The Rise and Fall of Adobe Abodes in Greater Los Angeles, 1851-1876, Part Seven

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

The peak of greater Los Angeles’ first period of major growth, though a boom, starting in the late 1860s, of far smaller proportions than the many that followed, occurred in 1874 and 1875. A major part of this development concerned real estate and construction, with the latter involving the continued destruction of adobe structures and their replacement with buildings of brick and wood. This wholesale replacement was seen as a mark of progress that demonstrated the superiority of American civilization over that during the Spanish and Mexican eras.

No better expression could be found, among the many offered in the Angel City’s English-language newspapers, than this harbinger of the region’s future from the Los Angeles Express in its edition of 11 April 1874:

Make way for the new era of life and prosperity which is now about to dawn on this city and section. Be ready to pull down the adobes of a paste and effete civilization and replace them with the substantial material of a new, vigorous and progressive one.

The section of town with the largest concentration of adobe edifices was Sonoratown, north of the Plaza and which was heavily Latino in its population, though it is now largely covered by the city’s Chinatown. Four days prior to the above statement, the Express reported that Joseph G. Carmona, a native of Chile, recent arrival to Los Angeles and a merchant, “is tearing down an old adobe at the corner of High and Eternity [North Broadway] streets” for a brick structure and this was viewed as a positive step as “‘Sonora’ can stand any amount of improvements of that character.”

The 23 April issue of the paper provided a lengthy description of the area by Everett Chamberlain of Chicago, who wrote books at the time on the great fire of 1871 that ravaged the Windy City and of the metropolis and its suburbs. Chamberlain noted the Angel City’s “bustling and business-like appearance” featuring “the handsomest business blocks” but also “the meanest church edifices and the most outlandish adobe tenements of any western town or city . . . these last are chiefly in a section by themselves, nicknamed Sonora.”

In addressing the sentiment of the denizens of Los Angeles, the correspondent offered that,

One of the most promising features of Los Angeles is the intense public spirit with pervades her American citizens and a few—very few—of the Spaniards. Everything which promises to bring a grist to Los Angeles’ mill is “gone for” with general zest. Almost every day there is some new enterprise toward developing the resources of the Los Angeles district brought before the chamber of commerce . . . or before the capitalists of this place, or before the people at large, through the press.

This boosterism was observed in some examples provided in part six, while outsider views, such as that of the Chicago writer, served much the same purpose. Whether it was a request to members of Congress for help in promoting the citrus industry; oil development (such as that in which F.P.F. Temple was involved near today’s Santa Clarita); “those little spasmodic railroads” built in the area and including one directed toward the transcontinental (this would be Temple’s Los Angeles and Independence Railroad); or others, Chamberlain added, “of course, many of these enterprises fall through,” but those that succeed meant that “the glory of ‘our town’ is advanced.”

In his discussion of those capitalists, “the biggest bug among them, financially, is F.P.F. Temple, who counts his dollars by millions, owns nearly a whole square of the solidest buildings in town, landlords it over several thousand acres, runs a bank, and doubtless has stock or a partnership in half of all the enterprises in the county.” Though there is some exaggeration in the wealth (it might have been around $2 million, a substantial sum by any measure) and how many fingers were stuck in what number of pies, there was no question that Temple, and, by association, his father-in-law and banking partner, William Workman, was among the most energetic of boosters and developers in boomtime Los Angeles.

As noted in previous parts, the majority of accounts concerning adobe buildings, not surprisingly, were those in the City of the Angels, though, rarely, are encountered references to those in outlying areas. A “special correspondent” of the Los Angeles Star sent a dispatch, dated 27 April, to the paper, which published it four days later, from the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino and who began with “the above named rancho is historic ground.” This was because of the Battle of Chino, fought there in late September 1846 during the Mexican-American War and, in the aftermath of which, Workman had a key role.

The writer, under the name of “Viator,” commented that “there is an old adobe house in sight, roofless, tenantless, and rapidly falling to decay, which was once an extemporized fort,” where today’s Boys Republic institution is in Chino Hills and where Americans and Europeans were holed up in the dwelling, owned by Isaac Williams and besieged by Californios, led by his brothers-in-law from the Lugo family. After details of the battle were given, the account noted that Chino was “a magnificent estate” owned by the heirs of Robert Carlisle, killed in a notorious gun battle almost a decade before, though it was really the tract of his wife, and Williams’ daughter, Francisca, married in 1874 to Dr. Frederick A. MacDougall, soon to be mayor of Los Angeles.

The manager of the ranch was Joseph Bridger, who lived in an adobe dwelling to the south where Los Serranos Country Club will be celebrating its centennial next year. Viator went to great lengths to describe the wonders of the Chino Ranch and may have been the same correspondent who, in 1873, supplies a less detailed, but still notable summary of the Rancho Los Cerritos, though with a much more substantial description of the ranch house built by Jonathan Temple.

