Fits the Bill: A Receipt from the Pico House, Los Angeles, 7 February 1879

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

In 1869, Don Pío Pico (1801-1894), the last governor of Mexican-era California and one of the few remaining Californios of some wealth and influence as greater Los Angeles was in the early stages of its first boom and as Anglos outnumbered Spanish-speaking residents and grew in political and financial power, sold a large swath of the San Fernando Valley.

One of his main reasons for doing this was to raise capital to raze an adobe building he owned at the southwest corner of the Plaza, the historic center of town, and build a three-story hotel, with more than eighty rooms, along with parlors, an expansive dining room and other amenities, including gas lighting.

Don Pío’s intention was to both provide first-class lodging for guests as well as keep that area of town economically viable as the commercial core of the city was moving south towards areas like the Temple Block, then owned by F.P.F. Temple, a compadre of Pico. When the hotel was opened in June 1870, it was hailed for its elegance and opulence and it was soon followed by the completion next door William Abbott’s Merced Theatre—the two structures were viewed as important elements of Los Angeles’ development.

While many accounts make it appear as if the Pico House did well through its early years and that it was not until Don Pío’s economic and legal woes led to his losing the building in the 1880s that dire days ensued, there is evidence to show that the hostelry struggled almost from the beginning. The Los Angeles Star of 30 January 1873, just two-and-a-half years after the opening, wrote disparagingly of Sonoratown, the district adjacent to the Plaza to the north, including its observations, without apparently considering the socio-economic conditions of that section, that:

Long rows of adobe buildings with scarcely a window to admit the light within their dingy enclosures comprise both the dwellings and business houses of the population. Sitting on the doorsteps of these quaint looking habitations may be seen old Mexican or Indian women smoking their ciggeritos [sic] . . . The Pico house is a model hotel building, but on account of its near proximity to the delectable place described above, is not well patronized.

Just a week or so later, the paper lamented that “our best hotel building, the Pico House, is at present merely a lodging house, and its army of lodgers are [sic] compelled to go out to an eating stall some distance away, or to the boarding house still farther, in all sorts of weather to get their meals.” As the city grew rapidly during the boom, the Star was upset that “our present hotel accommodations are wholly inadequate to meet this demand” of increased visitation to the City of Angels.

There may have been some improvement in the next couple of years as the boom rose to its (unsustainable) peak and, for example, when the Temple and Workman bank reopened in early December 1875 after a lengthy suspension due to an economic panic that resounded statewide, a celebratory banquet was held at Don Pío’s hotel. That downturn, which lasted several years into the Eighties, certainly had a pronounced effect on the success of the hostelry.

Other factors, however, were at play. One was the protracted legal battles between Pico and the lessee of the the hotel, Antonio Cuyas, over its operation. In fact, within a month of the aforementioned “lodging house” comment, Don Pío found a new operator, Charles Knowlton, who signed a two-year lease, while Pico and Cuyas continued their courtroom squabbling. A prior post here discussed some of the history of the Pico House under Knowlton’s tenure between 1873 and 1875.

After Knowlton left, the Los Angeles Express of 1 April 1875 reported that the Pico House was again “simply a lodging house” and its dining room closed and bar shuttered, though, there as at least the capacity to provide the food and (copious) alcohol for the bank shindig at the end of the year. Cuyas also returned to operate the hotel, but, the dire state of the economy and the location further became an issue for it, not to mention many other facilities, like the adjoining Merced Theatre, which closed in 1877.

The featured object from the Museum’s collection for this post is an innocuous looking receipt from the “Pico House Office” and dated 7 February 1879. Signed by hotel manager John Whitney is concerned a two-day stay by a person only identified as “Fish” with the amount charged being $2.50. The document was issued, however, during a period of flux and financial difficulty for the Pico House.

For the first part of the prior year, the hotel was operated by the brothers Paul Nathan and Edward Roth, natives of France and merchants in the city since at least the early part of the decade. They were unable to make a success of the operation, however, and the Los Angeles Herald of 29 May 1878 recorded that “the Pico House is now appearing in the unwonted role of a lodging house.”

On 1 July, with merchant Louis Mesmer having acquired the goods and furnishings of the hotel through of a sale on the mortgage the Roths executed with him, an auction was held of this material. While the value of the items was said to be in the range of $5,000, there were only two buyers, one man acquiring about $400 worth and the other being Don Pío, who spent $2,200 on the majority of the items and then reintroduced what he purchased back to the hotel.

A couple of days later, Pico’s nephew Francisco (1844-1909—son of the ex-governor’s late brother José Antonio) dissolved a business he ran, likely involving sheep raising, with his brother-in-law, Miguel Aguirre and cousin Francisco P. Forster. Forster, who shared a passion for horse breeding and racing with Francisco Pico, was a regular visitor at the Pico House and the adjacent stable run by former Santa Barbara County sheriff Nicolás (Nick) Covarrubias, and his killing by Lastenia Abarta was a notable event a couple of years later, in spring 1881. Abarta, testifying in her defense, mentioned that when she first knew Forster in 1878 it included an invitation by Francisco to the reopening of the hotel.

