by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The life and career of Charles Clarke Chapman (1853-1944) in Chicago, where he was successful as a book publisher and in real estate, until the Vendome Club Hotel, which he owned with his brother Frank, failed financially in 1894, is certainly interesting, but it was his relocation, with his sibling, to Los Angeles that year that led to a reinvention that was, if hardly unique, was of significance on multiple fronts.
Part one of this post ended with Charles, Frank and their younger brother Samuel, in business together as Chapman Brothers, successfully subdividing 80 acres west of Westlake (MacArthur) Park, then a highly fashionable section of the Angel City, into the Chapman Park and Normandie Square tracts. The siblings continued managing their property until the March 1909 death of Frank at his Palmetto Ranch in Covina, after which another brother, Columbus, who also came to Los Angeles in the Nineties, joined Charles and Samuel for a time.
There were some other Chapman Brothers projects in downtown, including the fall 1907 development of a property, purchased from Herbert Wolfskill, whose family owned land in that area dating back several decades, on East Third Street just west of Central Avenue where a three-story brick and wood business building, for wholesale mercantile and loft purposes, was constructed. Today the site is part of the Higashi Hoganji Buddhist Temple, built in 1976 in Little Tokyo.
Nearby, at the southeast corner of Los Angeles and 5th Streets, Charles, who formed his namesake realty development firm in 1909 with his brother Columbus and son Charles Stanley, had an ambitious plan in 1912 for a ten-story, height-limit, structure with a vaudeville theater, slated to be run by the Globe Amusement Company, on the ground floor. This project fell through, but, a half-dozen years later, a permit was issued for an “auto stage” depot.
The 21 April 1919 edition of the Whittier News reported that a union station for the Clark Bus Line, Pickwick Stage Corporation, United States bus line and the White Bus Line was in development on a ten-year lease from Chapman, with three or four other companies likely to join in the scheme. The paper added that a single-story brick building, “patterned closely after those of a modern interurban electric railway station,” was to be constructed with “a large waiting-room opening through gates onto platforms from which passengers will board their specific stages.” The edifice still stands as the “5th & L.A. Wholesale Plaza.”
Also in this vicinity, the Los Angeles Times of 8 August 1912 reported on plans by architect Edwin C. Thorne, whose Temple (formerly La Puente) School, now the district offices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the Whittier Narrows, was a striking example of his work, for a six-story commercial building for Chapman on the east side of Los Angeles Street, north of 6th Street, in what was then the main wholesale section of downtown.
The paper noted that the edifice was to be “of the most metropolitan, fireproof type,” with the $75,000 structure replacing two frame houses and the first level to have two stores and the upper floors for lofts. It was added that “the building for Chapman is only one of the many modern improvements . . . which will contribute to the swelling of the already record-breaking construction figures of the present year” as another boom was playing out in the Angel City and region. This structure, at 548 S. Los Angeles, also still stands, with B. Black and Sons, a wholesale fabric business, the main tenant there since 1935.
Another major real estate venture in downtown came in October 1915 when Chapman expended about a half million dollars to buy the Exchange Building at the northeast corner of Hill and 3rd streets, where the Chapman Brothers had their offices. The Los Angeles Tribune of the 10th remarked that,
As part of the purchase price Mr. Chapman, who is known as the “orange king” of Southern California, transferred to Mr. [Frank K.] Meade 1000 acres of raw citrus land about four miles east of Orange.
It was added that “it is Mr. Chapman’s intention to spend about $10,000 in refinishing portions of the interior and in putting the premises in first-class condition,” with the structure containing stores on the ground level and about 100 offices in its upper stories. The building was cater corner to the famous Angels Flight funicular railway (which has been moved a short distance south along Hill) and, as was mentioned in part one, it was razed and a parking lot is there now.
Yet another major building project in downtown in which Chapman was a partner was announced in the Tribune of 10 September 1916, which remarked that,
Plans for the erection of a splendid nine-story fire-proof building on the southwest corner of Third and Broadway, the ground floor of which will be a mammoth theater, have been announced by the Stability Building company . . . While part of the ground floor will be devoted to store rooms . . . most of the space will be taken up with a handsome theater, seating 3000 people. The designers are gathering the very latest ideas in modern theater construction to embody in the new theater. The upper floors will be given over to studios.
Homer Laughlin, Jr., was the principal in the structure that was named for him, while other capitalists invested in the project were Eli P. Clark, Robert A. Rowan and Frank J. Hart. The structure was completed in early 1918 and Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theatre was the main tenant.
