by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Our look at some of the early history of Los Angeles Fire Department’s Engine Company No. 1, through about its first two decades as a professional company, we move into that second ten-year period from the mid-1890s until around the time the featured photo here appears to have been taken.
The first post briefly noted a reduction in force in 1889 as the highly significant Boom of the Eighties devolved into the usual bust and a couple of firefighters were let go. Another evident attempt to economize came in summer 1897 when department Chief Walter S. Moore proposed to the Board of Fire Commissioners that the company consolidate with another engine company as well as a hook-and-ladder company and doing so at the other engine house.
The Los Angeles Times of 12 August reported that the Moore’s idea was because “by this arrangement the efficiency of the force will be increased, it is thought, and a saving of $100 a month,” this seems very insignificant, given the budgets and operating costs of today, “will be effected.” The commissioners appeared on board with the proposal, especially “as the three companies are located so close together,” but, while Moore was asked to return with more information at the next meeting, Engine Company No. 1 remained separate.
Notably, this followed by about a year-and-a-half, Moore’s own design for a water hose tower at the facility, situated at the northeast corner of Pasadena Avenue and North Avenue 19 in Lincoln Heights (then East Los Angeles,) while the department also worked on adding electric or gas lighting in consultation with the Los Angeles Electric Lighting Company there and at two chemical company houses. This, however, would only happen “as soon as the consumption of light would warrant the move,” though the commissioners tasked the chief with doing everything possible to get these facilities into the electric light age.
A core function of the department, of course, were drills to ensure that procedures were properly followed when responding to calls and these were generally conducted semi-annually. These could also, however, be an opportunity of showcasing the department to the public with the Los Angeles Express of 22 February 1897 reporting on one such example, as it told readers, under the heading of “Brave Fire Laddies,”
Today at 1 p.m. the fire department held the first of its semi-annual drills of the year, and convinced spectators that Los Angeles may well be proud of her fire department. The inspection this afternoon at the Plaza [where the surviving 1884 station house was the first home of Engine Company No. 1 before its move] was a revelation to hundreds of the people that gathered to witness the inspection and parade.
It was added that the public generally knew little about the department’s operations and capacities. Chief Moore and his assistant, Edward Smith, were praised for their administration and the pride of the organization was reflected in the fact that “each man from the Chief down was resplendent in new uniform[s] and shining brass buttons,” with these modeled after those worn by New York City’s department. White shirts were replaced with blue flannel ones, while caps gave way to helmets.
Moreover, “the horses were groomed as if for a great horse fair” and showed an evident eagerness to get the demonstration started “as they restively pawed the ground and awaited the signal to go.” The engines were finely polished and the copper and nickel components gleaming, while the boilers were “ready to get steam up at a moment’s notice,” though they were not lighted. Bunting and flowers were not used for decoration in case of a call.
Mayor Meredith P. Snyder and the fire commissioners oversaw the half-hour inspection, after which the parade proceeded south of Main Street to the Downey Block at the northwest corner of the intersection with Temple Street, and followed the fork to the right down Spring Street to Fourth Street. A westward turn one block to Broadway was followed by heading north a block to Third Street and an eastward move to Main and up to the Temple Block, across what was sometimes called Temple Square from the Downey Block, at which point the procession ended.
The Express also remarked that,
The fact that there has never been what might be called a great fire in Los Angeles since the inception of the department, bears witness to the efficiency of the department. But while the glittering engines, polished like mirrors, the grand horses attached to them, the neat business-like chemicals and the heavy hose carts were notable features of the parade, they constitute but a part of the department. The other part, which is not seen by the public and is therefore less appreciation, is the great system of boxes and lines of wire which permit the prompt warning of a fire. This system, one of the most complete and perfect working of any in the United States for a city the size of Los Angeles, has been brought to its standard very largely through the ability of the Chief Electrician, Ira J. Francis.
The reference to the absence of a massive fire in the Angel City, which then had about 100,000 residents, is notable and the metropolis, which would, with the onset of the 20th century enter into its third major boom period, also began experiencing the onset of “fireproof” construction including the abundant use of concrete for commercial buildings.
There were some large blazes as the 19th century crawled to a close reported in the press for which Engine Company No. 1 answered the call. The 8 December 1898 edition of the Times remarked on one incident in which it stated, “a tiny flame that could have been extinguished by one whiff of an infant’s breath kindled a conflagration yesterday that consumed almost entirely the Standard Oil Company’s refinery and storage plant, situated just across the river from the station at the base of the Elysian Hills.
