by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As we continue to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, established in spring 1875 by William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, along with banker Isaias W. Hellman and merchant John Lazzarovich, we turn our attention to a remarkable description of that area when it was known as Paredon Blanco (White Bluff.)
Appearing in the 1928 edition of the Annual Publications, Historical Society of Southern California, the work was the reminiscences of Francisca López de Bilderrain, whose family were the first settlers of the area named for the color of the material embedded in the bluff overlooking Los Angeles on the east side of the Los Angeles River. The recollection complements a 1926 piece by a relative, Isabel C. López, and published in the Los Angeles Times under the headline of “Hollenbeck Heights Once Was Home of Pioneer Aristocrats”—for a time in the Roaring Twenties, some locals promoted the name “Hollenbeck Heights” over “Boyle Heights.”
Señora Bilderrain was the great-granddaughter of Claudio López, who migrated from México to the Spanish colony of Alta California in 1773 and was, among other activities, the administrator for the Mission San Gabriel. Her grandfather, Claudio’s son, was Esteban, who served on the Los Angeles ayuntamiento (pueblo council) and, on 28 September 1835 received a grant from that body for the Paredon Blanco tract. She remarked,
Standing as a great sentinel, overlooking the already established City of Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles [which was officially designated a ciudad, or city, in 1835], the great Paredon Blanco thrived, flourished and produced manifold, crops for its early inhabitants. Now Los Angeles was in its infancy, but life was there and around it. It was an industrious, home-loving life with its purposeful, manifold, wholesome and co-operative activities.
Doña Francisca continued that her grandfather’s “possessions on the east side of the river embraced many acres,” including tracts he bestowed on his children, comprising four sons and four daughters, while keeping the land between 3rd and 4th streets. His adobe residence on the bluff, faced the pueblo, and, “although modest in structure, it was comfortable,” and once the dwelling was finished, “he began to prepare the land for the setting out of fruit trees and [grape] vines.”
The edifice, she added, had five rooms, while “nearby were the granaries, workingmen’s quarters, [and] tool rooms,” while there were also a silversmith’s shop, where gold and silver jewelry were made. She continued that “the house had a long, wide corridor and in front was a large, shady grapevine arbor, the floor of which was kept covered with white sand,” derived from the bluff, and “many a joyous re-union took place in this charming arbor.”
South of where 7th Street enters Boyle Heights amid the tangle of freeways includes U.S. 101, Interstates 5 and 10, and State Route 60 was where son Gerómimo resided, maintaining an orchard and vineyard, until he married a cousin, Catalina, and moved to what is now the San Fernando area in the valley of that name.
To the north of that, a daughter Manuela López de Ruiz resided and had an orchard and garden, while another daughter, Josefa López de Carrion, had a house where the Hollenbeck Palms senior home stands now—her husband, Saturnino, sold the tract to John E. Hollenbeck in 1875 and the Carrions lived in an adobe dwelling, still standing, in La Verne.
Another daughter, Concepción was the wife of Ygnacio Palomares, co-owner of the Rancho San José in that Pomona area, while the fourth girl, Catalina, was the wife of merchant George Rice, a partner, for a time, of Jonathan Temple and she and her brother, José Antonio long resided in Rice’s native Massachusetts.
Señora Bilderrain’s father Francisco was given a tract next to that of Esteban for a present when he wedded Rosario Almenares early in 1836, just months after the Paredon Blanco grant was made. A zanja, or water ditch to supply the needs of the family, divided the two properties, and Francisco quickly established his orchard and vineyard. Doña Francisca observed that, during the Gold Rush annus mirabilis of 1849, he exported grapes to the burgeoning town of San Francisco and added that “his were the best and ripened earlier than any other in this part of the state,” which was the main grape-producing region at the time, with prices fetching ten dollars for every 100 pounds.
When the Ireland native Mathew Keller came to Los Angeles the following year, he soon became Don Francisco’s major customer, while, later, San Francisco buyers arranged for contracts in which they arranged for the packing of the fruit. His granddaughter remarked that “Don Francisco also made wines for the raps that were left and brandy from the sugar cane,” that was also raised on the “Flats” next to the river. He and Keller partnered to experiment with cotton, but on the opposite side of the watercourse not far from the orange orchard and vineyard of William Wolfskill.
In 1855, Doña Francisca’s father added 25 acres to his orchard “with all kinds of profitable fruit trees, sugar cane and a vineyard” and this was to the north up to what became Aliso Street, this being about where U.S. 101 and Interstate 10 branch off and much of the “Flats” portion are now the Pueblo del Sol housing complex, Mendez High School, Utah Street Elementary and industrial areas along the river.
Moreover, Señor López contracted with Phineas Banning, the future “Port Admiral” at Wilmington to transport goods to Los Angeles, having 25 ox-carts for this, while he also provided lumber for building, including from López’ sawmill in the San Bernardino Mountains for the Lake Vineyard residence of Benjamin D. Wilson in what is now San Marino in the San Gabriel Valley.
In 1858, the year Doña Francisca was born, her father constructed a second residence “on the high bluff, the site being seventy feet from the edge of the bluff.” Here, she went into some detail because of her memories of her childhood home:
The house had five spacious rooms, all nicely finished. The ceilings were of white canvas, adorned with pretty designs. Light-colored wood was used for the floors; the walls were white. A mopboard six inches high ran all along the walls of the parlor. It formed the base of a deep border about two and one-half feet high, imitating brown marble, headed by a brown moulding making a nice finish, and also serving as a protection for the wall, as the chairs were placed close to the wall. This room was about thirty feet long. It had two doors of exit, a French door with heavy wooden shutters. This faced the town.
