by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As has been often pointed out in this blog, the year 1923 was the peak of one of the many development booms in greater Los Angeles over its history. Homestead owner Walter P. Temple, who had real estate projects in downtown Los Angeles and several cities in the San Gabriel Valley, launched his biggest that May when he announced the Town of Temple, renamed Temple City in 1928.
Explosive growth took place in all directions during that period and, in the Angel City, a focal point of expansion was south from downtown toward the burgeoning Port of Los Angeles. An obvious argument for this was the tie between agriculture, commerce and industry with goods transported by rail and road to the harbor, the addition of manufacturing areas and the need for housing, especially for those employed in that sector.
We’ve explored at least one example of the connection between industry and housing with the Montebello Park project southeast of Los Angeles, along rail lines that took products east, while this post takes us to the southern portions of the City of the Angels and the Greater Goodyear Park subdivision in what is now the Florence-Graham neighborhood.
Notably, Florence was where an important rail project took place a half-century prior after the Southern Pacific took control of the sole existing railroad line, the Los Angeles and San Pedro, following a subsidy election in which Los Angeles County voters not only handed that line over to the rail giant, but provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds for projects like the construction of a branch line to Anaheim, in what later became Orange County, from the Florence section.
The move from the industrial heart of Los Angeles (east of Alameda near Union Station and west of the Los Angeles River) to the south was an obvious one, given the railroad line to the harbor, as well as routes heading to the east through the San Gabriel Valley. By the Roaring Twenties, the roar of heavy manufacturing magnified dramatically in these new districts which offered the space for large-scale plants.
Because our region quickly became the automobile capital of the world in terms of ownership and use of cars, it was no surprise that the onrush of such facilities as tire plants took place. For example, not far away from the tract highlighted here and several years later, the Firestone Tire and Rubber plant opened at the border of Los Angeles and South Gate, while further east was the Samson Tire and Rubber factory in what became the City of Commerce (part of it survives today as the Citadel Outlets.)
Predating these was the plant of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber and the Goodyear Textile Mills companies on the west side of Central Avenue between Gage and Florence avenues. The facility, located on what was previously the first Ascot Park race track (a new version subsequently opened in El Sereno, northeast of downtown), produced its first batch of tires in mid-June 1920, while cotton and other materials were also processed there.
The Goodyear firm bought, the prior year, more property than it needed for its plant plans, so it soon sold off surplus land that was used for residential development. This included tracts containing houses affordable for those like to work at the factory as well as those being built adjacent to the Goodyear site to the west and north by commercial real estate developer William H. Daum, who came to Los Angeles in 1904 as an agent with the Santa Fe railroad and built a firm that still operates, at his Southwest Industrial Gateway Terminal.
Two substantial subdivisions were instituted by the duo of Charles F. DeWitt and John H. Blair, who very recently formed their firm, but quickly launched projects in the Silver Lake section northwest of downtown and Wilshire Boulevard Heights in that quickly growing section west of the central section of the city, while later developing Hollywood Manor adjacent on the east to Universal City and Studios.
DeWitt (1872-1946), hailed from Lowell, a town on the west edge of Indiana not far southeast of Chicago, where he resided before coming to this area in 1907 where he became the proprietor of the Alvarado Hotel, cater corner to Westlake (now MacArthur) Park. By fall 1908, however, he moved into real estate, operating solo and working with land near Bakersfield, Fresno and other parts of the Central Valley. DeWitt, his wife and son resided for some years in South Pasadena before moving back to Los Angeles and it appears that he made a decent living.
Blair (1881-1953) was born in Waco, Texas and lived for many years in Houston, where he was a teaming contractor and farmer. He headed to Los Angeles in 1920, engaged in some solo real estate worker and was briefly the vice-president of the Larter Realty Company. It looks like his introduction to DeWitt came when he acquired some of the Citrus Cove land between Fresno and Sequoia National Park where DeWitt had a major subdivision during the last half of the teens.
The pair’s inaugural project as a team was Wilshire Boulevard Heights (the name was used for a different project early in the century). Blair bought property there for a prospective home early in 1921 and, in October, after the Larter firm dissolved, the first mention of DeWitt and Blair working together was in the Los Angeles Times of the 2nd, which reported that
Arrangements for the subdivision of the last portion of the old Rancho Las Cienegas [La Cienega], formerly known as the Antonio Urquidez tract, have been made, according to C.F. DeWitt and John H. Blair, local realty brokers, who have purchased forty-eight acres on Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue for the purpose of subdividing it into homesites.
The property, promoted as “Wilshire’s Highest Viewpoint,” was acquired through a bank liquidation and 180 lots were laid out, southwest of that intersection, with $100,000 in improvements planned for the tract.
Express, 21 January 1922
With Wilshire Boulevard Heights an immediate success as the regional real estate marked heated dup, DeWitt and Blair, in early 1922, looked to the southeast and acquired a 25-acre parcel from Mary Fleming in an area bounded by Main, Florence and Moneta [later renamed Broadway]. They bestowed on it the unwieldy and bulky moniker of “Main-Moneta-Florence Avenue Square” and sales were launched on 22 January. An early advertisement referred to their windfall from the Wilshire Boulevard property, noting that they sold more than $300,000 worth of property there in a month.
