by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Today, the Homestead participated in the first “Adobe Day” hosted by the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum in Compton, a remarkable 18-acre site that was once the headquarters of the Rancho San Pedro. A great deal of fascinating history took place here concerning the ranching and farming operations of the family, an important battle during the Mexican-American War, the first national airplane meet, which took place early in 1910, and much more.
Other sites present today included Rancho Los Alamitos and Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach; the Centinela Adobe in Inglewood; the Soto-Sánchez Adobe in Montebello; the Casa Primera and Palomares Adobe in Pomona; the Campo de Cahuenga at Studio City; Rancho Camulos and the adobe of the del Valle family; and California State Parks, which operates the Pío Pico Mansion and the Rancho Encino. Visitors were able to see this diversity and experience activities and performances during the four-hour event.
The Homestead shared photographs of the Workman House and La Casa Nueva, our adobes from very different eras—the 1840s and 1920s, respectively—along with a group of images dating from the 1870s through the 1920s of many other adobe structures throughout the region. Some were in the Calle de los Negros, which became Los Angeles’ first Chinatown, while others were in Sonoratown, north of the Plaza where the current Chinatown is situated.
Still others were in the hinterlands, including the ruins of Campo de Cahuenga and the William Money (pronounced Mo-nay) octagon in San Gabriel; the Vejar Adobe in south Pomona where the Phillips Mansion was soon built; the Andrés Pico Adobe, still with us in Mission Hills near the Mission San Fernando; and more. By the time many of these views were taken in the late 19th century, the push to raze adobe structures and replace them with brick and wood buildings was seen as part of the “progress” brought by Americans and Europeans to the region.
This post looks at some of the coverage in Los Angeles newspapers from the 1850s to the mid-1870s, emphasizing this point, though the earliest examples were somewhat more muted because the conditions for large-scale construction of those other materials were just starting to be expanded and adobe was still being used by many people, Spanish-speaking Californios and Mexicans generally. As Anglos became the majority and, especially as the region entered its first significant and sustained period of growth in the late Sixties, the call to remove adobe buildings was considerably heightened.
The Homestead has two adobe houses. The Workman House’s center core of three rooms—two of which appear to have been constructed first and the other added shortly afterward—date to as early as 1842 when William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste settled on the Rancho La Puente and engaged in cattle ranching with some limited agriculture. The Gold Rush years brought a windfall of cash due to the high demand for beef and the structure, by 1856, expanded accordingly, including two long wings to the south of about 150 feet and including work and storage rooms, while a pair of small rooms at the north end may have been used for travelers’ accommodations.
By 1870, however, the prevailing attitude about replacing adobes with brick and wood buildings led the Workmans to raze the wings, while just one of the north-facing rooms was retained. All four corners had brick additions, while a second floor was built of the material, and architectural stylings reflected Italianate, Gothic Revival and Greek Revival elements popular during the time. From a distance, a visitor would not have known that part of the house was adobe until they entered one of those three core rooms—especially in the summer when cooler temperatures would be enjoyed in them.
A half-century later, the Workmans’ grandson, Walter P. Temple and his wife Laura González, inspired by a trip to México with their four children in the summer of 1922, embarked on the construction of La Casa Nueva, a considerably larger and more ornate adobe building that la casa vieja (the Workman House.) Using adobe makers from Guadalajara in the Mexican state of Jalisco, the Temples put considerable attention to the old material, with the distinction that the bricks were kiln-fired rather than sun-dried. The project took five years, but the family resided in the fully-finished house only half that time. Both families experienced financial disasters (the failure of the Temple and Workman bank in 1876 and Walter Temple’s economic collapse by the Great Depression), but they left behind a pair of fascinating buildings for us to enjoy.
Another family adobe was that built by the Workmans’ daughter, Margarita, and her husband, F.P.F. Temple, on the Rancho La Merced, adjoining La Puente to the west. Their L-shaped, single-story dwelling later had a wooden second-floor, while, by the 1870s, a two-story French Empire brick edifice was added next to it to accommodate the growing family and others who lived as part of their household. F.P.F. Temple’s much older half-brother, Jonathan, built a substantial two-story adobe that survives at Rancho Los Cerritos at the western edge of Long Beach.
While visitors including individual travelers and a retinue from the state agricultural association commented favorably on the condition and comforts of the Temple and Workman adobe houses during the decade from 1856 to 1865, there was a growing movement, as noted above, to move to wood and brick structures, which is what Workman’s co-owner at La Puente, John Rowland, did when he razed his adobe house and, in 1855, built the still-standing brick residence a mile from the Workman House.
