THE REVIVAL OF THE SOUTHLAND
1877-1880
The late seventies were marked by an encouraging awakening of national
energy and a growing desire on the part of the Angeleño,
notwithstanding the excessive local dullness, to bring the outside
world a pace or two nearer; as a result of which, things began to
simmer, while there was an unmistakable manifestation on the part of
those at places more or less remote to explore the almost unknown
Southwest, especially that portion bordering on the Pacific.
I have already noted, with varying dates, the time when patents to
land were issued. These dates remind me of the long years during which
some of the ranch owners had to wait before they received a clear
title to their vast estates. Although, as I have said, the Land
Commission was in session during the first decade of my residence
here, it was a quarter of a century and more, in some cases, after the
Commissioners had completed their reports before the Washington
authorities issued the desired patents confirming the Mexican grants;
and by that time, not a few of those who had owned the ranches at the
beginning of the American occupancy were dead and buried.
William Mulholland, who was really trained for navigation and had
followed the sea for four or five years, steered for Los Angeles in
1877 and associated himself with the Los Angeles Water Company, giving
his attention especially to hydraulic engineering and passing as it
were in 1902, with the rest of the water-plant, to the City when it
bought the Company out.
On March 22d, the Common Council changed the name of Nigger Alley, in
the adobe days known as Calle de los Negros, to that of Los Angeles
Street; and thus faded away a designation of Los Angeles' early
gambling district long familiar to old settlers. The same year, the
City marshalship, which J. J. Carrillo had held during 1875-76, was
discontinued, and J. F. Gerkins was appointed the first Chief of
Police.
Part of the property included in the blanket mortgage given by Temple
& Workman to E. J. Baldwin was Temple Block; and when this was sold at
sheriff's sale in 1877, H. Newmark & Company decided to acquire it if
they could. Dan Freeman, acting for Baldwin, was our only competitor;
and after a somewhat spirited contest, the property was knocked down
to us. In 1909, we sold Temple Block to the City of Los Angeles. Quite
a large contribution of money was then made by adjoining landowners,
with the understanding that the site would form the nucleus for a
civic center; but thus far this solemn promise remains unfulfilled
--more's the shame, especially since the obligation is precisely
coincidental with the City's needs.
In 1877, Colonel R. S. Baker erected the block bearing his name on the
site of the historic adobe home of Don Abel Stearns, the walls of
which structure, when demolished, killed two of the workmen. This
building, the most modern of that period, immediately became the scene
of much retail activity; and three wide-awake merchants--Eugène
Germain, George D. Rowan and Rev. B. F. Coulter--moved into it.
Germain was the first of these to arrive in Los Angeles, coming in
1870 and, soon after, establishing several trading posts along the
line of the Southern Pacific during its construction through Arizona.
One day, while inspecting branches in this wild and woolly region,
Germain ran into a party of cowboys who were out gunning; and just for
a little diversion, they took to peppering the vicinity of his feet,
which attention persuaded him into a high-step less graceful than
alert. Germain came to occupy many positions of trust, being
appointed, in 1889, Commissioner from California to the Paris
Exposition, and later American Consul at Zurich, Switzerland. Next
among the tenants was George D. Rowan, who opened a grocery store in
the Strelitz Block, opposite the old Jail, remaining there until the
completion of Baker's building; thus supplying another illustration of
the tendency then predominating to gravitate toward the extreme
northern end of the town. In several enterprises, Rowan was a pioneer:
he brought from Chicago the first phaeton seen on our streets; and in
conjunction with Germain, he inaugurated the shipping of California
products, in carload lots, to the Eastern market. He was also one of
the first to use pennies here. Withdrawing from the grocery trade, in
1882, he busied himself with real estate until 1892, when he retired.
A public-spirited man, he had the greatest confidence in the future of
Los Angeles, and was instrumental in subdividing much important
acreage, including the block between Sixth, Seventh, Hill and Olive
streets, which he sold in sixty-foot lots at prices as low as six
hundred dollars each. He was a prime mover in having the name of Fort
Street altered to that of Broadway, certainly a change of questionable
propriety considering the origin of the old name. Rowan died on
September 7th, 1901. His sons, R. A. and P. D. Rowan, constitute the
firm of R. A. Rowan & Company. Reverend Coulter, father of Frank M.
