by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In this 150th anniversary year of the founding of Boyle Heights, the eastside community of Los Angeles launched by John Lazzarovich, Isaias W. Hellman and William H. Workman, the Homestead will offer its second program exploring some of the history of the neighborhood, this being on 31 August and looking at Jews in Boyle Heights, as well as some musical elements with the Phillips Music Store and the career of Lalo Guerrero through a presentation by his son, Mark.
A key figure in the early days of Boyle Heights was John E. Hollenbeck (1829-1885), a native of Ohio who intended to try his luck in Gold Rush California, but was stranded in Nicaragua and built up a remarkably successful commercial life in that Central American nation. He did this in partnership with his German-born wife, Elizabeth Hatsfeldt, and, after about a quarter-century there, the couple visited Los Angeles in summer 1874, bought property near town, deposited $20,000 in the Temple and Workman bank, co-owned by William H. Workman’s uncle, William, and went back to Nicaragua to close their affairs.
When they returned early in 1876, they found that institution closed and their money lost, but invested further in Boyle Heights property and built a substantial residence on the bluff (which gave the area its first name, Paredon Blanco, or White Bluff). Hollenbeck also purchased several thousand acres of the Rowland family’s portion of Rancho La Puente as part of expanding his real estate portfolio in greater Los Angeles.
During the Long Depression which lasted in America from 1873 through the rest of the decade, Los Angeles was largely financially moribund, but gradual growth was experienced in the first half of the Eighties. In 1884, John Hollenbeck decided to build a two-story building at the southwest corner of Spring and 2nd streets in what would soon be part of a growing commercial section of the Angel City. A few years later, his widow oversaw a significant remodeling including the addition of two stories, surmounted by a corner tower, and the hotel opened as part of the makeover.
The featured artifact for this post is a 7 July 1900 invoice from the hostelry, which was under the ownership of Albert C. Bilicke (who died in the German sinking of the British cruise ship, the RMS Lusitania in 1915) for the previous seven years. While the document is the simple record of the payment of three men for painting work at the hotel for a week, it has a nice vignette showing the hotel from the opposite (meaning northeast) corner of the intersection, as the Hollenbeck loomed over the two streets filled with pedestrians, horse-drawn vehicles and streetcars.
What we’ll do here, however, is look at some of the early history, about the first five years of the Hollenbeck Block, and then consider returning at a future date with a post that will carry the story of the structure forward. A previous post here on the Second Street Cable Railroad, which breached Bunker Hill to the west and terminated in the new Crown Hill section, included a photo from the Museum’s collection showing the original Hollenbeck behind the cars.
So, we’ll start with the Los Angeles Herald of 12 February 1884, which informed readers that,
Mr. J.E. Hollenbeck informs a HERALD reporter that the business edifice that he is preparing to erect will be 120×230 feet, the lower story to be used as ware rooms of various kinds. The second story will be made with eighty rooms, in the form of the New York flats, for the accommodation of single tenants or families. A large kitchen will be made in the building so that ample facilities can be furnished for tenants to do their own cooking if they so desire . . . This will be the first regular building made as a flat in Los Angeles, and will prove quite a convenience. The corner is very eligible, and directly opposite the proposed new City Hall [though that public edifice was not built there]. Work will begin as soon as the plans are completed, which will be in a few days.
The reference to New York-style flats provides a plausible argument that Hollenbeck was preparing for something of an ancestor to the lofts and apartments that are in the thousands now in downtown Los Angeles, many of which are conversions from old office buildings.
Though not mentioned, the architect was Robert B. Young (1851-1914), a native of Quebec, Canada who left his home country at age 26 for Denver and studied architecture and construction. Completing his education, he and his wife Mary relocated to San Francisco in 1881, but only stayed for a couple of months before heading south to Los Angeles. He later wrote that there were few architects in town then, principally Ezra F. Kysor (who it said to have designed the remodeling of the Workman House at the Homestead) and his partner Octavius W. Morgan, and Charles W. Davis.
The 23 March edition of the Herald included an advertisement by Young soliciting bids from contractors “for the Hollenbeck Block, with or without brick foundation, stone curb and gutter.” Two days later, the paper reported that the contract was given to William O. Burr, who did the carpentry work on St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, just a block away at Main and Second, with the amount stated to be $66,000.
The account added that,
The building is to of brick with [a] stone basement, the stone for which is to be taken from the quarry of Mr. McDonald on the hill within the city limits. The new block when completed will be one of the handsomest in the city and a decided improvement to that part of Spring street.
Just a few months prior, at the end of 1883, the City Council passed an ordinance granting James McDonald permission to work up to 20 acres along the Los Angeles River at the northeast edge of the Elysian Hills, close to where Dodger Stadium is today, to establish his quarry by paying $75 an acre and having the location surveyed (see the accompanying illustration here from the Solano-Reeve Collection at the Huntington Library).
