The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space

T h e Lo s A ng e l e s P la z a

The Los Angeles Plaza Sacred and Contested Space

W i l l i a m Dav i d E s t r a da Foreword by Devra Weber

University of Texas Press

Au s t i n

Cover photo credits: (top) photo by Frank Damon; (middle left) courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino; (middle second from left) courtesy of Cruz Moreno; (middle center) courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument; (middle second from right) courtesy of La Opinión; (middle right) courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument; and (bottom) courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2008 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Estrada, William D. The Los Angeles Plaza : sacred and contested space / William David Estrada ; foreword by Devra Weber. — 1st ed.    p.   cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-71754-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-71755-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Los Angeles Plaza (Los Angeles, Calif.)—History.  2. Public spaces—California—Los Angeles— History.  3. Sacred space—California—Los Angeles—History.  4. Memory—Social aspects— California—Los Angeles—History.  5. Community life—California—Los Angeles—History.  6. Human Ecology—California—Los Angeles—History.  7. Los Angeles (Calif.)—History.  8. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Social life and customs.  9. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Ethnic relations.  10. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Buildings, structures, etc.  I. Title. f869.l87l67  2008 979.4'94—dc22 2007036326

For Patricia, Amelia, and David

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings. Edward Said , Culture and Imperialism

Contents

Foreword by Devra Weber  ix Acknowledgments  xiii Introduction  1 1. Cultural and Historical Origins  15 2. The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza  43 3. From Ciudad to City  81 4. Homelands Remembered  109 5. Revolution and Public Space  133 6. Reforming Culture and Community  169 7. Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers  203 8. Politics and Preservation  231 9. The Persistence of Memory  259 Notes  271 Bibliography  311 Index  329

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Foreword Devra Weber



The book you are holding is about Los Angeles’ historic heart, the Plaza,

the Placita, a space of contested memories, forgotten histories and their reclamation. The Los Angeles Plaza is personal and evocative for those who grew up in the city. The book triggered my own memories of growing up in L.A. By the early 1950s, my Los Angeles–born father was taking me (and my pet of the moment) to the annual blessing of the animals at the Placita church. My mother took me to Olvera Street’s Christmas posadas, after days of carefully rehearsing songs of the posadas from a tattered songbook. Filtered through the eyes of my Anglo bohemian parents and Chicano neighbors, the Placita, Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church, and Olvera Street played a central part in forming my notion of Los Angeles and my sense that it was at its core a Mexican city. The realization that some of my notions were based on myths, stereotypes, and orchestrated dreams—well, that would come later.

The Los Angeles Plaza expands an understanding of the city for all

readers. Estrada’s own multigenerational familial memories of the Placita were and are a jarring disjuncture from the institutional histories imposed on him during school trips that obliterated the Mexican L.A. he knew. The book challenges such institutional memories through an evocation of historical

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conflicts over the use and meaning of the Plaza and surrounding space. It tracks the performances of contradictory public narratives and the evolving coexistence of conflicting narratives and usages of space. The Placita was and is a place where Mexicans, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, African Americans, Anglos, Filipinos, and people of other countries, regions, and locales came together, fought, and organized. The book goes beyond the built spaces to encompass the story of how people actively interacted with and shaped the meaning of this place. And in so doing, people resisted the homogenization of the Plaza pushed by varying demands of dominant city powers and kept alive the political, contrary, and vibrant sense of interactive space.

Olvera Street, manufactured as an “authentic Mexican shopping street”

for tourists, was simultaneously a place where Mexicans shopped next to tourists. The mythical Olvera Street failed to overwhelm the lived space of the Placita, which remains a center for politicians, labor organizers and other activists, dancers, musicians, tourists, lovers, and families who congregate on Sundays. The Placita is a starting point of demonstrations and city celebrations. The church is again a sanctuary for immigrants. The development of the Pico House, the Chinese American Museum, and the conservation of América Tropical, the David Alfaro Siqueiros mural located on the exterior wall of Italian Hall, is reviving the history that mirrors that of our city.

It is fitting that this book is coming out in 2008. Los Angeles has become

one of the most diverse cities in the world. With more than two-thirds of county residents either immigrants or their children, Los Angeles is home to the largest number of diasporic populations in the world of at least five countries. The city is rent by problems of poverty, proliferation of low-wage jobs, crises in affordable housing and in education, and increasing congestion in an out-of-control freeway system. It is also home to progressive coalitions pushing to develop a livable city and one in which all who work here can also live. These coalitions have produced living-wage ordinances and other proposals to address the city’s ongoing challenges.

The question of the future of Los Angeles looms. Developers are munch-

ing on downtown areas such as the Figueroa corridor and have ripped out working-class enclaves to make room for upscale condominiums. There are Champs Élysées–like commercial visions for Grand Avenue. Gentrification is spreading into the old neighborhoods of Boyle Heights and Pico Union. The questions of who determines the city’s future, what it will look like, and



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who or what will dominate our public spaces are central to political, social, and economic agendas. The Placita remains an important city core adjacent to the Los Angeles River and the Cornfield, which are soon to be developed into a park. The Los Angeles Plaza eloquently speaks not only of our collective past but to our collective future.

Foreword ˚ xi

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Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s



This is but a partial list of all the people and institutions whose knowing

and unknowing contributions helped me to reach this long-sought goal, a project that my two children in their youthful wit once reminded me began in the last century. With apologies to those unnamed, I wish to thank the following.

For institutional support, I am grateful to the John Randolph Haynes

and Dora Haynes Foundation/Historical Society of Southern California for two generous research grants in 2004–2005. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where I serve as Curator of History, provided tremendous support, resources, and encouragement for this project. The museum’s Seaver Center for Western History research is among the best collections on Los Angeles. I am particularly grateful to Jane Pisano, Margaret Hardin, Tom Sitton, Janet Fireman, Bill Mertz, John Cahoon, Beth Werling, Brent Riggs, Betty Uyeda, Jacqueline Morin, Jim Gilson, Tom Jacobson, María Ponce, Salena Small, Karen Wise, and Terri Togiai. Other institutions whose contributions cannot be overstated are the Huntington Library; El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument; the Regional History Center at the University of Southern California; Los Angeles Public Library; the California Room of the Rosemead Library, which is among the overlooked research treasures in xiii

the area; Los Angeles City Archives; Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research; the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles; A. C. Bilbrew Library’s Black Resource Center; the Japanese American National Museum; and East Los Angeles Public Library’s Chicano Resource Center.

For judicious intellectual mentoring, Bill Mason, more than any other

person, was the inspiration for this book. In a career than spanned more than forty years, he was the guiding hand and generous wealth of knowledge for numerous scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and anyone else seeking new insight concerning our city’s history. For him, the story of Los Angeles began at the Plaza, and he understood the complex transformations and intimate social history of the site more than any scholar of his generation.

Several other scholars read the entire manuscript at various stages and

generously shared their ideas about Los Angeles and the Plaza: Devra Weber, Leornard Pitt, Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Paul Bryan Gray, Jean Bruce Poole, Doug Monroy, Thomas Hines, Ed Soja, and Setha Low were there from the beginning and offered expertise and encouragement. Don Parson, Suellen Cheng, Michael Engh, Arthè Anthony, Raul Villa, Shifra Goldman, Sojin Kim, William Deverell, James Rojas, Robert Garcia, Gloria Lothrop, and John Bengtson were always available by telephone, for a cup of coffee, or through email to discuss ideas. Other scholars who shared their knowledge and advice include: Gloria Miranda, Tim Tangerlini, Rudy Acuña, Luis Arroyo, Lisbeth Haas, Tevvy Ball, Diego Vigil, Vicki Ruiz, Victor Valle, Mary Ryan, Judy Branf­man, Jan Lin, Mary Yeager, Marta Lopez Garza, Glenn Price, Cecilia Rasmussen, Roberta Greenwood, Greg Howell, Steve Loza, Raúl Ruiz, Roberto Garza, Edward Escobar, Antonio Ríos-Bustamante, Daniel Arreola, Lisa See, Greg Hise, Howard Shorr, and David Ayón.

It was a pleasure working with people of the University of Texas Press—

Theresa May, Lynne Chapman, Tana Silva, and Jan McInroy. For invaluable assistance during various phases of document and photograph research, I am grateful to Jennifer Watts, Hynda Rudd, Jay Jones, Dan Lewis, Dace Taube, Beth Krupshaw, Carolyn Cole, Sarah Cooper, Bob Arconti, Don Sloper, Frank Damon, Ezekiel Tarango, Tom Yoneda, Jason LaBau, and Amelia Estrada.

I am also indebted to the many people, some of whom are no longer

with us, who agreed to be interviewed and share their insights and personal

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experiences. It is through their memories that the Plaza reveals its human face.

No writing project can be complete without the love and support of

family and close friends. For lifelong inspiration I am grateful to my parents, Rudolph and Lillian Estrada, who introduced me to the Plaza. I am thankful also to my children, Amelia and David Estrada, as well as Dennis Melendez, Manuel and Belen De La Rosa, Ernesto Collosi, Virginia Escalante, Joe Salas Jr., Angel Cervantes, and Glenn Benton, and all of my friends at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, especially the wonderful volunteer docents, Las Angelitas del Pueblo.

Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Patricia, for her keen editorial eye,

amazing strength, patience, and encouragement to see this project to its conclusion.

Acknowledgments ˚ xv

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T h e Lo s A ng e l e s P la z a

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Introduction

Memory of Place

For generations of Angelenos, the old Plaza in downtown is a place of en-

during personal and historical memory. I am a native Angeleno with family roots that run deep in the city, especially in the old downtown core around the Plaza. My great-grandfather Miguel Salazar, nephew of the legendary General José Ines Salazar of the Mexican Revolution, settled in Los Angeles in the late 1910s with his family and began his long career as a baker working for the Moreno family at La Esperanza bakery located on the first floor of the old Plaza House on North Main Street directly across from the Pico House and the Plaza. He was among the crowds of newly arrived immigrants and exiles who filled the restaurants, pool halls, theaters, and public gatherings at the Plaza and gave evidence to the dramatic social dislocation that was brought on by the Revolution and marked the rebirth of Mexican Los Angeles.

As children of the Great Depression, my parents, Rudolph Estrada and

Lillian Saenz, found economic opportunity and some measure of social acceptance in the theaters and soda fountains of downtown. Clifton’s Cafeteria on Olive, motion pictures and live performances at the Orpheum and Million Dollar Theatres, and the jazz clubs on Central Avenue still linger in 

their memories. They also understood that Los Angeles was a smaller place before World War II and that the Plaza was a focal point for the city that people understood in terms of its spatial relation to other significant places and landmarks in downtown: Union Station, Fort Moore Hill, Old and New Chinatown, City Hall, Little Tokyo, and Broadway. For them, the old square was a place where daily shopping, courtship, weddings, funerals, traditional Mexican-patriotic observances such as Cinco de Mayo, and the simple pleasure of sitting in its shaded open space allowed Angelenos to temporarily soften the barriers of race, class, and ethnicity that divided other places of the city. The Plaza also served as a visual and visceral reminder that despite the physical transformation of downtown and the decline in the Plaza’s regional significance after the war, Los Angeles once was a Mexican city.

My earliest memories of the Plaza area date back to my childhood in the

1960s while growing up in the city’s East Side barrio. This is where significant neighborhood landmarks comprised my first mental map of the city: the New Calvary Cemetery; Belvedere Park, where I learned to fish, swim, and play baseball; Whittier Boulevard, where I shined shoes and learned to cruise; the Golden Gate Theater; D. W. Griffith Junior High and Garfield High; and Saint Alphonsos Catholic Church. Weekend family shopping excursions downtown to the department stores on Broadway and the Grand Central Market and dinner at the Golden Pagoda Café in New Chinatown (our family favorite) would invariably lead us to the Plaza for rest, a visit to the old church, or shopping on Olvera Street. Walking through its historic structures and open spaces, my parents—a union construction worker and a secretary—served as my first tour guides. And whether or not I was paying attention, they drew on their own childhood experiences of downtown to point out significant historical markers and events that formulated an important part of my cultural DNA as an Angeleno and, given the times, as a Chicano. Among them were the Avila Adobe (built in 1818 and the oldest remaining house in the city); the Zanja Madre on Olvera Street, the bricklined ditch that brought precious water to residents during the early days of the pueblo; the three-story Pico House hotel, built in 1870 by Pío Pico, California’s last governor under Mexican rule (my father would proudly remind me with a soft whisper into my ear: “M’ijo, he was one of us”); the place where mobs of Anglo servicemen and Mexican teenagers (my father among them) clashed in the summer of 1943 in what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots; and the most sacred structure on the site, La Iglesia de Nuestra 

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Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, affectionately known by locals as La Placita church. Paradoxically, these experiences were a sharp contrast to my gradeschool field trips to the old square, which were a requirement for all lowergrade classes in the Los Angeles city schools under the rubric of the California missions and local history. In these instances, however, the lessons to be learned focused on the American exploration and conquest of the city by men like Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and John C. Frémont and, ultimately, what my place in this heroic story might be. For after learning that Commodore Robert F. Stockton and other U.S. military leaders made the old Avila Adobe their headquarters during the occupation of the pueblo in 1846, our attention usually shifted to the display of contemporary images, caricatures, and incarnations of Mexico and Mexicans that were for sale on Olvera Street, the Mexican marketplace created in 1930. But as a Mexican American, I often found it difficult, yet necessary, to join in the laughter and finger pointing of my classmates in the onslaught of brown-faced puppets, peasant sandals, giant sombreros, and all sorts of other “things Mexican.” I was never quite sure if the statue of the peasant sleeping under the giant saguaro cactus (the “lazy Mexican”) or Mexican jumping beans were ever sold in Mexico. For me, Olvera Street was then and always will be a place of mirrors.

As the years passed and while making my way through college and the

last phase of the Chicano/a Movement, my family’s memory strengthened, if not inspired, my growing sense of history. And as my academic interest in Los Angeles and its historic center became the basis for a doctoral thesis, I came to appreciate the scholarly value of my boyhood anxiety about the Plaza area, especially the contrast between the bittersweet memories of my family, which are part of the unwritten narrative of Los Angeles, and my memory of elementary-school field trips and sterile classroom textbooks, which were part of the “official” narrative of the city. It is this duality between contrasting memories that forms the prism through which we will examine the long and complex history of the Plaza.

History of Place

While the subject of Los Angeles has attracted a growing body of re-

search, the old Plaza has somehow eluded systematic analysis in the historiography of the city. This is not to say that the birthplace of the city has Introduction ˚ 

been out of sight and out of mind. From the 1850s to the turn of the twentieth century, leading English and Spanish newspapers such as the Los Angeles Star/La Estrella de Los Angeles, El Clamor Público, Daily News, La Crónica, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Examiner reported on daily life and important events at the Plaza. This attention to the space was certainly understandable and natural, as during this time the city and the Plaza were thought of as one place. Historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took careful note of the transformations taking place as the city and its Plaza changed hands from Mexican to Anglo American rule. Major Horace Bell, in Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881) and On the Old West Coast (1929), offered several colorful and sobering observations of daily life within the Plaza area between the 1850s and 1870s, while historian J. M. Guinn devoted generous space to Los Angeles and the Plaza in his five-volume History of California (1915). Guinn was the consummate public historian of his era. He was a founder of the Historical Society of Southern California and edited and contributed to the society’s annual publication. Three pioneering essays—“The Story of a Plaza” (1897), “Passing of the Old Pueblo” (1903), and “From Pueblo to Ciudad: The Municipal and Territorial Expansion of Los Angeles” (1906)—are Guinn’s most important works that linked the Plaza with the larger geographic and social development of the city. But perhaps above all other observations of Los Angeles of the nineteenth century was Harris Newmark’s detailed memoir, Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913. He arrived in the city in 1853 and became a pioneer merchant and patriarch of the Jewish community. He knew almost everyone and everything that went on in the pueblo. The book was published in 1916, the year of Newmark’s death. His careful prose and insightful anecdotes offered a rich account of the Plaza during the second half of the nineteenth century as well as noting with a sympathetic eye the social and economic decline of Californio society. (Californios were Mexicans born or living in California during the rule of Spain and Mexico, from 1769 to 1848, and their offspring born following the Yankee takeover. The term gradually went out of use during the 1880s.)

In the early twentieth century, the leading daily newspapers, especially

the Times and the pro-labor Express, kept the Plaza in the public mind by reporting on two issues that were of great concern to their publishers. The first was the use of the space by a growing number of the city’s poor and unemployed—usually described in the Times as “bums,” “tramps,” or “loafers.” The second was the Plaza’s popularity as a rallying place for the radical left 

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of all persuasions—events that often led to violent confrontations with the infamous “Red Squad” of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). During the first decades of the century, a host of scholars including sociologists Dana Bartlett, Emory Bogardus, and William W. McEuen, anthropologist Manuel Gamio, and the reform-minded cleric Reverend G. Bromley Oxnam conducted important sociological and ethnographic studies of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. Each paid particular attention to the vibrant interplay of home, work, commerce, culture, and politics surrounding the old Plaza. These seminal studies were followed by several articles on the Plaza beginning in 1926 by three notable Times journalists—John Steven McGroarty, Chapin Hill, and Harry Carr—who tapped into a growing sense of nostalgia among local readers and history buffs in their show of support for Christine Sterling’s fledgling campaign to preserve what was left of the birthplace of the city.

