by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Following the very detailed description of the Baker Block published in the 6 August 1877 edition of the Los Angeles Express, among whose stockholders was the structure’s developer, Col. Robert S. Baker, the issue of that paper two days later, remarked that building activity slated for the ensuing fall and winter were good signs for the local economy, which was battered by the recent financial panic that included the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and followed the “Long Depression” that affected the country during most of the decade.
The Baker Block, along with the hall of the fraternal society, the International Order of Odd Fellows, of which Elijah H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste was a member, “will compare favorably with any building of their class on the Pacific Coast.” Assuring readers that there was an “architectural renaissance epoch of Los Angeles,” the Los Angeles Herald remarked that the trend “will soon give us a very handsome city” of which residents could be proud and travelers impressed, so it wondered when the Angel City could get a new courthouse—Jonathan Temple’s Market House only dated to 1859, but was considered outmoded and “ungainly”—and replace the “horrible adobe carcel [jail] called the City Hall,” which Temple sold to the city and county nearly a quarter century ago.
A little over a week later, Baker took out an advertisement calling for contractors to submit bids for “tearing down and removing old buildings,” meaning the El Palacio adobe on Main Street and Arcadia Street, long owned by Abel Stearns, the first husband of Baker’s wife, Arcadia Bandini, and the Arcadia Block, which Stearns built behind the adobe at Arcadia and Los Angeles streets, as well as “excavation of basements and wall trenches for the proposed building.” At the end of the month, the Los Angeles Star reported that the contract was issued to W.E. Rodgers and Company and, within a week, the Express observed that “the adobe walls of the old Stearns mansion have now been entirely demolished” and excavations for the new edifice undertaken.
At a city fair and in its art hall in October, the architectural drawings of Spencer H. Buchanan and Charles E. Herbert were exhibited and considered by the Express as “among the most meritorious of their class” with the front elevation and its elaborate cast-iron front “undoubtedly the finest of the lot” of submitted drawings. By the end of the month, bids were sought for the hauling and laying of bricks and towards late November, the Star noted that “work on the new Baker Block is progressing rapidly, the south wall having now reached the level of the street” and fifty workers employed on what was assured to be “the most substantial and imposing structure ever erected in Los Angeles.” The Express followed shortly with a bigger boast that “we doubt whether there is a larger private structure in the State in the process of construction.”
Press reports dimmed through the rest of 1877 and the earliest found reference in 1878 was one in which the Star of 26 January reported that an Irish laborer working with mortar for bricks “made it convenient to splatter a Celestial [a Chinese man] from head to foot as the latter was passing by.” Choosing to view the incident as humorous, the paper added that “John [a common pejorative for Chinese men] came into the City Court as spotted as a leopard and made a complaint of malicious mischief.” Judge Benjamin F. Peel, it was stated, “decided that Pat [a typical moniker for Irish men] only wanted a little fun, but nevertheless found him guilty and taxed him a small fine,” which was all of a dollar.
The 14 March edition of the Express continued its boosting of Baker’s building by informing readers that,
As the Baker Block approaches completion, its magnificent and imposing proportions assume a grace and stateliness which evoke universal admiration. Colonel Baker is the bravest man in his lower country, and his intrepidity in erecting this splendid and costly improvement proves it.
Not quite as enthusiastic, the Los Angeles Herald of 12 April that the structure “is beginning to disclose its splendid proportions” as the framing for the trio of towers was almost finished and noted that “the consciousness is daily growing upon our people that no private edifice in California will eclipse the Baker block when it shall have received its finishing touches.” The issue of the 20th offered that when the structure got as far along as to have its mansard roof and stucco added, “it will make a grand figure,” and added that for a public building of its type “its cost would be returned at about a million dollars.”
In its edition of 25 May, the paper, however, asserted that “real marvels of building have been achieved when such calamities as the suspension of the Temple & Workman Bank, the [recent] small-pox epidemic and the drouth [drought during the winter of 1876-1877], threatened Los Angeles with extinction.” Claiming that this triple set of disasters would have effaced other communities, the Herald noted that “instead of desponding, our ‘solid men,'” went to work on several new commercial buildings and that “the superb facade of the Baker block has now reached cornice and tower” and would “really be notable in Broadway, New York” and was only bested by a few buildings in San Francisco.
A week later, the paper added that, not only was the portico at the grand entrance and the pediment nearly completed, but “when the stucco is on the edifice, and the interior arrangements are completed, it will be a gala affair.” Moreover, the building was to boast Los Angeles’ first elevator. Two weeks later, a fire broke out on the roof (the precautions against blazes were emphasized in a lengthy description covered in part one of this post), but a security guard, who happened to be named Stearns (nothing was said about any relation to Abel, the former owner of the property on which the Block was situated), was able to put it out without recourse to the volunteer fire department. Apparently, a spark from some smoldering material caused the blaze, but a water pipe was added to prevent future mishaps of the sort.
As the city readied for its Independence Day celebration, a reminder of the growing popularity and power of the Workingmen’s Party, which had a great deal of influence on state politics such as in the burgeoning and rampant anti-Chinese sentiment expressed throughout California, including the new constitution, ratified in 1879 and which is still current, came with the report in the 4 July edition of the Herald. The paper observed that a party banner had an image of the Baker Block and the motto, “Honor to Whom Honor is Due, and this led it to comment,
This compliment is intended for Col. R.S. Baker who, in giving out all contracts for work on his block, stipulated that no Chinaman should be employed on any detail of it. The Baker Block would be an ornament to Paris or New York, and the Celestial has had absolutely no hand in its erection.
