by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It was a pleasure to participate this evening in the commemoration of 150th anniversary of Boyle Heights by Boyle Heights Community Partners, formed “to uphold the vibrant cultural heritage” of the eastside Los Angeles neighborhood, founded in 1875 by Isaias W. Hellman, John Lazzarovich and William H. Workman, by presenting some aspects of its history through the 1920s.
This discussion involved the people, businesses, institutions, school and other aspects of Boyle Heights as it developed over roughly its first half-century, which involved major demographic changes, with respect to class and ethnicity, and shared artifacts from the Homestead’s collection to illustrate the transformations that took place in the last quarter of the 19th century and first quarter of the 20th.
Workman, the nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, became part of the eastside because of his 1867 marriage to Maria (Mar-aye-uh) Boyle, whose father, Andrew, acquired, about a decade before, a portion of what was then known as Paredon Blanco (White Bluff) from descendants of the López family which was granted this section in the mid-1830s. Upon Andrew Boyle’s death in early 1871, his daughter and son-in-law inherited his estate.
At that time, greater Los Angeles was in the midst of its first significant and sustained period of growth, a small boom during the late 1860s and first half of the subsequent decade. With more new residents, pressure or incentive to develop surrounding areas intensified, including the creation of East Los Angeles, now Lincoln Heights, in 1873. Workman, Hellman and Lazzarovich—this last married into the López family— decided, in early 1875, that the time was ripe for establishing a new subdivision and so, in April, Boyle Heights was publicly announced.
Development of the 70-acre tract continued apace, with water delivery an obvious key component, as well as the establishment of a horse-drawn streetcar line. Unfortunately, that boom suddenly went bust at the end of August during a statewide economic collapse, following a national depression that burst forth in 1873, that included the failure of the Temple and Workman bank, owned by William H.’s uncle and F.P.F. Temple, the elder Workman’s son-in-law.
One of the recent arrivals in town was John E. Hollenbeck, who, after nearly a quarter century in Nicaragua, came to Los Angeles to settle and deposited $20,000, a substantial sum then, in the bank before returning to Central America to close out his affairs and bring his wife, Elizabeth, to the Angel City. Though Hollenbeck lost his money in the Temple and Workman bank debacle, he remained and immediately invested in Boyle Heights, including building a substantial residence on his estate in the south section of that community.
The Long Depression continued through the remainder of the 1870s and, while there was some economic improvement as the Eighties ensued, growth was moderate until the much larger Boom of the 1880s occurred, largely taking place during William H. Workman’s two-year tenure as Los Angeles mayor from 1886 to 1888. But as the Seventies came, mercifully, to a close, there were some notable changes afoot in Boyle Heights and that is the focus of this follow-up post to today’s talk.
We’re going to specifically detail a 1 September 1880 feature about Boyle Heights in the Los Angeles Express, but we’ll begin by noting some other interesting references to the community in the Angel City’s press during that year. For example, a recent post here looked at the emerging popularity of baseball in town through media coverage in Boyle Heights in 1878. There was an area in the neighborhood where teams from all over the city and beyond played and the year 1880 includes several references in the spring and fall.
The 10 April edition of the Los Angeles Commercial briefly informed readers that the Academy and High School clubs were to face off, with the interesting note that the former would allow the latter six outs, instead of the usual three, per inning. The results, however, could not be located.
The 13 June edition of the paper did provide a brief summary of a contest between the Acme and Orange clubs, with the latter deemed to be “one of the strongest nines on the Pacific coast outside of San Francisco,” though the former gave them a run for their money and lost by just a run. The following day’s Express provided a box score of “one of the most exciting and closely contested games ever played in Los Angeles,” with the Orange squad prevailing 21-20, though it was noted that the game was called after eight innings.
