by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A recent post here discussed a 12 May 1929 letter from the hysterical historian J. Perry Worden to Thomas W. Temple II pleading his case for financial support concerning the Temple family history book Worden was hired to write eight years before and never finished. In that missive, amongst his litany of complaints about his treatment by Temple’s father, Walter, and the latter’s attorney and business partner George H. Woodruff, was some acknowledgment of the increasingly dire financial situation of the Temple estate. Yet, Worden insisted that it was worth it to pay for the completion of the book, which he guaranteed, by shedding favorable light on the family, would elevate the family name.
At that time, Thomas was concluding his three years of intense study at the prestigious and rigorous Harvard Law School, earning his degree which was to be followed by his taking the California bar exam and embarking on a career as a lawyer. Woodruff occasionally corresponded with Thomas about his studies and future in the law, but, on 4 July, sent a letter and a copy of a telegram to Temple’s residence at the Brattle Inn in Cambridge about an urgent business matter—this as graduation loomed and the young scholar hoped to enjoy a vacation before returning home.
The essential problem, as pointed out here in prior entries, is that those palmy days of the late Teens and very early Twenties when oil from the Temple family’s lease in Montebello was bursting forth in gushers and providing them tens of thousands of dollars monthly in royalties were significantly diminished in subsequent years as those field proved to be somewhat shallow and income dropped.
At the same time, spending skyrocketed, including Walter’s own investments in oil wells throughout greater Los Angeles (Whittier, Huntington Beach, Signal Hill, Ventura) and outside California and his expansive (and expensive) real estate investments in the Angel City and several San Gabriel Valley communities (Alhambra, El Monte, San Gabriel) as well as his own Town of Temple, renamed Temple City in 1928, project.
With revenue and expenditures at cross-purposes, Temple and his advisors and partners, business manager Milton Kauffman and Woodruff, who were given larger shares of stock in the recently created Temple Estate Company in 1924, took out bonds for both that firm and for the Temple Townsite Company, which handled all of his other properties, in early 1926. While these raised needed capital for developing what was committed, they also entailed the usual interest, paid at intervals over the life of the bond issue, and this added significantly to rising debt, especially if, as was the case with Temple City, sales were not robust and adding to the coffers.
By June 1929, the situation was rapidly worsening and we’ve featured Woodruff letters in this “Reading Between the Lines” series that outlined these difficulties and some potential solutions, including the idea of establishing a holding company, this proposed by the attorney in May 1927, but which did not gain traction. The John M.C. Marble Company, a financial services and investment firm, was approached then and its principals, Marble’s son William, and the firm’s treasurer William S. Witmer, were to be directors of the holding company along with Woodruff and Thomas Temple. The California Trust Company, subsidiary of the California Bank, established at the end of the 19th century, by Witmer’s father and uncle, was also to be involved as a bond trustee.
Again, that plan was not executed, but what was notable in the first half of 1929 was the connection Woodruff had with Witmer and another real estate and banking figure, George L. Eastman. For example, Eastman was president and Witmer the vice-president of the Fidelity Savings and Loan Association, situated in a still-existing building at the northeast corner of Spring and Sixth streets in downtown Los Angeles and of which Woodruff was also a vice-president. The trio were also the principals in the Cortaro Farms Company and Cortaro Water Company, investing in agricultural land near Tucson, Arizona.
Witmer (1890-1965) was born in Los Angeles to Josephine Smith and Joseph M. Witmer, the latter having come to the booming city after his brother Henry migrated from Wisconsin in 1884 and invested in the Crown Hill subdivision west of downtown and a commercial building at Fort Street (renamed Broadway in 1890) and Second that housed the California Bank. Joseph became the bank’s cashier and, while not as well known as Henry, was a widely regarded business figure until his death from heart trouble at just age 39 in 1897 (Henry succumbed to heart failure in 1909 at 52, it being apparent that there was some family history there.)
Josephine Witmer took her two sons, William and David, back to Massachusetts, from which state she hailed, and moved in with family. Both boys were sent to Harvard University, with David earning his degree in 1910 and following that with graduate work in architecture, which he completed two years later. He went on to have a forty-year partnership with Loyall Watson, while also serving in the Signal Corps during the First World War and in the Army during World War II, but David Witmer was best known nationally for being chief architect of the Pentagon project during the latter conflict. Locally, with Watson, he was involved with the well-known Wyvernwood garden apartments and Estrada Courts housing project, which are adjacent to each other in Boyle Heights. His family house in what was Crown Hill only recently was sold by the family after a century of ownership.
William also graduated from Harvard, earning his degree there in 1912. Returning to Los Angeles, he registered for the draft in 1917 as American entered World War I and identified himself as manager of the Witmer Estate, which was comprised of his brother. When the 1920 federal census was taken, he was in Pasadena and working as a real estate broker. After becoming involved in the Fidelity Savings and Loan Association, he bought a house near the Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens.
George L. Eastman (1887-1969) was from Potsdam, New York, not far from the Canadian border to the far north of the Empire State. He attended an engineering college in his hometown and migrated to Hollywood, an independent city, where he was the city engineer for a couple of years, but where he lived for decades. He then formed his own firm, which dealt in building materials, fuel and grains for about a decade from the mid-Teens to mid-Twenties.
Beyond his status as president of Fidelity, Eastman had a significant public presence, including as a founding member of the Community Park and Art Association that established the Hollywood Bowl, a key figure in the Pilgrimage Play at what is now the John Anson Ford Theatre, and an organizer of the 1928 National Air Races at what is now Los Angeles International Airport. In 1928, the Los Angeles Realty Board named him “Los Angeles’ Most Useful Citizen.”
