Chapter XXXVI: Centenary of the City--Electric Light

1881-1884

The year 1881 opened with what, for Los Angeles, was a curious natural phenomenon--snow falling in February and covering the streets and plains with a white mantle. So rare was the novelty that many residents then saw the oddly-shaped flakes for the first time. It was about that time, according to my recollection, that another attempt was made to advertise Los Angeles through her far-famed climate, an effort which had a very amusing termination. Prominent men of our city invited the California Editorial Association, of which Frank Pixley of the _Argonaut_ was President, to meet in Los Angeles that year, with the far-sighted intention of having them give wider publicity to the charms and fame of our winters. During this convention, a banquet was held in the dining-room of the St. Elmo Hotel, then perhaps called the Cosmopolitan. After a fine repast and a flow of brilliant eloquence, principally devoted to extolling our climatic wonders, the participants dispersed. But what was the surprised embarrassment of the Los Angeles boomers, on making their exit, to find pieces of ice hanging from all points of vantage and an intense cold permeating and stiffening their bones. Thus ended, amid the few icicles Los Angeles has ever known, the first official attempt to extend the celebrity of our glorious and seductive climate.

In February, Nathaniel C. Carter, to whom I have referred as a pioneer in arranging railroad excursions for tourists coming to California, bought from E. J. Baldwin some eleven hundred acres of the Santa Anita Ranch, comprising the northern and wilder portion which sloped down from the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains. This he subdivided, piping water from the hills; and by wide advertising he established Sierra Madre, appropriating the name already selected by a neighboring colony.

In 1881, J. M. Guinn, who for a decade or more had been Principal of the schools at Anaheim, was made Superintendent of Los Angeles City Schools.

A tragedy attracted unusual attention in the early eighties, owing, in part, to the social connections of the persons involved. Francisco, or Chico Forster, as he was popularly called, the sporting son of Don Juan Forster, had been keeping company with a Señorita Abarta, a young woman of superb stature, whose father was French and mother was Mexican; and having promised to marry her, he betrayed her confidence. Her insistence that Forster should keep his word had its _dénouement_ when, one day, at her behest, they visited the Plaza church; but Forster so far endeavored to postpone the ceremony that he returned to the carriage, in which he had left her, declaring that no priest could be found. Then they drove around until they reached the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets, half a block from H. Newmark & Company's. There the young woman left the carriage, followed by Forster; and on reaching the sidewalk, she said to him in Spanish, "_¿Chico, que vas hacer?_" ("What are you going to do?") Forster gave some evasive answer, and Señorita Abarta shot him dead. She was arrested and tried; but owing to the expert evidence in her behalf given by Dr. Joseph Kurtz she was exonerated, to the satisfaction of nearly the entire community. Among those who followed the proceedings closely with a view to publishing the dramatic story was George Butler Griffin, traveler and journalist, who, having recently arrived, had joined the staff of the _Express_, later becoming somewhat noted as a student of local history.

At a meeting in Turnverein Hall, on March 24th, the German Ladies' Benevolent Society of Los Angeles, so long known for its commendable work, was organized. Mrs. John Milner was elected President; Mrs. D. Mahlstedt, Vice-President; Mrs. John Benner, Secretary; and Mrs. Jacob Kuhrts, Treasurer.

Savarie J., _alias_ Professor Brewster, was a simple-minded freak of the freakish eighties, who dropped into Los Angeles--as such characters generally do--without anyone knowing much about his origin. It was during the time that walking matches were much in vogue, and whenever one of these took place, Savarie J. was sure to participate. He was the only man in town that took Savarie J. seriously, and I assume that he was generally entered rather to attract spectators than for any other purpose. One day the Professor disappeared and no clue to his whereabouts could be discovered until his dead body was found far out on the desert. He had walked once too often and too far!

Fabian was a Frenchman and a jack-at-all-trades doing odd jobs around town, whose temperament and out-spoken way of expressing himself used to produce both amusement and surprise. On one occasion, when he took offense at the daughter of a prominent family for whom he was working, he sought out the lady of the house and said to her: "Madam, your sons are all right, but _your daughters are no good_!"

