by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the October 1929 crash of the stock market in New York City ushering in the early stages of the Great Depression, it was initially believed that the economic downturn would be temporary and so, when it came to proposed projects like Clarence C. Bigelow’s wide-ranging plan to raze Bunker Hill, resubdivide lots and rework thoroughfares over several hundred acres of downtown Los Angeles, the hope was that the effort would continue as the Roaring Twenties much more meekly came to a close.
The Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News of 21 February 1930, briefly reported that,
A new proposal for the removal of Bunker Hill by lowering it to the level of adjoining streets was taken under consideration yesterday by the county board of supervisors when it received a quest for an appropriation of $5000 to make preliminary surveys of the plans.
The request, a companion one to another made to the city council, was filed by the Bigelow plan, an organization [actually, it was his Southwestern Investment Corporation] formed to investigate the possibility of removing the hill . . .
The result was that Los Angeles County Counsel Everett W. Mattoon, namesake of a well-intended act that was to fund infrastructure in unincorporated county communities, like Temple City (founded in 1923 by Homestead owner Walter P. Temple) through special assessment districts, but which was repealed because of its onerous provisions, was to provide advice to the supervisors on whether the proposal and request were legal.
While there was mention of a like request made to the City Council, the Los Angeles Times of 24 March observed that “C.C. Bigelow has asked the City Council to allocate $10,000 toward the preparatory work for the regrading of the section known as Bunker Hill.” In a 27 April article mostly concerning a project to widen Temple Street as part of an ongoing Civic Center plan, the paper noted that there were concerns “inasmuch as the Council has refused to consider the Bigelow plan of cutting down Bunker Hill, which would eliminate the necessity for heavy-grade changes in Temple street.”
Notably, however, an appeal of that decision was undertaken by the Biltmore Improvement Association, located on Bunker Hill at Grand Avenue and 2nd Street, as the Times of 2 May noted that “criticism was directed at Councilman Thomas W. Williams, formerly a Socialist Party member who ran in 1929 as a “people’s” candidate, “for his action in voting against the appropriation of city funds to the survey,” though he allegedly said previously that he would vote for it.
In its edition of the 17th, the paper summarized a meeting of the City Planning Commission concerning improvements of mass transit in the Angel City. Former council member, Alfred J. Barnes, a Progressive Party adherent who served from 1925-1927, offered ideas for three extensions of the existing one-mile subway line that went northwest from downtown.
These included one to the north to serve Eagle Rock, Glendale and Pasadena, another Sunset Boulevard and Aliso Street for the east side, and one south along Olive Street and then to Venice Boulevard for the west and southwest. Barnes provided cost estimates of $4.5 million for the trio, though there were no specifics as to financing, but he added that “this project is dependent upon consummation of the Bigelow plan for the reduction of Bunker Hill.”
In the editorial section of 29 May, the Times addressed the “Bunker Hill Question,” it was commented that the city and county agreed to appropriate funds for a study on the financial viability of the Bigelow plan. It was added that “the community is interested because, if Bunker Hill can be cut down, there will be a vast addition to the assessment roll [due to higher property values] and various traffic problems will be made easier.”
Moreover, the paper told readers that there would be cost savings for building tunnels and that “most of the cost of the survey is already pledged from private sources” with the modest amounts requested of the city and council “smaller than the public’s proportional interest.” The Times opined that it didn’t matter who was for or against the concept, as “certain large interests are known to be strongly opposed,” though even they could not have a problem with a study and it was offered that,
Bunker Hill and what shall be done with it has been a question long enough. It should be settled, one way or the other. For this reason the economic survey now proposed, which will give an unbiased, disinterested opinion on the economic feasibility of the Bigelow plan, should by all means be conducted. Either the removal of the hill will prove profitable or not; but it is very unprofitable to leave matters as they stand, in a condition of uncertainty.
The 11 June number of the Times reported on the hiring of the Chicago firm of William H. Babcock and Sons to work on the study, while the letters to the editor section contained a missive from C.F. Hunt, who was referred to in part three of this post. Continuing his argument against the proposal, Hunt asked “Mr. Bigelow might buy lots and level them, but can be buy and level streets,” while he claimed land value increases would benefit the whole of the Angel City, but “is he able to tax according to benefits.”
The correspondent also questioned the valuation claims, observing that there were hundreds of lots in the vicinity that were either vacant or poorly improved and he wondered “why assume that leveled hill lots will be worth more than the above section?” He also seemed skeptical of the amounts cited and whether “this [would] pay for the existing large buildings and the leveling?”