During the 1920s and 1930s, notable literary figures such as Louis Adamic,

Raymond Chandler, and Aldous Huxley offered glaring observations on race, history, and street life around the Plaza in several essays and novels, but they often juxtaposed a belief that the old square was—in Huxley’s words— “a slum of Africans and Filipinos, Japanese and Mexicans” that embodied the city’s worst forms of crime and human deprivation.1 From the late 1930s through the 1960s, William Wilcox Robinson produced several important books and monographs on early Los Angeles, all of which made reference to the role of the Plaza in the development of the city. Among these works were Ranchos Become Cities (1939) and his widely read Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, Together with a Guide to the Historic Old Plaza Area (1959, revised in 1981). During the 1940s, lawyer-activist-turned-historian Carey McWilliams, whose writing seems to grow in importance with the passage of time, brought new interpretive meaning to our understanding of the transformation of Los Angeles and the city’s Mexican population in his classic study, Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946). For him, the Plaza area during the boom years of the 1880s was the most natural place to chronicle the dramatic social and economic decline of the Mexican ciudad with the rise of the Anglo city: “Much Spanish was still spoken in the streets where Mexicans, crowded out of their former occupations, appeared with their carts as vendors, selling sweets, tamales, and manzanita roots which they sawed into bricks and sold as fuel. Most of them still lived in the old Plaza section, their homes clinging precariously to the slopes of Fort Moore hill.”2 Introduction ˚ 



Rounding off this review of critical writings on the Plaza are the works

of historians Leonard Pitt, Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890 (1966); Monsignor Francis J. Weber, The Old Plaza Church: A Documentary History (1980); and William Marvin Mason, The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California (1998). In the spirit of McWilliams, Pitt’s now-classic study was a major departure from previous writing because, as its subtitle suggests, it was truly a social history from the point of view of the defeated Mexican population. Weber’s collection of essays documented a social history of Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church and its adjacent Plaza, and from the 1960s to the 1990s, Mason produced a series of articles, books, and monographs that focused on such topics as the multi-ethnic origins of the founders of Los Angeles, the treatment of Indian laborers, Old Chinatown, and his critical analysis of the Census of 1790. In 1981, Mason co-wrote with Jeanne Duque a pioneering yet largely overlooked essay, “Los Angeles Plaza: Living Symbol of Our Past,” for TERRA, the quarterly magazine of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. More recent additions to Plaza scholarship include El Pueblo: The Historic Heart of Los Angeles by Jean Bruce Poole and Tevvy Ball (2002), which is enjoying a wide readership while offering new insights on historic preservation efforts at the city’s birthplace. Finally, Mary P. Ryan’s insightful essay “A Durable Centre of Urban Space: The Los Angeles Plaza” (2006) reminds us that the Plaza has always played a vital role in downtown planning and development.

Other important works by contemporary historians shed new light

on the city’s Mexican legacy, among them: Michael Engh, Frontier Faiths: Church, Temple, and Synagogue in Los Angeles, 1846–1888 (1992); George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (1993); Douglas Monroy, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (1999); Tom Sitton and William Deverell, editors, Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s (2001); and Deverell’s Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (2004). But as William Mason once noted, the Plaza has yet to attract a biographer. Doctoral dissertations by Phoebe S. Kropp, “All Our Yesterdays: The Spanish Fantasy Past and the Politics of Public Memory in Southern California, 1884–1939” (1999); by Cesar Lopez, “El Descanso: A Comparative History of the Los Angeles Plaza Area and the Shared Racialized Space of the Mexican and Chinese Communities, 1853–1933” (2002); 

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and my own “Sacred and Contested Space: The Los Angeles Plaza” (2003) are more recent attempts to locate the Plaza area in the center of the discourse on the city itself, or as Edward W. Soja would describe, as a “thirdspace” where “real and imagined narratives overlap and provide questions that disrupt binary and linear historical understandings of this place [Los Angeles] and its people.”3

To be sure, the Plaza is the quintessential thirdspace, and any thorough

analysis of the original city center necessitates research of pre-1870s Los Angeles. However, this is an area that has attracted only scant interest from longtime scholars as well as from a newer generation of historians. The diversity of the extant scholarship, from Progressive Era politics to Boosterism and from city planning to urban riots, points to an important historiographic need to construct a more coherent definition of the city. And while this is not a small task, perhaps because of its complexity, Los Angeles can be better understood from an interdisciplinary and multi-ethnic perspective originating at the historic core. Consequently, to understand the importance of the Plaza as a particular kind of public space and to provide a more complete narrative of Plaza life, those perspectives are interwoven in this study. These multiple genres are employed to create a more multi-vocal and multi-local representation of the Plaza.

This study of Los Angeles and its Plaza explores changes in the spatial

and social dimension over a long time span and how these changes reflect the larger story of the city—how the social order is arranged geographically and how it may change over time. Historians have often overlooked this spatial dimension as opposed to changes based upon economic forces, race, class, or gender.4 Works by Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936 (1995); Moira Rachel Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A.: The Intersection of Place and Politics (2001); Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (2006); William McClung, Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles (2000); Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996); and Raúl Homero Villa, Barrio Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture (2000) have certainly raised our awareness of the need for critical spatial studies about our sprawling metropolis. McClung and Kropp, in particular, offer a regional analysis of the transformations taking place in twentieth-century Los Angeles while also being mindful of the contested nature of historical memory that one finds between such places as the Plaza Introduction ˚ 

and the ersatz Olvera Street Mexican marketplace. Even so, there is a paucity of spatial studies on the city itself and much less on the complex history of the Plaza.

Fortunately, the writings of anthropologists, urban planners, and ge-

ographers may provide insight into the missing spatial dimension needed for historical studies. Anthropologist Setha M. Low, in her seminal ethnographic study of the Plaza of San José, Costa Rica, found that the Latin American plaza was the most comprehensive representation of Latin American society and social hierarchy.5 She observed that citizens struggled over these representations because they were critical as to the definition and survival of civil society. Plazas, whether they are in Latin America or the United States, are also centers of cultural expression and artistic display that are reflected in the changing designs and furnishings of the space. They are settings for everyday urban life where daily interactions, economic exchanges, and informal conversations occur, thereby creating a socially meaningful place in the heart of the city. This meaning is marked by the physical or aesthetic transformation of the Plaza and perhaps highlights what David Harvey once asserted as the ways in which landscape design and the reorganization of space are part of the “creative destruction” of forms of society, replacing traditional forms with new capitalist forms.6 Low concurred with Harvey, stating that “spatial forms such as public plazas [were] systems of representation and social products whose style [was] a confirmation rather than a cause of social differentiation.”7 And as Low found also in the plazas of Costa Rica, the aesthetic, political, and social aspects of the Los Angeles Plaza are dynamic and change continually in response to personal action and broader sociopolitical forces. They also are contested through conflicts about the use, design, and meaning of the space. So by tracing these changes and conflicts as well as their impacts on architecture, social activities, and political meaning, we may come to a better understanding of public space through the study of this specific cultural form.8 How we examine change in the use and meaning of space, as reflected in the history of this preeminent public space—known today as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument—is the analytical challenge of this book. And with that challenge, it is my hope to contribute to the growing historiography of Los Angeles by providing an analysis of the original core that covers a long span of time, space, and social relations by examining the impact of change on the lives of ordinary people in a specific place. 

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Chapter Outline and Central Themes

This book is divided into nine chapters and follows a thematic and

chronological course. Chapter 1, “Cultural and Historical Origins,” examines the influences that led to the founding of Los Angeles and its Plaza as a space of social and cultural interaction. Long before the founding of the pueblo in 1781, the indigenous people who occupied what is now Los Angeles—known today as the Gabrielino or Tongva—had developed a complex culture and knowledge of the local environment that would be transmitted to the new pueblo. This chapter also explores the cultural and spatial origins of the gridplan Plaza, where pre-Columbian and European urban designs and culture merged with the conquest of the Americas. Spanish colonial town planning was an organized and orderly set of designs, and the rectangular Plaza became the undisputed center of social and economic life. The founding of Los Angeles in 1781 by forty-four racially mixed settlers of Indian, African, and European ancestry extended this planning tradition that began in 1492 when Columbus established the first colonial town of Hispanic origin in present-day Santo Domingo.

The chapter continues with an examination of the colonial pueblo from

1781 to 1821. During this period the Plaza would undergo its first major physical transformation by changing locations at least twice (and perhaps three times) due to the periodic flooding of the Los Angeles River. The first streets, adobe buildings, and zanja (ditch) water system were constructed. At the core of this agricultural community was its interdependence with Yaanga, the Gabrielino community that served as the main source of labor for the pueblo. But as Los Angeles developed and prospered, the priests at nearby Mission San Gabriel perceived this arrangement as a threat to their authority over the Indians and the pueblo. And while the pobladores (founders) often committed the same abuses as the missionaries in their relations with Indians, the social and cultural exchanges that were taking place between the Gabrielinos and the settlers, including intermarriage, would come to symbolize the decline of colonial authority and the rise of the pueblos and surrounding ranchos under independent Mexico.

Chapter 2, “The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza,” examines the

Plaza as an expression of norteño (northern) Mexican culture and society during the period of Mexican rule from 1821 to 1848. The breakup of vast mission properties led to the growth of the private rancho and an export economy in Introduction ˚ 

hides and tallow. During this time the Plaza was the heart of Californio society in Southern California. It was a place where a regional community engaged in a dynamic economy based on cattle raising and where traditional religious and secular events were centered at the Plaza. This period also witnessed the development of the Plaza’s physical appearance. By the 1830s the flat-roofed adobe townhouses of the leading ranchero families clustered around the square, which was the center of social, political, and commercial activity. The Mexican era in Los Angeles was marked also by the settlement and acculturation of foreigners from the United States and Europe; many of them became Mexican citizens by converting to Catholicism and marrying into Mexican families. Some would eventually play the role of an incipient Trojan horse when the Plaza became the scene of conflict between the invading U.S. military and the Californios, who finally capitulated in 1847. Yet despite the change in governments, Los Angeles from the 1850s to 1860s would remain a predominantly Mexican city in terms of population, culture, and the ongoing use of the Plaza as the center of the community. By the late 1860s, however, the end of the Gold Rush and Civil War brought many new settlers and new racial attitudes that had divided the nation. And perhaps more than any other event, the Chinese Massacre that occurred in 1871 on the eastern edge of the Plaza came to symbolize the rise of a new Los Angeles.

In Chapter 3, “From Ciudad to City,” the Plaza comes to reflect the trans-

formation of Los Angeles from a Mexican ciudad to an American city, beginning with Lieutenant Edward O. C. Ord’s survey of Los Angeles in 1849. Ord’s survey was a signal that the expansion and consolidation of the Anglo city meant that future urban growth was directly at odds with the existent Mexican urban form. Instead of the Mexican preference for urban living near the Plaza, Anglo business and political elites chose to reside away from the center and created a new civic center southwest of the Plaza. As a result, a new social landscape for Los Angeles emerged and would be segmented along racial and class lines, as seen in the rise of Sonoratown to the north of the Plaza and Chinatown on its eastern edge. The dramatic physical transformation of Plaza architecture from adobe to fired red brick would also mirror this change. During the 1870s and 1880s, streets were realigned, adobes were razed, and the Plaza was landscaped to reflect the growing American ideal for public park space. But as the new civic center took form near Temple Street,

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the Plaza was more often out of sight and out of mind. More and more, the old square was characterized by poverty, segregation, and vice. By 1896, the deteriorated condition of the Plaza led to a call by local elected officials to abandon the old square as a city park and to construct new buildings in its place. This led to the first preservation effort to save the Plaza from demolition. But by the end of the century, the Plaza’s redesign and expectations that it would become a quiet “garden park” for the Victorian city had not been fulfilled. Increasingly, as the business and political center continued to shift farther southwest and as a growing labor movement was strengthened by the arrival of new immigrants, the Plaza came to reflect the growing racial and class segmentation of the city. And as Los Angeles entered the twentieth century, the Plaza became the unrivaled focus for immigrant workingclass life and politics that frequently stood in opposition to the authority and politics of the new civic center.

Chapter 4, “Homelands Remembered,” explores how new immigration

in the early twentieth century led to the reclamation of Plaza space by immigrants from Europe, Mexico, and Asia who brought cultural vibrancy and new meaning to the old square. Before World War I, the immigrant workingclass population of the Plaza area accounted for more than twenty ethnic groups, but the majority were Mexicans, Chinese, Italians, and Japanese. Central to the discussion is how these new immigrants who were integral to the industrial expansion of Los Angeles created a sense of community. The sites and sounds of businesses such as El Progreso restaurant, Teatro Hidalgo, Piuma’s Italian imported food market, the Sun Wing Wo store, and a host of other businesses including food carts, barber shops, bakeries, saloons, and penny arcades featured familiar symbols and cultural offerings that served as important connections to distant homelands and psychological survival. While differences in language and culture produced their share of misunderstanding and cultural conflict, the Plaza created opportunities for disparate immigrant groups to interact with one another beyond the workplace. Mexican and Italian Catholics sat side by side in the old church and shared cramped residential space in Sonoratown, while Chinese herbalists enjoyed a steady flow of multi-ethnic customers, and Japanese-owned grocery stores and pool halls on Main Street catered to the large Mexican population. The Plaza’s dynamic ethnic makeup and poverty caught the attention of reformers, writers, and social scientists who sought either to justify Americaniza-

Introduction ˚ 11

tion programs or to chronicle the life experiences of the immigrants. The chapter concludes by offering a glimpse of daily life during the 1920s and 1930s through the personal memories of former Plaza residents.

Chapter 5, “Revolution and Public Space,” is a natural outgrowth of

Chapter 4. As previously discussed, the Plaza in early-twentieth-century Los Angeles served as a gateway for newly arrived immigrants, providing goods and services as well as jobs, recreation, and places of worship as they made the often painful transition to American urban life and industrial labor. Many of these immigrants came to Los Angeles with the radical political traditions of their homelands; from the turn of the century through the 1930s, the Plaza was a contested space between the forces of labor and capital. As the center of immigrant community life, it was natural that the Plaza would become the central meeting place for various working-class social and political movements. Asian, European, Mexican, and American radicals and revolutionaries such as Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Ricardo Flores Magón, Emma Goldman, and Socialist mayoral candidate Job Harriman vied for the hearts and minds of the crowds that congregated at the Plaza. Through the pages of the Los Angeles Times and the oppositional press, from union banners and police batons, the personal memories of former political activists help to convey the story of the Plaza as the rallying place for radical free speech and politics in the city that was known as the citadel of the open shop.

Chapter 6, “Reforming Culture and Community,” examines various

early-twentieth-century efforts to reform the Plaza of its long-standing image as an urban slum inhabited by immigrants who were believed to have emerged from inferior cultures, especially the Chinese and Mexicans, who were considered to be the main source of the city’s social deprivation and periodic outbreaks of contagious disease. Such beliefs, in the hands of public health officials, business interests, journalists, and history buffs, led to various campaigns to cleanse the Plaza area of its prevailing image in order to safeguard against any potential threat to the larger white community. The threat of “Mexican disease” in the 1920s was shaped by nineteenth-century racial images of slums and disease surrounding Chinese immigrant communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Fear of such diseases peaked in 1924 with an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plagues in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood near the Plaza. From then on, health officials, educators, writers, and journalists were alarmed by what they perceived to be a variety of “Mexican problems.” Writer Louis Adamic described the Plaza 12

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area as consisting mostly of “cheap wooden tenements occupied by Mexicans and Chinks” and Main Street as a “moron stream, muddy, filthy, unpleasant to the nose . . . an awful stew of human life.”9 So within this climate of fear and xenophobia, business interests destroyed Chinatown in the name of progress to build a new civic center and Union Station. Christine Sterling, “the Mother of Olvera Street,” emerged with a plan to rid the Plaza area along Olvera Street of its “filth” and crime, and in its place, she would reform Mexican culture by taking Mexicans off public relief and putting them to work as colorful merchants in her fantasy-inspired Mexican marketplace. The consequences of these decisions would have dramatic effects in the ensuing decades.

