by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This afternoon’s Holiday Open House at the Homestead was a gratifying success, with about 700 visitors (more than three times what we had each of the last two years) enjoying ballet folklorico, choir caroling, a barbershop quartet, a pianist in the Music Room of La Casa Nueva, face-painting and balloon twisting, and visits to our decorated historic houses—including a first-ever demonstration of audio tours at the Workman House.
My colleagues Michelle Muro and Christian Fuentes put in many hours in planning and installing the exhibits in the houses, including some great decorating schemes, such as a large paper Santa Claus with the Main Hall chandelier forming his hat and the detailed centerpiece for the Dining Room table. Visitors really seemed to enjoy walking through La Casa Nueva and seeing their handiwork, while Michelle shared some of 1920s sources, including decorating books and catalogs, for aspects of the display.
Our public programs team of Gennie Truelock, Isis Quan, Steve Dugan and Beatriz Rivas worked very hard to come up with diverse menu of offerings, scheduling volunteers, preparing the Museum Store, developing the audio tour, a mini-exhibit about Christmas cards in the Gallery, set-up and clean-up, and much more. Our talented staff deserved abundant thanks for all of their efforts to make the open house work as well as it did and for visitors to have as great experience as they did.
In the Dining Room, Michelle and Christian put out an abundance of “replicated” food, including turkey, tamales, side dishes galore and a panoply of desserts, including cakes and pies—with holiday “eats” always an important part of interpreting the season. This edition of “The Evolution of Christmas” and the “Selling the Holiday” version of it takes us back to about 1908 and a handsome die-cut holiday offering of the “Compliments of the Season” from Christopher’s, a candy, ice cream and confectionery business that operated in Los Angeles for close to ninety years.
The piece shows a little girl with golden hair, rosy cheeks and a pink dress under a large bunch of four-petal purple flowers and the use of the flowers and a cherubic child has almost an 1870s or 1880s aura to it and a far cry from the red, green, and gold colors, Santa Clauses and other imagery that became more common by the turn of the 20th century. In any case, the item is not dates, but the font type and the logo are suggestive of the first decade of that new century.
As for the business, it was formed by Louis Joseph Christopher (1856-1943), a native of Walscheid, France, a commune in the department of Moselle in the northeastern part of that country, which was long contested by it and Germany. It seems likely that the surname was Anglicized, but nothing is known of his origins.
Christopher and brother Seraphin (also known as Samuel and who migrated first), who fought in the Franco-Prussia War of 1870-1871 (their father was said to have fought under Napoleon), may have left a region devastated by the conflict and, by 1875, Christopher joined his sibling in San Francisco. A city directory from that year lists a Louis Christopher as a hairdresser and the 1880 federal census and a voter registration list from six years later shows him as a barber.
In 1887, Christopher migrated south to Los Angeles, where, at the end of the year, as the Angel City and its environs were in the midst of the great Boom of the Eighties, he purchased the confectionery (candy, ice cream and lunch parlor) of T.A. Gardner, who’d been in the business since early in the decade. His brother also settled in the city and worked as a barber as well as in the candy store, while Christopher’s success with the business included an expansion to a few locations by the early 20th century.
In turn, he became an investor in horses, which he regularly raced at such venues as the track at Exposition Park (where the rose garden is now situated), while he also had an interest in boxes, promoting fights in the Angel City as soon as the late 1890s, and in purchasing land. He acquired a 20-acre ranch near Anaheim and had one in Covina, as well.
At the end of the 19th century, he became a partner with the well-known café of Al Levy, though there were later disputes between the two when Christopher took over operation of the restaurant. In 1905, he took a quarter stake in theater impresario Oliver Morosco’s Majestic Theatre project along with some major names like Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Dr. John Randolph Haynes, best known now for his foundation.
Moreover, Christopher was involved in several financial institutions, beginning in the 1890s with Fidelity Savings and Loan, with which he was a vice-president and then chief executive. In the late 1920s, while he was a director, one of his successors as vice-president was George H. Woodruff, Walter P. Temple’s attorney and business partner. Christopher was also with the Provident Mutual Building-Loan Association, Citizens National Bank, Consolidated Realty Company, the Funding Company of California, and the Sentinel and Navajo oil companies, among others.