Two other names not forgotten by householders of an earlier day in Los Angeles are John Hall and Henry Buddin. The former, whose complexion was as black as his soul was white, came to Los Angeles a great many years ago. He was a whitewasher by trade and followed this calling for a livelihood, later giving it up to run an express wagon; and I can still see John plying about town and driving in summer between Los Angeles and Santa Monica, his wagon piled high with household effects, as our good citizens moved from one dwelling to another or went on their way to the shore of the sea. I remember, also, that one day some unnatural parent left a newborn, white infant on John Hall's steps. He was never able to locate the mother of the little fellow, and therefore took the foundling into his home and raised him as his son. Moses was the name John very appropriately bestowed upon the baby; and the white lad grew into manhood in the midst of this negro family. Like Fabian, Buddin proved himself handy in doing odd jobs of carpentering and upholstering, and was in frequent demand.

On September 5th, at the conclusion of the City's first century, or, more strictly speaking, one hundred years and a day after the founding of Los Angeles, a noteworthy celebration was undertaken. A population of about twelve thousand was all that Los Angeles then boasted; but visitors added greatly to the crowd, and the town took on a true holiday appearance. Main Street was decorated with an arch, bearing the inclusive figures, _1781-1881_; and the variegated procession, under the grand marshalship of General George Stoneman, was made up of such vehicles, costumed passengers and riders as suggested at once the motley but interesting character of our city's past. There were old, creaking _carretas_ that had seen service in pioneer days; there were richly-decorated saddles, on which rode gay and expert horsemen; and there were also the more up-to-date and fashionable carriages which, with the advent of transcontinental railroading, had at last reached the Coast. Two Mexican Indian women--one named Benjamina--alternately scowling and smiling, and declared to be, respectively, one hundred and three and one hundred and fourteen years old, formed a feature of the procession. Clouds of dust, from the crowding auditors, greeted the orators of the day, who spoke not only in English and Spanish, but also in French; there were festal games and sports characteristic of the olden time; and the celebration concluded with a Spanish _baile_, at which dancing was continued until the following morning.

One of the musical celebrities of her time, and a native of Los Angeles of whom the city was justly proud, was Miss Mamie Perry, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Perry. In 1880, she went to Italy and studied under Sangiovanni and in September, 1881, made her _début_, singing in Milan, Florence, Mantua and Bologna the title _rôle_ of Petrella's opera, _Contessa d'Amalfi_. In other cities, she attained further distinction. A musical career was interrupted by her marriage, in 1883, to Charles W. Davis; but, after his untimely death in 1889, Mrs. Perry-Davis returned to Italy, a notable _musicale_ in Turnverein Hall being given, as a farewell honor, on April 22d. Still later, she returned to Los Angeles and married C. Modini Wood.

When the funeral of President Garfield took place at Washington, on September 27th, his memory was also honored in Los Angeles. A procession started at two o'clock from Spring Street and marched to the Plaza, Colonel John O. Wheeler acting as Grand Marshal and George E. Gard, Chief of Police, leading the way. A catafalque, draped with black, star-bedecked silk and green smilax, and surmounted by a shrouded eagle and a little child--Laura Chauvin, daughter of A. C. Chauvin, the grocer--kneeling and representing Columbia lamenting the loss of the martyred chief, was drawn by six horses, followed by the honorary pallbearers and by civic and official bodies. Judge Volney E. Howard, as President, introduced Dr. J. P. Widney, who read the resolutions of condolence, after which A. Brunson delivered the eulogy. Mrs. Garfield, the President's widow, who first came to winter in California in 1899, finally built her own winter home in Pasadena, in October, 1904.

S. A. and M. A. Hamburger, who were engaged in business in Sacramento, concluded they would do better if they secured the right opening in the Southland; and having persuaded their father, Asher Hamburger, to join them in the new enterprise, they came to Los Angeles in November, 1881, and established their present business, under the firm name of A. Hamburger & Sons. D. A. Hamburger, who had been reading law, joined them in January, 1883. For years, until his death on December 2d, 1897, the elder Hamburger participated actively in all the affairs of the concern. They first opened on Main Street near Requena--close to the popular dry-goods store of Dillon & Kenealy, conducted by Richard Dillon & John Kenealy--what was known as the People's Store, occupying a one-story building with a room containing not more than twenty-five hundred square feet; but having outgrown this location, they moved to the Bumiller Block. Again obliged to seek more room, the Phillips Block, at the corner of Spring and Franklin streets, was built for their use on the site of the old City and County Building and the Jail. In 1908, the Hamburgers moved to their extensive building on Broadway and Eighth Street.