Hunt then ended with two more queries:
Can the motive for attempting public work, which private parties have no right to do, be other than the profits of promoting and contracting? If the hill be left to develop in a normal way, who can say it will not be the best way, excepting for the promoters who will have to forego the profits of promoting?
The survey work carried on through much of the rest of the year, while the Los Angeles Record, the most liberal of the papers in town, briefly noted, in its 1 October issue, that “more than 600 Bunker hill property owners adopt[ed] [a] resolution pledging confidence to [in] [the] Bigelow plan for [the] removal of” the land form. Bigelow previously remarked that there would need to be at least 85% agreement in the scheme and, as there were well north of 1,200 owners, it is unclear whether that bar was cleared.
A lengthy feature on the Babcock study was published in the Times of 7 December and journalist Charles H. Cohan, who wrote prior articles on the subject, began his piece by commenting that “intensive study is being made to determine the economic probabilities involved in the plan to raze Bunker Hill” and that this “is the outstanding item in the new program of realty procedure now engaging the attention of the country’s foremost real estate economists,” this based by Frederick Babcock’s notes “on new trends of realty economics.”
Babcock informed the paper that “no project of comparable size or importance is in prospect in any other American city” while the engineering component was “in no wise a bar to its consummation.” Rather, “the only point to be determined pertains to its economic expediency.” Notably, the Babcock firm decided “to extend the scope of their survey” beyond Bunker Hill as they pursued its work and, Cohan added,
This has resulted in one of the most extensive realty studies of the entire Los Angeles area ever attempted and goes back for a period of thirty-three years [or around 1897]. It comprises a historical inventory of all building improvements and also is intended to disclose population trends and valuation curves of every section of the municipality.
The company pointed out that “the Bunker Hill project . . . ties in directly or indirectly with every other part of the city,” though this was left unaddressed in terms of detail.” The twin matters of land values and traffic were cited. In a comment that is striking considering that, in 1932, waves of bank failures across the country worsened the Great Depression, it was asserted that,
In the new national prosperity that is now in the making a leading part is visioned for real estate on a basis of sound economics more far-reaching than ever before in the history of American realty transactions. In this respect, it is essential that realty values and possibilities should be considered more largely than ever from the standpoint of developments that have a general municipal significance.
Henry Babcock, Frederick’s brother and partner, continued, through Cohan’s paraphrasing, that “an outstanding feature of the new realty concept is the rehabilitation of blighted areas in cities and towns” and remarked that “there is no community that is entire free from spots of sections that be reason of antiquated structures, topographical conditions or congestion have depreciated in value and also are having an adverse effect on adjacent areas.” It was posited that “these depreciated areas threaten a bad effect on entire municipalities.”
Henry Babcock was quoted as arguing that,
They cannot be fenced off and left to their fate. They cannot be segregated to work out their own salvation regardless of the rest of the community. Consequently they present a problem of concern to the entire city in which they are situated. Naturally, the rehabilitation of blighted areas is governed entirely by the conditions involved.
The topographical environment was crucial in terms of that “traffic barrier” condition frequently cited, but Babcock also stated that “architecturally it has not kept pace with the modernly growing parts of the city.” Consequently, he posited, “it apparently presents a striking need for rehabilitation if it is to share in the indicated improvement in realty values.”
While affirming the engineering viability of razing Bunker Hill, Babcock reiterated that the study was about property value and the effect on nearby sections “and influence on the general realty set-up of the community.” The work, however, was deemed “one of the most important realty propositions that the city has faced in years, we believe.”
The study plowed on for months more, with the Times of 5 April 1931 reporting that details would soon emerge, based on a preliminary report that the Babcock concern completed. It was noted that the survey covered some 40,000 structures built since 1898, not including “single and double family dwellings,” as well as garages, out buildings and others. In the downtown business section, 1,100 edifices were “defined and catalogued.”
Four phases were identified: 1) the study and inventory of the business area; 2) a broader look at improvements citywide; 3) a look at 40 or so other cities in the county; and 4) “an intensive study and appraisal of the properties comprised in the Bunker Hill area.” Addressing the first, those 1,100 buildings were recorded with year of construction, addresses, frontages, lot sizes, type of material, number of stories, capacity, and more. This approach was used for the wider look at about 22,000 structures in the rest of Los Angeles and the county, excepting addresses.
It was specified that a “historical study” was intended and “the data have been expressed in terms of permit valuations corrected to a uniform dollar basis and measured against the growth of city [and county] population,” while it was also vital to examine decentralization of business areas.
