by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The Homestead’s collection of historic greater Los Angeles photographs provides some fascinating and instructive visual documentation of the region from about 1870 through the Roaring Twenties, showing the dramatic transformation of the area that had few parallels in American history.
There was no shortage of images that purported to reflect changes, particularly in the Angel City, with many of these contrasting the old and new, clearly to note that the latter demonstrated its superiority over the latter. In many cases, these could be viewed as general and representative of technological advances, improvements in transportation, heightened professionalism in planning and codes, and so on.
For other examples, however, it seemed obvious that the point in these images was to show the manifold benefits of a burgeoning late 19th century American economy and society in Los Angeles comparison to what was frequently referred to as the “sleepy” pueblo, lacking in initiative and drive, if not intelligence and acumen.
One wonders, for instance, if a circa 1872 stereographic photograph featured here previously is representative of this type of perspective, as it clearly contrasts the Plaza, the historic center of pre-American Los Angeles, with the newly developing business and residential district to the south, including the Temple Block, much of this established since the first boom in the region burst forth in the late Sixties.
Another post here featured an 1890s cabinet card photo of an adobe house that was alleged to have been the headquarters of John C. Frémont after the American invasion and seizure of the pueblo. Was this a framing of a structure that represented the “old” in the Angel City, a commemoration of the American “conquest” from about a half-century prior, or both? There is no commentary with the image, but what motivated the photographer to take the view is an obvious question—notably, the claim about Frémont using the structure for his quarters turned out to be false.
There are quite a few images, for instance, of deteriorating adobe buildings in areas like Sonoratown, the area north of the Plaza, south of the Elysian Hills and west of the Los Angeles River, named for Gold Rush migrants from the mining regions of the northern Mexican state and nearby sections and which was heavily populated by Latinos. Some of these could be interpreted as curiosity about surviving “relics” but framing the older adobe residences in the foreground with the newer and generally larger and luxurious dwellings on the hills in the distance could easily be seen as a statement.
The highlighted object from the Museum’s holdings for this post is a cabinet card view titled “37 The Old And New Of Los Angeles, Showing Pepper Trees In Sonora Town.” To the side of the pasted-on caption is the inscription “R.R.B.T. 1893,” with the initials perhaps of the photographer, though four of them would be highly unusual for a name, unless it was for a pair of shutterbugs, while the year would seem obviously to be the date of the image.
The single-story adobe houses—with some of the lime-based plaster covering the walls missing and exposing the bricks, doors converted to windows with wooden shutters and a minimum of decoration with the dentil molding along the roofline (notice the later additions of gabled wooden section to roofs of a couple of the buildings and the windmill behind the tree at the right, as well as brick fireplaces from a more recent period), and a gate leading to the rear yards— aren’t quite as dilapidated as some of the structures shown in other period photos of this section of town.
The emphasis on the pepper trees is interesting. Perhaps there was some fascination with their age and size or the photographer may have felt compelled to include them in the title because they were so prominent in the framing of the scene. One wonders about the children, largely standing in the somewhat meager shade of one of the trees.
It is clear that they were requested to come out of the house, with its open door, and pose, but the question is whether this was for any reasons beyond introducing a human element to the scene. Also of note is the apparent shyness, not surprising for children posing for a stranger, as the older children look downward, while the toddler, almost certainly coached, looks towards one of the boys.
As to Sonoratown in 1893, it was definitely the section of town with among the lowest incomes. As noted above, it was largely populated by Spanish-speakers, though there were some persons of other ethnic groups, a trend that would accelerate in coming years, including Chinese, southern and eastern Europeans, and some African-Americans.
The older housing stock was more affordable than most areas of the city for working class residents and it was adjacent to the Southern Pacific railyard, where the Los Angeles State Historic Park is now, and one of the early industrial and manufacturing sections of the rapidly growing metropolis. Sonoratown was surrounded by newer, more affluent areas, including the generally middle-class East Los Angeles (soon renamed Lincoln Heights) and the upper-class Angeleno Heights neighborhoods.
Another consideration in looking at this photo is the fact that the Boom of the Eighties, which peaked during the mayoral administration of William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, brought tremendous transformations to the region, but the inevitable bust was followed by an 1890s that included several years of local drought and a national depression, lasting about half of 1893, that was one of the worst in American history. Growth continued in the Angel City and environs, but there were these factors at play the year this image was snapped.
Looking at news accounts pertaining to Sonoratown for the year, there is an interesting diversity. Some articles talked about the history of the neighborhood and city, albeit often with inaccuracies. The New Year’s Day edition of the Los Angeles Herald provided a somewhat succinct “HISTORY OF THE CITY” in which it was asserted that “the story of the founding of the City of the Angels is a dull and prosy tale” comprising “a plain, official business transaction” and that “no halo of glory or glamor of romance surrounds it.”
