by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A prior post here looked at the remarkable rise and rapid collapse of the Los Angeles Investment Company and its primary personage, Charles Elder, with one of its myriad real estate projects in the Angel City being the early 1910s construction of its namesake office building on the northwest corner of Broadway and Eighth Street.
After the furious financial flameout of the LAIC, the structure ended up being purchased in 1920 by Charles Clarke Chapman (1853-1944), a figure best remembered in the Orange County city of Fullerton because his name is readily recognizable for the major east-west thoroughfare running nearly the entire length of that burg.
Chapman actually had an economic crisis of his own that led to his decamping to greater Los Angeles from Chicago in 1894, after which, however, he amassed a substantial fortune—a reinvention that was not necessarily a rare situation. Born in Macomb, Illinois, in the west-central portion of the Land of Lincoln and one of ten children of plasterer and brick mason Sidney Chapman and Rebecca Clarke, Chapman also resided with his family in the nearby town of Vermont.
By 1880, he and older brother Frank, who likely moved there first and worked as a clerk and in building before getting a medical degree in 1877, were in Chicago and, although Charles can be found in every federal census from 1860 to 1940, a group of a half-dozen residents of the Windy City’s Metropolitan Block submitted a short notice to the Tribune of 24 June to state that they “think they have been omitted by the census enumerator.”
In any case, Charles and Frank soon embarked on the enterprise of Chapman Brothers, which was best known at the time for numerous publications of city and county histories, especially in the Midwest and which was succeeded by the Chapman Publishing Company, run by brother Samuel and who extended the reach of these to the East and West. One early example of a Chapman Brothers work was the 1882 The Farmers’ Practical Encyclopedia, which the Tribune of 16 September informed readers promised to “supply farmers and their households with all the information of every nature necessary to carry on their profession to the best advantage.”
During their time in Chicago, however, Frank and Charles also amassed a substantial real estate portfolio, this in an area of the then-West Side and including commercial and residential property. Frank and Charles built substantial houses in that section, as well as expended large sums on a $65,000 group of property in spring 1892, received a building permit for a $70,000 seven-story warehouse and established a subdivision. While they clearly had money from their publishing business to invest, there were other means of securing capital for their growing ambitions.
Their biggest endeavor, however, was a substantial hotel situated more than ten miles southeast of their usual theater of operations. The Chicago Inter-Ocean of 31 July 1892 reported that, “Chapman Bros. have taken out a permit to build the Vendome Club Hotel . . . at a cost of $150,000.” The Tribune of 26 March 1893 noted the edifice’s architect, Frederick B. Townsend, “has designed for Chapman Bros., owners of the Vendome Club Hotel, a four-story and basement addition to that hotel” with an estimated cost of $50,000.
The reason for the heavy investment was embodied in an advertisement for the Vendome Club in the Tribune of 28 October:
The VENDOME CLUB HOTEL is now open for the reception of permanent guests. This is one of the finest hotels in the city . . . The building is fireproof, has all modern improvements, and is elegantly furnished throughout . . . During the World’s Fair the Vendome has entertained only the best class of visitors.
Known as the World’s Columbian Exposition to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ stumbling on the New World when seeking Asia, the fair, held from 1 May to 31 October, was held on 700 acres of converted marshlands, now Jackson Park, with more than 27 million visitors seeing exhibits and other elements in more than 200 temporary structures and on extensively landscaped grounds that included canals, lagoons and a body of water that had a representation of Columbus’ unforeseen landing.
The World’s Fair was also significant for the promotion of greater Los Angeles as a “Land of Sunshine,” including its burgeoning citrus industry, which was just starting to have national reach thanks to the recent innovation of refrigerated railroad box cars for shipping fruit, particularly the orange. One wonders how much the Chapman brothers learned about the region from the exposition and how influential it was in their decision to leave the Windy City for the Angel City and environs.
While a Chapman University special collections description for material related to Frank Chapman states that the Panic of 1893, one of the worst in American history, induced he and Charles to sell the Vendome Club Hotel, it was hardly a decision based on their own volition. The fact was that they, as with so many other capitalists throughout the country at the time, got badly overextended in this speculative venture.
The Inter-Ocean of 26 November reported that “F.M. Chapman and others have given . . . a trust deed on the property . . . for $137,250 at 6 per cent. The Vendome Club Hotel, which was erected and operated by Chapman Bros., during the past year, stands on the ground.” Four months later, however, the Tribune of 23 March 1894 observed that “the ownership of the Vendome Club Hotel . . . is changed” with a trio of men to run it ,though it was added that “the consideration in the deed which has passed from Chapman Bros. is nominal.”