As the downtown section continued its relentless expansion, the topography of Bunker Hill forced the commercial districts to move south and southwest, though efforts were undertaken to either cut through the hill region or level it entirely. When Eli Clark and others proposed a cut to open up access to the west, where, as we’ve noted with the Chapman Brothers tracts near Westlake (MacArthur) Park, there was also major expansion, though primarily residential, Chapman was initially opposed, even as his purchase of the Exchange Building was at the edge of where this concept identified as the essential location for the cleaving of the hill.
Clark, however, lobbied Chapman and this resulted in a change of view which the Business Stability Association, which was formed to campaign for the proposal, publicized as a important development, given Chapman’s public standing. A facsimile of the missive was published in the Times of 25 March 1916 and in which the “orange king” wrote to Clark:
I am pleased to tell you that I no longer look through a pair of holes through the hills but rather a great highway. The proposition of the open cut appeals to me more and more as I think of it. I am frank to say I was prejudiced against this enterprise because of the wrong conception I had of it . . . I have been thinking along different lines . . .
What ended up happening was the construction of the Second Street Tunnel, though years of determined opposition and legal proceedings prevented work from starting until 1921 and the “cut” of 1,500 feet through the hill was finally opened to the public in late July 1924, easing ingress and egress through downtown as automobile traffic accelerated dramatically during that period.
Another similar transportation project to which Chapman lent his support concerned a subway from Hill Street through Bunker Hill and adjoining areas, with the Tribune of 29 January 1917 reporting, which cited “prominent Los Angeles business men” for the assertion that its completion was “necessary to make Los Angeles . . . the great western metropolis of the future.” With cars already so numerous that traffic and parking were increasing problems downtown, the rapid transit plan was considered “an asset in the city for years to come.”
Chapman was one of those major capitalists quoted in the piece, as he declared,
We are in process of building a great city, doubtless the greatest on this favored coast. We therefore must build it not alone for the present, but we must look into the future and prepare for the demands sure to be made upon it. We must have a vision of this great future metropolis. The subway will mean more to the city than any other improvement save the [Los Angeles] aqueduct.
Chapman’s reputation was such that he was a prominent Angel City figure on multiple fronts, including his long stretch as president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) regional conference, role as chair of the state Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.), leader of the state Sunday School Association.
He and his brothers donated the land on the Chapman Park Tract for the Wilshire Boulevard Christian Church, located at the northeast corner of that prominent thoroughfare and Normandie Avenue and which began services in a tent in 1910 until a Craftsman-style edifice was completed the following year. We’ll return to this church later in the post when a much larger and more ornate structure was built in the 1920s.
In 1920, Chapman donated the princely sum of $400,000, conditional on a matching sum being raised, for a theological institution in East Hollywood and named the California School for Christianity, formed after the California Bible College, with antecedents dating to 1861 and the Hesperian College at Woodland in northern California, decided to migrate from Berkeley.
Five-and-a-half acres were purchased on Vermont Avenue, across from the Los Angeles branch of the University of California (and recently evolved from a normal school for teacher education long located where the Los Angeles Central Public Library opened in 1926). As work began on the campus buildings, classes were held at the Wilshire Boulevard Christian Church and the Hollywood Citizen-News hailed the project, writing “Hollywood interest is attracted to the college . . . at a time when discussion of the problems of the church [generally] are foremost in the minds of many people.” As with the Wilshire Boulevard church, we’ll come back to this topic of the college.
Chapman was also a director of the Commercial National Bank of Los Angeles and maintained a long and important standing with the Republican Party. On this last point, there was an effort in 1914 to promote his candidacy for California governor, stemming from party supporters in Orange County.
The same year, missives on Chapman’s business letterhead for his Santa Ysabel (Fullerton), Borromeo (purchased in 1901 from John K. and Carolina Borromeo Tuffree in Placentia and named for the Peru native), and Santa Ema (also in Fullerton) orange ranches, supported a candidate for Congress. He issued a similar piece of correspondence, though not on that letterhead, for another office-seeker for the House of Representatives in 1920. Chapman was twice a delegate at the Republican national convention, more of which will be discussed later.
As the Teens neared their conclusion, the already very successful and wealthy orange grower and real estate developer hit the trifecta as the Times, of 14 March 1919 reported,
The new gusher which the Union Oil Company brought in on Tuesday [the 11th] near Yorba Linda, on the C.C. Chapman ranch, has been growing in production every day and looked last night as though it would settle down into a steady 5000-barrel output, although it would surprise none familiar with the conditions if it really did much better.