The paper added, “the firefighters did heroic work” as “never had they a more difficult task to accomplish” with the fossil fuel content, a lack of hydrants and other challenges. One hose stretched more than 2,000 feet to reach the plant, while “a neighboring zanja,” perhaps the Zanja Madre (mother ditch) running from the Los Angeles River southward, “helped somewhat to relieve the situation.” Nearby Dogtown, a poor community of small wooden dwellings, was threatened, as well by the conflagration.
The Times of 17 November 1899 reported on another major commercial fire on San Fernando Road, in which the warehouse of the Black Diamond Supply Company, which stored coal, feed, flour and hay in a newly completed brick structure, burst out in flames and was totally destroyed. As with the Standard blaze, Engine Company No. 1, as well as No. 3 on Main Street near the Plaza, responded and sought to save adjoining structures. Two firefighters from Company No. 3 narrowly averted death when a portion of the edifice crashed down to the sidewalk where they were working.
Sometimes, the company was called out of the city to assist in other jurisdictions, as took place in May 1896, as the Herald of the 8th noted, when a gas stove fire destroyed two business buildings in Long Beach. An official in the coastal city called for help and it took two hours for Chief Moore and the company’s personnel to get to the location, at which point nothing could be done because the structures were burned to the ground and the fire under control.
Later, in 1897, Engine Company No. 1, with the rest of the fire department, took part in a parade marking the 37th anniversary of California’s admission as the 31st state in the American Union—a post here a few days ago observed how unobserved the day was in previous decades. With regard to parades, the company and the department received significant public attention and exposure with appearances as part of the La Fiesta de Los Angeles (a.k.a., La Fiesta de los Flores) parades held each spring.
These events, while shallowly evoking the pre-American period of the Angel City, were carefully planned by business interests to promote the city and its commercial community, while the downtown parade drew many locals and visitors, with the tourism angle being critical. The 1895 edition, with the first debuting the prior year, including, noted the Herald of 20 April, four engine companies and their hose carts, “all most beautifully decorated with flowers,” as part of the procession, and these included “solid wheels of calla lilies, fire hats of roses, and many of the hose carts were quite concealed with the beds of flowers with which they were covered.” The account added, “engine company No. 1 was awarded the prize for the best decorated apparatus.
The 1896 La Fiesta included an image of “The Firemen’s ‘Pet’,” this apparently being the entry of company #1, which followed the carriage carrying Mayor Frank Rader and the members of the Fire Commission. While the horse cart’s driver did not decorate his vehicle, this declared to be “the one glaring exception to the rule,” the Times of 23 April commented that “a beautiful bell of roses was suspended over the boiler and festoons of the flowers covered the sides and front of the engine.” The same day’s Herald proclaimed, “never since it has been in existence did the Los Angeles fire department cover itself with glory as it did yesterday” and it asserted that the effort was better “at a ratio of sixteen to one.”
In the run-up to the 1897 edition of the event, the Express of 13 April, remarked that Chief Moore reported “all the companies are hard at work with their plans of decorating their engines,” while “feelings of emulation run high at present among the various fire companies and their friends.” Moreover,
The East Side engine company, No. 1, is determined to maintain its position and number—nothing short of first prize is to satisfy the members. The whole neighborhood is interested. A purse of $40 has already been raised for decorations other than flowers.
A driver for the company during much of the 1890s was one of the few Latinos in the department and also a scion of one of the oldest Spanish-era colonizing families of Alta California. José Malarin Sepúlveda (1869-1941) was a cousin of the Wenceslao Sepúlveda who was the only Latino when the professional department was established in 1886. Five years, later, José, who usually was known as Joseph or Joe, joined and by the mid-Nineties was a driver for Engine Company No. 1. A brother, Solomon, also became a firefighter and rose to be a captain during at least a quarter-century with the LAFD.
Joe Sepúlveda, whose family owned was a sixth-generation Californian on his father, José Dolores’ side (Wenceslao was of the fourht generation), dating back to Francisco Sepúlveda (1742-1788) and María Candelaria Redondo (1746-1804), with Francisco, a native of Villa de Sinaloa in México being among the military personnel in the Zuñiga Expedition of 1781 that ended at Mission San Gabriel that August. This was a few weeks after the Rivera Expedition came to this area—an outgrowth of this was the founding of Los Angeles, with its birthday traditionally denoted as 4 September. Francisco remained at Los Angeles until his death.