Owen Brown, son of the famous John Brown of Ossawatomie, and long the only survivor of the little party that seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, came West late in 1881 and settled with his brother Jason, already at Pasadena. A horseback trail up one of the neighboring mountains still leads the traveler to speak in friendly spirit of this late pioneer, who died in 1889 and is buried near the foothills. Five years later, Jason Brown returned to Ohio.

The _Daily Times_, a Republican sheet started by Nathan Cole and James Gardiner, began on December 4th to be issued six days in the week. Both publishers within a month were succeeded by Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, owners of the _Mirror_. So successful was the paper that it soon grew to be a nine-column folio.

In the height of the Winter season of 1881-82, when the semi-tropical glory of Southern California was most appealing, Helen Hunt Jackson, exploring the Southwest for materials of value in the study of the Indian, came to Los Angeles and met, as I have already related, Abbot Kinney, himself a student of the aborigines. She also met Don António F. and Doña Mariana Coronel; and finding in the latter a highly intelligent and affable lady, she passed some hours each day at the hospitable Coronel mansion, driving out there from her hotel and reclining under the broad palm trees. When Mrs. Jackson first came, with her pencils and note-books, the retiring Señora (as she used to tell me), having little comprehension of the Eastern lady's ambitious plans, looked with some suspicion on the motives of her enthusiastic visitor; but fortunately this half-distrust was dispelled by the warmth of the author's geniality, and Doña Mariana, opening both her house and heart, contributed inestimably to the success of the now famous _Ramona_, most of the rough notes for which were written at a little table on the Coronel veranda. On Doña Mariana's advice, Mrs. Jackson selected the Del Valle ranchhouse at the Camulos, as the best-preserved and most typical place for a background; although, disappointed in not finding the Del Valles at home, and consequently seeing the imagined headquarters of Ramona for but an hour or two, she was compelled to rely upon her Los Angeles hostess for many of the interesting and singularly accurate details. On departing from Southern California, Mrs. Jackson wrote for the _Century Magazine_ a charming description of life at the old Coronel adobe, whence she never departed without a carriageful of luscious fruit. She also added her tribute to the attractions of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. Now the world at large has been made more conversant with the poetical past of Los Angeles for the most part through the novel _Ramona_.

In 1882, the telephone was first introduced here, H. Newmark & Company so early subscribing for the service that they were given 'phone No. 5, the old River Station having No. 1. But it may amuse the reader to know that this patronage was not pledged without some misgivings lest the customary noises around the store might interfere with hearing, and so render the curious instrument useless!

On January 20th, Don Juan Forster died at his Santa Margarita rancho, in San Diego County; followed to the grave but a few months later by Mrs. Forster, a sister of Pio Pico.

As rugged as the climate of his native State of Maine, A. T. Currier, after the usual hazardous life of the pioneer on the plains and in mines, proved his good judgment when, in the late sixties, after riding through California in search of the best place to found a home, he selected a ranch close to that of Louis Phillips. For years, I had pleasant relations with Currier; and I must confess that it was not easy to decide, in 1882, when two such friends as he and Billy Rowland were the opposing candidates, how I should vote for Sheriff. Currier was elected.

The Arroyo Vista--later and more correctly named the Vista del Arroyo--kept by Mrs. Emma C. Bangs, was the only hotel in the Pasadena settlement in 1882, and not infrequently passengers who journeyed there by the narrow, stuffy stage, running every day except Sunday, found on arriving that they could not be accommodated. So small, in fact, was the hostelry that it became necessary to advertise when all the rooms had been taken. The stage left for Los Angeles at nine o'clock in the morning and returned at three; and the driver, who was a student of the classics from the East, doled out to the passengers both crossroad data and bits of ancient lore.

Fire having destroyed the State Normal School at San José, in 1880, then the only institution of its kind in California, the Legislature, on March 14th, 1881, provided for the establishing here of a branch; and the following March George Gephard, a German who had come in 1875, raised eight thousand dollars to purchase the orange grove at Bellevue Terrace, near Fifth Street and Charity, for a site. On August 29th, 1882, the school was opened with Charles H. Allen of San Francisco as first Principal, two other teachers and sixty-one students. In 1883, Allen was succeeded by President Ira More and the school became an independent institution. Edward T. Pierce, who followed Professor More, retired in 1904. An instructor there for twenty-two years was Professor Melville Dozier, who made for California, by way of Panamá, in 1868. Largely through the devotion of these pioneer teachers, as well as through those qualities which have marked the administration of Dr. Jesse F. Millspaugh, scholar and pedagogue, for nearly the last decade, this Normal School has grown, each year, from a very humble beginning until now it sends out hundreds of men and women into one of the noblest of all professions.

