by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The role of F.P.F. Temple, husband of Antonia Margarita Workman, whose parents William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste were the founders of the Homestead, as a “city maker,” to borrow historian Remi Nadeau’s term, during greater Los Angeles’ first boom, lasting from about 1868 to mid-1875, has been oft-discussed in this blog.
The range of his activities in businesses from railroads to real estate and from mining to banking, among others, during those seven or so years was nearly unmatched in the Angel City, save for such notable examples of former governor John G. Downey and Temple’s former banking partner, Isaias W. Hellman, as he seemed virtually ubiquitous in the emerging city’s ranks of developers and capitalists.
At the core of most of his enterprises, however, was the inherent risk of speculation, especially amid the ferment and excitement of the boomtime mentality. The potential of Los Angeles as an economic hub of the American Southwest not infrequently highlighted, but, in the late Sixties, a community of several thousands had a long way to go to get that level, even if the population more than doubled and many of the elements of future growth put into place.
The risk, of course, was the expenditure of large amounts of capital, from the purses of Temple and his father-in-law Workman (who assigned his power-of-attorney to Temple) as well as from the deposits of customers of the Temple and Workman bank, which opened in November 1871 after the enterprise with Hellman ended. It was one thing to collect rents from doctors, lawyers, merchants, and government (such as the postal service) in buildings erected by Temple.
But, building railroads involved large outlays as did the search for petroleum and silver, while the expensive water pipeline built at Cerro Gordo, the silver boom town in Inyo County, more than 200 miles from Los Angeles, which was successfully completed and then ran dry when the spring that were tapped proved to be shallow. Perhaps no enterprise was as subject to boom period hysteria than real estate and, whether it was the subdivision of Spanish and Mexican era ranchos, like Centinela west of Los Angeles, or tracts within the Angel City, it was easy to get caught up in the groundswell of over-enthusiastic expectations and the promise of immense profit.
The highlighted object from the Museum’s collection for this post is another example of Temple’s investment in local land development projects, but from the opposite end of the acquisition side. It is a deed, dated 3 January 1876, from F.P.F. Temple to his son William for property in the recently established Mount Pleasant Tract, one of the four developments east of the Los Angeles River and within the old “pueblo grant” limits that sprung up in the preceding three years.
The first was East Los Angeles, opened in 1873 by Downey, Hancock Johnston, Dr. John S. Griffin and others and which, just shy of a half-century later, was renamed Lincoln Heights. Another was Brooklyn Heights, opened by seven investors in spring 1875 on 100 acres across the Aliso Street covered bridge. A third was Boyle Heights, south of the Brooklyn tract, and established at that same time on land owned by William H. Workman, nephew of the Homestead owners, and his partners Hellman and John Lazzarevich (sometimes spelled Lazzarovich).
Then there was the Mount Pleasant Tract, which adjoined the Brooklyn Heights and Boyle Heights properties and which was developed by Lazzarevich, again, in 1875, though just a bit later than the others. An 1894 Los Angeles Times article noted that the city attorney, in looking at the matter of a no longer extant street, informed the City Council that “in 1875 Francisco Lopez was the owner of a large amount of property lying between First and Brooklyn streets and St. Louis street to the bluff in Boyle Heights,” and that on 15 May of that year, Lazzarevich, who obtained power of attorney from López four days prior, submitted to the county recorded a map, dated the 8th, for the tract.
Lazzarevich (1830-1892, the same age range as Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple) was a native of what is now Croatia, in the province of Dalmatia and likely in or near Dubrovnik at the southern end of that territory. This highly contested region was part of the Italian city of Venice until 1797, then in Austrian hands for less than a decade before becoming part of Napoleonic France and then back to Austria after Napoleon’s downfall in 1815.
At age 21, Lazzarevich migrated to America and then came to California by sea around the Horn of South America (as F.P.F. Temple did in 1841.) In June 1855, he settled in Los Angeles and became a merchant with Italian Santiago Bollo and then on his own. In the early Sixties, he returned to his homeland and married Angelica Grivich, with whom he had two sons, John, Jr. and Stephen before her death from consumption in 1869.
