by Paul R. Spitzzeri
When, in spring 1923, Homestead owner Walter P. Temple launched his Town of Temple subdivision, it was likely that he was doing whatever he could to reassert the Temple family’s prominence in the region. The 285-acre tract was, a half-century earlier, owned by his father, F.P.F., grandfather William Workman and their friend, Lewis Wolfskill, and was part of the Rancho San Francisquito.
As the family’s Temple and Workman bank, however, was suspended for three months during an economic panic, which left them with a severe cash reserve problem, that land was sold in October 1875, to Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, a San Francisco capitalist who acquired the adjoining Rancho Santa Anita several months earlier and who was contemplating loaning money to the stricken institution.
Undoubtedly, Baldwin was eagerly eyeing Temple and Workman’s vast real estate holdings and when, in late November, he agreed to a loan, these thousands of acres of valuable property were used as collateral. This included what later would be known as the Montebello Hills, part of Rancho La Merced and considered of low value, but which passed to Baldwin when he foreclosed on the loan in 1879, three years after the bank closed.
Three years after Baldwin’s 1909 death, Walter Temple acquired 60 acres of that hill property, on which his nine-year-old son, Thomas, stumbled upon oil indications. By summer 1917, Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) brought in the first well and a string of thirteen producers, of fourteen attempts, brought the Temples a fortune. Some of those funds went toward acquiring the land on which the Town of Temple was laid out.
For most towns, there are benchmarks that were intended to show that they were stable, durable and desirable places to live and work. These would include such examples as a business district, a school, a park, good transportation (in the case of the Town of Temple, the extension of the Alhambra line of the Pacific Electric Railway streetcar system), and churches.
Walter and his Temple Townsite Company partners, Milton Kauffman, George Woodruff and Sylvester Dupuy, established the business area around the key intersection of Las Tunas Drive and Temple City Boulevard and, just a couple of blocks to the east, a park on the west side of which was the Pacific Electric depot.
With respect to a school and church, there were preexisting ones that were incorporated into the new burg. In early February 1908, the Palo Solo School District was carved out of the Arcadia district, with it reported that this secession was effected because of dissatisfaction with Lucky Baldwin’s town which had a horse racing track (soon shuttered because of moral indignation).
A lot was acquired from the Santa Anita Land Company and a school built later that year on what became Longden Avenue, named for Los Angeles County Supervisor Orray W. Longden, who died in office in 1905. In August 1911, the name was changed to South Santa Anita and the school was folded into the boundaries of the Town of Temple a dozen years later. The growth of the hamlet led to a voter-approved bond issue for new campus buildings, which were completed by September 1927. A few years later, the school name was changed to Longden.
The Mountain View Methodist Episcopal Church was incorporated in February 1910 and a frame house of worship erected at Golden West and Lemon avenues in Arcadia, though some sources suggest that there was a founding of the church two years prior. After nearly 15 years, a name change to Mountain View Community Church and not quite a year-and-a-half after the establishment of the Town of Temple, another moniker was effected with the Monrovia News of 25 September 1924 reporting that “the Mountain View Community church, which for many years has served the people of South Santa Anita . . . is no more.” The piece remarked:
By action of the official board, the name was officially changed to the Temple Community M.E. church. This follows the decision to change the location of the church to the Temple civic center, where three lots have been given the church people and where they will receive the financial support both of the Townsite company and the merchants of Temple.
This was about a month after plans were approved by the church’s building committee for a Neoclassical structure (with Greek temple-like columns—one wonders if this was a nod to the name of the town and its founder, whose mausoleum at his family’s El Campo Santo Cemetery at the Homestead has a similar architectural style) designed by Arthur R. Lindley and Charles R. Selkirk of Los Angeles and whose best-known local edifice is Glendale’s Alex Theatre.
On the 1st of February 1925, the cornerstone was laid for the church with the Los Angeles Times of the prior day observing that about 175 guests were expected and, among the speakers was Woodruff. It was added that “a regular attendance of between 500 and 600 has necessitated the building of the new structure” while the cost of the edifice was pegged at $40,000 (other sources suggested that the amount expended was $25,000.)
As for the postcard, it is unclear when the photo was taken. It appears the church was completed by fall 1925, while the landscaping appears to show bushes, shrubs and trees that were somewhat recently planted, but not likely newly so. The Pasadena Star-News of 25 March 1926 reported that,
Temple Community Church grounds are now being landscaped through co-operative effort on the part of residents of the district. The work is being done by voluntary labor under the supervision of M. Sato, well known Japanese nurseryman of Alhambra.
Many donations of trees and shrubs have been made since the idea was suggested. Much of the planting will be done next Saturday, the land already having been cleared and leveled . . .
So, it is possible the photo was taken later that year, though it was used on this day in 1929 with the sender, identified only as “F.H.S.,” writing to the recipient in Toledo, Ohio, that there was a visit with a couple, of which the man was going to “transfer his membership to this Church on Easter.”
As for the church, it was renamed the Community Methodist Church of Temple City in 1944 and, thirteen years later, a new house of worship was constructed on the property, though the 1920s edifice remained as a sanctuary. In 1962, after a merger with St. Paul’s Methodist Church, which was located at El Monte and Freer avenues, the institution took on the name of the First Methodist Church of Temple City.