In Chapter 7, “Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers,” the Plaza’s contesting

historical narratives are revealed through conflicts over public pageantry, mural art, and community preservation. Combined, these conflicts represented attempts to distort local history and eradicate Plaza communities by those who wielded cultural and political power in 1930s Los Angeles against African American, Mexican, and Chinese residents who were being systematically left out of the Plaza’s narrowing historical and geographic boundaries. Tellingly, in 1931, La Fiesta de Los Angeles celebrated the 150th anniversary of the city’s founding with a grand historical parade and pageant that was attended by more than 700,000 people. A highlight of the sesquicentennial event occurred at the Plaza with a “reenactment” of the 1781 founding of Los Angeles. However, in 1931, the founders of the city were thought of as the white European ancestors of the Anglo Midwesterners who were then ruling the city. Consequently, the forty-four people who were selected to portray the “original” pobladores were the friends and family members of leading businessmen and elected officials; the selection drew harsh criticism from the black community for wasteful spending and conscious denial of the city’s African heritage. This challenge to the public if not to the official historical narrative was also at the center of the controversy over Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural América Tropical, whose bold allegorical images of oppressed Indians did not conform to Sterling’s sanitized history on Olvera Street. History would continue to be challenged, but by the end of the 1930s, Chinese and Mexican communities were uprooted from the Plaza area and simulated landscapes were built in the void they left behind. Olvera Street and China City, which opened in 1938, came to symbolize the fragmentation of the city along racial and class lines. Introduction ˚ 13



Chapter 8, “Politics and Preservation,” recounts the campaign waged

by Sterling and her supporters to designate the Plaza area as a State Historic Park. This was a long and contentious period in the life of the Plaza, lasting from the World War II years to 1953. However, designating the site as a State Historic Park was achieved not simply through the legislative process and working with city hall. The chapter focuses on the effort to gain greater administrative authority over the Plaza area by controlling the interpretive landscape: Whose history would be told, and whose history would be left out? To achieve this and win favor in Sacramento, Sterling and her supporters embarked upon an ambitious program. They first addressed the issue of Mexican youth gangs in nearby barrios as antithetical to the quaintness of Olvera Street. Then, they sought to eradicate all references to the Plaza’s multi-ethnic history with the destruction of the old Lugo House (a last remnant of Old Chinatown) in 1951 and aggressive efforts to conceal from public knowledge the true racial identities of the original founders of the city. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Plaza area after Sterling—from the 1960s to the present—and how as a result of new immigration the Latinization of the city has brought redemptive meaning to the old square as symbol for a new Los Angeles.

Chapter 9, “The Persistence of Memory,” concludes our journey into the

historic heart of the city with a discussion of the Plaza in twenty-first-century Los Angeles. In the dramatic transformation of the city during the late twentieth century, Latinos returned as the majority population, while the privatization of downtown space supplanted traditional streets and spaces that once brought people together. In the process of downtown transformation, the Plaza has grown in its cultural and spatial significance. The book concludes with a discussion of the competing visions for Los Angeles in the early twenty-first century and how the enduring spirit of the Plaza, embedded in its long history and use, might serve as a model for its recovery.

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Chapter one

Cultural and Historical Origins Indigenous Roots

Any discussion of the actual founding of Los Angeles must address the

cultural and environmental history of the area before 1781, because the design and meaning of the eighteenth-century Plaza was not based exclusively upon a complex set of colonial laws and designs. The site of the pueblo was the result of careful observation of the indigenous people who successfully occupied the area for generations before colonization. The contributions of the Gabrielino people to the founding of Los Angeles were significant, especially as an available labor supply. The Gabrielino village of Yaanga provided the pobladores (founders) with a geographic reference point for siting the pueblo and Plaza. The Indians transmitted their knowledge of and skills in the local environment to the pobladores, and intermarriage was common. The Gabrielinos’ spoken language and cultural practices, especially of indigenous medicine, gave the emerging pueblo community a unique social context with the Plaza as its heart.

Long before the arrival of the Gabrielino, information on the earliest

people to occupy the Los Angeles area remains uncertain. A growing body of research in the form of radiocarbon data from archaeological sites on the 15

Channel Islands demonstrates that a seafaring culture existed in Southern California by at least 8000 b.c. On the mainland, archaeological discoveries at Rancho La Brea in West Los Angeles and recovery of millstone tools at Malaga Cove at Santa Monica Bay suggest a long history of regional occupation.1 Sometime before 6000 b.c., the life of these early peoples of Los Angeles changed from hunting to gathering wild seeds and plants. Foods were prepared by grinding the plants on metates (stone platforms) with manos (hand stones). Archaeologists refer to this period as the Milling Stone Period, Milling Stone Horizon, or Food Collecting Period. It is unclear whether a change in food-gathering preferences represented the arrival of new peoples or the gradual cultural evolution of these earlier hunters in response to environmental change; however, similar developments were occurring throughout California during this period.

Around 3000 b.c., the people of the Milling Stone Period developed a

more sophisticated food-gathering economy that combined hunting with gathering of wild seeds and plants.2 Fishing, sea-mammal hunting, and shellfish gathering became important activities for the people living near the coast and on the Channel Islands.3 During the late Milling Stone Period, a new group of people entered Southern California from the Great Basin area, perhaps to escape from periods of severe drought and food shortage. They occupied Southern California from the desert to the coast, absorbing or displacing the Hokan-speaking peoples who lived there earlier. Anthropologists referred to those new arrivals as Uto-Aztecan because they spoke a language belonging to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock that extended across the Great Basin region of Utah, Nevada, and California.4

The total indigenous population of California before the arrival of the

first Spanish-speaking settlers in the late eighteenth century is estimated at 250,000 to 300,000.5 During this period, the Los Angeles basin was inhabited by a relatively dense population of about 5,000 people. They spoke the Shoshonean language or the Cupan subgroup of the Takic family of the UtoAztecan language. Since colonization, the Indians of the Los Angeles area were known as the Gabrielino and the Fernandeño—the names assigned to these groups by those in authority at the Missions San Gabriel and San Fernando, respectively. The Gabrielino group was most closely associated with Los Angeles and Mission San Gabriel; their language was referred to as Kizh or Kij.6 Unlike their Chumash neighbors to the north, the Gabrielino prac-

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ticed cremation burial. This, in part, accounts for the relative lack of archaeological evidence in the Los Angeles area. If they had an overall tribal name for themselves, it was lost as they became identified simply by the names of rancherías, or villages, and only these names of village groups and other locations have survived.7

The Gabrielino inhabited a geographic area of roughly four thousand

square miles bordered by the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, the Mojave Desert to the east, Aliso Creek to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west; the Los Angeles and Santa Ana Rivers ran through the center.8 The region extended beyond the mainland to encompass the southern Channel Islands—Santa Catalina, San Clemente, and San Nicolas. Santa Barbara Island was occupied on a temporary and periodic basis. The northern Channel Islands, including Santa Barbara, were under the influence of the Chumash. The Gabrielino identified and inhabited the prime sites for human habitation in the Los Angeles region. For the most part, later settlements, pueblos, ranchos, towns, and cities were preceded by historic or prehistoric villages. Hence, the location of Yaanga near El Río de la Porciúncula (Los Angeles River) was an essential prerequisite to the survival of Los Angeles.9

The Gabrielinos were part of a complex land and sea trading economy

that included the Chumash to the north, the Cahuilla and Mojave to the east, and the Juaneño and Luiseño to the south. And since trade was beneficial to all inhabitants of Southern California, a complex trading economy developed that was based on craft specialization.10 Southern California trade extended to the Colorado River tribes and included slavery; it was complemented by a complex system of cultural and religious practices.11 Reportedly, the cosmological views of the Gabrielino and neighboring groups identified major creative supernatural forces. They honored a common creator god, Chinigchinix, and a virgin god, Chukit; through the Great Morning Ceremony based upon the belief in an afterlife, a complex ritual spread throughout Southern California.12 The “jimson weed cult” originated with the Gabrielino and came into wide practice throughout Southern California. The use of jimson weed involved various disciplinary practices, sacred and esoteric rituals, and the drinking of tolguache, a hallucinogen made from jimson weed mixed with salt water that represented a spiritual purification similar to the Eucharist.13 Very soon, however, their world would change forever.

Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 17

Early Observations

The Los Angeles region was first observed by European sailors in the six-

teenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1542, Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo apparently “discovered” California while sailing the coastline in search of a new route to Asia.14 He sailed aboard the flagship San Salvador near the bay at Santa Monica, where he observed the smoke of several fires from villages along the shoreline. In 1602, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno set sail from Acapulco along Cabrillo’s route. His mission was to explore the California coast and to survey possible ports for the use or protection of galleons from Manila from ongoing raids by English and Dutch pirates on Spanish ships along the coasts of Mexico and South America. He dropped anchor at Santa Catalina Island and near the mainland at San Pedro before sailing northward out of the Los Angeles area. For the next 166 years, no Europeans would make contact with Los Angeles.15

The colonization of Alta California (with San Diego at its southern end)

was begun between 1765 and 1771 with the administrative inspection for the vice royalty of New Spain by Visitador General José de Galvez. Galvez was a royal bureaucrat charged with reforming Nueva España’s fiscal administration and creating a new program for the administrative reorganization of the Vice Royalty. Part of this reorganization program included the further exploration and settlement of the northern frontier of New Spain. This program was among the Bourbon Reforms and included a new line of presidios (military forts) and missions in Alta California.

Galvez sought the approval of the king and rationalized his ambitious

program for northern expansion based upon three crucial, long-range concerns. The first was the potential increase in revenue that the northern provinces could provide to the Vice Royalty. The second was the strategic defense that a militarized frontier would provide for the Spanish Empire in North America, especially based on an immediate threat from Russian activities in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The third concern was the potential for a colonized Alta California to increase future trade with Asia.16 For Galvez, this third concern had less significance than the others as a practical reason for expansion into the north, but it had tremendous value as an ideological justification for the Franciscans’ desire to open a new missionary frontier in Alta California.

His basic plan for the occupation of Alta California was enacted in 1769 18

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by a joint land-sea expedition consisting of two land and two sea parties. The primary objective of the expedition was to occupy the port of Monterey, discovered by Vizcaíno in 1602 while establishing new missions and presidios there and at San Diego. To lead the expedition Galvez selected Lieutenant Colonel Gaspar de Portolá, the newly appointed governor of California, and Father Junípero Serra, the Franciscan head of the former Jesuit missions of Baja California. Portolá would serve as military commander and civil governor of the Californias—Alta and Baja—while Serra would be the father president of the new missions established in Alta California.17 Additional support for Portolá and Serra came from several military personnel under the command of Lieutenant Pedro Fages and Captain Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, several Christianized Indians from Baja California, a dozen artisans, and a small contingent of Franciscan missionaries.

During the land expedition from San Diego to Monterey, the Los An-

geles region was first examined at close range. Father Juan Crespi and engineer Miguel Costanso, who accompanied Portolá north from San Diego, were among the principal diarists of the expedition. Both took careful note of the landscape and the indigenous population as the Portolá party passed near the site where the future pueblo would be established. An excerpt from Crespi’s diary offers a vivid description of the potential for future settlement of Los Angeles: Thursday, 3, 1769. At half past six we left the camp and forded the Porciúncula River, which runs down from the valley, flowing through it from the mountains into the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. All the soil is black and loamy, and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit which may be planted. We went west, continually over good land well covered with grass. After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which, on seeing us, came out into the road.18



With the colonization of Alta California in 1769, Galvez maintained

the basic pattern of Spanish settlement between the northern and southern boundaries by placing a string of missions and presidios—the two interdependent frontier institutions—that stretched from San Diego in the south to Sonoma in the north. The missionaries would Christianize while the soldiers Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 19

based at the presidio would protect. And because of the distance between Alta California and the supply centers in San Blas, along with the pressing need to control the large indigenous population, the Franciscans were compelled to reach a level of self-sufficiency as soon as possible. The presidios lacked the time, labor, inclination, and resources to fully support themselves. In response to this state of affairs, after a 1777 tour of the province the new governor of California, Felipe de Neve, decided to establish a new kind of settlement in Alta California, the civil pueblo. Neve’s basic objective was to make the presidios less dependent on the missions and the supply ships from Mexico by establishing pueblos designed to include industrial diversification and the development and cultivation of farmlands. As part of his colonial blueprints, he had at his disposal a set of royal city-planning ordinances—contained in the so-called Laws of the Indies issued by King Philip II in 1513. Perhaps more than any individual, Neve was responsible for creating and shaping the pueblo of Los Angeles.

The Colonial Grid-Plan Plaza

The founding of El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles in 1781 as envi-

sioned by Governor Felipe de Neve was part of a complex historical process that was reflected in the development of the grid-plan plaza throughout the Americas. The pueblo, with its distinct physical form centering on an open central plaza, had its origins in European and pre-Columbian town planning models.

As previously noted, human habitation in the Los Angeles region dates

from the coming of the early Native Americans. Centuries later, a second settlement stretched across the northern borderlands of the vast Spanish colonial empire from Texas through New Mexico and Arizona and up the California coast. From the first decade of the seventeenth century, the Spanish and Mexican governments pursued a policy of pueblo development. Their efforts laid the foundations for some of the largest cities in the region— Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson and San Antonio—and for such smaller but historically important cities as Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Fe, and Laredo.19 Seminal writings by American historians, notably Frederick Jackson Turner’s famed “frontier thesis” in 1893, ignored an older frontier where the first “Western” (actually northern Mexican) towns were established.20 20

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The plan of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, based on a view first published in 1588. Courtesy of John Reps.



The development of cities in the present-day U.S. Southwest extended

a European-inspired town planning tradition that began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus established a crude fortress, La Navidad, from the timbers of the wrecked Santa María on the northern coast of the island of Hispañola (the modern Santo Domingo). La Navidad did not survive. Santo Domingo, the oldest surviving town of Hispanic origins in the Western Hemisphere, was established in 1496 a few miles to the east of La Navidad. However, no plan of this first city of Santo Domingo survived. In 1502, after a storm destroyed the settlement, Governor Nicolas de Ovando relocated it across the river to the west.21 Under Ovando’s direction, this second Santo Domingo site introduced to the Americas the grid-plan plaza that was to govern Spanish colonial urban design for the next 400 years.22

Physically, the colonial town plan imposed by the Hapsburg adminis-

trators throughout the Americas originated in ancient Europe. Of particular importance were the writings of Vitruvius, who offered specific rules for the Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 21

foundation of new cities under imperial Rome.23 The Romans developed a standard town plan called the castrum, made up of a grid-plan military camp with a small central square for the mustering of troops, for their settlements across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The influence of the castrum also affected town planning throughout medieval Europe, especially in the French bastides, which characteristically consisted of an open town with narrow streets, a fortified church, a gridiron plan of rectangular shape and limited size.24

The Renaissance in Europe witnessed the publication of numerous

books on architectural theory. These writings referred to the ideal layout of cities as theorized by Vitruvius and paid particular attention the shapes of towns, their walls and fortifications, water supply structures, streets, and open spaces. The first important treatise of this type was Leon Batista Alberti’s interpretation of Vitruvius, De Re Aedificatoria, written in 1485. Quoting Vitruvius, Alberti argued that a plaza should be twice as long as it is broad, surrounded by buildings between one-sixth and one-third as high as the plaza’s width, with porticos where old men could relax in the heat of the day.25

Anthropologist Setha Low presents a rather inclusive view regarding the

origins of the Spanish American grid-plan plaza, arguing that its roots lay in a multiplicity of architectural and cultural traditions: “Most ancient towns in China, Japan, Korea, peninsular India as well as pre-Columbian America were planned according to a gridiron pattern. Only two civilizations produced large, irregular towns—Islam and medieval Europe.”26

Renaissance town planning concepts and utopian writings may not

have had a direct impact on the design of the grid-plan plaza in Spanish America, though a copy of Vitruvius’ De Architectura was found in a Mexico City library as early as 1550.27 The grid plan did not take form until the second half of the sixteenth century with the 1573 Royal Ordinances on laying out new towns (later incorporated into the Laws of the Indies).28

The Spanish colonial town plan disseminated after Santo Domingo was

organized and orderly. Blocks and streets formed an orthogonal pattern. Political and social life was organized in a two-tier hierarchy of church and state. Private buildings related to each other and to open spaces in ways that mirrored this social structure. The Laws of the Indies further dictated that houses would be distributed upon a checkerboard gridiron plan developed from two main axes. At the center of town, church and state buildings and

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houses of the aristocracy faced a rectangular plaza whose length was twice its width. This spatial composition also reinforced a social order whereby towns and cities had a central space used for military mustering and social gatherings of the colonial elite, guarded by church and state, with the avowed purpose of impressing the recently conquered indigenous populations.

But the rectangular public plaza for which Mexico City became the

model and template for the future urbanization of the Americas did not exist in the medieval towns of Europe. The center of civic and religious life in Spain was geographically distant from the various types of European plazas. Geographer Daniel Arreola found three types of plazas in the Spanish-European experience.29 The market plazas, the oldest form, appeared as early as the eleventh century and were random, unplanned spaces located on the edges of town. There was little functional relationship between the grid-plan pattern and the orientation of the market plaza. By contrast, the organic plaza was a planned space and had a functional relationship to the grid plan. Finally, the monumental plazas, which appeared in the sixteenth century, were irregular, unplanned voids carved out from existent urban space and did not complement the street grid pattern. The monumental plaza of Spain, such as the great Plaza of Salamanca, was rarely spatially adjacent to a church, but rather was the scene of markets, festivities, and public executions.

