by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In the early 1920s, greater Los Angeles embarked on another of the booms that characterized its massive growth starting about a half-century prior with the frenzy including major bonanzas in manufacturing, motion pictures, oil and real estate, among other industries. Walter P. Temple, in a stunning reversal of fortune, made a significant amount of money from oil accidentally discovered on his Montebello-area ranch in 1914 and unearthed from wells brought into production starting three years later.
By 1920, Temple was being represented by attorney George H. Woodruff, a Vashon College (in Washington state) Stanford University graduate who came to the region about two decades prior and worked as a principal at the boys’ reform school in Whittier before being admitted to the bar. After a brief stint as the city attorney, following some post-graduate study at Stanford, Woodruff was counsel for two Los Angeles title insurance firms and then went into private practice.
This included a short period on his own and partnerships with Fred D. McClure and Clyde C. Shoemaker, with the latter firm becoming quite successful in the Angel City. From early on in his years in Los Angeles, moreover, Woodruff showed an vibrant interest in business, including in oil, automotive-related endeavors and others. In 1912, he, his wife Nellie Brittan and their children moved from the west side of Los Angeles to the rural confines of Sierra Madre Villa, a subdivision tucked between Pasadena and Sierra Madre where a hotel once operated.
Last weekend, local residents and historians Marlene Griffith and Gregory McReynolds provided me with a detailed walking and driving tour of the area, including a visit to the Woodruff house, which began as a single-story cottage in the late 19th century and was expansively remodeled by the Woodruffs into something of a Neoclassical dwelling. On the ten-acre property, citrus and avocados were raised, with a large reservoir to the west (partially still surviving) for irrigation.
Not long after signing on as Temple’s counsel, Woodruff joined him in a number of real estate ventures, including the construction of downtown office buildings (one of which was the National City Bank Building, with the lawyer being a director of that institution) and smaller commercial structures in several San Gabriel Valley cities, including Alhambra, El Monte and San Gabriel—all of this under the aegis of the Temple Estate Company, formed in 1923.
Also that year, the two men, along with Temple’s business manager, Milton Kauffman, also a key figure in the former firm, and Alhambra sheep rancher and capitalist Sylvester Dupuy formed the Temple Townsite Company to develop the Town of Temple, renamed Temple City five years later. Previous posts here have detailed much of the involvement Woodruff had with Temple’s business projects, but there were many more he had beyond those.
One of the most important of these was the Standard Mortgage Corporation, of which Woodruff was its president when it was incorporated in June 1922. The earliest located reference to the firm was from February 1923, with it noted in a Long Beach newspaper that capitalization was at $2 million. Business was successful enough that, in July, an advertisement in the Los Angeles Express stated that a 7% semi-annual dividend was payable to stockholders.
A short article in the Los Angeles Times of 8 February 1924 noted that Woodruff, retaining the presidency for another year, while Albert R. Walker of the prominent architectural firm of Walker and Eisen, which designed many well-known Los Angeles commercial structures as well as most built by Temple, was the secretary. The article continued that the firm, formed to issue mortgages, trust deeds and real estate securities, was set up so that,
At the time of organization, it was decided not to transact business until the corporation had $100,000 paid up in the treasury of the company. Its first loans were made in December 1922. During the year 1923, the corporation increased its working capital from $100,000 to $450,000 and succeeded in doing business exceeding $600,000. The earnings during the year 1923, were sufficient to pay all dividend requirements to paid-up shareholders . . . and also build up an undivided surplus or profit of approximately $35,000.
Four days later, the company took out an ad touting that it was “Rendering A Public Service” because it was “assisting in the development of Southern California” through providing “the money necessary to build homes, apartment houses and business blocks.” Moreover, it offered mortgages on such projects “to those who demand a conservative investment that not only yields a safe, dependable income but that contributes to the welfare of the community itself.”
In late 1925, Woodruff moved to the role of chair of the board of directors of Standard Mortgage as it was observed by the Times that he was not only a director of the National City Bank, but also of the Great Republic Life Insurance Company, whose Los Angeles building contained the offices of Temple’s several firms, the Security Title Insurance and Guaranty Company and others.
A September 1926 advertisement that company took out as it sold a quarter million dollars in guaranteed gold notes yielding five to six percent from March 1927 to September 1931 showed that the firm had assets of just shy of a million dollars and a net work of about $714,000. The issue was made for “financing and carrying loans made by it (including business loans,) on carefully appraised real estate.” Legal representation, of course, was through Woodruff and Shoemaker.
In September 1928, Standard Mortgage merged with the New York-based United States Bond and Mortgage Corporation to create the California United States Bond and Mortgage Corporation, which involved the importation of some $10 million in capital to the area from the eastern states. With Standard as the loan representative, an ad from the 13th in the Times informed readers and potential customers of the manifold benefits of the new firm in second mortgage financing.
