention of the devil in his pursuit of the newly dead.
But the life was not all picturesque. There were slave women and tong
wars and murders and individual persecutions of Chinese by low grade
whites, and ever the haunting memory of the massacre of 1871 when
nineteen Chinese lost their lives at the hands of a mob.
The changing of prestige of hotels has marked the changing city. Just
now the Biltmore holds the center of the stage, last year it was the
Ambassador, once it was the Bella Union, perhaps the most interesting
of them all, dating as it did, back into pueblo days. The Pico House
of the early seventies prided itself on rivalling the San Francisco
hostelries, but before a decade had passed it had to yield first place
to the St. Elmo, the place chosen in which to do honor to Mrs. Hayes,
the wife of the President. I have personal memories of both the Pico
and the St. Elmo. In the first we once stayed several days during one
of my earliest trips to Los Angeles, and in the second I climbed the
red velveted stairs, holding my mother’s hand to greet the chief lady
of the land. The poor old place is now a ten cent lodging house, just
north of the post office.
When the Nadeau, towering four stories and containing all the latest
wrinkles, was completed it easily assumed first place, but in such
a bustling, booming town it soon had to pass the favor on to the
Hollenbeck; then came the Westminster and the Van Nuys, which I believe
still clings to a little back-water distinction.
The sudden end of the boom about eighty-seven had one very excellent
result, it saved us the chagrin of having our finest caravanserie
called Hotel Splendid--it never got beyond the foundations, out at
Tenth and Main. Perhaps the name was no worse than San Francisco’s
Palace which has built about itself such a tradition that no one stops
to consider the self-assumption of its designation.
During those boom years Los Angeles was having its first experience
of rapid growth, and we were almost as proud and boastful then as we
are now,--at least in quality if not in quantity. It seemed just as
exciting to suddenly grow from ten to fifty thousand, as it does to
aim at a million or two. We hadn’t invented the name realtor for our
land sellers or established courses at college in realtoring, but there
were already enterprising boosters. One of them displayed in his office
window this hospitable biblical text: “I was a stranger and ye took me
in.”
It was during that period that we boldly discarded gas as a means of
lighting our streets and adopted electricity, the first city in the
land to do it. How imposing were our six tall poles each carrying four
arc lights, four substitute moons, protected by a little tin umbrella.
What strange and beautiful blue light filtered through our windows,
making on the walls black shadows of the swaying eucalyptus branches
like Japanese silhouettes.
The summer that we first had these wonder lanterns the very sky put
on a nightly pageant of color, most gorgeous sunsets to celebrate our
progress, and incidentally to mark the fact that the upper air was full
of a fine ash from a volcanic eruption in far away Java.
I wonder what we could do now if the railroads should start another
rate war as they did when the Santa Fe first came into Southern
California. Tickets from the middle west dropped to five dollars, and
on one day went down to one. We would need a host of Aladdins with
obedient genii to build in a minute not palaces but just plain houses
and schools,--the fact is that one or two such magic builders would not
at all be despised by our present boards of education.
I have spoken of stores and public buildings and hotels and real-estate
offices but they were not all that the streets afforded; there was a
barber shop where father and I got our respective hairs cut, accepting
the fragrant offering of bay rum, supposed to ward off head colds
due to the exposure of lightening one’s head covering, but refusing
emphatically the hair oil in the pink, brass-nozzled bottle. Then there
was the fruit stand next to Wollacott’s Wholesale Liquor Establishment
near the post office where we bought the ceremonial bananas that
completed the barbering, bananas at five cents apiece. If none could
be found a like amount was invested in sugary peppermint drops. These
delicacies were eaten at the little Wells Fargo office on the east side
of Temple block where there was time enough and little enough doing for
Mr. Pridham and father to tilt back their round chairs and have a good
gossip.
One day we went over to investigate the crowd that had gathered on the
covered sidewalk in front of the Baker Block on North Main Street.
Suddenly a man came balancing across the tight rope that was stretched
above us. I saw him stop there over our open-mouthed heads and flip a
flap-jack in the pan he carried. I do not know why he thus showed his
prowess nor what his reward, but he furnished a passing entertainment
for the inhabitants of Los Angeles back in the later seventies, and his
ghost still walks in mid-air for me whenever I go through that old part
of town.
His is not the only walking spirit. There in the Plaza still stands
the shade of the peripatetic dentist, fore-runner of Painless Parker,
who once stood for several days in a red and gold chariot containing a
gorgeous, throne-like chair; for a consideration he pulled teeth of any
who were in search of relief.
Still a third ghost walks and calls in unforgotten accents, “Ice
Cream,” the white-clad Mexican who went about the town with a freezer
on his head, and in his hand a circular tin carrier, with a place for
spoons in the middle and holes for the six tumblers in which he served
his wares. There was a great scurrying for nickels among the children
when his cry was heard in the land.