Joe’s great-grandfather, José Dolores (1835-1909), as a teen, herded cattle on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and later sought a claim, contested by Manuel Dominguez, for part of the massive Rancho San Pedro, which included the Peninsula. His successors continued legal battles on this matter with Joe’s grandfather José Loreto and a brother securing a grant for the Rancho de los Palos Verdes carved from San Pedro, though the issue wasn’t settled until 1846, a month before the Americans seized Monterey during the Mexican-American War. Joe was born and raised in that area.
Joe’s mother was María Antonia Lugo and she was a fourth-generation Californio with her father, Felipe, being the namesake of a rancho the Potrero de Felipe Lugo which William Workman and F.P.F. Temple once owned in the Whittier Narrows area. Her paternal grandfather Antonio María Lugo was one of the most prominent figures in greater Los Angeles, owner of the Rancho San Antonio immediately southeast of the Angel City and also of the ranchos San Bernardino and Santa Ana del Chino.
Her great-grandfather, Francisco (1740-1805), was from the same town as Francisco Sepúlveda, but migrated to California in 1774 as a soldier with his wife Juana María Rita Villanasul and children. Francisco Lugo was one of the military escorts of the 44 pobladores who founded the pueblo of Los Angeles seven years later and lived near the town for almost a quarter-century until his death.
Joe Sepúlveda was mentioned as an engine driver in those accounts related to the La Fiesta parade appearances. In his early years, there were a couple of incidents involving drinking, with the 8 July 1897 issue of the Times reporting that he and a hose cart driver were said to be intoxicated on the job, though Sepúlveda, after talking to Chief Moore, appeared before the Fire Commission and “stated that he had taken one or two drinks and was not well,” so he went home as sick. Because he had a good service record, “the charge was dismissed by the commissioners.”
Almost exactly four years later, the Independence Day 1901 edition of the paper recorded that Sepúlveda “has been temporarily suspended by his lieutenant” and was to go to the commission meeting and state why he should not be fired because Chief Thomas Strohm “reported that Sepulveda was intoxicated at the engine house” recently.” After that date, however, and for thirty more years, Sepúlveda apparently had no other major issues.
In February 1930, he retired from service after almost four decades, being the longest-tenured member of the department to date. The Los Angeles Express of the 24th remarked,
Preparing to retire after thirty-eight [it was actually 39] years of active service in the Los Angeles Fire Department, Joseph Sepulveda, member of a famous California Spanish family, and for twenty-six years a trainer of fire horses, today recalls what he describes the “more romantic days”, preceding the motorizing of apparatus.
It was in summer 1921, while Sepúlveda was in Jersey City, New Jersey for the “Fight of the Century” between heavyweights Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey, the latter winning the bout, that the department decided to retire the last of its horses and the veteran “found his favorite chargers had been taken to retirement pasture at Griffith Park.” Reportedly, the 60-year old cried as tried to adjust to changing times. The Times of the 21st added that “his reason for retiring is that he has had a number of surgical operations.”
There were two other Latino firefighters in Station No. 1 in this period, Francisco Louis Leiva (1868-1926), who hailed from Sacramento and whose father was a Chilean born carpenter and whose mother was from the San José area. Leiva joined the department by 1893, was a pallbearer at the 1895 funeral of Sam Haskins, the first Black firefighter in the city, drove for Engine Company No. 3, and then joined Engine Company No. 1.
He was involved in an 1897 fight with a man named Alvarez who went to the station house to see its captain Hugh Heaney, though no resolution was found to that incident. Leiva continued working for the LAFD, become a lieutenant, before leaving in the 1910s. He worked as a meat cutter before retiring to Auburn, near his hometown of Sacramento, and died there.
Charles C. Castillo (1870-1946) was born in the Anaheim area of what was later Orange County and, after his father Feliciano died, he was raised in Los Angeles by his mother, María de Jesús Valenzuela and her second husband, a German butcher, George Englehardt, who was a member of the Angel City’s first volunteer firefighting company, formed in September 1871. It seems like this is how Castillo joined the LAFD around 1900 and was with the department for about three decades, through at least 1931, as he rose to be a lieutenant and then a captain.
We have a concluding part three tomorrow that will take the story of Engine Company No. 1 to the time the highlighted photo was taken, likely in 1906, so please join us then.