Plaque Build Up: La Casa Nueva’s Historic Markers

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Today is National Historic Marker Day, established by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation to celebrate the 190,000 or so markers in the country the last Friday each April. A prior post here for the 2022 edition of the day focused on the pair of California State Historic Landmark plaques at the Workman House and El Campo Santo (which together comprise landmark #874), so we’ll head over to La Casa Nueva to highlight two markers, of very different character from each other, for the 2024 observation of the day.

The first of these was placed by the City of Industry, which owns and funds the Homestead, as it dedicated “a program of preservation, protection and improvement of the Historic Resources” of the city in the “Commemoration of the United States Bicentennial,” which took place in 1976 (this is a good time to mention that the Museum is beginning to discuss ways it will commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026).

The plaque noted that this program include the restored Workman House and La Casa Nueva, El Campo Santo and the addition of the Pío Pico (Homestead Museum) Gallery and the Pío Pico Glorieta (Gazebo) and Memorial Walkway, this latter connecting the Glorieta to El Campo Santo along what had long been Evergreen Lane, the western entrance to the Homestead from Turnbull Canyon Road. The names of Mayor John Ferrero (who held that position from 1957 to 1996) and councilmembers Charles J. Rowland (descendant of John Rowland, Rancho La Puente co-grantee with William Workman), Darius R. Johnson, Samuel J. Parriott (whose grandson, Jeff, recently wrote a pictorial history of the City) and John P. Ferrero (son of the mayor) are also included.

The second is a granite tablet that was created by Walter P. Temple to mark the first anniversary of the death of his wife, Laura González Temple, whose dream to see La Casa Nueva created with so much of her input, was unrealized as colon cancer claimed her life on 28 December 1922. A year to the day, the Right Reverend John Joseph Cantwell, Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles and San Diego, “solemnly blessed” the marker as it was placed to the right of the front door of the structure. A post here covered some of the details of there ceremony, but we’ll expand upon that here.

The monument also contained the names of the architectural firm of Walker and Eisen, who principals Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen were very prominent in regional circles at the time and were engaged in several commercial projects for Temple at the time; Los Angeles builder Sylvester J. Cook, whose work in local construction went back some four decades; and Don Pablo Urzua, a maestro de obra or master stonemason, who came with a crew from Guadalajara in the Mexican state of Jalisco each year to make adobe bricks in a traditional fashion for La Casa Nueva and associated elements.

Unfortunately, we have very little information about Urzua, other than brief mention in a couple of receipts for this work and, thanks to Thomas W. Temple II, son of Walter and Laura, being a dedicated shutterbug, several photos of the crew at work. The fact that Urzua’s work was recognized in this plaque, however, is notable, as Walter P. Temple clearly valued the effort that he and his workers made in providing the main construction material for La Casa Nueva.

As to Bishop Cantwell (1874-1947), he hailed from Limerick, a city in southwestern section of Ireland. After completing his education at a Jesuit school, he went to seminary at age 18, spending seven years in preparation for the priesthood. After ordination and his application for and appointment to the Diocese of San Francisco and sailed for America in August 1899. His first assignment was to a church in Berkeley and his efforts were such that he became secretary to Bishop Patrick Riordan and he remained in that role for over a decade.

After Riordan’s death, Cantwell was appointed the Archdiocese’s vicar general and held that position for a couple of years. When two successive candidates for the bishopric of the Diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles declined to accept the role, Cantwell was named to the honor in September 1917, with his episcopal consecration taking place in early December. Installation followed shortly thereafter with a ceremony at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral and the Bishop continued in that role for three decades, during which time there was a change in 1922 to the Diocese of Los Angeles and San Diego and, fourteen years later, to the Diocese of Los Angeles.

The Temple family’s astounding ascent to sudden wealth thanks to oil produced from Thomas’ providential discovery, when he just nine years of age, included support of the Catholic Church in several ways. For example, the Christmas Eve 1920 edition of the weekly church publication, The Tidings, reported that “the new pipe organ, which was recently presented to St. Mary’s Academy by Mr. and Mrs. Walter P. Temple of Alhambra, was dedicated with [a] beautifully impressive ceremony last Thursday afternoon in the chapel of the Academy.”

