by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This Saturday, the Homestead is hosting a “Temple City Day” for residents of the San Gabriel Valley community established in 1923 by Walter P. Temple and his associates, business manager Milton Kauffman, his attorney George H. Woodruff and Alhambra rancher Sylvester Dupuy. The 285-acre project was by far the largest of the real estate development endeavors Temple took on, along with an oil company, with the small fortune he realized from the discovery of black gold on his Montebello-area ranch starting in the late Teens.
In 1923, two companies were created to handle this work: the Temple Townsite Company, which undertook the development of what was originally called the Town of Temple (the name was changed at the behest of the United States Postal Service in 1928), and the Temple Estate Company, which handled the rest of his work in such cities as Alhambra, El Monte, Los Angeles and San Gabriel.
Moreover, after a visit to México the prior summer, Walter and his wife Laura González, were so inspired by what they saw there that they decided to build a Spanish Colonial Revival house, La Casa Nueva (in contrast to the older Workman House), on their Workman Homestead. The structure, which took five years to complete, was a significant investment in time and money, even as it had barely been initiated when Laura died at the end of 1922. One consequence is that her considerable business acumen was sorely missed.
1923 also marked the peak of the latest greater Los Angeles real estate boom and there was a general decline thereafter. Another issue was that the production from the oil wells at the Temple Lease, which was in a rather shallow field, reached its apex earlier in the Roaring Twenties and then dropped markedly. What this meant, simply put, was that, as Temple’s spending rose and his income dropped, the inevitable economic issues arose and expanded.
The situation became critical by early 1926 when Temple was convinced by Kauffman and Woodruff to issue bonds to raise the funds necessary to continue existing real estate development work, but this is obviously added further debt to both the townsite and estate companies. The continuing deterioration of Temple’s financial position led Woodruff in May 1927 to propose new bonds, loans or the sale of assets to seek some relief in the form of a draft letter from Temple to the John M.C. Marble Company, a financial services and investment firm in Los Angeles.
In the midst of this environment, the financial statement of the Temple Estate Company dated 21 March 1927 is a notable document. On its surface, as shown on the first page, the report projected an ample base of assets, totaling just shy of $2.3 million. Four-fifths of this was tied to real property, detailed in Exhibit A of the document, chief among these being the nearly 60 acres of the Temple oil lease with the land valued at not far under $60,000 and the one-eighth royalty interest pegged, “according to present practice at 30 times [the] amount of present month royalty,” at $600,000—this means that royalties were on the order of $20,000 per month.
The second most valuable property was the Edison Building, very close to completion, situated on the northwest corner of Main and Third streets in Alhambra. The four-story commercial structure, which had Southern California Edison as the anchor tenant, was on a parcel secured by a 99-year lease, with that valued at $76,000, while the improvements, meaning the nearly finished edifice, at $240,000.
Just behind in value was the Workman Homestead Ranch, described as “93 acres of Rancho La Puente situated 1/2 mile S.W. of the Townsite of Puente, California.” The value of the land “in Bearing Walnuts and including 3 [water] pumping Plants) was given as $232,500, while improvements were determined to be $75,000. This entailed not just the Workman House and La Casa Nueva, which was completed late in the year, but El Campo Santo Cemetery, the three Workman winery buildings (used as an auditorium, dining hall and garage) and other outbuildings.
Next was the “Alhambra Post Office Property” comprising a two-story brick building on Fourth Street just north of Main and which was begun by George Pethybridge before it was swapped for another Temple-held property in the city. The value of the land was pegged at $80,000, while the improvements, involving the post office on the first floor and the Temple Hotel on the second, valued at $45,000. At $115,000 was the “San Gabriel Property” involving 14 lots across the historic mission, with the value of the land at $60,000 and the improvements, involving the single-story Arcade and post office/library structures and the two-story Temple Building, at $25,000.
Back in Alhambra, the Temple Theatre, on the north side of Main between Third and Fourth, had a land value of $35,000 and the venue marked at $40,000. Adjacent to the east was the “Nye Property,” also under a 99-year lease, so that value was at $20,000, while the improvement, the one-story Temple Estate Building, with several stores, including a bank, and finished in 1926, listed as worth $47,000. To the west of the theatre and on the northeast corner of Main and 4th was the Utter and Sons Mortuary, with the land at $40,000 and the structure at $25,000.
