by Paul R. Spitzzeri
After a brief announcement in early January 1877 that Robert S. Baker was planning a building on the property on the east side of Main Street at Arcadia Street which his wife Arcadia Bandini Stearns inherited from her late spouse, Abel Stearns, and comprising the large single-story El Palacio (The Palace) adobe house and the Arcadia Block and Stearns Hall, the next located report came that April.
The Los Angeles Star of the 11th reported that “the old Stearns mansion . . . will soon give way to a more pretentious structure, to be known as the Baker Block and, about two months later, the Los Angeles Express (which counted Baker as one of its stockholders) , remarked that “architects are working on the plans for Col. Baker’s new block. It will cost $125,000,” this being a substantial sum for the time and place, as will be pointed out below.
The 6 August 1877 edition of the Express went into great detail about the project in a piece that began with the observation that, “for no less than forty-three years the old Stearns dwelling . . . has been a distinctive feature of Los Angeles” being built by Abel in 1834 “and a portion of it has been occupied by the family as a dwelling continuously since that time,” including after he married Arcadia seven years after its completion.
The date was “a little misty” as the paper sifted through “the most authentic legends,” but it was generally accepted that Stearns bought the property with an existing adobe house on it and “this he modeled over, extended and rebuilt until he produced the house which we now see” with it added that “the walls are of [the] most massive and enduring adobe, and the girders [wood beams] of the roofs are something prodigious,” with the wood hauled down from the San Bernardino Mountains.
Old-time residents like Frank Carpenter, Vincent Hoover and Stephen C. Foster offered their recollections, with the latter stating that, in 1834, the existing structure was four rooms, though he couldn’t recall who built it. Foster added that the last addition was the southern end, completed in 1847. The account observed,
In the early days the Stearns mansion was, no doubt, justly entitled to rank as a structure of importance. The adobe walls forming its single lofty story, the open paved court in front, backed by the wide verandah, the projecting wings on either end, and the carriage drive through its central corridor, all gave it significance as a first representative of the buildings of its time. Don Abel Stearns was a man of affluence and enterprise, and there is no reason why he should not have provided himself with the very finest residence in town.
Over the years, of course, came “remarkable revolutions” in the Angel City’s architecture and construction with brick and wood frame edifices springing up and these “outshone” El Palacio, o that “answering to the inexorable laws of progress, its laurels and bays were scattered to the winds.” Added the Express, “long since, the house had outlived its days of ornament and usefulness, and was voted a relic of the past which the ungrateful town felt it would be better for her to sever her connection with and no know more forever.”
Therefore, the account continued, “Col. Baker, desiring to keep pace with the advancement of the times, has determined to raze the old walls of adobe, and, in their stead, erect a structure of greater pretentions and more modern design.” This was generally true of many people of that era, though the Workmans at their home on Rancho La Puente, chose to retain the original 1840s adobe core of three rooms and add new brick ones at the corners as well as a second floor. With its prominent location on Main Street, however, the Stearns adobe was destined for destruction.
The paper, however, offered this interesting analysis about the old and new:
There seems an appropriateness in the thought that the old buildings which comes down to us as the first [meaning, evidently, finest, not oldest] representative of its day, and which has looked upon the growing town with a short of calm implacable dignity for all these years, should surrender its place at last to a building which is to be no less a shining example of the most improved modern architecture. The dignity and aristocracy of the line descends from sire to son.
The Express expressed itself as pleased to announce that the plans for the new structure were approved and, after some details were decided, bids taken out for work to begin. It added that four architects submitted ideas, including the best-known of era, Ezra F. Kysor (whose Pico House, St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, Mount Pleasant (Perry) House, and, it is presumed, the Workman House at the Homestead, are still with us), along with Charles W. Davis, Mathews and Sons of Oakland (one of the family, Walter, was recently a partner of Kysor) and Buchanan and Herbert.
While all were praised as “most elegant,” the general consensus (by the Bakers?) was that “the palm was [to be] awarded” to the latter. Spencer H. Buchanan had recently designed the palatial Boyle Heights residence of John and Elizabeth Hatsfeldt Hollenbeck and he’d taken on a partner, Charles E. Herbert, at the start of the year. The pair were “entitled to the heartiest congratulations on this grand triumph, which we are confident is well merited, and the Express added that “beyond the plan of the building, the very idea of its construction belongs to them by courtesy, for it was the submission of a design originally drafted by them to Col. Baker which determined him upon building it.” The firm, the paper added, was sure to ascend to the ranks of top architects in California with this project.