DeWitt and Blair, in a highly competitive real estate market, also honed their promotional skills, establishing a railroad crossing sign as something of a logo and employing attention-grabbing language, such as
We Told You to STOP — LOOK — LISTEN For the Greatest Investor’s and Homebuilder’s Opportunity in Los Angeles’ History, Here It Is—Now ACT!
The pair also proclaimed that “this greatest subdivision of the great southwest” had a trio of major paved streets, while the land laid fallow for some three decades “while the city’s population pressed on all three sides.”
By summer, the DeWitt-Blair Realty Company announced Goodyear Park, which, with 1,600 lots on the east side of Central Avenue between Slauson and 79th Street, which the Los Angeles Express of 26 August observed, was “said to be the largest piece of land ever marketed at a single time in the city.” It was added that “this property is bounded by thickly populated areas on three sides and is 15 minutes,” presumably by streetcar, “from Seventh and Broadway” in the fast-developing area of downtown.
Blair noted that, with a quarter million dollars in projected improvements, there would be 14 miles of curbing, some 300,000 square feet in sidewalks, over 1.3 million square feet of oil-based paving and nearly 42,000 feet of piping for gas and water. He continued by telling the paper that “events transpiring since our purchase of the land was announced, have indicated that it will sell with amazing rapidity” and that “at least 20 contractors already have offered to buy lots upon which to build houses for resale, and literally a flock of salesmen have applied for positions.”
The first advertisement for the subdivision appeared in early September, with sales commencing at the start of the following month, headed by a promotion involving the give-way of a $5,000 house. It was noted that Goodyear Park, the main sales office for which was across Florence Avenue from the tire plant and just east of Daum’s $100 million industrial subdivision and was two blocks from a $1.5 million site for what became, in 1924, the John C. Fremont High School. Here again was the railroad crossing sign logo with “STOP LOOK LISTEN BUY” on it.
By the end of 1922, the “stamp of approval” of a “buyer’s guide” included the aforementioned amenities, with additional mention of the nearby Miramonte Grammar School (residing on nearby Miramonte Boulevard was Walter Temple’s brother, John, who owned the Homestead from 1888 to 1899, and his family, as well as the prospective site for Thomas A. Edison Middle School, which opened in 1926. What was new to the promotion, however, was mention of race restrictions, meaning that “homes [are] protected by perpetual” banning of anyone not “of the Caucasian race.”
At the dawn of 1923, ads for Goodyear Park became more ostentatious, with one showing a map of the area and an arrow pointing south towards the Port of Los Angeles with the heading “Payrolls and Population Are Building ‘Solid to the Sea.” Magnifying glasses looked upon representations of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, New York City and Philadelphia as precursors to such projects and the remark that “Factories Locate Convenient to Harbors, Workers Locate Convenient to Factories.”
The first unit, comprising 1,000 lots, sold out in three months and the second, with 514 lots, opened six days earlier, already experienced 159 sales. Moreover, Daum announced that deals were made for 15 factories in his industrial tract as “Los Angeles is just entering its industrial era” and those were “but the first of hundreds of plants to seek sites between the [downtown] business district and the harbor.” Builders and potential lot buyers were put on notice that houses were selling before completion and that the second and final unit was sure to be sold out in a month.
Not quite a month later, in early February, a new ad had the striking image and language of “City and Harbor, THE GIANT HANDS of INDUSTRY are forcing them together.” Further, it was remarked that Daum projected $5 million annually in new factories and improvements at his site, while the $10 million, electrically-powered Goodyear tire factory had a $3 million payroll each year. Readers were exhorted to buy soon, as $2.5 million in sales were rung up since the first of October, north of 150 houses, stores and other buildings constructed in four months, and eight flats and ten stores coming soon.
The rhetoric ratcheted up even further with the pronouncement that “humanity calls for food, for clothing, for a thousand and one necessities and luxuries.” It was through “the great wheels of industry” that these needs and wants were met and “Los Angeles, with two new factories per day opening within its portals, is fast becoming the great manufacturing center of the Pacific Coast.” Goodyear Park, it was assured, “is the center of the city’s greatest growth,” with readers told not to take DeWitt and Blair at their word, but to visit, because “where there is growth, there is money to be made in real estate.”
With their two soaring successes in hand and their pockets lined or stuffed with the proceeds of their pronounced profits, DeWitt and Blair turned their attention to a new section, just south of the tire plant, with the Times of 22 March 1923 reporting,
The Dewitt-Blair Realty Company [sic], it was announced yesterday, has arranged to purchase 300 acres in the southern section of the city from the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and will complete the deal within two or three days. The acreage is bounded by South Park [now Avalon Blvd.], Central, Manchester and Florence avenues, and will be subdivided at once and placed on the market.
The property was purchased by the Goodyear Company in 1919 when its factory was established, together with much other acreage that has since been placed on the market. The city has grown completely around the tract, and is proceeding rapidly on all four sides. The consideration is asserted to be in excess of $1,000,000.
The property adjoins acreage immediately surrounding the Goodyear plant [and which was] purchased recently by W.H. Daum for industrial sites, and on which, it is said, seventeen large enterprises have obtained sites for factories.
The new subdivision was named as a way to capitalize on the resounding success of its predecessor and dubbed “Greater Goodyear Park,” comprised of 930 lots, though the map was merely labeled with its official reference with the city, “Tract No. 6097.”
We’ll pause here, however, and return with part two covering the development of this latest DeWitt and Blair project, so be sure to join us for that.