In those days two street car lines meandered, the one way out to
Agricultural Park (Exposition), a large bare space with a few old
eucalyptus trees, and the grand stand beside the race-track; the other
south on Spring to Sixth and then up to Pearl, the name of Figueroa
street, north of Pico where the bend is. Each line boasted two cars so
that simultaneous trips in opposite directions were possible. The cars
were very small and drawn by mules; there was no separate conductor;
we put our tickets--bought at the neighboring drug store--into a glass
box near the door. It is told that on the Main street line it was the
custom for the driver on late trips to stop the car, wind the reins
around the brake handles, and escort lone lady passengers to their
front doors,--so much for leisure and gallantry in old Los Angeles.
Even as late as 1890 the car once waited while a lady ran into Mott’s
market for her meat!
Sometimes we took the car for Sixth and Pearl and then walked on down
to Twelfth, where Aunt Margaret lived for a time. The street was a
grass-bordered road and along the west side the footpath followed a
zanja (a ditch for water). Mr. H. K. W. Bent, the postmaster, and a
man who was in every way a value to the community, had an orange grove
here and lived in it. As I passed it I would meditate, not on his
high position, (he was my Sunday School superintendent), but on the
strange thing I had heard about him. He ate pie for breakfast! That
was undoubtedly a taste brought straight from New England. We happened
to import a different one; we had doughnuts twice a day every day in
the year. His taste, being different, was queer. I guess each family
had beans and brown bread at least once a week, with frequent meals of
boiled codfish, attended by white sauce and pork scraps.
The trip on the other line was out past vineyards, an occasional
house, one of them being the adobe mistakenly called the headquarters
of General Fremont, far, far away to the race-track, to see our
Silverheel trot.
But we did not go often, and then only as a concession to the fathers,
for races were frowned upon by mothers as being unsuitable for
Christians and girls.
The circus, however, was not under the ban, and “joy was unconfined”
when we heard the shrill calliope in the streets and saw the line
of elephants and caged lions and gay horsewomen filing along Spring
Street. There were usually enough children in the family to provide
excuses for all the men-folk who longed to attend the show as
chaperones. Grandfather felt that seventy years of abstinence justified
him in examining a circus thoroughly and Harry was his lucky escort,
when, with his inhibitions released, he visited everything, even to the
last side-show.
After a full fledged Barnum and Bailey the small tent on the lot now
graced by the Times building where trained horses and dogs performed
for a month was too tame for the gentlemen, but afforded pleasure to
the children.
Once Los Angeles was small enough to be very happy during county fair
week, with its races and shows of fine stock and the usual indoor
exhibits of fruits and grains, its fancy work and jellies, and then the
fair developed into orange shows and flower festivals and finally into
the fiesta. We lined the streets with palms and decked the buildings
with the orange, red and green banners and played and paraded for a
week in April, the peak of Spring. We saw our redshirted firemen
with their flower-garlanded, shining engines, drawn by those wisest
of animals, the fire horses; bands played, Spanish cavaliers and
señoritas appeared again in our midst, marvellous floats vied for first
prize--gay days.
Who that saw the many-footed dragon that wound its silken, glistening
way out of Chinatown into our streets can ever forget its beauty. Or
the floats that carried the bewitching little Chinese children wearing
their vivid embroidered garments and beaded headdresses? Alas, they are
buried now in their American coveralls and corduroys.
What happened to us? Did we grow too unwieldy, or too sophisticated or
were we swamped with midwest sobriety? We gave our parade to Pasadena,
who put it in wintry January instead of fragrant, flowering April; San
Bernardino has the orange show, fiesta has disappeared altogether. But
I have heard whispers that indicate that mayhap the spirit of pageantry
and frolic is about to return to Los Angeles.
Many changes have come but each phase as it exists seems the natural
condition; the old days that I have been recalling were the “Now” that
we knew. In the past there was less hurry and more room in our streets
that were built to be but ways between cottage homes where now and
then a wagon or carriage might go. However, there were no more hours a
day to fill or dispose of than we have now. We could stroll down the
street to do our errands, meeting friends at every turn; we could drive
if preferred, and although Harry Horse and the phaeton made slower
progress than Henry Ford or Lionel Limousin, he did not have so far
to go and he could stand as long as he wished before the shop door, so
that the time consumed by my lady was no more than in these days of
suburban homes, and parking places far, far from where she really wants
to go.
In the matters of health, friendship, intelligence, the number of
inhabitants in a city are of little moment; happiness does not increase
with population.
I find it interesting, however, to have in my mind pictures of the
little vanished village that once was Los Angeles. I also find it
interesting to watch its present turmoil and energy and to speculate on
its future; to see signs of intellectual, artistic and social vitality
that exist among the scattered groups and individuals now pouring into
this seething community; to wonder how soon the wheels of progress are
going to stop rattling long enough for us to hear ourselves think,
catch our breath and develop some sort of cohesive social organism.
It is the fashion just now to make a butt of Los Angeles, to see
only its obsessions, its crudities, its banalities. Those who really
comprehend the amazing number of people daily crowding in upon us,
and remember that the bulk of the people are inevitably strangers to
each other, each ready to shift responsibility to someone supposedly
an older citizen, cannot but have patience, cannot but rejoice in the
really fine things that have been done and are doing.