by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In the frenzied ferment of the Boom of the 1880s, a large number of real estate subdivisions and tracts, as well as towns, sprung up all over greater Los Angeles. Many of these were placed along railroad routes in the hinterlands, most notably the Santa Fe in the northern San Gabriel Valley, or along new streetcar lines, including those operating with cable, within the limits of the Angel City.
The subdivision that is the focus of this post, thanks to an April 1900 photo in the Museum’s collection, is St. James Park, which was part of a cadre of subdivisions in close proximity to the University of Southern California, founded in 1880 across from Agricultural (Exposition) Park, and which catered to the growing upper class of residents who wanted suburban living with reasonable access to downtown Los Angeles, which was aggressively expanding during that period.
The project was launched in August 1887, amid the height of the Boom, which took place during the administration of Angel City Mayor William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, and its main figures were J[ohn] Downey Harvey and George Wilson King, while Harvey’s real estate partner, Frederick Harkness, also deserves mention for his role, though his name is not often linked in contemporary media accounts to the subdivision.
Harkness (1852-1905) was born in New York state and came to California with his family at age 11, living in San Francisco and then Santa Barbara, where he had a strong interest in race horses and lived until 1884 when he migrated south to the Angel City and became a clerk at the Pico House hotel. He then was employed at the Nadeau Hotel before becoming secretary of the City Railroad and Central Railway streetcar lines under the control of the powerful banker and landowner Isaias W. Hellman.
Harkness’ partnership with Harvey was followed by one with former county treasurer and Los Angeles Mayor Thomas E. Rowan before he returned to Santa Barbara to work in that region’s booming oil industry. In 1904, he once more settled in the Angel City and died there of heart disease—notably, his political involvement including managing campaigns for United States Senator George Hearst and working in an effort by the latter’s son, William Randolph Hearst, the powerful media titan, to secure a Democratic Party nomination for President in 1904, though this was unsuccessful.
J. Downey Harvey (1860-1947) was a native Angeleno, being the son of William H. Harvey and Eleanor Downey, the sister of John G. Downey, a druggist, landowner and, when his nephew was born, governor of California. In fact, patronage was given to William Harvey, who served as registrar of the federal land office and then commissioner of immigration at San Francisco when he suddenly died in 1861.
Eleanor later married Edward Martin, a prominent San Francisco figure who came to California during the Gold Rush and operated in real estate before helping to establish the Hibernia Bank and then a wholesale liquor business. When Martin died in 1880, he had an estate of a couple million dollars and Harvey was well-positioned to pursue his business interests with support from his mother and his uncle.
In fact, after a short period operating a store at Yuma, Arizona Territory, Harvey came to Los Angeles and was John Downey’s representative in leasing space in the Downey Block and in the subdivision and sale of the Downey Orange Orchard, situated at the southern terminus of Main and Spring streets at 9th Street.
A major in the 7th Infantry Battalion of the California National Guard, Harvey was vice-president of the Temple Street Cable Railway and then, as the Boom ramped up during 1886, was a founder of the Los Angeles Development Company and purchased land adjacent to what became St. James Park, having already established a home on Figueroa Street.
At the end of 1886, Harvey joined a syndicate that purchased some 17,000 acres of mountain and valley land embracing the Rancho Providencia, in the southeastern portion of the San Fernando Valley. The Providencia Land, Water and Development Company was formed and, in early 1887, a portion of the tract was set out for the town of Burbank. By then, another investor in the scheme was the third major figure at St. James Park.
George Wilson King (1830-1916), hailed from Wheeling, located on the Ohio River across from the Buckeye State and then still part of Virginia (it became a major city in West Virginia when statehood was granted in 1863 during the Civil War). King, like Edward Martin, was a Gold Rush migrant and found some success in the mines, but then went to La Salle, Illinois, where he became a successful wholesale grocer by 1860 with a self-reported estate of some $25,000 and operations also conducted at St. Louis.
A decade later, King was in New York City, where he was listed in the 1870 census as an “importer of coffins” and declared his assets as $44,000. Subsequently, he dealt in coffee, sugar and tea and did so well that, in 1881, he retired from business and soon moved to Los Angeles. He quickly amassed an impressive real estate portfolio, including a subdivision in East Los Angeles (now Lincoln Heights), the Montana Tract where Echo Park is today, the Seabright tract at the west edge of Long Beach, ranch land at La Habra in north Orange County and interests in property served by the Temple Street Cable Railway.
