La La Landscapes With Invoices to Walter P. Temple from Nursery Owner Edward H. Rust, South Pasadena, 1921 and 1924

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

It’s quite a surname for someone who worked with plants, but our latest post dealing with spring, Earth Day and landscapes shares, from the Museum’s collection and thanks to donations from descendants of Walter P. Temple, invoices and related artifacts sent to him by South Pasadena nursery owner, Edward H. Rust (1863-1944), who was a major figure in that community from its formative days and for some six decades until his death.

Rust was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of basketball, to Fidelia Humphrey (her maiden name was his middle one) and Horatio Nelson Rust, the couple having married in 1851, and was the third of four children. Horatio (1828-1906) was quite an interesting and notable figure, having hailed from Amherst, home of the well-known college, and worked in an ax manufactory in which his father, Nelson, was a partner in Collinsville, Connecticut, northwest of Hartford. He also studied medicine and ran a drug store for a short time.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Horatio volunteered for service with the Union Army with the medical corps of a Connecticut infantry unit and supervised the transportation of wounded soldiers to their homes by appointment of General Ambrose Burnside (whose distinctive and luxurious facial hair gave rise to the name “sideburns”), as well as serving as an assistant surgeon. He mustered out with the rank of major.

Following the conclusion of the war, the Rust family relocated to Chicago, where Horatio opened a wholesale merchandise warehouse that was very successful. His father having been an ardent abolitionist, Horatio became an active participant in the move to assist the “Exodusters,” recently freed Black Southerners who migrated to Kansas to try and build new lives. He long worked with Elizabeth Comstock in this effort, while also being a friend of John Brown, whose raid on Harper’s Ferry is one of American history’s notable events of the era.

Another area of avid interest concerned the indigenous people of the United States and it was reported that Horatio assembled a substantial collection of artifacts during efforts that led him to be identified as having “an important national reputation as an archeologist.” This work included digs in native mounds in Missouri and other Midwest locations, activities that would, naturally, become frowned upon later. In the late 1870s, he spent an extended period in the Yucatán and Chiapas states of México and collected material, including photographs (some of his collection is at the Huntington Library, with other items at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and Beloit College), from those explorations.

In March 1881, he sold the business he ran with eldest child, Frank, and devoted his time to the Kansas exodus work and his archaeological interests, which included the better part of two years in Arizona, California and New Mexico. Within a year, the Rust family, perhaps because of health problems which led many people to come to this “health-seekers paradise,” settled in Pasadena with one account suggesting that Horatio had interests in what began as the “Indiana Colony” shortly after its establishment in 1873.

Horatio acquired a large tract with the boundaries being Monterey Road on the north, Oak Street on the south, Diamond Avenue on the west and Fremont Avenue on the east and this became known as the H.N. Rust and Sons Palm Place Nursery Tract. On this was established the Palm Place Nursery, while the earliest located reference to South Pasadena was in the 17 March 1882 edition of the Los Angeles Times, which reported that “the improvements in South Pasadena continue; new houses, new orchards, new vineyards,” including the report that “Mr. H.N. Rust, late of Chicago, is finishing a large, fine residence.”

The Palm Place Nursery was developed on this substantial tract and the earliest found advertisement, from the Los Angeles Mirror of 31 October 1885, stated that father and son “offer for sale Orange Trees, 6000 choice Washington Navel, Mediterranean Sweet, Bahia Blood, Merim Blood, St. Michael, [and] Bitter Seville” as well as “Lemons, Eureka, Lisbon, Genoa, Bonnie Brae, Sweet Lemons, Shattocks, Loquots [sic], Palms, Pepper, Figs, etc.” Roses were also featured and Horatio’s place was widely known for its massive Gold of Ophir specimens with Henry residing across the street—the properties on Lyndon Street between Fremont and Diamond now contain apartment buildings.

Notably, it was much later reported that Henry, under the tutelage of his father, “gathered the seed from fallen oranges from local groves, including that of the Los Robles ranch of George Stoneman, a Civil War general and California governor. It was also stated that 10,000 orange trees were raised and that “many of the groves of San Marino and South Pasadena were from this stock,” while Henry earned $2,000 by his 22nd birthday and had “laid the foundation for the nursery business” he operated for many decades.

The Rusts were very involved in developing horticultural components for a Pasadena exhibit at the important World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, the year that ornamental nursery plants like roses were introduced at the nursery, and they began raising palm trees, which became ubiquitous in the region, a few years prior.

While Horatio gave his address as South Pasadena, specifically the Nursery tract, Henry was on Spring Street between Temple and First streets in Los Angeles, and also was an agent for the prominent Hartford Insurance Company. Soon, the original nursery land, situated at Monterey and Fremont, became valuable for development, during the ensuing Boom of the 1880s (in late 1887, the father sold several lots to the son), so the Palm Place headquarters was moved to five acres at the southeast corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Bank Street and it was increasingly managed by Henry as Horatio focused on other endeavors, including real estate with his sons and service as a federal Indian agent.

This latter included management of what was called the Tule River Agency, though he appears to have been involved with indigenous people throughout California, including the Hoopa Valley in the northwest corner of the state, the Tule River that gave the agency its name and which was located in the lower San Joaquin Valley, and in southern California. One project he was proud of but became another controversial flashpoint of federal Indian policy was his oversight of the construction of a school at the Riverside County town in Paris.