Given access to the plans rendered by Buchanan and Herbert, the Express remarked that the three-story brick structure, facing 182 feet on Main and 100 on Arcadia to the north, would have an iron front, a common feature of the period, and “will be of the Classic order of architecture in the main” and the brick to be covered with cement beyond the iron front. The cornices were to be of a “Renaissance style, heavy and ornate” and the roof to be a French Second Empire mansard-type with a balustrade and the three distinctive towers, with the central one 106 feet from the street and the others at 75. The iron front was to be designed according to “the principles of the Corinthian and Roman impost and arch” and much the same for the first and second levels, while the third to be “constructed of brick in vertical pilasters, with the exception of the centre which maintains the iron columns and has a series of triple windows, surmounted by a pediment and the main tower.”
That central tower “is purely Classic, supporting an ornamental dome upon open columns and leaving the space within, either for purposes of observation [a feature of the Hollenbeck resident’s central tower] or for the mounting of a bell. Moreover, “a round dormer window opens from the side of the dome” with ornamented wreaths and the heavy cornices marking much of the structure’s decoration. As for the other towers, they were more of “the Renaissance school” and with dormer windows and flagpoles. With a “pleasant and striking” look, “there is a harmony of design which we have seldom seen excelled in a building of such large proportions.”
The basement covered the entirety of the edifice and was to have many dividing walls with some 7,500 square feet “devoted to the purposes of a promenade saloon” with entrances on both Main and Arcadia and “to be finished elegantly, after the style now followed in the finest Eastern buildings.” A marble tiled floor, a central fountain and a stucco ceiling, as well an elevator to the top of the structure were cited, while the remainder of the basement “will be devoted to the use of the stores above” on the first level. There was to be full length windows at the rear “and dead lights placed in the sidewalk in front” along Main with ceilings of 13-feet in height.
The ground floor had a central “grand entrance way” and a half-dozen stores, each at 24 x 96 feet with 17-foot ceilings, windows along Main of single plate glass and “the whole finish will be unsurpassed. The central hallway was to be 22 x 96 feet with vestibules, a stucco ceiling, marble or Minton encaustic tiles (these are in the United States Capitol, for example) in the floors and access to the upper levels by a double staircase and the elevator. Stairways from Arcadia Street and at the south end at the rear were also noted.
The second story had another large hallway of 36 x 40 feet, with hallways projecting from it at widths of eight to ten feet, “all lighted by shafts, extending through the story above and opening into sky lights in the roof,” with eleven in all. At the center of the front was an office, measuring 23 x 27.5 feet, “which will be highly finished and devoted to general use,” and 51 other office spaces, some of which could be set up en suite. It was added that “each leading office will be fitted with [a] marble mantel and grate” as well as marble wash basins, running water and gas, while there were five water closets and a bathroom, as well. That main staircase and four others from the side halls ascended to the top level.
The third floor “will be arranged en suite for family occupation, on the French Flat plan and another “grand hallway” measured up to 38 feet wide and 125 feet through the structure, illuminated by those sky lights. Beyond this, “transverse halls cross the building, front and rear, at each extremity of the grand hall; and, along the centre, is arranged a series of 4 Corinthian columns, supporting the ceiling.” With a total of 16 suites, each of three to five rooms, there were vestibules, bathrooms and water closets, marble wash stands, parlors with marble mantels and grates and corniced and stuccoed ceilings which were about 13 feet tall, while “brick partitions are built between each suite as precautions against fire.”
Not only this, but stairways led to the towers, in each of which “there will be an apartment sixteen feet square and used for sleeping or observation,” while water tanks were placed above the ceilings in these spaces and were developed so that “in case of fire the whole roof of the building can be flooded at a moment’s notice.” Tin covered the roof “and heavy fire walls raised above it on each side as protection,” with it added that “every precaution against fire known in architecture will be employed” in the construction, so that the brick was wrapped around the iron columns so that, if there was any warping from fire “the main walls would still remain staunch.”
Given the terrible fire risk (the great fire at Chicago, for example, happened several years prior), “the whole arrangement of the building seems to leave nothing wanting to secure the safety and elegant accommodation of its occupants” and there was plenty of means for escaping so that “there need be no apprehension of a disastrous panic with a resulting holocaust” as was found in large Eastern structures when fires broke out. Noting that the general design was done, but details and specifications awaited before “the plans can be placed upon the market” and then a contractor hired so that “the workmen will put their hands to the erection of the magnificent Baker Block,” but the Express concluded,
We need hardly add that the building when completed, will be the finest architectural ornament of which our city can boast, and indeed the finest in Southern California. It will be fully up with the most spacious and elegant buildings of the metropolis, and will redound to the high credit of the builder in his display of enterprise of and [and of] liberality.
Addressing rumors that a hotel might occupy the Block, the paper noted that there were “strong presumptive grounds for this belief,” based on the details provided in the article, so that “should Col. Baker finally conclude to devote his building to the purposes of a grand hotel, every well-wisher of Los Angeles and the traveling public for generations to come will rise up and call him blessed.”
We’ll return with a third part taking us to the construction of the edifice, which took longer and cost more money than originally thought, though this is hardly a surprise with substantial buildings like the Baker Block, so check back for that.