Coulter,[35] brought his family to Los Angeles on September 17th,
1877, and after a short association in the hardware firm of Harper &
Coulter, he entered the dry goods field as B. F. Coulter, now the
Coulter Dry Goods Company. In 1878, Coulter bought the woolen mills on
Pearl Street near Fifth. Coulter was a man of genial temperament and
great integrity; and I shall have occasion to speak of him again.
R. F. Del Valle was born in December, 1854, at the Plaza ancestral
home, where, before the family's removal to Camulos _rancho_, I
frequently saw him playing when I attended the political councils at
his father's home. By the by, I believe that J. L. Brent had his law
office there, which may account for those gatherings. Del Valle's
boyhood days were spent in and around Los Angeles. He studied law in
San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles in 1877, a promising young
orator and attorney. Since that period he has been in public life
practically all of the time. For some time past he has been a member
of the Water Board. He has been frequently honored by the Democratic
party, especially in 1880, when as elector he was instructed to vote
for our former fellow-townsman, General W. S. Hancock. In 1890, Del
Valle married Mrs. Helen Caystile, widow of Thomas Caystile and
daughter of Caleb E. White, a Pomona horticulturist and sheepman.
A murder case of the late seventies was notable on account of the
tragic fate of two indirect participants. On October 10th, G. M.
Waller, custodian of the land company's bath-house at Santa Monica,
detected Victor Fonck, who had been warned to keep off the premises,
in the act of erecting a private bath-house on the beach, and shot him
in the leg, from which wound, after two days, Fonck died. In his
defense, Waller claimed that, as watchman, he was acting under orders
from E. S. Parker, the land company's agent. Waller was found guilty
of involuntary homicide and sentenced on January 25th, 1878, to one
year in the Penitentiary. Parker, on the other hand, was convicted of
murder in the second degree, and on March 8th was sentenced to ten
years' imprisonment. This severe and unexpected punishment caused a
mental excitement from which Parker soon died; and, but a few days
later, his broken-hearted wife fell dead.
Annual public fairs were centers of social life as late as the middle
of the seventies, one being held, about 1876 or 1877, in the old
Alameda Street depot, which, decorated with evergreens and flowers,
had been transformed into a veritable garden. With succeeding years,
these displays, for some time in Horticultural Hall on Temple Street,
came to be more and more enchanting. Still later, one or more flower
festivals were held in Hazard's Pavilion on Fifth Street, near Olive,
that of 1889 in particular attracting, in the phraseology of a local
newspaper, "one of the largest and most brilliant gatherings in the
history of the city." It is indeed a pity that these charming
exhibitions, requiring but the mere bringing together of some of the
flowers so bountifully supplied us, have been abandoned.
On February 1st, 1878, twenty-three years after the Odd Fellows first
organized here, their newly-constructed hall in the Oxarart Block at
108 North Spring Street was dedicated with elaborate ceremonies.
About 1878, Captain George J. Clarke, who had been Postmaster from
1866 to 1873, and who lived well out of town, offered me sixty feet
adjoining my home on Fort Street, a site now occupied by the J. W.
Robinson Company. He asked one hundred dollars a foot for the Fort
Street frontage alone, but as only sixteen dollars a foot had been
paid for the full depth to Hill Street of the piece I already owned, I
refused to purchase; nor was I persuaded even when he threatened to
erect a livery stable next to my house.
Another item respecting land values, and how they impressed me: in
1878, Nadeau purchased, for twenty thousand dollars, the site of the
Nadeau Hotel, whereupon I told him that he was crazy; but later events
proved him to have been a better judge than I.
Sometime in the late seventies, Jerry Illich started a chop-house on
North Main Street and prospered so well that in time he was able to
open a larger and much finer establishment which he called the Maison
Dorée. This restaurant was one of the best of the time, and became the
_rendezvous_ of men about town. In 1896, Jerry moved again, this time
to Third Street opposite the Bradbury Block; and thither went with him
his customers of former days. When Illich died in December, 1902, he
had the finest restaurant in the city.