Though it appeared in the Los Angeles Star of 1 August 1868, a report by Benjamin D. Wilson, who was a federal Indian agent and dated to 1852, includes a notable passage about adobe making by the region’s indigenous people, as he wrote, that they “are inferior to the American only in bodily strength, and might soon rank with the best Californian and Sonoranian [Mexican] in all the arts necessary to their physical comfort.” The agent then continued,
They teach the American, even, how to make an adobe (sun-dried brick), mix the lodo (mud mortar), put on the brea (pitch for [the] roof)—all these, recondite arts to the new beginner, yet very important to be known, when there are no other building materials.
Wilson’s eminently measured and even-handed description, especially when compared to the general tenor of views on the native people, much less the Californios and Mexicans, definitely stand out, as did the views of Hugo Reid, who died in 1852 and left behind a series of essays on local Indians. Wilson ended this passage by noting the Indians well knew how to farm and use irrigation, but added, “poor unfortunates! they seldom have farms of their own to till, or a dwelling to shelter them from the rain!”
Other early accounts pertaining to adobe come from the short-lived Southern Californian, including a trio of articles from October 1854. The edition from the 5th featured a description of the Angel City by someone denoted only as “Francisco,” who came up from the rudimentary harbor at San Pedro, passing thousands of cattle, to arrive in the town on 27 September. He wrote that “the houses, generally are the adobes of one story high, and there are several new ones going up, with some few brick buildings two stories high, of not a very costly character.”
Brick, in fact, had only been introduced a couple of years earlier by Jesse Hunter and Joseph Mullally soon followed and was a major manufacturer of the building material for many years afterward. “Francisco” continued by noting that Los Angeles “has the appearance of a Mexican town, with its usual characteristics . . . [the adobe houses’] style and structure being one and the same, inheriting fully the spirit and habits of their ancestors.” He concluded that the Americans, being a third of the populace, “are the life and soul of the place,” but construction did not reflect “the usual vigor of the American character” as the Anglo “is with his store full a la Mexicana.”
The next week, on the 12th, the paper reported on “IMPROVEMENTS GOING ON,” specifically, that “Ex Gov. [Pío] Pico has been demolishing the old adobe building in front of our office, with a view of erecting a brick building in its place.” The Southern Californian, however, looked askance at the idea that Pico, one of the few Californios who felt as most Americans did that brick buildings were a sign of progress as he built the Pico Building on the east side of Main Street and then followed with the Pico House hotel at the southwest corner of the Plaza, contemplated only a single story structure. The paper exhorted,
He being one of our most wealthy citizens, should put up buildings more of an ornament to our city, and thus acting as a stimulus to other of our citizens to follow his example.
In its edition of the 26th, the Southern Californian observed that “in our rambles on Saturday we observed a singularly built adobe . . . the main building is circular, over which the roof, sugar loaf fashion, is supported by posts forming another outside circle.” We were at a loss ” Struggling to describe its style, the paper concluded that, with its “neat appearance,” the unusual edifice “has about it the style of a French summer house.”
Long known simply as the Round House and later as the Garden of Paradise, the building, on the west side of Main south of 3rd, was constructed by Ramon Alexander, a sailor from France, so the summer house description made some sense, except the builder’s wife, María Valdez, stated that her husband was inspired by structures he saw in Africa, where a considerable number of earthen structures were and are to be found. Soon, the dwelling passed to German-born baker George Lehman, whose Garden of Paradise opened there in 1858.
The Star of 1 February 1855 had some interesting commentary about the “Destiny of California and Californios,” under a decade from the American seizure of the Mexican territory and as the Gold Rush was coming to an end. Among its statements was this notable one:
These bold, dashing, gay, generous, but indolent and improvident Californians . . . [reside in their] plain, cheerless looking, but hospitable adobe . . . Yet a rapid change has been going on with them for the last year or two. The dazzling pack of the clever peddler [merchant], who has learned to speak their language in a fortnight [two weeks], soon rids them of their cash, if any has been left them by the gambler or speculator. Flock by flock the cattle are changing hands, and at the same time the ranches are being hopelessly encumbered by the keen calculating and intelligent stranger. In a few years their cattle and lands will fall into the hands of the conquerors and new comers . . .
Advertisements in the Star during 1855 included those of architects and builders including Stuart and Stone and their successor B.J. Virgin, who promoted their work with “buildings of brick, wood or adobe. An adjoining ad to one of Stuart and Stone was for a newly built adobe house with 80-foot frontage on Alameda Street and of two stories “built of adobes with [a] good stone foundation, and floors of American pine.”