In later years, he wrote letters to newspaper and in such well-known journals as The Land of Sunshine and Out West, expressing support for Indians, including the terrible Cupeño removal of the early 20th century, much as he’d done with with African-Americans in Kansas, while he also occasionally appeared in the press regarding his ties to the family of John Brown, some of whom lived in the Pasadena area and in the San Gabriel Mountains above it. In November 1906, Horatio, who remarried in 1899 after Fidelia’s death, died at age 78.

By the first decades of the 20th century, a major change took place in the western San Gabriel Valley as vineyards, orchards and groves gave way to houses and other elements of suburbanization. So, the business of the nursery, which Edward assumed completely around 1892 (he also had a Los Angeles office at Broadway and 4th Street for several years after the turn of the century and then one at 11th and, appropriately enough, Flower streets—where an Armed Forces recruiting center is now), shifted away from the primary sale of citrus trees to a new angle, with it stated that,

Many of the fine estates in Southern California have been landscaped by the landscape department of the nursery [this handled by Ralph Roth, a brother-in-law of Henry]. One of the most interesting commissions which Mr. Rust had was the job of giving a tropical appearance to Catalina Island. Scores of big palm trees from the [George S., father of the hero World War II general] Patton estate in San Marino and other places were shipped across the channel and planted in the streets of Avalon where they are now thriving.

The early part of the century involved Rust doing much of the work himself in irrigating and delivery from South Pasadena, while he employed delivery drivers from the downtown Los Angeles location, with the busy Christmas holiday season meaning long hours and service by horse and wagon with lanterns to guide his way. In 1910, he joined the automobile age by purchasing “an old high wheel Buick” and among his big projects in those days was furnishing material for Henry E. Huntington’s Oneonta Park tract in Pasadena and the Westmoreland project in Los Angeles, west of downtown.

At South Pasadena, greenhouses were completed around 1903 and, around a decade later, there were several of these along with lath-constructed houses and an underground boiler replacing distillate fuel for heating. To accompany the growth of the business, nine acres at Marengo Avenue and Huntington Drive were purchased to raise nursery stock. In 1918, the Los Angeles yard was shuttered and a dedicated landscape department set up at South Pasadena.

In the early Twenties, another three acres off Bank Street was dedicated to raising Canary Island palm trees, which were in high demand, while land in El Monte was purchased for deciduous tree growing. During the booming period, more property was utilized in several locations, so that 35 acres in all were devoted to growing and propagating plants of all kinds.

Another estate to utilize the services of Rust’s nursery, which took his name by the start of 1914 was that of Temple and his Workman Homestead, embracing 75 acres and then expanded to 92 and which was purchased by him in late 1917. The first invoice shared here is from 30 July 1921 and was for yucca and dracena, totaling $15.00, though this was before the building of La Casa Nueva commenced, so it may have been for a large cement-enclosed planter near the wineries and garage.

The 1 March 1924 invoice did not go into detail, but had an account due of nearly $600.00, and it may be that this covered purchases for large sections of the Homestead. Included with the bill was a March calendar and ink blotter for Rust’s business. There may well have been other transactions between the two, while a notable personal one came when Temple fell on hard financial times as the Roaring Twenties came to a sudden, startling end with the onset of the Great Depression.

A cannon, said to be from the Mexican-American War in local fighting and acquired by Temple before he acquired wealth from oil wells, was purchased in 1930 by Rust and it later ended up in the collection of the Historical Society of Southern California. For a brief period a decade ago it was at the Homestead, which temporarily stored the collections of the Society after it vacated its longtime quarters at the Lummis House in Los Angeles and these items were then transferred to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Edward Rust was involved in many aspects of South Pasadena civic and social life, including service as a city trustee from 1892 to 1898, and committees to improve water delivery and draft exemptions during the First World War. He was also a county horticultural commissioner, though some people unsuccessfully petitioned for his removal, claiming that there was an inherent conflict of interest because of his owning the nursery.

In late 1928, with South Pasadena wanting the nursery property for school purposes, specifically for the junior high, while the high school is on another part of the Palm Place Nursery tract, Henry purchased just under seven acres at the southwest corner of Glenarm Avenue and Euclid Street in Pasadena and moved his enterprise into a Spanish Colonial Revival structure there. The South Pasadena Foothill Review of 21 December reported, regarding an all-day open house six days prior,

Beautiful flowers everywhere. Great greenhouses full of gorgeous poinsettias[,] azaleas, cyclamen, begonias and palms. Acres of shrubbery under lath and out-of-doors. Soft music, reminiscent of old California and Spain. Old friends by hundreds come to bring congratulations and best wishes. Such was the colorful, happy background of the formal opening . . .

That music included performances by the orchestra of José Arias, whose performances were widely known throughout great Los Angeles (apparently, he also played at the Homestead during that time, according to recollections by a son. The new facility was considered to be thoroughly modern and up-to-date and Rust was a long way from his origins some three decades prior, though the Great Depression soon followed.

Despite the tough times, he ran the nursery until his death at age 80 in 1944 and it remained in family hands for another several years until it was sold at the end of 1948 and became Bamico Gardens. Today, an Armstrong Garden Center is at the site and we will soon offer another post this month focusing on that major nursery enterprise.

So, be sure to keep an eye (and nose) out for that soon.