The plaza that developed in the colonies of Nueva España was signifi-

cantly different from those of medieval Europe. Arreola concludes that unlike the plazas in Spain, those in the Americas were “larger, more open, cordoned by municipal and ecclesiastical buildings, and integrated with the city’s street grid. Socially, the plaza in Hispanic America was the community’s religious and political focus, a geographical pivot encompassed by surrounding streets and homes.”30 Consequently, it can be argued that the plaza in Hispanic America resulted from two historically unrelated sources. The first influence was the inability of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century architects and planners to insert Renaissance notions of clarity, regularity, order, and harmony into the crowded quarters of an existing medieval city. In other words, Renaissance principles of legal, social, and physical order, as translated through new urban theories about regularized, planned cities, were forced to compete with the larger, much older medieval townscape.31 Low finds that the medieval cities of Spain were not the models for the plazacentered grid-plan pueblo in the Americas: “The plaza is a normal form in

Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 23

very old Spanish cities, but even in the sixteenth century it remains small and irregular. In fact, the plazas of Andalusian cities were added as part of the redesign of urban centers in response to the New World planning, rather than the reverse.”32

Therefore, after the arrival of Columbus, Renaissance urban concepts

were actualized far beyond what had only been imagined in Europe. But this was only partially due to a divorce between Renaissance urban planning concepts and the medieval townscape. The vibrant plazas that developed in the Americas, especially in Mexico, were as much a product of the Indian world— the world of the Maya, Toltec, and Aztec before the conquest—as they were European.33 Urban theorist Don Parson has suggested that the Spanish colonial city that evolved in the Americas had features similar to those in cities of ancient Mesoamerica.34 This may partially account for its rapid acceptance among the indigenous peoples in New Spain. For in the Spanish colonial city, according to Jorge Hardoy, “the center of pre-Columbian life focused around plazas and ceremonial centers.”35 Indeed, Paul Zucker writes, “It is here in the New World, rather than in Spain proper, that the ‘plaza’ actually represents the center of civic life. Its shape is defined equally by Indian preconquest tradition and by Spanish concepts originating from the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century.”36

When Hernando Cortes arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in

1519, the conquistadors were awestruck and rhapsodized over the beauty, grandeur, and order of the city, which they compared to Granada but on a mammoth scale. Tellingly, Cortes wrote to Charles V in 1520 and professed that within five years, Tenochtitlán would be the finest city in the world.37 In terms of layout, the Mesoamerican plaza, as in Renaissance design, was bordered by temples or churches, civic buildings, and residences of the upper class. Likewise, the regular development of streets and houses surrounding the Mesoamerican plaza lent themselves to integration into the Spanish colonial urban gridiron. And since Renaissance urban designs pertaining to clarity, regularity, order, and harmony could not be fully realized because of the enduring physical legacy of the medieval cities, the conquistadors believed that in the New World the Renaissance ideal would finally take shape.38

Thus, the incorporation of pre-Columbian and European urban plan-

ning models indicates that indigenous Mexicans were proactive rather than passive recipients of Spanish urban designs and culture in the formation of a new and dynamic mestizo society. Spanish policy encouraged the settlement 24

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of pacified Indians from the Mexican interior in establishing colonial towns, as well as of Africans (negros), mulatos (mixed-race descendants of Spanish and negro unions), mestizos or coyotes (mixed-race descendants of Spanish and Indian unions), and numerous other mixed castas, or castes, to serve as examples to their wild compatriots on the frontier. The final outcome of such a settlement pattern was a small minority of peninsular Spaniards (españoles) combined with a vast majority of colonists with indigenous urban traditions living within a spatially formal Spanish colonial urban framework.39

Over time, as Spanish colonization extended beyond the center of in-

fluence in Mexico City, the evidence suggests that particularly in the northern frontier there were multiple forces affecting the planning and building of pueblos because of the variations in available information, participants, chronology, local natural resources, geographical sites and history, and indigenous populations.40 This is exactly what occurred in the northern frontier with the founding of the pueblo of Los Angeles. For, contrary to the popular myth of Spanish purity in the settlement of Alta California and the Southwest, among the adults enumerated as original founders of the pueblo, only two settlers were listed as Spaniards.41 Most were of mixed African and Indian ancestry. This spatial, racial, and cultural mixing in the formation of early Los Angeles would have a lasting impression on the character and growth of plazas as the preeminent public space in Alta California and throughout the Mexican north. This understanding is enhanced from an analysis of the missions and presidios as interrelating colonial institutions.

From Missions and Presidios to Colonial Pueblos

Two colonial institutions emerged in Alta California alongside the pueb-

los. The missions, under Father Serra, were established to extend the arm of colonial Spain by containing the indigenous people and converting them to Christianity with the ultimate goal of transforming them into Spanish subjects. Through this process of forced assimilation and a system of regimented labor, the missions would be maintained as self-supporting institutions. The presidios, on the other hand, had the dual role of protecting the colony from foreign encroachment and, if the missionaries were unsuccessful in their work, to protect them from Indian attack.

Anthropologist Lisa Kealhofer has found that the spatial structures Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 25

of the two institutions differed. The presidios tended to be “the most constrained and formal settlements,” with most activity areas placed within a rectangular fort.42 The military hierarchy, the role of religion, the degree of craft and/or technological self-sufficiency, and often the role of food production were mirrored in the architectural structure of the presidio. Missions, on the other hand, were less spatially confined but more constrained in activities. The Franciscans were interested in self-sufficiency more than defense. This led to an often predictable repertoire of architectural and activity area components in a less predictable spatial arrangement on the ground. Kealhofer concludes that the pueblo, in contrast to the presidio, did not have the structural composition to “maintain either a formal spatial or activity oriented structure.”43

Consequently, as in the urban plan that developed throughout Nueva

España, the Plaza was the center of civic life in Los Angeles, embodying both the formal and informal activities of church and state into a common space. Increased distance from the Plaza, for either residences or businesses, reflected decreased social status. This spatial significance would be dramatically altered with the imposition of Anglo American rule in the mid-nineteenth century.44 For indeed, the Plaza’s function as the center of civic and religious life was foreign to the Anglo city. An inverted urban spatial design was imposed following the American conquest of the city. Instead of the elite residing in the center of town around the Plaza, Anglo elites, in particular, opted to dwell beyond the core of the city in what may be considered a forerunner to the twentieth-century suburban commuter zone, spatially separated from the activities of church and state.45 And as we shall see, this spatial shift contributed to the geographic fragmentation of Los Angeles along racial and class lines.

During Los Angeles’ colonial and early national periods, the physical

layout of the pueblo and its Plaza would change several times, due largely to flooding of the Los Angeles River in 1801 and 1815, a powerful earthquake in 1812, and Mexican Independence in 1821, when property disputes erupted among settlers as the pueblo expanded.46 The pobladores began work on the Zanja Madre (mother ditch), mud-roofed jacales (huts, later replaced by adobe), and crude box-shaped huts that formed a church and the essential public buildings by the end of 1784.47 Although crude in construction, this original town plan was an orderly, regularized example of colonial urban design. To understand the Plaza as the center of pueblo life in Los Angeles dur26

˚ the los angeles plaza

ing the colonial period, however, it is essential to understand just who the original pobladores were and what the conditions were in northwest Mexico that sent them north. Through the dynamics of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) that had taken place throughout Mexico since the conquest in the sixteenth century, the pobladores came north in the eighteenth century and merged with another indigenous population (the Gabrielino) to create a sense of place that ultimately gave Los Angeles its distinct regional character.

The Founding of Los Angeles

In the course of his duties as governor, Felipe de Neve identified the

future sites of San José, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, recommending them for the formation of two pueblos and a new presidio. As noted by historian Gilbert Cruz in his study of the municipal origins of the American Southwest, the governor also instructed the commander of the San Francisco presidio to “recruit nine soldiers experienced in farming, five settlers, and one servant for the establishment of a pueblo on one of the sites proposed in the letter to the viceroy, namely the great plain of Santa Clara near the mouth of the Guadalupe River.”48 And when the party arrived at the site in early November 1777, alférez (ensign) José Moraga, acting in accordance with the Laws of the Indies, marked out the dimensions for the Plaza in suertes (farmlands) and solares, which were to serve as the assigned house lots for the settlers. Thus, under such precise planning, the pueblo of San José de Guadalupe was officially founded on November 29, 1777.

And while Neve was establishing San José as Alta California’s first civic

municipality, plans were already under way for the founding of Los Angeles. In December 1779, Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursua and Commandant General Teodoro de Croix approved his proposal for the founding of Los Angeles and the new presidio of Santa Barbara.49 Croix instructed the lieutenant governor of the Californias, Fernando Rivera y Moncada, to take charge of the recruitment of Spanish colonists for the new settlements. And contrary to the myth of Spanish purity in the settlement of the Southwest, the colonists who came to Los Angeles were primarily poor farmers and artisans and were typical of the dynamic racial and cultural mixture that resulted from colonization. For example, Pablo Rodriguez, a forty-two-yearCultural and Historical Origins ˚ 27

old farmworker, is listed as indio, and his twenty-six-year-old wife, Rosalina María, is listed as india. Luis Manuel Quintero, a fifty-five-year-old tailor, is listed as negro, and his forty-year-old wife, María Petra, is mulata.50 What is more, casta identification, especially in the northern frontier, was virtually free from whatever stigma may have been attached in Mexico City to negros, mulatos, indios, and mestizos. Throughout an individual’s life, the casta was elastic and often changed several times from darker features (negro) to lighter features (mulato or mestizo) depending on the individual’s social mobility or the census taker. William Mason notes: As soldiers and settlers, there seems to have been no gulf between indios, españoles, mestizos, mulatos, or coyotes. California Indian neophytes, it is true, were not the social equals of the gente de razón, as the non-Indians liked to style themselves in California. Indians were considered minors, and were not considered able to think for themselves to any great degree. In any case, the gente included Mexican Indians among the colonial settlers of California, for Indians who spoke Spanish, dressed and behaved as did the other non-Indian inhabitants were able to consider themselves such, especially if they had moved outside the linguistic and cultural area they had been affiliated with as “Indians.”51

Indeed, throughout Nueva España and especially in the northern frontier, from Texas to California, the intermixture of Indians, Africans, and Europeans had formed a multiracial majority. These are the people who came north to create Los Angeles.

Rivera y Moncada began recruiting settlers in the summer of 1780. His-

torians Antonio Ríos-Bustamante and Pedro Castillo wrote that he was originally instructed to recruit twenty-four settlers with families and fifty-nine presidial soldiers.52 Approximately twenty-five of the recruits were to fill the places in the Sonoran presidios of twenty-five soldiers who were being sent to Alta California, and thirty-four were to serve in the Alta California military. He was also instructed to purchase 1,000 head of livestock, including horses for the presidial companies and the settlers. His task was further complicated by Croix, who instructed him not to recruit in Sonora, since this was an underpopulated area from which previous expeditions had drawn too many recruits. Instead, he was forced to find recruits from the tierra de afuera, the

28

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land beyond. This meant that he traveled south to southern Sinaloa, including Mazatlán and Rosario, east to Durango, and even as far as Jalisco to the great city of Guadalajara.53 Finally, after an exhausting journey between 1780 and early 1781, Rivera y Moncada had secured forty-five soldiers and half of the twenty-four settlers. Consequently, rather than incurring more time and expenses, Croix decided against any further recruitment efforts. He instructed Rivera y Moncada to proceed northward to Alta California.

The settlers, soldiers, and livestock met in Sonora at the town of Ala-

mos, where they were divided into two groups. The first group was composed of twelve settlers and their families and an escort of seventeen soldiers who were placed under the command of Alférez José de Zúñiga and Alférez Ramon Laso de la Vega.54 They left Alamos in February 1781 and headed for the coast, where they crossed the Gulf of California in lanchas (flat launches). After docking at the former capital of Loreto in northern Baja California, they proceeded to march overland to the presidio at San Diego and then on to Mission San Gabriel. The second group, equipped with some livestock, was under the command of Rivera y Moncada. They left Alamos in April on the same overland route taken by Juan de Anza in 1774 and 1776. This led them through the desert to the newly founded missions and pueblos of La Purísima Concepción and San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner, which was located along the Colorado River.55

Meanwhile, Governor Neve left his base at Monterey in April and trav-

eled south to Mission San Gabriel to await the arrival of the settlers and soldiers and to select the exact location for the pueblo and draw up plans for settlement.56 On May 16, 1781, he wrote to Croix from Mission San Gabriel that one group of settlers had left Loreto and was under the custody of Zuñiga.57 Rivera y Moncada’s settlers and soldiers arrived at the Colorado River in June 1781. This party subsequently divided. Rivera y Moncada sent most of them ahead to Mission San Gabriel, while he and the remaining group stayed behind to allow the livestock ample time to rest for the final march across the Mojave Desert; but they would never reach Mission San Gabriel. On July 17, 1781, the Quechans formed an alliance with the Mojaves and rose up in arms against the party for encroaching on their farmlands and for other abuses inflicted by the soldiers. The Quechan Revolt, as it came to be known, was swift and overwhelming. Rivera y Moncada was among the estimated ninety-five soldiers and settlers who were killed.58 The revolt was also indicative of the

Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 29

ongoing conflicts between newcomers and indigenous peoples. The founding of Los Angeles had to proceed without all of its original settlers and its most influential soldier.

Zuñiga’s party arrived at Mission San Gabriel on July 18, 1781. They were

immediately placed in quarantine a short distance from the mission to recover from smallpox, which had broken out among the children. While they waited, Neve drew up plans for the founding of Los Angeles. He positioned the pueblo so that all the irrigable lands lay within its boundaries. The dam and irrigated lands were located in relation to each other to get the maximum volume of water. The Plaza and residences also were to be placed as close to the river as possible for the sake of convenience but on ground high enough to avoid the threat of floods.59 Unfortunately, little information exists about the location or appearance of the original pueblo and Plaza. Several historians have noted a location slightly northwest of the present Plaza as the original site; however, this may have been the second site. Mason and Duque have suggested that the original site may have been several blocks south of the present location, slightly south of Fifth Street and east of San Pedro Street. By the early 1800s, the pueblo was moved to higher ground at least twice due to the ravages caused by the Los Angeles River in 1801 and 1815.60

Neve was involved in every detail in the design for the new pueblo. In

fact, before the settlers and soldiers arrived, an interesting event revealed a growing tension between his authority and the missions. He traveled to Yaanga, the Indian village near the site where the pueblo was to be established.61 After selecting several boys and girls for conversion to Christianity, he personally acted as padrino, or godfather, at twelve of the baptisms. He chose a young married couple and renamed them Felipe and Phelipa Theresa de Neve, sponsored their baptism, and remarried them “in the eyes of the Church.”62 And while his actions drew immediate disapproval from the Franciscans, Neve’s youthful Indian converts at Yaanga possibly were part of a strategic plan to have a Christian Indian labor force adjacent to the new secular pueblo. Clearly, his 1781 Reglamento (regulations for government and administration) was calculated in part to bring about a radical change in the mission system and reduce the Franciscans’ temporal power.63 In this plan, the neófitos (converts or baptized Indians) were no longer to reside at the missions. Instead, they would live at their traditional rancherías, practice a degree of self-government, and return to the missions periodically for 30

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religious instruction. Thus, Neve anticipated harsh opposition from the padres at Mission San Gabriel concerning this aspect of the Reglamento and remained silent while completing his final plans for the pueblo. He told the priests only that they lacked skill at proselytizing, an activity at which he excelled.64

In terms of accounts of the actual founding of Los Angeles, contempo-

rary scholars have spent considerable time debunking long-held myths. And while the stated date of the founding is September 4, 1781, which today is commemorated with a yearly celebration and “historical reenactment” of the walk from Mission San Gabriel to the Plaza, the pobladores did not arrive in a single group. Actually, various members of Rivera y Moncada’s land party and Zuñiga’s land-sea party arrived at Mission San Gabriel between June and August 1781. They then made their way to Los Angeles and probably received their land before September.65 What is more, on November 19, Neve informed Croix that the founding of the pueblo had taken place under his command on September 4, 1781.66 The selection of this date possibly was arbitrary, since September marked the month when the colony’s financial records were first recorded. Therefore, September 4 marked the official, if not the actual, date of the founding of El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles.67 Contrary to another long-cherished myth, it took place without pomp or ceremony.68

The Early Pueblo and Its Plaza

Before the end of the first year, only eight of the original pobladores and

their families were living in the pueblo. Three were forced to leave Los Angeles for being “useless to themselves and the town.”69 In 1784, a chapel was constructed alongside other public buildings on the eastern side of the Plaza. Two years later, the pobladores were given full ownership of their house lots and planting fields. Retired soldiers drifted into the pueblo and remained as settlers. By the end of the decade, twenty-nine structures surrounded the Plaza. They were all flat, one-story adobes with thatched tule roofs. Each year brought new settlers to the pueblo, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the names that became prominent in later years were listed among the inhabitants: Alvarez, Cota, Dominguez, Figueroa, Garcia, Pico, Reyes, Lugo, Sepúlveda, and Verdugo.70 Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 31