A commencement of the Los Angeles High School of particular interest to me was celebrated in June in the old Turnverein Hall, on Spring Street--Superintendent James M. Guinn presenting the diplomas--when my daughter Ella graduated. Among her instructors had been Mrs. Chloe P. Jones, for three years Principal of the school and for one year Superintendent (having been the last incumbent, at the same time, of both offices), and the late Mrs. Anna Averill, a noted club woman. Mrs. Jones came to California from Ohio in 1873, taught for a while in Santa Rosa and, after a year of grade work here, began to instruct in the new high school; and there, after a service of nearly four decades, she is still a highly esteemed member of the staff. Mrs. Averill was the first woman to enter the Board of Education; and in her honor a bell was placed on the Mission Road, El Camino Real, to celebrate her seventieth birthday.

Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, who had been a farmer's boy, printer, Union soldier, foreman of the Government printing office, newspaper correspondent and editor, and had first visited Los Angeles late in 1874 or 1875 to familiarize himself with local conditions, on August 1st, 1882 joined the firm of Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, thereupon assuming the management of both the _Times_ and the weekly _Mirror_. In October, 1883, Yarnell and Mathes retired. A year later, the Times-Mirror Company was incorporated with a capital stock of forty thousand dollars.

Notwithstanding the failure of the _Evening Republican_, in 1878-79, Nathan Cole, Jr. started another afternoon daily, the _Evening Telegram_, on August 19th. It was very neatly printed; was delivered by carrier at sixty-five cents a month; and was a pioneer here in inserting free advertisements for those desiring situations.

In the spring of 1882, my attention had been called to the public need of proper facilities for obtaining a drink of good water; and no one else having moved in the matter, the following communication was sent, during the heated summer, to the City authorities:

LOS ANGELES, August 25, 1882.

To the Honorable, The Council of Los Angeles City:

GENTLEMEN:--

The undersigned hereby tender to the city a drinking
fountain, as per the accompanying cut, to be placed on that
portion of Temple Block fronting the junction of Main and
Spring streets, for the free use of the public, and subject
to the approval of your honorable body.

Respectfully,
H. NEWMARK & CO.

About the same time Stephen H. Mott, Secretary of the Los Angeles City Water Company, promised enough drinking water, free of charge, to supply the fountain.

The unpretentious gift having been accepted, the fountain was installed. The design included an iron pedestal and column, surmounted by a female figure of attractive proportions; while below, the water issued from the mouth of a lion's head. Though but seven feet in height and not to be compared with more ambitious designs seen here later, the fountain may have given some incentive to city service and adornment.

It has been shown that Remi Nadeau bought the southwest corner of Spring and First streets at what I then considered a ridiculously high price. On that site, in 1882, he commenced building the Hotel Nadeau--the first four-story structure in town. This fact is not likely to escape my memory, since he acquired the necessary funds out of the profit he made in a barley speculation involving the sale, by H. Newmark & Company, of some eighty thousand bags of this cereal; his gain representing our loss. It thus happened that I participated in the opening festivities (which began with a banquet and ended with a ball) to a greater extent than, I dare say, the average guest ever suspected. For many years thereafter, the Nadeau, now comparatively so deserted, was the center of social and business life in Los Angeles.

On October 11th occurred the death of Don Manuel Dominguez, his wife surviving him but a few months.

In 1882, F. H. Howland, representing the Brush Electric Lighting Company, made an energetic canvass in Los Angeles for the introduction of the electric light; and by the end of the third week in August, forty or more arc lamps had been ordered by business houses and private individuals. He soon proposed to light the city by seven towers or spliced masts--each about one hundred and fifty feet high--to be erected within an area bounded by the Plaza, Seventh, Charity and Main streets, and supplied from a power-house at the corner of Banning and Alameda streets. The seven masts were to cost seven thousand dollars a year, or somewhat more than was then being paid for gas. This proposition was accepted by the Council, popular opinion being that it was "the best advertisement that Los Angeles could have;" and when Howland, a week later, offered to add three or four masts, there was considerable satisfaction that Los Angeles was to be brought into the line of progress. On the evening of December 31st, the city was first lighted by electricity when Mayor Toberman touched the button that turned on the mysterious current. Howland was opposed by the gas company and by many who advanced the most ridiculous objections: electric light, it was claimed, attracted bugs, contributed to blindness and had a bad effect on--ladies' complexions!