That year, Lazzarevich ended a partnership with George Cummings, a recent arrival and a native of the Austrian Empire, but the two remained friends with Cummings likely introducing the widower to his sister-in-law, Juana López de Warren. Juana was a daughter, as was Cummings’ wife Sacramenta, of Francisco López (1818-1900), son of Esteban, who, in 1835, was given pueblo lands on the east side of the river and which became known as Paredon Blanco (White Bluff.) López built quite a successful estate on the tract’s north end, especially with irrigation along the flats bordering the watercourse.
In 1858, his stepmother, Esteban’s widow, Petra Varela, sold a substantial portion of Paredon Blanco to Andrew Boyle, a native of Ireland and a recent Angel City arrival. He cultivated Esteban López’s vineyards and made wine under the Paredon Blanco name. Four years before his death in 1871, Boyle’s daughter, Maria (pronounced Mar-aye-ya) wedded William H. Workman and the couple inherited the estate.
Juana López was married to William C. Warren, who was the Los Angeles city marshal when, in an 1870 dispute with a deputy over reward money, the two engaged in a gun-battle in broad daylight on the street and the marshal was killed. There were three daughters and, when Juana married Lazzarevich in January 1872 (Sacramenta López and George Cummings were the witnesses), they and his two sons were brought into a family that expanded with three more children born between 1872 and 1879. Juana’s eldest daughter Ida was the mother of longtime Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene W. Biscaliuz.
Having married into the López family and becoming close with his father-in-law, as well having lost his Main Street store to a fire in November 1871, Lazzarevich decided to leave the mercantile business and attend to the Paredon Blanco property owned by Francisco López. This included the establishment of a nursery in the flats section that, by mid-1874, had 200,000 citrus and other trees. Interestingly, there was a conflict between Lazzarevich and F.P.F. Temple’s son, Thomas, over land for which the latter tried to petition the Common (City) Council in February and March 1874, but which the former produced an abstract of title.
A notable footnote involving Lazzarevich is that, when the horrific Chinese Massacre took place on 24 October 1871, he joined attorney and future District Court Judge Robert M. Widney and others, in intervening with a mob of rioters to save the lives of a few Chinese who were being dragged to a nearby corral for lynching. Witnesses testified in a coroner’s inquest that A.R. Johnson and a few Californios were the ones intercepted—Johnson was convicted of manslaughter in a trial in which F.P.F. Temple was the foreperson, though he was freed on a technicality after not much over a year in San Quentin State Prison.
With the boom growing in succeeding years and with his involvement in the new Boyle Heights project, Lazzarevich, as noted above, moved to establish the Mount Pleasant Tract. The 11 August 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Express reported,
Our people have rarely an opportunity of making an investment which will repay them so well as the lots on “Mount Pleasant,” . . . A great and immediate enhancement in the value of property is certain to take place on the East side of the river from this time on. Three hundred lots are located on the brow and sides of a pleasant knoll, which commands a charming view of the mountains which encircle Los Angeles, of the city itself, and of the valley which sweeps onward toward the sea.
It was added that a street railroad (the first in the city, the Spring and Sixth, of which F.P.F. Temple was treasurer, opened the prior year and a second, the Main Street and Agricultural (Exposition) Park followed later) would be built, while water delivery for the new subdivision, along with Boyle Heights and Brooklyn Heights, was also in the works.
The piece, asserting that “Mount Pleasant offers splendid inducements,” concluded that “there is no longer any doubt of the fact that anybody who buys land anywhere in the neighborhood of Los Angeles will profit by an enhancement of from one hundred to five hundred per cent in the next two or three years.” Moreover, it informed readers “this has been the lesson of the hour, and we advise investors to heed it.”
