by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This lengthy look into some of the early history of Montebello, the suburb just southeast of Los Angeles, from its founding as the 19th century came to a close through the first three decades of the 20th century focused heavily on its status as a nursery district and oil-producing center, including the Temple family lease at the northeast corner of the city.
Another of its notable aspects, on the opposite side of town, was the establishment of the Montebello Park and Montebello Golf Course tracts, as part of a massive East Side series of projects by real estate developer James B. Ransom (1885-1951), whose rapid rise and equally flurried fall is a notable story in Roaring Twenties greater Los Angeles.
Ransom hailed from Minneapolis, Minnesota, though he spent part of his youth in Mississippi, where his father was a lumber dealer. He attended the University of Chicago and looks to have gotten his start in real estate there as, by 1910, he was agent for a land company selling orchard property in the Bitter Root Valley of Montana. A half-decade later he was founder of a construction company, but then moved into real estate development in Florida, including with the Tampa Bay Land Company, headquartered in Chicago, the Thomas Nurseries and the Florida Estates Corporation. In 1918, he was the defendant in a civil suit of unknown charges.
By the end of the Teens, however, Ransom, married and with a namesake son, was in Sacramento, involved in a land project in the Natomas section north of California’s capital city. In 1921, he was a defendant in a suit filed that accused him and associates of bilking a man out of money paid for property in that area, though, as with the Florida case, it is not known what the adjudication was in this action.
The next we can trace of Ransom is his working as the managing director and sales manager of the syndicate that developed the industrial and residential subdivision of Bandini, now the City of Commerce, in what was formerly part of the Rancho San Antonio, owned by Antonio María Lugo, and then a localized Rancho Laguna, acquired by Abel Stearns. After Stearns’ death in 1871, the Laguna passed to his widow Arcadia Bandini, who married to Robert S. Baker (of Baker Block—site of the former Stearns adobe, El Palacio—and Santa Monica fame), kept ownership until her death in 1912.
The syndicate developing the Bandini project was led by O. Nicholas Gabriel, whose San Marino house was mentioned in a post here, and this occurred in conjunction with the opening of the Union Pacific’s $2 million rail yard and shops (this being on the line of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, which the UP acquired) and which was denoted as a “precursor of the great tide of industries” coming to the area.
The Los Angeles Express of 8 March 1924 remarked that, “his program involves the attracting of a sufficient number of industries to fill the 800-acre industrial district which the [Union Pacific] owns adjoining the shops. That many acres of industries would, it is roughly estimated, represent an investment of $100,000,000.” The confidence of the rail giant in acquiring the land was reflected in a dry, terse comment from its president, Carl Gray, who told the press, “we didn’t buy those 800 acres for fun.”
Also not in it to entertain themselves, Gabriel and his associates launched their syndicate and project, with the paper observing,
Adjoining both the Union Pacific shops and the Union Pacific industrial district the Bandini syndicate today opens a homesite and business site subdivision. It is situated at the corner of Ninth street (Telegraph road) and Atlantic boulevard.
A week later, the Express reported that “plans for erecting a school to cost between $50,000 and $55,000 in the Bandini syndicate tract have been announced by the Montebello board of education,” with Ransom telling the paper that three acres were donated by the syndicate, along with two more for a park and library. These probably concerned the Bandini Elementary School and Bandini Park in an area bounded by the UP yard to the north, Washington Boulevard on the south, Interstate 710 on the west and Atlantic Boulevard on the east and in which there is a Ransom Street.
Ransom lauded the Montebello school district’s action as “just one of the many proofs of the importance of [Bandini’s] location” and was amplified by the board’s commitment to spend up to $40,000 for an expansion of the campus whenever required. Moreover, the prior Sunday at the tract’s formal opening, $180,000 in lot sales were registered, joining some $420,000 in pre-sales.
Among the major buyers was architect Harry H. Whiteley, a Bakersfield native who was the chief of the drafting department at 20th Century Fox film studio and was a recent engineering graduate from the University of Southern California. He worked on houses in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, as well as a later career in Las Vegas, including tract houses along with schools. At Bandini, Whiteley, whose portrait appeared in the piece along with that of Ransom, began work constructing bungalows.
A rendering of the school appeared in the Express of 19 April, in which it was also observed that Edward Ferguson’s construction company (Ferguson Drive, extending from Atlantic and paralleling the Union Pacific track east to Vail Avenue in Montebello, is named for the contractor) was ready to start work on the first 10 houses in Bandini. Ransom told the paper,
This is the first time in the history of Los Angeles, I believe, that a school has been started before there is a single pupil within a mile. The Montebello school trustees are building this school to take care of the influx of children that will come this summer with the industries.
The account noted that some $8 million in factory sites were acquired in what was called the Bandini Industrial District next to the residential tract with two projects under construction, though the names of the manufacturing businesses were not given. Some 600 employees of the UP shops were expected to begin work within two weeks, while the school was to be started in two days and the six-room brick edifice with classrooms for eight grades was to be ready for the fall term.
The prior day’s Los Angeles Record advertised a free Better Homes Exhibit at Bandini that was promoted as “of real interest and benefit to every housewife, covering practically every branch of home economics, from the care of children to the refinishing of old furniture.” Daily talks were to be presented, as well, with many hints and tips, including for menu preparation and “proper food combinations,” as well as how to “furnish a home tastefully at the smallest possible cost” and “the application of modern methods of housekeeping.”
Five Bandini residences were to be opened for the exhibit, with further interesting facts to be made available to women covering interior decoration, gardening, care of the body including the scalp and skin, and daily exercise. Well-known authorities were to present this information in such a way as to “help you cut down household expenses,” while refreshments were served. Notably, this ad was an early reference to the newly launched J.B. Ransom Organization, with quarters on the sixth floor of the recently completed National City Bank Building, in which Walter Temple was an investor and which still stands at the southeast corner of Spring and 8th streets in downtown Los Angeles.