Four other tracts were the Rialto Theatre and post-office property on the south side of Main Street in El Monte, with the land valued at $30,000 and the improvements at $25,000; a half-interest in over 180 acres at Owensmouth, now Canoga Park, at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, and listed as wort of over $45,000; the “Puente Hotel Property,” embracing five lots in Puente where the Rowland Hotel, built in 1886 when the tract was new, and valued at $12,000; and the Andrew Adams property, comprising three lots in Puente and worth $2,500.
Some 10% of the company’s assets were invested in stocks, but 55% of these were in the 1,250 shares of the Temple Townsite Company, which was struggling as the town languished during a real estate downturn and conditions such as the application of the Mattoon Act, intended to raise funds for infrastructure by assessments on lots but which required adjacent owners to cover defaults of lot holders. Almost a third of the stock involved $68,000 in the Central Finance Building Company, which built the 11-story Great Republic Life Building at Main, Spring and Eighth streets in Los Angeles.
The Mission Play Association, a director of which was Kauffman, was formed to construct a new playhouse in San Gabriel, northwest of the mission, for the popular Mission Play, penned by John Steven McGroarty and which celebrated the efforts of the Franciscan missionaries of the California missions in their efforts to Christianize and “civilize” the indigenous people. Temple took $20,000 in stock and was the large holder of the instruments along with rail tycoon and art collector Henry E. Huntington.
Temple also owned $10,000 in the stock of the Sierra Furniture Manufacturing Company, which was established a couple of years prior in the flats of Boyle Heights at the intersection of Aliso Street and Mission Road. The firm, however, was troubled including legal problems related to its stock and a September 1929 fire that gutted the structure. Small amounts of stock were held in Southern California Edison; the Samson Tire and Rubber Company (builder of the unusual structure that is now The Citadel Outlets in City of Commerce); the Temple National Bank in Temple City (the structure of which survives at the northeast corner of Las Tunas Drive and Temple City Boulevard); the El Monte Plunge Association, which built a community swimming pool in that town; and the San Gabriel Country Club, of which Temple was a member.
Another 8.5% entailed mortgages and notes receivable, a bond interest fund from Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank (formed over a half-century prior from the ashes of the Hellman, Temple and Company bank in which Temple’s father and grandfather were partners with merchant Isaias W. Hellman.) Finally, there were more than $40,000 in federal government bonds, a few thousand in bonds taken out by the San Gabriel Country Club. With those mortgages and notes, more than half were owned by the Temple Townsite Company and the question was whether those were likely to be paid back, especially as the collateral was an “assignment of beneficial interest under [a] trust securing [the] bond issue” of the prior year.
$14,500 was owed by the Mountain View Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1908 on a site that became Temple City. After the town was established, the church moved to a new location provided by the townsite company at the southwest corner of Golden West and Woodruff Avenue and was renamed the Temple Community Church, housed in a Neoclassical edifice that was later replaced by the current one under the name of the First United Methodist Church. A $7,400 mortgage was made to the Elks lodge #1328 of Alhambra, of which Temple was a member.
The rest of the items were to individuals, most of them friends and relations of Temple, though there was a $475 unsecured note from Los Angeles County Sheriff William I. Traeger. Among those who owned Temple money were Puente resident Casimir Didier, with a mortgage of nearly $15,000 and who is buried in El Campo Santo Cemetery at the Homestead; his brother-in-law, Frank Gonzalez; Leonore Hartnell, step-daughter of his sister, Lucinda Zuñiga, with a trust deed of $1,200; Stephen Piuma, son of Giovanni, who long rented the Temple family adobe in the Whittier Narrows community of Misión Vieja for his winemaking business; and Victor Torres, a San Gabriel barber whose family owned the El Poche Café for many years.
Liabilities totaled not quite $720,000, nearly half involved the bonds taken out the preceding year and which had close to $20,000 in interest accrued through the first of March, with another third involving notes payable. The rest involved trade acceptances, building and other contracts, and almost $50,000 of accounts payable. Of the $230,000 in notes, 60% was owned to California Bank, which held a mortgage on the Homestead from loans made in late June and late October 1926—these latter were due in three years, just in time for the crash of the stock market in New York City that ushered in the Great Depression. Another $28,000 was owned to a subsidiary called the California Group Corporation. About a quarter was owned to individuals and businesses, including the W.I. Hollingsworth contracting firm and the Sierra furniture concern.