Pobladores of Los Angeles, 1781 NA M E C AMERO

Manuel María Tomasa LARA

José Fernando María Antonia María Juana José Julian María Faustina MESA

Antonio María Ana María Paula Antonio María MORENO

José María Guadalupe N AVARRO

José Antonio María Regina José Eduardo José Clemente Mariana RODRIQUEZ

Pablo María Rosalia María Antonia QUINT ERO

Luis María Petra María Gertrudis María Concepción María Tomasa María Rafaela José Clemente ROSAS

Basilio María Manuela José Máximo José Carlos María Josefa Antonio Rosalino José Marcelino José Esteban ROSAS

Alejandro Juana María

32

C ASTE

SEX

Mulato Mulata

Hombre Mujer

30 24

Español India

Hombre Mujer Niña Niño Niña

50 23 6 4 2

Negro Mulata

Hombre Mujer Niña Niño

38 27 10 8

Mulato Mulata

Hombre Mujer

22 19

Mestizo Mulata

Hombre Mujer Niño Niño Niña

42 47 10 9 4

Indio India

Hombre Mujer Niña

42 26 1

Negro Mulata

Hombre Mujer Niña Niña Niña Niña Niño

55 40 16 9

Indio Mulata

Hombre Mujer Niño Niño Niña Niño Niño Niño

67 43 15 12 8 7 4 2

Indio India

Hombre Mujer

19 20

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AGE

Pobladores of Los Angeles, 1781, continued NA M E VANEG AS

José María Bonifacia Cosme Damien VILLAVICENCIO

Antonio Clemente María Seferina María Antonia

C ASTE

SEX

AGE

Indio India

Hombre Mujer Niño

28 20 1

Español India

Hombre Mujer Niña

30 26 8

Legend: Caste = Race, Ethnicity; Español = Spanish; India, Indio = Indian; Mestizo = Indian-Spanish; Mulata, Mulato = Black-Spanish; Negro = Black; Hombre = Man; Mujer = Woman; Niña = Girl; Niño = Boy



During the period of colonial rule in Alta California from 1769 to 1821,

Los Angeles developed into a self–contained agricultural community and the largest settlement in what now is Southern California. Physically, the original town plan of the pueblo conformed to the Laws of the Indies and Neve’s site provisions in terms of the spatial arrangement of the grid-plan plaza, building sites, and farm tracts. The pueblo encompassed a square of 10,000 varas,71 or five and one-quarter miles on each side. The Plaza occupied a site in the middle of this tract and measured 75 varas (208 feet) wide by 100 varas (277 feet) long. Fronting the Plaza, facing east was the space reserved to eventually build the church and municipal buildings.72 From the Plaza, the four principal streets were to diverge, one from the middle of each of its sides, and two streets were to meet at each of its corners. The four corners of the Plaza were aligned to face the four points of the compass, thus assuring that streets diverging from the plaza would not be directly exposed to the four principal winds, which would cause much inconvenience.73 Under Neve’s original plan, the orientation of the pueblo and its central Plaza was in accordance with the Royal Ordinances.

Each vecino, or neighbor, was given a solar measuring twenty varas wide

(55 1/2 feet) by forty varas long (110 feet). Suertes were laid out in rectangular fields beyond the pueblo. Each settler was given four tracts—two for irrigation and two dry plots, each measuring 200 squared varas. The farmlands were separated from the pueblo town lots by a tract of land 200 varas wide. Certain farm tracts were to remain as propios, or pueblo-owned lands, to serve as rental property to defray municipal expenses. Other town properties would serve as realengas, or unassigned land, and were reserved to provide land grants for future settlers. The rest of the land surrounding the pueblo Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 33

The plan of El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles, 1786, showing the Plaza (P), surrounding house lots (upper left), agricultural lands ( lower right), Zanja Madre (mother ditch, through center), and El Río de la Porciúncula ( later called Los Angeles River, far right). Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

was to remain as ejidos, or common lands for the general use of the community and possible future expansion of the pueblo. The ejidos would serve for recreation, threshing grain, grazing cows and goats, and tethering horses. A second tract of publicly held lands, lying beyond the ejidos and surrounding the pueblo, were the dehesas, or pastures, where much of the livestock owned by the pueblo residents was allowed to graze. Still farther from town were the baldios, or uncultivated public lands, such as mountains, forests, rivers, and lakes. These lands were held in common by order of the king. Hence, the plan of Los Angeles, originating from a central authority, embodied a pattern typical of urban design in northern Mexico.74 Just how the pueblo’s physical and social landscape interacted with the local indigenous population and with the mission and presidio would have a significant impact on later periods in the Plaza’s history.

An Emerging Plaza Culture

After Los Angeles was founded, the adjacent village of Yaanga served as

the main source of labor for the pueblo and surrounding ranchos. In 1803, Yaanga’s population was reported to be 200, but whether it functioned as a true Gabrielino community after the founding of the pueblo is debatable. In fact, as the demand for Indian labor grew, the Yaanga village began to look much more like a refugee camp than a traditional community, as it attracted local Gabrielinos and some from the islands, as well as laborers from Missions San Diego and San Luis Rey and beyond.75 This symbiotic interdependency may have helped Yaanga survive longer than most rancherías.

Initially, the priests at nearby Mission San Gabriel prospered from lend-

ing their Indian neófitos (converts) to work in the new pueblo in a process similar to the repartamiento system (temporary allotment by royal officials of Indians to work on private projects for colonists), which flourished in Mexico’s interior and other parts of Latin America.76 But as the pueblo developed and prospered, the padres perceived this arrangement as a potential threat to their authority over the Indians, as neófitos and gentiles (baptized and unbaptized Indians, respectively), especially women, began entering the pueblo in larger numbers. The various material and cultural incentives that brought Indians into the pueblo—physical and sexual abuse notwithstanding—would play a major role in shaping the character of pueblo soCultural and Historical Origins ˚ 35

ciety. For example, since its founding in 1781, Los Angeles distinguished itself as a settlement with vast economic potential. As early as 1784, the pueblo reported a harvest of 1,800 fanegas of grain, principally wheat and corn, which contributed to the pueblo’s attraction to new settlers.77 Even so, the overall economic success of the pueblo was largely due to the relationships that the pobladores had established with their Gabrielino neighbors, who brought with them the prospect of trade and a surplus of exploitable labor. Indeed, since the vast majority of the Indians in the Los Angeles area were converts and under mission control, the demand for cheap labor in the pueblo and surrounding ranchos exceeded the supply. Thus, the missionaries and pobladores became competitors. They secured Indian labor through various material inducements, such as food and clothing, and also by capture. But unlike the mission, the pueblo introduced paid wages after 1790. From 1786 to 1789 a total of 1,184 pesos was paid to Indian laborers at the Santa Barbara presidio. This figure broke down to an annual rate of 396 pesos, or one and onehalf real (six cents) per day.78 In exchange for their needed farm labor as well as other tasks, which included domestic service, ditch digging, and serving as vaqueros, Indians in the pueblo received payment in clothing, grain, cotton yardage, tools, and a variety of other manufactured goods in addition to cash wages and alcohol. The pobladores bartered with the Gabrielinos for the prized sea otter pelts and seal skins, as well as sieves, trays, mats, and other articles made of indigenous woven materials. Contemporary archaeological excavations at the Plaza have produced an impressive assemblage of artifacts of Indian manufacture, such as common household items made of tizón and steatite—dishes, bowls, pots—that helped to sustain the early pueblo community.79 These dynamic cultural exchanges in the pueblo, coupled with abuses at the missions, attracted the Indian to Los Angeles.

During the 1780s, the vast region of San Gabriel had been the geographic

area in Alta California that was most affected by missionization. By 1785, 843 Indian converts were living in cramped quarters at Mission San Gabriel. As a result, numerous local Gabrielino rancherías had been depopulated, which had a severe impact on traditional cultural practices and daily survival. In addition, the mission fathers and pobladores had appropriated the most productive Gabrielino lands for agriculture and stock grazing. Consequently, the Indians who were not brought under the control of Mission San Gabriel often found themselves abused and laboring for the settlers on lands that had once belonged to them. So in late October 1785, a young curandera, or 36

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spiritual healer, named Toypurina began traveling throughout the vast domain of the Gabrielino to proclaim the injustices against her people. She gained the support of four key rancherías and led a revolt on San Gabriel. The soldiers at the mission managed to lead a successful counterattack, resulting in seventeen arrests, including that of Toypurina. The revolt gave testament to the level of Indian dissatisfaction at the mission just as they began to enter the pueblo.80

Clearly, the demand for labor was the dominant factor that attracted the

Indian to the pueblo, which in turn contributed to the decline of the mission. And while the Indians were beaten, starved, and abused in the pueblo as much as they had experienced in the missions and presidios, the settlers soon realized that in order to maintain a free flow of cheap labor into the pueblo, legal measures had to be taken to make pueblo life more attractive to the Indians. This was reflected in 1787 when Governor Pedro Fages drafted his “Instructions for the Corporal of the Guard of the Pueblo of Los Angeles.”81 The main emphasis of this document concerned the administration of government in Los Angeles, specifically defining the powers and duties of the comisionado, or corporal, and those of the alcalde, or mayor. And while such laws may not have been fully enforced, their enactment indicates problems, especially in the treatment of Indians. Tellingly, Fages included a strict code of conduct that, in theory, would guide the pobladores in their relations with the local Indians. It included rules pertaining to methods used; securing Indians for work; not using corporal punishment; and preserving the traditional rancherías surrounding the pueblo.82 And while male Indian converts from nearby Mission San Gabriel were not allowed to enter the pueblo without permission of the padres, women were not subject to this restriction. This meant that Indian women, both neófitos and gentiles, comprised the largest number of Indian migrants into Los Angeles during the Spanish and Mexican periods and therefore would play a significant role in the cultural and social transformations that occurred at the pueblo.83

Consequently, with new rules to guide the social relations between

Indians and settlers, many Gabrielinos and other Indians who came to Los Angeles were able to resist various methods of voluntary and forced conversion that were taking place at Mission San Gabriel. In this regard, indigenous people were in a position to make decisions regarding the social and material benefits between the mission and pueblo. And as they began entering the pueblo in greater numbers, they gradually became part of an emerging ranCultural and Historical Origins ˚ 37

chero society, but always as an exploited workforce. In 1784, California’s first three ranchos, all in Los Angeles County, were granted to soldiers. Rancho San Pedro was granted to Juan José Dominguez; Rancho San Rafael went to Mariano and José María Verdugo; and Rancho Santa Gertrudis was given to Manuel and Crispin Perez Nieto.84 The provision of these land grants required that the soldiers stay clear of the property owned by Mission San Gabriel, thereby ensuring that their Indian employees would not come into contact with the mission. As a result, the ranchos drew the Indians further away from the authority of the mission and closer to life at the pueblo.

But economic factors were not the only major forces that fused the

Indian and poblador. Indeed, the most noticeable consequence from closer contact between the two groups, according to Mason, was through intermarriage, a regional variant of mestizaje: “These marriages may have helped to cement better relations between the pueblo and the neighboring Indians. Certainly this method of interaction was an improvement over the soldiers’ casual and often violent sexual liaisons of the previous decade.”85 In fact, the first two recorded marriages in Los Angeles were between Gabrielino and pobladores, when the two sons of settler Basilio Rosas married young Gabrielino women from nearby villages: in 1784 Máximo Rosas married María Antonia, and in 1785 José Carlos Rosas married María Dolores.86

Clearly, the most pervasive cultural factor that bound the two groups

together was the Indians’ adaptation to the Spanish language, a process that facilitated mestizaje, or cultural fusion. For various reasons, this was not fully realized at the mission. Despite the regimentation in work and religious instruction, the mission proved to be a poor environment for the development of new language skills. The aggregation of large masses of Indian converts in the presence of a few priests greatly minimized the opportunity to hear the new language. The normal channels of mission life—work, trade, food distribution, and social customs—were largely diminished as the Indians dealt primarily with each other on a day-to-day basis.87 Only on those occasions when Indian converts worked at the presidio, hired out to the ranchos, or went to the pueblo to work for private families or on public works projects did they encounter the free social exchanges that facilitated the learning of language. Thus, through their adaptation of the Spanish language, the Gabrielino and other Indian groups from Southern California who congregated near the Plaza assimilated into a mestizo society and contributed to the dynamic pueblo culture. For example, due to a lack of physicians in Southern Califor38

˚ the los angeles plaza

nia, knowledge and application of indigenous medicine were perhaps the most valued aspect of Indian culture brought into Los Angeles. The Gabrielinos taught the settlers to treat wounds and to use such healing herbs as wild hemp and anise. Because of the scarcity of doctors in the northern frontier, the pobladores came to rely on the skills of local healers. Richard Griswold del Castillo has noted that “it is not known exactly how much of the California Indian folk medicine found its way into the health practices of the early settlers, but the local curanderos, as in Mexico, probably borrowed elements of the native healing arts.”88

The Franciscans no doubt were perplexed by this situation and offered

firsthand accounts of the changes occurring in Los Angeles. In 1795, Sergeant Pablo Cota led an expedition through the Simi Valley, the Conejo-Calabazas region, and the San Fernando Valley. Traveling eastward, the party, which included Padre Vicente de Santa María, visited the rancho of Francisco Reyes. There, according to Santa María, the Indians were caring for crops, working as vaqueros, and demonstrating an overt preference for life in the pueblo: “The whole pagandom [Indians] is fond of the pueblo of Los Angeles, of the rancho of Reyes, and of the Zanja [water system]. Here we see nothing but pagans, clad in shoes, with sombreros and blankets, and serving as muleteers to the settlers and rancheros, so that if it were not for the gentiles there would be neither pueblo nor ranches. These pagan Indians care neither for the missions nor for the missionaries.”89 Yet, despite their preference for Los Angeles, Indians who ventured into the pueblo or surrounding ranchos were faced with overwork, withheld wages, and physical abuse including rape. Indeed, the Indian always occupied the lowest level of the social structure during the Spanish, Mexican, and later Anglo American periods. But unlike the rigid discipline at the missions, through the process of mestizaje, pueblo society integrated the Indian and made adjustments in its laws as reflected in Neve’s Reglamento and Fages’ Code of Conduct.90

Perhaps no other event in the Plaza’s early social and cultural history

symbolized the growing conflict with the missions more than the construction of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles between 1818–1822 at the Plaza’s third site. The building of a civic church—much of it with Indian labor—meant that the pueblo would no longer be bound by the authority of the padres at San Gabriel Mission, a relationship that was reinforced each week through a bumpy eleven-mile ride for Sunday mass. Ultimately, the little church came to symbolize the decline of the mission, the growing auCultural and Historical Origins ˚ 39

Plaza area map of structures, streets, and spaces built or named between 1815 and 1823. (1) Calle Principal (1815–1818); (2) Republic Street (renamed Plaza Street); (3) Plaza area (1815–1818); (4) Avila Adobe (1818); (5) Calle Vine or Vino (Wine) (1818); (6) Plaza church and Campo Santo cemetery (1818–1822); (7) José Antonio Carrillo Adobe (1821–1823). Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

thority of the pueblo, and the rise of the Plaza as the unquestioned center of Mexican California.

By assessing the earliest information on the original site of Los Ange-

les, founded adjacent to Yaanga, readers are better able to understand the Plaza’s spatial and cultural antecedents. This pre-European understanding is essential because, like a symbol, Los Angeles was not created from a void. Long before the arrival of the first settlers from colonial Mexico, the earliest inhabitants of Los Angeles recognized the area as being ecologically suitable for permanent settlement. Therefore, they learned to manage their lives with an understanding and respect for the natural landscape, especially for the force of the Los Angeles River. Those who came later built on that same sense of place. Consequently, as Los Angeles slowly evolved from pueblo to ciudad to metropolis in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the

40

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basic infrastructure of the city, from roads and railways to freeways, its geography, and its mythology were built upon its indigenous past.

The exploration, settlement, and founding of Los Angeles in 1781 re-

flected the larger dynamic process of Spanish colonial town planning as seen in the development of the grid-plan plaza. Don Parson finds that the cultural origins, spatial structure, and meaning of the Plaza as the center of urban life in the Americas are what defined “Mexican urbanism.”91 Thus, the phenomena of mestizaje—the racial and cultural mixture that the founders brought from northwest Mexico—became essential to understanding the Los Angeles Plaza. The founding forty-four pobladores of Los Angeles who arrived from northwest Mexico, besides being subjects of colonial Spain, were primarily of Indian, African, and European background. Upon settlement in 1781, the founders of Los Angeles integrated with the local Indian population through cultural assimilation and intermarriage, thus adding a unique quality to the Plaza culture. With the pueblo’s social and cultural foundations, colonial Los Angeles became a self-contained agricultural community, autonomous from Mission San Gabriel.

Finally, the influence of the Gabrielino people in the founding and de-

velopment of Los Angeles serves to illustrate the complexities of pueblo society during the colonial period. Indians, tragically, were torn between paternalistic authority under the mission system and a free but anarchic life in the pueblo and surrounding ranchos. As a major improvement from the rigid environment of the mission, Indians at the pueblo found greater freedoms and new opportunities by adapting to the emerging mestizo culture. Even so, they remained at the bottom of the social structure and were destined to be marginalized.

