by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Following the Civil War, after several years of flood, drought, grasshopper infestations, smallpox epidemics and other afflictions, greater Los Angeles entered into a period that constituted its first boom. From the later Sixties through the mid-Seventies, the population grew appreciably, the economy shifted large from livestock raising, principally cattle, to an growing focus on agriculture (grapes, wheat and citrus chiefly) and many other changes were afoot, including the types of material used for the construction of new buildings.
Yet, with the onset of 1867, the Los Angeles News commented on “Los Angeles Asleep,” reminding its readers that on New Year’s Day it “took occasion to speak of the pervading lethargy that broods over our city and county.” It lamented that, while “the good God” provided “a sweet and equable clime and unusual productiveness of soil,” it was almost treasonous to waste these and it observed that “if from no higher motive, sectional pride should stimulate our good people to energy and enterprise.”
Rising to a lather, the paper fulminated,
Why here is about the eldest town of the State, of easy access by land and sea, located in the heart of the richest and most luxurious valley on God’s footstool, and yet, just look on the unsightly buildings [read: adobe] that mar the vision at every footstep. How many of our merchants are there, who have plucked rich increment by long years of barter, that have deigned to invest a single maravedi [a medieval Spanish coin] in improving and beautifying their adopted city?
One of the few citizens to move into brick construction and a sense of architectural aesthetics in the late 1850s was Jonathan Temple through the southern structure on his Temple Block (1857) and the adjoining Market House (1859), the latter becoming the court house, city hall (for a few years) and county offices, as well as, for a short time, having the city’s first purpose-built theatre. Though he left Los Angeles for San Francisco, where he died in late May 1866, his property was soon sold, with the Temple Block going to brother, F.P.F., who soon embarked on improving the rest of the block with three structures between 1868-1871.
The Plaza was referred to as “miserable” with nary “a flower—not a solitary tree engirts [engirds] it,” with just an “unsightly” brick reservoir at its center and part of the public space’s “most beastly aspect.” The News called for the center of pre-American Los Angeles to be “a resort for flowers and trees and playing fountains.” Streets should be clean and comfortable for the pedestrian who, in the rainy season, “is forced to wade to his thighs in repulsive mud.”
It was “criminal neglect” for those to claim that the problem was “the hardness of the times” along with issues of transportation and a lack of enough residents and it was a religious duty to cease “corroding inactivity, that demoralizing listlessness, that besotting lethargy.” Making the Angel City attractive would draw settlers and it was a lack of spirit that was the problem because “nature has done all she can” and “the most beautiful damsel is a repulsive creature if she does not wash her face and pay some attention to her under garments.”
Noting that Phineas Banning (who was not named) “has built up a town . . . upon the seaboard” in the form of Wilmington, the News concluded its lecture by imploring that “it is time—high time for display of some decent and manly energy.” Too many merchants “are dozing in our doorways, lazily exchanging greetings the year through” and it concluded, with a pointed critique of past “popular justice” events,
Who ever heard of a public meeting in Los Angeles, save a vigilante assemblage or a political convocation? Where are your Lyceums or public libraries[?] The People of Los Angeles are asleep. Treasures are within their grasp; they are two [sic] indolent to stretch forth their hands to catch them.
It was a half-year later that the paper reported, in its edition of 26 July, that “one by one the old adobe walls are being pulled down, and the landmarks of the old Spanish town gradually disappear.” Such was happening next to the United States Hotel where Louis Mesmer was “extending the building . . . so as to cover the entire front of the lot, making it, when completed, the largest hotel in the Southern portion of the State.” After fire destroyed the adobe portions, a section of the Bell Block was rebuilt with two brick stores.
Ramping up its rhetoric on 20 September, the paper elaborated further on continuing improvements, celebrating that “within the past few years, many of the old unsightly adobe structures, that looked like a cross between a stable and a pig-pen, have given way to modern improvements” with “solid brick edifices that even San Francisco might be proud of.”
