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.
[Illustration: Main Street, Looking North from Sixth, Probably in the
Late Seventies]
[Illustration: High School, on Pound Cake Hill, about 1873]
[Illustration: First Street, Looking East from Hill]
[Illustration: Temple Court House, after Abandonment by the County]
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.