USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 70
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The so-called Library building at Fresno and I was sold in June, 1918, by Mrs. Minnie K. Swift to Andrew Mattei of the winery that bears his name for $130,000. The building covers a site 100x150 with twelve ground floor store rooms. It was erected a quarter of a century ago by the I Street
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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
Improvement Company, was a notable improvement of the day and a source of great pride. The late Harvey W. Swift bought it in 1908. It was the first home of the city public library in two rooms. This deal recalls that the price on one corner of city property just on the outskirts of the business district trebled in value in seven years. In March, 1917, James Porteous bought four lots at the corner of M and Kern for $30,000, becoming the owner of twelve lots facing on M and of uniform depth of 150 feet, giving him a 300-foot M Street frontage. The Fresno Republican Publishing Company bought the four lots in 1910 for $10,000, the eastern seller having planned to sell for $5,000 but after a visit to Fresno doubled his price. The corner was offered to Porteous but he would only pay $9,500 and the deal was not made. The company held the property for three years and then sold to J. S. Fleming of Shanghai, China, then a resident, for $20,000 and he after four years to Por- teous for $30,000. Such tales of real estate deals are numerous in Fresno. The Porteous purchase also recalls early city history. He has twenty-one lots in that block. The lowest price that he paid when he bought from the railroad in 1879 was $62.50 for a lot and his highest $7,500 for a corner holding. With his M and Kern property, Porteous has the largest frontage owned by an individual in the near business section so fast expanding on all sides.
Two notable improvements are marked by the year 1917 on Van Ness between Tulare and Kern, the Nob Hill of the infant days of the city. On the vacated site of the Louis Einstein mansion home of thirty-six years ago and adjoining the Rowell-Chandler second sky-scraper structure of the city has been erected the Liberty Theater, the third largest in the state, with a seating capacity for 2,000, whose opening was delayed until late in Sep- tember because of labor troubles in the construction. Cost of this improve- ment was $125,000. The entire building is devoted to the theater in movie pictures. The premises have a frontage of seventy-five feet and a depth to the alley of 150. It is a building that in construction and equipment will compare with any. Covering a frontage of 100 feet further along the block and adjoining the Milo Rowell building at Kern and Van Ness, has been erected on the site of the Louis Gundelfinger mansion residence of 1879 the $65,000 one-story Liberty Market building, floor space subdivided and leased, marking a new type of store for Fresno. Einstein and Gundelfinger houses were removed to other locations, leaving in the block two small bungalows as reminders in this business block of the days when it was the fashionable residence district. The bungalows are on lots which were the home of W. B. Dennett, first city clerk and assessor and pioneer of the colonization enter- prise of southerners at Borden. Across the street on the west side were the Lewis Leach, G. E. Church, H. C. and W. D. Tupper homes now replaced by the Republican newspaper, Sequoia Hotel and the Graff-Rowell store buildings. The Rowell-Chandler building at Tulare and K covers the site of the little cottage home of the late Dr. Chester Rowell that stood on the terraced ground of the street surrounded by orange trees. Thirty-eight- year-old and over forty feet high palm trees, the tallest in the city, standing in front of the Einstein home, were uprooted and transported for replanting at the normal school grounds but on account of inadequate moving facilities were damaged and broken in the moving and were sawed up for fuel. The mansions named, as well as the other two Gundelfinger and the Herman Levy houses in the block beyond between Kern and Inyo, were specially con- structed by a San Francisco architect to meet the local climatic conditions.
The great fire in the plant of the California Products Company broke out early on the morning of Thursday, November 8, 1917, and the firemen worked more than forty-eight hours before they had control. The loss was $150,000. The warehouse with its tons of raisin seeds in bins offered the most discouraging resistance to all efforts to save from fire and damage by water. Attack was made with dynamite on the walls to reach the fire but this was only partially successful. It was also a difficult fire to combat as
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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
the plant was located more than 2,000 feet from the nearest hydrant, located as it was beyond the city corporate limits, and water had to be relayed through a second engine to give the working pressure. There had been also a great headway before discovery of the fire. The raisin seeds are used in the making of alcohol and oil. The loss was an accruing one because parts of the plant would not be able to resume for months with some machinery not replaceable during the war. Fire had origin in the elevator conveying seeds from the dryer to the warehouse. Plans were laid to operate such portions of the plant as could be made ready at an early date.
