by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As head into the late 1920s and the early years of The Great Depression to conclude this post on the Hebrew Sheltering and Home for the Aged and its significant growth during the Roaring Twenties at the five-acre site once comprising the Boyle/Workman family estate, it should be noted that the institution expanded dramatically along with the population, including of Jews, in Los Angeles and that its fundraising efforts also became larger-scale and more sophisticated.
On 15 June 1928, for example, the Los Angeles Express reported that film studio owner Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers hosted Home residents at the company’s theater in Hollywood, where the guests enjoyed the Vitaphone talkie, The Lion and the Mouse, starring May McAvoy and Lionel Barrymore, the latter heard for the first time on screen with the film still surviving.
The same day, the Jewish paper, B’nai B’rith Messenger published an advertisement for the Temple Emanu-El’s men’s club and its hosting of a picnic and bazaar on the grounds. It was added that
Entire proceeds go to the Home for Aged. Come and spread some sunshine! Help us make this a record-breaking event! Bring your family and friends. There will be diversions for all ages. Goodies! Drinks! Games! Entertainment! Surprises!
The 27 April edition of the paper included a summary of a visit to the facility five days prior by the members of the B’nai B’rith fraternal order with a local lodge’s social service committee, chaired by Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney and future Superior Court Judge Benjamin J. Scheinman presiding, meeting in the Home’s administration building, this being Andrew Boyle’s 1858 brick house, extensively remodeled by his grandson William H. Workman, Jr. in 1910.
Of the committee members, several were also directors of the Home, including its president, Barnett Rosenburg, along with Executive Director Max Goldstein, First Vice-President Abraham Mark and Financial Secretary Moses Tannenbaum. After a tour of the institution, committee members, along with those of the women’s auxiliary, enjoyed entertainment, presentations and refreshment with the former including piano duets and singing.
By early 1929, another massive effort was undertaken for improvement of the institution, with the Messenger of 10 May reporting that, along with the Los Angeles Fire Department’s order of condemnation of the 1887 Maria Boyle/William H. Workman residence, a Queen Anne-style wooden dwelling, as well the house of their daughter Charlotte, “the necessity for the new buildings [being planned] has long been recognized by Old Home officials and there have been more or less desultory efforts toward securing a new structure.”
The 2 June issue of the Los Angeles Times included a rendering by Max Maltzman (1899-1971), a Ukrainian-born and Boston-trained architect who became known for his apartment buildings and hotels in Los Angeles, including The Ravenswood, built by Paramount Pictures in Hollywood; the Los Feliz complex, The Northmere; The El Cortez in Santa Monica; and the Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Groundbreaking for the first of four units designed by Maltzman was held that day.
As part of that effort, the Messenger of the 7th published a montage of photos of that event, with at least one showing one of the Workman dwellings in the background. of 21st recorded that the city’s second oldest tree, a magnolia next to the 1887 house, was being removed. In September, briefly recorded the Times of the 15th, Maltzman completed the drawings for a synagogue, measuring 72 x 108 feet and replacing a very small one built earlier in the decade, this being the first of the new structures to be constructed.
The 10 October edition of the Los Angeles Express ran a photo of resident Rebecca Goldblum being cared for by a Home nurse as part of the report that the facility would, as a member of the Community Chest, a charity consortium in the city, receive just shy of $40,000 for its work. Adding that the institution was launched in 1912, the article noted that there was a capacity for 108 residents with minimum age requirements being 60 for women and 65 for men, with religious services held in the existing synagogue three times daily per Orthodox practice, while kosher observances were also adhered to at the facility.
At the end of the month came the terrible Crash on Wall Street that precipitated the Great Depression, yet work pressed forward on the project. The Messenger reported on further groundbreaking in mid-February 1930 and “work was immediately started, and will be rushed to completion so that the large number of deserving applicants,” of whom there would be many more with the increasingly dire economic environment, “now waiting for admission may be taken care of as soon as possible.”
The 16 April edition of the Times remarked that Marco H. Los Hellman, of the very prominent family dating back in the Angel City to the 1850s, was appointed to lead a committee to raise $115,000 for a four-story dormitory and dining hall, as well as the synagogue, with the paper adding,
The new dormitory is to replace cottages [these being the Workman residences] which have been condemned by the fire department and must be torn down.
The following day, enumerator Harry Kahn conducted the count at the Home for the 1930 federal census, including the eight staff and 88 residents, referred to as “inmates,” with many of these latter presumably still in their quarters in the two Workman dwellings. Of these latter, there were four couples, while four residents were the youngest at 65 and the eldest were two at 91—Max Herman Paculla, who was featured in part four, was listed as 93 years of age, but we learned that he was substantially younger than that, being in his late seventies.
The Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News of 3 May published Maltzman’s rendering of the four-story dormitory, in the form on an “L” and this was followed not quite three weeks later by a trio of photos appearing in the Messenger showing progress. The Express of the 28th ran an editorial under the heading of “To Shelter the Aged” and noting that “it is characteristic” of the Jews to heed the appeal for “the necessary rebuilding” of the Home, as they “carry their own burdens, yet generously respond to every appeal from others for aid” as “theirs is genuine philanthropy.”
The piece added that “old frame buildings are thought no longer safe housing and have been condemned by the fire warden” for the purpose for which they’d been used for close to a decade. Time was running out, it was emphasized, to raise the $155,000 necessary for the new complex to replace the Workman houses and the Express concluded,
The Sheltering Home for the Aged is only one of several noble institutions established and maintained by Jews. Maybe this is most worthy of all. To provide for the comfort and save from want those whose burden of years makes them no longer able to care for themselves is a wonderful thing. They are so often forgotten. It is said that there exists in Los Angeles an actual lack of provision for the dependent aged. For that reason among others we wish Mr. Hellman and those working with him speedy success in their worthy undertaking.
The Times of 27 July included images of the nearly completed synagogue, the adjacent dining hall and the dormitory, the latter in a much earlier stage and also connected to the others by a patio, but all with the Romanesque style of architecture much like that of recent edifices at the University of California, Los Angeles campus in Westwood.
The paper continued that the $225,000 project was progressing to the extent that a cornerstone laying and dedication were expected in about six weeks. It added that the dormitory, in addition to the 86 rooms, would have a lobby, therapeutic rooms, a health clinic and a solarium with violet-ray glass, and was anticipated to be complete in about three months.
The dining hall, with a capacity for 600 in the main area containing a speakers’ platform and dance floor, was to also have a 150-seat auxiliary room, as well as two kitchens. Three below-ground levels for storage and supply rooms and dressing rooms were to contain space for meetings of directors.
The 460-person capacity synagogue featured an octagonal prayer room with lighting from leaded glass windows and a domed ceiling with panels of art glass. The east wall contained the ornamental chamber housing the “Aron Kodesh” or Torah scrolls. The last two edifices were projected to be finished within that six week period mentioned above and construction was done by day labor under the oversight of Emil Brown, chair of the building committee.
The synagogue was dedicated on 7 September and the Express of the previous day reported that “many prominent rabbis and cantors will be present and a colorful feature of the program will be the sacred ceremony of transferring the Torahs from the old synagogue into the new temple.” It was added that the synagogue was not just for use by Home residents, but by those in the surrounding area.
The 26 September edition of the Messenger included a photo with portraits of two patients, Minnie Keppie, said to be the youngest resident at 76 (though the census showed many persons who were younger), and 103-year old Sarah Silverstein, the eldest, )though she was not listed in the census five months prior), superimposed in front of the dormitory. An accompanying article stated that the two were signatories, on behalf of the 100 residents, in Jewish New Year greeting cards sent to the fellow Jews and it continued,
These aged people are awaiting with deepest anxiety the result of their gesture, hoping that the good people of this community will respond to their appeal with generosity, that the coming year may witness the completion of their new home.
While the synagogue was finished, awaiting some furnishings, and the dining hall was nearly done, the dormitory was further away from realization and the article ended with the exhortation that “only the generous contributions of the Los Angeles Jewish community will make the completion and furnishing of this building possible.”
It was almost another eight months, but, finally, on 18 May 1931, with the Express of that day informing readers, “a golden key today opened the doors, figuratively at least, of the $250,000 group of buildings too 100 inmates of the Hebrew Sheltering Home for the aged.” The symbolic key was presented by the head of the Home’s president’s committee to Hellman, who, in turn, handed it to the institution’s head, Abraham Mark. Music from a band and choir, an invocation and speeches by Scheinman and the Catholic lawyer Joseph Scott, were also part of the program. The Times, in its similar account, added that 5,000 visitors toured the trio of structures.
The Messenger of the 21st reported that there were 6,000 persons present at the ceremony, in which “purchasing the honor of opening the doors . . . was the high light,” with $1,000 being paid for the main golden key and $100 for smaller versions—$11,000 was realized that day from such sales and others. The paper noted that the main hall of the dormitory was “crowded to capacity” for the dedication exercises.
Despite the Depression, which worsened considerably in 1932 with the failing of thousands of banks nationwide, the achievement embodied in the completion of the dining hall, dormitory and synagogue, built on the spot of the pair of Workman family residences, was truly a remarkable one and a testament to the community spirit of Los Angeles Jewry. On 7 January 1939, the institution’s name was formally changed to the Jewish Home for the Aged after several years of that moniker generally being used.
The Jewish population of Boyle Heights was significantly reduced after the Second World War and, while the facility had eleven structures, including the seven-story medical building, finished in 1950 and named for long-time supporter, silent film star Mary Pickford, it was sold early in March 1975 to the Japanese operators of City View Hospital and two nursing homes in Lincoln Heights run by the non-profit Keiro organization.
Some 250 residents were relocated to the Jewish Home for the Aged in Reseda, which still operated and windows from the synagogue, rededicated for Christian and Buddhist services, were also sent there, while the dual kosher kitchen became a laundry as well as food preparation area. The new institution, called the Keiro Retirement Home and then Keiro Intermediate Care Facility, had to raze the old Boyle House after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but was as much a Boyle Heights institution in its time as the Jewish Home was in its era.
In 2016, however, the facility was sold to the for-profit Pacifica Companies, which renamed it Sakura Gardens. Yet, the firm, citing significant operating losses, soon announced plans for conversion to multi-family residential units, alarming existing residents, their families, and community groups like Boyle Heights Community Partners, which has been aiming for a City Historic-Cultural Landmark designation for the campus. Part of this involves the history of the site dating back to the Boyle and Workman family occupancy for some six decades, as well as the earlier years of the Paredon Blanco period.
One example of how societal values and human perspectives have evolved significantly over the past 100 years can be seen in the post from a cited report on the Los Angeles Express dated October 29, 1929, about the Hebrew Sheltering Home. The report described the home’s policy of accepting residents with a minimum age requirement of 60 for women and 65 for men. While this simple and straightforward policy may have seemed reasonable at the time, it would likely face significant challenges today regarding issues of age discrimination and gender equality.
In the 1920s, women were often perceived as aging earlier, having shorter life expectancies, being more economically dependent, and having less access to retirement benefits. However, by today’s standards, these concerns are no longer relevant, and life expectancy trends have shifted favoring women over men.
Furthermore, the strictly binary concept of gender, which persisted well into the 21st century, has evolved for today’s public statements and policies to acknowledge a broader spectrum including LGBTQ+ gender identities and sexual orientations.