Cultural and Historical Origins ˚ 41

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Chapter two

The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza

When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, California-

born Mexicans assumed control of the direction and affairs of Los Angeles and the Southern California region, which prior to independence was controlled by the colonial governor. Historian Herbert Howe Bancroft noted that the reaction to Mexican independence was widespread throughout Alta California. In April 1822, public festivities included taking an oath of allegiance in the main plazas at Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and other settlements.1 The Spanish flag was lowered and the flag of independent Mexico raised at central plazas throughout Alta California. Thus, Mexican independence elevated the status and symbolic significance of the pueblo and Plaza of Los Angeles, which briefly served as the capital of Alta California. As the heart of this Mexican pueblo, the Plaza was a place where secular and religious fiestas, commerce and political life were characterized by a collective significance, unifying the pueblo and rancho, reaffirming traditional loyalties, and defining Mexican Los Angeles as a whole.2

In addition to Mexican independence, other changes were taking place

in the life of the Los Angeles pueblo during the 1820s. Cattle ranching and agriculture expanded. Overall population of the pueblo increased. The local political elite grew, and popular participation in the political process in43

creased. Los Angeles’ administrative district separated from that of Santa Barbara. A parish church was constructed, and this led to greater autonomy from the missions. The zanja (ditch water system) was rebuilt. The zanja system was developed almost immediately after the founding of the pueblo in 1781 and provided water for agricultural irrigation and domestic purposes.3 In the late nineteenth century, the system was expanded to provide water power for the city’s emerging industry. The Zanja Madre, or mother ditch, ran directly through the pueblo near the Plaza and was the main water line that tapped directly into the Los Angeles River. A total of nine subsidiary zan­ jas tapped into the Zanja Madre.

Perhaps the most significant event for the pueblo during the 1820s was

the construction in 1818 through 1822 of the church of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles next to the Plaza. The first chapel for the original pueblo was built in 1794, thirteen years after the founding of the pueblo in 1781. Within twenty years, however, the pobladores had outgrown this small chapel, and in 1814 the foundation of a new church was laid near present-day Aliso and Alameda Streets. In 1815 the Los Angeles River’s channel changed course from the eastern side of the valley to the western side and flooded the foundation of this second church.4 The church was moved to its present location on higher ground. Hence, when Governor Pablo Vicente de Sola decided on a new location for the church slightly east of the old 1784 location, it then was necessary to select a new site for a Plaza.5 The original plaza vieja (old Plaza) site was established in 1781 and carefully designed by Felipe de Neve as a rectangular space in accordance with Spanish colonial law and design, while the designated site for the present Plaza, which was laid out in 1818 and completed in 1822 as previously noted, was on part of the pueblo’s ejidos and on private house lots. Thus, without a plot plan, the ayuntamiento, or town council, was faced with two interrelated problems at the new Plaza site. The first was how to square the irregular line that defined the Plaza’s boundaries. The second was how to resolve the property disputes that would follow.6

The 1830s and 1840s were a period that saw significant economic devel-

opment in the Los Angeles district. The growth of the ranchos and exports in hides, tallow, and soap were consequences of the secularization of mission properties in 1833 along with the rapid increase in the number of Mexican land grants made by the governor—more than eight hundred under Mexican rule. However, the liberal reforms that came with the end of Church influ44

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ence did not apply to the Indian. According to historian Michael J. Gonzalez, “By enticing the Indians with alcohol or drawing them into gambling debts, enterprising gente de razón soon relieved the ex-neophytes of their land titles.”7 The economic and social focus during this period of relative prosperity for the Californios would be the Plaza, the social core of the pueblo. And with the attractions of a new church and Plaza, townhouses fronting the Plaza became fashionable for the ranching and political elite.8 In fact, the distance of residences from the Plaza indicated decreasing social status of their owners. By the 1830s, the adobe homes of the Carrillos, Tapias, Sepúlvedas, and Avilas were clustered around the Plaza. Consequently, when vacant lots with Plaza fronts were all built upon, the irregular shape of what was originally intended to be a perfect rectangle became more noticeable. This irregular pattern of spatial development around the Plaza also was the case for the Los Angeles pueblo as a whole. Historian J. M. Guinn wrote that fifty years after its founding, Los Angeles was “like the earth on the morning of creation, without form.”9 A new Plaza, the present one, evolved from the chaos of house lots and planting fields. As the pueblo grew, so did the confusion and irregularity of the streets. For instance, when a new house was to be constructed, the owner built where it was most convenient to him, without regard to street lines. If the house did not align with the street, the street could align itself with the house.10 As such, the original area of 200 by 300 square feet had been reduced to a distorted, irregular polygon that bore little resemblance to a rectangle. Numerous property disputes resulted, pitting the legal claims of private-property owners against the larger interests of the pueblo.

The 1830s saw continued efforts on the part of local officials to square

the Plaza as well as to elevate its place as a regional social and economic center. Other events, however, were far less controversial. Perhaps no other event reflected the growing importance of Los Angeles and its Plaza than the wedding of Pío Pico (who was governor for the first time in 1831) to María Ignacia Alvarado in 1834. The ceremony was held at the Plaza church and was among the most memorable social events of the entire Mexican period. Governor José Figueroa came from Monterey to serve as best man. The entire population of the pueblo—about eight hundred people—and hundreds of visitors from Alta California participated in the three-day fiesta at the large adobe home of Pico’s brother-in-law, José Antonio Carrillo, that fronted the Plaza.11 The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 45



What is more, the wedding was an indication that Los Angeles now was

the unrivaled center of Mexican society in Southern California, and the Plaza was its heart. This again was demonstrated in 1835 when the people of Los Angeles received public confirmation of its status as Alta California’s largest town and the Mexican Congress passed a decree declaring the former pueblo a ciudad (city) and making it the official capital of Alta California. However, because of strong opposition from the north, the seat of government for Alta California based at Monterey did not move south for another decade. As the conflict over political power between northern and southern Californios persisted throughout the 1830s, the Plaza became the scene of the struggle. One morning in 1837, pueblo residents awoke to see Captain Luis Espinoza with his northern detachment camped in the Plaza. After defeating southern forces at San Buenaventura, Espinoza’s troops arrived in Los Angeles and occupied the Plaza. They proceeded to arrest prominent southern leaders including Pío Pico, José Antonio Carrillo, and alcalde Gil Ibarra, who then were taken north for a brief period as prisoners.12

The Plaza was the scene for two important inauguration ceremonies

during this period of bitter political conflict between northern “centralists” and the “federalists” of Southern California. The first occurred on December 6, 1837, when Carlos Carrillo, the brother of José Antonio Carrillo, crossed the Plaza and took the oath of office as governor. W. W. Robinson noted that “Plaza fronts were illuminated for three nights and a big cannon boomed forth the tidings that Los Angeles was the capital. However, when the rival governor, Juan B. Alvarado, came down from Monterey, Carrillo fled to San Diego.”13 Five years later, on December 31, 1842, a new centralist government in Mexico City sent Manuel Micheltorena and a convict army of three hundred to Los Angeles, where he took the oath of office as governor at 4 p.m. in Vicente Sanchez’ adobe house on the southern edge of the Plaza. In the presence of the local ayuntamiento and other prominent citizens, speeches were made, salutes fired, and the pueblo residents assembled at the Plaza at the order of municipal authorities so that the people might “give expression to the joy that should be felt by all patriots in acknowledging so worthy a ruler.”14 On the contrary, Micheltorena proved to be insufferable and would remain as governor in Monterey until 1845, when a local assembly of Californios ended the governor’s tyrannical rule at the Battle of Cahuenga Pass in February 1845. The governor was put on a boat bound for Mexico, and the assembly named Pío Pico as the new governor of Alta California.15 46

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The Mexican era in Los Angeles also was marked by the settlement and

acculturation of a small number of “foreigners” from the United States and Europe. Many would make important contributions to life at the Plaza as well as play the role of the incipient Trojan horse before the U.S. takeover. Joseph Chapman, also known as Pirate Joe, was believed to be the first Anglo American to enter the pueblo and actually came to Los Angeles before Mexican independence. In 1818 while on a pirate raid along the California coast under the Frenchman-turned-Argentine pirate Hippolyte de Bouchard, he was captured by soldiers at Rancho de Refugio, the home of Don José María Ortega, west of the presidio at Santa Barbara. One year later, Don Antonio María Lugo, alcalde of Los Angeles, assumed responsibility for the young captive and brought him to the pueblo. Chapman was a skilled carpenter and contributed to the construction of the Plaza church, which was designed by José Antonio Ramírez.16 One of the first Italian settlers of Los Angeles was Giovanni Batista Leandri, who arrived in 1823 and opened a store on the southeast corner of the Plaza where he sold general merchandise and liquor. In 1839 he married María Francisca Uribe, the daughter of a prominent Californio family and built an adobe adjoining his store.17 In 1840 Leandri was named juez de paz (justice of the peace) of the pueblo. And as part owner of the Rancho San Pedro and Rancho Los Coyotes, on which a total of six thousand head of cattle grazed, he became a successful ranchero and pioneer in the development of wine making in Los Angeles.18 Italian women did not begin to settle in Los Angeles until the second half of the nineteenth century, and as Mexicans shared a familiar religion and culture with them, male Italian settlers intermarried more with Mexicans than with any European group.19

Three Americans who came to the pueblo in 1828 were Nathaniel Prior,

Jesse Ferguson, and Richard Laughlin. They had taken a land route across the continent and arrived in Los Angeles with the intention to settle. As with earlier arrivals, they converted to Catholicism and were fully integrated into Mexican society. Europeans came also. After the ravages of the Napoleonic wars in the early nineteenth century, legions of European immigrants of all nationalities came to the Americas. Europe was impoverished by the wars, and scores of disillusioned people sought their fortunes in the “new world.”20 By the end of 1828, the pueblo received its first permanent settlers from Germany and France. John Groningen, a German immigrant, was part of a surviving party that was shipwrecked off San Pedro on the Southern California The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 47

coast. He easily adapted to the Californio culture and soon became known as Juan Domingo. Later he acquired a choice section of land southeast of the Plaza and converted the parcel to vineyards.21

Immigrants from France came to Los Angeles in small numbers in the

mid-1820s. They settled largely around Commercial and Alameda Streets, close to the original Gabrielino village of Yaanga.22 Among the first of these settlers was Jean Louis Vignes, who arrived in Southern California by sea in 1827 aboard the Jeanette. Having goods to dispense, he came to the pueblo and developed an immediate attachment to the town and its people, who affectionately called him Don Luis. Vignes would later return to permanently settle next to the Plaza in 1831, joining other Frenchmen such as Louis Bouchette. The Reverend Jean Augustine Bachelot, a member of the Picupus Fathers of France, came to Los Angeles from the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands in January 1832 and became the first resident priest of the Plaza church.23 However, owing to the relative isolation of the pueblo, for ten years after he returned to the islands in 1837 the Plaza church was without a resident pastor and once again relied for spiritual leadership on Mission San Gabriel eleven miles away.

Following Bouchette’s example, Jean Louis Vignes acquired one hun-

dred acres of land east of the Plaza and developed one of the first large-scale wine-making businesses in Los Angeles. Viticulture was an industry that attracted many European immigrants to Southern California, especially the French and Italians. Many of the immigrants were experienced in this industry, and they added their own methods to the already successful vineyards grown by the Californios. And with Mexican independence signaling the end to Spanish mercantilism, the market for California wine was large and expanding, and the land for vineyards was fertile and abundant. With an ideal climate for agriculture, European settlers could live comfortably by assimilating into the Mexican community around the Plaza and still be within close proximity to their vineyards.24

The Mexican era in Los Angeles, from 1821 to 1848, was a period of dy-

namic growth for the pueblo, and the Plaza was indisputably the center of social, political, and commercial activity in Southern California. The prosperity and growing significance of the pueblo was derived from the trade in hides and tallow, a fact that was even noted in 1835 by Richard Henry Dana Jr., a Yankee sailor who rarely found anything positive to record con-

48

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An 1857 view of Los Angeles looking north, showing the dominance of flat-roofed adobe structures. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

cerning Californio society: “It [San Pedro] was the only port for a distance of eighty miles, and about thirty miles in the interior was a fine plane country, filled with herds of cattle, in the centre of which was the Pueblo de les Angelos [sic]—the largest town in California.”25 Dana’s observations had the air of manifest destiny and would provide some of the rationale for a future U.S. takeover. Even so, Californio society continued to expand.

In 1845, following the removal of Governor Micheltorena from the gov-

ernorship, Pío Pico of Los Angeles was again declared governor and served from March 1845 to July 1846.26 During this second term as governor, he quickly moved the capital of Alta California from Monterey to Los Angeles, as ordered by the Mexican Congress in 1835. The arribeños (northern Californios) refused to accept this action and attempted to support General José Castro, a northern military commander, as governor. A compromise was reached under which the governor and legislature under Pío Pico would be based in Los Angeles and the customs house and military authority would remain at Monterey under General Castro. And as he did in his first brief term as governor in 1831, Pico took the oath of office in the Plaza in front

The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 49

of Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church.27 He ran the government from his modest one-story adobe, which fronted the south side of the Plaza and served as his private residence.28 Therefore, with Pico’s installation as governor, the Plaza came to symbolize the growing significance of Los Angeles as the center of social and political life in Alta California. The population of the pueblo in 1820, just prior to independence, was only 650; however, by 1844 it nearly tripled, to 1,680 people.29 This demographic growth in Los Angeles was the result of natural increase, the migration of Mexicans and California Indians undergoing various stages of transculturation, and the increasing number of European and American settlers.

As such, the character of Mexican society in Southern California,

though based largely on a pastoral economy, was becoming increasingly urban-oriented and with a decided preference and social prestige for Plaza residents. That Los Angeles was urbanizing by the beginning of Mexican rule in 1821, if not before, certainly runs contrary to the view of some contemporary historians that the Yankee influx in the mid-nineteenth century merely replaced a subsistence economy of farmworkers and ranchers.30 Indeed, the most prosperous, influential residents of the pueblo lived within the periphery of the Plaza. This initiated a process of dynamic cultural change that was dramatic when compared to the authoritarian rule of colonial Spain. For example, during Spanish colonial rule, the governor, presidial commanders, missionaries, and lower-ranked military personnel exercised significant authority over the pueblo residents (as non-citizens) who were legal subjects and who possessed only those privileges rather than rights guaranteed by law as interpreted by the governor. Conversely, the Mexican period introduced the concepts of citizenship, legal rights, electoral representation, equality under the law, and popular political participation. The Plaza became the social and spatial center where these concepts would be realized. Regardless of the actual effectiveness of government, this federalist ideology created a new political culture in Los Angeles, Alta California, and beyond. Hence, the change from Spanish colonial to Mexican rule introduced several innovations in popular culture and ideology. Most dramatically, independence led to innovative change in the participation of large numbers of people in the political process. Residents of Los Angeles now viewed themselves as ciudadanos (citizens) of the pueblo, not subjects, and the Plaza more than any other place was where this new public identity expressed itself and flourished. 50

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A War of Cultures, Cannons, and Public Spaces

It could be said that the gradual transformation of the Plaza as the heart

of Los Angeles and center of Mexican culture in Southern California began in May 1846 when the United States declared war against Mexico. Though Mexican leaders long were aware of the American desire for territorial expansion, nevertheless they openly welcomed scores of foreign settlers who assimilated into Mexican society and agreed to abide by its laws. The Texas revolt of 1836 and the United States’ attempts to purchase Mexican territory heightened Mexican fears of the ambitions of foreign settlers. Although the 1840s were marked by a period of growth in population and prosperity from the cattle-based economy, those years were clouded by the United States’ desire to acquire Alta California. Furthermore, because of its internal economic, political, and social contradictions, the Mexican government was unable to protect its most distant territories in Alta California, thereby establishing the conditions for military invasion by the United States.