King’s entry into the Providencia project, where he owned 1,500 acres of farm and orchard land and leased large sections of the Verdugo Mountains to grazers, led to the partnership with Harvey and, then, Harkness at St. James Park. In fall 1886 and spring 1887, Harvey acquired the property of John O. Wheeler, a long-time Angeleno who once co-owned the Southern Californian newspaper and was a federal and state judicial clerk as well as interested in street railroads, in the vicinity of St. James Park.
Just after completing a new house on Figueroa Street just south of Adams Boulevard, the 24 July 1887 edition of the Los Angeles Herald reported that Harvey “and others” purchased, for $50,000, “the magnificent place of Mrs. John F. Godfrey, on Adams street.” The Los Angeles Times of the same day added that, while she kept her house, “the rest of the land—ten acres—will be subdivided at once and placed on the market by the new owners.”
Nellie Treat was the third wife of John F. Godfrey, a Union Army Civil War veteran and attorney who arrived in Los Angeles in 1874 and immediately bought the Adams Street land, planting it to oranges. Godfrey, who served as Los Angeles City Attorney for two terms from 1876 to 1880, was the law partner of Stephen M. White, later a United States Senator who played a crucial role in the Free Harbor Fight in which the federal government decided that today’s Port of Los Angeles was to be developed with its funding.
The Times of 21 August then ran an advertisement stating, under the heading of “St. James Park, on Adams Street”:
Subdivision of the “Beautiful Godfrey Tract,” with archways leading to the center of the tract, where an exquisite park of one acre is reserved for the benefit for the purchasers, in the center of which is a fine fountain surrounded with flowers and grass plots, intersected with fine cement walks six feet wide; streets paved with bituminous rock; gas and water on each lot; ample sewerages laid throughout. A chance for the finest homes in America.
The 4 September edition of the Herald provided another ad with more detail about the subdivision, with agents J.W. Green and Company, located in the Nadeau Block where Harkness formerly worked, imploring readers “it will be an advantage to secure lots in this delightful retreat at an early day, as the number to be sold will be limited.”
In addition to repeating some of the info from the earlier piece, Green and Company noted that there was to be “a beautiful drive entering from Adams street,” but the emphasis was on the private park as it was remarked that,
This park will be entered through a magnificent gateway of sculptured stone, rivaling the famous Arc de Triomphe of Paris, illuminated at night by refulgent [brightly shining] chandeliers. It is becoming certain that this beautiful spot will be adorned by the most costly residences yet erected on this coast. Our readers will remember the beautiful St. James Park in London, crowded with exquisite villas . . . It is the intention of the owners of the delightful square in our good city of the Queen of the Angels to reproduce, under fairer skies and more lofty surroundings, this chef d’oeuvre of European landscape beauty.
Two days later, the paper reprinted what was said to be a letter from a “French Traveler,” who professed to be pleased to hear of the comparison to the Parisian landmark and concluded, after a description of it, that “I rejoice that Los Angeles will rival Paris.” This strange corollary of famous portions of the French and British capitals is notable and it was said that the name of St. James Park was bestowed on the new tract by King who made annual trips to Europe, including after he built a “cottage” that still stands on 23rd Street at the north edge of the subdivision.
With the development of the infrastructure, an early reference to a house built at St. James Park came in the Los Angeles Express of 17 February 1888 in an article titled “The Building Boom” and an unnamed architect showed a reporter “designs for a magnificent residence for E.T. Wilber, to be built on his lot in St. James Park, this city, which will stand Mr. Wilber in, complete, about $20,000.” It was to be built in “a free treatment of the English Gothic style, contains about 18 rooms and will be one of the finest homes in town.”
The Times of 29 April published an account by “The Saunterer,” this being Eliza Otis, wife of the paper’s owner, Harrison, who encountered a friend who offered to show the scribe “not only the new homes which are being built, but a pretty park that is being laid out there.” The pair drove down Figueroa, turned right on Ellis Avenue, now 23rd Street, and then south on Scarff Street, lined with eucalyptus and pepper trees, “till we reached the 10-acre tract that was formerly Col. Godfrey’s home place” and it was expressed that the late lawyer would not recognize what became of his property.
