by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A prior post here discussed some of the history regarding the remarkable rise and fall of the Los Angeles Investment Company (LAIC) and its prime mover, Charles A. Elder, who came to the Angel City in 1895, formed the firm four years later and became a builder of housing tracts in south Los Angeles that featured the incredibly popular and affordable bungalow. As he expanded his residential development business to the west, the LAIC also built a commercial edifice downtown at Broadway and 8th Street.
In 1913, Elder and his company took on a massive endeavor by purchasing a large amount of property, some 6,000 acres, in and around the Baldwin Hills, where some four decades before F.P.F. Temple, who owned a major number of acres in the section with his father-in-law, Homestead founder William Workman, and others launched the Centinela project. That fell through when the Temple and Workman bank failed after borrowing money from Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin and those hills were part of the collateral for the loan.
With this amazingly ambitious scheme, and which involved a reorganization of the LAIC, Elder quickly foundered on the rocky and uncertain shores of the finances for what he simply called the 1700 Tract, with much of the problem being how he sold stock in the company. In fall 1914, the house of cards essentially collapsed, Elder and two other officials were convicted of mail fraud and were sent to federal prison.
Yet, the LAIC was again reorganized, with a host of prominent Angelenos like the Los Angeles Times‘ Harry Chandler, developer Robert A. Rowan, banker Stoddard Jess, merchant D.A. Hamburger and others involved. Early in 1915, former United States Senator, banker and developer Frank P. Flint, because president of the reconstituted company and steered it into a major success over the next baker’s dozen of years, including the sale of the downtown building to Charles C. Chapman, a key figure in the Orange County town of Fullerton.
We’ll look to cover the period from 1915 to 1926, using an LAIC letter signed by Flint, namesake of Flintridge, now La Cañada-Flintridge, that is in our collection, as a featured artifact, but here we’re highlighting a 14 July 1928 stock certificate from the firm and provide some history of the principal project that the LAIC focused upon during the period (and for a good many years afterward), the large-scale Baldwin Hills area. The certificate is not especially noteworthy on its own, as the company was capitalized at $5 million and issued that many certificates because the par value of each was a mere dollar.
The key component, rather, is what the stock represented in terms of the important development of what is now known as the View Park-Windsor Hills area of unincorporated Los Angeles County. This section of about 11,500 residents has been termed “The Black Beverly Hills” because a growing number of African-Americans of means began to live there in the 1960s, though not without facing hostility from whites who were the vast majority of its residents prior to then, including when “restrictive covenants” specified that only those of the “Caucasian race” could live there.
As the Sixties ended, three-quarters of the denizens of View Park were Black and the extended View Park-Windsor Hills area was 70% African-American according to the 2020 census, a decline from 87% two decades prior. Latinos have about tripled to close to 10% of the population and whites have close to doubled at about 9%, while mixed-race residents have also doubled to above 7%.
Thanks to the diligence of the View Park Conservancy, the area, almost a decade ago, became part of the National Register of Historic Places, with the significance lying in its African-American heritage as well as the integrity of its diverse architecture, from 1920s Tudor and Spanish Colonial Revival examples to post-World War II Midcentury Modern instances. Here we go back to the formation of the View Park area and some of tracts within it.
The 9 January 1926 edition of the Los Angeles Express reported that,
The Los Angeles Investment Company, recognized as the Southland’s largest home building organization, with a record of more than 5000 houses built and sold, anticipates one of the most active years in its history and is planning to present some of the most distinctive homes in this part of the United States.
It was added that the firm, “after building up many tracts in the southwest part of the city,” was focused on its View Park project, comprising “a highly restricted” development west of Angeles Mesa Drive, now Crenshaw Boulevard, where Vernon Avenue just past this forks into Mt. Vernon and Olympiad drives “up the gentle east slope of the Baldwin hills.” Moreover, the article went on, “this property has been converted from undeveloped acreage into a residential park embodying features found only in home building projects of uniform excellence.” What was not stated was that the LAIC also made a substantial amount from oil wells in the Hills.