The Los Angeles Herald, recently co-owned by Temple and other investors, of 12 August chimed in, prognosticating that “soon this elegant site will be covered with palatial residences and thronged by a busy population, and the lots will have quadrupled in value.” As with its competitor, the paper repeated that such an opportunity for significant remuneration was rare “and we recommend our friends having money to invest to seize the chance, and put their funds where they will have a certain profit on their outlay.”
Two days, 23 and 24 August, were devoted to an auction, the common way real estate tracts were sold in those days, with the Herald writing that the first day drew a decent crowd as the auctioneer “hung out the maps in the corridor [porch?] of the old Lopez mansion” before lots along Aliso Street, later renamed Macy, then Brooklyn and now César A. Chávez, Avenue and now, were sold over an hour to eight buyers. The account then noted that “Block S, between the Perry and Temple properties, a very handsome block, was next put up.” William H. Perry was a prominent lumber dealer whose Mount Pleasant House, finished in 1876, is now at Heritage Square Museum in Lincoln Heights, while Block T was evidently sold privately to F.P.F. Temple prior to any public sale.
The Express added that the location at the López adobe dwelling, built in 1857, and located on the bluff north of Esteban’s property (later, Boyle’s land) closer to Old Aliso Street, or what became First Street, also included the attractive feature in which “the assemblage were shaded by the ample foliage of the grand old pepper trees.” As for those who acquired lots, the paper averred that they “have not to wait for green things to be planted and to grow up around them” because “umbrageous trees and verdant surroundings delight the eye” and “the outlook [view] is exceedingly beautiful, comprehending one of the loveliest panoramas in the State.”
Day two of the sale was adjudged by the Express as “a magnificent success,” with more than double the lots sold than on the prior day and a total of 74 overall and it was deemed important that this was done “right in the middle of the dry season” and took place “when all the real estate sharps were of the opinion that the sale would be a failure.”
Calling the auction “one of the most spirited sales that has taken place in Los Angeles in the last four years,” the paper recorded purchases from a baker’s dozen of buyers, including William H. Workman and Robert Turnbull, among the many recent settlers in the Angel City and who also invested in former public land in the Puente Hills, southwest of William Workman’s share of Rancho La Puente, including the canyon that bears his name.
In a follow-up on the 25th, the Express took its enthusiasm to a macro level, not only observing that the success of the Mount Pleasant auction “shows that our citizens have faith in suburban property” but insisting that,
It is useless for anyone to shut his eyes any longer to the fact that Los Angeles is destined to be a large city. San Francisco will always remain the metropolis of the Pacific Coast, but that is no reason why Los Angeles should not contain, in the next fifteen years[,] one hundred thousand inhabitants. She is to-day the center of what will be, when developed, the most remarkable railway system on the continent. She is also the center of an immense productive region . . . [and] will have, in addition, two ports [San Pedro/Wilmington and the newly established Santa Monica] whose excellence is undisputed . . . These things have doubtless been considered by the persons who invest money freely on the East side of the Los Angeles river. A very considerable suburb is certain to spring up there, and that at no distant day.
The Spanish-language paper, La Crónica (later published by Thomas W. Temple) citing a delay in a land sale at Colton near San Bernardino, told its readers that it refrained from saying much about developments because “with the exception of the sale of lots in Mount Pleasant, nothing has been done” that was noteworthy. But, with the new Eastside tract, the paper approvingly noted that “the plots are well located and are sold on very good terms,” these comprising a third due in six months and the next third in a year with interest at 1% monthly on installment payments.
On the 27th, real estate listings noted that “F. Temple,” this being F.P.F., sold a lot in Block X for the devilish sum of $666 and, on 22 September, it was reported that F.P.F. sold three lots to Turnbull for $245, while the latter acquired five lots from Lazzarevich and his wife for $570. By then, however, circumstances already occurred that quickly changed the rosy predictions painted by the press just the dat before—namely, the Bank of California, the state’s largest, failed when a bubble in stock with Virginia City, Nevada silver mining companies burst. This was the result of such factors as Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin’s sale of immense amounts of stock that realized him millions of dollars, but spooked other investors.