The Express of the 9th published an account of an inspection of the structure provided by the architect, Spencer Buchanan, and noted the busy work of the laborers, including that the first coat of plastering of the store spaces on the first level was completed, so that it was expected these would be leased in a short period. As to the upper two levels, it was averred that work was moving more slowly, so that “it will not be until the first of September probably that the last artisan will turn his back on the premises.”
Walking through the entrance and up the staircase, viewing the hallways illuminated by skylights and the suites of offices and rooms, the paper remarked that “visitors cannot avoid a degree of astonishment at the harmonious adaptation of the vast structure to the convenience of its prospective occupants.” The third floor living spaces, it was reiterated, could be occupied as singles or suites of rooms with the impressive amenities laid out in the description in the first post, while some of the second floor offices were already rented and applications were flowing for others.
Attorney Anson Brunson was said to have leased seven offices, three of these for his imposing law library and, as completion neared, residents and professionals were expected to rush to seek accommodations. The piece observed that “the building must be thoroughly inspected to have its many points of excellence appreciated” and Buchanan was “willing to challenge the State to show for the same outlay a building equal to this in size, style and completeness,” leading the Express to conclude, “we guess he will hold the belt without a competitor.”
On 27 August, a brief description of the Block was provided in a piece in the Express updating the work of the Angel City’s architectural fraternity with Buchanan and Herbert submitting that the nearly finished structure, with an estimated cost of $130,000, measuring 183′ on Main Street and 107′ on Arcadia at its north end, had the half-dozen first floor stores, 51 offices on the second level, with 15 apartment suited on the top story and rooms in each of the three towers—much of this gone into with great detail in the first part of the post. Four days later, the Herald noted that the asphalt pavement on Main was laid and, with the portico’s shade, “this will doubtless soon become the fashionable promenade of Los Angeles.”
News was a bit scarce for a time afterward, with the Herald briefly observing on 9 October that “the finest view attainable in Los Angeles is to be had from the central tower,” and, by that time, the stores were completed. The Express of 17 December reported that “a number of families have already taken up their residence” on the third floor. The same day’s Herald also remarked that the entrance pavement and vestibule with Minton tiles from London of which “the patterns are unique and complicated” and it continued that “when the work is finished, the effect will be elegant in the extreme.”
It further repeated that, when the structure was completed, acknowledging the common problem of construction delays, “it will be the most thorough business block in California,” such that “there is no edifice, in private hands, in San Francisco which will compare with it” and would rival the well-known Equitable Life Assurance Company Building in New York City, an eight-story structure which was completed in 1870 and destroyed in a fire just over four decades later (a skyscraper built by the firm in 1915 still stands there) and which had a mansard roof and was the first commercial building in the world to feature an elevator.
While some of the building was occupied, work continued on details through the end of 1878 and the Herald reported on a gift presented to Baker from the construction crew, with the paper again observing that it was “rapidly approaching a stage of completeness which will shortly call for a detailed description of what is unquestionably one of the most massive, elegant, durable and expensive edifices, in private hands, in the State of California.” Again, comparisons, frequently made during the era, with San Francisco included the idea that only a public building there or two “will compare with this superb block, and certainly none which surpasses it in extent, thoroughness of detail or finish.”
The paper remarked that Baker was surprised when the laborers, “entirely of their own motion and at their own expence [sic], had procured and put in place an elegant and elaborate bulletin board, in black walnut, the whole surmounted by a superb clock” in an area that was a sort of entry hall for the elevator. The Herald examined the work and found “this graceful mark of esteem” to be “a gem of its kind” and it added that the owner replied, through the press, that—and note his reference to the type of worker involved:
It is with a sentiment of lively gratitude that I give this public testimonial to my appreciation [of the gift] . . . You have given to your kindly feelings to me and elegant, costly and enduring expression, and one which I shall cherish as a valued souvenir of the pleasant connection which, for nearly a year, has existed between us. I presume I am justified in assuming that I owe this tribute of friendly regard from the workingmen of Los Angeles to the fact that I have been at great pains, from first to last, to stipulate that persons who either are or aim to become American citizens should be employed in building the block which bears my name. I have felt that only those who contribute to our schools, churches and municipal burdens should be concerned in a building which will probably endure long after Los Angeles has demonstrated her status as an important city.
Clearly, the reference was again to forbidding the hiring of Chinese workers. Meanwhile, an unusual use for the Block was the display, starting on Christmas Day, of a replica of the famous Strasbourg Clock, so named because of the originals (from the 14th and 16th centuries with the current dating to 1843) in the Strasbourg Cathedral in France. The timepiece featured a planetary calendar, a mechanical rooster and the twelve apostles in a procession and, from 1:30 to 9 p.m. visitors paying from 10 to 15 cents (two adults could go for a quarter) could see what purportedly drew 45,000 people in six weeks in San Francisco and about 900,000 nationally.
On the final day of 1878, the Express listed principal structures built in the Angel City during the year, with a few above $30,000, including the Isaias W. Hellman and José Mascarel building a short distance south of the Baker, a mercantile warehouse for merchant Edouard Naud, and a mill for the brothers-in-law, James B. Lankershim and Isaac Van Nuys. The County Hospital ($9,000), Horticultural Pavilion ($7,000) and merchant Samuel Hellman’s residence ($7,500) were among others, but the Baker Block lorded it far above all at $150,000, a full 45% of the total.
We’ll return with a fourth and concluding part, so check back for that soon!