USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > A history of California and an extended history of Los Angeles and environs : also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I > Part 61
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to Hill street was the furthest venture south in the earlier stages of the southward migra- tion.
The rapid movement southward alarmed the property holders in the northern portion of the city. The postoffice had been moved from the government building on the southeast corner of Winston and Main streets to Grand avenue and Seventh street preparatory to erecting a larger building on the old site. When the gov- ernment officials undertook to purchase ad- ditional ground they were blocked by the high prices asked. With the expectation that a new building was to be erected on the old site the postoffice building was partially demolished and after the attempt to secure more land failed the half demolished building stood for several years a monument to the government's parsi- mony or to the property holders' greed.
The property holders in the northern part of the city saw or thought they saw an oppor- tunity to check the southern trend of business and possibly recuperate their lost prestige. They raised by subscription $200,000 and bought the historic Downey block at the junc- tion of Temple, Spring and Main streets and donated it to the United States government for the site of a Federal building. The leisurely way in which the general government makes improvements consumed four years from incep- tion to finish of the building. The building was completed and dedicated October 15, 1910. After wandering for sixty years from the Plaza to Seventh street and from Main to Grand avenue, the postoffice returned to its old moor- ing. Across the street from its present location in 1849 Col. John O. Wheeler established his wash tub free mail delivery. (See Chapter LV).
In the meantime the business district of the city had been drifting southward with increas- ing speed. Again the northern property hold- ers assessed themselves to aid the city author- ities in securing a new site for a city hall. An eastern expert had planned a scheme for a civic center where all the public buildings, City, County and Federal, would be grouped to- gether. The county was building the Hall of Records-a million and a half dollar building- the Federal building was approaching comple- tion ; to carry out the iridescent dream of the eastern expert to create a civic center, the city
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
council bought the site of the Temple block, a flat-iron shaped piece of ground at the junction of Spring and Main streets, agreeing to pay for it half a million dollars on the installment plan, the property holders in that part of the city contributing $175,000. The purchase was made in 1910. Nearly a quarter million dollars of taxpayers' money has been invested in this venture. Five years have passed but no city hall towers on the site.
Among the later large business buildings built may be named the Title Insurance build- ing, the Title Guarantee, the Van Nuys, the San Fernando, the Alexandria Annex, the Union Oil, the New Rosslyn, the Los Angeles Investment, the Merchants National, the Hig- gins, Washington, Citizens National and Rob- ert Marsh & Co.'s building-corner Ninth and Main, the furthest south that any large office building so far has been erected.
While the business district of the city was moving southward and westward the residence district was expanding from its old center towards all points of the compass. Subdivision after subdivision was thrown onto the market until it seemed as if there would be no land left for farming between the city and the sea, or between the city and the mountains. In- vestment companies, building associations, home makers, home builders and corporations of various kinds limited and unlimited were organized to furnish lots and houses to the houseless and lotless. The bungalow boom began in the early years of the present century. Houses were sold on the installment plan, the purchaser agreeing to pay $10, $20 or $30 a month according to the amount of his savings from his income. It might take ten years to pay for his home, but hope and the persuasion of the real estate agent buoyed him up to make the venture.
The Los Angeles Investment Company was one of the most extensive and most daring ad- venturers during the subdivision boom. Start- ing with a small venture it advanced rapidly in placing lots and houses on the market. Its stock advanced from $1 per share to $4.50. Its managers in their ambitious project for ex- panding their business and the city at the same time, overreached themselves. They purchased from the Baldwin heirs 3126 acres of the La Cienega rancho, agreeing to pay $6,252,815,
about $2,000 per acre. The price was exorbi- tant ; expert real estate dealers valued it at about one-half the purchase price. Over specu- lation and depression in the real estate market brought a disaster to the company. Its stock went down to about fifty per cent of its par value and the end is not yet.
The prosperity of the city was materially in- creased by the completion of the Salt Lake Railroad in 1905. This gave Los Angeles its fourth transcontinental railroad. After its com- pletion an exchange of visits was arranged be- tween the Commercial Club of Salt Lake city and the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. These visits were productive of amicable busi- ness and social relations between the two cities. Preceding and following for a short time the completion of the Salt Lake Railroad there was near the line of that road in western Nevada a mining boom that took on some of the char- acteristics of a mining rush in "the days of '49." One of these was the peculiar nomencla- ture of the mining camps and towns. Goldfield had an attractive sound to the prospector that seemed prophetic of the presence in abundance of the precious metal. Bullfrog and Tidewater were doubtless named by the rule of contraries.