Trade acceptances involved firms that did work on Estate Company building projects, including contractor Herbert M. Baruch Corporation, Llewellyn Iron Works, a flooring company, Sierra and others. Nearly $38,000 was owned to Baruch for contracts payable and another $3,300 to architects Walker and Eisen, who designed many of Temple’s buildings and were involved in the early designs of La Casa Nueva. Other contracts included $4,000 owned to a showcase and fixtures company, most for the Edison Building with a under $300 provided for the office of Temple’s nephew, dentist Charles P. Temple, and over $1,000 owned to the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, which financed an automobile for Temple, probably a Cadillac. Under general accounts payable was $10,000 owned to Standard Oil Company, California, which held the Temple oil lease at Montebello.
Almost $20,000 was under the category of “Audited Vouchers Payable” with nearly half owned to the John M.C. Marble Company and the others over $1,000 due to Barker Brothers, the well-known furniture company and Desmonds, a Los Angeles clothier of long standing. Among other business on the list were a florist, newspaper, the chamber of commerce and construction-related firms in Alhambra; florists with funds charged to the accounts of Temple and his beau, Maud Romero Bassity; a Puente plumber, Henry P. Gerckens; the prominent store I. Magnin and Company; a Los Angeles law firm; the Patten and Davies Lumber Company; the Security Trust and Savings Bank; and Young’s Market Company, among fifty entities on the list.
A further list of unaudited vouchers of north of $5,000, included $827 owed to Roy Seldon Price, architect of the Temple Estate Building and who supervised the completion of La Casa Nueva and more than thirty persons and businesses, such as Armstrong Nurseries; Brooks Brothers clothiers; a safe company; St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Puente, where Temple donated a rose-shaped stained glass window to the structure preceding the existing one; and the Vinton Sign Company. $370 in current bills to be paid including about 30% for utilities and smaller amounts to a meat market; auto garages; Puente Hardware Company; Mission Pharmacy in San Gabriel; and Alhambra Florists.
Disturbingly, there were more than $4,000 in checks, issued from a First National Bank of Alhambra account, held by the company to more than fifty recipients, including to stores; construction-related firms; Southern California Edison; Cadillac dealer Don Lee; the confectioner L.J. Christopher Company; Thomas Acton Company, a real estate firm; Soboba Hot Springs, where Temple frequently vacationed for health reasons and where a Tepee-style cottage was the inspiration for his home office next to La Casa Nueva; and a small amount owed to Woodruff. Under the list was a reference to “Actual Cash in Bank” and this amount being just $178.01.
A separate statement for an account held at California Bank and dated 26 April showed that there had been more than $6,300 in cash there, but two recent checks paid included to General Petroleum Company for $4,500 and to the tax collector for $7,244, leaving a shortfall of almost $5,400 of “ACTUAL CASH NEEDED TO COVER CHECKS DELIV’D,” this another red flag. Beyond this there was another $2,700 that had to be paid in just four days, including to the Internal Revenue Service, California Bank, California Trust Company and the Great Republic Life Insurance Company, meaning that just north of $8,000 was lacking to pay bills. If that wasn’t enough, more than $500 comprised held checks to four recipients, including the Mission Pharmacy and Whittier Savings Bank, and $10,000 was denoted as “ESTIMATED MISCELLANEOUS OBLIGATIONS NOT OF RECORD ADDED AS MARGIN OF SAFETY.”
It was small wonder that Woodruff soon drafted that letter seeking additional funds or the sale of assets and the situation worsened subsequently and a previous post here covered a personal statement of Temple’s bank transactions. In March 1928, Woodruff penned a lengthy letter to Kauffman, sent to Temple, with his plan to try and salvage what could be retained of the Estate Company. Sadly, nothing could stem the tide of debt and the sale of Estate Company property in 1929 did not do much to delay the inevitable, which included the Temples vacating the Homestead in early 1930, the sale of Temple City assets shortly afterward, and the loss of the ranch in July 1932.
Given that financial disaster struck so many Americans during this period, the Temple story is hardly unusual or an outlier. It is a stark reminder of the reality of when booms dissolve into busts and is particularly striking given what happened to Temple’s father and grandfather a little more than a half-century prior—this makes the history we share at the Homestead more compelling and notable.