On 9 July, however, it was reported by the Herald that Cuyas was again back as manager of the Pico House, though this tenure was very short-lived. At the end of August, the Express briefly noted that “Mr. Francisco Pico steps to the front as manager of the Pico House.” Just under a month later, the Herald observed that,

the renovated and refurbished Pico House is ready for the reception of guests under the proprietorship of Mr. Francisco Pico. This gentleman is deservedly popular amongst a large circle of friends and he emphatically knows how to keep a hotel. We predict for the Pico under its new management a brilliant career.

In fact, it is not clear whether Francisco Pico had any prior hotel experience, as he was largely involved in ranching on family property in San Diego County, including at what is now the Camp Pendleton area as well as in San Jacinto near Hemet. 

In any case, by early November, ads were taken out in the local press that announced that “this elegant and best situated Hotel in Los Angeles has been OPENED AGAIN” and that “as soon as the renovations of the Dining Room, etc., are finished this Hotel can amply accommodate guests both as regards Comfort and Price.” 

The manager was listed as William E. Morford (1827-1900), a Civil War veteran of the Union Army and recently a federal Indian agent in Arizona and then an insurance agent in the Angel City. Known for “indomitable will” and as “too rigid a disciplinarian,” Morford’s tenure was very short and he went on to work in real estate, making and losing a small fortune during Los Angeles’ boom in the later 1880s and was a street and labor bureau superintendent in his later years.

With the onset of 1879, Francisco Pico hired Whitney (abt. 1833-1883), who’d come to Los Angeles in 1875 just as the first boom was about to go bust to run the St. Charles Hotel. This pioneer hostelry was opened as the Bella Union in an 1840s-era one-story adobe building on the east side of Main Street and the enterprise was widely known for its lively saloon and violence there as well as being a headquarters for the Confederate-supporting Democrats who ruled the local roost politically. Notably, in 1868, Don Pío built a two-story brick building next door that housed the Hellman, Temple and Company bank, co-owned by William Workman and F.P.F. Temple.

With the crumbling economy, however, Whitney left the St. Charles (which was previously known as the Clarendon, as well) and decamped to San Francisco, where he took up work as a stock broker. There, he got into a legal scrape as, in June 1877, he was arrested and charged a woman claimed he defrauded her of $1,400, though the prosecution was not able to prove its case and Whitney was freed. He then returned to Los Angeles the following spring.

An ad in the Los Angeles Star of 3 January 1879 (that paper soon became a victim of tough times and folded after nearly three decades, save a four-year gap in the 1860s, of operation as the first newspaper in the city) announced Whitney’s appointment and added that “this well known and popular Hotel—by common consent the best appointed and most Luxurious Hotel in Southern California—has just been refurnished and renovated.” 

The Herald made a point of publishing the bill of fare at the hotel’s dining room on at least three occasions between Christmas 1878 and May 1879, including the offerings of soup, seafood, a variety of meat dishes, relishes, vegetables, and pastries and desserts. Meanwhile, Covarrubias took over an existing stable behind the hotel on Sánchez Street, which he considered a branch of one he operated in Santa Barbara and advertised that “my stables IMMEDIATELY ADJOIN and are CONNECTED WITH THE PICO HOUSE.” Moreover, Covarrubias and Francisco Pico raced their horses against one another’s at Agricultural (now Exposition) Park.

Yet, despite occasional press notices of well-known visitors, such as the Forster cousins of the proprietor, State Treasurer José Guadalupe Estudillo, whose family was intermarried with the Picos (most of the prominent early Californio families had intricate blood ties), and the visiting Dr. Elizabeth J. French (said to be “the distinguished electrician and discoverer of cranial diagnosis” but who has been identified as “a working opportunist” using Spiritualism and pseudo-science as many so-called “quacks” did at the time), continuing problems loomed.

At the end of 1878, Don Pío owned more than $1,300 in delinquent taxes (not an insignificant sum for the time) on a variety of properties, including the Pico House, valued at $10,710 with $2,500 in improvements, the Pico Building ($5,250 value and $4,500 in improvements), and eight other tracts. In March 1879, Maurice Kremer, the county tax collector, held a tax sale in which he “sold one inch and a half square of the Pico House property for $5000, the amount of taxes due on that and other property,” presumably including those outside the city, such as the Ranchito on Rancho Paso de Bartolo in modern Whittier, “owned by Don Pio Pico.” The acquisition was by the Savings and Loan Society of San Francisco.

In August 1880, Don Pío conveyed, through trustees, to that organization the “Pico House property and property on Main st between Perry & Riley and Bella Union property” meaning the Pico Building, for $22,500. By then, Whitney left after a second stint following a brief period running a hotel in Tucson, Arizona, and the ex-governor’s nephew also ended his proprietorship of the hotel, which was again closed for a lengthy spell during that year. It reopened later in 1880 under the management of San Francisco dentist, Dr. Norman R. Griswold, who was said to have had an extensive hostelry experience.

By 1882, the Pico House was operated by Edward Dunham and Charles L. Schieffelin, whose tenure was longer than any previous managers, but we’ll save more of that story for a later post.