While some of the orange orchard remained, “in the heart of the tract is now what is known as ‘St. James’s Park'” and circular asphalt drives with lawns aplenty included medians with artificial stone curbs and planted in flowers and shrubs. Sidewalks of the same stone-like material had edging to be planted with flowering plants and trees. Moreover,
In the center of the park, from its pedestal of red sandstone, rises a bronze standard with a branching top, each of which five branches supports a handsome electric lamp. In the center of two of the grass plats are good-sized paved tennis grounds surrounded by trees. Among the trees already planted, independent of the orange, are acacias of every variety, magnolias, sequoia gigantea, cedars, numberless varieties of palms, loquats, jacrantha [jacaranda] and numerous others of tropical variety. The flowering plants, which are to blossom by the driveways, are of the choicest in the floral kingdom. This park is a new departure for Los Angeles, and could we have it duplicated and multiplied, the Angel City would soon possess charms such as could not be easily outrivaled. The beautiful modern Los Angeles is tending in this direction—Los Angeles clothed in the magnificence of elegant architecture, of flowery pastures, of orchards and gardens, in which are set homes of taste and beauty, telling of the new era of culture, wealth and refinement that is dawning for her. What a contrast between this era and that of the crumbling adobe and the tiled roofs of the generations that are gone.
You certainly would be hard-pressed to find another statement emblematic of the elitism that embraced this section of the rapidly growing Angel City, while it is worth noting that the call for duplicating and expanding such parks as St. James came during what might be referred to as a “park boom” in Los Angeles. It was during this period that Westlake (MacArthur), Eastlake (Lincoln), Hollenbeck and Elysian parks were established and Griffith J. Griffith’s massive 3,000-acre donation was several years away. After the 19th century, however, the establishment of parks was very sparse.
The Times of 9 June provided a brief description of the park, but complained that it was “so far from the center of town that few loungers ever get out there” while the paper commented that “it is not so public as the other places, and does not attract so many people.” There were Sunday pleasure drives, while “on account of its exclusiveness, small parties often resort to it for tennis games, and many a pleasant little picnic is held there.” It was allowed that “the grounds are pretty and well-kept, and have more flowers about them than any of the others,” but, if it was only closer to the city center, “it would be the most beautiful and most popular place of the town.”
There were other remarks about thefts of the oranges in the grove, with the Times of 19 March observing that “there is hardly a day but complaints are made about raids on orchards in the suburbs,” with some denizens threatening to take out summary punishment on offenders. Under the heading of “Very Bad People,” the Express of 18 May reported on “a gang of hoodlums and petit [petty] thieves that congregate on Adams street, near the St. James Park” and who “by their hilarious and boisterous manner make night hideous.” Moreover, two locals reported that their houses had been burglarized.
The Express of 11 September, issued as a new flurry of advertising for St. James was launched, remarked that,
This is a private park for the mutual benefit of the adjacent property owners, thirty-eight in all. It is a beautifully laid out park, with drives and walks leading to it, and is lighted by gas. Already eastern capitalists have come, and seeing the many advantages of such a location, have bought lots and commenced the erection of fine substantial residences, with more soon to follow.
It was considered a novelty that Albany, New York migrants, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Ackerman were building a $7,000 house that was of her design “differing from most modern styles” and that “it will be remembered as the only residence in the city where there ceremony (or burlesque) of laying a corner stone was performed.”
Yet, the boom was going bust. Despite the proclamation of a visiting Oakland city council member that “I would not live anywhere but in Los Angeles” because “it is a paradise,” Harvey and King were forced to file lawsuits against purchasers not fulfilling the terms of the contracts, including one in December 1888 in which not a dime of the $7,875 price was paid, even as Margaret Hughes completed a dwelling on the lot. In May 1889, a mortgage foreclosure was filed by the two for $6,750 and 10% interest on two lots, though it took five months for this latter to lead to a favorable judgment.
By March 1889, King was advertising for lots at St. James Park including some 500 feet of Adams Street frontage at a “great reduction.” In November 1891, he and Harvey decided to offer the park to the City. The Express of the 9th stated that the property “is one of the most valuable plots of the kind in the city” and “the reason for the gift is that the owners live abroad, the park needs to be kept up and it was desirable that the city should have the care of it.”
While one council member was suspicious concerning “the cause of this spontaneous generosity” by Harvey and King, the park was quitclaimed by them to the City and St. James Park has remained a city park for more than 130 years—though it looks nothing as described above! King did continue owning and selling St. James property into the 20th century, though. Moreover, the area has changed a great deal, along with the adjacent Chester Place of Charles Silent, which also did not develop as hoped. Mount St. Mary’s University, the Girls Academic Leadership Academy, parking lots and apartments are part of the transformation, though there are some late 19th century houses and the park still there today.
For a wealth of information on St. James Park, check out pages from the Historic Los Angeles blog.