He was a leader in the French community of Los Angeles, serving as head of the Alsace-Lorraine Society, the French Colony association and invariably present when dignitaries from his home country visited the Angel City. He made frequent trips to his hometown and endowed a hospital, provided scholarships to university students and was given several honors by France as recognition for his efforts to support those in his homeland.
Christopher’s started in Gardner’s quarters on Spring Street across from the Temple Block and moved further south as the city’s commercial core expanded and also branched out. By late 1908, he operated at locations on Spring between 2nd and 3rd and Broadway between 3rd and 4th, while, the following year a second store on Broadway between 5th and 6th was opened.
By 1912, another Spring Street location was added to the roster, while an ice cream manufacturing plant was established at Main and 21st streets, and a candy factory built on Avalon and 40th street (that building appears to still be with us) and a Long Beach branch founded, to boot. The firm’s products were also sold by many stores throughout greater Los Angeles.
While candy, ice cream and cakes were specialties, Christopher’s increasingly offered lunches, including for “after theater” meals, and focused more heavily on the great popularity of soda fountains and a wide variety of drinks. For the period that we are assuming generated the die-cut card focused here, there was also no small amount of savvy and snappy language employed in the company’s ads. For example, the 20 May 1908 edition of the Times ran one that began,
I know men who wouldn’t walk under a ladder or sit down at table with thirteen at party, but I have yet to learn of a woman who wouldn’t start for a bargain on Friday . . . the cashier lady at Christopher’s tells me they have bargains twice a week . . . She assures me that a Christopher candy bargain tastes even better than it looks . . . I intend to test this lady’s claims. She looks both wise and veracious, but I am a Missourian.
At the end of August, another ad in that paper stated, “that inquisitive neighbor of mine has again been firing questions at me on the early morning [street]car” saying he wanted to know the difference in the meaning of two words and when the exasperated narrator blurted out “oh, fudge, forget it,” the neighbor rejoined with “if you mean Christopher’s fudge, I can’t forget it.”
When late October came, the company issued an ad that talked about faults and paradoxes, but claimed that “it would be a paradoxical effort, for example, to find fault with Christopher’s candies.” The narrator continued that “I do not profess to have any monopoly of candy wisdom” and was no “professional judge,” but added, “I know bad candy when I run across it.” When it came to the store, however, “to think of Christopher’s is to think of purity in sweets” and it was concluded that “I am getting to be a regular slave to those toasted marshmallows.”
A holiday ad in the Los Angeles Herald from its 16 December 1905 edition called the attention of “candy givers” to the fact that “our beautiful display of bon-bon boxes of last year is doubtless a pleasant memory to you, but this year you will be even more delighted with the line we show. IT IS GORGEOUS!” With burnt wood boxes featuring images of California missions and poppies and filled with “crystalized California fruit,” it was assured that “your gift will make a good impression” and with prices to fit every budget, spanning $1 to $15.
The Los Angeles Express of 10 December 1909 promoted “Christmas candies and exquisite Parisian novelties and baskets” that constituted “the largest and finest display ever shown here.” These being selected by Christopher, these were considered “suitable gifts for a child—to a debutante—and to the mother,” with the added emphasis that these would make for “a gift that has lasting qualities—so the donor will be remembered for years.”
In 1912, Christopher took out a trademark on his name, while in February 1914 there was a complete reorganization of the firm, which was incorporated. Seven years later, the company was reincorporated, this time in Delaware with its tax-friendly environment and Christopher intended to retire and spend more time on his financial enterprises and other interests, while the business invested more than $150,000 in improvements. In August 1921, however, he returned to the helm for reasons that were unstated.
With further growth during the boom of the Roaring Twenties and as Christopher reached his seventies, he sold the company, after forty years of operation, to the newly formed California Dairies, Inc., run by a Seattle business figure. While Christopher retained presidency of his subsidiary company, it does not appear that he was nearly as involved in operations as previously.
Still, he continued serving as director of financial companies, with French organizations and in running ranches. Married to Madeline Heid, also from France, while in San Francisco (the couple were childless), he long resided in the Westlake South neighborhood west of downtown and died early in 1943, with his interment at the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles. While he is not remembered today, Angelenos in the late 19th and much of the 20th century were very well acquainted with his delicious candies, ice cream, sodas and drinks and other products, including at the holiday season.