Señora Bilderrain went on to note the heavy iron bar that secured the entry and a pair of windows with a dozen panes “with so many sharp corners” which she came to dislike and shutters. At the parlor’s ends, entries led into bedroom, each of which had a single window with iron bars and painted green. The same color was applied to all the wood on the home’s exterior.
An eastern door led to the dining room and then to a corridor, while at the north end of the structure was a large pantry and baggage room. Doña Francisca remarked that “the principal rooms opened out on the long, wide corridor with [a] fine red brick floor,” brick being available in the Angel City from 1852 onward,” supported by stout pillars entirely covered with different kinds of vines, the Passion flower predominating.” In these climbing plants, birds proliferated, including hummingbirds, linnets and robins, while “this porch used to be our schoolroom,” an ideal location because of the shade from the vines. There, too, was where the servants would join the family in evening prayers, particularly on warm summer nights.
As with the other residences in the city, the roof was covered with brea, or tar, obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits, though this was later replaced with a shingled pitched roof containing “a spacious garret which was well utilized for storing fruits for winter.” This and the mention of the imitation marble remind of the Workman House’s second-floor space and faux finishing on the exterior.
In fact, she went on to remark that “pears, apples, [and] pomegranates were buried in white sand on shelves along the walls” of the attic for preservation, while “fine big bunches of ripe grapes hung on nails from the rafters, which would keep fresh until late in the winter.” The Workman House attic, too, still has square-head nails (manufactured in the 19th century before round nails became common) in rafters, perhaps for same purpose.
Doña Francisca related that, after the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art opened in 1913, she visited with her uncle Gerónimo, who scoffed when hearing that a pair of oxen skulls were of a very early time and told his niece: “Before the flood, indeed! What will those scandalous gringos say next—these are simply the heads of the poor oxen [named Hercules and Pinto] I lost in the brea,” as he used to haul tar from the pits to town.
Some 30 feet away was a large pepper tree with its little red berries and “tiny creamy blossoms,” while the north portion of the yard contained a well, that provided “delicious, cool water,” though “just enough water for the use of the house” because a current would introduce sand that had to often be removed to prevent blockages.” Another tree of note was “an enormous acacia,” which “called the attention of everyone to it because of its size,” as well as its blooming of “cream-white aromatic blossoms.”
With all of this described regarding her father’s substantial Paredon Blanco property, Señora Bilderrain exclaimed, not having mentioned whether indigenous people were those servants or workers in the orchards and vineyards nor thought about their condition following the Spanish incursions from 1771, with the founding of Mission San Gabriel, onward:
Our home was exceedingly pleasant, as it stood fronting the grandeurs of the west and its sublime sunsets. Land made ready for the power of God for human hands to embellish! Embellished by the courageous civilizers that came with the immortal missionaries.
What she also did not directly refer to until the end of her recollections was the sale of part of the Esteban López tract to another Irish settler in Los Angeles, Andrew A. Boyle, by who was only referred to as her grandfather’s second wife or widow, rather than by name. Apparently, this was because Petra Varela was roundly criticized by the López family for her decision to make the transaction with Boyle, a widower who came to the Angel City in 1858 with his 11-year old daughter, Maria [pronounced Mar-eye-uh].
Out of sequence, Doña Francisca told of how, when she was young, she went to walk through the orchard and “Miss Charlotte [Dardier], Miss Maria Boyle’s maiden aunt,” meaning her late mother’s sister, “called me over to see her flower garden,” which was “a fine garden indeed!” Again, it was mentioned that there was “a narrow ditch with running water,” likely the same described above, that “divided my father’s orchard from Mr. Boyle’s.”
It was across this zanja from which “their flower garden, the finest fruit trees and their most exuberant grapevines,” from which Boyle made his Paredon Blanco wine and brandy, ” began. Moreover, the author continued, “it seemed to me that everything that grew on the other side of the ditch was better than our side.” The grapes, she felt, “looked more tempting than ours,” though her mother instructed her “to hold other people’s goods as sacred,” so she had to content herself “to feast my eyes on them.”
As she walked along a row of trees, the little child saw low plants with small pink and white blossoms that were planted along the tree trunk bottoms. Transfixed by the sight of this new species, she wrote that “this was the first time I had seen a daisy.” Dardier noticed the child admiring the unfamiliar plant and asked what was wrong, with Francisca answering “Pretty! pretty flowers!” which was “all I could say in English.”
Dardier picked a bunch of the daisies and gave them to the girl, who then noticed small sprouting acacias developing from seeds that fell from a larger tree in bloom. Because the older woman knew some Spanish, Francisca asked if she could have one of them, so Dardier pulled one out, put wet soil on the root and wrapped it in a fig leaf. The account went on,
When my memorable visit was over, I went running up the bluff to show mother my highly appreciated presents. Then it occurred to me to plant the little tree by the well, and it grew and grew and I gloried in seeing it grow. It stood by the well over fifty years, to my knowledge. When father’s homestead passed into other hands, father asked the new owner to spare the tree, as his daughter had planted it when she was a little child, and the tree was spared.
We’re going to pause here and return tomorrow with part two, so please check back in for more for Señora Bilderrain’s remarkable recollections of life at Paredon Blanco before Boyle Heights came into existence.