Speaking of which, the Express of 8 August printed another outsider’s impression of the South Bay domain of Jotham Bixby, this being from the editor of the Santa Barbara Press. That journalist, in describing his arrival at the ranch house, constructed three decades prior by Temple, wrote,

Climbing a gradually ascending hill, the carriage enters a gate, and we are in a large courtyard, enclosed by two very long wings of the house, running north [actually, west and slightly north] from either end by the west wall of the main building. The wings are one hundred fifty feet long, one story high, and the mansion itself is one hundred feet long, and two stories high, with walls three feet thick; built of adobes. On the south [east and somewhat south] side of the house is a wide, double corridor, completely sheltering the building from heat in summer and storms in winter. The entrance to each of the numerous rooms in both stories is from the corridor.

The writer did not “propose to introduce our readers uninvited into this elegant home, where modesty, worth, wit and beauty lend a charm that wins the heart and lingers in the memory after a visit to this restful retreat,” but merely concluded that “the hospitality is in keeping with the appointments of the mansion and genial natures of the occupants,” with the Bixbys retaining ownership for about a century. Incidentally, it was said that Temple’s nephew, Walter, had Los Cerritos in mind when he laid out his 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival house, La Casa Nueva, with a two-story main block and single-story wings.

With respect to the removal of adobe structures or walls, the 3 June issue of the Express had two brief reports to provide its readers, with one concerning an “old corral” at the corner of Fort (renamed Broadway) and Second streets, and apparently one once owned by Phineas Banning, the “Port Admiral” of Wilmington when he ferried passengers and goods from the rudimentary harbor to town. Three houses were being built there by merchant Isaias M. Hellman, often confused with his banker cousin, Isaias W., and who, the paper stated, “rightly considers it a loss of money to leave the adobe obstruction any longer in so elegant a part of the city.”

Another similar piece of property, though one with a much more important and grisly place in the city’s recent history, mentioned was the “old Tomlinson property,” actually owned previously by Jonathan Temple, on Temple Street between New High and Buena Vista (now where Spring and Broadway generally are). The paper recorded that lumber merchant John M. Griffith sold the former lumberyard for $9,000 and added that the lot was “too centrally and eligibly located to remain much longer encumbered and disfigured by the adobe barricade which surrounds it.” Because of a very heavy gate beam on the Temple Street entrance, the yard was frequently used by vigilantes to summarily execute suspected criminals up and until the Chinese Massacre of 24 October 1871, at which time the gate was torn out.

The Los Angeles Herald, also of 3 June, made mention of Hellman’s plans for the Second and Fort corral property and commented on it in an usual fashion:

Thus, one by one, the old landmarks are fading away and are supplanted by the evidences of thrift and enterprise. Every adobe wall which fails contributes five hundred dollars towards the prosperity of Los Angeles.

Previous parts of this post have made reference to Calle de los Negros, a street named in the Mexican era for a dark-skinned Latino and which, from the late 1860s became the city’s Chinatown. Almost always discussed in the press for its degraded structures, rampant crime and the general undesirability of its Chinese residents. The 6 August issue of the Herald issued another denigration of this section of town and specifically about its adobe edifices.

Hearkening to the themes that animated almost all discussion about the Chinese and their community, including the buildings in which they dwelled, the paper spared no pains in issuing its denunciations:

Negro Alley, the Chinese quarters, has, as all know, on either side long rows of tumble-down adobe buildings, which present all of the characteristics of ancient ruins, with little of their usually attributed poetry . . . Here and there the roof has taken a crazy tilt up or down, the soil which covered it in lieu of thatch is gone and numberless sky-lights [holes] improvised by time and the elements let streaks of sunshine through the fast decaying mass.

The buildings are divided into little apartments, low ceiled, and almost guiltless of windows, and these are filled to their utmost by Celestial humanity, in all of its various phases . . . Besides accommodating the necessary channels of trade, the apartments all do double duty as domiciles, lodging and eating houses, and establishments whose character we shall state hereafter [meaning, brothels, opium dens and others].

Nothing, naturally, was said about why these conditions existed, if as described, with respect to limits on what the Chinese could do occupationally, where else they could reside and other factors that would apply to almost any other ethnic enclave, such as the ghettos of New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and, in California, San Francisco. In Los Angeles, such locations as the Calle and Sonoratown would be designated as barrios and little attention paid to the conditions which fostered and maintained these environments from a broader economic, political and social perspective.

Earlier in this post, reference was made to the decrepit conditions of the city’s administrative quarters in the Rocha Adobe on the west side of Spring Street between Temple and First streets, though absent, of course, of the vitriol leveled at the adobe structures of the Calle. Remarkably, however, there was some positive news in the Herald of 9 August about the edifice, as it was noted, with some sarcasm, that “the magnificent adobe building used by the city for municipal purposes, is looking up.” This was because there was a “bran[d] new coat of plaster,” albeit “in sundry places,” as well as “a complete covering of whitewash,” which, the paper allowed, meant that “the building now gives a very elegant appearance.”