At the close of June, 1917, announcement was made after a long agita- tion by the Merchants' Association that on policies issued since April 22, 1917, the Board of Fire Underwriters of the Pacific had ordered into effect a new insurance rate schedule, estimated at about ten per cent. less than those prevailing since 1914. That year Fresno was penalized six points of deficiency and the general increase was about twenty per cent. The 1917 decrease on credit corrections was for an expenditure of $72,000 in improved apparatus, the buying of more hose, and the appointment of a fire marshal. Authorized reductions applied only to the business district, figuring up an estimated saving of about $22,500 in premiums, yet new schedule was about ten per cent. higher than the schedule that obtained before 1914, and not- withstanding reduction of board company rates the latter were said to be from twenty to twenty-five per cent. higher than those of the non board companies, though the last had no uniformity of rates.
In June, 1917, Fresno reached, according to official report, the lowest per capita fire loss ratio in its history-that is since such account has been kept of fire losses. The figures are: 1916-17. $2.68: 1916, $2.86; 1915, $6.24; 1914, $12.03; 1913, $5.52: 1912. $7.75. The January-June 1917 fire loss was only $29.970.97, or seventy-five cents per capita, figured on a basis of 40,000. The total fire loss for the 1916-17 fiscal year was $107,921.98.
It was on July 12, 1909, that Judge G. E. Church in the case of Henry P. Black ruled that the anti-saloon ordinance adopted as the result of the April election is invalid because the polls had been closed at five o'clock. The same reasoning would have unseated the elective officers but the point was not raised as to them and any how the time had passed then for a con- test of their election, that limit being thirty days after the declaration of the result. The proclamation called for closing of the polls at six o'clock, and on election afternoon City Attorney D. S. Ewing ordered the election officers to follow the proclamation when a question was raised. The state law fixing time and place for an election is mandatory; the city charter is governed as to elections by the general election law provision and there is no avoiding that conclusion. That general law had been variously changed between 1905 and 1909 when the time was fixed from five to six o'clock and in that year amended to permit only those actually in the voting booth to vote after closing time. There was no authority to change the voting time from six to five.
At a dinner at the Normal school cafeteria January 18, 1918, of the Americanization Committee of the Community Welfare League, Jerome O. Cross, city superintendent of the public schools, made the astounding an- nouncements that sixty-two per cent. of the population of Fresno city is foreign-born ; that in one school ninety-nine and two-tenths per cent. of the attending children are of foreign parentage, the Americans consisting of only three families; and that in other schools the foreign element ranges from these figures down to the most American school which gives six per cent. as its proportion of foreigners. The anomaly was pointed out that the same curriculum of education is used in the school with the six percentage for- eign children as in the one having ninety-nine and two-tenths per cent. The plea at the dinner was to extend the hand of friendliness to the foreigner within the gates of the city.
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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
The two sky-scrapers of Fresno are the Griffith-Mckenzie and the Bank of Italy buildings at Mariposa and J and at Tulare and J respectively, one square apart, like a pillar gateway entrance into the city. In the con- struction of the bank building, the steel columns were 130 feet in the air and as high as the ten-story office building. The bank building while only eight stories high devotes twenty-six feet to the banking quarters on the ground floor and each floor has a higher ceiling.