Towards the end of May, Young took an advertisement for his practice, located in an office on Spring just south of 1st street in the former Los Angeles Times building and the Herald observed that the architect was working on the Hollenbeck project. The 27 June issue of the paper stated that “the immense Hollenbeck Block is being pushed for all there is in it” and that “the iron front is all set and the side and rear walls are looming up handsomely.”
The edition of 16 August remarked that “the bay-window frames on both sides . . . are being covered with galvanized iron, as is also the cupola at the northeast corner of the building,” so that “the new improvement sets of the building in fine style.” On the 28th, the Herald commented that “the new and ornamental” edifice “is nearly completed, and only requires the facade and roof to complete it.
The 2 September issue announced that,
Mr. B.F. Coulter, our leading dry-goods merchant, will occupy the large and beautiful stores . . . in the new and elegant Hollenbeck Block, as soon as finished, an in order to reduce his stock of dry goods and gents’ furnishing goods as much as possible before moving, will, for the next thirty days sell at very low figures.
Benjamin Franklin Coulter (1832-1911) hailed from Kentucky and lived and worked in the Bluegrass State and neighboring Tennessee, leaving Clarksville, on the border of the states and northwest of Nashville, for Los Angeles in June 1874. He and his family checked in at the Pico House hotel, the finest in town at the time, and, reported the Los Angeles Star of the 24th, “they came here to spy out the land” and “like the looks of it,” which the paper crowed, “everybody does who comes here” and “if they don’t remain they will come back sure.”
That the Coulters did and early in 1875, he replaced George E. Long (who was the long-term assignee of the failed Temple and Workman bank) in a hardware and tin firm run by Charles F. Harper, father of Mayor Arthur C. Harper, who was recalled from office early in the 20th century. After a few years, Coulter opened his dry goods store in the same quarters in the Downey Block, at the northwest corner of Temple and Main streets.
After under a year, Coulter, who also had a woolen mill business, relocated to the grand Baker Block further south of Main and on the east side of the thoroughfare where U.S. 101 runs through today, and the store stayed there until the move, after five years, to the Hollenbeck. While there were hopes of an opening by the first of October, that was delayed by a month and the 2 November edition of the Herald included short ads exhorting readers,
Go and take a look at the magnificent display of new goods in the new store . . . in the elegant Hollenbeck block. You will find that Mr. Coulter has spared neither pains or money, and to-day has the finest store in Southern California.
The store stayed in the building for nearly 14 years before moving to the Homer Laughlin Building on Broadway south of 3rd and had three more changes of address over its many years of operation. Coulter, meanwhile, was ordained a minister and opened the Broadway Church of Christ and remained active in his religious work until his death.
It was apparent that the flats concept was abandoned early on in the design of the structure, as professional offices were opened on the second floor, including for doctors, music teachers, “practical architects” (meaning those who learned on the job, not through academic work), and others. One physician who practiced at the Hollenbeck in its early days was a rare woman doctor, Dorothea Lummis (1857-1942), who was from Ohio and studied music in Philadelphia and Boston. The latter is where she met Harvard University student Charles F. Lummis and the two wedded secretly, though, while she graduated from the Boston University School of medicine, he dropped out of college.
Charles worked on her parents’ farm and as a journalist before embarking on a walk from Ohio to Los Angeles, where his dispatches from the road garnered him much attention and a job at the Times, while Dorothea completed her studies. She joined him and the 21 November 1884 edition of Herald included an advertisement for her practice.
The couple remained together until 1891 (with Charles having a notable and varied career until his death 37 years later) and she was a music and drama critic for the Times, wrote articles for journals throughout the country, headed the county medical association and maintained an interest, shared with Charles, in New Mexico’s indigenous people. In 1896, Dorothea married a fellow doctor, Ernest Moore, and continued her diverse and remarkable work and interests, including published poetry, an art collection, working for woman suffrage and advocacy for the poor, until close to her death.
George D. Cox was a real estate agent who also served as the agent for leasing offices in the Hollenbeck Block. The 19 October edition of the Herald included his ad for “the right man to engage in the hotel business” with “very little capital,” and, while interested parties were told to find Cox in a first-floor office just inside the main entrance on Spring Street, it is not clear whether the offer was for a hostelry in that building or elsewhere. By the end of the year, Cox moved to a Second Street space in the structure to pursue his realty business.
Another main Hollenbeck tenant was John Koster, who had a long and colorful career as a restaurateur in Los Angeles. He opened, on 22 October, his “Bakery, Ice Cream and Coffee Parlors,” likely in the basement, which is where, five years later, after the major makeover, he ran the Koster Restaurant and Bakery, which offered a 25-cent business lunch and a 50-cent dinner with the admonition that “this Restaurant should be well supported, it is the finest on the Coast.” In December, the Metropolitan Restaurant opened on the Second Street side.