But this was not simply an exercise in unbridled U.S. military power. An

interesting side note and precursor to the war in California occurred at the Plaza on January 18, 1843, at the adobe residence of Don Vicente Sanchez.31 In the upstairs salon of the adobe known as La Casa de Alto, Governor Micheltorena and his staff hosted an unusual banquet and ball for Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones of the U.S. Navy, who traveled to Los Angeles to apologize for raising the U.S. flag over Monterey the previous October following the false rumor that Washington had declared war on Mexico. The assemblage was amicable.32 Governor Micheltorena, in full military regalia, made proclamations and ultimatums, while Commodore Jones listened, smiled, and bowed. The commodore and his staff then withdrew to the Port of San Pedro, boarded their ship, and left. The affair, however, was less than auspicious. Historian Leonard Pitt has noted that the Commodore’s mistaken seizure of Monterey in 1842, “although ending innocently enough in a fiesta [at the Plaza], was seen as a clear portent of evil things to come.”33

On August 6, 1846, Commodore Robert F. Stockton anchored off San Pe-

dro, where several hundred sailors and marines disembarked and proceeded to march inland with the intention of occupying Los Angeles.34 Of importance is the fact that in Mexican cities and towns throughout the presentday southwestern United States, the central plazas always were the first spaces to be occupied. Indeed, if warfare is as much a symbolic act as it is a The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 51

military one, the raising of the U.S. flag at the Plaza served as a visual confirmation of conquest and therefore became the focus for widespread popular resistance. Prior to Stockton’s arrival in Los Angeles, Governor Pío Pico and his top military commander, José Castro, fled to Sonora via different routes in an attempt to seek support from the Mexican government to supply regular troops and weapons for the defense of Alta California. Pico’s appeal was ignored, and he was ordered to remain in Hermosillo for the duration of the war.35 He later learned that Mexico had in fact prepared troops to defend Alta California, but they could not be spared after U.S. warships attacked the southern coastal cities of Guaymas and Mazatlán. As a result, the people of Alta California, under Pico’s younger brother, General Andrés Pico, were left to defend themselves. On August 13, 1846, Stockton’s troops, joined by Major John C. Frémont, marched into the Los Angeles Plaza with a full brass band playing “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle.” Stockton’s troops first seized the adobe home and headquarters of Governor Pico and then held forth at the Plaza for several days, where the brass band gave a concert in a peaceful yet overt gesture that Los Angeles was under American occupation.36 The fact that the pueblo did not react with force to this initial invasion of the pueblo is understandable. At the time, Mexico was not yet a republic, and the government was emerging from the last stage in the breakdown of the Spanish empire. Considerable tension and mistrust existed between the Californios and the government in Mexico City. Some Californio leaders had even called for a separation from Mexico to achieve greater economic and political power, and all were caught up in a national struggle over having a centralized or federal form of government. All were contributing factors to a U.S. takeover.37

After three weeks of occupation, Stockton and Frémont withdrew from

Los Angeles, leaving a heavily armed garrison under the command of Marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie. Gillespie and his men imposed martial law and arbitrarily humiliated the people of the pueblo, placing many of its leading citizens under arrest.38 According to Pitt, Gillespie also prohibited Mexicans from carrying out their daily social and cultural activities, which centered around the Plaza, when he placed a curfew on the town, closed the stores, and outlawed even the most innocuous social gatherings: “One resident American observed that Gillespie enjoyed humiliating the most respectable men. Fearful of conspiracy, Gillespie searched several houses, confiscated arms, and did everything in his power to intimidate the occupants.”39 52

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Such wanton maltreatment by U.S. forces under Gillespie enraged the

people of Los Angeles to the point that they rose up in arms in September 1846. The revolt was led by Captain José María Flores, José Antonio Carrillo, and Andrés Pico. It began at the Plaza, where Gillespie and his men held out in Pío Pico’s old headquarters.40 Gillespie stated: “On the 22nd [of September] at 3 o’clock in the morning, a party of 65 Californians and Sonoreños made an attack upon my small command quartered in the government house.”41 The garrison was forced out of the Plaza and took a position on the hill overlooking the square, the present site of Fort Moore. This decision proved to be a strategic mistake. The Americans were besieged by more than three hundred Californios, and Flores demanded that they surrender, offering them safe passage to San Pedro harbor. Gillespie accepted the offer and with his men marched out of Los Angeles with colors flying and drums beating. As a final act of resistance to the invaders, a group of women from the pueblo who saw their families and community humiliated over the previous weeks presented the departing Gillespie with a basket of peaches rolled in cactus needles.42 On October 4, Gillespie and his troops embarked on the merchant ship Vandalia and departed from California, thus ending this first phase of the battle of Los Angeles.43 Gillespie’s occupation of the city also can be seen as the first episode in the complex history of Anglo American and Mexican conflict over space and cultural power at the Plaza—contestations that became an enduring character of the space during the U.S. era under military occupation, before statehood, and after 1850.

Full-scale warfare was now in effect in Southern California, and Los

Angeles residents played leading roles in the conflict. On one occasion, a colonial cannon was dug up from the garden of Inocencia Reyes and used in defense of the pueblo. The old four-pounder had long stood in the Plaza, where it was used to fire salutes during fiestas and other public ceremonies. However, due to a scarcity of powder, it apparently was buried for safekeeping on Reyes’ property during Stockton’s first approach to Los Angeles. The cannon was exhumed, and it fired upon American Navy troops on October 8, 1846, at the Battle of Dominguez Ranch. Aiding in a Mexican victory, the cannon was affectionately named by local residents el piedrero de la vieja (the old woman’s gun).44 In December 1846, after the Mexican victory at the Battle of San Pascual in present-day Escondido in San Diego County, Commodore Stockton with six hundred men along with U.S. Army General Stephen Watts Kearny and his guide, Kit Carson, left San Diego with their regrouped The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 53

forces, intending to retake Los Angeles. Captain Frémont marched south from Monterey to Los Angeles with another four hundred troops.45

After a few skirmishes outside the pueblo, Stockton’s forces entered Los

Angeles as Frémont’s forces entered from the San Fernando Valley.46 However, unlike their previous encounter, this second seizure of Los Angeles was accomplished without bloodshed. In the face of overwhelming forces, the Californio officers, under José María Flores, laid down their arms. Once again, the Plaza was retaken by the U.S. military. All day long, the American band played Yankee tunes in the Plaza, with many curious locals—children in particular—in attendance. Commodore Stockton made his headquarters in the abandoned home of Encarnación Avila, widow of wealthy ranchero Francisco Avila. The adobe, located slightly north of the Plaza on Calle de las Vinas (later to be renamed Olvera Street), would survive the generations.

On January 13, 1847, Andrés Pico, who succeeded Flores as military

commander and was acting on behalf of the civil and military authority of Alta California, met with Frémont, who represented the United States. They signed the Treaty of Cahuenga in a ranch house located in present-day Studio City. This treaty formally ended the California phase of the war between the two nations. Of course, the actual cession of California to the United States by Mexico occurred when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. The following year, Lieutenant Edward O. C. Ord surveyed Los Angeles to affirm and extend the street pattern of the Mexican city to facilitate real estate speculation. To determine the four points of the compass, the two lines that cross are reported to be the front of the Plaza church. Ord measured two leagues in each cardinal direction: “These lines will bisect the four sides of a square, within which the lands of the municipality will be contained, the area of the same being sixteen square leagues, and each side of the square measuring four leagues.”47 What is also clear from the top half of the map is that the grid pattern of the future Anglo city would extend away from the Plaza in a southwesterly direction.

As the new military governor of California, Bennet Riley ruled that mu-

nicipal land could only be sold with reference to a city map. Under colonial Spain and Mexico, land was generally not sold or mortgaged but granted by the government. It was, according to Neal Harlow, occupied and worked by the grantee, as otherwise it could revert to the government, and was not therefore available for speculation.48 The diseños (property sketches) held by

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Lieutenant Edward O. C. Ord’s survey of Los Angeles, 1849. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

the Californios were ruled insufficient to claim title in the American court system.

Under U.S. property law, it was determined that the city land of Los An-

geles including the Plaza “was thought of as disposable wealth and not as a patrimony to be handed on to later generations.”49 While crude in its design, the Ord survey provided the basis for Los Angeles’ first real estate boom, which, according to W. W. Robinson, crested in the mid-1850s: “If the map had its defects [such as an absence of street widths and block and lot dimensions], it served its primary purpose of putting Los Angeles in the real-estate business, in making possible a great real-estate boom, and in filling an empty city treasury.”50 Historian Mary P. Ryan perhaps put it best in stating that the “US army swept into California with the surveyor as well as the sword and

The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 55

quickly translated Spanish and Mexican practices into cartographic representations.”51 Ord’s survey, in effect, initiated the spatial chapter of the conquest of Los Angeles. Spanish street names later gave way to English names: Calle Principal became Main Street, Calle Primavera became Spring Street, and Calle Loma became Hill Street. In 1853 Henry Hancock conducted a second survey of the city, dividing the large remaining portion of the twentyeight-square-mile pueblo grant into a super-gridiron of wide streets forming large blocks of thirty parcels of five acres each. As such, the Ord and Hancock surveys provided the rationale for Anglo Los Angeles to reject the original plan of the pueblo, which centered on the Plaza. In its place, a new civic center and a new vision for Los Angeles would emerge.

Often overlooked in the literature about this new vision for the city is

what became of Yaanga and its people—the original Gabrielino ranchería that influenced the early pueblo. In 1836 Yaanga was apparently relocated near the southwest corner of the future Commercial and Alameda Streets. The new community was called Ranchería de Poblanos (Settlement of the People).52 The ranchería lasted for only ten years, after local residents complained that Indians were bathing in the Zanja Madre, the main water supply for the pueblo. In June 1845 this last remnant of Yaanga was relocated across the Los Angeles River to present-day Boyle Heights.

Following the United States’ takeover of Los Angeles, Indians continued

to cluster along the edge of the pueblo. Forced into a competitive labor system with Mexicans, often as debt peons, Indian women succumbed to prostitution, and alcoholism became a common vice. Mexicans gradually comprised the bulk of the labor force in Southern California. Employers in Los Angeles were required to provide shelter and care for their Indian laborers. Self-employed Indians were required to lodge outside the city limits. Those who were drunk or unemployed or who loitered within city limits were jailed summarily, and their labor was allocated for public works projects or auctioned off at the Plaza to private citizens who paid their fines. Once their fines were paid and they returned to work for the citizens of the pueblo, Indians often were paid partially in liquor, thus repeating the cycle.53 Disease also took its toll on the California Indian after the American takeover. From 1848 to 1880, the total population declined from 72,050 to 12,500. Indian status varied in Los Angeles following the U.S.–Mexican war. Under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States was bound under law to recognize Indian citizenship in former Mexican territories.54 However, with the 56

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drafting of the California Constitution in 1849, Indians were deprived of protection under the law and were considered essentially non-persons. And since no Anglo could be brought to trial for killing an Indian in California, one observer remarked that by Anglo American reasoning, “the quickest and easiest way to get rid of [their] troublesome presence was to kill [them] off, [and] this procedure was adopted as a standard for some years.”55 Thus, the Gabrielino joined with other Native Americans in Southern California who were absorbed by the larger Mexican community or pushed to the margins of a changing social and physical landscape.

Transitional Era

The “Americanization” of Los Angeles and its Plaza in the 1870s was

preceded by two transitional decades that began with statehood in 1850.56 The city would remain predominantly Mexican in terms of population, and Spanish continued to be the common language; however, Anglo American political and economic influences gradually increased. Most pronounced was Anglo economic growth, which led to a gradual decline in the economic and social status of Mexican Angelenos. While this periodically led to violent confrontations between Anglos and Mexicans, far more significant and prevalent were Mexican efforts to adapt to the city’s changing environment. And for members of the Californio elite, this resulted in compromise and power sharing in business and politics, relations that were often bound by intermarriage. Many of these Mexican elites formed alliances with Anglos like Joseph Lancaster Brent, who represented a branch of the Democratic Party that originated in the Deep South. They were known as the Southern Chivalry and zealously supported slavery and its extension into the territories acquired after the U.S.-Mexican war. Historian Paul Bryan Gray notes that political leaders like Brent were able to form alliances with the ranchero elite because he was a Catholic and spoke fluent Spanish: “By 1853, Brent had a ‘wonderful influence’ over the wealthy Mexican element. Mexican landowners delivered the votes of their employees, friends, and relatives.”57

However, for the majority of Mexican Angelenos—including new ar-

rivals from Sonora and Sinaloa, comprised primarily of laborers—Anglo rule forced them to adapt to declining economic opportunities and to actively maintain traditional cultural practices. The 1848 discovery of gold at Coloma The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 57

caused a dramatic rise in the pueblo’s population and social makeup. Thousands of Mexican miners from Sonora bound for the northern gold fields were the first to arrive in Los Angeles. Many went no farther. In fact, so many Sonorans finally settled in the oldest section of the pueblo—the area that had drawn the founders—that it came to be called Sonoratown.58 The Sonorans were followed by American gold seekers who had taken southern routes from the east and by the Chinese who were driven out of the gold fields with the Sonorans who traveled north. For many pueblo residents, especially the rancheros, the Gold Rush brought new prosperity due to the enormous demand for beef cattle in the north. Before the Gold Rush, Southern California cattle were slaughtered for hides and tallow. However, during the 1850s, northern cattle drives became a new feature of the ranchero way of life, and the price of beef soared.

With their new wealth, the rancheros of Los Angeles made visible im-

prints on the pueblo. This was most evident at the Plaza, where they built new adobes or added second stories to their townhouses.59 The two-story adobes of Ignacio del Valle and Vicente Lugo dominated the Plaza’s east side, while Yankee merchant Abel Stearns’ massive-walled Main Street home on the west side, known as El Palacio, was the social center of Los Angeles during the 1850s.60 Stearns married Arcadia Bandini, daughter of Don Juan Bandini and Dolores Estudillo, who were among the most prominent landowning families in Southern California. Today, Arcadia Street forms the southern boundary of the Plaza district.

Life in Gold Rush–era Los Angeles was one of abundance for such promi-

nent rancheros as Juan Dominguez, John Temple, and Francisco Avila, with horse racing, bull and bear fights, gambling, and lavish fiestas considered the common social events of the day. In October 1852, one of California’s most celebrated horse races occurred in Los Angeles between José Andrés Sepúlveda’s imported Australian mare Black Swan and Pío Pico’s California-bred Sarco. The enormous stakes, $50,000 in gold, 500 mares, 500 heifers, 500 calves, and 500 sheep, were the talk of the day throughout the state. Perhaps as much as $1 million was riding on the winner. Thousands of people from as far away as San Francisco lined the nine-mile route on San Pedro Street to see the race, which Black Swan won by seventy-five yards.61

During the cattle boom of the 1850s, amidst the normal traditional

activities associated with the ranchero culture, including the regular observance of patriotic and religious fiestas, Los Angeles also saw an influx of a 58

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Pío de Jesús Pico and his wife, María Ignacia Alvarado Pico, in 1852, with two of their nieces, María Anita Alvarado (far left) and Trinidad Ortega (far right). Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

new social element that created a severely detrimental impact on the Plaza. This began in late 1848 when the regiment of New York volunteers under Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson was disbanded. Charged with maintaining order after the Treaty of Cahuenga, the disbanded soldiers, many of whom were thugs and brawlers from the rough Five Points and Bowery districts of New York, roamed the Los Angeles streets.62 The volunteers were joined by northern gamblers, failed miners, outlaws, and prostitutes who followed the money south or were driven out of San Francisco and the mining towns by the vigilante committees.

Consequently, much of the city’s growing vice and violence during the

1850s and after the boom in the 1860s were centered on a blocklong row of adobes housing several businesses, among them saloons and prostitutes’ cribs. This block on the Plaza’s east side was called Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks) or Negro or Nigger Ally among Anglos.63 Indeed, Los AngeThe Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 59

les during the early 1850s, with a population near two thousand, was considered the “toughest and most lawless city west of Santa Fe.”64 For this reason, in 1853 the Los Angeles Rangers were formed to stem the daily killings, shootings, and stabbings. They consisted of 75 percent volunteers (with 25 percent paid full-time lawmen), and their member roster, with names like Olvera, Banning, Downey, and Sepúlveda, read like a who’s who of the city’s powerful and wealthy. Wealthy Anglos and Mexicans like John Downey and Andrés Pico found common class interests through the Rangers. But just as the fear of Indian violence colored civic action and reaction in the early 1850s, so did the potential for a discontented Mexican insurrection occupy the thoughts of mid-decade Angelenos, and the Plaza area was believed to be the most likely place for such an uprising. Rumors circulated surrounding the violent exploits of real and imagined Mexican “bandits” such as Pío Linares, Joaquin Valenzuela, Salomon Pico (the former governor’s nephew), the Juan Flores–Pancho Daniel gang, and, notably, Joaquin Murieta, the most famous and mythological “bandit” of the California Gold Rush era. Major Horace Bell wrote that in August 1853, amid rumors that Murieta was in the city, the entire Ranger Company, mounted and on foot, marched and rode through Sonotatown, Calle de Los Negros, and surrounding areas to “search every suspicious house and place within the city limits.”65 Thus, the spectacle of violence throughout the 1850s and 1860s, particularly in the form of public lynching, was directed against Mexicans and served to consolidate Anglo hegemony by securing the socioeconomic decline of the Mexican population. This, along with punishing floods and droughts that destroyed the cattle industry, had a direct impact on the social and physical character of the Plaza. According to Raúl Villa, “This violent period did conveniently precede the first concerted efforts of urban development to transform Los Angeles in anticipation of the coming landscape of Anglo-capitalist dominance.”66 And in a very real sense, these environmental and social factors that led to the decline of the Californios and an increasing separation between Anglos and Mexicans were reflected in the physical look of the Plaza.