The names helped to disguise the absence of the aqueous fluid in the desert regions in which they were located, while Searchlight and Skidoo might be applied respectively to a doubtful mine or an undesirable miner. Another char- acteristic similar to "the days of old," "the days of gold" was the rapid growth of the towns. Goldfield, the metropolis of a district, boasted at one time of a floating population of 20,000. Most of this floated away, leaving a residence population of possibly one-fourth of that number.
After the bursting of the boom in 1888-89 the values of real estate were utterly demoralized. It was not what property was worth that fixed the price nor yet what the seller asked, but what will a buyer, if one can be found, give. The reaction was greatest in what is now the most valuable business property. A few exam- ples will show the depreciation that followed the boom of 1887 and also will illustrate the great advance since 1900. A lot adjoining the Mercantile Place property on the east side of Broadway held at $500 a front foot in 1887 was offered in 1893 at $250 a foot and no takers.
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
The present site of the Consolidated Realty building was bought by the First Congrega- tional church in 1887 for $52,000. After put- ting a building on it and holding it for eighteen years the church people sold it in 1905 for $75,- 000. In 1908 it was resold for $350,000 and eight months later the Consolidated Realty Company bought it, paying $450,000. The northeast corner of Eighth and Broadway bought in 1900 for $27,500, in 1906 sold for $300,000, and in 1911 was sold for $400,000. Among the remarkable rises in value the lot on the northeast corner of Spring and Sixth streets is a good illustration. It was bought in 1882 for $2,300, in 1912 it was sold for $1,000,- 000. The lot on the northwest corner of Spring and Sixth streets, 60x165 feet, was sold in July, 1881, for $1,500, now worth probably half a million dollars. The property known as Mer- cantile Place, 120 feet front on Spring street and the same on Broadway, between Fifth and Sixth streets, was bought by the Board of Edu- cation in May, 1883, for $12,500. It was not considered a bargain ; some three months be- fore it had been bought by the seller for $9,000. It is now valued at $1,500,000. H. E. Huntington in 1902 bought the block bounded by Main, Spring , Eleventh and Twelfth streets for $250,000; in 1913 he sold it for $3,000.000; it was subdivided and resold at an advance.
Among the legends of accidental purchases that have made fortunes for the buyer this one passes current. A resident of Spring street in the late '70s owned a cow with a crumpled horn that he was accustomed to stake out to feed on the sites of future skyscrapers. The cow was in the habit of breaking her tether and invading his neighbors' gardens. This caused unpleasantness. So to keep peace in the com- munity he bought the lot on the southeast cor- ner of Broadway and Eighth street, paying $600 for it, and built a corral for the cow. The cow ceased troubling the neighbors and even- tually passed into beef steaks, but the lot re- mained in the family and is worth today prob- ably $400,000, all due to the predatory habits of that cow. Another legend of the days of cheap lots is that of an old pioneer who traded a lot on Broadway near Fourth street to a tailor for a dress suit. As the price of the lot goes up he marks up the price of that ancient
suit. It has already reached a quarter million dollars and is still going up.
Among the names of the benefactors who aided the city in the days of her poverty and the era of cheap lots should stand out in bold relief that of Jacob Weixel. In 1875 he do- nated to the city for a school site two Ord sur- vey lots with a frontage of 240 feet on Grand avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets. Weixel owned a large amount of property in that neighborhood. Adversity overwhelmed the prospective millionaire. He lost all his property and died in poverty. The school de- partment still owns the lots. At the price prop- erty across Grand avenue opposite these lots sold for recently Weixel's donation to the city is worth $750,000, but the donor sleeps unwept, unhonored and unsung in a nameless grave.
While the beginning of the oil industry of Los Angeles dates back into the decades of the nineteenth century, it was not until the closing year of the first decade of the present century that the oil gusher came into the history of the industry. While the gusher was the product of other fields, Los Angeles men and Los Angeles capital were largely instrumental in the development of the country where the great gushers were struck.