In 1883, Herman Flatau came to Los Angeles from Berlin and soon entered the employ of H. Newmark & Company. His first duty was to bale hides; in a year, he was a porter in the grocery department; and by another year he had advanced to a place in the billing-office. Since then, he has risen step by step until he is now a stockholder in M. A. Newmark & Company and is taken into the most confidential and important councils of that firm. On the nineteenth of February, 1888, Flatau married Miss Fanny Bernstein, a lady distinguished as the first girl graduate of a Los Angeles high school to enter the State University, receiving therefrom the Ph.B. degree.

Dr. Elizabeth A. Follansbee registered in Los Angeles in February, 1883, and as one of the earliest women physicians here soon secured an enviable position in the professional world, being called to the chair for diseases of children in the College of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

J. W. Robinson in 1833 established a small dry goods shop at the corner of Temple and Spring streets, which he named the Boston Dry Goods Store.[36] A couple of years later he moved into the Jones Block opposite the Court House, the growth of his business having warranted such a change. In 1895 the block next to Blanchard Hall was built by this firm, and this he has occupied ever since. In March, 1896, the present manager, J. M. Schneider, became associated with the Boston Dry Goods Co., which was incorporated in 1891. N. B. Blackstone, a kinsman of Robinson, once in business with him, in time withdrew and set up for himself, under his own name, on Broadway.

One of the most shocking railroad accidents in the history of California blotted the calendar for January 20th, when over twenty persons were killed and sudden grief was brought to several happy Los Angeles circles. About three o'clock on a cold wintry night, an express train, bound south, stopped at the Teháchepi Station, near the summit; and while the engineer and fireman on the detached locomotive and tender were busy loading water and fuel, and the conductor was in the office making his report, the brakeman, with what proved to be uncalculating gallantry, was hastening to escort a young lady from the car to the railway station. In his hurry, he had forgotten to apply the brakes; and before he could return, the entire train, started by a heavy gale, had begun to move away--at the outset slowly, then dashing, with ever-increasing momentum, down the heavy mountain grade!

The conductor, upon leaving the depot, was the first to discover that the cars had started away; the disappearing lights having become so faint as to be scarcely visible. The passengers, too, had noticed nothing unusual until too late; when the train, plunging along at fearful velocity, leaped the track and fell in a heap to the ravine below. The old-fashioned lamps and stoves set fire to the _débris_; with the result that those who were not crushed were burned. The dead and wounded were brought to Los Angeles as quickly as possible; but the remains of some were never identified. Governor Downey, who was on the train, was rescued, though for years he suffered from the nervous shock; but among those lost was his charming wife.

Marshall & Henderson established themselves, in 1883, in the wholesale iron and wagon-supply trade; whereupon we sold that branch of our business to them. Shortly after, we vacated the storerooms in the Arcadia Block, which we had continuously occupied since the establishing of H. Newmark & Company in 1865, and moved to the two-story Amestoy Building on Los Angeles Street, north of Requena, but a few paces from the corner on which I had first clerked for my brother.

At a meeting in the office of the Los Angeles Produce Exchange, in the Arcadia Block on Los Angeles Street on March 9th, presided over by C. W. Gibson when J. Mills Davies acted as Secretary, the Board of Trade of Los Angeles was organized, M. Dodsworth, C. W. Gibson, A. Haas, J. M. Davies, Eugène Germain, J. J. Mellus, John R. Mathews, Walter S. Maxwell, I. N. Van Nuys and myself being the incorporators. Six directors--Gibson, Van Nuys, Haas, Dodsworth, Mathews and Newmark--were chosen. On March 14th, 1883, the Board was formally incorporated for fifty years. After a while the Board met in the Baker Block, and still later it assembled in a two-story brick structure at the northwest corner of Fort and First streets. In October, 1906, the Board of Trade and the Wholesalers' Board of Trade were consolidated, the new organization becoming known as the Wholesalers' Board of Trade. This move was initiated by Herman Flatau.

The republication, in the Los Angeles _Express_ of March 23d, 1908, under the caption, "Twenty-five Years Ago To-day," of several paragraphs, savoring of village gossip such as the following--

Some very fine nugas [_nougats?_] are to be seen at Dol's
Commercial Restaurant. They are meant for the
silver-wedding feast at Mr. Newmark's--

calls to mind an event of March 21st, when my wife and I celebrated our silver wedding at our home on Fort Street. At half-past six in the evening, all of my employees sat down at dinner with us, having come in a body to tender their congratulations. A reunion of three generations of the Newmarks, some of whom then saw one another for the first time, came to a close a week or two later.