Six new loan plans were touted, half partial and other fully amortizing with ranges of three to five years at 7%. Woodruff was the chair of the board of directors for the entity and was joined in the directorate by Erle M. Leaf, who succeeded him as head of Standard Mortgage and was president of the Los Angeles Steamship Company, as well as Standard’s vice-president, John Coverley, Albert Walker and ten other capitalists.
A project from fall 1924 that appears not to have been directly connected with Standard Mortgage, though funding may well have been obtained from it, was a commercial “garage building” at the southwest corner of Los Angeles and 7th streets, a short distance northwest of the aforementioned Great Republic Life and National City Bank structures. Woodruff and four other partners, including Albert Walker. Walker and Eisen drew up plans for what was to have seven stories of garages with another four levels of light manufacturing space, to cost a million dollars and to be completed within ten months. It doesn’t appear that the effort got beyond the design stage as the Fashion Center Building, soon renamed the Merchants Exchange Building, was constructed there in 1927-1928.
Another of Woodruff’s major business endeavors during the Roaring Twenties was the Security Title Insurance and Guarantee Company, which began in Riverside and, from 1920, spread through seventeen counties in the southern part of California, including a move to Los Angeles once it took over Standard Title Insurance Company. The 22 March 1926 edition of the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News reported that, among new staff brought on board, “one of the outstanding appointments” was that of Woodruff as a director and vice-president.
Observing that “the new appointee has been identified with Pacific Coast activities since 1891,” when the 18-year old enrolled at tiny Vashon College on the Puget Sound island of that name near Seattle, the article continued that,
Mr. Woodruff’s activity and participation in the civic affairs of Los Angeles is testified to by the fact that he is president of the National City Holding Company [which built the structure for the bank mentioned before], vice president of the Great Republic Life Insurance Company, and a member of the board of directors of the National City Bank. The title company that has now secured Mr. Woodruff’s services has built an enviable reputation.
The 9 May edition of the Times announced that the firm was building a commercial structure at the southwest corner of Grand Avenue and 6th Street that was to cost $1.5 million and involve a $10 million, 99-year lease of the property. Here again, Walker and Eisen were the architects and it was mentioned that Woodruff and two colleagues at the Security Title company and Geoffrey Edwards of the development firm of Edwards and Wildey, which built the structure, still standing, at the southeast corner of the two thoroughfares, were purchasers of the lease.
The building was named the Security Title Insurance Building because that company was to “occupy approximately one-third of the ground floor” facing 6th as well as the two floors above that. The published architectural drawing and the finished structure shown in an accompanying image seems to show a more Mayan-influenced design than what is left today. It took more than five months from the announcement before the razing of the existing single-story structure and excavating for the new edifice ensued. By October, the development firm was renamed Edward, Wildey and Dixon.
When the structure opened on 1 August 1927, Edwards & Wildey (Dixon apparently having left after a short tenure) took out a full-page ad in the Times to celebrate its completion, with other ground-floor store tenants including California Bank (which issued loans to Walter P. Temple and, a half-decade later, foreclosed on the Homestead), United Cigar Stores and the Wetherby-Kayser Shoe Company. Offices were taken by attorneys, insurance companies, financial firms, an office for Dolores Bingham, secretary for the Temple Estate Company, and the 12th floor was occupied by Woodruff’s new law firm: Woodruff, Pinney, Musick and Hartke.
At the end of March, the Times reported on the termination of the partnership Woodruff had with Shoemaker, with both retaining separate offices in the Great Republic Life Building for a short period. Notably, the piece observed that the two, partners since 1912, split because Woodruff “has become identified lately with a number of corporations” while Shoemaker “also had acquired interests which caused them to decide to dissolve and each continue the practice of law separately.” Shoemaker, like Woodruff a Stanford alumnus, was said to have “been identified with the concern largely in the handling of the trials of litigated cases,” which suggests the senior partner handled more of the business side and rarely appeared in court.
In February 1929, Security Title effected another merger, this time with the Metropolitan Trust Company of California, so that the former could have a trust department given that competitors did so and “derive an important portion of their income from this source.” Security and its holding company, Consolidated Title Securities Company, had $8 million in assets and it was the third-largest firm of its kind in the Golden State, while Metropolitan brought $1.4 in capital and surplus and $1.5 million in deposits to the deal. It was stated that Woodruff was the vice-president and chair of the executive committee of the expanded firm. At the end of 1929, Consolidated Title Securities completed negotiations for the acquisition of California Title Insurance Company, bringing further expansion to the former since it was created four years before.