During the year 1910 a dozen wells that might be classed as gushers were developed in the Sunset-Midway field of Kern county. A history of the performance of some of these gushers will be interesting in the future when the gushers have become a thing of the long past.
The first of these that passed the line of a flowing well into that of a gusher was the Mays well located on Section 20, 21, 22 in the south- ern portion of the Midway field. It came in March 6, 1910, and began its performance with spouting oil and gas at a terrific rate, drenching the adjoining country with a rain of oil. Then it choked itself and for a week was quiet, when it began again with renewed vigor, wrecked the derrick and blackened the sands for miles around with oil spray. After several months of alternate spouting and resting it settled down to a moderately producing well.
The world champion gusher was the Lake- view, which came in March 14, 1910. It is located on Section 25, 12, 24 in the Sunset-Mid- way district. It was ushered in with a great
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
rush of gas followed by a flood of oil estimated at 18,000 barrels in twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours of steady gushing it stopped for a brief space of time. Then a torrent of rocks and sand was shot out of it, demolishing the top of the derrick and sending the drillers scurrying for their lives.
The following extract from a description of the great gusher written by Wallace Morgan is taken from the Los Angeles Times of January 1, 1911 :
"()il rained on everything for miles around as the breeze carried the spray from the gusher. The Union Oil Company's new camp, just built on a near-by hill, was abandoned, and the neat, green cottages were soon a funeral black. Other wells drilling in the neighborhood were left unfinished, fires were put out in all the boiler plants within the radius that the gas from the Lakeview reached. Hundreds of men and teams were rushed to the scene to dig ditches, build dams across gulleys, and scrape reservoirs in the earth to catch and hold the oil. The sand that the well threw out built a mound fifteen or twenty feet high all about the derrick, burying the engine house. Gradually the der- rick was torn to pieces by the rushing column of oil, and sections of the inner casing of the well, worn as thin as a knife blade, were hurled out. The question of whether the casing would all be worn out by the cutting of the sand and the well become a great crater in the ground became a very serious one.
"The Union Oil Company's engineers tackled the job of harnessing the great well with faint hope of success. An hour's work in the suffo- cating gas and drenching rain of oil about the gusher cost $4 or $5 and upwards, and men did not seek the jobs at that price. The first futile device for smothering the well was a great wooden hood made of timbers a foot and more in thickness. But the stream of oil ate its way through the wood and went on playing the biggest and blackest fountain the world ever saw. Every train to Sunset bore sightseers, and a line of guards was placed in a great circle about the well to prevent the possibility of any accidental ignition of the gas.
"Finally after some months of effort, when the well was largely cleared of sand and the upward force of the oil was less, an embank- ment was built about the gusher with sacks of
sand and earth to a height of twenty or thirty feet, thus confining the oil over the mouth of the well and forming a cushion against which the big black geyser could beat. By that time every vestige of the derrick was gone, and the well looked like an inky fountain, playing in an inky pool.
"Meantime, down on the flat a half mile and further away, lakes of oil were accumulating. By September, 5,000,000 barrels of oil had been stored in these makeshift reservoirs. The seepage was great, and the evaporation was greater, and the danger of accidental fire turn- ing the whole into a flood of flame to go further down the valley was the greatest anxiety of all. "At one time the Lakeview output reached 68,000 barrels per day, twice the capacity of the greatest oil pipe line on the coast. There was no such thing as properly caring for the oil. During the months of September and October the Producers' Transportation Company's pipe line to the coast was placed almost exclusively at the service of Lakeview oil, and pumps and pipe lines installed by the Union were set to work forcing the oil from the temporary reser- voirs on the flat to two new reservoirs built in the edge of the hills. These reservoirs, dug in a canyon and protected with earth and concrete dams and artificial waterways cut through the hill above them, will hold 5,000,000 barrels of oil. The well is still flowing 10,000 to 12,000 barrels of oil per day after nine months of steady work, and it seems not unlikely that the total product of the great well may reach 10,000,000 barrels.