As the anniversary approached, I prepared a surprise for my wife, arranging that her brother, Abraham Newmark of St. Louis, should be present in Los Angeles for the occasion. His visit, however, had a grievous termination: while in San Francisco on his way home from Los Angeles, death came to him suddenly in the home of a friend.

In May, the Los Angeles Board of Education sold the northwest corner of Spring and Second streets--a lot one hundred and twenty by one hundred and sixty-five feet, where the City, in 1854, had built the first schoolhouse--to the city authorities for thirty-one thousand dollars; and the next year the Council erected on the inside sixty feet the first municipal building of consequence. When the Boom was at its height in 1887, the City sold the balance of the lot with its frontage on Spring Street and a depth of one hundred and five feet for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, to John Bryson, Sr., an arrival of 1879 and ten years later Mayor of Los Angeles; and George H. Bonebrake (who came a year earlier than Bryson, and was in his day a prominent financier) opened, if my memory serves me correctly, the first agency for Eastern vehicles. Together, they built the Bryson Block.

This sale and purchase reminds me that when the lot was cleared to make way for the new City Hall, ten or twelve fine black locust trees were felled, much to the regret of many old-timers. These were the same shade trees for the preservation of which Billy McKee, the early schoolmaster, had risked bodily encounter with the irate waterman.

When the Board of Education sold this lot, it bought another, which extended from Fort Street to Spring between Fifth and Sixth streets and had a frontage of one hundred and twenty feet on each street. The price paid was twelve thousand five hundred dollars. This is the lot now known as Mercantile Place, whose retention or sale has been so much debated and which, with its many small stores, reminds the traveler not a little of those narrow but cosy, and often very prosperous, European streets and alleys on both sides lined with famous shops.

August 22d was the date of the City ordinance creating Elysian Park, the act leading the early settler back to pueblo days when the land in question passed from Mexican to American control and remained a part of the City lots, already described, and never subdivided and sold.

The last companies of volunteer firemen were organized in 1883, one being in the Morris Vineyard, a district between what is now Main, Hill, Fifteenth and Sixteenth streets, and the other in East Los Angeles, where a hose company was formed.

During September or October, a party of distinguished German bankers and statesmen, who had come to the United States to investigate certain branches of business, visited Los Angeles. The most important of this commission was Dr. Edward Lasker of the German Reichstag, other eminent members being Henry Villard, President of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and Judge Siemens, President of the German Bank of Berlin. A committee, consisting of I. W. Hellman, C. C. Lips, M. Morris, A. W. Edelman, Conrad Jacoby, Dr. Joseph Kurtz and myself took charge of these gentlemen, as well as a number of others, whose names I forget. Dr. Lasker, during his brief stay, accepted the hospitality of my home, and there received considerable honor at the hands of his German admirers, a large body of enthusiasts serenading him. Even while with us, it was evident that Dr. Lasker was an ailing man; and on the fifth of the following January, while riding in a carriage in Galveston, he suddenly died.

General George H. Stoneman, when he retired from the army in 1871, settled near San Gabriel; and continuing more or less in public life, he was elected in 1883 Governor of California.

In December, 1883, Eugene Meyer sold out to Nathan Cahn and Leon Loeb, his partners in the City of Paris store, and engaged in banking with Lazard Frères, in San Francisco, in which enterprise he continued until 1892, when he moved to New York and became one of the managing partners of the same institution in that city, retiring from active business nearly a decade later.

When Meyer left, he sold his home on Fort Street, which had originally cost him six thousand, to Moses L. Wicks for sixteen thousand dollars; and his friends told him that so successful a sale proved the Meyer luck. Wicks in time resold it to John D. Bicknell, whose heirs still own it.

With the coming at Christmas in 1883 of Robert N. Bulla, began a career that has made itself felt in local legal, political, commercial, social and scientific circles. In 1884, he joined the law firm of Bicknell & White; nine years later, he was representing his district in the State Assembly; in 1897, he was a State Senator; and his efficient activity as a director of the Chamber of Commerce, together with his forensic talent, lead one to anticipate his rise to further distinction in that body. As a director of the Southwest Museum, Bulla performs another of his services to the community.

