by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With their purchase of most of the Rancho Rodeo las Aguas, situated west of Los Angeles and which was once partly-owned by William Workman, founder with his wife Nicolasa Urioste of the Homestead, Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker, tended livestock, grew wheat, planted citrus and fruit trees, ran a dairy and more on the few thousand acres comprising the property.
Much of what was produced on the ranch was for use in their Cosmopolitan and United States hotels in the Angel City’s downtown, though, as the region emerged, in the first half of the 1880s, from the dour depths of the Long Depression, which consumed most of the prior decade, a new project came to the forefront.
When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a direct transcontinental line to greater Los Angeles at the end of 1885, the floodgates opened for what became known as the Boom of the 1880s, which largely occurred during the administration of Workman’s nephew, William H., as Los Angeles’ mayor from 1886 to 1888.
New subdivisions sprouted in all points of the compass during the fervent fevered frenzy of the boom and Hammel and Denker, being successful business figures, decided to take some of their Rodeo de las Aguas land and try their hands as real estate developers. The New Year’s Day 1888 edition of the Los Angeles Herald informed readers that “the finest suburban town in the world is just what this will be, if Dame Rumor is quite correct in her outgivings.”
The paper added that “all Angeleños know quite well the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas” and its unnamed representative observed it on a trip to see work on what became the Los Angeles and Pacific Railway, but then known as the Los Angeles County Railroad, for which Hammel and Denker deeded a 30-foot right-of-way in exchange for a pair of 10-year passes, a depot and two flag stops on their ranch.
Purportedly, the driver transporting the journalist stopped the vehicle and uttered, “Mr. Reporter, here is where the finest town in Los Angeles, or for that matter, in the world, is to be laid out and built—that is if rumor reports the plans of A.H. Denker correctly.” Regardless of the authenticity of such a quote, it is notable that Denker’s name was generally associated with the project, as it would be with another ambitious endeavor (which will be the topic of the next part of this post).
At that locale, the writer gushed, “what a matchless panorama of mountain, plain, sea and city spread before the eye” as the view captured as far south as the port city of Wilmington and the newer town of Long Beach, to the southeast and Anaheim, east to the summits of the mounts San Antonio (Baldy), San Bernardino and San Jacinto, as well as Los Angeles and parts of the San Gabriel Valley.
Slightly north, the Cahuenga (Santa Monica) range was said to shelter Rodeo de las Aguas and its neighbors from “every harsh wind from the cold North” while, on this mesa, was “the brightest sunshine that blesses this semi-tropic clime.” The view apparently led the reporter to exclaim,
Well, this is certainly the most charming spot imaginable for the founding of a well-built suburban town! Taking even the books of travel, with their glowing accounts, and not Morocco herself, which is reported the most charmingly situated town in the world, can boast a site more delightful than this!
The reference to Morocco seems to have been to the north African kingdom (not a town), but whatever was meant, the article then went on to remark that 1,000 acres, roughly a third of Hammel and Denker’s holdings at Rodeo de las Aguas, were devoted to the project, with lots of from one to five acres subdivided. Water was to be delivered from Coldwater Canyon, it being mentioned previously here that the owners had a tunnel bored into the mountains to tap springs, while “there are excellent mineral springs on the property” to add to the supply.
Strangely (or not, if this article is considered an advertisement, as so many were), the unidentified scribe then stated that, with respect to the mineral water, “this will also be piped to the new town, which, perhaps the reporter may be allowed to name, ‘Morocco.'” Also conceived for the tract was a plant for supplying electric light to the town and “just as soon as enough purchasers become interested in Morocco—should that be name decided upon [sic]—steps will be taken to put in the machinery and light the masts.”
Moreover, it was reported that up to 60 prominent Angelenos made the recommendation for the lighting system, committing to buy lots and build there, “but they want everything on a scale of great magnificence.” Other examples of this were the plans for 100-foot wide streets and sidewalks to be laid before anything was constructed there. After propounding the idea that suburbs outside of Chicago and New York were models to emulate, the Herald commented,
This new Los Angeles town is destined in a very short time to rival the most beautiful of them all. The streets will be set with palms and other attractive plants. The houses built will all be of an elegance and beauty as no place this side of Chicago can boast . . .
The prediction is risked that by this time next year this new town will be the wonder of all beholders.
