by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A couple of months ago, Laura Hanley, a local resident, contacted me about her ancestors, three sisters, Anna, Catherine, and Johanna O’Keefe, who migrated to Los Angeles about 1860, and what information might be available about them. Laura noted that Catherine was a prominent Angel City resident, being a rare example of a woman property owner of substantial means in the late 19th century. Some subsequent research conducted since then has located the material for this post.
While the Homestead’s collection does not have any artifacts directly connected to the O’Keefe sisters, Laura’s mention of her great-great-grand-aunt Catherine, led to the finding of a few photographs in the Museum’s holdings of the Wilson Block, a distinctive four-story business building in an especially valuable downtown location. She noted that Catherine and a sister Mary, migrated from Ireland to America to join other siblings who’d settled there a couple of years before. Their widowed mother then followed with four other children, including Anna, Johanna and two brothers and the O’Keefe clan resided in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the girls labored in the textile mills for which that city was well-known.
In 1859, Catherine and Johanna came, by ship either around the Horn of South America or through the isthmus at Panama, to Los Angeles, perhaps because of a connection with the Mellus family, who hailed from the Commonwealth State, and Anna appears to have joined them shortly afterward. As mentioned by Laura, the 1860 census showed Catherine O’Keefe as a servant of Los Angeles Mayor Henry Mellus, who died later that year, while “Honora O’Keefe” almost certainly Johanna, was enumerated as a servant into the household of Dr. Thomas J. White. In 1865, Johanna married James Gorman, who kept a stage stop near Fort Tejon where a small community bearing the Gorman name remains today. Anna, who family lore states worked for the prominent merchant Abel Stearns (another Massachusetts native) and his wife Arcadia Bandini at their El Palacio adobe house, later married Samuel Snedden and lived in Ventura County and in Los Angeles—Laura is their descendent.
Shortly afterward, Catherine married Peter Wilson, a native of Sweden, who came in 1851 to the Angel City as a sailor. In the enumeration in 1860, he was actually counted twice, both times he was listed as a 25-year old drayman, meaning he made deliveries via an animal-drawn vehicle, and his self-declared wealth was moderate, $3,000 in real estate and $1,000 in personal property according to one of the listings.
A significant part of his estate, however, proved to be the means for the future wealth of his wife and family, as Wilson acquired the southeast corner of Spring and 1st streets, purportedly for $900. The Wilson home was there and Peter and Catherine had six children, two daughters (Mary and Agnes) and four sons (William, Henry, George and Philip), raised at the family homestead, which is depicted in the earliest of the photos in our collection.
Notably, in 1864, the eccentric George Lehman, owner of the highly distinctive Round House, took out an ad to complain ironically about his loan, “more than four years ago,” to Peter for the construction of the Wilson residence, but that repayment was in paper, not coin as was the usual form, and at only 65 cents on the dollar.
Peter continued his occupation through his thirty-five years in the Angel City and was rarely mentioned in the local press, save for an occasional reference in Common (City) Council reports for payment of his hauling services for the municipality or for his service with the volunteer firefighting companies, Company No. 1 and the 38s, formed in the 1870s, including his role as foreman of the hose carriage for the latter. In February 1875, Peter acquired some lots at the Centinela subdivision sale, this tract established with F.P.F. Temple as president of the land company.
The following month, the earliest mention found of Catherine was her taking out an advertisement in the Los Angeles Express and the Los Angeles Herald warning anyone against selling liquor to Peter, otherwise she would “sue them for damages, under the penalty of the law.” The Express reported that “Mrs. Peter Wilson is the first person here to avail herself of the law,” presumably a city ordinance, pertaining to the question at hand.
It was also in 1875 that Peter formally deeded the Spring and 1st street property to Catherine, whether in an attempt to protect it from financial loss or because of his drinking is not known. Four years later, a fire broke out in a Chinese laundry located in what appears to have been some store fronts, including a carpentry shop, built next to the Wilson residence, but the quick action of the volunteer firefighters (which led Peter to take out an ad thanking them for their heroism) limited the damage, though the structures were uninsured.
After 1875, when the California economy, following a national depression which broke out two years prior, collapsed after a Nevada silver mine stock bubble burst and which included the failure of the bank of Temple and Workman in its wake, the local financial situation was moribund for several years. By 1884, however, there was improvement and Los Angeles was on the rebound, leading Peter and Catherine to embark on the conversion of their property through the construction of a new business building.
While the Wilsons relocated to Spring and 5th, they hired architect Burgess J. Reeve, who recently finished, a short distance up Spring, the Phillips Block for Pomona rancher Louis Phillips, to design a $25,000 structure to comprise two stories with a rear warehouse. Late in 1884, contracts were let for the construction and, while there some pitfalls, including the disappearance of a contractor doing the excavation for what became a basement store and a partial collapse of that area due to heavy rains one year, work steadily continued. A mortgage was taken out during this time, but it was paid off during the building period.