In April the Public Library was transferred to the care of the City.
In the beginning, as I have stated, a fee of five dollars was charged
to patrons; somewhat later, it is my recollection, a legislative
enactment permitted a small addition to the tax-rate for the partial
support of this worthy enterprise, and this municipal assistance
enabled the directors to carry the work along even though the annual
membership fee was reduced to four dollars, payable quarterly.
On September 25th, General John C. Frémont arrived in Los Angeles on
his way to Arizona, of which Territory he had been appointed Governor;
and accompanied by his wife and daughter, he was driven at once to the
St. Charles Hotel. There, in response to a demonstration by the
citizens, he referred to the great changes which had taken place here
during his absence of thirty years. Two days later, General Frémont
and family left for Yuma, the explorer traveling that route by means
of the iron horse for the first time.
Benjamin Franklin Taylor, the lecturer and author, visited Los
Angeles, in 1878, and wrote the sympathetic book, _Between the Gates_,
full of just discrimination and hopeful views respecting the
Southland.
Some new ordinances regulating vegetable venders having been passed in
the winter of 1878-79, the Chinese peddlers went on a strike, and for
some time refused, to the inconvenience of their dependent customers,
to supply any truck-farm products.
During the Postmastership of Colonel Isaac R. Dunkelberger, the Post
Office was moved, in 1879, to the Oxarart Block on North Spring Street
near First. There it continued for eight years, contributing much
toward making the neighborhood an important commercial center.
M. J. Newmark, having sold to his partners his interest in the firm of
H. Newmark & Company, left Los Angeles, in 1879, for San Francisco,
after building a residence on Spring Street next to the southwest
corner of Spring and Seventh and adjoining the dwellings owned by
Kaspare Cohn and M. A. Newmark. Each of these houses stood on a
sixty-foot lot; and to protect themselves from possibly unpleasant
neighbors, the holders had bought the corner of Seventh and Spring
streets for four hundred and twenty-five dollars. On his departure, M.
J. Newmark committed his affairs to my care, desiring to dispose of
his place; and I offered it to I. N. Van Nuys for seven thousand five
hundred dollars, which represented the cost of the house alone. Times
were quite hard in Los Angeles at this period; and when Van Nuys said
that he would give six thousand five hundred dollars for it, I
accepted his offer and induced the owners to sell to him the corner
lot for four hundred and seventy-five dollars. This is the earlier
history of the corner now occupied by the I. N. Van Nuys Building, in
which the First National Bank conducts its affairs.
Long before there was any necessity for cutting Sixth Street through,
east of Main, George Kerckhoff (who, in 1879, had brought his family
from Indiana) bought the six acres formerly belonging to the intrepid
pioneer, J. J. Warner, and, in the midst of this pretty orchard, built
the home in which he continued to reside until 1896, when he died.
William G. Kerckhoff, a son, came with his father and almost
immediately engaged in the lumber business with James Cuzner. An
ordinary man might have found this enterprise sufficient, especially
as it expanded with the building up of our Southland communities; but
this was not so with the younger Kerckhoff, who in 1892 entered the
ice business, after which effort, within ten years, he evolved the San
Gabriel Electric Company. Henry E. Huntington then associated himself
with this enterprise, somewhat later buying that part of the Kerckhoff
property on which the Huntington Building, opposite the Kerckhoff, now
stands; and as a result of the working together of two such minds,
huge electrical enterprises culminated in the Pacific Light and Power
Company.
The year 1879 was tragic in my family. On the 20th of January, our son
Philip, only nine years of age, died of diphtheria; and a trifle more
than three weeks later, on February 11th, Leo, a baby of three years,
succumbed to the same treacherous disease. Barely had the grave closed
on the second, when a daughter became seriously ill, and after her
recovery, in a fit of awful consternation we fled the plague-infected
house and the city, taking with us to San Francisco, Edward, a son of
five years. But alas! hardly had we returned to town, when he also
died, on March 17th, 1879.
In May, Judge R. M. Widney broached to the Rev. A. M. Hough, Rev. M.