Two days later, the paper clarified that,
The Vendome Club Hotel, one of the best built and equipped of the World’s Fair hotels, has changed ownership, having been sold by George W. Haines for Chapman Bros. . . . The building is an eight-story and basement fireproof building . . . It was built by Chapman Bros. at a cost of between $300,000 and $350,000 and furnished at an expense of $80,000 . . . Included in the transfer of the hotel is [another parcel] which is occupied by cheap frame structures. In part payment for the hotel is given a tract of Florida lands in the Pensacola district at a valuation of something like $100,000. The hotel plant, as it now stands is valued in the sale at $375,000. It has been vacant since the Fair, but will be opened as a fine family hotel by the new owners April 1.
The Inter-Ocean of 12 August, however, noted that a foreclosure suit on that $137,250 trust deed was filed against the brothers and their wives and some 250 complainants, including contractors, suppliers and utilities, sought a receiver because the notes defaulted as of the first of July. Moreover, the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company had a prior mortgage on the hotel for $70,000, upon which the firm filed for foreclosure in March 1895. There were also a raft of civil lawsuits filed against the Chapmans by some of these debtors.
At the end of 1895, reported the Chicago Chronicle, a creditors’ bill was filed against the brothers, with the paper commenting,
The defendants were in the hotel business and were also the proprietors of a publishing business, but their affairs went into the hands of a receiver . . . The bill says Charles Chapman is in California, where service cannot be had upon him, [though others named in the filing purportedly] have funds or property of the Chapmans.
Not surprisingly, the spring of 1894 included a spate of sales of property by Frank and Charles Chapman, to the tunes of tens of thousands of dollars, including their houses as they made plans to flee Chicago and seek opportunities to rise from the ashes of their flamed-out fortunes in greater Los Angeles.
The 14 April edition of the Los Angeles Express stated that,
The largest [real estate] sale recently made [in the past week] was that of the famous Baldridge orange orchard at Covina. The owner, Colonel George Rohrer, who resides in this city in a fine residence at Figueroa and Adams streets [in the fashionable University Park area near the University of Southern California], sold the orchard to Chapman Brothers of Chicago, who have a large printing business there. The price paid was $90,000 . . . He [Rohrer] also has an orchard of 176 acres at Fullerton containing a greater variety of fruits . . . He is a firm believer that orange raising is by no means overdone and that orange orchards will always be first-class property.
The result of this acquisition was that Frank took possession of the Covina orange grove and chose it as his residence, with the house at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Cypress Street, while Charles became proprietor of the Fullerton orchard, situated a couple of miles to the east and sometimes describe as being in Placentia, to which it was closer. Charles, however, decided to live at the University Park home.
Charles was married to Elizabeth Pearson, also an Illinois native, in Texas in 1884 and the couple had a daughter Ethel and a son Charles Stanley. The Los Angeles Times of 13 July 1894 briefly noted that Charles and Elizabeth spent the summer in Redlands because of her health and two months later she died at age 33 of tuberculosis, so it appears that the move to this region was at least in part due to her fragile health—something that drew so many people to come to the area at the time.
In 1898, Charles wedded Clara Irwin, who was almost half his age, and the couple settled into a house a few blocks away from the one acquired from Rohrer, while the Figueroa and Adams house, at the southwest corner where the Automobile Club of Southern California headquarters are now, was rented to recently arrived French artist Paul de Longpre, later owner of a widely-known estate in Hollywood. As in Chicago, Charles quickly became a prominent figure in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), including leadership roles at conferences and in missionary work, while also involved with the Young Men’s Christian Association.
As the 20th century dawned and greater Los Angeles embarked on its third major growth boom (the first in the late 1860s through mid 1870s, when F.P.F. Temple was a prominent “city maker” and the second during the period of 1886-1888 when William H. Workman was the Angel City’s mayor), the Chapman Brothers, augmented with younger sibling Samuel, who came from Chicago in 1904 after disposing of the publishing company, moved into real estate development, with an office in the Frank P. Fay Building at Hill and 3rd streets in downtown (razed in 1994 for a parking lot), to take advantage of the great influx of migrants.
Key to any subdivision in outlying areas of the rapidly expanding, through aggressive annexation, city were streetcar lines and the Express of 26 August 1905 reported that,
Hollywood will have a short line electric railway communication with Los Angeles if plans under way are completed. A committee has the matter in hand, and at its head is F.M. Chapman of Covina, who, with Charles C. Chapman and S.J. Chapman, has organized Chapman Brothers company for the purpose. The three brothers are well-known residents of Los Angeles and Orange counties, and possess ample means. C.C. Chapman is one of the most extensive shippers of citrus fruits in Southern California.
It was added that, two weeks prior, the siblings were granted a franchise by the city following 6th Street from downtown toward Westlake (MacArthur) Park to the western boundary of the municipality along Hoover Street, with the Los Angeles Railway, controlled by transportation and real estate magnate Henry E. Huntington, having a line that ended at 6th and Rampart.