The Herald of 28 December provided a brief description of the building officially completed a few days prior, commenting,
Of all the business blocks recently erected in Los Angeles, none deserve more attention than the Hollenbeck Block . . . Its cost is about $56,000 . . . The building is of brick, with stone trimmings, and iron cornices, and concrete floors. On the first floor are three stores . . . a livery stable, a dining room, and an open court in the rear. Upstairs there are 56 chambers, handsomely furnished, and all are occupied by lodgers [though at least some, like Lummis and others, were running businesses in their spaces]. A fine sunny balcony is on the south side.
The paper did add that there was “an octagon dome” at the street corner, while “four pediments relieve the monotony of the outlines.” Who knows what Young’s response would have been to that last criticism? In its New Year’s Day 1885 issue, the Times pegged the cost of construction at $75,000 and observed that the edifice “is specially deserving of mention, it being one of the excellent business buildings of the city” with “substantial concrete floors, iron awnings and is handsomely designed.”
John Hollenbeck died in September 1885 and, a few months later, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad completed a transcontinental line to San Bernardino, working its way along the foothills of the mountains towards Los Angeles as the Boom of the Eighties ensued. Among many elements, this included a growing tourism, fostered significantly by excursions, like those of Walter Raymond of Boston, who built a fine hotel at South Pasadena.
Seeing the dramatic changes afoot, Elizabeth Hollenbeck authorized the addition of two new floors, with it being reported that this was part of her husband’s thinking when he worked on the original plan with Young, who designed the new work. An early reference to the conversion of these three upper levels into a hotel came in the 14 August 1887 edition of the Los Angeles Tribune.
The 3 September issue of the paper added that,
It is true that two large hotel buildings—the Hotel Hollenbeck . . . and the Johnson Hotel [at Main and 4th streets] are being pushed to completion as rapidly as men and money can build them. These two buildings will add about 600 rooms to the lodging capacity of the city [with 400 more in other structures] . . . However, reliable estimates place the number of visitors who will come to Southern California during the course of the winter at from 75,000 to 100,000 . . .
Today, there are concerns in various countries about the effects of mass tourism and, though this boom version was welcomed, finding places for tourists to stay was a significant issue and many homeowners opened up extra bedrooms or spaces in their dwellings for visitors. Notably, two months later, the Tribune reported that, as the expansion of the Hollenbeck began, there were concerns about its structural integrity, so the City Council had a half-dozen architects inspect the building, with the result that it was deemed “perfectly safe.” Elizabeth Hollenbeck did this on her own shortly before and the same conclusion was reached.
The work was completed in early 1888 (one celebrity guest at that time was renowned illustrator Thomas Nast, best known for largely defining the image of Santa Claus) and the Herald of the first day of the next year listed its cost as a sumptuous $250,000. Accompanying a illustration of the structure looking much like the one on the invoice, the same day’s edition provided a description of the reconstituted edifice saying of the Hollenbeck
It contains about 250 large and elegantly furnished rooms. The halls are spacious, airy and attractive. The woodwork on the inside of the hotel is redwood and look rich with its finish of oil and varnish. The floors are covered with beautiful velvet, Moquette and Body Brussels carpets, and in the parlors are paintings from the brushes of some of the most celebrated artists in America. A large number of the rooms are arranged in suites, with private baths and closets attached . . . in connection with it is one of the finest restaurants in the State [run by Cowley and Baker, who also operated the Metropole Hotel on Santa Catalina Island], where persons can get anything they wish, from a cup of coffee to a $20 dinner.
It was added that the hotel was “equipped with all modern improvements” including “elevators, fire escapes, electric bells, fire-alarm system, etc., etc.” For at least the remainder of the 19th century, the Hollenbeck stood out among the Angel City’s hostelries, but, with the onset of the 20th century, new, larger and more ornate examples like the Alexandria, the Rosslyn and others overshadowed it. In the 1920s came such prominent instances like the Ambassador and the Biltmore and so, in the early Depression years, the Hollenbeck estate (Elizabeth died in 1918).
In February 1932, at the time another landmark hotel and business block, the Nadeau, at First and Spring, was knocked down, the Hollenbeck fell to the wrecking ball, leading the Times to remark that it had to “give way before the march of modernity” though it, in its prime, was “the best [hotel] in the lusty infant metropolis that was La Reina de Los Angeles.”
With, however, income from the building, Elizabeth Hollenbeck endowed the Hollenbeck Home for the Aged, now Hollenbeck Palms, on the family estate in Boyle Heights that still operates today, even as the hotel and business block site, which was slated for a building, remains a parking lot nearly a century later.