In October, during the annual agricultural fair, a tournament was held in Boyle Heights, as well as Agricultural Park, now Exposition Park, with the Acme and Orange teams joined by a squad sent up from San Diego. After the Orange nines prevailed again over Acme, this time by a score of 21-17, the former met the team from the visiting squad for a two-game series. While it was reported at the San Diegans were expected to prevail, the locals handily won both contests, 16-8 and 20-8, and the team was crowned Southern California champions for the year.
A couple of news reports concerned the instructors for the 1880-1881 school year at the two city schools in the neighborhood, Boyle Heights and Brooklyn Heights. Thomas A. Saxon, a long-time educator (and an amateur thespian who once played Othello), was a teacher and superintendent in the community, though he left mid-year to take a position at El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley after the instructor there died. The other teacher in Boyle Heights was Mrs. G.W. Letchworth, who began teaching locally in 1877 and remained in the neighborhood school for a couple of years.
Also of note was that there were petitions, including from William H. Workman, along with lumber company owner William H. Perry, whose substantial residence was in the Brooklyn Heights section (and is now at Heritage Square Museum), for gas lamps and for an assigned police officer in Boyle Heights. It is not known if the lamps were approved at that time, but, when Workman lobbied the police commission for a mounted officer, this request was adopted by the Common (City) Council, in which he served several terms earlier.
With regard to Perry, a remarkable account appeared in the 9 November edition of the Los Angeles Herald in which the merchant reported on a robbery at his house, telling the paper,
The thief entered by a bay window at the back of the house and made his way to the sleeping apartment of Mr. Perry, who thinks chloroform was administered, as neither he nor his wife were awakened during the operations of the burglar . . .
Perry’s gold watch, valued at $200, 40 dollars in gold coin and a pocket knife were stolen from his clothes, while the thief ransacked Mrs. Perry’s jewelry box and absconded with $250 worth of items from it. Dumped outside the house was Perry’s set of keys and his memorandum book, the latter containing letters of credit on banks in Europe. It was presumed the same robber broke into the nearby residence of George Cummings, also married into the López family and later builder of the still-standing landmark structure at 1st and Boyle, taking $105, while an attempt to enter the house of Burdette Chandler, an oil man who was elected to the Council in December, failed.
In community agriculture, the Express of 26 August featured a report on “Mammoth Peaches” from the orchard of Mrs. S.J. Ruloff on Chicago Street, not far from what later became Hollenbeck Park. She brought to the paper’s office “a pyramid of peaches” of fourteen pieces collectively weighing eight pounds and which were picked from a tree of just two years of age. She informed the paper that she used river sand and stable manure covered with adobe when planting the trees and brought the fruit was “a garniture of magnificent fuschias [sic], roses, amaranths, heliotropes” and others, all grown on her property.
At Workman’s Boyle Avenue estate, the 17 July edition of the paper remarked that there was a movement to plant grapevines on hillsides in the Angel City, as there was a remarkable expansion of grape growing throughout greater Los Angeles during this era. The paper added, “in the immediate vicinity of this city, we believe Mr. Workman planted last season a considerable area on Boyle Heights to grapes and he is sanguine of the success of his experiment.” At the end of the year, the Commercial concisely commented, “Mr. W.H. Workman will, in about a week, begin the work of planting a large addition to his vineyard on Boyle Heights.”
This leads us to the 1 September article in the Express, which colorfully began by explaining to its readers that,
Until about three or four years ago, Boyle Heights was a Los Angeles suburb upon which the seal of barrenness was set. It was without water and was about as non-productive and uninhabitable as the Desert of Sahara. Except for the stubby growth of [weeds] . . . which served to pasture, [and] here and there, a nomadic band of sheep, the land was good for nothing in the world. For the most part the squirrel sat upon his dust pile and was monarch of all that he surveyed.
The account went on that “the only residence of any importance in the section” was the Workman/Boyle place, with the brick house, completed in 1860, near the bluff edge and overlooking the vineyard and orange grove in the Flats. Water for the house (along which a new structure in 1882 was constructed) was lifted by hydraulics from a zanja (open ditch) diverting the precious fluid from the Los Angeles River and which ran along the bottom of the bluff.
It was then recorded that Workman “not content to live with the fruitful valley” below and “a stretch of desert” on the mesa, determined that the latter “might be redeemed from [its] barrenness,” so “he acquired possession of a tract of two hundred acres on the mesa.” Next, “joining with others” and spending some $7,000 of his funds, Workman arranged for pipes to tie into the private water company’s system for domestic water delivery.
The Express continued,
With the advantages then offered a number of wealthy people speedily availed themselves of the opportunity to secure residence sites, some purchasing of Mr. Workman and others near by. The elegant villa residences of Messrs. Perry, Hollenbeck and Cummings were soon erected, and numbers of less pretentious dwellings succeeded, each with its tracts of a few rods or a few acres in extent, which became a blooming garden or orchard.
After about a half-decade, the paper declared, “the Boyle Heights tract now presents the appearance of a little village in itself,” with a school in the midst of the residences and “on a lot donated for the purpose by Mr. Workman,” while an intersection included a modest store, though what was needed were a blacksmith shop and saloon.
The article went on to comment that,
To make a practical demonstration of his faith in the natural productiveness of the [area] Mr. Workman laid out a park of fifteen acres opposite his residence, aligning the walks and fences with rows of eucalyptus and cypress trees and filling the interstices with shrubs, flowers and vines . . . A little knoll in the center . . . is now encircled with an alameda of evergreens and surmounted by a fountain which throws up its jet of water to the height of twenty or twenty-five feet. Grape-vines of choice varieties planted one and two years ago are loaded down with fruit . . . the grapes . . . are entirely free from spot or blemish.
A recently planted vineyard of 40,000 plants next to this park—which should not be confused with Hollenbeck Park, that not being developed for another decade—was considered an experiment to determine whether the soil could bear the grapes with almost no irrigation, the only time this being done was in the heat of July, though it helped that the winter of 1879-1880 had plentiful rain. Squirrels and gophers destroyed about 20%, but Workman undertook a mass poisoning that, he reported, eliminated some 100,000 of the animals and planned to double the size of the new vineyard.
Though the land consisted both of red-colored loam and thick adobe, which actually helped in the saving of water, Workman pressed (!) on with his project, planting Blaus Elba, White Muscat, Zinfandel and Riesling grapes, all for wine except the muscat which was for raisins. Though he sought to rely mainly on rainfall, there was a contingency in that the East Side Reservoir, located actually in Elysian Park to the north of downtown, was tapped with 6,500 feet of flume and pipe, all built at Workman’s expense, and which were to be used for the park, as well.
While space limited what could be described, the Express did inform its readers that,
The old Boyle orchard and vineyard in the river bottom, which has been in cultivation the best part of eighty years [?], and which has some trees that, in their day, brought to their owner a hundred gold dollars apiece every fruiting season; the cozy, old Southern house [the 1860 Boyle brick residence], with its broad verandah and its capacious wine cellar beneath; the magnificent outlook which its site commands upon the city and valley; the wine-making establishment and the other appointments of the ranch would furnish the subject for another even more lengthy dissertation.
It was concluded, however, that the purpose was to discourse on the experiments Workman was conducting on the “hitherto barren and desolate mesa lands,” which comprise much of what is today’s neighborhood of Boyle Heights. While it accounted this effort to be successful, the paper observed that “we believe [this] to be as yet only a beginning” and it ended with the prognostication that,
The time is certainly not many years distant when the entire plateau from Brooklyn Heights [on the north] to the point where the foothills debouch into the valley [at the south] will be a succession of well-cultivated and productive farms and gardens.
We will, meanwhile, continue to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of Boyle Heights with further posts on this blog, as well as a presentation at the Homestead in late January or early February by University of Southern California professor and Boyle Heights native George Sánchez, so look for those here and on our website.