The Chapmans’ goal was to connect their 80-acre holding to the west and it was reported that the LARY had no interest in taking over their rail franchise, though talks were reportedly being considered with the Huntington line, while another, the Los Angeles Interurban, controlled by Edward H. Harriman of the Southern Pacific who recently took over interests from United States Senator from Montana, William Andrews Clark.
The Chapman Brothers did not proceed with railway construction and future lines in the area were built, but the article concluded that the firm was “expending nearly $100,000” for grading and preparing their land “for the purpose of placing on the market a high-class subdivision. ?They embarked on a pair of subdivisions in summer and fall of that year and the Times of 27 August informed readers that,
Within ten days another handsome residence tract in the western part of the city, Chapman Park tract, will be opened for lot reservations. This is a section which will doubtless attract much attention from people seeking high-class home sites, as it has many points of advantage, and the scenic features can scarcely be surpassed within the city. This is an eighty-acre tract, extending from Fourth street to Wilshire boulevard and from Normandie avenue to a line about 300 feet beyond Kenmore avenue. It lies high and rolling, and the streets have been laid out with the contour of the hills, so as to preserve their natural beauty.
About 300 lots were laid out on the property, with frontages of 60 and 75 feet and depths of 150 and 175 feet, while streets were 80 feet in width “and the parking space is to be beautified with palms and a variety of ornamental trees.” In fact, palm trees still are very much a feature in Chapman Park, while the article observed that “there are to be high-class building restrictions,” which could have meant the types of architecture, but also the banning of people of color. The piece concluded, “this land has been held by the Chapmans for several years, and is adjoining other holdings of theirs in that section of the city.” Kenmore Avenue was named after the Chicago street on which Frank Chapman resided.
An advertisement for Chapman Park Tract called it “the newest of subdivisions, close-in [meaning to downtown], high grade residence property . . . in the beautiful Westlake Park district.” It was added that “all improvements to be first class” and “with proper building restrictions,” while there were to be 10-foot parkways, six-foot sidewalks and a “beautiful park centrally located in the tract,” though no such amenity is there now.
A 25 October article in the Express mentioned “three handsome gateways that are to be placed on Wilshire boulevard at the entrances of the three principal streets of the subdivision running north and south,” these being Alexandria, Mariposa and Kenmore.” It was added that “these gateways will be constructed of Santa Barbara sandstone with tile roofs and will have a commanding appearance.” If these were built, however, they are long gone.
Another of those holdings mentioned above became Normandie Square, for which the Chapmans partnered with the realty firm of Wright and Callender, whose office was just a block or so away on Hill Street. Dubbed “An Idea Subdivision of Exceptionally Desirable Lots,” with properties from $750 to $1,250 and a tract office at the corner of Normandie Avenue and 4th Street, the subdivision was promoted in an ad from the Times of 26 November as:
High, sightly, healthy tableland—just west of the famous Westlake district, where you are obliged to pay just three times what we ask. Always buy in the direction the populace wishes to go. They certainly have sought this locality during past years—and always will—and you pay no more than down on the cold, damp flats, or in the wrong direction.
It was added that the subdivision was near a school (the closest now is Cahuenga Elementary at Hobart and 2nd) with street car access close by, as well as “Superb View (including Ocean) and the healthiest air and surroundings obtainable,” this latter a near-universal point made by developers. The piece emphasized “DON’T LET THE PESSIMIST WHO HAS NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES KEEP YOU FROM MAKING MONEY ANY LONGER, but invest in Normandie Square and start a FORTUNE.”
We will return next with part two, carrying some of the history of Charles Chapman (and his brothers) further into the 20th century, so be sure to check back for that!
Paul’s comment on Charles Clark Chapman’s amassing of a real estate fortune after fleeing from Chicago and arriving at Los Angeles is not only noticeable but also thought-provoking. As said, Chapman’s success was a reinvention that was not necessarily a rare situation. This comment is like a wake-up call enlightening the importance of a perspective to review how real estate has evolved, and to foresee the future development trend.
I believe that opportunities actually exist at all times and almost everywhere, but they only belong to those who can recognize them and are willing to react. The time when Chapman was in town, Los Angeles had already been drastically different from its earlier frontier phase decades ago. The land was no more free or very cheap, the influx of immigrants into Los Angeles continued to surge, and the need for productive subdivision and commercial developments were steadily increasing. In that context, Chapman could no longer dream to act as a city maker or to marry into lands. Instead, he should play the role as a city modifier, and align his real estate developments to what Los Angeles mostly needed then.
Today, if we apply this same logic to examine the current housing pressure, expensive land costs, shifting demographic demands, and more permissive building policies, three strategies as below can easily be identified:
1. Adding rental units through ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units)
2. Converting garages into living spaces as self-owned vehicles gradually become outdated
3. Redeveloping strip retail into residential and commercial mixed-use multi-floor buildings
Of course, they are easy to say but at least they are forward-looking, and, much like in Chapman’s time, they should not be rare.