M. Bovard, E. F. Spence, Dr. J. P. Widney and G. D. Compton his
project for the first Protestant institution of higher learning in
Southern California; and meeting with their encouragement, certain
land in West Los Angeles, consisting of three hundred and eight acres,
was accepted in trust as a gift from I. W. Hellman, J. G. Downey and
O. W. Childs, forty acres being later added. In 1880, the first
building was put up on Wesley Avenue; and on the sixth of October the
college was opened. Most of the projectors were Methodists; and the
institution, since known as the University of Southern California,
became a Methodist college. The beginning of the institution has been
odd: its first department of arts was built, in 1883, at Ontario;
while two years later its theological school was opened at San
Fernando. Recently, under the energetic administration of President F.
D. Bovard, the University has made much progress.
A. B. Chapman, about 1879, joined C. T. Paul in opening a hardware
store at 12 Commercial Street, with a little tin-shop opposite; and
they soon introduced here the first gasoline stoves, to which the
insurance companies at once seriously objected.
Probably the earliest Los Angeles newspaper published in French was a
weekly, _L'Union Nouvelle_, which commenced in 1879 with P. Ganée as
editor.
Exceeding the limits of animated editorial debate into which the rival
journalists had been drawn in the heated campaign of 1879, William A.
Spalding, a reporter on the _Evening Express_, waited for Joseph D.
Lynch, the editor of the _Herald_, at about eleven o'clock in the
morning of August 16th, and peppered away with a bull-dog pistol at
his rival, as the latter, who had just left the Pico House, was
crossing Spring Street from Temple Block to go to the _Herald_ office.
Lynch dropped his cane, and fumbled for his shooting-iron; but by the
time he could return the fire, A. de Celis and other citizens had
thrust themselves forward, making it doubly perilous to shoot at all.
Spalding sent the bullet which wounded, not his adversary, but a
bystander, L. A. Major of Compton.
Colonel G. Wiley Wells arrived in 1879, after a Civil War career in
which his left arm was permanently crippled. He also served as United
States District Attorney in Mississippi, where he prosecuted many of
the Ku-Klux Klan, and as United States Consul-General to China, where
he had a varied experience with men and affairs. With A. Brunson, he
formed the law partnership of Brunson & Wells, having offices in the
Baker Block. The next year, Bradner W. Lee, a nephew of Wells, who had
arrived here in 1879, was added to the firm. After fifteen years'
practice in the local courts, during which time Wells became a noted
figure, he retired to private life at Santa Monica, disposing of his
extensive law library, consisting of some six thousand volumes, to his
successors, Works & Lee.
Henry Milner Mitchell, to whom I have referred as assisting to run
down Vasquez, reached Los Angeles by way of Nicaragua in 1868, and was
successively a surveyor, a reporter, a law student and, finally, from
1878 to 1879, Sheriff. In 1879, he was admitted to practice before the
Supreme Court of California, and in the same year, he married the
eldest daughter of Andrew Glassell. Eventually he met a very tragic
death: while hunting near the scene of Vasquez's capture, he was shot
by a friend who mistook him for a deer.
Colonel Henry Harrison Markham, a New Yorker, pitched his tent in Los
Angeles and Pasadena in 1879, and was elected to Congress from the
Sixth District, defeating R. F. Del Valle. He succeeded in getting one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a public building and
appropriations for Wilmington and other harbors; and he also aided in
establishing army headquarters at Los Angeles for Arizona, New Mexico
and Southern California.
Carl Seligman left Germany for America in 1879 and spent a year in San
Francisco, after which he removed to Tucson, Arizona. And there he
remained, engaged in the wholesale and retail grocery business until,
on December 6th, 1885, he married my daughter Ella, following which
event he bought an interest in the firm of M. A. Newmark & Company.
The early eighties witnessed a commercial development so marked as to
remind one of the proverbial grass that could be heard to grow. During
an entire century, business (centered, like social life, more or less
about the Plaza) had crawled southward to First Street, a distance of
but three or four blocks; and now, in five or six years, trade passed
First, extended along both Main and Spring streets and reached almost
to, or just beyond Second. At this time, the Baker Block, at the
corner of North Main and Arcadia streets, which contained the first
town ticket-office of the Southern Pacific Railroad, was still the
center of the retail trade of Los Angeles.