The Chapman Well #1 was the second major discovery in Orange County after the first one drilled by Edward L. Doheny (who, with Charles Canfield, opened the Los Angeles field in 1892) at nearby Olinda in 1897. In fact, the paper remarked that “the distance of the well from the proven field, three miles, encourages belief that astonishing results may be developed” and the Chapman well yielded 2 million gallons of crude in five years. While the fantastic field of Huntington Beach in 1920 shifted attention to that coastal region, later finds in Placentia, specifically Richfield and others, brought renewed focus to the northeastern portion of the county for petroleum prospecting.
The gusher at Placentia and the wells that followed obviously greatly improved Chapman’s financial position. In his “Mory’s Day Letter” column in the Los Angeles Record of 27 September 1920, Edward L. Moriarty penned a missive directed to Chapman in which he read an interview with the capitalist and “orange king” in which he “told of leaving your job printing shop in Chicago because a member of your family was ill—and seeking your fortune in California, at the age of FORTY-THREE.”
Of course, this was not at all the case, as Chapman and his brother, as was noted in part one of this post, were seriously weakened financially by the disastrous operation of a Windy City hotel, though it was true that his wife suffered from tuberculosis, which claimed her life within months of settling in Los Angeles.
Observing that Chapman talked of his efforts in perfecting citriculture, Moriarty wrote “evidently you didn’t come by your money through luck” and added that “what should interest men at any age is the fact the circumstances,” not thoroughly explained, “forced you to begin all over again at FORTY-THREE.” Given this, it was concluded that “the story of your fortune, founded when you were comfortably over FORTY, may prove somewhat of an inspiration to men who are doubting their own chances for success.” Moriarty also gently chided Joseph Mesmer, from a longtime Los Angeles family, for having sold the land to Chapman that yielded its black gold.
And, as the decade came to a close, nothing, outside of his “orange king” operations, better epitomized Chapman’s standing than his purchase of the Los Angeles Investment Company Building, erected by capitalists who overextended on the development of the structure (perhaps not all that different than what he and his brother experienced a quarter century before in Chicago, though without the criminal aspects!)
Four days before the Moriarty column, the Los Angeles Express reported
Charles C. Chapman of Fullerton has bought the Los Angeles Investment building for $1,600,000. It is one of the largest business transactions in downtown realty recorded in the city’s history . . .
The new owner has extensive fruit and oil interests. He first began business here in 1894, when he sold lots in the Wilshire [Westlake] district by showing them to prospects with horse and buggy. He bought the 11-story building at Eighth and Broadway purely as an investment and will rename it “The Charles C. Chapman building.”
Among the agents was Wright-Callender-Andrews, an earlier iteration of which had business ties to Chapman, while it was added that there was an $800,000 mortgage on the edifice, “but most of the remainder of the purchase price is paid in cash.” The Times, also of the 23rd, published an image of the building with an inset portrait of its new owner, with the paper going into much more detail about the transaction, including that Chapman intended having offices in the structure for his fruit, oil and real estate enterprises.
Major tenants included Savings Bank, American Express and, in the three topmost floors, the posh City Club. While all of the space was leased, Chapman told the paper that rents were under market rate and would soon be increased—today, the edifice is known as The Chapman Flats. It was added that, “seen yesterday at his home in Fullerton, Mr. Chapman was enthusiastic over his purchase” as “he voiced the belief that Los Angeles will develop and grow even more rapidly in the future than in the past” and this motivated his decision.
The capitalist commented,
Every year there are stronger reasons and greater incentive to come to Los Angeles. We have every attraction to induce hundreds of thousands of people to come here to live and more are added every year. Los Angeles is better known now. It is world famous. I believe that people will come here to settle from all parts of the world, and that all Southern California will be thickly populated.
As for the LAIC, with new leadership seeking to revive the flagged fortunes of the firm, which built thousands of houses, mostly in the southwestern sections of the expanding city, the infusion of cash from Chapman was viewed as a significant boon to its future. A recent post on this blog covered some of the subsequent history of the company as, under far superior management and in the next boom that certainly lent credence to Chapman’s cheery prediction, it rose to prominence once again.
We’ll return next with part three, looking further at Chapman’s life and work in Orange County, particularly in citrus, but also his efforts in Fullerton and later developments in Los Angeles, as well, so come back for that.