Category: Neighborhoods

The Edendale Asteroid

December 20, 1907meteor
Edendale

Was Los Angeles nearly ground zero for a Cretaceous-tertiary extinction event-styled piece of catastrophism?  Sort of.  Not really.

An asteroid nearly reached the open field near the home of Joseph Phillis, at the corner of McCullom and Berkeley early this morning.  It exploded just before impact, leaving a burned patch twelve feet in diameter.  The neighborhood was filled with heavy sulphurous smoke, in the center of which burned a dim blue flame.

Surrounding homes were rocked by the loud explosion and lit up by a Fourth of July spectacular, but the only extant remains of our spacejectile the shaken denizens could find were chunks of meteorite that resembled volcanic rock.

Otherwise neighbors, and dinosaurs, were not affected.

Matzo Brawl!

Nov. 29, 1907
Los Angeles

Oh Those Shriners: Recall, if you will, the grisly train wreck that killed a large number of Shriners returning from their convention in Los Angeles. It seems that one of them, George F. Hageman, inadvertently touched off a legal dispute between two belles of Reading.

Sarah Reber and Maude Weber went before the court insisting that each of them was the rightful heir of the bachelor, who was

All About the Weird West Adams Tour

WHAT: 1947project Weird West Adams Crime Bus Tour, Saturday 12/16/06, 11am-4pm. $47 cost includes snacks, beverages and five-hour luxury coach tour.
 
LOS ANGELES- Since January, the bloggers at 1947project have taken their Los Angeles crime history research on the road with their lively, mysterious and very popular Crime Bus tours. Past routes have explored the dark side of Pasadena, the secret history of downtown and the real story of the Black Dahlia case. In December, 1947project offers a new tour celebrating the Beverly Hills of the early 20th century, that grand swath of city just west of downtown: Weird West Adams.

On this five-hour tour, Crime Bus passengers will be treated to detailed descriptions of some of the most notorious, strange and fascinating forgotten tales from the past hundred years, each told at the scene of the crime. They’ll thrill to the carjacking horror of silent film starlet Myrtle Gonzalez, shiver as Dream Killer Otto Parzyjegla chops his newspaper publisher boss to pieces with the paper-cutting blade, shudder at the pickled poignancy of the murder-by-brandy of Benjamin Weber, marvel at the Krazy Kafitz family and their litany of murder-suicides, attempted husband slayings, Byzantine estate battles and mad bombings, then gag at terrible fate visited on kidnap victim Marion Parker by The Fox. There will be some celebrity sites along the route, including the death scenes of Motown soul sensation Marvin Gaye and 1920s star Angels baseball catcher Gus Sandberg.

And in a special treat for the holiday season, the Crime Bus will toast the Winter Solstice by visiting the city’s shortest street and remembering 2′ 11" Angelo Rossitto, the charismatic cult actor / newsstand operator ("Freaks," "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome") who famously visited the spot in his teeny-tiny car on 12/21/37.  All this, plus a robbery by Pretty Boy Floyd, Prohibition-era houses transformed into secret distilleries, fumigations gone terribly wrong, mashers, bad marriages, rotten drivers, assorted weirdos and a mummified teenage cult priestess.

Upcoming Crime Bus Tours include the 60th Anniversary Real Black Dahlia (January 13, 2007).

Want to reserve a seat for West Adams or the Black Dahlia? Just email us with the number of spots you’d like.
 

Religious Recycling


Nov. 18, 1907
South Pasadena

Calvary Presbyterian Church at Center (now El Centro) and Fremont was dedicated in a service featuring prominent local religious leaders, including Dr. John Willis Baer, president of Occidental College.

The Times notes that the original church building was located on Columbia Street, but the location was inconvenient, so the church bought the Nazarene Chapel on Center.

The church, which cost $10,000 ($205,235.70 USD 2005) incorporates much of the old First Presbyterian Church of Pasadena, which was at Worcester Avenue and Colorado Street, The Times says.

Fortunately, this church is still standing and I

More Mashers

November 17, 1907mashers
Los Angeles

 
levy'sMashers are at work across Los Angeles, although those at Levy’s Café certainly don’t have the cachet of a Caruso (or even of a Cazauran, I suspect) as reported on in Larry’s post below.

This time it was the work of ruffians, an all-too infrequently used word, which we at 1947project implore our readers to use at least thrice weekly henceforth. 

In any course, Eugene Harrison, a “gentleman” by occupation, of 612 Figueroa Street, had taken his friends Mr. and Mrs. George Walters of 714 Figueroa, and one Miss Margaret de Baugh, a guest at the Hotel Ohio, 1104 East Seventh, off to Levy’s Café for some late-night comestibles and libations.