Each dwelling was to be of brick or stucco finishes and “designed after Spanish or English types that combine comfort and beauty,” while each front yard was fully landscaped by the Company. In all, the piece remarked, “nothing is overlooked that contributes to the excellence of each home and of the community as a whole.” For a recent event to start the year “a crowd of unusual dimensions” visited View Park and the firm intended “to provide more high-class homes” during 1926 “than in any similar period since the company’s inception, many years ago.”
An early advertisement from the Los Angeles Times in its 24 January highlighted one of the first View Park houses, unfortunately no longer with us, and whose doctor owner allowed for visitor inspection. The LAIC informed readers
Though View Park homes combine the last word in modern architecture, the most skilled workmanship and the best of materials, and a refinement in finish that is truly representative of homes of this class, they may still be purchased on the [firm’s] attractive terms of a comparatively small cash payment and convenient monthly payments—terms that cannot be had elsewhere on similar homes.
That upfront money involved $1,000 to $1,500 with monthly installments of $90 and up. Interested readers were directed to the company’s new offices at the Western Pacific Building, on Broadway south of 10th Street (soon renamed Olympic Boulevard for the 1932 summer games), which was completed that year by the Company and still stands, which also constructed a Pierce-Arrow dealership at Figueroa and 21st—this edifice is also with us today. Also still standing is a model home at View Park, on Angeles Vista Boulevard, that was featured in the Times of 3 October.
In fall 1926, another LAIC subdivision, View Heights, was announced. This tract to the south of Windsor Hills is south of Slauson Avenue and extends down to 64th Street, the boundary between the cities of Los Angeles and Inglewood, and between Buckler and Aliso avenues not far east of La Brea Avenue on the west, while a fair distance from Crenshaw to the east.
The Express’ real estate editor, Richard Bloomer, wrote in its 6 November edition that,
With the opening of View Heights, the Los Angeles Improvement Company’s new tract just north of Fairview Heights [in Inglewood and through which Fairview Boulevard runs] on the south slope of the Baldwin hills, a new impetus is given the “own your own home” movement in Los Angeles. That this project will establish a record for rapid development is indicated by the accomplishments thus far.
In fact, Bloomer continued, in just a week since the tract was opened, 50 houses were started—previews obviously accounted for this—and sales were said to be two homes a day. For those surprised at the pace of building, he commented that the LAIC “has behind it many years of home building experience” and those involved in the firm “who for years have devoted their time to building and marketing homes.”
It was added that the company had its own lumberyards, worked with specific builders, owned road-building equipment and had an internal financing department. Operating on a large scale with these elements meant “they are able to effect economies for the buyer and assure him of a home of substantial construction.” An unnamed official remarked that View Heights was priced so that those renting from $35 to $50 monthly could afford to own a house there and noted,
Of the 5000 homes we have built approximately half of them are now owned outright by those who have “paid like rent.” This is highly gratifying to us and encourages us in the knowledge that our work is of a constructive nature.
In April 1927, another 350-acre “unit” was released in what was revised into one word, “Viewpark,” while the LAIC also announced that it would no longer use “Baldwin Hills” in its advertising to emphasize its selected place name. This was because “we feel that the commanding beauty of this property entitles it to a name which will denote the distinctive and picturesque attributes of its location.”
A ceremony on the 2nd, advertised by the firm, was to include music and speeches, attended by “many of the oldest, best and most prominent families of Los Angeles will be represented at this gathering,” while “a large electrical Neon sign” was to be installed to bring attention to the development and “at the same hour tonight, and every night for some time, a searchlight will direct your way to this goal.”
The onset of 1928 included the report in the Express that one Sunday at View Park brought the most visitors to a LAIC development in five years, when the latest greater Los Angeles boom was at its peak (Walter Temple’s Temple City was established in 1923, as well). Another January piece remarked that $1.5 million in sales were recorded in the past few months, with the current unit called the University—this was because “of the many faculty members of the nearby University of Southern California residing in Viewpark.” Also emphasized were ornamental streetlights, underground conduits and restrictions “to preserve the view to each homesite and to establish a beautiful and harmonious architecture.”
At the end of January, Flint presented the 1927 company report including a slight increase in profit over the prior year and it was added that “sales from real estate operations more than offset the decline in oil revenues, so about $560,000 more was earned in the former, while there was a drop of $406,000 in the latter.
