by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The Roaring Twenties included, in its earlier years, another of the massive development and growth booms that marked the remarkable expansion of greater Los Angeles from the after the Civil War years, especially after 1885 when a direct transcontinental railroad linked was established to the region. By mid-decade, not surprisingly, a petition was signed by thousands of Angelenos to provide for the complete razing of the Old Calvary Cemetery, some thirty years after its closure and the establishment of the New Calvary in East Los Angeles.
As we noted in part four, this led to a 1925 City Council ordinance requiring the removal of all remaining bodies from the older graveyard by the dawn of 1928, so it is notable to see the 12 July 1925 edition of the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News and its feature by John Thomas Burns, who also took the photos, on “City’s Oldest Landmarks Being Destroyed.” This is because, accompanied by “old-timer” Charles J. Prudhomme, who was descended from early Californio families through his mother, Burns essayed the fact that “old adobe houses of pueblo days are blotted out by far-striding steps of progress and municipal development in Los Angeles.”
Several adobe houses, including the sole survivor, the Avila, which became part of a “restored” Olvera Street off the north side of the Plaza, were highlighted, most in the Sonoratown section later to be the new Chinatown, while the journalist lamented that “a number of the city’s oldest landmarks . . . are being destroyed!” Moreover, it was reported that “the inevitable march of progress” was also part of “a campaign of the health department to make the city and cleaner and consequently a more healthful place.”
Prudomme, born in 1854, regaled Burns with tales of the days of his childhood, including bull and cock fights, fandangos, as well as courting rituals, as he called for some preservation of “the district’s past glory. As he expressed his concern for the continuing demolition of historic edifices, Prudhomme told the journalist,
Many of us old timers are deeply hurt to learn of the condemnation of the old Calvary cemetery on North Broadway—merely for the sake of commercial progress. Our relatives all are buried there.
We believe that instead of selling the plot in lots, it should be preserved and kept by the city as a park to honor the men and the women who began the building of this wonderful city.
Under two month later, at least a portion of Old Calvary was repurposed, but by the diocese, rather than the city. The Los Angeles Record of 5 April 1927 published a feature on Old Calvary under the heading of “Historic Graveyard Returning to Dust,” with writer Laird Landis providing a colorful opening to his article by intoning,
If there be one thing more desolate, [and] dreary, than a graveyard, it is a graveyard abandoned by even its inert inhabitants.
There, where the dayless gloom is broken fitfully by deflected sunshine seeping through a cracked slap [slab], or perchance past rusty mausoleum bars, all the dignity of former days has departed, leaving tumbling tombs and caving crypts to the small sympathy of beast and insect.
Such a scene is presented by old Calvary cemetery . . . Long since the local [Catholic] diocese decided upon more roomy space for the last repose of its departed, and the work of removing the remains here resting almost has been completed.
Here, where hundreds of mute mounds beseech in barren solitude, here where departed death still hovers, the children of today, happy, joyous-eyed, launch out in fullsome [sic] play. Here milch [milk] cows graze in stupid ease, and browse upon the flowers of reverential origin.
The reference to “the children of today” was to the conversion of a portion of the cemetery land for the new Cathedral High School for boys, operated under the auspices of the Christian Brothers. The $100,000 campus was completed on 1 September 1925 in time for the opening of the new school year three days later with 200 students drawn from 44 parishes. On 18 October, Bishop John J. Cantwell presided over the dedication, with 3,000 persons attending and, while nothing was said in press coverage about the property’s prior use, it is significant that the school nickname became the Phantoms.
Landis, in fact, commented that it was “inspiring . . . to watch the recessed classes” of the school which was “bordering the deserted sepulchers, with bat and ball and carefree cry bring warmness closer to the eerie earth” and an accompanying photograph showed a quartet of Cathedral classmates with baseball equipment, while behind them were areas of the cemetery as well as the former Briswalter Chapel converted a decade prior to St. Peter’s Church. To the journalist, there was quite a contrast between “the outworn gravestones, their duty passed, decaying in the unkempt area of an earlier day” and the “newer generation, playing as only school boys can” as they were “jubilantly evident of life.”
The writer described some of what was left of Old Calvary, including in the Sepúlveda family plot, “a fallen relic . . . near a vacant tomb, dumb witness of the ceremony and prestige which accompanied its eventful placing.” One of the mausoleums was observed with “rusty bars and rust-broken chains . . . [and] shattered vases” and as he dared to “push aside the creaking gates” and head “in the dim light down debris-padded steps,” he recorded that “empty iron pipe cribs [were] ghastly devoid of coffins.”