"While the Lakeview gusher is abundantly worthy of a place in history as a natural won- der, an engineering problem and a source of wealth that might make Midas envy, its story is not complete without the human interest features that attach to it and to the men who are associated with it. The land on which the gusher is located was taken up as an oil placer mining claim by Julius Fried, J. M. Dunn and Parker Barrett. Fried began life as a cashier of a country bank, became a stock broker and went broke, turned to developing oil lands and drifted to the Sunset field. Dunn was a cowboy in Texas, a bridge-carpenter in Missouri and then a rig builder in the California oil fields. Barrett was successive stock raiser, a carpenter, a fireman, a locomotive engineer, a timber
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
framer in the mines of Shasta county, and finally, like Dunn, a rig builder in the Sunset oil field. All of them together did not have money enough to develop the land they had located, and Fried, with Charles Off, R. D. Wade, E. F. Dunlap and others, formed the Lakeview Oil Company and took a lease from the locators.
"It cost the Lakeview stockholders $70,000 to drill down 1900 feet, and there they found themselves with a dry hole, at the end of their resources. Less than 100 feet deeper was the first pay oil sand, but they did not know it, and the Maricopa flat was only prospective oil land then. Under these circumstances a majority of the stock was sold to the Union Oil Com- pany, and the latter undertook the completion of the well. The first oil sand was reached and cased off, and the drill sent down to explore the deeper strata. The well had been sunk past the 2200 mark with no result, and the directors ordered the drilling stopped and the casing perforated at the upper oil stratum. The order was delayed or the drillers did not obey it promptly, and the drill, going down a few feet farther, uncovered the great gusher sand-un- covered it only, for the well was never sunk more than a few feet into the sand." The Lake- view has continued to gush intermittently up to the present time.
What has been called the "Crime of the cen- tury" was committed about one o'clock on the morning of October 1, 1910. The building of the Los Angeles Times was destroyed by a bomb placed in an alleyway and discharged by a clockwork mechanism. The explosion wrecked the building and damaged several ad- joining. Fire instantly followed the explosion and swept through the building with incredible speed. Some of the employes escaped onto the roofs of adjoining houses, others by jumping out of windows and others down elevator shafts. Twenty lost their lives either in the building or from injuries in trying to escape from it.
At the time of the destruction of the Times building unsuccessful attempts were made to destroy the residences of Gen. H. G. Otis, presi- dent and manager of the Times corporation, and that of F. J. Zeehandelaar, secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association. The mayor of the city offered a reward of
$10,000 for the detection and arrest of the dynamiters. The board of supervisors offered $5,000, and later the legislature offered $10,000. A stick of dynamite found at the Zeehandelaar residence was identified as having been manu- factured at Giant, a place on the bay of San Francisco. Early on the morning of December 25, 1910, the Llewellyn Iron Works were dyna- mited and a portion of the building destroyed.
The stick of dynamite found at Zeehande- laar's residence gave a clew which, followed up by the famous detective William J. Burns, re- sulted in the arrest, April 23, 1911, in Detroit of J. B. McNamara and Ortie E. McManigal, where they had gone to dynamite structures on which non-union workmen were employed, and of J. J. McNamara, secretary-treasurer of the International Bridge and Structural Iron Workers Association, at the headquarters of the Association in Indianapolis.
The men were hurried across the continent and lodged in the Los Angeles county jail. Mc- Manigal made a full confession, implicating his two associates in a number of dynamite plots. The summer was spent in gathering evidence. The trial began October 11, 1911. Clarence Darrow, a Chicago lawyer, was chief counsel for the defense, and District Attorney J. D. Fredericks, and Joseph Ford assistant, con- ducted the prosecution. Superior Judge Walter Bordwell presided. There were a number of sensational episodes in the case. After eight weeks spent in trying to secure a jury, the trial came to a dramatic ending. A secret service agent in the employ of the defense was de- tected in an attempt to bribe a prospective juror.
The evidence against the accused was so strong that the lawyers for the defense induced the McNamaras to change their plea of not guilty to guilty in hopes of clemency from the judge. This they did. J. J. McNamara was sen- tenced to fifteen years' imprisonment in San Quentin for complicity in dynamiting the Llew- ellyn Iron Works, and J. B. McNamara to life imprisonment in the same prison for the murder of Charles Haggerty, one of the Times em- ployes. McManigal remained in jail for two years or more, when he was released, but his place of concealment was kept secret.