The 18 May edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on the purchase of a factory site in what was now termed the Central Manufacturing District by the Imperial Fruit Products Company, which hoped to open the plant in four months, and it was added that “within a comparatively short distance” in the Bandini tract, 20 new houses were under construction since the beginning of the month. Ransom informed the paper that a “workingmen’s hotel” was also to be started within a month and he commented that,
We are continuing to hurry improvements so that building can go on without interruption. Curbs and sidewalks of concrete are being laid rapidly. Water has been brought to the tract and turned into the distributing mains. Gas mains have been laid and the survey for the electric lines has been completed.
A week prior, the paper published an advertisement for the new Standard Union Finance Corporation, the founders of which “stand for a Greater Industrial Los Angeles” and who “are thoroughly sold on Los Angeles and know that prosperous manufacturers, jobbers and wholesalers will help keep the white spot white.” The “white spot” was a common symbol of a prosperous Angel City and environs, though it has also been interpreted in racial terms.
The ad continued that “Southern California’s pressing industrial problem,” evidently the lack of timely development of factories and plants, “can best be solved through a strong, determined organization such as this” and all those involved were said to have “long experience in commercial and financial affairs.” Consequently, “they are ready to do their bit to create the much desired balanced prosperity” especially in collaboration with very powerful Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Los Angeles Association.
Among the fifteen directors, a third of which were executive officers, were Herman J. Hauser, whose family meatpacking house was a prominent one in the Angel City; furniture company owner Frederick R. Feitshans; oil executive Verne Dumas, Fitzgerald Music Company owner James T. Fitzgerald; and Ransom, who, besides his work with the Bandini Syndicate, was also the managing director of the Ferguson Construction Syndicate.
Later in 1924, an example of Ransom’s flair for dramatic promotion, of which there was plenty during this period of remarkable growth in yet another regional boom, was reflected in an ad in the 5 October edition of the Times. An image with the “Bandini” name in massive letters amid factories and skyscrapers was surmounted with “THE CITY OF THE GIANTS” and the proud statement of “A Feat Accomplished / Established in 7 Months.” Readers were urged to “SEE!” the fact that,
Bandini, the City, called into existence by the gigantic and concentrated industrial growth of the East Side is before you today, a splendid fascinating reality.
You must see Bandini and the big industries surrounding it before you can fully appreciate the great city of Los Angeles and its glorious future.
Here 2000 acres are being filled with factories. Already over a score of gigantic industrial plants have reared their massive buildings in the vegetable gardens of two years ago. Their great wheels are whirling silently around, driven by hydro-electric energy, pouring systems of wealth into Bandini and through Bandini into the greater prosperity of Los Angeles.
When the project was launched in March, it was asserted, “a deluge of sales swept our sales organization off its feet . . . and put us hopelessly behind with our improvement program,” so that “we stopped advertising, slowed up sales as much as possible and rushed developments” while “it has taken all summer for our engineering force to catch up with the selling force.” Moreover, it was assured that “the second million of greater Los Angeles population will come with the industries and live convenient to their places of employment” and it was added that “every newcomer has a mouth to feed, a back to clothe, a need for a home and all that goes with it.”
On that day, in fact, an addition to the “City of Bandini” was placed on the market and was next to a $70,000 school and civic center. Readers were implored to visit personally so they could “best appreciate the opportunities to save and profit offered by this new city.” As a lure, three houses were advertised as available for just $500 cash down and the “balance like rent.” A coupon offered a printed analysis of the East Side’s industrial expansion, including at the Central Manufacturing District, while a motto read: “If You Haven’t Seen BANDINI, You Haven’t Seen Los Angeles.”
The next week, the Times ran an illustrated feature on the project by “An Observer,” who began by commenting “considerable activity can be seen in the development of Bandini . . . situated in the middle of an industrial development of unusual proportions, this community project has been the scene of home construction during the six months of its existence that is truly remarkable considering its disadvantages and advantages.”
It was admitted that Bandini did not comprise “a high-class residential area with ideal environment and beautiful surroundings,” yet it was claimed that it was “in an enviable position because the rapid industrial development around it “has created a demand for workers, numbering in the thousands, who must live close to work.”
Among those businesses in the Central Manufacturing District were the Union Stockyards, a chemical and soap firm, a lumber and supply company, the Paul G. Hoffman auto distribution facility, and a refrigeration plant. What were coming included the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Corporation, a building materials plant, three foundries and a cotton oil facility, while nearby were flour mills, the Pullman railroad car plant, and a pharmaceuticals firm.
That new unit to Bandini was dubbed the Civic Center Addition, with a city hall slated for the school site, while a building with that workers’ hotel and eight stores was under construction. Well-paved streets, curbs and sidewalks of concrete, and modern utility delivery were also highlighted with sewer connections to come. Also anticipated was the construction of the Ninth Street Viaduct over the Los Angeles River, this being the crossing of Olympic Boulevard (the renaming later came as the 1932 summer games were held in Los Angeles.)
As the year came to a close, the J.B. Ransom Organization took on another project at the eastern end of the county as the firm took control of the existing Sierra Vista Tract in Pomona in what is now part of the Lincoln Park Historic District. On the last day of 1924, an ad in the Record from the firm informed readers that “we specialize in Eastside business, residential and income properties” and requested that they “consult with us before investing in this growing district.”
We’ll return tomorrow to follow Ransom and his firm as the next big project, Montebello Park, was undertaken, so please join us then.