Because of the work, the firm remarked that “we are now in a position to make a forecast of the probable future occupancy of land in the central business district,” while efforts were ongoing to predict “the probable percentage of such future occupancy” likely to happen in “the proposed regarded area. provided such regrade takes place.” One important element at play was “the tendency to erect taller and taller buildings in this area.”
The survey period was from 1 September 1930 to 7 February 1931, at which time a local office was shuttered and the personnel and material headed back to Chicago because “the lengthy computations involved” were better handled at the home office due to “the greater facilities available there” and “this work has proceeded continuously to date.”
The 25 June edition of the Times informed readers that the City Council was to hear the final report that afternoon, even as it was declared that “the city government is interested only indirectly in the report” because of the proposed private funding for the project. One benefit expressed, though, was that “in the event the hill is cut down, the city will effect a saving of about $6,000,000, the estimated cost of cuts and tunnels for transportation work.
The next day’s issue covered the report to the council for the “assertedly feasible plan” with Henry Babcock informing city leaders, through a paraphrase:
The report envisages a successful regrade of the hill at a cost of $24,000,000 with public funds [bold added] and the leasing of a consideration section of the regraded area to a private organization for at least ninety-nine years at a rate that will entirely repay the cost in forty years and thereafter provide an annual revenue for the city or county or both for the remainder of the life of the lease.
Breaking down that estimate involved the acquisition of property from 1st to 5th streets, but not beyond and with no east to west limit specified (though see below), at a bit north of $15 million; the “physical work” pegged at just under $7 million; remodeling buildings outside the regraded section, but affected by it as $1.25 million and the rest involving costs of financing.
With a near-capacity crowd in the council chamber, continued the account,
Mr. Babcock, in an explanation of the report illustrated with stereopticon presentations of graphs, declared that it is not feasible for any private company or private organization to acquire, regrade and develop the Bunker Hill area [bold added]. He contended that the maximum area that it would be economical to regrade by private enterprise is that hill area between Fifth and Third streets, and that the minimum area that it is feasible to regrade from an engineering and traffic viewpoint is the area between Fifth and First streets. Therefore, he declared, it is obvious that the project must be undertaken by public enterprise, if at all.
It is significant that the concept now became the “Babcock plan” and envisioned acquiring land from First to Fifth and from Hill to Flower streets, a much smaller footprint than the Bigelow Plan conceived. The Babcock variation, moreover, called for “the section from Third to First street [to] be developed as a park with a certain number of intersecting avenues,” while the existing 1st Street was “to be left at its present grade with a sloping park surface southward from it curving to a new First Boulevard” to eliminate the requirement of a retaining wall. Another change was the idea that “the section from First to Temple street possibly might be utilized as a Civic Center addition,” though not developed much in the document.
Some discussion was had about redeveloping the section from 5th to 3rd streets and then selling the tract which meant the city “would be left with a $13,400,000 permanent investment on its hands, the cost of the section from Third to First street.” A lease for the former, though, “would pay out for the project as mentioned besides thereafter returning a large annual revenue.” It was asserted that a private entity “could not swing the deal of buying the Fifth to Third street section” because a loan of $12.5 million “could not be floated for the purposes involved.”
While the Babcock study did not identify a “decided through of the central business district toward the Bunker Hill area, or in any other direction,” it felt that improvement of the streets “would materially stimulate such expansion in that direction.” It did, however, indicate that “a private organization doing all the work” in the area smaller than Bigelow envisioned, would take some $27 million, but a public project would cost $3 million less because “of the city being able to borrow at a lower rate” through a bond issue.
In another letter, this time published in the Hollywood Citizen-News of 30 June, C.F. Hunt pronounced “the end of the fanciful and impossible Bigelow Plan” and labeled the Babcock proposal “purely single tax.” He concluded, with England reportedly to adopt a Henry George-style plan, to which American “land monopolists” would be diametrically opposed, the rallying cry of “success to the Babcock plan.”
None of this, however, was really viable as the Great Depression became considerably worse in coming months (July 1932 was when Walter Temple lost the Homestead, the last of his once-extensive properties) and there was no possibility for any public or private undertaking with leveling, resubdividing and redeveloping Bunker Hill. After World War II, however, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency did carry out a plan that has been well covered by others over the years, along with general history and remembrance of the area (not to mention a cool 3-D project), and Henry Babcock was in Los Angeles to offer his views, as well.
Unrealistic and infeasible as Clarence C. Bigelow’s gargantuan and grandiose plan for Bunker Hill was, it was a notable part of ongoing ideas and projects to remake early 20th century Los Angeles and it did foreshadow the later redevelopment of that section of the city, so it has a place in our understanding of the Angel City’s history.