Gross revenue climbed by about $130,000 to above $2.5 million, while operating expenses dropped by a third from around a million dollars to near $670,000. The LAIC also had a majority stake in a building and loan and owned a securities firm and trust company and it recently bought close to 500 acres in Inglewood from a development company owned by the family of city founder Daniel Freeman—who was also an associate of Temple and Workman in the Centinela project.
The 20 January edition of the Los Angeles Record included an observation by sales manager C.E. Culberson, who handled the several tracts for the LAIC in the area, that having the future openings, both in 1929, of Loyola Marymount University to the southwest at Westchester and the University of California at Westwood brought more interest in Viewpark and attracted “families of high ideals and educational trends.” An accompanying photo highlighted the “Ideal Home for Children” in the tract, as well.
Another model home introduced as 1928 dawned was Casa Solana, or Home of Sunshine, a nine-room Spanish Colonial Revival residence that is still standing on the corner of West 48th Street and Brynhurst Avenue. A notable feature emphasized in the Express of 21 January was that “from the living-room, French windows open to an observation porch commanding a view of the city and mountains beyond, including San Jacinto, Mt. Baldy and also the mountains of Catalina Island.”
A couple of weeks later, the paper quoted Culberson as enthusing that Casa Solana was such that “the atmosphere of old Spain pervades the dwelling, but the genius of American industry is displayed in the modern appointments.” An example of an element that did not succeed was a community shopping center across from Monteith Park bounded by Olympiad Drive and Mullen Avenue and houses are there now, though, in early February it was promoted that there were sales of 28 sites in 10 days.
The unbounded enthusiasm, however, began to dim after the spring and as the summer came and the certificate was issued to holder S.S. Ney. In May a rendering promoted a Spanish Colonial Revival house on Circle View Boulevard that remain standing today, while an advertisement promoted a new method of providing buyers paintings of what their homes would look like when completed. The next month, reports in the Express and the Times of home building picking up with an ad touting “Amazing Activity” and a photo showing actor Ann Carter welcoming owners to their new home.
View Heights was also given more promotion through ads and features, as the southern extension of La Brea Avenue as a “Hollywood to the Sea” project was emphasized, along with its connection to Overhill Drive in the southwest section—also highlighted was the western extension of Slauson to Jefferson Boulevard.
These smaller, more modestly priced residences, once again, were marketed so that it was asserted that “no ambitious family need longer pay rent” as they could put down a small “good faith” deposit and use that rent money as payment on a loan with the promise that “before they know it they will have established a big equity in the property which is just as good as money in the bank.”
But, as June came to a close and the semi-annual report released, the LAIC announced a 20% cut in the dividend paid out to stockholders, dropping it from 20% to 16%. Flint explained this as due to continuing declines in oil revenues at Baldwin Hills, but also “the reduction in the sales of real estate,” which, as we saw above, was not the case for 1927. Net earnings before taxes were said to be down 40% for the first five months of 1928 compared to the same period the prior year and May specifically was cited as a slow sales month.
Yet, when the 14 July issue of the Express summarized the semi-annual report as released, it showed net earnings at not quite $550,000, of which $265,000 was from oil income, but the same period in 1927 was well north of $1 million and $360,000 from oil. Clearly, there was a significant problem happening and this tempered the news that a vote to annex Viewpark to the City of Los Angele was, as reported by the Record of 30 June, defeated roundly, with only three dozen supporters while 334 rejected the idea.
On 19 September, Flint resigned, citing both ill health and his desire to retire, and he planned a 9-month world tour with his wife. On 11 February 1929, however, the 66-year old was on board a ship approaching Manila in The Philippines, then an American possession, when he died of what “was attributed to a nervous breakdown.”
The LAIC, however, continued on for more than four decades, including further development in the Park View-Windsor Hills area for many years, long after World War II and including when the demographics of the section were beginning to change, as noted above, before it finally stopped operations in the early 1970s after almost three-quarters of a century.
As noted at the outset, we’ll return at some point with another LAIC-related post to fill in the gap for the decade or so from 1915-1925 and add more to the history of the firm and the View Park-Windsor Hills area.