Another substantial business investment came when Woodruff and Leaf joined forces in May 1928 to take control of the People’s National Bank, which commanded $4 million in assets and was building a new home on Hill near 4th Street. Among those involved in the enterprise were Albert Walker and a half-dozen other capitalists and the institution soon changed its name to the National Bank of Commerce when the building was completed at the end of June. In January 1929, Woodruff, after the death of John H. Coverley, an executive with Standard Mortgage, was elected vice-president, serving under Leaf who became chief executive after the assumption of the bank.
Summer 1928 brought another Woodruff-led takeover of a financial firm as he joined George L. Eastman, president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and a syndicate comprising the head of Samson Tire Company (which occupied the distinctive headquarters that has lately been The Citadel shopping outlet in the City of Commerce), the president of Western Costume Company which supplied extensive to the film industry, and William S. Witmer, whose father was a prime mover in the Crown Hill neighborhood near downtown, in the assumption of control of Fidelity Savings and Loan.
As a prior post here noted, Witmer’s father and uncle were founders of the California Bank and its California Trust Company subsidiary, while he was also treasurer of the John M.C. Marble Company, mentioned here before with respect to Walter P. Temple’s worsening finances concerning the Temple Estate Company. In fact, a recent post here highlighted a 4 June 1929 telegram from Woodruff to Temple’s son, Thomas W. II, concerning a plan to create a $200,000 bond issue so that the company could pay off bonds for its downtown Alhambra commercial properties—a month or so later, those were sold.
Said to be the largest of its type on the Pacific Coast, Fidelity had assets of more than $28 million. Among the directors of the reconfigured institution were Louis J. Christopher, a confectioner of more than four decades in the Angel City and who was involved with Fidelity Savings and Loan from the 1890s including as president, as well as many other businesses during his long career, which was covered in a holiday post here last year.
As if all this outlined above was not enough, Woodruff, Witmer and Eastman established, in December 1929, the Cortaro Farms Company, which operated near Tucson, Arizona. In Pasadena, Woodruff was a director of the Equitable Building and Loan Association, with a July 1928 article in the Pasadena Post noting that he was “an old resident of Pasadena, and at present makes his home in Sierra Madre.” Woodruff continued his involvement with the Canoga Citrus Association in modern Canoga Park into the mid-1930s, as well.
With respect to the Sierra Madre Villa residence, the Woodruffs sometimes hosted large events there, such as a 1924 gathering of the Whittier College Auxiliary; a June 1926 party for graduates, including their daughter Lois, of Pasadena High School; the Crown City’s College Woman’s Club, of which Nellie Woodruff was an active member—she was briefly president of the high school’s PTA; and the Century Club, another Pasadena organization.
The onset of the Great Depression in fall 1929 and worsening within a few years to terrible levels had an enormous impact of Woodruff’s finances, as it did his client and business partner Temple, not to mention Milton Kauffman (who, however, experienced a late-in-life revival of remarkable proportions as a builder of tens of thousands of houses in the post-World War II period.)
In April 1932, he worked with new Under-Secretary of the Department of the Treasury John Jay Hopkins in the Security Title Insurance and Consolidated Title firms and kept his law offices at the Security Title building, where the Temple Estate Company also operated for a few years with Kauffman as manager there.
That year, he represented a group of petitioners who wanted to create a new city from “the Sunnyslope area in the vicinity of Huntington drive and San Gabriel boulevard,” as reported in the Los Angeles Daily News of 20 September, though there was a separate petition by others to join Pasadena—we’ll cover some of the life of Leonard J. Rose and his Sunny Slope Ranch in posts over the next several days.
During the Thirties, Woodruff continued to work as an attorney, but, by 1940, it appears that he retired and spent more of his time at the Sierra Madre Villa property, where the next-door neighbor as enumerated in the federal census of that year was renowned CalTech chemist Linus Pauling.
On 9 December 1944, Woodruff passed away at age 71 at the residence and an obituary in the Whittier News of the 12th mentioned his years in Whittier and in Los Angeles early in the century, as well as thirty years as a lawyer, but said nothing of his extensive business interests or deep connections to Temple—a reflection, perhaps, of the economic devastation that came as the Roaring Twenties was reduced to a whimper with the Great Depression.
Nellie Brittan Woodruff survived her husband by more than a decade and died at the house in February 1956, after 44 years residing there. Her children did not long keep the dwelling, though eldest son, George, Jr., a physician lived in a surviving house across the street. While owners of the Woodruff place have made changes, as expected, including a major addition to the rear early this century, the structure still stands and the story for its owner of more than three decades is a notable one, especially George Woodruff’s boomtime career as an attorney and capitalist during the Twenties.