This subterranean sojourn left the author to conclude,
All—all is gone, save shattered, wormy floor boards, the exposed yellow corner of an ancient newspaper—and, looking up, the silently terrible tarantula who stands sole guard above the gloomy vault.
Out into the sun again, a frame-shaking shudder. Then the shrill happy calls of boys at play reverberate across the waste. One becomes strangely conscious of what makes life worth living.
Another instance of “progress” reflecting Los Angeles’ unchallenged position as the automobile capital of the world was remarked upon the 18 April 1928 edition of the Los Angeles Express, which informed readers that “the way was further cleared today for the extension of North Figueroa street by tunnels through the Elysian park hills, thence over a bridge across the Los Angeles river to connect with the major traffic speedway to Highland Park and Pasadena in the bottom of the Arroyo Seco.”
Part of extensive traffic planning conducted in the Angel City and the county during the era, the Figueroa Street project was realized between 1930 and 1936 with respect to a quartet of tunnels excavated through the hills immediately to the west of Old Calvary, with the “speedway” eventually morphing into the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which opened in 1940. Later, the construction of the 110 Freeway took over the tunnel corridor so that Figueroa is now bifurcated a short distance southwest of the cemetery site and north where the 110 and Interstate 5 interchange is next to the river.
The article added that “the city engineer reported that quit claiming a portion of land in the old North Broadway Calvary cemetery would not affect the project,” this legal procedure requested by Bishop Cantwell, while it was noted that “Old Calvary cemetery affects only the extension of North Figueroa street and the widening of North Broadway . . . neither of which traverse the land proposed to be vacated.”
In its 18 February 1929 number, the Los Angeles Times reported that
Owners of plots in Old Calvary Cemetery have been asked by the Cemetery Protective Association with headquarters in San Francisco to protect against the removal of the dead from that cemetery.
. . . in a circular mailed to plot owners, the exhumation proposal [from the City Council’s 1925 ordinance] . . . was termed as “placing the dead subject to the whim of land grabbers.”
By the end of the year, though, the Record, in its 6 December edition, commented that “workmen are busy today removing the dead from the old Calvary cemetery . . . to the new Calvary cemetery” and that “half of the two-acre tract which comprised [the remaining section of the formerly 12-acre] cemetery is to be used as a public playground and the other half will be used as the site for the proposed Cathedral high school.” As we’ve seen, the school was already four years into operation, so this was obviously for expansion, while the park was never built.
As the Twenties approached its close, with the roar subdued by the stock market crash and the early days of the Great Depression, the 27 February 1930 Illustrated Daily News continued coverage of the change at the cemetery in a feature titled “L.A. Engulfs Historic City of Dead.” Reporter Wesley A. Gardner wrote that Calvary “will be swallowed up by the advance of modern Los Angeles” and added that, “about three months ago work of disinterment and removal to New Calvary cemetery, 4303 Whittier boulevard, was started, but now is temporarily discontinued.”
No information was forthcoming from the diocesan office of Bishop Cantwell, but Gardner remarked that,
It is known, however, that the expense connected with removal of bodies will fall on descendants of persons buried there, but because of the age of the cemetery, the task of finding claimants of these old graves is extremely difficult. The cost of removal of all unclaimed bodies [to a section marked by an obelisk in Section G of New Calvary] of necessarily will be paid by the church.
Today, crumbling vaults and tombstones, some sagging and some fallen, give mute testimony of their long vigil over the graves of these pioneers.
While a prior post here on the earlier history of Old Calvary included reference to a deed filed in 1875 concerning the cemetery and a quit claim by Manuel Requena to Bishop Thaddeus Amat that appeared to involve the entire property, Gardner related that “ground for the northeast quarter of the cemetery was given to the church in 1800 [this date clearly was wrong as the cemetery was not consecrated until 1844] by Don Francisco Avila and Senora [María Encarnación] Sepulveda de Avila.”
Another notable tidbit was that “the cemetery at the Plaza had become full when the old Calvary site was chosen” and that “bodies were buried 20 to 24 feet deep, and at times members of a family would be buried one on top of another.” Gardner’s telling also included the observation that, “the northeast quarter becoming full, the church acquired more ground [perhaps from Requena] and the addition was consecrated with solemn ceremonies in 1866.”