Four days later, with the name Morocco settled upon, the Herald offered “further points on this aristocratic suburb” and asserted that its prior article “has caused no end of inquiry about the proposition” and it added that “the magnificent plans of the projectors might well create a little enthusiasm.”
A piece of granite quarried from Coldwater Canyon and said to be considered for building at the new town was mentioned, as was the report (also mentioned here previously) that the Southern Pacific Railroad conducted a survey for a line through the canyon and into the San Fernando Valley to terminate at Ventura.
With this potential rail route, as well as the Los Angeles County Railroad and a “dummy” line (this referred to steam locomotives disguised to look like streetcars to blend in with urban and suburban environments) to Rancho La Brea that was expected to be extended to the town, and with a road coming from Palms to the southwest that would more easily allow for delivery of Coldwater Canyon granite, the piece ended, “mark the prognostication of the HERALD, this is to be the most superb suburb in the world.”
That alliterative phrase was so appealing to the paper (one wonders if its owners were investors?) that it repeated it in its edition of the 11th as it insisted that “no project has ever been broached in Los Angeles, even during the boom period, which has attracted half the attention the new suburb on the Rodeo de las Aguas has elicited.” Moreover, “it is the class of people who are abundantly able to put up splendid improvements” who were said to be clamoring, “Where is Morocco? What is Morocco?”
All of the aforementioned attributes of the property, as well as “the magnificence of the plan and the class of improvements proposed,” were such that Morocco was sure to be “the cynosure [North Star] of all eyes.” The Herald ended the piece with somewhat typical boomtime boosting:
In a few months from now buildings will be going up like magic, and in a year or two, Morocco will be the marvel of all the suburbs of this or any city on the globe. All beholders will wonder how anything so beautiful could be upreared in the world.
In the number of the 22nd, the paper reported that, if the rain let up, surveyors were to begin laying out the townsite and the Herald then launched into a reverie of the “panorama of loveliness [that] will greet the eyes of the band of engineers!” This included the vast views of an area blessed with a winter of excellent precipitation revealing “a mass of living and vivid green.”
The article continued by describing, as noted above, of the plans for Morocco, but provided some new detail, including that “the houses will all be made to conform to some broad general plan,” which sounds a good deal like modern codes and ordinances.” Additionally, “they will be placed well back from the streets, and the lawns will be made as artistic as a landscape garden.”
While there were no defined borders as yet to the subdivision, it was repeated that some 50 prospective buyers awaited the publication of the tract map “to select their lots and at once proceed with all due dispatch to build their villas.” It was concluded that “by the end of summer there will not be less than 100 handsome houses raising their graceful outlines on the mesa, where the surveyors to-day will run their first lines.”
While the Herald led the media pack in promoting Morocco, there were occasional mentions in other Angel City newspapers. In the Los Angeles Times of 13 February, for instance, a correspondent touring the region west of Los Angeles to Santa Monica, reported that,
Mr. Denker of the firm of Hammel & Denker . . . informs us that he has already had applications for a large number of acre tracts, upon which the parties agree to obligate themselves to build handsome and even costly residences. Then these centers of improvement that are being dotted along [the areas west of the Angel City] at intervals, will hasten matters [of development] considerably.
The Los Angeles Express of the 18th let its readers know that “what promises to be one of the largest enterprises yet worked by Los Angeles capital and enterprises is that soon to be born” by Morocco’s promoters and it conducted an interview with Denker at the office he and Hammel maintained at the Cosmopolitan.
The hotelier and budding town builder was correcting the map of this new project as questions were asked and answered about Morocco, with one query concerning its commercial possibilities. Denker replied that “the design is to make it a suburban residence portion of Los Angeles, as we expect the city to extend to it in a few years” and added that, as the business core of the Angel City was to embrace existing residence sections within current city limits, “we conceived the plan of subdividing a portion of our ranch into small tracts, suitable for homes for people who do business in the city.”
Also of note was Denker’s remark that his town was patterned after Lincoln Park, a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago and Riverside Park, on the west edge of Manhattan in New York City, while the plan was to be “very much after the manner of the city of Washington [Washington, D.C.].” He also told the Express that “the conditions of sale will be: Each purchaser obligates himself to put up a residence to cost not less than $5,000.”
This led the reporter to inquire, “can a poor man buy in Morocco?” Denker replied, “yes, the terms are such that only a small portion is required down” while values would climb so quickly that “enough of [the] purchase can be sold to pay for the remainder and build the $5,000 house.” He added that no saloons would be allowed in the new town, while streets were to be from 80 to 100 feet in width.
Beyond the aforementioned rail connections, Denker stated that a quartet of cable streetcar lines (the Temple Street, Second Street, Seventh Street and Pico Street) were to quickly be extended to the town.” He also emphasized that business figures in Los Angeles would come home to “pure, bracing, refreshing air” would greet them as they left for work and “the invigorating ocean breeze will meet” them as they headed home.
Probable improvements, beyond those previously reported, included churches, schools from grammar level to the university, and, given a movement that was underway, “a prominent mound in close proximity to Morocco, has already been signaled for the capital grounds for the capital of the new state of Southern California.” Finally, it was stated “that from twenty to thirty old residents, capitalists of Los Angeles, have already applied for homes at Morocco.”
Another local paper that covered the Morocco project was the Santa Monica Outlook, which gave its readers in the somewhat new seaside town a look in an account reprinted by the Times on 18 March. The opening remark was that, amid the boom, “Los Angeles capital has worked wonders in this country, but the end is not yet.” Aside from other attributes which have been accounted for above, the Outlook added that the new town “is favored with the finest climate on the American continent” and was far enough from the coast (and Santa Monica) so that the more biting of the winds from the Pacific were moderated.
Acknowledging the spate of towns that developed at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in the valley of that name (such as Duarte, Monrovia and Sierra Madre), the paper, however, claimed,
The foothills of the San Gabriel Valley have already passed into special favor as places of residence, but they are far interior to the uplands that lie among the mountain range that extends from the ocean near Santa Monica to the city of Los Angeles. Both for scenic beauty and genial climate no location in proximity to a city surpasses it, and few, if any, equals it. The resident “boom” is now setting seaward.
The Herald, however, remained the preeminent booster of Morocco and a reporter spoke with Denker on 13 February with an extensive quote from the hotelier and developer provided by who the paper called “an enthusiastic believer in our great future.” Asserting that most of the migrants settling in greater Los Angeles during the boom were those of “large wealth,” Denker continued “that is what builds up such cities as Monrovia in two years,” though the San Gabriel Valley burg “is not the only city in Los Angeles county whose growth will forever be a marvel.”
The promoter told the paper that, in two years, in the area between the Pacific and Los Angeles “there will be a larger city than Monrovia is to-day,” this, of course, being his own Morocco, “which will be built in a style and on proportions which will eclipse everything yet seen.” Denker essayed some of the core elements of the project in terms of lot sizes, street widths, the Washington, D.C. inspired design of radial streets emanating from a center and that “there will be no cheap houses in the town.”
He concluded “you would be surprised to learn the wealth of the people who are purchasing in Morocco” and contended that “here is where these wealthy people all have their faces turned.” This was because, “the climate does it; and Morocco proposes to have most of them.” Along these lines, the following day’s Herald blared that “The Millionaires [Are] Moving On The Town In Force” as it was understood that the previous day’s piece was wired to “all parts of the East” and “made a great commotion in Gotham [New York City], the National Capital, and all the other centers of wealth and refinement on the Atlantic Coast.”
Moreover, it was claimed that messages coming into Denker’s Los Angeles office included that an organization headed by railroad and finance tycoon Jay Gould was in the process of formation and that “all the Astors, Vanderbilts, Belmonts, all the bankers, railroad kings, Standard oil cliques and other associations of capital have some of the stock.” Further, it was rumored that,
These millionaires want to purchase the entire town site of Morocco, and make it a summer resort where the gentle breezes of the Pacific shall fan the brows of the tired millionaires, whose life is made a burden to them in counting their untold wealth.
This report might represent something of the acme of the overheated, overexcited rhetoric that marked the rarefied atmosphere of the Boom of the 1880s in greater Los Angeles. Of course, no such group existed and, therefore, no such offer was tended when it came to the tract. In March, there were references to the townsite’s proximity to the Los Angeles and Pacific Railroad line, as well as Denker’s involvement in a movement to widen Pico Street (now Boulevard) to a 100-foot width from either city limits (where Hoover Street is now) or Pearl Street (soon to be renamed Figueroa) all the way to Santa Monica.