All was well until Harrison and Mr. Walters went off in search of a waiter so as to procure the group’s nightcaps, when in strolled a couple of rowdies.  When Harrison and Walters returned they found their lady companions engaged in a struggle for some deep lip-lock with the burly intruders.  Walters bravely ran off to find a policeman, whereas Harrison jumped upon the brutes, and by all accounts, put up a sturdy fight.

When Walters returned with a constable in tow, they found a supine Harrison, having received a broken nose and two black eyes for his trouble.  The smooch-mad barbarians had fled.

The Walters’, and Harrison, recent and monied émigrés from Pittsburgh, are anxious to have the whole sordid affair hushed, but stated they were willing to testify against the mashers if the pair were ever arrested. 

The former site of Levy’s Café now looks like this– overhead

 

….could this be an Edwardian-era building, remuddled into unrecognizability?  Well, it’s late on a Friday night, or early on a Saturday morning, and I’m not about to go out investigating.  But if it is an old building, I can conjecture with certitude that its interior no longer looks like this. levysinterior

Imagining the Future


Nov. 15, 1907
Los Angeles

Architect Charles Mulford Robinson has drafted a proposal for downtown Los Angeles that is stunning in its ambition. One portion calls for broad boulevard leading from a proposed Union Station at Central and 5th Street toward Grand, ending at a new public library and art gallery. The other, equally elaborate, calls for a grouping of civic buildings and terraced gardens around North Spring Street, including a new City Hall.

Some Interesting Oil Facts, 1907-style

November 6, 1907oilfirst
Los Angeles

Oil facts, you say?  And you continue to comment, I thought this was a crime blog!  Well, the way most people talk about oil companies, you’d think the SS was Toys for Tots.  So it’s apropos, especially as we head into Tuesday and face the outcome of Proposition 87.

On this day in 1907, according to the US Geological Survey, the numbers were in:  in 1906, California produced 23,098,598 barrels of oil.  That’s more than Oklahoma and Kansas combined.  (Texas came in with a paltry 12.5 million barrels.)  Our oil came primarily from Kern River, Coalinga, Santa Maria, with Los Angeles finishing fourth.  The value of California’s 23M barrels came in at 9.5M dollars ($194,973,917 USD 2005).  One-sixth of that oil was exported to Japan, Chile, and the American Panama Canal Works.  

Today, California is no longer number one (behind Louisiana, Texas and Alaska) but we’re far ahead of those dried-up old fields in Oklahoma and Kansas.  In 2007 California should come in with about 274M barrels, over ten times that of 1907.  And that, with a value of approximately 16.5B (804M USD 1907).  And we’re at our lowest oil production since WWII.  

 

oilwellsoilLA 

A Many Splendored Thing

hypnotized?
November 6, 1907
Los Angeles

When Mrs. Jenevieve Van Lakum, a well-to-do and refined 35 year-old widow from Manitou, Colorado checked into an apartment at 803 East Fifth Street with her four children and a black gentleman, it was assumed by the proprietor that the gentleman was her porter.

But a certain Patrolman C. H. Jones espied Jenevieve and the black gentleman about town, and made an investigation.  It came to light that the man, William Seay, was occupying the same apartment.  

Humane Officer Reynolds took the children into custody and the two adults face arrest.

After Mrs. Van Lakum was taken to Central Station and interrogated, she broke down and admitted that she loved the man, and “could not explain her affection for the negro.”  They came from the east to Los Angeles with the express purpose of becoming husband and wife, but the LA Powers That Be put the kibosh on that.  Police suspected that Seay held some “uncanny” influence over her, but Jeneivieve denied that she had been hypnotized.  Seay further stated that he maintained his relations with her only for the money she gave him, which to this point had amounted to about $500 ($10,261 USD 2005).

disappearedPostscript – on November 10, “Humane Officer” Reynolds confessed that the sextet had given him the slip.  After having secured Seay’s promise to stay away from the woman, Reynolds allowed Van Lakum to take the children in search of a cottage to rent—and disappeared.  

Says Reynolds:  “I believe that she has found a cottage somewhere in the suburbs and is living quietly.  Whether the negro visits her or not, I have no positive knowledge, but I am inclined to believe that he does.

“Information from the East states that Mrs. Van Lakum is the member of a prominent family in Chicago.  I think that she is irresponsible.  I believe she is mentally deranged.”

Let’s hope they found happiness somewhere, though where in 1907 Los Angeles that would be, I do not know.  Certainly not in Edendale.