And yet some idea of the backwardness of the city, even then, may be
obtained from the fact that, in 1880, on the southwest corner of
Spring and Second streets where the Hollenbeck Hotel was later built,
stood a horse corral; while the old adobe on the lot at the corner of
First and Spring streets, which was torn down later to make room for
the Hotel Nadeau, was also still there.
Obadiah Truax Barker settled in Los Angeles in 1880 and, with Otto
Mueller, started a furniture and carpet business, known as Barker &
Mueller's, at 113 North Spring Street. Strange as it seems, however,
the newcomers found themselves too far from the business district;
and, on Mueller's retiring, O. T. Barker & Sons moved to a store near
the Pico House. Now the firm is Barker Brothers.
In fond recollection, the homely cheerfulness of the old-time adobe
recurs again and again. The eighties, however, were characterized by
another form of dwelling, fashionable and popular; some examples of
which, half-ruined, are still to be seen. This was the frame house,
large and spacious with wide, high, curving verandas, semicircular
bay-windows, towers and cupolas. Flower-bordered lawns generally
encircled these residences; there were long, narrow hallways and more
spare bedrooms than the less intimate hospitality of to-day suggests
or demands.
On January 1st, 1880, the District Court of Los Angeles was abolished
to give way to the County Court; on which occasion Don Ygnácio
Sepúlveda, the last of the District Court judges, became the first
County Judge.
The first cement pavement in the city was laid on Main Street north of
First by a man named Floyd. Having bought Temple Block, we were
thinking of surrounding it with a wooden sidewalk. Floyd recommended
cement, asking me, at the same time, to inspect a bit of pavement
which he had just put down. I did so, and took his advice; and from
this small beginning has developed the excellent system of paving now
enjoyed by Los Angeles.
In 1880, there visited Southern California a man who not only had a
varied and most interesting past, but who was destined to have an
important future. This was Abbot Kinney, a blood relation of Emerson,
Holmes and old General Harrison, and a student of law and medicine,
commission merchant, a botanical expert, cigarette manufacturer and
member of the United States Geological Survey; a man, too, who had
traveled through, and lived long in Europe, Asia and Africa; and who,
after seeing most of our own Northwest, was on his way to settle in
Florida in search of health. While in San Francisco he heard of the
recently-formed Sierra Madre Colony, whither he made haste to go; and
after a month or two there, he liked it so well that he decided to
remain on the gentle slope, found there a home and lay out a farm. At
that time we had a customer by the name of Seabury, who owned one
hundred and sixty acres along the foothills; and this land he had
mortgaged to us to secure a note. When Kinney came, he bought a place
adjoining Seabury's, and this led him to take over the mortgage. In
due season, he foreclosed and added the land to his beautiful
property, which he named _Kinneloa_.
All Kinney's combined experience was brought to bear to make his
estate pleasurable, not only to himself but for the casual visitor and
passer-by; and in a short time he became well known. He also was made
a Special Commissioner of the United States to examine into the
condition of the Mission Indians of Southern California; and on this
commission he served with Helen Hunt Jackson, so famous as _H. H._
or, especially in California, as the author of _Ramona_, visiting with
her all the well-known Indian _rancherías_ between San Diego and
Monterey, in addition to the twenty-one Franciscan Missions.
Toward the end of April, F. P. F. Temple passed away at the Merced
Ranch and was buried in the family burying-ground at La Puente. This
recalls to mind that, in early days, many families owned a hallowed
acre where, as summoned one by one, they were laid side by side in
rest eternal.
On May 16th, John W. Bixby died, at his Long Beach estate. About 1871
he had entered his brother Jotham's service, supervising the sheep
ranch; and to John Bixby's foresight was attributed, first the renting
and later the purchase of the great ranch controlled, through
foreclosure of mortgage, by Michael Reese. A year or two before
Bixby's death, five thousand acres were set aside for the town of Los
Alamitos, but John never saw the realization of his dream to establish
there a settlement.