At the close of the first decade of the present century the population of the city was 319,198;
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
about 13,000 of the increase was due to annexa- tion of contiguous property and to consolida- tion with Hollywood, Wilmington and San Pedro. The estimated population July 1, 1914, was 550,000.
The tabulation of the assessed valuations of the city and county property in Chapter XXXVII brings them down to and including the fiscal year of 1906-07.
The following continues them to and includ- ing the fiscal year of 1914-15.
City Valuation. County Valuation.
1907-08 .... $267,120,304
1907-08 .... $384.051.740
1908-09. 263,570,272
1908-09. 407,172,330
1909-10. 270,801,517
1909-10 593,861,497
1910-11 332,507,474
1910-11 521,400,559
1911-12 391,341,212
1911-12 607,182.761
I912-13 443,362,844
1912-13 720,110,668
1913-14 481,483,342
1913-14 804,046,374
1914-15. 508,247,113
1914-15. 849,991,598
The per cent of increase in the assessed val- uation of the county is a more correct index of growth than that of the city. The area of the county remains the same, while that of the city has been increased by annexation.
BANK CLEARANCE
The following table gives the Los Angeles bank clearings beginning with 1900 and con- tinuing to and including 1914. It will be noted in this table and in the tabulation of the amount spent in building that there was a marked fall- ing off in business in 1908. In the latter part of that year there was a temporary financial panic. The banks paid their deposits in scrip for several months, reserving their coin and currency against a run should one come. It did not come :
1900 $113,766,378 1908 $ 481,831,177
1901 143,170,307
1909 630,620,123
1902. 225,917,730 1910 811,387,487
1903 288,527,582
1911 922,914,526
1904 332,715,240
1912 1,168.941,700
1905 419,953,039
1913 1,211,167,980
1906 549,648,223
1914 1,145,167,110
1907 628,170,919
BUILDING PERMITS
The building record of Los Angeles during the present century has kept pace with the rapid advance of real estate values. The value
of the permits granted in 1900 was $2,517,060. This was about the yearly average for the pre- ceding six years.
The number of permits granted each year beginning with 1901 and their valuation, and continuing to 1907, is given on page 283 of this volume.
The following table, beginning with 1907, continues the record to the close of 1914:
Year.
Number. 7,584
Valuation.
1907
$13,275,943
1908
7,373
9,934,298
1909
8,571
13,260,713
1910
10,738
21,684,100
1911
12,408
23,004,185
1912
16,453
31,366,357
1913
16,442
31,641,923
1914
10,108
17,500,000
RECORD OF THE RAINFALL
The season's rainfall as reported by the officer in charge of the United States Weather Bureau up to September 1, 1906, is given on page 430 of this volume.
The following table gives it by seasons to September 1, 1914:
Seasons.
Inches.
September 1, 1906, to September, 1907. 19.25
September 1, 1907, to September. 1908. 11.80
September 1, 1908, to September, 1909. 19.10
September 1, 1909, to September, 1910. 12.67
September 1, 1910, to September, 1911 17.81
September 1, 1911, to September, 1912 11.60
September 1, 1912, to September, 1913. 13.42
September 1, 1913, to September, 1914. 22.66
The extension of the city over a large area has necessitated a widely extended car service. The facilities for local transportation exceed that of cities with a larger population. The last horse car line ceased operation about the close of the last century. The cable car went out of business a little later, and was succeeded by the electric car. The latest innovation of means for local transportation is the motor coach. These came in July, 1914, and were introduced by a public parade of the coaches. They were of the omnibus build with a deck and a winding stairway to climb up to it. They made regular trips to the beach towns, com- peting with the cars and slightly reducing the fare. The run of the auto coach was short.
376
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
The innovation did not pay. The auto coach was succeeded by another innovation that threatens to stay with us-the "jitney bus." These are automobiles of varying dates of con- struction and various conditions of dilapida- tion. The jitneys so far are largely inde- pendent ventures, the owners in many cases operating their own conveyances, acting both as conductor and motorman. These convey- ances are operated on the densely populated streets at a nickel a ride.
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