The 29 September edition of the paper reported on more “CITY IMPROVEMENTS,” with seven specific projects identified including what became known as the Capitol Mill and constructed by the prominent merchant Abel Stearns and attorney and judge Jonathan R. Scott; a series of stores; John Goller’s carriage-making establishment; and that “Don Juan Ramirez is building a large brick block on Alameda street, designed for stores and a printing office.” In the latter, Ramirez’ teenage son, Francisco, launched El Clamor Público, Los Angeles’ first Spanish-language newspaper and which lasted until 1859.
The Star added that all this work was being conducted “in spite of the hard times” following the end of the Gold Rush and went on to observe that “the excellent quality of Brick that is manufactured within the City limits, supplies the place of adobes in a great measure, and are preferred by those who wish to make lasting improvements.” The piece ended with, “there are also many dwellings in different parts of the City now being erected, some of which denote a rare taste for the ornamental as well as for convenience.”
As for young Francisco P. Ramirez and his fledgling paper, he wrote in its issue of 30 October on “The Construction of Buildings” and waxed eloquently that,
Nothing can interest the Angelenos more than the spirit of material advances continually being manifested. Never has our city been so liberal and active as it is now. We have seen that many beautiful brick and adobe houses are being built everywhere. When we consider such displays of the energy of our fellow citizens we feel we pay them a compliment to their entrepreneurial spirit.
The Star‘s edition of 11 October 1856 carried an interesting story from Monterey, long the capital of pre-American California and where it was determined that, in one day in May, glass inside a wooden house registered a temperature of 68 degrees, while the same object in an adobe residence was six degrees cooler. Four months later, the experiment was repeated and the recorded temperatures were 82 degrees in the wood dwelling and fourteen degrees cooler in the adobe buildings—these recordings being testament to the benefit of adobe construction for keeping houses cooler than those made of other material.
Returning to the notion of improvements in Los Angeles, El Clamor Público reported in its 15 October 1859 issue, shortly before it ceased operations, that a new brick building was being constructed on Main Street for use as a saloon and restaurant. Young Ramirez remarked that “the old adobes are fast giving way to be replaced by tenements of more modern superstructure.” By then, as just one prominent example, Jonathan Temple had (1857) completed the first brick building in the Temple Block and then in a wide dirt area to the south, erected, earlier in 1859, the Market House, with market stalls on the first floor and the city’s first purpose-built theater on the second level.
Early in 1857, a major earthquake struck along the San Andreas Fault and this is the last “big one” recorded to date in the region, though damage was minor because of Los Angeles’ small population. Adobe structures were not as affected by quakes as they were from water intrusion, which is why replastering of the walls had to be done frequently, while the application of brea on roofs was also an important maintenance item. With the region’s Mediterranean climate, frequent dry years including often crippling drought can be interspersed with intense rainy seasons leading to flood.
As the Fifties ended, the Los Angeles News of 28 December 1860 reported that a recent storm “made havoc” as “the streams were swollen beyond the water-mark of any former year, for several years past.” In some areas of the region, younger livestock were lost to flooding, while there were also problems in mining regions, notably in the San Gabriel (then usually known as the Sierra Madre) range. The paper also recorded
In this city there was a general scattering and desertion from adobe buildings, many of which either partly or wholly found their origin, and are now heaps of mud. Among the particulars given, of damage by the rain, is the falling of a greater portion of the rear walls of Mellus’ row [formerly Bell’s Row, built by Alexander Bell, near the Plaza at the southeast corner of Los Angeles and Aliso streets], by which a large number of stores were thrown open to the storm . . . a large amount of damage was sustained by the merchants occupying the several stores.
As we’ll see in the second part of this post, even worse flooding struck in the winter of 1861-1862 and future reports through 1875 will also be noted as we move forward with this story of the gradual decline in the use of adobe buildings in the Angel City. Check back with us soon for more!
Within just two short decades after 1846, poor Californios became victims of both natural and man-made disasters. On one hand, heavy rains and floods reduced their adobe houses to heaps of mud, and subsequent severe droughts devastated their ranching business. On the other hand, newly arrived Americans and Europeans stole their livestock and land. As crudely described in an 1855 report from the Stars, these people were too happy and too simple to be aware of being cheated and ripped off. Far from being happy-go-lucky, their fates were actually a mix of happiness and misfortune.