by Paul R. Spitzzeri
After the deaths of Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker and the assumption of the ownership by Emeline Huber Childs of the property on which the massive Main and Tenth Street, or Splendid, Hotel was planned, her intentions to continue the project as intended remained manifest. At the end of March 1894, yet another effort to resurrect the long-dormant enterprise was launched with a meeting of some 50 interested persons, as reported by the Los Angeles Herald in its edition on the last day of the month.
Stephen M. White, one of the original incorporators of the firm that launched the effort and then serving as a United States Senator, “proceeded to urge the necessity of pushing the erection of the hotel to a speedy conclusion” and motioned for a committee of five to be established to achieve that end. Others followed with a general agreement and the committee was formed including Abraham Jacoby, Orson T. Johnson, William G. Kerckhoff, Jr., John R. Mathews, Thomas D. Mott.
Three days later, the paper covered another meeting at which the committee issued a long, typed report identifying the advantages of the hotel site and then offering a proposal proffered by Mrs. Childs, in which she would sell the property and one across Los Angeles Street to the east for $150,000 with 30% down in cash, while she would also subscribe $5,000 towards the resurrected hostelry.
Speakers, including Mathews, endorsed the idea with the committee member also suggesting that an effort be undertaken to determine just how much money would be needed “for the erection of a mammoth hotel.” This led to a new group of five appointed to confer with the Hotel Committee of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, formed during the late boom and becoming increasingly important in boosting the Angel City and environs. That committee met immediately after the confab and discussed some twenty ideas for the site and found that there was enough support to move forward.
The 25 May number of the Los Angeles Express, citing “the evidence of a new boom coming,” informed readers that,
The Main and Tenth-street hotel project has bobbed up again. The outlook for the success of the new scheme recently adopted by the benefited property owners begins to show signs of success . . . the hotel committee has it bonded until October 1 for $85,000, and they are endeavoring to raise this amount by subscription, to be paid as a donation to capitalists who may be induced by this magnificent offer to construct it within one year later.
Impressed by the attitude and ambition of the new hotel cohort, the paper lauded the “old-time vim” expressed and concluded, “people who work with the proper enthusiasm generally obtain the best results and usually get there some way.” A little over a week later, in its issue of 2 June, the Los Angeles Times commented on another gathering in which a subscription committee reported that $55,000 was subscribed and Mathews remarked that “the matter was daily assuming a more tangible shape, and that the outlook was encouraging.”
Moreover, he offered the view that, if the full amount could be obtained, there would be no need to seek outside capital from Chicago (from where previous possibilities emanated) or anywhere else, “but that it would be forthcoming right here in Los Angeles.” He demurred, though, when it came to explaining why he had that perspective. On Mathews’ motion, subcommittees, with seven total members, were appointed for three districts along Main Street between 6th and 10th streets [the latter now Olympic Boulevard].
Conditions were such that, two weeks later, the Express remarked that nearly all of the bonded amount was subscribed so that the project was “considered a fixed fact” and an offer approved to be tendered to those who would build a hotel on the existing foundation “as a clear donation.” The minimum height was four stories and it was added that there was a “project of a local syndicate to build a hotel on the Mission style,” this emerging as a preeminent one in the region, “to cover most of the ground offered and have spacious interior courts.”
An editorial in its 21 July edition observed that,
It begins to look as though Los Angeles will have, before another year rolls by, the large hotel she so badly needed. Probably no city of equal size has so many visitors in the course of twelve months. [After noting the peerless climate and growing business in the city] . . . It is remarkable that a large hotel, like the one now under contemplation, has not been erected here before . . . it is no exaggeration to say that hundreds of persons . . . now only make it a flying visit, and if they remain in the neighborhood, stay at one of the suburban towns, which in point of hotel accommodations are far ahead of the metropolis.
The next day’s Times included a view from Eliza Otis, wife of the paper’s owner Harrison, going under the name of “The Saunterer,” who hearkened back to the opinions of banker and former incorporator Isaias W. Hellman, with respect to the need for “grounds highly improved and beautified and made a veritable garden in the city’s heart, that shall attract all eyes, and especially delight the hearts of the tourist and visitor.”
Eliza Otis added that she preferred that the hotel’s landscaping be “the very perfection of horticultural beauty and concluded,
Los Angeles could have no more effective advertisement than a mammoth modern hotel, surrounded by extensive grounds, fitted with the charms of semi-tropical growth. There is no place in the State that invites such an experiment more promising than Los Angeles.