In fall 1964, after less than four decades, the original church structure was torn down to make way for a fellowship hall, education center and administrative offices (built by Wheatland Construction Company of Whittier, which erected the aforementioned Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum at El Campo Santo at the Homestead) and the Times of 30 November quoted the Rev. Charles Hamby, the church’s pastor, that “the old church was one of the first permanent church structures in this community.” The article added that church records showed 30 members when the church was built and there were 875 in 1964.
With respect to what was happening in Temple City the month the postcard was mailed, a couple of items stand out, including a report in the Star-News of 8 March that,
Friends of Mabel Walker Willebrandt here, are interested in the announcement that she will remain assistant attorney general in charge of prohibition affairs . . .
Mrs. Willebrandt will be placed even more directly in charge of dry law enforcement, since it is anticipated that the prohibition department will be transferred from the treasury to the justice department [following the inauguration of President Herbert Hoover].
A prior post here covers some of the history of Willebrandt, who was the highest ranking woman in the federal government while serving as an assistant attorney general and whose parents, David and Mabel Walker, who resided on Encinita Avenue on the west end of Temple City. In late May, Willebrandt, however, retired and returned to a private law practice with clients including the MGM film studio and the Screen Actors Guild.
A second item of note came when a notice was taken out in the next day’s edition of the Monrovia News-Post and read,
REALTORS and brokers take notice: All our lots in Temple City, California, are withdrawn from the market as of March 1, 1929. All price lists issued by the Davis-Baker Company or ourselves are herewith canceled. Temple Townsite Company, Milton Kauffman, Secretary.
As has been noted here before, sales of lots at Temple City dropped markedly following the passage of the Mattoon Act, which was intended to provide for infrastructure in unincorporated communities by establishing tax assessment districts, though the problem was that the neighbors of a defaulting property owner were forced to pay that assessment.
In late January 1928, a deal was reached by Walter Temple, Woodruff and Kauffman by which all of the Temple Townsite Company and Temple Estate Company properties—these latter including holdings in Alhambra, El Monte and San Gabriel and the total valuation involving some $1.5 million—were assigned to the Davis-Baker Company of Pasadena to manage.
Richard D. Davis, Jr. and Harrison R. Baker, who served in the Navy during the First World War, formed their partnership in fall 1921 and became very successful with nearly two dozen new tracts, involving 7,000 dwellings, and existing structures in the Crown City and elsewhere in the area, as well as in San Diego. They were joined in 1926 by Thomas Acton, who established a realty office in Alhambra about a dozen years prior and who facilitated sales and leases of downtown business properties for Temple just prior to joining Davis-Baker.
The Star-News of the 28th reported that “the Davis-Baker Company plans developing the Temple properties along the same distinctive lines that have characterized the property developments heretofore negotiated by the concern” and that Acton “will supervise the development of the Temple properties.” The paper added that, “Temple [City] residents view the firm’s entrance into the realty field in their community as an augury of significance, believing that the local company will do much for the upbuilding of the properties to be managed in the region.”
In its announcement, Davis-Baker reviewed the holdings involved and commented,
The town of Temple has been developed by the Temple Estate [Townsite] Company. It is now a thriving community comprising some 600 residents and the business section has some twenty-five stores and includes a bank, newspaper, post office, retail stores and an active Chamber of Commerce. The Davis-Baker company will represent the Temple interests in handling development and sale of the property now owned there by them.
The article ended with the observation that “certain of the business properties will be disposed of and the Temple holdings consolidated.” Despite the track record of Davis-Baker, the conditions at Temple City, including the Mattoon Act issues, and the souring real estate market generally meant that the arrangement came to an end with the modest notice issued by the Townsite Company.
In fact, in July, the Estate Company announced that three of Alhambra business properties were sold for $425,000, these being the Utter and Sons mortuary, Temple Theatre and Edison Building, which took up most of a block that Walter Temple developed between 1921 and 1927, the only edifice being left out of the deals was the Temple Estate Company Building between the theater and the Edison structure.
This transaction, however, could not stem the rising tide of debt that was consuming Temple’s finances, which were in increasingly troubled straits due to rapidly declining revenue from the Montebello oil wells and dramatically rising expenses professionally and personally, the latter including the five-year construction of the Temple family’s residence, La Casa Nueva, at the Homestead.
On the last day of May 1930, Woodruff announced on behalf of his partners that the Temple Townsite Company “has sold all of its property in this district to the newly organized Temple City Company, headed by D[ouglas] D. Coughran,” who was an original sales agent when the town was founded seven years prior. The deal involved all unsold lots and 35 houses in the northeastern section of the tract and the article ended that “it is felt the property is being taken over at a most propitious time because of general business conditions being on the upgrade now.”
Walter Temple only recently leased the Homestead to the Golden State Military Academy, hoping to save it from being lost by foreclosure to the California Bank, and decamped to Ensenada, Baja California, México to save money. The late October 1929 crash of the stock market in New York City, however, set the Great Depression in motion and, while conditions did not seem to be that bad several months later, matters would get considerable worse, especially during waves of bank failures in 1932.
In July of that year, the Homestead was transferred to the bank after foreclosure but part of it as the Museum and Temple City are still with us as part of Walter Temple’s fascinating and complex legacy as a capitalist taking great risks in business during the highly speculative period of the Roaring Twenties.