It was on the eighteenth of the same month that my brother found it
necessary to visit Carlsbad for the benefit of his health, and the
decision occasioned my removal to San Francisco to look after his
affairs. What was expected to be a brief absence really lasted until
September, 1882, when he and his family returned to America and San
Francisco, and I came back to Los Angeles, with which, of course, I
had continued in close communication. During our absence, my wife's
father, Joseph Newmark, died rather suddenly on October 19th, 1881.
[Illustration: Antonio Franco and Mariana Coronel
From an oil painting in the Coronel Collection]
[Illustration: Fourth Street, Looking West from Main]
[Illustration: Timms Landing
From a print of the late fifties]
[Illustration: Santa Catalina, in the Middle Eighties]
Reference has been made to the movement, in 1859, for the division of
California into two states. In the spring of 1880, John G. Downey
republished the original act and argued that it was still valid; and
Dr. J. P. Widney contended that the geographical, topographical,
climatic and commercial laws were all working for the separation of
California into two distinct civil organizations. Not long after, at a
mass-meeting in Los Angeles called to forward the improvement of
Wilmington harbor, an Executive Committee consisting of J. G.
Downey, W. H. Perry, E. F. Spence, Dr. J. P. Widney, A. B. Moffitt and
J. G. Estudillo was named to see what could be done; and this
Committee appointed a Legal Committee, consisting of Henry T. Hazard,
R. M. Widney, George H. Smith, C. E. Thom, A. Brunson, S. C. Hubbell
and H. A. Barclay. The latter Committee endorsed Downey's view that
Congress could admit the new State; and it arranged for a convention
which met on September 8th, 1881. There the gist of the sentiment was
that State division was a necessity, but that the time was not yet
ripe!
In 1880, Jotham Bixby & Company sold four thousand acres of their
celebrated Cerritos Ranch to an organization known as the American
Colony, and in a short time Willmore City, named after W. E. Willmore
and the origin of Long Beach, was laid out and widely advertised.
Willmore, a teacher, had been fairly successful as a colonizer in
Fresno County; but after all his dreaming, hard work and investments,
he lost all that he had, like so many others, and died broken-hearted.
The earliest recollection I have of a storekeeper at Long Beach was my
customer, W. W. Lowe.
At an early period in the development of Santa Monica, as we have
seen, Senator Jones built a wharf there; but the Los Angeles &
Independence Railroad, expected to become the outlet on the Pacific
Coast of a supposedly great mining district in Inyo County, never
reached farther east than Los Angeles. The Southern Pacific Railroad
Company, desiring to remove this competition, obtained possession of
the new road, razed the warehouse and condemned and half dismantled
the wharf; and by setting up its terminus at Wilmington, it
transferred there the greater part of its shipping and trade. By 1880,
Santa Monica, to-day so prosperous, had shrunk to but three hundred
and fifty inhabitants.
Competition compelled us, in 1880, to put traveling salesmen into the
field--an innovation we introduced with reluctance, involving as it
did no little additional expense.
Near the end of August, a Citizens' Committee was appointed to
receive and entertain President Rutherford B. Hayes, whose visit to
Los Angeles, as the first President to come here, caused quite a stir.
His stay was very brief. During the few hours that he was here, he and
his party were driven around the neighborhood in open hacks.
In the midst of his successive Greenback campaigns, General Ben. F.
Butler sojourned for a few days, in 1880, in Los Angeles and was the
recipient of many attentions.
At the beginning of this decade, the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railway
was extended to Timms' Landing, the well-known old shipping point; and
San Pedro then began to grow in earnest, both on the bluff and in the
lowlands bordering on the bay. Wharves were projected; and large
vessels, such as would have startled the earlier shippers, yet none
too large at that, made fast to their moorings. But the improvement of
yesterday must make way for that of to-day, and even now the Harbor
Commissioners are razing historic Timms' Point. Penning again this
familiar cognomen, I am reminded of what, I dare say, has been
generally forgotten, that the Bay of Avalon was also once called
Timms' Landing or Cove--after A. W. Timms, under-officer in the United
States Navy--and that the name was changed prior to the Bannings'
purchase of Catalina.
