by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This latest post in the “Through the Viewfinder” series, highlighting historic photographs in the Homestead’s holdings, is another image of the Temple Block, a group of four brick commercial structures constructed by the brothers Jonathan and F.P.F. Temple between 1857 and 1871 and which was the center of the growing downtown business district at the time this image was taken, which was likely in late 1875, if not slightly later.
When Jonathan Temple acquired the parcel in the Mexican period and where Calle Principal (Main Street) and Calle Primavera (Spring Street) then came to a point where he soon established Temple Street, which headed west toward the hills adjoining the town, he likely could little foresee how prominent the property would become. By the mid-1850s, however, as he wound up the operation, after close to three decades, of his store, the first in the Angel City, he decided to erect the first Temple Block structure at the southern end of the property.
The year was 1857 and a national depression was in place, while Los Angeles’ economy was also in a decline following the end of the Gold Rush and the boon that had been to the “cow counties” of southern California. Two years later, in a wide open space to the south, he constructed the Market House, which was intended to have first floor shops with the lease revenue from them to go to the city government, while the second floor contained the first purpose-built theater in town. The flagging economy, however, led to the conversion of the structure into the county courthouse and city hall.
The financial situation only worsened into the Sixties, with raging floods and terrible drought afflicting greater Los Angeles and leading Temple to abandon Los Angeles for San Francisco. After his death in spring 1866, his widow, Rafaela Cota, sold the Temple Block to her brother-in-law, F.P.F., for $10,000 and this soon proved to be a smart purchase for the 44-year old, who’d come to Los Angeles in 1841 to meet his brother (they were 26 years apart in age and Jonathan left their native Reading, Massachusetts, for Hawaii before F.P.F. was born) and then worked in the store.
For more than fifteen years, F.P.F. was a rancher and farmer, including on half of Rancho La Merced, in the Whittier Narrows area where the San Gabriel River flowed between the Puente and Montebello hills. But, after he acquired the Temple Block and with Los Angeles poised to enter its first significant and sustained period of growth, lasting into the mid-1870s, F.P.F. added three more edifices to the Block between 1868 and 1871. The last of these is prominently shown in our featured photograph and it housed in its northwestern corner (at the right in the view) the new Temple and Workman bank.
The institution emerged from the shuttering of Hellman, Temple and Company, which was launched in fall 1868 as Temple and his father-in-law, William Workman, partnered with the brilliant young Jewish merchant, Isaias W. Hellman, to establish the second bank in town (following Hayward and Company, which featured ex-Governor John G. Downey as a partner.) Hellman, Temple and Company should have been an unqualified success and had Temple let Hellman manage the institution with the ability and acumen that led him to the pinnacle of finance in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who knows how the fortunes of the Temple and Workman family would have fared?
Instead, Hellman terminated the partnership, joined forces with Downey to establish The Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Los Angeles and went on the unparalleled success. Undaunted, Temple and Workman opened their own entirely private bank (meaning no stockholders) in that latest addition to the Temple Block. On the right (west) side of the block in the photo can be discerned a sign reading “Stationery” and this was the long-operating store of Hellman’s cousin, Samuel, who has been previously featured in a post here. His enterprise had entrances on both sides of the block at Main and Spring, as a newspaper reference here shows.
A sign for another Jewish merchant of long-standing in Los Angeles is on the northeast corner of the Block, this being Adolph Portugal (1830-1871). His last name is almost certainly representative of his Sephardic origins in the Iberian peninsula, though Portugal was born in Włocławek, Poland, at that time under the control of Russia (thanks to reader Piotr Fracowski, a native of Włocławek, who pointed out an error that stated Portugal hailed from Wrocław, which is some 200 miles to the southwest). It is unknown how Portugal ended up in Los Angeles, though it might have been something of a “chain migration” effect with news sent back home of the Angel City and its opportunities, especially in the post-1848 Revolution years and ongoing anti-Semitism in eastern Europe.
Whatever the reasons, Portugal established himself as a merchant and, the year after settling in town, became an American citizen. For about a decade, he ran his store and employed the young Isaias Hellman as a clerk before selling the business to the budding financier in 1865. Apparently, Portugal took his proceeds and returned to his homeland, but poor investments led to his return to the Angel City in early 1870, upon which he opened a new store in the Downey Block, part of which is at the right edge of the photo where signs for the establishments of merchants Levy and Coblentz and the watch and jewelry shop of L.W. Thatcher are notable.
With the completion of the Temple Block segment featured in the photo, however, Portugal vacated his quarters in the Downey Block for a prime spot in the new building and he remained there for several years. When, however, the boom that lasted since the late Sixties came to a shocking and sudden end in late August 1875, following a national depression that started two years earlier and continued through the remainder of the decade, the Temple and Workman bank was a startling disaster in its spectacular failure early the next year.
An April 1876 lawsuit filed against the institution, which was in the hands of assignees responsible for collecting debts and paying whatever could be realized for depositors and creditors of the bank, alleged that Portugal was nearly $7,000 in debt to Temple and Workman. It, moreover, charged that
three days after said assignments were made the said [F.P.F.] Temple, fraudulently combining with said Portugal, to defraud the creditors of said firm, did cause the said indebtedness to be satisfied on the books of the firm, and the said Temple then drew his check for the said sum of $6,900 in lieu of said Portugal’s indebtedness to said firm, and ante-dated his check to Jan. 12, 1876 [the last day of operation of the failed institution], and placed the same among the assets of the firm and did fraudulently omit and conceal the indebtedness of said Portugal to the firm.