The year 1917 established the record for building operations in the city of Fresno. Systematic record keeping began with the year 1910. The record is the following :
New buildings
$1,768,353
Alterations and repairs 253,103
Total for year
$2,021,456
The million dollar mark was attained in July 1917. The yearly records are these :
Year
New
Alterations
1917
$1,768,353
$253,103
1916
747,050
221,325
1915
854,266
170,144
1914
47,065
13,800
1913
130,110
37,603
1912
169,558
125.083
1911
77,077
83.772
1910
207.937
70,605
1917's larger construction work includes the following:
January-Pacific Coast Grocery warehouse, $42,000. February-San Joa- quin Grocery warehouse addition, $20,000: Geo. Schorling brick apartments, $40,000. March-Mason six-story store and office building, $122,000. April- Einstein Improvement Company auto supply house. $11,750; City of Fresno fire engine house on Van Ness. $14,200; Einstein Improvement Company, Liberty theater, $100,000. May-Western Meat Company refrigerating plant, $12,000. Guggenhime & Co. plant addition, $10,000 ; H. M. S. Investment Com- pany, brick block, $22,000; City of Fresno schoolhouse, block 244, $18,480; Louis Gundelfinger, Liberty Market, $31,000; S. P. Company, Pullman car concrete shed, $8,000. June-E. Y. Foley packing house, $9,776; Einstein Improvement Company, Herald newspaper office, $13,750; Danish Lutheran Congregational Church, Sunset tract. $9,000; Cobb Bros., Irvington addition garage, $8,000; Bank of Italy eight-story building, $191,800. August-Jacob Richter store building, $10,000; Fresno Planing Mill, planing mill, $25,000; Frank Short, garage, block 90, $60,000. November-Fresno Natatorium, $33,100; Dr. D. H. Trowbridge, garage, block 87, $11,000; Frank Short and Roos Bros. store building at Merced and J, $148,000. In the line of repair and alterations may be noted: April-Guggenhime & Co., $4,250 alterations to packing house. May-Burnett Sanitarium fire loss repair, $15,000. Au- gust-Warner Jewelry Store alterations to premises, $6,000; Santa Fe depot extensions, $14,246; Catholic Church, $4,500 additions in block 164. Septem- ber-L. L. Cory, alterations to Barton Theater Building, $17,860; C. H. Riege, alterations to J Street fire house to convert it into store building, $7,000. December-Einstein Improvement Company, alterations and additions in rear of Patterson block, $8,860.
Building operations kept up well in the 1918 war year what with the scarcity of labor and the high price of all material. The figures:
January
$ 57,845
February
104,387
March
456,708
April
384.953
May
217,190
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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
For the year 1917 Fresno ranked fifth in the state. For March 1918 it was third in the state, exceeding by $102,996 its own largest monthly record of June 1913 which was $353,372. May broke another record in the alteration and repair work estimated at $92,510 and the largest for a month ever re- ported. Among the large permits for the five months of the year are these: California Raisin Association, $200,000 seeder plant; Paul Mosesian, $100,- 000 warehouse on R Street; Rosenberg and Co., $200,000 first unit of its large packing plant on Cherry Avenue ; California Products Company, $20,000 concrete storehouse on Butler Avenue ; D. Yesdan, $14,000 warehouse on J Street.
The old engine house on J Street-once the city hall-was sold to Charles H. Riege, August 6, 1917, for $37,550. It was considered a fine bargain. The rebuilding cost $15,000.
The farewell services at the First Christian Church at N and Mariposa Streets were held Sunday, February 21, 1915, and the new $80,000 church at Tuolumne and N was opened on the Sunday after.
The White, Fresno's latest and finest theater, was opened with "The Whip," which was given four representations on the afternoons and evenings of Christmas, Friday and Saturday, 1914.
Property valuations involved in 1917 fires were $3,595,727.68-on build- ings, $1,154,830, and on contents, $2.440.897.68. Insurance, $1,327.328-on buildings, $612,585, and on contents, $714,743. Insurance loss, $221.986.89- on buildings, $87,985 and on contents, $134,001.89. Direct loss. $20,542.14 ; ex- posure, $51,447, as against $114,605.50 in 1916 and insurance loss of $82,798. The California Product Company fire of over $70,000 and of the Fresno Plan- ing Mills of over $45,000 is accountable for the fact. The loss report is based on a 45,000 population and an area of 6.15 square miles. There were 316 alarms, twenty-one false and twenty-one outside calls as against 249 in 1916; 265 fires-127 in frame buildings and ninety-eight other than in buildings ; 239 in place of origin, twenty-five extending to adjoining premises and 198 con- fined to floor of origin. The percentage of fires to 1.000 population was 6.31 ; ninety per cent. were confined to original place ; loss per capita was $6.09 and fire loss to valuation involved 7.1 per cent. Among recent large fires have been these :
1918-March 19, Studebaker garage and bowling alley.
1917-December 17, clothing store Tulare and I. November 8, Califor- nia Product Plant. August 11, Palms. July 21, Fresno Planing Mills. April 10, Burnett Sanitarium. February 10, Hill's hay market.
1916-December 25, O'Neill building. July 14, Cudahy Packing Com- pany. July 6, Willys-Knight garage. July 8, open air theater at Van Ness Avenue and Holland building. June 20, Cudahy Packing Company.
1915-November 29, Hickman haberdashery 1922 Mariposa, confessed incendiary. July 3, 1044 to 1048 I, site of old Grady opera house and Red- lick's store, attacking rear of stores fronting on Mariposa.
1914 December 14, W. Parker Lyon building 144-148 J. August 8, spec- tacular fire in Fulton Hotel, attacking Grand Central on one side and J. W. Short building on the other. July 24, big fire in 900 block on J. June 16, Roed- ing Fig Packing Company plant with loss of over $63,000. May 6, Wonder store fire at I and Tulare. February 14, San Joaquin Planing Mill.
1913-June 8, great fire in Russian town district. May 26, fire in Mari- posa hotel at M and Mariposa. May 20, at 1025-1039 K, adjoining postoffice.
1912-August 25, Thompson Bros.' barn at Stanislaus and H. June 18, Holland & Holland's store. June 19, Cadillac garage. February 14, big fire at Cherry and I.
1911-December 1, fire at 732-762 J. July 1, S. P. passenger depot. April 16, paste factory at 1823 San Benito. January 6, burning of a S. P. locomotive at loss of $9,000.
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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
The city library established a record for circulation of books and mag- azines in January 1917, namely 14,417, the largest previous record having been 13,040 in March 1915.
The free market conceived under the regime of A. E. Snow, former mayor, as a municipal institution to bring the producer and the consumer in direct relation, was opened to the public September 25, 1912.
The Commercial Club formed as an exchange meeting place for business and professional men was organized January 1913, located in the third story of the Holland Building, with the roof as a summer garden. Henry F. Pratt of the Phoenix Packing Company was the first president.
The Library building at Fresno and I so called because the city free library had its humble beginning there was bought by the late H. P. Swift from the Fresno Improvement Company for $125,000, a notable investment at the time. The Shaver and Swift interests invested all the proceeds from the sale of the Sanger Lumber Company in city real estate and in notable building improvements in 1913.
A June 1918 purchase was one by Frank Helm for $38,000 of 150 feet frontages in six lots at the southeast corner of H and Tuolumne Streets, opposite the Southern Pacific railroad freight depot, as a site for the distri- bution depot of the Jersey Farm Dairy in a two-story, concrete plant build- ing.
The playgrounds commission established records during the 1917-18 fiscal year. The record of attendance at the playgrounds is of an approximate 485,000 children as against 483,000 the year before. There would have been an additional 30,000 attendance had the public swimming pool been con- ducted as the year before, and had not night activities at the Fresno Audi- torium been prevented by so many war emergency public assemblies. Of the $17.500 annual appropriation, a balance of one dollar and eighty-five cents was left. showing that with the cooperation of other city departments the service was not abridged and the children were given play opportunities at a cost of about four cents per individual.
June 1918 holds the record for long continued great heat. Other June months have recorded higher temperatures but it was for brief periods and no other in more than a quarter of a century has averaged so high. The mean was eighty-two and one-half degrees or half a degree higher than the normal for July and three degrees higher than in June 1889, which held the record. Average maximum was ninety-nine degrees and average minimum sixty-six degrees as compared with ninety-one and fifty-nine respectively. The highest was 106° June 9 and the lowest fifty-seven June 23. This last day and the one after were the only days in the month with the temper- ature below the normal, the excess on all other days ranging from four to fourteen degrees above the normal. Humidity was not high and the wind movement was lighter than normal. It was a month of unusual weather dis- comfort to be remembered.
The official seal of the City of Fresno is a beaded double circle enclosing the legend: "City of Fresno. Incorporated Oct. 27, 1885." Within the cen- tral circle is pictured a double leafed and very full bunch of grapes.
The first official body having purely municipal functions was a board of fire commissioners appointed by the supervisors of the county May 12, 1881, under a state act to establish fire limits in the town and organize fire protection means. The board was Dr. Lewis Leach. George McCollough and William Faymonville. It made an estimate of $14,200 to carry on its work and called for an election for June 2 to vote a tax levy to raise the money. In May 1883 S. A. Miller, T. E. Hughes and W. H. Chance were appointed commissioners and in July 1884 a hook and ladder truck was bought for a total of $500.50. The commission and its successors continued until October 30, 1885 when the town having incorporated the apparatus on hand was turned over to the city. That apparatus consisted of a hand engine, cart
479
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
and hose, hook and ladder truck, a fire extinguisher, an engine house and several fire wells, or cisterns, at the Grand Central corner and the other at the Kutner, Goldstein corner. A volunteer fire department took charge.
The phonograph was introduced in Fresno January 2, 1900. La grippe also seized the town at this time.