With Woodruff’s useful connections to such figures as Witmer and Eastman and to banks, trust companies and others, he was undoubtedly vital to the effort to try and salvage what could be saved for the Temple Estate. This leads us to the letter and telegram, with the former on the letterhead of the law firm of Woodruff, Musick, Pinney and Hartke, situated on the top floor suite, #1200, of the Security Title Insurance Building, completed in 1929 and which is still with us at the southeast corner of Grand Avenue and 6th Street, close to Pershing Square.
Not surprisingly, Woodruff was vice-president of the Security Title Insurance and Guarantee Company, which merged earlier in 1929 with the Metropolitan Trust Company. We should add that he was also a vice-president of the National Bank of Commerce and a director of the United States Bond and Mortgage Corporation, so it can easily be seen that the attorney had more than a few fingers in other financial pies during this period.
The Western Union telegram informed Thomas that,
Temple Estate Company is creating new two hundred thousand dollar bond issue to pay off existing bonds against Alhambra properties with proceeds of sale of other properties stop to create bond issue law requires sundry notices of meetings to be given directors which means long delay because of time required to notify you and receive reply thereto stop Suggest you resign as director and [Charles W.] Tandy [Temple Estate Company manager] be elected in your stead stop When bond proceedings are consummated Tandy will resign and you will reelected stop
Thomas was asked to wire his resignation, effective immediately as well as waiving notice of a meeting held on the 8th and consenting to pass on the bond issue proposition and any other items discussed at the gathering.
With respect to the letter, Temple was sent four documents regarding the meeting, including the notice, a consent and waiver signed by all directors; a specific document for him to sign as a director and stockholder, and assent to the creation of the bond issue. He was requested to return all but the first and to write the number “10,” reflecting the number of shares he owned, “notwithstanding you may have resigned as a director of the corporation pursuant to our telegraphic request of to-day.” Thomas was further requested to leave dates blank so that these could be filled in by company officials “to conform with the steps taken in creating this indebtedness.”
Breaking from the formalities of the first page, the second found Woodruff speaking in more of a personal voice, as he told the young man,
I have only a moment to say to you that this whole proceeding is necessary by reason of the sale of the Alhambra properties. We have been struggling a long time to get from under this load [of debt] without avail until right now and while the deal [is] not what we have hoped it might be in that we are getting no cash whatever, yet it is affording immediate relief from the standpoint of having to advance money every month to carry the [cost of the] properties.
Woodruff went to observe that the Temple Estate Company was to receive equity of $150,000 “which is about $100,000 more than we have ever been offered for it before.” Further, he informed Thomas that to get the deal completed, “we have got to unscramble the whole proposition whereby we can sell the individual properties,” as they were bundled.
The result was that “this necessitates our paying off the bond issue now on the property and this in turn necessitates our creating another smaller bond issue.” With the present issue at $365,000, including $15,000 in interest and borrowing to pay taxes,” this meant that “in addition to the cash we are getting out of the sales, we are required to borrow $200,000 to clean up this indebtedness.”
The attorney continued that the deal had to be completed by the 15th and that is was important “that we have a working Board of Directors here that can act upon call to meet any emergency that may arise during the procedure of closing the deal.” Having Tandy on the board in lieu of Thomas and his absence on the east coast meant that any “unexpected details” could be addressed quickly. As noted above, once the transaction was finished, Thomas would return to the board. With that, the letter ended with brief regards to Thomas and his younger brothers, Walter, Jr. and Edgar, who were finishing high school at Dummer Academy north of Cambridge (the fourth Temple child, Agnes, was also graduating from Dominican College north of San Francisco at that time and then married Luis Fatjo at Thanksgiving.)
There was a delay in the Alhambra deal. The Los Angeles Times of 7 July reported that there were two business properties sold. The first was the building occupied by the Utter and Sons Mortuary, completed in 1923, at the northeast corner of Main and Fourth streets, with the L and R Investment Company of Los Angeles, acquiring it for $125,000. A block to the east, the Edison Building, the Temple Estate Company’s final building project and finished in spring 1927, was purchased by Horace L. Averill of San Pedro, who sold land in that harbor city for a project led by Kauffman and mentioned in the post linked to above with the highlighted words “Temple Estate Company in 1924.”
The problem was that, whatever “immediate relief” was procured by the sale of these structures, there was still the borrowing, through a new bond issue, of $200,000 to clear out the indebtedness of $365,000 that existed before the transaction. The hope of gushers on the Ventura Avenue Oil Field property in the city of that name went unrealized and there were a couple of other “Hail Mary” endeavors, as well, but the situation was further worsened by the onset of the Great Depression, after the stock market crash in New York City about 4 1/2 months after this letter and telegram were sent.
The Workman Homestead was leased in spring 1930 to the Golden State Military, while Walter Temple decamped to Ensenada in Baja California, México, to try and limit expenses. The end finally came in summer 1932 when California Bank, established by the Witmers more than four decades prior, foreclosed on the ranch, the last of the landholdings of Walter Temple, who returned to Los Angeles and died there in 1938. Thomas forewent any idea of practicing law and became a genealogist and historian in San Gabriel for some forty years until his death in 1972. As for Woodruff, he was badly damaged economically by the Temple Estate collapse and his own investments in other enterprises, though he continued to practice law before his death in 1944.
There’ll be plenty more artifacts from the Homestead’s collection in the “Reading Between the Lines” series, including family correspondence, so check back for those!