The school, located in southwest Los Angeles and now in Inglewood, was attended by the Temples’ only daughter, Agnes, for several years until she graduated from high school in 1925. Because of her extraordinary talent on the piano, Agnes frequently gave concerts, including for Church officials, dignitaries and ceremonies (continuing this when she went to Dominican College, an all-women Catholic school in San Rafael north of San Francisco, from 1925-1929).

In this case, The Tidings added that,

Right Rev. John J. Cantwell, D.D. [Doctor of Divinity], Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles, officiated, and Miss Agnes Evelyn Temple, daughter of the donors, acted as sponsor. After the blessing of the organ by the Bishop, Dr. Ray Hastings was heard in recital . . . The exquisite tone of the instrument was displayed to excellent advantage by the excellent technique of the artist, and his carefully selected program.

Cantwell spoke about “the beautiful association of music with the Church” and the fine arts in general and a Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament ended the event.

In April 1921, the Temples commemorated the completion of the Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum at El Campo Santo at the spot where St. Nicholas’ Chapel was erected by the Workman family in the 1850s and 1860s and for which Bishop Tadeo Amat provided a blessing of the cornerstone on 30 May 1857. Cantwell offered a second blessing for the site as the mausoleum was dedicated.

Three months later, as Mission San Gabriel celebrated its 150th birthday, Walter Temple had a granite marker placed at his Montebello oil lease property to identify the original site of the mission, which was founded at the Whittier Narrows location next to the Río Hondo, the earlier channel of the San Gabriel River, in 1771. After a few years, flooding forced the removal of the facility to its current spot, but Temple’s placing of the monument, later declared a state historic landmark, has since confused those who know about it, because the mission, of which no trace remains, was actually a short distance to the north. In any case, Cantwell was on hand on its unveiling to bless the spot and a featured article from 1950 from the Los Angeles Times here is notable.

Then came the Bishop’s presiding over the ceremony and the blessing as the plaque for Laura Temple was installed next to the front door of La Casa Nueva, of which there are a few surviving photographs, again likely taken by Thomas. One of those is featured here. The prelate, the longest-serving of the diocesan leaders and a powerful and influential figure in the region during those thirty years, continued in his bishopric until his death in 1947 at age 72 from a throat infection.

Sylvester Jackson Cook was born in 1856 on a farm in Pulaski County in southwestern Virginia and migrated to this area in his mid-twenties, residing first in the Wilmington/San Pedro area. He worked as a carpenter and then became a building contractor, working on residential and commercial projects as Los Angeles experienced exponential growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cook married Guadalupe Garcia, a native of the Angel City who was born in 1858 at Paredon Blanco (White Bluff), an area across from town east of the Los Angeles River. That section was purchased earlier in the year by Andrew Boyle, whose daughter, Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-uh) later married William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste. When William H.’s daughter, Mary Julia, founded the Brownson House in 1901 to work with the Americanization of immigrants, Guadalupe Cook was involved in its establishment.

By 1905, Cook acquired land in Montebello and an advertisement for the tract indicated that he planned to build a house there. It may be that he did so and constructed other buildings in the town and this would appear how he became acquainted with Walter Temple. Once Temple came into his oil fortune, he hired Cook for some projects at his Montebello lease, as reported in the South Pasadena Record of 19 July 1918:

S.J. Cook, who recently completed a brick office building for Walter P. Temple on the [southeast] corner of Lincoln avenue and San Gabriel boulevard [the aforementioned Mission marker is across Lincoln on the southwest corner], is now engaged in putting up a modern oil and gasoline station for Mr. Temple adjoining his office building.

The article continued that the service station was mainly for the benefit of the workers on the various oil leases in the area but “will also be a great convenience to the general auto driving public,” offering restrooms, as well. Temple’s older brother, John, was briefly the manager of the station.

Some four years later, after the Temples visited México for several weeks during the summer of 1922 and came back brimming with inspired ideas for “a new house,” Cook was hired to be the contractor. He assisted Walter and Laura in putting down rough ideas for the house on paper and these were rendered into workable construction plans with refinements and changes by Walker and Eisen. Cook remained active in contracting and building until at least 1930, though he lived to be well into his nineties, dying in 1950.

This leaves us with Walker and Eisen. Albert R. Walker (1881-1958) was born in Sonoma in northern California and began work as a teenager in architectural drafting at San Diego by the end of the 19th century. He worked for the prominent firm of Sumner Hunt and Abraham Eager in the first years of the new century before passing the state architectural exam in spring 1908 and starting a solo practice. An officer of the Los Angeles Architectural Club, Walker designed residences, schools, some commercial buildings and quite a few churches, including the First Methodist Church in Fullerton, designed in 1909 and which still stands in that city’s downtown.