After an unsuccessful canvass made by Judge Noah Levering, which resulted in the attendance of just four persons, the Historical Society of Southern California was finally organized at meetings in Temple Block, in November and December, 1883. J. J. Warner was the first President; H. D. Barrows, A. F. Coronel, J. G. Downey and John Mansfield, the Vice-Presidents; J. M. Guinn, Treasurer; and C. N. Wilson, Secretary. For a time, the Society's meetings were held in the City Council room, after that in the County Court room; and later at the houses of the members. On February 12th, 1891, the Society was incorporated.

_Le Progrès_, a seven-column paper, was started here, in 1883, as the organ of the French population, some rather prominent citizens of Gallic origin becoming the stockholders. Dr. Pigné du Puytren was the first editor, and he was succeeded, in a year or two, by Georges Le Mésnager, the wine-grower.

On February 18th, another flood of unusual proportions, continuing until May, devastated the Southland. Following several days of heavy rain, the river rose and fifty houses and large sections of vineyards and orchards in the low-lying portions of the city were carried away by the mad waters; several lives being lost. In that year, the Santa Ana cut its new channel to the sea, deviating from the old course from one to three miles, but still holding to the southwest, a direction apparently characteristic of rivers in this vicinity.

Speaking of rains, reminds me that, in 1884, one of the difficulties in the way of solving the water problem was removed in the purchase, by the City of Los Angeles, for fifty thousand dollars, of Colonel Griffith J. Griffith's right to the water of the Los Angeles River.

Charles F. Lummis, long a distinguished and always a picturesquely-recognizable resident, walked across the continent "for fun and study," from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, by a roundabout route of 3507 miles in one hundred and forty-three days, in 1884, having made an arrangement with the Los Angeles _Times_ to which he contributed breezy letters on the way. The day after his arrival he became city editor of that newspaper, and in the last Apache campaign, in 1886, he was its war correspondent. In 1887 a stroke of paralysis sent him to New Mexico; and recovering, he spent several years exploring and studying Spanish-America from Colorado to Chile, becoming acknowledged here and abroad as an authority on the history and the peoples of the lands he visited. In 1893, returning from Peru, he edited for a dozen years the _Land of Sunshine_ magazine (later _Out West_); after that founding the Landmarks Club to which we owe the preservation, from utter ruin, of several of the old Missions. This club has lately been reorganized to care for all of the twenty-one Missions of the State. Later Lummis incorporated the Sequoya League which has so much bettered the condition of thousands of California Indians--securing, in particular, for the evicted Warner's Ranch Indians a better reservation than that from which they were driven. From 1905 to 1911 he was Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library. In 1903 he founded the Southwest Society of the Archæological Institute of America which conducted many scientific expeditions in Arizona, New Mexico and Guatemala, acquired valuable collections and maintained the first free public exhibits of science in Southern California. In 1907 he and others incorporated the Southwest Museum, whereupon the Society conveyed to it all its collections, a twenty-acre site and the fifty thousand dollars bequeathed by Mrs. Carrie M. Jones for the first buildings. Besides other and many literary activities, Lummis has published over a dozen notable books on the Southwest and Spanish America.[37] Clad in corduroys from Barcelona--coat and trousers, with very wide wales, of olive or green--wearing no vest, but having a shirt of heavy drawn-work of the Pueblo Indians (with whom he dwelt six years), a red-and-white _faja_ or waist-band made by the same people, and a grey _sombrero_ banded with Mexican braided horse-hair, Lummis roams the desert or is welcome at the most exclusive functions; having already been a guest many times at the White House and the palaces of Diaz and other presidents in Spanish America. "I don't change my face for company," he says, "then why my garb--so long as both are clean?" An interesting figure at scientific meetings and on the lecture platform, Lummis is equally so at home where, after twenty years' work with his own hands, he is still building his stone "castle," _El Alisal_; and as his house is a rendezvous for artists, musicians, authors and scientists, his guests often find him toiling as either carpenter or mason. The _Alisal_, by the way, is built around the huge sycamore under which Greek George camped with his camels on his first arrival in Los Angeles nearly sixty years ago.

In 1884, Colonel H. Z. Osborne--always a foremost citizen of the town and in 1912 a most energetic President of the Chamber of Commerce--and E. R. Cleveland bought the _Express_; and two years later they organized the Evening Express Company, J. Mills Davies, once Secretary of the Board of Trade, becoming business manager. In 1897, Colonel Osborne was appointed United States Marshal for the Southern California District, whereupon Charles Dwight Willard became general manager of the paper, to be succeeded by J. B. Abell. For a short time in 1900, the _Express_ fell into the hands of a group of men, of whom John M. Miller acted as President and Richard Beebe served as Secretary.