A little over a month later, the Express published a remarkable and fanciful design for a new version of the hotel, based on “a pencil sketch of the elevation . . . by the public-spirited courtesy of Messrs. Bradbeer and Ferris.” These were James H. Bradbeer (1842-1929), a native of Canada, who worked in Cleveland before migrating to Los Angeles by 1892 and then moved to San Francisco in 1905 and died there, and Walter Ferris (1860-1932), previously a draftsperson for the celebrated sibling architects Joseph and Samuel Newsom (California Governor Gavin Newsom is a descendant of the latter) in the Angel City.
The renderings reproduced in the paper, however, were drawn by Martin M. Morrison (1843-1932), a real estate agent and chair of the hotel promotion committee who thought to keep the original hotel on the existing foundation, but add an “open court circle” on the north end in what was still vacant. Morrison told the Express reporter that he was inspired by what he saw in the previous year’s World’s Fair at Chicago, one of the more important events of the period, and his two-story horseshoe-shaped addition led into a large veranda on the north end of the four-story hotel, which was slated to have 500 rooms.
The “open court circle” was to have drawing rooms for men and women, dressing rooms and a ballroom upstairs, as well as 10-foot wide balconies and promenade and a roof garden, while the structure was to be constructed of steel, faced with terra-cotta, as well a plain and art glass. The open side was to be the carriage entrance and the interior to have lawns and a central flower bed, in which there would be a 40-foot tall column of steel and art glass with a bandstand at the bottom and a 12-foot diameter globe of the world surmounting it, this revolving as a a clock, while an Uncle Sam statue with a liberty pole in one hand and red, white and blue lights activated by his lifting the pole and illuminating the column in a blaze of shifting colors.
With this fantastical apparatus, Morrison proclaimed, “thus we have a tourist hotel, and a magnetic attraction as well.” When asked about the cost and a name, he reported that “responsible contractors” asserted that a quarter-million dollars would do for the hotel and about $70,000 for the “open circle,” while he “thought the most catchy, appropriate and effective name would be The World.” He adjudged that, given the positive effect the edifice would have on the neighboring areas, a realized value of $1 million was likely.
With the hotel “a winner from the start” and “a gold mine . . . both to the owners and to the management,” Morrison predicted that “every resident of Los Angeles would feel a throb of prosperity trickling through their entire system” as the hotel’s “fame would soon spread all over the land.” He reiterated that the option expired on the first of October and the subscription was due a year after that, so the opportunity was at hand, while he informed the Express that, of 26 submitted proposals, the Chamber of Commerce deemed this the best.
Reviving the notion of the floating of bonds to pay for the project, Morrison concluded with a further burst of enthusiasm:
As we sow so shall we reap. We need this improvement badly. There are now indications of another prosperous career [boom]; immense harbors are being erected at our gates [Senator White led the movement to make San Pedro and Wilmington the Port of Los Angeles over the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Santa Monica project]. The iron rail and lightning wires are approaching from several directions. People are flocking here from all points. Our banks are said to be overflowing with unemployed funds. The speculator again is in our midst waiting for a field of labor. Start this enterprise now. Withdraw the veil and let The World develop. Then our guests will be able to stand amidst the radiant splendor of these sun-lit worlds and witness a wave of prosperity sweeping through this city from end to end, while we, with hearts and interests united, await the reaping bye and bye.
In its 8 October edition, the Express remarked that the hotel prospects were still strong as it was stated that subscriptions were within a few hundred dollars of the goal and that the rest was promised. It was asserted that soon the funds would be in a bank, with a trustee heading to Chicago to arrange a deal (despite Mathews’ contention that local money would suffice.) The 15 December issue cited the publication Land and Water as reporting that Morrison stated that “everything is working favorably and there is no doubt about the hotel being built.”
When the new year of 1895 dawned, however, the Express of 4 January informed readers that “the Main Street Hotel problem will, from all appearances, be shortly solved, as the property has been placed in the hands of the well known firm of Easton, Eldridge & Company, with peremptory instructions to close the matter out.”
Principal Wendell Easton of the firm, with offices in the Angel City and San Francisco, stated that the preference was to have the hotel built with bond funding, but added that if “it is not possible to accomplish it . . . we shall certainly . . . sell the property without further delay.” He concluded, “we are not in the hotel business . . . but we will certainly bear a hand and a good one in putting this enterprise on its feet, if those interested more than we are will make some practical demonstration of their faith.”