In March 1910, Walker partnered with John T. Vawter, most recently an architectural instructor at the University of Illinois, and the duo worked together for about seven years. Continuing with much of the same type of work Walker did on his own, the two garnered a significant amount of attention and acclaim for their 1913 design of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, a long-time downtown landmark known also for its Church of the Open Door—BIOLA is now in the suburban city of La Mirada.

After the duo split, Walker worked on his own for a short time and then had a partner in Charles M. Hutchinson, but very soon afterward Percy A. Eisen joined. Eisen (1885-1946) was also a California native, born in San Francisco with his father, Theodore, an architect who moved the family to Los Angeles in 1887, as the great Boom of the Eighties was underway, and worked on the landmark County Courthouse. Theodore became partners with Sumner Hunt eight years later and the duo worked on many prominent residences, including Chester Place for Judge Charles Silent, Charles F. Lummis’ idiosyncratic El Alisal, and the department store of J.W. Robinson.

In his younger years, though Eisen joined his father’s firm in 1906 after he received his state license, with the business known as Eisen and Son, he was better known for his passion for and prowess in yachting. About 1915, he started getting notices in the local press for his work, such as a Windsor Square house for a physician, as well as for a being a director in the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects. During the First World War, he served as a private in the Coast Artillery, and, not long after returning to civilian life, joined up with Hutchinson and Walker.

An official announcement came in the Times of 20 July 1919 and a week later the paper reported that the new company were hired to draw plans for a theater and stores, a hotel and quarters for the Southern Counties Gas Company in Whittier. Given the proximity of the Quaker City to Walter Temple’s oil lease, perhaps this is how they came to his attention, though Walker and Eisen grew rapidly to prominent among architectural and building circles, especially as the next big boom hit the region in the early Twenties and peaking in 1923, the year the plaque was placed and dedicated.

While Walker and Eisen designed some houses, as well as such projects as the Huntington Beach City Hall and Auditorium as that oil boom town blossomed, their forte increasing was in the commercial sphere, especially as height-limit (eleven above ground stories) buildings were being built in droves. Around the time the partnership was established, Walter Temple bought his first piece of commercial property in downtown Alhambra and commissioned the architects to design his Temple Theatre, which opened just before Christmas 1921.

Amid their burgeoning business, Walker and Eisen became the house designers for Temple’s growing real estate development enterprise through 1923. This included the Utter and Sons Mortuary next to the theater; the Post Office and Public Library, Temple Building and Arcade Building in San Gabriel, as well as the City Hall, the lot of which was donated by Temple; the Rialto Theatre and Post Office in El Monte; and the commercial structures at each corner of Las Tunas Drive (formerly Main Street) and Temple City Boulevard (previously Sunset Avenue) in his new Town of Temple.

In downtown Los Angeles, where the architects were rapidly building their clientele and fame (later projects of note include the remarkable Oviatt [1925] and Fine Arts [1927] buildings there, as well as the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel [1928], among many), Walker and Eisen joined Temple and others in a syndicate that purchased land on the north side of 8th Street between Spring and Main streets for the Great Republic Life Building, which the architects designed. This was soon followed by the National City Bank Building across Eighth and in which the two men and Temple were also financially interested.

Shortly after the plaque dedication, Walter Temple hired Beverly Hills architect Roy Seldon Price to continue work on La Casa Nueva and, being true to his name with loads of transformative and expensive ideas and changes, Price made the structure his own over the three years he worked on the house, which was not completed until late 1927. Additionally, Price was hired to design the Temple Estate Building, next to the Alhambra theater, but there may have been a falling out as Walker and Eisen were brought back to work on Temple’s last real estate development project, the Edison Building, adjacent to the Temple Estate edifice.

While Temple’s financial situation deteriorated rapidly until he was ruined by the depths of the Great Depression, Walker and Eisen also experienced a downturn, as with so many others, during those dire years. Their partnership continued until 1941, after which both continued separately in various endeavors. Eisen worked for the procurement division of the Army Air Corps (soon renamed the Air Force) and then got into house building before his death from a heart attack suffered in his office in 1946, while Walker did some industrial engineering along with architecture with two partners through the mid-Fifties just before his death in 1958.