Yet, he also related that “the first record of a burial in Old Calvary is listed as May, 1890, in the records of the Los Angeles bureau of vital statistics,” this only reflecting what that department, formed in 1877, initiated in recordkeeping for any Los Angeles burial ground. The final listing for interment in the cemetery in the bureau’s records is that of Frank Villalobos, who died at the beginning of 1897. Noting that “soon no vestige of this landmark will remain,” Gardner concluded,
Above the din of Broadway traffic, a murmur seems to hover over this early burying ground, muted to a whisper by its long passage down the years—a dying echo of the sleepy little village that was El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles.
After 1930, there were occasional references to Old Calvary, including the report that José Moreno, a grandson of Pío Pico, who had children after the death of his wife, María Ignacia Alvarado, died in Tijuana in Baja California, México, but, noted the Express of 8 April 1931, “in the family plot in old Calvary Cemetery, where the bones of Governor Pico once lay [he and Doña Ignacia were reinterred a decade before in the Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum in El Campo Santo Cemetery at the Homestead], Mr. Moreno will be interred . . . under an aged pepper tree in the Pico chapel, which has stood in Calvary snice 1853 [1854].” What happened to his remains later, however, was not investigated for this post.
In its number of the last day of June 1933, the Times told readers that a mystery of the body of a man found in a vault in the Old Calvary was solved when an autopsy surgeon determined that the body was “embalmed and buried in regular funeral fashion about twenty years ago,” obviously against city ordinances. It was added that the remains were “uncovered by workers engaged in filling in the old vaults” and they were “overlooked when the graveyard was abandoned several years ago.” Initially, it was wondered if the man was killed or went to sleep in the vault and died.
In May 1936 the paper reported on a couple, Cal and Marie Forrester evicted from their residence on Bishop Road across from the high school, with it stated that they bought the land in 1900 from the estate of Alfred Solano of nearby Solano Canyon and who was a city surveyor, while the city began eviction proceedings two decades prior. An attorney hired by the aged couple “discovered that [the land] was part of the old Calvary Cemetery and he obtained a deed from” Bishop Cantwell. In a foreshadowing of sorts to what happened with Chavez Ravine where Dodger Stadium was built, deputy sheriffs were called out to force the Forresters from their home.
At the end of the year, the West Los Angeles Independent briefly remarked on the fact that St. Peter’s Church was “built over the grave of Andre Briswalter,” though, as has been noted in this post, the Church was actually installed in the remodeled Briswalter Chapel.
Another strange story appeared in the Times of 31 August 1937, which related that construction workers at a new gas station site on North Figueroa called the Los Angeles Police Department and stated “come quick. We found the body of a little child.” Two detectives arrived and, after some investigating, found that “it was a body buried in regular funeral fashion some eighty years ago in the old Calvary Cemetery,” while the paper added, “a huge stone vault, also part of the old burial grounds, will be removed today.” Often in the century since Cathedral High opened, remains have been located and moved to New Calvary, while tombstones left at the old cemetery are now placed throughout the campus.
The Briswalter Chapel remodeled as St. Peter’s Church survived more than a half-century, but, in 1943, as plans were underway to raise money for a new house of worship, a history of the church relates, “a terrible fire destroyed the old cemetery/chapel church.” The remains of the Briswalter were razed and a new St. Peter’s was dedicated in April 1947.
Lastly, it wasn’t just at Cathedral that Old Calvary tombstones were used for new purposes. The Times of 24 September 1944 informed readers that Harry Iles, the 92-year-old publisher of the magazine, Southwest Builder and Contractor, showed a reporter a slab of Italian marble, measuring 33 by 50 inches and two inches thick, used as a “printer’s stone” on which it “undergoes a daily beating from inky steel chases and type slugs.” Iles related that, about 1899, he acquired the slab for $9 from a marble dealer and it well suited his needs.
The marble was part of the headstone of Juan Bandini, born in Peru in 1800, and a prominent resident of San Diego, who was interred at Calvary after his death in 1859 (his daughter, Arcadia, wife of Abel Stearns and Robert S. Baker, was one of the wealthiest women in the region). After Don Juan’s remains were removed to the New Calvary, the tombstone fragment was sold to the marble dealer and then to Isles, who commented,
Like the people of its day, this stone is rugged. It looks good for a century more.
One hopes that it is still with us somewhere!
As we end this post, let’s pay tribute to Edwin H. Carpenter, a longtime employee of the Huntington Library, as well as at the New York Public Library and U.C.L.A., and his Early Cemeteries of The City of Los Angeles, published in 1973 in an edition of 300 printed by Richard J. Hoffman by Dawson’s Book Shop. Carpenter, obviously, had a much more difficult time in finding information about the Angel City’s first graveyards, but his work was read recently and was an inspiration for this post.