Just more than two weeks later, though, in its edition of the 26th, the Express quotes from a journalist from the San Diego Union and its “shameful description of our magnificent public buildings,” again, tongue was firmly planted in cheek here. The journalist from the southern burg commented that “while the city and county are making rapid strides in material prosperity the public buildings are a disgrace to both.” The account continued:

The Mayor and Common Council meet in a squat adobe building in a room more resembling a jail dungeon than a place where the City Fathers of a growing city of twelve thousand inhabitants are wont to hold their sittings. The surroundings are in keeping with the building.

Even Jonathan Temple’s Market House, a two-story brick structure completed in 1859 and converted within a couple of years for city and county purposes, was called “a pokey old concern in the worst possible location and utterly unfitted both in size and construction for the purpose to which it is applied.” Neighboring counties, like San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Barbara all had more “ornamental and useful” public buildings, but “Los Angeles, largely their superior in wealth and population, and claiming to be the ‘star’ county of Southern California, still dawdles along contented with public buildings that would disgrace a fifth rate county.”

Another locale on the outskirts of which there was brief mention of its adobe buildings was San Gabriel, best known for its stone mission church that is still with us. The Express of 31 August contained an account of a visit in which the visitor observed that there was “here and there a cottage of modern architecture vainly struggling, amidst its dense foliage, for superior recognition among the weather-worn and ancient adobes, which lord it in that curious old relic of a by gone civilization.” As to the mission church, it was dismissively adjudged “that old and rusty pile.”

Taking its place among the aforementioned descriptions of the Angel City was one from the Herald of 23 September by R.D. Pitt, a recent transplant from San Francisco and who wrote back to that city’s Call about his impressions of his new home. Pitt called Los Angeles “the Queen City of the South” as it would soon be “the capital of all southern California” and he observed that “nature has done everything for her” in terms of climate. He asserted that it would be essential “in attracting the wealthy from all parts, whose taste and money are rapidly adding to the beauty of the valley.” With a bit of a poetic touch, Pitt added that “with the soft Pacific breeze comes the fragrance of the orchards and orange groves perfuming the air,” this would be an oft-stated element of the region in promotion in subsequent decades.

When it came to Los Angeles and its orientation, however, Pitt was perturbed, as he stated by it and Latino residents,

The town itself is not well laid out, owing to the streets being originally formed by the old California natives, whose adobe buildings still occupy a large proportion of the place, but they are gradually giving away [sic] to the modern brick house. Great difficulty is experienced in purchasing lots from the Mexican residents, as they have a great dislike to sell their little homesteads, as long as they can borrow or mortgage, and they continue to live in the most primitive style; but how the great majority of them earn a living, is a puzzle. The male portion is constantly riding about [on horseback?], and seem to enjoy life, while they wonder at the advanced progress the Americans are making on all sides.

Pitt’s attitude was increasingly becoming more of the norm—if not overtly racist, then certainly dismissive of the cultural differences, not to mention the worsening economic status of the Californios, whom he seemed to be describing, if not Latinos broadly. Another manifestation, as noted above, of the perspectives concerning adobe structures came from claims about the health of those living in them and from an official view.

The city’s health officer, Dr. J.H. McKee, in his regular report in early October to the Common (City) Council, commented that the city was free from contagious disease outbreaks during the previous quarter. He, however, noted that scarlet fever was erupting and added that “the mortality in our city among children has been disproportionately great for such a salubrious climate as ours and if the cause exists in our badly ventilated and old adobe houses with their imperfectly cleansed premises, the vigilance of the health officers cannot be too faithfully applied to correct it.” What this was to involve, including in the context, of what was just stated about the condition of those residing in the structures was, however, not stated or reprinted.

Finally, there is an interesting tidbit in the Herald of 18 November, which published a history of Fort Moore Hill by Juan José (Jonathan Trumbull) Warner, a resident of nearly a half century and an expert on Los Angeles history. In his account, he corrected the widely held notion that the only fort constructed on the eminence immediately west of the Plaza was in early 1847 by American troops after the seizure of the pueblo during the Mexican-American War by noting that an earlier version, incomplete as it was, was started by Governor Manuel Micheltorena.

Michetorena was sent by the government in México City to be chief executive of the department, as it was then known, of Alta California, but, as was usually the case, the Californios, distinguishing themselves from Mexicans as necessarily self-sufficient because of a lack of material and monetary support, were unhappy with this imposition. It was made worse by Micheltorena’s attitudes and actions, as well as his small retinue of armed personnel denigrated as cholos, said to have been paroled from prison to serve the governor.

In any case, Warner informed readers that a visitor to the hill could “trace the almost obliterated but still unmistakable forms of the adobes” from Micheltorena’s unfinished redoubt, and that “the wall, which no doubt was once considered formidable, has crumbled to the shapeless mass of earth which we now see.” He added that, “in a few years, improvement march over the spot, and with pick and shovel will obliterate even the few landmarks which now remain.” Consequently, he concluded, “when none of the old inhabitants,” like him, “are left to tell the story, from such records as this [article] only can the people of the busy city know that once above them rose a Fort Hill.”

With this, we’ll return tomorrow with the eighth part of this post, taking us into 1875, so please check back with us then!