It seems pretty clear that Portugal contracted his debt in trying to grow his business and the assignees, Daniel Freeman and Edward F. Spence, filed suit against the merchant later in 1876 over the matter of his debt, though Portugal prevailed in a ruling handed down by District Court Judge Ygnacio Sepúlveda. The dire economic environment and his personal financial problems eventually, however, led Portugal to assign his property to another well-known Jewish merchant, Bernard Cohn (later notorious for his lawsuit against former Governor Pío Pico that led to the latter’s eviction from his ranch in what is now Whittier) to satisfy debts.
Portugal spent some time working for a store in Tucson, Arizona Territory, which had many ties with Los Angeles, and then returned to the Angel City, where lived in poverty in his last years. In early 1901, his body was found slouched in the hallway outside his room at a hotel across from the Pico House and just a short distance north of the Temple Block, which was sold to prominent Jewish merchant and civic leader Harris Newmark. The Los Angeles Times commented that “in later years, he met reverses, lost his fortune and for a considerable length of time was supported by some of his old friends,” as Portugal was unmarried, childless and without any relatives in the United States.
As to the photographer of this view, Francis Parker (1827-1920) was, like the Temples, a native of Massachusetts. He may have been a carpenter by trade and the earliest located reference to his camera work was in spring 1873 in San Diego. The 21 September 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Express included a notice that he bought the Photographic Parlors in the Downey Block “and furnished it with new apparatus” so that “none other than the very best photographic work will be allowed to leave the establishment.”
Could this image have been one of Parker’s earliest productions? After all, all he had to do was step outside the Downey Block, walk over to what was likely the upper level of the Bella Union Hotel on the east side of Main Street (the gas lamp post at the lower left was at the intersection with Commercial Street), and take the photo. It is possible the shot was taken later, perhaps between 1876 and 1878, but it would not be surprising if this was part of Parker’s efforts to get well established in what he called the “California Scenery” series.
The Homestead’s collection has several other photographs of Parker, who not only practiced solo during about four years in the Angel City, but had partnerships with Dudley Flanders (who’d previously worked with William M. Godfrey), Charles Hasselman and William N. Tuttle. As has been noted on this blog before, however, photography was a highly competitive and challenging business, especially during difficult economic periods and Parker set up shop in Los Angeles just as the 1875 panic was taking deeper hold.
After about four years, however, he could no longer make a go of it in the Angel City and so he did what many Angelenos did as they sought better opportunities elsewhere, he headed for Tucson, which Portugal would later do. For a short period, he practiced his profession there and in the towns of Patagonia and the notorious Tombstone, but, by summer 1881, he’d headed further east and settled in El Paso. He had personal connections in that Texas border-town as he was married in February 1878 to Amelia Abarta, a Los Angeles native, whose sister Lastania fled to El Paso after her shocking killing in the Angel City of Francisco P. Forster in March 1881.
Parker remained in El Paso for close to thirty years and ran a photography studio. After Amelia’s death, he, in 1889, wedded Pauline Sanger, though it appears Parker had no children. In 1909, he and Pauline moved to San Diego and, while Parker was in his 80s, it appears he continued as a photographer for several more years before retiring. He died in March 1920 at the age of 92, with his widow following sixteen years later.
For those interested in early Los Angeles photography, Parker is not as well known as such figures as Henri Penélon, Stephen Rendall, Godfrey, and Henry T. Payne, but we are to happy to have a pair of excellent views of downtown Los Angeles during the time of its first major growth period, along with several carte de visité portraits, including an extremely rare one of a police officer in uniform, this being of Francis Carpenter, also a long-time jailer.
We’ll continue to roll out further posts in the “Through the Viewfinder” series, sharing some of the excellent photos in the Museum’s collection, so be sure to keep such offerings in view and find out more about greater Los Angeles history through these visual representations.
Hey Paul I always love these articles that you write! You must spend hours researching and writing them as they are so informative and well written! I love Los Angeles history and if I could I would go back and obtain a degree in History and work for a historic site as you do. Where did your love of history come from? I admire your efforts and perseverance!
Thanks very much, Dana, for the kind words and, yes, generally devoting late nights or weekend days to sharing the Museum’s collection through this blog. A fascination with history was always there, but no knowledge to speak of concerning greater Los Angeles until the long journey at the Homestead began 37 years ago starting with an internship in February 1988. Hard to believe how many years it has been!
As noted in this post, Temple Block not only provided commercial spaces for Jewish merchants to run their businesses in late 19th- and early 20th-century Los Angeles, but it was also, for a time, owned by a prominent Jewish individual. These factors reflect the success and prosperous lives of Jewish immigrants who arrived in California during the latter half of the 19th century, following the 1848 revolutions in Europe.
At the same time, however, another wave of immigrants – from China – faced an entirely different fate. They were hated, scorned, discriminated against, rounded up for expulsion, and excluded through systemic policies. Why did two groups of immigrants, both leaving their homelands in search of better lives in the United States, end up with such opposite outcomes? Did the Chinese commit many crimes? Were they lazy, dependent on social benefits, or reliant on public assistance? On the contrary, they were cautious, law-abiding, and exceptionally hardworking.
This sharp contrast raises questions about the factors that shaped the divergent experiences of these two immigrant groups.
Hi Larry, it is important to bring up this comtrast and, while there was certainly anti-Semitism, the anti-Chinese movement generally highlighted the religion, dress and other aspects that were considered more “alien”, as well as skin color and physical features. As almost all Jews in that period were European, they were considered more acceptable and those, especially, who were successful merchants, one of the few areas of business open to Jews in Europe, often were civic leaders. The complicated nature of immigration in this region and more broadly is always an important issue.