Yet, the account continued, despite the “dry reports” of public records, the facts of which “are not obscured by tradition nor forgotten in fables,” the paper did allow that “to the student, who can read Spanish and has time to unroll and pore over these documents,” one such being Thomas W. Temple II, who, in 1931, discovered in these the date of 4 September 1781 that is still considered the founding one of Los Angeles, “there is a charm and compensation” for the effort “for he is drinking at the foundation of history.”
The piece asserted that, in 1769, “the same year that Daniel Boone first entered the wilds of Kentucky,” the Portolá Expedition made it way from “an antelope hunt on the Laguna ranch,” though the trek by Spanish military and religious personnel actually came in from the San Gabriel Valley, including the building of a rough bridge (puente) near where the Homestead is today, to the east, not the Laguna, which was part of the Rancho San Antonio to the southeast, and “camped about where ‘Sonoratown’ now is.”
It is generally believed that the expedition established its camp on 2 August at the base of the Elysian Hills where North Broadway meets Elysian Park Drive and where a state historical landmark plaque set in a rock is located at the southeast corner of Elysian Park. The Herald added that the priests in the group “celebrated the mass of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels—Nuestra Senora, la Reyna de los Angeles,” further observing that,
Hence this spot was ever afterwards marked in their minds by the memory of the religious exercises here held on that day, and so it came to be called, and thus the pueblo founded here 12 years later got its name.
In its 10 October edition, the paper provided more historical info, specifically about the work of Bishop Francisco Mora, and remarked that “one hundred and twenty-four years ago some Franciscan priests celebrated the feast day of Our Lady, the Queen of Angels, on the spot where ‘Sonoratown’ now stands.
After noting the establishment of the pueblo in 1781, the account continued that “three years passed and the first little chapel was erected, in 1784, on the northeast corner of Buena Vista and Bellevue streets—this is now North Broadway and César Chávez Avenue. Due to flooding, the Plaza moved a couple of times until the current location was established and the existing church completed in 1822 after several years of construction.
Another historical reference came in the Herald of 27 January with respect to the first boom in the region and it identified 1873 as a “‘dobie [adobe] boom,” presumably meaning that many of these older structures were razed and replaced by wood and brick structures. This continued “until the failure of the Bank of California [in San Francisco] resulted in that of the bank of Temple & Workman,” though it wasn’t quite like that give the latter’s management issues and lack of cash reserves and that article mentioned the very little that depositors (though the amount of $1.1 million was greatly exaggerated) received in the aftermath.
After mentioning the drought of 1876-1877, which caused further economic havoc with cattle and sheep ranching as just under 5 inches of rain fell that season, the piece continued with,
The list of miseries required to be completed to the point of “filled full and glowing o’er.” A violent smallpox epidemic set in and swept this city as with the bosom of destruction. It was aggravated by the fact that the less intelligent portion of the native California population had an invincible repugnance to vaccination. A goodly fraction of the inhabitants of Sonoratown was swept away, together with a sprinkling of Americans. The put the climax on disaster. Everybody that could get away left . . . Surely no blacker cloud ever hung over a place than that which impended over the city of the Angels then!
The outbreak of highly contagious epidemic diseases like smallpox have often been identified as being about the people contracting them rather than about the conditions in which they were living, including substandard housing, much of which was rented but with landlords not held to account for the maintenance of the structures, and a lack of sanitary infrastructure, such as sewers, drainage of standing water and so on.
In fact, when the Herald of 13 July briefly recounted a reporter’s querying of the city’s longtime health officer, Luther M. Powers (who, during the flu pandemic of 1918, ordered the closure of schools, theaters and other public gathering places, mask wearing and other measures), in which he was asked about the general health of the Angel City, Powers replied, “the city as a whole is healthy. Most of the illness that exists is in the filthiest quarters of Sonoratown.”
With respect to cleanliness, the official noted that more inspectors were needed so that Los Angeles was “not as clean as it might be,” but that asking for a quintet of inspectors rather than up to eighteen, or two per ward (council district) was a mistake, because, Powers felt, they would have had the larger number allocated. While there is no doubt that more human resources were important, that question of housing stock quality, sanitation measures, and more would certainly have made a significant difference.
As a neighborhood with socio-economic challenges, it was no surprise to see several references during 1893 to criminal activity in Sonoratown, including an attempted rape of a teenage girl at the north end of the community in a canyon, likely Solano, behind the old Calvary Cemetery; a man who lunged with a knife at his female landlord; and several bouts of fisticuffs, including one that was set up as an illicit boxing match in a vacant store building on Buena Vista Street that lasted all of 58 seconds and involved a fenced area, the use of gloves and a referee.