Articles of incorporation of the San Joaquin Valley Railroad Company -the so-called Pollasky road to Pollasky or Friant on the San Joaquin in the Millerton vicinity-were filed January 7, 1890.
It is recorded that on March 29, 1890 the first negro jury was impaneled in town to try Henrietta Sadler for a disturbance of the peace. Trial resulted in her acquittal.
April 3, 1890 the Fresno water works plant was sold for $200,000. The price paid was not so much for the plant as for the franchise.
June 3, 1890 the historical Larquier or French Hotel went up in fire.
Talk of filling in the mill ditch on Fresno Street which had become a public nuisance, an eyesore and a stench commenced January 7. 1890. June 12 the city council officially declared it a nuisance and ordered its abatement and suit was brought. Trial of the case commenced before Judge M. K. Har- ris October 1, and judgment went for the city, Long litigation with injunc- tions followed by the canal company and on expiration of the time limit on the last one the late Dr. W. T. Maupin as city health officer took the matter in hand and on Saturday, March 19, 1892, with a force of hired men and vol- unteers filled in the ditch and completed the work on the following Sunday from the flour mills to the western town limits. The proceeding was one of the sensational events of the day. The time for the abatement of the nuisance was chosen that no court injunction might be sued out to hinder the work. For lack of a city sewer, the ditch had been used as an outfall for house laterals.
A newspaper squib of forty years ago-in April 1878-observed: There are only fourteen public bars and five other places where liquor can be had in town. A good field for temperance lectures.
Those were easy and happy-go-lucky days in Fresno forty years ago. In April 1878 editorial apology in the Republican begged the forbearance of its patrons for the delay in the Saturday issue because of unavoidable deten- tion in San Francisco and illness among the compositors preventing the ap- pearance on time of the issue with its one week old news. Promise was made of endeavor to make amends "for delay now by promptness and interesting reading matter hereafter."
Because a man and woman would not give up the use of the telephone which they were using in spooning and permit of an alarm of fire being turned in, the Eagle Packing and Storage Company's plant at K and San Diego Streets was destroyed by fire one morning in June 1908. Loss was $30,000. The request for "Central" was coolly ignored and the spooning con- tinned for five minutes before the line was cleared for business by the love sick couple.
It was in March 1877 that the S. W. Henry House, then the hotel of Fresno, passed into the hands of the late Jesse Morrow and became the Morrow House under a lease to A. B. Anderson, who had been in the hotel business on the line of travel between Fresno and Stockton for twenty-three years. For ten of these, he kept the Anderson Hotel at French Bar or La Grange as it was sometimes called, and for thirteen years thereafter the Galt at Snelling, first county seat of Merced.
It was on Saturday evening February 24, 1877 after many fires and long continued agitation that a citizen's meeting was held at old Magnolia Hall for the organization of a hook and ladder fire company. Leopold Gundel- finger was the chairman and Charles L. Wainwright the secretary of that meeting. The organized company located afterward with a hand drawn ap- paratus soon lost the latter in one of the periodical fires. The company was 29
480
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
to have a membership of twenty-five and the charter members at the organ- ization meeting were the following named: L. Gundelfinger, A. Basso, C. Overholser, C. L. Wainwright, N. Rosenthal, William H. Mckenzie, W. W. Phillips, G. Winters, Henry Rea, Joe Moody, Charles Brimson, Charles W. De Long. H. Borchers, Dr. N. P. Duncan, A. G. Bell, J. P. Luke, W. Silver and Charles Hahn. Of the above named Gundelfinger, Phillips and De Long are living.
Reasons were advanced in the newspapers as early as February 1877 why the town of Fresno should incorporate, not the least of these that "there is a very large and unwieldly population that the general administration of the law seems unable to reach." It was pointed out that there is no power to abate nuisances, to repair streets, to safeguard against fires or at all times to preserve the peace. "We have a cemetery," said the Republican, "but no- body owns it, and nobody has charge of it. Graves are dug in such manner and wherever it pleases the ones who dig them. We have a watchman but he has no legal authority to make arrests or preserve good order and he has to depend upon gratuities for a living." Those were free and loose days in Fresno.
After a career of about nine years, the Fresno Evening Democrat made an assignment for the benefit of creditors in February, 1907, Mark R. Plaisted stepping out and C. T. Cearley placed in charge as trustee. The confessed liabilities were more than $50,000.
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