To the next day’s Herald, Easton specified that a few days only were allowed for a decision to be made and remarked, “in a city with so much enterprise as this, it does seem too bad that a few men cannot be found who are ready to take hold and push an enterprise like this to a finish.” He added that there were offers to remove the foundation materials in about three weeks, but this would only be considered if “we are absolutely sure that the hotel site must be abandoned for want of public spirit and enterprise to carry it on.” Easton told the paper that, if there was a serious backing, he could entice capital from San Francisco.”
Addressing Morrison’s fanciful concept, Easton offered,
In my opinion, a hotel something after the old mission architecture, that would be a pride to the city and bear the distinctive touch of Southern California architecture, would be preferable to the present plans, and a material reduction in cost could be made from the original plans by some such architecture, using the present foundations, however, as a basis to work on. Such a building, neatly and completely equipped, would be a credit to the city, and one that Los Angeles citizens could point to with pride when their eastern friends drop in on them.
Editorializing on the matter, the Express, also of the 5th, noted the long delays with the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty and Grant’s Tomb “and Los Angeles has been equally metropolitan in its experience with the Tenth-street hotel.” It observed the frequent coming and going of revivals, though each “was dropped and fell with a dull thud into oblivion.”
Still, the paper expressed faith that “the magnificent hotel will yet be erected” and that the current promoters “will add another important building to those now in the city and another leaf to the laurel wreath of their business enterprise.” After all, it concluded, “there could not be a better town than this for a splendid hotel” because of the large number of visitors, including “a class of patrons who want a fine hotel and the best of accommodations.”
Two days later, the Herald ran an advertisement from Easton, Eldridge & Company asking subscribers to visit the firm’s office “where a plan as to the completion of the hotel project will be laid before them.” The Times of the 11th quoted “caustic remarks” from the publication, Builder and Contractor, which remarked,
The Main street hotel goblin is walking again. This time it is plastered and painted and assumes the guise of a bluff; the firm of San Francisco real estate men have taken charge of the site to sell it . . . Precisely why it is that other people should be called on to give some one else money to build a house to do business in is not especially clear to the uncultured . . . Queer bed-fellows this land value racket makes . . .
The big excavation on Main street has become an annoying eyesore to our citizens. The perennial talk about constructing a big hotel on that site has become something of a nuisance. Either the hotel should be built at once or the project given up for good. To further prolong discussion on this subject is to advertise abroad the lack of enterprise which exists among the people of Los Angeles . . . So far as can be observed by outsiders the Tenth-street hotel project appears to be very dead, and if it is dead the corpse should be taken away and buried before it begins to smell too loud [?]. Then, after the remains shall have been carted away we may perhaps begin to discuss some other project of a similar character, and upon a site that is more adapted to the purpose of a tourist hotel . . .
A little more than two weeks later, the Express briefly reported that Orson T. Johnson, a member of a committee for the hotel project and who built the Westminster Hotel, one of the city’s finest, in 1887 during the late boom “has offered $25,000 for the Main and Tenth-street Hotel site” and pledged to keep the site open for a year to allow for another opportunity to carry through with the edifice; otherwise, “he would use the site for business purposes.”
The Times of the 27th added that Easton, Eldridge and Company, displeased with the paper’s remarks on the proposal tendered by Johnson to Emeline Childs, admitted that “the property has been sold to Mr. Johnson” under conditions that apparently included the one-year moratorium on any activity pending a revived hotel project, “and is closed under Mrs. Childs’ authorization, and she has compensated us for our services.”
The paper reminded readers that the realtors were, on 9 January, adamant that there were only a few days left for a concrete proposal to be received for a hostelry and that 200 tons of iron and several million bricks comprising the foundation were to be sold as well as the property. It ended its remarks with,
To judge by the sale, which Messrs. Easton & Co. made, the “bluff” worked. Mr. Johnson is to be congratulated on securing the biggest bargain that has been seen in local real estate for several years past.
The 15 February number of the Herald remarked that, with the deed transferred the prior day, the realtors stated that, “there is perhaps no better man in Los Angeles to have purchased this property than Mr. Johnson” as he was a peerless capitalist and successful hotelier. It added that he did not buy the land to build a hotel, but “has given an option upon the hotel to Mrs. Childs or her assigns” with provision that this was for a year and that an edifice had to be completed within 18 months of a deal being consummated.
Emeline Childs was praised for “at a material loss to herself, declined propositions which would have brought her more money, but would have necessitated the removal of the foundations and the loss of the hotel for good.” It can only be assumed that she believed that her late husband, Ozro, was a steadfast champion for the project and Easton recommended that a new slate of promoters should return any money so far collected and seek funds due immediately as work was to commence.
With that, we’ll return with part eight and continue the long, involved story of the project first championed by Hammel and Denker.