While many of the incidents involved Latinos, there were others in which Anglos and the Chinese were identified as participants in fights, theft, drunkenness and one incident in which a man “was chasing and scaring little girls in a maudlin, though not vicious, manner,” whatever that was supposed to mean. The Los Angeles Times of 28 February reported on a “big day’s business in the police courts,” with cases including African-American, Chinese, Latino and white defendants.
There was also a spate of the poisoning of cats and dogs in May and a Police Commission meeting report from police chief John M. Glass, who served from 1889 to 1900, an unusually long tenure for the era, on prostitution in the neighborhood. Glass told the body that
I have instructed all officers on [the] Sonoratown beat to rigidly enforce the order of the Commissioners in keeping the lewd women off New High Street, and not allow them to solicit or live on that street. I find that some of them room there or have rented rooms to sleep in the daytime. I will try and keep them away from that locality.
In Sonoratown, in Chinatown on the east side of the Plaza, and elsewhere in downtown, this attempt to curb prostitution was fruitless and often performative as there were alleged bribes to officers to look or walk the other way and other tactics to keep “the world’s oldest profession” in operation in the Angel City.
An unusual story came out of a land case in the local courts and the observation that a witness, Sonoratown resident Ygnacio Francisco de la Cruz Garcia was said to be 112 years old. The Herald of 9 May ran a lengthy feature with a drawing said to be based on a photograph of Garcia, who produced a baptismal document stating that he was born on 1 May 1781 on a ranch more than 40 miles southwest of Hermosillo not far inland from the Gulf of California.
He told the paper he came to Los Angeles in 1825, worked as a silversmith and hat-maker, was married three times with four children, but as many as 19 “contrabands” as he was said to refer to his illegitimate offspring, and intended to visit the World’s Fair at Chicago the following month. Reference was made to Eulalia Pérez de Guillen, who was touted as being 143 years old before her death in 1878, as a noted centenarian among Latinos in 19th century Los Angeles.
Another strange account appeared in the Times of 30 April in which it was reported that Elizabeth Crowell, who was determined to be mentally ill, was so rendered by the “devilish work” of a Sonoratown woman known only as Susana. “Unlike the ancient witches,” the account commented, Susana “is a comely, pleasant-looking Spanish woman, who resides near the Plaza Church, where she was a faithful parishioner.
In addition to Crowell, it was claimed that a teenager became close to Susana and then died, purportedly leaving the alleged witch a deed to property. With other claims of insanity brought forward, it was concluded that “if the attractive Susana of dark powers deludes more poor humans with her wiles, she will be arrested and tried” and “Sonoratown will keep out of the way of the witch.”
Lastly, Sonoratown was the center of the 16 September celebration of México’s independence from Spain, 83 years prior, with the Herald and the Los Angeles Express running features about the gathering the prior evening at a hall on Buena Vista between Alpine and Ord streets for a 21-gun salute fired at 11 p.m., which “startled the residents of Sonoratown from their slumbers.” It was added that “gathered about were scores of dark-eyed señoritas, together with a small army of stalwart admirers” who attended a dance that started three hours earlier and which took place after the playing of national anthem of our southern neighbor and the traditional reading of the declaration of independence with dancing resuming after the salute.
On the 16th, the raising of the American and Mexican flags took place at dawn with a parade beginning at 1:30 p.m. headed by marshal Juan Andrés Lugo and accompanied by a police escort led by Chief Glass. Guards from the Society of Patriots of Juárez, floats representing the United States and Mexico along with others, representatives from French and Italian social groups, and carriages with Mayor Thomas E. Rowan and members of the City Council were also part of the procession.
The convoy marched through Sonoratown as well as through downtown as far south on Spring Street as Third Street and then up Broadway to Buena Vista (now the extension of that street.) The singing of the Mexican anthem, band performances, songs by four Latinas and a rendering of the Star Spangled Banner were interspersed with orations and poems read in Spanish and English.
After the lowering of the flags at 6 p.m., a ball was given at Music (formerly the Turnverein) Hall on Spring Street by the Spanish-American Dramatic Club, while another was held by the Spanish-American Lodge of Foresters at the city Armory. The coverage included the report that “the [planning] committee especially request the Mexican residents to decorate their houses in honor the occasion.”
This account, the story of Ygnacio Garcia and a brief note of a baseball game played in early December between the Temple Street squad and “a picked nine from Sonoratown” were rare examples of reporting that wasn’t the more typical coverage of crime, prostitution, unhealthy and unclean conditions (not to mention witchcraft) and which also provides some three-dimensional perspectives to this two-dimensional pictorial representation of “The Old And New Of Los Angeles” some 130 years ago.