It asserted, moreover, that “our people have awakened from their lethargy, and we see on all sides a desire to develop that latent resources of our glorious county.” Water supply was improved, gas would soon be in every house, distilleries and mills were humming and other signs of growth were noted.
It followed up a week later with some detail about the Lafayette Hotel, observing,
Strangers who might have passed through Main street, a few years ago, and had seen a sign upon an old adobe house that there was [sic] accommodations for “man and beast” within, would hardly suppose that the palatial structure which has been reared upon its ruins, is the “old Lafayette.” But the world is progressive, and especially so is the city of Los Angeles.
Christian Fluhr, proprietor of some seven years, was lauded for his work in making the hostelry “second to none in the State” and “about a year ago the old unsightly building was partly torn down, and a two-story brick building erected in its place.” The Lafayette, with space for 160 guests, was described in some detail in terms of lodging, including for families, and the dining room providing “all the delicacies the prolific markets of Los Angeles affords,” so that “it leaves nothing to desire on the part of travelers.”
The 15 November edition of the News included an editorial that resonates to an extent to us today, as it observed that, within the last couple of years, a goodly number of houses were built, mainly by business people not able to find decent places to rent. But, it went on, “the supply of dwellings . . . is still inadequate to the demand,” affecting not just new arrivals, but long-time residents who, instead of finding “neat or comfortable houses,” were “forced to rent disagreeable and unhealthy old [adobe] rookeries” at a cost that would provide for a fine house in San Francisco.
The paper bitterly noted that “our capitalists do nothing towards relieving this great want of our city” and saved some vitriol for
Landlords, who have for several years had large incomes from the rents of old adobe houses that have been built for the last forty years, [and] have made no improvement whatever on the old system. The houses generally stand immediately on the streets with wooden shutters upon the windows instead of blinds; the floors are seldom raised above the grades of the streets, and in many places below the street grade. The windows are almost universally small, the ceilings generally low, and closets and other conveniences are unknown. The roofs are made of asphaltum [brea], and have to be renewed every winter, and during the wet season, a dry house can hardly be found in the city.
With steamboat service on the California coast and “a railroad is to be built from here to the port of San Pedro,” this latter completed in 1869, the News recommended a firm be established to build houses.” It was added that “it is an unpleasant fact that there is not in this city a single private house in the construction of which the most simple rules of architecture have been regarded.” In fact, Los Angeles’ first trained architect, Ezra F. Kysor, would soon arrive and begin his work, which apparently included a major renovation of the Workman House.
It was mentioned before in this post that floods did significant damage to adobe structures and the winter of 1867-1868 was one of significant rainfall, with the News of Christmas Eve reporting “streams being higher that during the floods of 1862. Damage included the loss of the dam for the city’s water works, north of the Plaza, as well as the fact that “quite a number of adobe walls unable to stand the constant pressure of the water, gave way.”
In the edition of 3 January 1868, further problems were noted as the Los Angeles River overflowed its banks and changed course, damaging adjacent vineyards, some with grapevines twenty years of age, and some property was saved by the cutting down of fruit and nut trees and tossing them into river to form a sort of breastwork. Moreover, recorded the News, “the damage to the adobe houses of the city have been serious” with three collapsing on San Pedro Street and “the families barely removed in time.”
At Misión Vieja/Old Mission, the original site of the Mission San Gabriel and home of the Temple family, “six houses were washed away” and residents built “temporary huts to live in from the branches of trees and the debris that have floated down the [San Gabriel] river,” while also losing fruit and nut trees. The San Gabriel also changed course, following an irrigation ditch built by ex-Governor Pío Pico and overtaking Coyote Creek coming out of what is now north Orange County as it emptied into the sea where modern Long Beach and Seal Beach meet.
