by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the 1860s came to an end and the dire days of the decade’s first half gave way to a post-Civil War period of growth that became greater Los Angeles’ first boom, albeit small compared to those that followed, a signal marker for progress in the growing town was the replacement of “old” adobe buildings with new wood and brick structures that served as symbols for the presumed superiority of American and European ways over those of the Mexican and Spanish, whose era was deemed to be one in which the pueblo was “sleepy” and indolent.
At the beginning of 1869, under the heading of “NOT FAIR,” the Los Angeles News, in its edition of the 13th, recorded that,
We hear much complaint from the more enterprising citizens and property holders of that portion of the city lying above [north] of the Plaza, that the municipal authorities have neglected to give them a fair proportion of the public improvements which have been made in the corporate limits during the past two years.
This area, known as Sonoratown, because of the migrants from that northern Mexican state who settled there during the Gold Rush years, retained a larger number of adobe structures and had more Spanish-speaking residents than most other parts of the city. While the paper agreed with some of these concerns, it also offered that “the neglect is in part chargeable to the representatives in the municipal government from that section of the city, among whom has been continuously the mayor and one member of the council.”
The former was Los Angeles native Cristóbal Aguilar, who served several terms between 1866 and 1872, while the latter was likely José Mascarel, a native of France who served as mayor in 1865-1866 and a council member in 1864 and 1867-1869. Observing that the unnamed figures were owners of significant property on Upper Main Street, the News added that they “seem content not only to reside in unsightly adobe dwellings, but to suffer the finest locations which are owned by themselves to remain unimproved.” These included no city allocations for streets or gas lighting much less “any measure calculated to divert attention to that really most pleasant and desirably located portion of the city.” No comments, however, were apparently solicited from the unidentified subjects of this criticism.
More commentary came a month later, as the News of 15 February addressed the matter of “A Business Necessity,” as it recited that
With few exceptions the business men of all classes in this city, complain of the houses in which they are compelled to do business. A large majority of those owning houses on lots in eligible localities for business, have refused to repair the old adobes of fifty years standing, or build the stores and offices required for business and professional men . . . Old adobe houses with leaky roofs and stained and cracked walls, that in many cases endanger the lives of the occupants, are forced upon those requiring places of business. The goods injured and destroyed by rain and dust in the rickety old buildings now used in many parts of the city for stores, would in a year more than pay the rent of a first class building.
Rents charged for leases in these adobe edifices were deemed excessive and the paper claimed that “not a day passes but what we hear some merchant say his business is injured for want of a proper store in which to display his goods.” Whatever excuses existed before about a limited number of businesses or the nature of ownership and leases were no longer justifiable in the current climate, charged the paper. While, as noted in part three, Pío Pico and F.P.F. Temple were lauded for their construction of new brick buildings where adobe structures were razed to make room for them, it seemed much more needed to be done with improving the situation.
The 20 March edition of the News reported that “a number of the old adobe houses that have stood the effects of rain storms for the past half a century, were seriously injured by the late rains,” and flooding damage to such structures was noted in previous parts of this post dating back to 1860. Adding that accounts told of such destruction throughout Los Angeles, the paper asserted that “adobe buildings are now regarded as the relics of a past age” and were always “replaced by modern structures of wood or brick.”
Another example was cited in the 3 April issue of the paper, which reported that, the day before, workers were engaged in “pulling down the old walls of the building” on the west side of Main Street long containing a butcher shop. It continued that “in a few weeks Mr. F.P.F. Temple will erect a fine two story brick house upon the site,” this comprising a new addition to the Temple Block. The News approvingly reiterated that “one by one, the old adobe houses, relics of a past and more primitive age, are disappearing, and modern and elegant structures taking their places.”
Temple’s downtown development projects continued in May 1870, when it was recorded by the News of the 20th, that “adjoining the new building on Spring street containing the Postoffice, Mr. Temple has about finished the excavations for a new brick building which he is to erect.” Moreover, the News observed, when leases expired for those renting “the adobes at the ‘heater’ formed by Main and Spring streets,” this being the sharp point comprising the north end of the Temple Block where those thoroughfares met Temple Street, “brick structures will be erected.” The account concluded that “it is to be regretted that other property owners in the vicinity do not follow the example set by Mr. Temple.”
As noted earlier in this post, Temple purchased the block from the widow of his late brother, Jonathan, who acquired the land back in the 1830s. Whether the elder Temple could foresee future growth of the then-tiny pueblo or not, his sibling could certainly see this a few decades later as this first boom included expansion of residential districts south and southwest, as well as east and northeast (East Los Angeles, now Lincoln Heights, came into being in 1873 and Boyle Heights, two years later.) The commercial core of the city concentrating in and around the Temple Block was more than timely for F.P.F. Temple and his development plans.
Ex-Governor Pico, whose 1868 building housing the Hellman, Temple and Company bank a stone’s throw from the Temple Block, wanted to keep the Plaza area viable and, being owner of a prime piece of property at its southwestern corner, embarked on his next and much bigger project. The News of 16 September 1869 (the day happening to be Mexican Independence Day) remarked that
The adobes fronting the plaza, known as the Pico block, are fast disappearing, and in a few days the workmen will have commenced the erection of a magnificent brick building upon the ground. This building will front on Main street 117 feet; on the plaza 84 feet; on Sanchez street [paralleling Main to the east] 117 feet. The brick work is to be done by Jacob Weixel; wood work by Switzer & Co. The architect is Mr. Keiser [Ezra F. Kysor]. This building, when finished, will be an ornament to our city.
Some nine months later, on 20 June 1870, the Pico House hotel opened, with the News relating that “the general verdict of the people was that the house was a complete success” adding that the enterprise “is certainly a credit to the place [the city], and from indications yesterday, will receive a liberal show of the public patronage.” Unfortunately, this was not true for the long term and the Pico House struggled financially, while its owner and builder went through serious financial issues, including the loss, through fraud, of his suburban ranch in today’s Whittier area.
The same edition of the News from the 21st also reported, once more, that “one by one the old land marks of the city are passing away” as workers were “taking down the old store and adobe building on the corner of Los Angeles and Commercial streets” long housing the store of Samuel Prager.” In its place was coming “a modern fire-proof building” built by Isaias W. Hellman, banking partner of Temple and William Workman. With the demolition, the paper reiterated, “Los Angeles is gradually assuming the appearance of a modern city, and a few adobe houses will be numbered among things of the past.”
The Star of 2 July brought up work at the Bella Union Hotel, where adobe portions were removed nearly a decade before, as brought up earlier in this post. This time, the paper stated,
Old things pass away, new ones take their place. We are reminded of the truthfulness of the above by the demolition of the last of the adobe walls of the Bella Union Hotel property.
The article then went into the history of the oldest hostelry in the Angel City, starting with its construction in 1835 by Isaac Williams (whose elusive search years later for doubloons he concealed in the walls was covered in the previous reference) for his residence as well as a store. The adobe structure fronted on Main Street, though the lot extended east to Los Angeles Street and south to Commercial Street and was also “enclosed by an adobe, and what was known as a box wall, partially built of stone and on the southern end along the latter thoroughfare. A wall running east to west also divided the property.
The piece continued that William Wolfskill, who did construction work in his early years before planting California’s first commercial orange grove in the city and later amassing significant landholdings with suburban ranches, built the adobe bricks and the wall, while he was assisted in carpentry by Richard Laughlin and Joseph Paulding. When the governors Manuel Micheltorena and Pico were in office, the structure was their administrative headquarters and then was used by the American military after it seized the Angel City in 1846-1847 during the Mexican-American War.
Williams reclaimed possession and, in October 1849, William P. Reynolds, a part-Hawaiian native, opened a saloon, while the following month, a French native named Roland opened a restaurant and hotel. The article then cataloged the various proprietors, nearly twenty in all, until current ownership by John King and Dr. James B. Winston and it was noted that the southern part of the property along Commercial and the eastern section on Los Angeles were sold.
An area with a high concentration of adobe houses, as well as crime and other illicit activities, and which also was the city’s small, but growing Chinatown was the Calle de los Negros, southeast of the Plaza and north of the then-terminus of Los Angeles Street with Arcadia Street passing along its southern fringe. The News of 24 August went into great detail about what it called the Barbary Coast of Los Angeles (referencing a red-light district of San Francisco) and a “haunt of vice and crime.” The paper also likened what was commonly called “Nigger Alley” because of the use of negros in the name, not because of Black people, to Five Points in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
It went on to describe the thoroughfare:
It is the chosen abode of the pariahs of society. The low adobe buildings are simply hives to hold swarms of social outcasts. Here the copper colored Indian, the ebony African, yellow Mongol and degraded Caucasian, herd together . . . Back yards are chosen receptacle for heaps of filth and garbage, from which arise vapors which, in a climate less pure, would breed a pestilence. Within the buildings, herded like beasts, men, women and children, male and female, dwell together, ignoring all distinctions of sex, and filthy to a degree absolutely appalling. Noisome vapors pervade the air creating a stench sickening to senses unperverted by daily contact with these loathsome quarters. Here crimes too horrible to name, are undoubtedly matters of ordinary, and perhaps daily or nightly occurrence.
The sensational account—how accurate is the question?—vividly pictured the “blear-eyed harridan,” slinking residents meandering along the shadows, “rude revelry” at night, the criminals operating in darkened hours, and regular gun fire and knife fights. It exclaimed that “the street is a disgrace to the city, and to our boasted civilization” and wondered what would be done with the small police force powerless to check the gross excesses claimed to emanate from the Calle.
Hearkening to the theme of degraded adobe buildings, the paper asserted that, as to those wealthy owners of property there, “the community would be gratified if they could be persuaded to tear down the rookeries” on valuable lands “and erect substantial structures, which would at once be occupied for legitimate business purposes.” How to dismantle the “nest of outlaws and criminals who gather there, is the question” but, in the meantime, “the fact remains that Negro Alley is a disgrace to Los Angeles.”
Three days later, the paper reported that “some old adobes are being hauled from China [sic] Alley” and dumped on Aliso Street to fill potholes, with it being added that this improved the latter “just about a hundredth part as much as the removal of China Alley and its denizens would improve the city.” Two months later, the Star noted that more reclaimed bricks, though rom where was not stated, were used to fill in a dry pond, elsewhere called “Los Angeles Lake,” at Aliso and Alameda streets.
A prominent adobe along Arcadia Street where it met the Calle de los Negros was the childhood home of Antonio Franco Coronel, a former mayor of the Angel City and California treasurer from 1867-1871. The 16 October edition of the Star commented that the property was surveyed the prior day “preparatory to the erection of a fine three story brick building” to cover the lot that also fronted to the west on Sanchez Street. The paper continued,
This is a long step in the right direction, no more decided improvement has ever been attempted in this city by a private individual than this building will be, when completed. The thieves, cut throats, and prostitutes, who have so long infested and disgraced this locality, will disappear with their adobe dens, and give place to buildings and citizens, who will be a credit to the City of Los Angeles.
Coronel, who later had misgivings about razing the residence where he was raised, did not go through with the plan and, just more than a year later, on 24 October 1871, the adobe was the flash point for the horrific Chinese Massacre, in which 17 men and a teen boy were lynched by a mob of some 500 Anglos and Latinos after Chinese infighting involved the killing of an American and wounding of a Latino police officer who intervened. The adobe structure was not torn down until the next major boom in 1888, when most of the Calle was removed as Los Angeles Street was extended north.
Another notable nearby adobe house of yore was that built by Vicente Lugo, fronting the east side of the Plaza and oft-seen in early photo of the area. Built in the 1840s, the building was donated about a quarter century later by Lugo to the newly established St. Vincent’s College, which operated there for a couple of years before moving to a site near modern Pershing Square. As the Star of 30 July reported,
In the old adobe building, formerly the Lugo House, east of the Plaza, in Los Angeles, is located the School of the Christian Brothers. This institution is under the auspices of the Bishop of the Catholic Church, and is immediately presided over by two Franciscan monks. It afford gratuitous [that is, free] education to all male children of all ages, denominations and nations, Hebrew, English, African or Chinese, who otherwise cannot attend school for want of means.
As Chinatown expanded north from the Calle location, the Lugo Adobe was part of that community, though, while the structure was named a state historic landmark, it could not prevent, despite significant advocacy, the razing of the edifice in 1951. Today, the Father Junipero Serra Park, currently closed to public access, is on the site.
Lastly, the adobe building, mentioned in part three and built by Charles Baric and later the residence of Venancia Sotelo Dominguez and Andrés Pico, brother of the former governor, an which was ravaged by fire a couple of years before, was the subject of a piece in the Star of 15 September. The paper called the structure a nuisance necessitating abatement by removal or renovation, with the “owner compelled to keep the place clean and in a condition not to offend the eyes and nostrils of persons traveling the street [Main, across from the Plaza and Pico House].”
We will return again tomorrow with part five taking this post into the 1870s, so check in then!