In late April, the Herald sent a reporter on another jaunt westward from the Angel City and a visit to the Rodeo de las Aguas contained the type of breathless recitations found earlier in this post relative to the use of the ranch for livestock raising and dairying, as well as an oil well at “the very foot of the mountain” drilled to some 600 feet and where there was “a very encouraging stream of the oleagenous product of Dame Nature’s laboratory.” There was, however, a great deal of water in the well, but it was remarked that “by patience and perseverance a good supply of petroleum will be developed in time.”
Once again, Denker was cited as the lead in promoting Morocco and, in running through the litany of the town’s components, it was proposed that “the design is to make this the most perfect suburban town in the world” in a location that “cannot be excelled anywhere.” The conclusion was that “as Mr. Denker succeeds with all he undertakes, it may be assured that Morocco will grow with rapid strides in the near future.”
A lengthy feature in its 21 June number was titled by the Herald “Morocco. Typical Semi-Tropical Place of Residence. The Peerless Queen of All. From the Mountain All Round to the Sea the Finest Scenery on Earth.” The piece reconstituted all of the bluster and boosting of its earlier efforts, opining, for instance, that “few spots on the good, green earth can furnish anything to equal it in beauty.”
The choice location of the town, the climate, fertility of the soil, the view and more were regurgitated, while what was new was reference to the fact that construction was underway on “the finest Soldiers’ Home in the Union,” situated not far west and which is now the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. Morocco, it was posited, “is the ideal spot . . . as the site of the finest residence place on the globe” even it was understood that the idea that “a suburb of Los Angeles is to be crowned the queen of them all may sound a little boastful.”
After essaying all of the unsurpassed attributes of the townsite, however, the paper, given that this was the first day of summer and it was that season when work was to be shown in full evidence at Morocco, assured readers that “the work of building will go merrily on this fall.” This not only the quarrying of material at Coldwater Canyon and its “inexhaustible supply of the finest of building stones,” but that “plenty of brick will be burned on the spot and sold at cost prices to those who are building.” This meant, it was claimed, that “basements of granite and brownstone fronts are sure to prevail in stately Morocco homes.”
There was reference, as well, to “all the stately mansions which are destined soon to crown the slope as no other spot on the American continent,” with its denizens enjoying the unparalleled climate and thereby becoming “the envy of all who are deprived of this inestimable privilege.” The account then ended with the remark that “all here set forth will bear the closest inspection” while “not a word of it all will be found to be a hair’s-breadth away from the line of the strictest truth.”
Yet, after this, mention of Morocco in the Herald and other local papers all but vanished. In its 2 November issue, the Herald tried to claim that there was a “revival of the boom,” when it was actually clear that the bust was well on its way, but it passed on the alleged news that the Rodeo de las Aguas “embracing the townsite of Morocco with all the water rights and other appurtenances has been sold to a part of New Yorkers for the snug sum of $4,000,000.”
Again, this was not the case, but, while Morocco rose on the crest of a wave of over-optimism and the excess of boom-time hype, Hammel and Denker were deeply involved in a corollary in downtown Los Angeles in the form of a massive hotel. We’ll turn tomorrow to that topic in the next part of this post, so join us then!
While reading this series, I kept asking how Beverly Hills came to be regarded as a prestige residential area. Even in the late nineteenth century, at the very beginning of its subdivision development, many newspaper reports and promotional materials described it as the finest suburban town in the world. Yet, at that time, there was little that was truly distinctive about the place. The so-called panoramic views of mountains and sea were in fact quite distant – nearly 10 miles west to the Pacific Ocean and more than 50 miles northeast to the San Gabriel Mountains. So, I firmly believed that these early descriptions were based more on aspiration than on reality.
That said, one factor mentioned in this post strikes me as crucial. From the outset, Beverly Hills was deliberately planned as an elite town, with wide streets, large lots, and deep setbacks. More importantly, these standards were strictly enforced, ensuring that all buildings and construction conformed to the original vision.
In addition, I think its early incorporation in 1918 was critical, as it gave the city a high degree of self-governance and the ability to maintain tight control over growth and land use.
Another decisive factor should be the influx of Hollywood celebrities, who not only provided invaluable free publicity but also firmly established Beverly Hills’ association with wealth and prestige.