The Los Angeles Times of 29 October 1885 reported that the Wilson Block covered an area 71 by 120 feet, with three ground floor stores with a loading yard 13 feet wide including a track for tram cars to access the property and the warehouse to measure 71 by 20 feet. The second floor was to comprise nine offices facing First Street and a hall measuring 60 by 77 feet, while the cellar had a concrete floor and walls two feet thick. There was to be a pressed brick front as well as ornamental iron columns and a galvanized iron cornice. Importantly, it was stated that “the walls will be strong enough for two additional stories.”
Just a couple of months later, however, on 8 January 1886, Peter died at age 51 of pneumonia, leaving his widow to complete the Wilson Block project, while grieving with their children (ages 7 to 23) and dealing with her husband’s estate. In early August, the edifice, the cost of which doubled to $50,000, but this also including the additional stories mentioned above, was completed. The Los Angeles Herald of the 8th went into significant detail, beginning its coverage with the statement,
In the Wilson Block . . . Los Angeles has had another handsome addition to the needed accommodations for her rapidly growing business. The location is in the heart of the city and of course one of the most desirable for business purposes. The lot has long been owned by Mrs. C. Wilson, and it is greatly to her credit that she has put up a structure which is not only an ornament to the city but one which will long be of substantial benefit.
In fact, as the Angel City was just embarking on its second boom, the first being from 1868-1875 and this one much larger, leading it to be called the Boom of the Eighties, the timing for the completion of the structure could not have been better. A direct transcontinental railroad connection by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, made at the end of 1885, was critical to the massive growth that followed. The business district, largely developed in the first boom with such important elements as the Temple Block, moved south along Main and Spring streets to the vicinity of the Wilson Block.
The Herald received details about the structure from Reeve, including the addition of elevators, the extensive use of bay windows, the 26 rooms each on the upper floors with modern conveniences like water-closets and bathrooms, and more. The paper discussed the various contractors, including the general work and the subs doing brick and stone; painting; plastering; plumbing and gas-fitting; the iron facade, replacing the pressed brick originally planned, and ornamental iron; glass; the unusual use of sliding blinds inside the windows; and lumber. Two of the stores operating on opening day was a jewelers and perfumers shop run by Jean Deler and the Bartlett jewelry and music house, which later became the prominent Southern California Music Company.
Given the boom and the rising value of the Spring and 1st property, a far cry from there mere $900 paid by James Wilson some three decades prior, Catherine rose to the upper ranks of the Angel City’s wealthy class. The New Year’s Day 1888 edition of the Herald reported her assessed property value at just shy of $102,000, but it was telling that, as the boom morphed into the inevitable bust, that figure shrunk by July 1889 to about $59,000. Even as there were some tough years during the Nineties, including a national depression that began in 1893 and local drought over much of the decade, Catherine remained a major taxpayer.
In 1895, as downtown expansion continued on its inexorable southward march, the Wilson home was again relocated, this time to the west at 7th and Bixel, while the property on Spring, south of 5th, was rededicated to another business building built by Catherine. The anchor tenant in the three-story brick edifice was the Los Angeles Athletic Club, formed in 1880 and which later moved to its present quarters on 7th Street. Catherine, meanwhile, invested in other real estate, including in Monrovia, when that town was established during the Eighties boom, and she ran a boarding house and a hotel dining room in that San Gabriel Valley community.
A devout Roman Catholic, Catherine gave liberally to church endeavors as well as other causes. In 1887, when St. Vincent’s Church was built next to the relocated college of that name at Grand Avenue and Washington Boulevard, she endowed a memorial window for Peter. Later, she left funds for similar memorials to her two sons, Henry and William, who died of consumption at ages 27 in 1894 and 1896, respectively, with an altar for the former at the University of Santa Clara, his alma mater, and a window for the latter at a church. When a Catholic church was built at Hollywood, then an independent city, in 1904, she donated a full set of vestments for the use of the clergy during services.
In December 1903, Catherine, her son Philip, daughters Mary Boylson and Agnes Gregg, and the latter’s husband, attorney and judge Frederic W. Gregg, formed the Wilson Land Company, with Philip, also a banker, as president. Six months later, Catherine deeded the Wilson Block property to the firm. On 7 December 1905, she passed away at age 67, dying, as James did, from pneumonia. The Herald of the following day noted,
she displayed a remarkable business sagacity that did much to build up the fortune left by her. Many of the keenest business men of the city were glad to have her advice on perplexing business problems and her judgment was considered almost infallible.
Catherine left an estate valued at $128,000 and, in addition to the memorials to her son, left funds for the Los Angeles Orphans’ Asylum in Boyle Heights, churches in Redlands and San Bernardino, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart for a planned school, a memorial window to her in a church and to the Brownson Settlement House, whose president was Mary J. Workman, grand-niece of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste.
As for the Wilson Block, it was sold by the family company in 1911, several months after a fire damaged part of the structure—another blaze struck the edifice six years later, which a previous post here discusses. Yet, the building, with needed repairs and improvements, remained standing until the late 1950s, when it was purchased by the City and razed. Today, the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department is on the site.
Thanks to Laura for bringing the story of Catherine to our attention and we’re happy to be able to share the remarkable story of an Irish immigrant woman who became one of the best-known property holders in late 19th and early 20th century Los Angeles.