Frequent reference has been made to those who, in one way or another,
sought to infuse new commercial life here and more rapidly to expand
the city; but, after all, George Lehman, of whom I have already
spoken, was perhaps _the_ pioneer local boomer before that picturesque
word had become incorporated in the Angeleño's vocabulary. Nor were
his peculiarities in this direction entirely confined to booming, for
he did considerable buying as well. Lehman's operations, however, most
unfortunately for himself, were conducted at too early a period, and
his optimism, together with his extensive, unimproved holdings,
wrought his downfall. Besides the Round House and gardens, he owned
real estate which would now represent enormous value, in proof of
which I have only to mention a few of his possessions at that time:
the southwest corner of Sixth and Spring streets; the northeast
corner of Sixth and Hill streets; large frontages and many other
corners on Main, Spring, Fort and Hill streets. Practically none of
this property brought any income, so that when the City began to grade
and improve the streets, Lehman's assessments compelled him to give a
fifteen thousand dollar blanket mortgage to Lazard Frères of San
Francisco.
Lehman soon found himself beyond his depth and defaulted in the
payment of both principal and interest. Not only that, but with a
complacency and a confidence in the future that were sublime, he
refused to sell a single foot of land, and Lazard Frères with a worthy
desire, natural to bankers, to turn a piece of paper into something
more negotiable, foreclosed the mortgage, in 1879, and shut the gates
of the Garden of Paradise forever; and a sheriff's sale was advertised
for the purpose of concluding this piece of financial legerdemain. I
attended the sale, and still distinctly remember with much amusement
some of the incidents.
The vociferous auctioneer mounted the box or barrel provided for him
and opened the program by requesting an offer for the corner of Hill
and Second streets, a lot one hundred and twenty by one hundred and
sixty feet in size. Nor did he request in vain.
One of the heroes of the occasion was Louis Mesmer, a friend of
Lehman, whose desire it was to take a talking part in the proceedings,
force up the prices and so help the latter. Amidst the familiar,
"Going, going, going!" accordingly, the bidding began and, under the
incentive of Mesmer's bullish activities, the figures soon reached
four hundred dollars, the last bidder being Eugene Meyer, local agent
for the mortgagee. At this juncture Mesmer, in his enthusiasm, doubled
the bid to eight hundred dollars, expecting, of course, to induce
someone to raise the price, already high for that day, still higher.
But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." How
eagerly Mesmer awaited the fruition of his shrewd manipulation! how he
listened in hopeful anticipation to the repeated, "Going, going,
going!" of the auctioneer! In vain, however, he waited, in vain he
listened. To his mortification and embarrassment, his astounded ear
was greeted with the decisive, "Gone!--for eight hundred dollars! Sold
to Louis Mesmer!"
Mesmer had bought, for more than it was worth, a piece of property
which he did not want, a catastrophe realized as well by all the
others present as it was patent to the victim himself. The crowd
relished keenly the ludicrous situation in which Mesmer found himself,
encumbered as he was with an investment which he had had no intention
of making; and throughout the remainder of the contest he was
distinguished only by his silence.
Poor old George! His vision was accurate: Los Angeles was to become
great, but her splendid expansion was delayed too long for him to
realize his dreams. When Lehman died, he was buried in a pauper's
grave; and toward the end of the eighties, the adobe Round House, once
such a feature of George Lehman's Garden of Paradise, was razed to
make way for needed improvements.
I have spoken of the intolerable condition of the atmosphere in the
Council Chamber when Charles Crocker made his memorable visit to Los
Angeles to consult with the City Fathers. In the eighties, when the
Common Council met in the southeast corner of the second floor of
Temple Block, the same objectionable use of tobacco prevailed, with
the result that the worthy Aldermen could scarcely be distinguished
twenty-five feet away from the rough benches on which sat the equally
beclouded spectators.
Doubtless the atmosphere of the court room was just as foul when the
Mayor, as late at least as 1880, passed judgment each morning, sitting
as a Justice, on the crop of disorderlies of the preceding night. Then
not infrequently some neighbor or associate of the Mayor himself,
caught in the police dragnet, appeared among the drowsy defendants!
FOOTNOTE:
[35] Died on October 27th, 1915.