Category: Neighborhoods

Skeet Shoot


Feb. 19, 1907
Los Angeles

A quick trip to the Thomas Bros. will show that Los Angeles County doesn’t look like this, but it’s not for lack of trying. The wealthy men of Los Angeles and Orange counties are furious with one another over an attempt by Assemblyman Phil Stanton to give Los Angeles County a strip of coastal communities as far south as Newport Beach.

The arguments in favor are simple: Los Angeles County money built those communities and Orange County is, at least as far as the Angelenos are concerned, poorly run.

The Orange County faction accuses its northern neighbors of a land grab and notes the distance people would have to travel to serve on juries, for example. The Orange County businessmen say wealthy Los Angeles members of the Bolsa Chica Gun Club are seeking revenge after losing a lawsuit in Santa Ana against local peat farmers who were hunting ducks in the area.

Bonus fact: The Times says that Los Angeles has abandoned its efforts to annex San Pedro. (For now, anyway).

The rising city: Brentwood.

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Twin Celebrations


Feb.13, 1907
Los Angeles

An enormous masked ball for the city’s elite was staged on Mardi Gras at Kramer’s Studio and Dancing Academy, 1500 S. Figueroa.

Kramer’s Hall, as it was informally known.

The Times, in a rare bylined article-by Katherine Thompson-gives
an exhaustive account of decorations and costumes. Rather than list all the women’s outfits, I’ll only comment on them: Spanish senoritas, flower girls, cowboys and a couple of ladies dressed as Chinese girls, which seems a peculiar choice given the attitude toward the Chinese in Los Angeles at the time.

One woman dressed as “My Lady Nicotine” her gown decorated with what The Times estimated, perhaps in exaggeration, as a thousand cigar bands. Several others were dressed as “Night.”

Costumes for the men included cowboys or vaqueros, a Spanish grandee, a French pastry cook and a cardinal.

The other celebration underway was the first anniversary of the Hotel Alexandria, which marked the occasion with a massive fireworks display.

“At 8 o’clock last night, several thousand dollars worth of fireworks were set off from the roof of the Alexandria,” The Times says. “One particularly attractive piece pictured the great lobby of the building. During the evening a Hungarian quartette furnished music.”

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Incendiary Ramblings

Feb. 5, 2007
Los Angeles

Here’s an architectural drawing of the O.T. Johnson Building, which burned in yesterday’s fire.


Looking north on Broadway at 4th Street. The burned structures are at the right.

And here are some snaps of the damaged structures:


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An Apostle of the Past


Jan. 28, 1907
Los Angeles

William Jennings Bryan stepped from the Owl train to be greeted by a long-waiting crowd.

“In appearance, Mr. Bryan has changed but little since he was last in Los Angeles,” The Times says. “In his manner, also, there has been little, if any, change, and he greeted his friends with the same fervor and showed the same remarkable talent for remembering names.”

From the Arcade Station, Bryan and his wife were transported by auto to the home of Nathan Cole on Pasadena Avenue. They took the Mt. Lowe railway and in the evening, he addressed a capacity audience at Simpson Auditorium in a benefit for the Lark Ellen Home for Boys.

At 47, Bryan was no longer the fiery orator of his youth, The Times says. Instead, he was a gentle idealist who “talked of the thousand little things that had found his favor on five continents, and a packed audience listened with almost breathless attention.”

“They liked the esthetic idealism of this older Bryan,” The Times says of the audience. “All along the many curving rows of seats, there was a leaning forward, as if to catch some word that had been lost, and a whispering sigh of regret.”

“In soft, sweet periods, reminiscent of ‘Gray’s Elegy,’ he lauded the age of belief, the age of dreams. Touchingly, he quoted from John Boyle O’Reilly, ‘For the dreamer lives forever, but the toiler dies in a day.’ ”

“William Jennings Bryan, making a simple discourse of so pretentious a subject as ‘The Old World and Its Ways’ showed himself still, as in the promulgation of strong beliefs that lie near his heart, the apostle of the past.”

The next day, there was a trip to Santa Catalina Island for the Bryans and 100 guests, followed by banquet hosted by local Democrats. Before leaving for Salt Lake City, he addressed the students of Polytechnic High School and attended a reception at the Chamber of Commerce.

Eighteen years later, Bryan and Clarence Darrow met in Dayton, Tenn., for the Scopes Monkey Trial. He died two days after the trial’s conclusion.

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The Changing Face of the City

Jan. 17, 1907
Los Angeles

On a trip from Utah to visit his daughter, H.E. Gibson keeps getting lost as he wanders around Los Angeles. No, it’s not because Gibson is 80, for his mind is still sharp. It’s because he hasn’t been back since 1848 and things have changed just a bit.

Even the old familiar landmark of Ft. Hill is covered with homes, he says. About the only spot in town he recognizes is the Plaza, where he keeps returning to get his bearings.

Gibson came to California with the “Flash Emigrant Colony” to establish Mormon settlements. The group couldn’t raise the money to buy Rancho Cucamonga, so they bought a parcel of land in San Bernardino, The Times says.

Land was “dirt cheap” in 1848, with entire blocks selling for $500 to $1,000, ($9,910.34-$19,820.69 USD 2005), Gibson said. But instead of becoming a real estate speculator, he left for Utah to bring the news (published in a New York newspaper that came around the Horn) proclaiming that Brigham Young had been appointed governor of the Utah Territory.

Note: Today presented a difficult decision, but I passed on some incredibly offensive caricatures of an African American who had been arrested, accompanied by quotes in dialect: “Ah dunno nothin’ about no stolen chickens” indeed.

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The Old Men in Blue

Dec. 30, 1907
Los Angeles

James Sullivan, 64, was a prisoner of the Confederates held at Belle Isle, Libby and Andersonville, where he and war correspondent Albert D. Richardson escaped by tunneling for three months with a spoon.

Henry Russell, formerly of the 4th Cavalry, was held at Andersonville and Benjamin L. Gorsuch of the 1st Maryland Infantry was captured and sent to Belle Isle. James Sherwood was with the 10th New Jersey. John Ryan, 77, was with 7th New York Heavy Artillery.

And then there

Mystery Solved


Dec. 22, 2006
Los Angeles

A quick (well, relatively) check of the Sanborn maps (online via the Los Angeles Public Library website) shows (Vol. 11, Sheet 1143) the intersection of McCollum and Berkeley. Alas, the impact crater was not recorded. Apparently all other variants were typos.

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Ecclesiastes 1:9

Dec. 22, 1907
Los Angeles

As Police Capt. Flammer approached Yuma, Ariz., to take custody of George White, he noticed the smoke of hundreds of campfires made by hobos burning old railroad ties.

The hobos, Flammer learned, were avoiding Yuma because the marshal meted out hard justice to vagrants, as he warned in posters all over town. But Flammer also learned all those homeless men were heading for Los Angeles.