When the news was furiously relayed by telegraph to Los Angeles, its two commercial banks, Farmers’ and Merchants’ (run by Hellman and Downey) and Temple and Workman faced a run by jittery depositors. As the panic worsened over coming months, the former institution survived thanks to Hellman’s skillful management, but the latter did not. A loan from Baldwin did not stem the tide of withdrawn funds and Temple and Workman closed its doors in January 1876. An inventory of the bank showed overdrafts by the Mount Pleasant project, clearly showing that F.P.F. Temple advanced monies to Lazzarevich for his development—no doubt, the acquisition of blocks were part of this relationship.
The deed featured here and written by William Temple was almost certainly in lieu of direct payment for his services, as he was recalled from England, where William was doing post-graduate work, following his receiving his degree in spring 1874 from the prestigious Harvard Law School, at the Inns of Court in London. Rushing home, he threw himself into assisting his father and grandfather Workman in dealing with their mounting financial problems.
The transfer of Mount Pleasant land, just ten days before the bank went under, was for $5, a minimum amount required by law, but with the added proviso that it was “for the further consideration of natural love & affection” from father to son. The document was notarized by Juan José (Jonathan Trumbull) Warner, a resident of Los Angeles for almost forty-five years and long a friend of the Temple family, and recorded by William with the county the same day. In early March, Lazzarevich recorded a transfer of the land, perhaps as a quit claim, to William, who held on to it for three years, deeding the property in 1879 for $200 to his brother Francis, then owner of the Homestead. Presumably, Francis disposed of the land before his death nine years later because, in 1887, during the great Boom of the Eighties, Block T was subdivided.
Meanwhile, F.P.F. Temple held two dozen lots and two full blocks of the Mount Pleasant Tract when he declared bankruptcy in summer 1876 and these were, after years of wrangling over his estate, offered in an August 1882 sale by assignee George E. Long for both Temple’s bankruptcy and that of the bank. Nothing could be found of the results of the sale, however.
With the moribund local economy during the late Seventies and early Eighties, Mount Pleasant was, almost certainly, stunted in its growth. It is notable that, in 1883, a large body of water collected on Summit Street outside William H. Perry’s house and it was claimed that disease emanating from the stagnant pool caused the death of two of Lazzarevich’s children and the illness of one of the Biscailuz children—later in the year, in the absence of action by the City, he proposed to re-grade the street at his own expense. The next year, however, nothing had been done to abate the nuisance.
When the aforementioned boom came during the mayoralty of William H. Workman, Mount Pleasant lots, as with all other local real estate, jumped in value, with some going for as high as $2,500 each, compared to the $100-$180 commanded in the original 1875 auction. In August 1887, Perry’s mansion and eight acres, comprising two blocks of the tract, were sold for $50,000 to Burdette Chandler (who was involved in early oil exploration with William R. Rowland in the Puente Hills at the start of the decade) and Stephen C. Hubbell, a city councilman, for subdivision of the land around the house.
In 1889, Cummings, who built a $4,000 house on the Mount Pleasant Tract, completed a brick commercial building, still standing today, at the northwest corner of First Street and Boyle Avenue that was then known as the “Mount Pleasant Hotel.” Lazzarevich and his wife, however, did not appear to benefit from the boom, or, if they did, there could well have been the deflating of finances in the resulting bust, after 1888, as, when he died in March 1892, his estate was valued at just $6,000.
Juana survived her husband by almost 30 years, dying in 1930. Mount Pleasant came to be part of Boyle Heights and the northwest corner of the tract, including most of Summit Avenue where Perry, Lazzarevich, Biscailuz and others lived, was sacrificed to the construction of U.S. 101 and Interstate 10 and their intersection in the mid-20th century. This deed is another Museum-held artifact that helps us better understand the real estate boom in Los Angeles during the mid-1870s and specifically some early history of Mount Pleasant and Boyle Heights.