Once the rains subsided, a News editorial in the 11 February issue concerned the development of the hill lands west of downtown on city-owned lands, these “heretofore considered of little or no value” being knocked down at auction at some $24.50 an acre (by contrast, just two years prior, Jonathan Temple sold the 27,000-acre Rancho Los Cerritos to the Bixby family for a mere 50 cents an acre.) The paper reported that there were development plans, including bringing water to these elevated sections, and called for more sales of several thousands of acres of city property—in the Seventies, such subdivisions as East Los Angeles [Lincoln Heights] and Boyle Heights on the “east side” would be established on some of these lands.
He was not named in the piece, but Prudent Beaudry, a future mayor, acquired much of the western hill tracts, which became developed as Bunker Hill and Bellevue Terrace and the News welcomed conversion of sheep grazing land for houses, fields and orchards as well as the badly needed tax revenue from property of increasing value. It added that “there are hundreds of people who are paying rent for the worst of old adobe houses” and who would gladly “build themselves small homesteads” if affordable lots were available. The News concluded that “the city can and should furnish them the land, and permit them to become more thoroughly identified with its prosperity by being owners.”
Beaudry was joined by others later in 1868 in development plans, though whether the jeremiad of the News about indolent Angeleno business figures not doing enough the help the city grow had any role is unclear. In any case, the revived Los Angeles Star, published from 1851 to 1864 and then shuttered for four years, reported in its 6 June edition that “another of the old adobes is going the way of all mud piles, to fill up the streets;” that is, bricks from razed structures were frequently used to reclaim potholes in the Angel City’s thoroughfares.
The account noted that “the adobe house adjoining the Bella Union Hotel,” on the east side of Main Street north of Commercial Street, “is being taken down, to make way for a new two-story brick, for the accommodation of the new bank, noticed elsewhere.” The adobe building “has long been an eyesore” and the paper was surprised, given rising property values as this first boom was underway, that it “was permitted to remain cumbered up with such a pile of rubbish.” It was not mentioned that the owner was Pío Pico, who would soon add to his notable improvements as the next part of this post will note, while the financial institution, the second in Los Angeles, was that of Hellman, Temple and Company, with F.P.F. Temple and William Workman joining merchant Isaias W. Hellman in the enterprise.
Next to be reported on by the Star was Temple, with the paper’s issue of 25 July observing,
Mr. Temple this week removed one of the old adobes on Spring street, to put up in its place an elegant brick structure, thirty feet front and eighty feet deep. This is but the beginning, we hope, of extensive improvements in this portion of the town.
Indeed, it, along with the work of Pico and others, such as another former governor, John G. Downey, was in the early stages of the boom that would accelerate over the next several years.
The Star of 5 September had a report of another common occurrence at the time, building fires, with the structure involved being “an adobe house on Main street, near and south of the [Plaza] church.” The blaze emanated from a saddler’s shop on the south end of the structure and “soon spread till nearly the contents of all the rooms were destroyed.” Moreover, there was concern that the conflagration would spread to the newly completed works of the Los Angeles Gas Company, of which F.P.F. Temple was a founding trustee, “which were directly in the rear of the burning building.”
Small structures and a fence were demolished to prevent the spread and a house north and next to the church was saved, though the adobe, recently used by Andrés Pico, brother of the former governor, as his townhouse, and built about 1841 by by ship captain Charles Baric and then owned by Venancia Sotelo Dominguez, was ravaged. Still, it continued to stand for some years afterward, as the early 1870s photo below shows.
With that, we’ll halt and return tomorrow with the next installment of this post, so please join us then!
This shocking example illustrates the myths that can arise from a lack of knowledge. As mentioned in this post, the Los Angeles’ western land was sold for $24.5 per acre, while just two years earlier, Jonathan Temple was selling his Rancho Los Cerritos at only $0.5 per acre.
I don’t understand why Jonathan Temple left for San Francisco in such a hurry, selling all his properties quickly as if to “escape” from Los Angeles. If he had known to sell his land in installments and gradually raise the transaction price of a small parcel first to set new benchmarks, he could have earned significantly more profit. This real estate strategy, known by everyone 100 years later, was scarcely understood in the 1860s-1870s, except by a few individuals like James Irvine.