March 19, 1907
Los Angeles
For the past two years, Mrs. C.M. Gray, elderly owner of the Hotel Gray at Third and Main Streets, has received a $15 monthly rental from a tamale vendor who sold his wares on her front walk. This illegal commerce has been stopped, and Mrs. Gray convicted and fined $50. Just the cost of doing business…
March 18, 1907
Los Angeles
Carlos Perez, an unarmed man shot by an Olvera Street nightwatchman as he walked towards his home on Macy Street last evening, lies tonight in County Hospital, gravely wounded with a bullet puncuring his lung. A gruesome side effect of his injury is that air is seeping beneath his skin, inflating his body like a fleshy balloon. Doctors can press gently on the man’s hands, eyelids and ribcage, causing him to briefly deflate, though he quickly swells up again.
Dr. Barber, the hospital superintendent, says that he has seen victims who suffer minor inflation around their injuries, but never someone whose entire body becomes so like a balloon. Doctors hesitate to puncture Perez’ skin for fear of introducing an infection, and so the poor man suffers the strange sensation of constant pressure from within. His outlook is uncertain.
Richard D. Birch, nightwatchman for the Merchant’s Fire Dispatch, has given conflicting statements regarding the shooting, and will surely face manslaughter charges should his victim perish.
Below, Olvera Street circa 1890
Elijah Washington died because he didn
On March 13, 2006, 1947project completed its mission to spend one year documenting the offbeat and criminal history of 1947 Los Angeles. You’ve found our archive site.
Today you’ll find us exploring 1927 at 1947project.com, where we previously spent a year immersed in 1907. Please stop by for all your early Los Angeles history needs.
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March 16, 1907
Los Angeles
Sometimes, exhausted after a day pulling clay out of the earth to make into bricks, the workers of the Los Angeles Brick Company would stop by Slovenian laborer George Laubro’s room at 735 Buena Vista Street and say, "Hey George, can we see that thing you found?" And George would open his trunk, unwrap the long, heavy object, and pass it around to his friends. "Have you ever seen the like?" Teeth as big as apples! Fused together in a row!
Word of the workman’s two-year-old discovery recently reached the ears of Jerome Craite, a mining man with an interest in obsolete fauna, who requested that Laubro exhibit his find. Astonished at the fine quality of the specimen, Craite inquired further and learned that the Brick Company pit, on Mission Road just south of the County Hospital, had often offered up the remnants of strange beasts, including a tusk that the son of A.A. Hubbard, former head of the brick concern, has taken home.
Professor A.B. Ulrey, head of the biology department of the University of Southern California, examined the teeth and determined that they were the right lower molars of some large herbivore, possible a mammoth or mastadon.
Laubro was mildly amused at all the interest in his oddity, but remarked that he would much rather have a full larder than some old creature’s teeth in his trunk.
My little ode to my favorite city, covering a roughly 20-year period centered on 1907 with the idea of giving a general introduction to Los Angeles from the 1890s to the eve of World War I. (The Times bombing and the air meet at Dominguez Hills were in 1910, for example). The Skunks of Los Feliz actually discovered this sometime back but I didn’t want to tip my hand by saying anything. Fortunately, I received some very flattering comments. Although the music sounds very contemporary, I chose it because it was written in 1907.
Here’s a high resolution version, but it only works with the newest versions of Windows (sorry folks with Win 98SE) and doesn’t play well with Mac OS X.
March 14, 1907
Los Angeles
Tongues were wagging on every floor of the Alexandria Hotel this morning, following the delicious faux pas of conservative businessman Walter Dinmore, a resident of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Roused by his "Jap" valet to take an important long distance telephone call from Santa Barbara in the lobby, the tousled Dinmore hurried from his room, only to encounter barely supressed merriment at every turn.
First a crew of Catholic girls fresh from their worships chortled, then an elderly lady he waved into the elevator seemed about to perish from the giggles. A bell hop dropped a pitcher of water, so great was his glee upon seeing Mr. Dinmore.
Finally, the gentleman was alone in the telephone booth, where he had a moment to reflect upon the curious afflictions of his fellow guests… and gaze down his own legs, to see vast billows of pink silk pajama material covering his shoes. Mortified, he dashed for the elevators, but found them engaged. In rising horror, he grabbed a porter and demanded aid. The porter led the humiliated Dinmore into a secret nook below stairs where he could divest himself of his shameful sartorial sin, then slink upward, his errand quite forgotten.
Below, a place where pink pajamas are not welcome.
As I began to write my grand opening about Los Angeles in 1907, I felt a ghostly hand pluck ever so gently at my sleeve.
“Promise me, dear boy, you”™ll remember to say that women couldn”™t vote in 1907.”
“Yes, of course.”
Now where was I? Ah yes. The street names are deceptively familiar: Broadway, Spring Street and Main. But stand up on Bunker Hill and look at the city below and you might pick out the Bradbury Building and the Alexandria Hotel. Maybe the Pan American building at Broadway and 3rd Street, kitty-corner from the Bradbury and currently undergoing loft conversion, and the Rosslyn Hotel on Main.
Nothing remains of the old City Hall on Broadway but the parking lot between the Los Angeles Times garage and Victor Clothing, otherwise known as the Hosfield Building, erected as an annex for city offices in 1914 and opened in 1915 as City Hall South.
There are no freeways in this alien city. No television, no radio (or “wireless” as it was previously known) and no movie theaters. There aren”™t even any comic strips in The Times, let alone crossword puzzles. Luckily, the operatic repertoire hasn”™t changed greatly; Angelenos in 1907 could hear “Carmen” and “La Traviata.”
The ghostly hand intruded again, a bit more forcefully.
“Dear boy, remember about women not being able to vote?”
“I”™ll get to that.”
There are a few automobiles (or “machines” as they were called) sold by dealers who set up shop on South Main around 12th Street. Reo, Rambler, Jackson, Pope-Toledo, Stevens-Duryea and Overland. Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Packard are the only familiar names. But machines seem only a bit more common than Segways are today. There are no more than 30 cars listed for sale in The Times classified ads for March 14, 1907, far outnumbered by horses; buggies and wagons, streetcars and bicycles appear to be the main modes of transportation.
Sample ad:
POPE-TOLEDO 24-H.P. TOURING CAR
with touring car body, canopy top and run-
about body. This car has just been thoroughly
overhauled and is in first-class condition.
The BIGGEST bargain offered in
Los Angeles
$1,000 ($20,523.57 USD 2005)
Western Motor Car Company
415 S. Hill
Patent medicine, séances, licensed saloons and something called a blind pig. The pages of The Times are brimming with vintage malfeasance.
“Ow! You don”™t need to pinch me.”
“Dear boy, women”™s suffrage?”
“Very well.”
Women in Los Angeles couldn”™t vote until 1911, when a new law allowed them to cast ballots in the local elections. The 19th amendment, granting women”™s suffrage, was ratified by California on Nov. 1, 1919, and proclaimed by the secretary of State on Aug. 26, 1920. (Not passed by Mississippi until March 22, 1984? Are you serious?)
“I”™ll even mention suffragette Rachel Foster Avery”™s visit in August 1907. How”™s that?”
“Thank you.”