O. W. Childs opened his new theater known as Childs' Opera House, on Main Street south of First, in what was then the center of the city, on May 24th, when the _School for Scandal_ was given, Mlle. Rhea taking the leading part. This, the first theater of real consequence built in Los Angeles, had a seating capacity of eighteen hundred; and for some time, at least, an entertainment was booked there for every night of the week. Frequently, too, whenever anything of moment was going to happen there, Childs sent me an invitation to occupy his private box.

An interesting personality for many years was C. P. Switzer, a Virginian, who came in 1853 with Colonel Hollister, W. H. Perry and others. Switzer became a contractor and builder; but in 1884, in search of health, he moved to an eminence in the Sierras, where he soon established Switzer's Camp, which gradually became famous as a resort generally reached on burros. A few years ago, "Commodore" Switzer--or Sweitzer as he was also called--retired, but the camp, more than ever popular, has been continued as "Switzer's."

Toward the middle of the eighties, excitement among citrus growers throughout Southern California gave way to deep depression due to the continued ravages of the fluted scale, a persistent insect whose home, according to research, is Australia, and which had found its way, on Australian plants (and especially on _Acacia latifolia_) into South Africa, New Zealand and California, arriving on the Pacific Coast about 1868. This particular species, known to the scientist as the _Icerya purchasi_, resisted and survived all insecticide sprayings, washes and fumigation, and for a while it seemed that one of the most important and growing industries of the Southland was absolutely doomed. Indeed, not until 1889, when the result of Albert Koebele's mission to Australia, as a representative of the Department of Agriculture, was made known, did hope among the citrus orchardists revive. In that year, the tiny ladybird--styled by the learned the _Novius cardinalis_, but more popularly spoken of as the ladybug--the most effective enemy of the fluted scale, was introduced here, the Government establishing, among other stations, an experimental laboratory on the Wolfskill ranch under the charge of Professor D. W. Coquillett; and so rapidly was this tiny favorite of children propagated and disseminated, that the dreaded scale was exterminated and the crops were saved. Wolfskill, by the way, though he fought hard with the assistance of his foreman, Alexander Craw, to save his noted trees, lacked the coöperation of his neighbors; and the injury then inflicted largely influenced him to subdivide his famous citrus property.

With the arrival on March 1st, 1887, of J. O. Koepfli, a man came on the scene who during the next twenty-five years was to be not only one of the real forces in the development of the city, but, as a whole-souled gentleman, was to surround himself, through his attractive personality, with a large circle of representative and influential friends. As President of the Merchants' Association, his record was such that in 1896 he was elected a director of the Chamber of Commerce where, during twelve years, he performed valiant service on all the important committees. His work in behalf of the harbor and the Owens River aqueduct is especially memorable. He was President of the Chamber in 1905 and 1906. With such men as C. D. Willard and R. W. Burnham, he founded the Municipal League, whose President he was for seven years. His efforts were always free from the taint of personal aggrandizement, and he thus had the public confidence. He is a member of the well-known firm of Bishop & Company.

Among the present social organizations of the city, the Los Angeles Athletic Club takes second place in point of age. It was organized in 1879 by forty young men, among whom were Fred Wood, Bradner W. Lee, Mark G. Jones, Frank M. Coulter, Frank A. Gibson, John S. Thayer, M. H. Newmark, W. G. Kerckhoff, Alfredo Solano, J. B. Lankershim, W. M. Caswell, James C. Kays, Joseph Binford, and Samuel Dewey. The initial meeting took place in Wood's office in the McDonald Block, and a hall in the Arcadia Building was the Club's earliest headquarters. J. B. Lankershim was the first President. A few years later, the Club moved to the Downey Block; and there the boys had many a merry bout. In the course of time, the gymnasium was located on Spring Street, between Fourth and Fifth; now it occupies its own spacious and elaborate building on Seventh Street, at the corner of Olive, the Club's quarters being among the finest of their kind in America.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] May 1st, 1914, the J. W. Robinson Dry Goods Co. contracted to move to Seventh Street between Grand Avenue and Hope Street. This is one of the notable examples of leapfrog that real estate operators have played in Los Angeles, to the detriment perhaps, at times, of the town itself.

[37] In 1915, in recognition of historical work, the King of Spain conferred upon Lummis the dignity of a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica.