by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Among the many massive manifestations of transformation wrought upon greater Los Angeles by the two booms that took place in the region in the last third of the 19th century, the smaller first one lasting from about 1868 to 1875 and the second much larger one peaking in 1887-1888 during the administration of Angel City Mayor William H. Workman was the marked change in religious practice.
From its founding in 1781 as a small, isolated pueblo in the “Siberia of México” during the waning days of the Spanish empire, for more than eight decades, Los Angeles was fundamentally a Roman Catholic community. As the American era arrived after the seizure of the city during the Mexican-American War, Protestantism very slowly grew, but this was markedly so following the Civil War period.
Moreover, a small, but vibrant Jewish community was established and a synagogue was among its earliest institutions. Other minority populations included African-Americans and the Chinese, but both founded houses of worship early on, with the former creating an African Methodist Episcopal Church and the latter featuring temples for ceremonies and services.
The Boom of the Eighties furthered the growth of mainline Protestant churches, including Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians and others, with the first being the largest and most influential. Though the so-called “Gay Nineties” included a debilitating national depression and six years of regional drought, expansion continued, included in the religious realm.
So, it was to be expected that, among the early issues of the magazine, The Land of Sunshine, which began in May 1894 to capitalize on the important exposure and promotion of greater Los Angeles at the previous year’s World’s Fair at Chicago, an article on “A City of Churches” was published because highlighting this aspect of life in the region was a vital one, along with schools, economic opportunities, and others.
The article began with the claim that “there is not a city in California, and probably not in the United States, that can show a greater proportion of churches to the population than Los Angeles” with ninety-three “representing all the leading dominations of the country and many of less numerical strength.
While it was allowed that the Angel City lacked “grand edifices as [found in] some Eastern cities,” it was remarked that “most of the religious bodies have attractive and comfortable, and in many cases highly ornate, buildings,” this being clearly important in the promotion of the city and region for prospective immigrants.
It is telling that, rather than start with the beginnings of the city and the Catholic faith, the article noted that “the first Protestant sermon was preached in Los Angeles in June, 1850, when a Methodist pastor, erroneously listed as “J.M. Brier,” when it was James Welch Brier, did so at the adobe house of future Mayor John G. Nichols.
It was nearly another decade before the First Protestant Society was established, this being in May 1859, and the first church was the St. Athanasius’ Episcopal, which was completed in 1864 and “stood until a few years ago, having been used for some time as an assessor’s office, and was pulled down to make room for the grounds of the Court House.” It was added that merchant Francis Mellus provided the lot, on the southwest corner of Temple and New High streets for the Presbyterians, but that denomination “built the edifice and transferred it to the Episcopalians.”
The Catholics were covered next, with the observation that “opposite the Plaza, the old center of the business portion of Los Angeles,” though it might be more accurate to refer to it as the center of the community at large prior to the American era, if not later, “stands the oldest church structure now in existence in this city.”
Adding that Franciscan priests established what is generally called the Plaza Church, but was officially La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles, or the Church of Our Lady Queen of the Angels. It was remarked that an inscription was dated 1861 and referred to the dedication of a restored church by “the faithful of this parish to the Queen of the Angels,” but that the edifice was more than seven decades old—its completion dating to the 1820s.
After recording that the cost of all the city’s Catholic churches was almost a half million dollars with 12,000 parishioners and revenues of some $100,000, the article then printed information about the various denominations provided by its leaders. Bishop Francis Mora wrote that the first Catholics in the 44 pobladores who settled Los Angeles relied on the Mission San Gabriel for their spiritual needs, but that “toward the end of the last century they had a chapel in Sonoratown,” a few blocks north of the Plaza Church.
This edifice, Mora continued, “was erected between 1821 and 1827,” just after México won its independence from Spain, “for the special use of settlers and soldiers.” In 1841, the year the Workman family and F.P.F. Temple arrived in the area, “the building was greatly improved,” while, two decades later, Father [John] Blas Raho (listed as “Reho”) “had it frescoed and ornamented.”
It was the current “energetic” priest, M.S. Liebana, who “spent thousands of dollars to have the ceiling raised, large windows opened, and the walls richly frescoed” in the edifice that seated some 600, though Mora observed that, with three masses on Sunday and mostly new congregants at each one, some 1,000 persons worshipped there.
The Bishop then noted that “the old church opposite the plaza became too small for the Catholic population, so in 1876 the new Cathedral,” known as St. Vibiana’s, “was consecrated,” at the southeast corner of Main and 2nd streets. The 80′ wide by 160′ deep structure, designed by Ezra F. Kysor, who is said to have overseen the remodeled Workman House, had a capacity of 2,000, but up to double that number attended the four Sunday masses. Mora concluded that “the Catholic churches of this city are in a flourishing condition” and “the Church does a great deal of important charitable work.”
B.W.R. Tayler, rector of St. John’s Episcopalian Church, reported that the denomination “is strong in Los Angeles, and, as in all large and cultured cities, is growing rapidly” and proudly added that “many of the best known and most prominent of our citizens are members.” Tayler reiterated that St. Athanasius’ was the first Protestant church in the city until the move in 1884 to St. Paul’s on Olive Street between 5th and 6th streets and which had been recently expanded (the site is now the Biltmore Hotel.)
With the growth of Los Angeles came new churches in East Los Angeles (Lincoln Heights), Boyle Heights, near the University of Southern California “in the popular and fashionable portion of the city,” and at “Vernondale,” this being the modern industrial city of Vernon. St. John’s, now a cathedral, was highlighted for its lush landscaping, as well as its choir and music department. Tayler concluded that the church grew so rapidly that there was talk of dividing the California diocese, so that the south had its own based in the Angel City.
J.S. Thompson, pastor of the Church of Unity, noted that the first Unitarian Church services in the city were conducted nearly two decades before at the end of the first boom, though it was not until the second boom ceased, in 1888, that his church was incorporated. An edifice was completed in 1887 on 7th Street, but succumbed to a fire four years later, so the Congregational Church, then taken over by the Baptists, at Hill and 3rd streets was acquired and in which “the seating capacity is 1085, which the regular attendance taxes to the utmost.”
W.R. Blackman, clerk of the First Congregational Church (the denomination of the Temples when they were in Massachusetts, though a conversion to Catholicism was effected when migrating to Mexican California), remarked that a missionary came to the Angel City in 1865 an added that “there had been ministers of all denominations here excepting Congregationalists, but all had gone away.”
After services in the Court House (built by Jonathan Temple as a commercial building), a property was acquired in 1867 and six members organized to build a church on New High Street, a little north of St. Athanasius’. The following summer the church closed, but this was temporary and a new organization ensued in the fall.
Incorporation followed in the mid-Eighties and a new church built at Hill and 3rd, as noted above, but, in 1889, following the boom, the current edifice at Hill and 6th streets, costing $70,000 was completed. Tayler ended his essay by reporting that “the church has met with phenomenal growth, and from a small membership at the time of incorporation it now numbers 534.
First Presbyterian Church Pastor W.J. Chichester wrote that the first service for his denomination in the Angel City was forty years before and an organization effected in 1855, including the acquisition of some property, but he then jumped to the statement that there were nine organized churches in the city with a membership of some 2,800 parishioners. These included a Chinese church with forty members and led by Ng Poon Chow, of whom we’ll hear more in tomorrow’s post, and a “Spanish” one with not quite thirty members.
After recording that “all of the churches have pastors, and are practically free from debt, Chichester discussed the Immanuel Presbyterian Church at Tenth and Pearl (changed in 1897 to Figueroa), where opening services were held early in 1891. He concluded that membership was 1,100, the largest of an Presbyterian church on the west coast, save that of Oakland.
Daniel Read, pastor of the First Baptist Church, wrote that it was ten years prior that the church organized, but it was actually two decades before, in September 1874, but the 11-member congregation was left without a pastor for more than a year and did not have a permanent home, though a place on Spring Street near 5th Street was used.
By 1880, services were held at the Good Templars Hall on Main Street and baptisms were either conducted in the Los Angeles River or a church on Temple Street, but there was another two-year gap without a pastor. In March 1884, the $25,000 church at Broadway and 6th Street was opened and three years later Read became the pastor, with 573 members at the time of his writing.
As powerful as the Methodist Episcopal Church was and would continue to be, the description from J.W. Campbell of the First M.E. Church is brief. The Rev. Adam Bland conducted the denomination’s first service in 1863 and, five years later, a church was dedicated on Broadway between 3rd and 4th streets and still stood as a residence a little to the north of the current edifice.
Campbell reported that “subsequent growth has necessitated the recent purchase, at $35,700, of ground at Sixth and Pearl streets, for an adequate structure,” while he recorded that there were 3,000 members of a baker’s dozen of Methodist Churches and that the property valuation of the aggregate was just north of $160,000.
The article concluded with a list of the 93 churches in the Angel City with this deemed “useful by visitors and new arrivals.” Beyond the denominations discussed above, the list includes the African Methodist Episcopal Church on Azusa Street in what is now Little Tokyo; a Church of God near today Los Angeles Police Department Metropolitan Detention Center; a “Church of the New Era;” German Lutheran churches; the Gospel Tabernacle; Gospel Meeting House; two Holiness Tabernacles; the New Era Church; the Pacific Gospel Union; the People’s Church; the Salvation Army; the Society of Friends, or Quakers; the Stevens African Methodist Episcopal, also on Azusa in Little Tokyo; Swedish churches of the Baptist and Lutheran denominations; a Union Christian Mission; the United Brethren; and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints, or Mormons.
There are also fourteen photographs and drawings of clergy and churches, including of Ng Poon Chew of the Presbyterian Chinese Mission; the Rev. Chester H. Anderson, pastor for twenty years of the African-American operated Second Baptist Church; and Rabbi Abraham Blum of the Jewish Congregation B’nai B’rith which met in the Church of the Unity. It is hardly a surprise that these men and their religious organizations were left out of the main discussion of the article, as were others, such as the Mormons, evangelicals, and the Salvation Army, which were generally viewed with distrust among those represented in the piece.
Tomorrow, which is the 153rd anniversary of the horrific Chinese Massacre of 1871, we return with the Rev. Ng Poon Chew and his contribution to The Land of Sunshine on “The Chinese of Los Angeles.” Be sure to join us then!