As early as 1849, after the American takeover, city residents took note

of the blighted condition of the Plaza area. “Monte (gambling), banks, cockfights, and liquor shops are to be seen in all directions,” wrote John S. Griffin, physician and veteran of the war with Mexico.67 In March of that year Griffin stated to his friend, the former U.S. Military Commander of Los Angeles Colonel Stevenson, that “a Californian [Californio] is a rare sight now on 60

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the streets. You never see them parading about on their fine horses as formerly.”68 W. W. Robinson noted: “Once a street of happy homes, Calle de los Negros, opening into the Plazuela and the Plaza, was . . . becoming a pandemonium of races, gambling, vice, and crime. The whole character of the Plaza was infected, though thick walls gave much protection to the occupants of town houses.”69

The severity of the pueblo’s growing violence was evidenced in 1853,

when the campo santo (cemetery) adjacent to the Plaza church became so crowded that it was abandoned. Then, on the property at the end of Calle de la Eternidad (Eternity Street, later Buena Vista Street, now North Broadway), ground was broken for Calvary Cemetery.70 This atmosphere of violence was noted by Horace Bell, known as much for his pungent pen as for his membership in the semi-vigilante Los Angeles Rangers. Bell recalled that an officer of the law would not have the temerity to arrest a criminal on Calle de los Negros, where “knives and revolvers settled all differences, either real or imaginary.”71

Despite the specter of violence, much of it racially motivated, the Plaza

continued to play a significant role in the city’s ceremonial life and social traditions that the city’s Mexican residents maintained and the growing immigrant population reinforced. In 1856 the Sisters of Charity, officially called the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, came to the pueblo and established the city’s first orphanage slightly northeast of the Plaza. Before this time, there was no system for providing care for orphaned, neglected, or abused children. Thus, in the wake of deadly epidemics of smallpox and measles, the plight of children who had lost their parents motivated residents to ignore ethnic, racial, and denominational differences for the benefit of the disenfranchised young.72 In 1859 the French community, which numbered around six hundred of the city’s population of four thousand, was recognized for its contribution to the development of Southern California when France sent Jacob A. Moerenhout to Los Angeles to serve as the first consul general. On October 29, the tricolor flag of France was raised at the Plaza in a scene reminiscent of the elaborate patriotic celebrations during the Mexican era. Led by the city’s first French-Canadian mayor, Damien Marchessault, a procession of French Angelenos converged at the Plaza in a public celebration. The musical bands, cannon fire, French Infantry Corps, and congratulatory speeches delivered by French, Mexican, and Anglo civic leaders signified the diversity of residents to be found around the Plaza.73 The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 61



This social convergence included an early presence of African Ameri-

cans within the Plaza area. While Los Angeles has had a black presence since the founding of the pueblo in 1781 by forty-four settlers who were predominantly mulato, the city’s 1850 Census also revealed that, of a total population of 1,600, 12 were African Americans.74 Historian Quintard Taylor notes that most black residents of Los Angeles during this time were former slaves or servants brought to California by white officers during the U.S.-Mexican war.75 Typical of this group was Peter Biggs, a former Missouri slave who came to Los Angeles in 1852. Biggs arrived in the west as the slave of Captain A. J. Smith of the California dragoons after the U.S.-Mexican war. Subsequently, Smith granted Biggs his freedom at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.76 Settling in Los Angeles near the Plaza, Biggs became the city’s first barber and bootblack, opening his popular New Orleans Shaving Saloon on Main Street.77 He married a Mexican woman and during the 1860s maintained a monopoly on the barbering trade. Joining Biggs during the second half of the century were other former slaves. The Robert Owens family built a successful livery and cattle business employing 10 Mexican vaqueros to break wild horses and supply beef for sale to newly arriving settlers.78 During the 1850s, Robert and Winnie Owens’ homestead “became the center of community life when the family invited other blacks to attend religious services in its residence.”79 The Owenses also speculated in real estate during Southern California’s post–Civil War boom and became the wealthiest black family by the end of the decade.

Bridget “Biddy” Mason was another luminary of the early black commu-

nity. She was brought from Mississippi to Salt Lake City and then to California as a slave along with Hannah (who took no last name) and their children and grandchildren by their Mormon owners, Robert and Rebecca Smith. Mason won her freedom for herself, Hannah, and their children with the assistance of Los Angeles County Sheriff David Alexander and Robert and Winnie Owens, who themselves were former slaves. In 1856 Benjamin Hayes, judge of the District Court in Los Angeles, ruled that Mason, Hannah, and their children were free people in a free state and that the Smiths had no right to take them out of California against their will. Mason’s eldest daughter, Ellen, would later marry into the Owens family.80 Hannah settled in San Bernardino, and Mason remained in Los Angeles.

Working as a nurse and midwife, Mason saved her earnings and became

the first African American woman to independently own land in the city. 62

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Bridget “Biddy” Mason (1818–1891), nurse, midwife, businesswoman, property owner, philanthropist, and pioneer of the African American community of Los Angeles, ca. 1873. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

She bought a block of property in an area that later became part of downtown Los Angeles, at Spring and Third Streets. She was known for her philanthropic work, and the First African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1872 in her home on Spring Street.81 Like many other black Angelenos, Mason was fully integrated in the local culture. She spoke fluent Spanish, rode the finest carriage, and was a well-known and respected figure at the Plaza, where she conducted business and dined on occasion at the Pico House. Shortly before her death in 1891, she refused an offer of $200,000 for her property and left it to her heirs.82

Despite the change in governments and the influx of new population

groups, Los Angeles remained a predominantly Mexican city, with the use The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 63

of Spanish as a common language and the prestige and ongoing public use of the Plaza as the center of social, commercial, and political activity for the largely Catholic city. Sunday bullfights at an arena on Calle del Toro (Bull Street, now Castelar Street, northwest of the Plaza) and cock fighting at Francisco Ocampo’s plazuela (a small open area outside the main Plaza area) were popular diversions.83 This atmosphere was immediately observed by Harris Newmark, a pioneer merchant and leader of the Jewish community, when he arrived in Los Angeles in 1853. He noted in his detailed memoir the significance of the Plaza among the leading ranchero families for traditional religious festivities such as the pastores and pastorelas, based on the birth of Christ, and the yearly festival of Corpus Christi in late May: The Corpus Christi festival was one of the events of the year when not the least imposing feature was the opening procession around the Plaza. For all these occasions, the square was thoroughly cleaned, and notable families, such as the Del Valles, Olveras, the Lugos and the Picos erected before their residences temporary altars, decorated with silks, satins, laces and even costly jewelry. The procession would start from the Church after the four o’clock service and proceed around the Plaza from altar to altar. There the boys and girls, carrying banners and flowers, and robed or dressed in white, paused for formal worship, the progress through the square, small as the Plaza was, thus taking a couple of hours.84



The Plaza area continued to feature various displays of traditional cul-

ture and the arts. Rafael Guerrero, the son of prominent ranchero Vicente Guerrero, staged a series of Spanish-language plays in his father’s townhouse on Calle de los Negros. Advertised in the Los Angeles Star/La Estrella de Los Angeles (the city’s first English-Spanish bilingual newspaper, established in 1851), “Classics of Lope de Vega and Zorrilla were among those performed. Don Juan Tenorio, La Familia del Mendigo and Cada Cual con su Razón were seen in Los Angeles during the season of 1852–1853.”85

Changes in the use and appearance of the Plaza reflected the larger so-

cial, economic, and political changes in Los Angeles after 1850 and posed even more challenges to its meaning. In 1850 Major Horace Bell recalled that public whippings were introduced at the Plaza by the local vigilante committee.86 During the winter of 1858–1859, it served as a circus ground when a large tent or pavilion was placed on the north side of the square. Again, 64

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The Plaza in 1862 in the first known photograph of Los Angeles, showing two-story Lugo adobe (fronting the Plaza), adobe built by José Antonio Carrillo (far right), Pío Pico adobe (behind Carrillo adobe) that served as the governor’s office, and brick water reservoir (center). Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

in January 1860, Bartholomew’s Rocky Mountain Circus “held forth on the Plaza, [with] people coming in from miles around to see the show.” The same month, another traveling circus, the so-called Paris Exposition Circus, came to the Plaza.87

In December 1856 the Los Angeles Common Council (later to become

the City Council) passed an ordinance that designated the Plaza as the first City Park.88 In 1857 the Common Council granted Judge W. G. Dryden the right to build a municipal brick water tank in the center of the Plaza. Attempts were made to beautify the space. Trees and flowers were planted, footpaths were laid out, and the entire square was enclosed by a small fence. But these improvements were not maintained, and the landscaping was soon gone.

During this period, “the Plaza became something of [a] linguistic bound-

ary. North of the Plaza the only language heard was Spanish; to the south, English, German, and French could also be heard.”89 Historian William Deverell found this spatial and cultural isolation to be representative of larger The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 65

changes taking place throughout the city: “Mexicans still lived in Mexico, in Sonora or Sonoratown, in ‘homes of the defeated.’ Both logic and geography argue that 1850s Sonoratown, north of the plaza, not far from the banks of the Los Angeles River, was in fact in Los Angeles, in California, in the United States. But logic and social reality do not of course always operate in tandem. Sonora and Sonoratown were Mexico in the popular perceptions of many an Anglo Angeleno, a Mexico gradually becoming surrounded by an Americanizing Los Angeles.”90 The apogee of the Plaza’s political glory came in January 1860 when a one-hundred-gun salute and torchlight parade were performed in celebration of John G. Downey’s elevation to the governorship of California. Later that year, a ball was held at the Bella Union Hotel on Main Street on the occasion of the completion of the telegraph to the city. The organizing committee for the event reflected the power sharing that had been taking place since the war that included Antonio Coronel, John Temple, Henry N. Alexander, Mathew Keller, Andrés Pico, Phineas Banning, Victor Beaudry, and Ozru W. Childs.91 However, by 1862 the political significance of the Plaza was diminished when the U.S. District Court moved from the northwest side of the Plaza to John Temple’s market building south of Temple and Main Streets.

Gradually, the Plaza lost its prestige as the political and social core of

the city. Its varied uses continued to reflect these larger changes in Los Angeles. In May 1869 the City Council gave permission to J. Eastman, a private entrepreneur, to build a velocipede (early bicycle) track at the Plaza; however, the venture never progressed beyond the planning stage. A newspaper writer who favored the project illustrated the changing attitudes regarding the use of the Plaza by pointing out its deteriorated condition as a reason for the track’s failure. “Our City Fathers tried to make a little coin by leasing the Plaza as a velocipede circle or square; but, so far, the velocipedist had failed to connect. I dare say the cost of cleaning up the place of weeds backed the poor soul out!”92 So as time passed, the old square came to symbolize the growing social and cultural distance between the city’s Mexican residents and the new Anglo-European character of Los Angeles, a shift that was even reflected in the houses of worship.

Changes in the Catholic faith in Los Angeles after 1848 coincided with

the social, economic, and political transformations that ultimately impoverished the Mexican community. By 1900 the Americanization of Los Angeles ultimately redefined the city’s religious orientation from Catholic to 66

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Protestant. Between the 1850s and 1880s, a new Catholic hierarchy set out to transform the very soul of Mexican Los Angeles. Historian and Jesuit priest Michael Engh, in his seminal study of the nineteenth century, found that under Mexican rule, “the faith life of the pobladores had long been a blend of church ceremony and familial piety, in which a host of religious feastdays punctuated the calendar year.”93 This communal expression of religious beliefs was a frequent occurrence in the spiritual and cultural life of the Los Angeles pueblo. “Designated leaders supervised the Christmas pastorelas [musical dramatic plays performed at churches or private homes in conjunction with the Christmas posada—inn or lodging—processions] performed in the [Plaza] church. The town’s corps of soldiers conducted the mock trial of Judas Iscariot during Holy Week, followed by his execution, in effigy, in the Plaza.”94 Such diversity in personal and communal customs effectively brought religion within the daily experience of the ordinary person.

Engh observed that most priests officiating at Our Lady Queen of the An-

gels Church at the Plaza were of French origin, belonged to the Society of the Sacred Hearts, and remained at the church until the advent of radical change in the Catholic hierarchy of Los Angeles. He found that the “[s]carcity of clergy in California had prompted church authorities to accept the services of these Gallic missionaries, in 1832. Tolerant of Hispanic religious customs, these priests withdrew for other lands in 1856, soon after Bishop Thaddeus Amat assumed leadership of the [Los Angeles] diocese.”95

Amat initiated tumultuous changes in the distinctly Spanish-speaking

and culturally Mexican-oriented Plaza church. He envisioned “a local Catholic communion thoroughly Roman in orientation, uniform in expression, and obedient to him and his actions.”96 This challenge to the Mexican Catholicism practiced locally at the Plaza reinforced the loss of economic and political power experienced by the larger Mexican population. In response, Griswold del Castillo found, a religious-cultural underground flourished among the majority of Mexicans of Los Angeles: “Fiestas, celebrating religious and secular holidays, were sometimes held without the sanctions of the Church or the ricos.”97 Arturo Bandini noted that the last major performance of the Christmas pastorelas in Los Angeles occurred ten years after California statehood in the courtyard of Pío Pico’s old adobe on the south end of the Plaza.98

The rise of the Spanish-language press hastened greater ethnic and

political awareness among Mexicans in Los Angeles while also revealing The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 67

Our Lady Queen of Angels Church (La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles), 1873, the city’s oldest house of worship, viewed on left looking north on Main Street toward present-day Chavez Ravine, the site of Dodger Stadium. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

the multi-ethnic relations that surrounded the Plaza. This was expressed through the early writings of Francisco P. Ramirez; at age eighteen, Ramirez founded El Clamor Público, the first independent Spanish-language newspaper, which he published weekly between 1855 and 1859.99 He was born in Los Angeles in 1837. His maternal grandmother was Petra Avila, daughter of former alcalde Francisco Avila. The Ramirez’ modest property adjoined the vineyards of Jean Louis Vignes, a prosperous French vintner who was a naturalized Mexican citizen. Historian Paul Bryan Gray writes that “Ramirez developed a life-long camaraderie with Vignes, which led to close friendships with other members of a French community centered on Aliso Street.”100 Ramirez was fluent in three languages and began his career in journalism in 1851 by writing for La Estrella de Los Angeles, the Spanish section of the Los Angeles Star. He commenced publishing El Clamor Público with the financial help of Vignes, his close friend and godfather. The four-page weekly tabloid reflected Ramirez’ embrace of nineteenth-century liberalism, especially the liberal philosophies espoused by Benito Juárez and Abraham Lincoln, by calling for racial equality and the abolition of slavery. Locally, he cham68

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pioned the rights of the Mexican people by drawing attention to the rash of lynchings and other abuses experienced by Mexicans under American rule.

Throughout the 1870s, La Crónica was the leading Spanish-language

newspaper, published every Wednesday and Saturday. It was founded by Eduardo Teodoli, an Italian born in Rome and a close friend of Ramirez, and counted leading citizens among its stockholders.101 The advertisement pages of La Crónica show a thriving Mexican community living and working side by side with Italians, Anglos, French, and Chinese. For example, Juan J. Carrillo advertised Tienda de California, his general store in the Arcadia Block, and carpenter Carlos L. Cruz announced his construction business at his Plaza residence adjacent to William Wolfskill’s adobe. Women also advertised their businesses in the newspaper. Faviana de Oropesa placed an ad for her new panaderia mexicana (Mexican bakery) next to the Plaza Catholic church, and Mrs. Campbell advertised her fine fabrics and dresses for women and girls at her shop in the Pico House. Readers of La Crónica were exposed to the Plaza’s diverse ethnic makeup. Dr. Poo Ji Tong, known to readers as Dr. Chino, advertised his skill in curing all ailments; Chevalier’s French drugstore stood opposite the Pico House, and Antonio Pelanconi sold his “excellent wines and aguardientes” from his winery on Alameda Street. Other businesses included J. J. Warner’s notary public service; the law office of Frederick Stanford and Francisco P. Ramirez; Louis Mazzini’s tin plate, copper, and watch-making shop on Main Street; and Belgian-born Victor Ponet’s imported mirrors and picture frames, a business that he proudly conducted in Spanish, French, English, and German.102

Among the French and Mexican communities of Los Angeles, several

social and patriotic clubs were organized during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and La Crónica reported on their activities. The French Benevolent Society, established in 1860, counted among its leaders Eugène Meyer, co-owner of the popular City of Paris dry goods store; Henri Penelon, a respected artist and photographer; and Charles Ducommun, owner of a popular jewelry and hardware shop at the corner of Commercial and Main Streets south of the Plaza. The society kept alive a sense of French nationalism and at the same time strengthened the local culture. In an ironic sharing of Plaza space for cultural and patriotic events, the most influential Mexicannationalist club was La Junta Patriótica de Juárez, which organized the yearly commemorations of Dieciseis de Septiembre (Mexican Independence Day) and Cinco de Mayo (the Mexican defeat of French forces at the Battle of The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 69

Puebla on May 5, 1862).103 Yearly observances included a parade, speeches in the Plaza, music, and dramatic plays. Often these were the only days on which Mexicans could publicly “demonstrate” cultural and ethnic pride.

Cinco de Mayo was first celebrated at the Plaza in 1862 and reinforced

the sense of cultural and political identity among Mexicans in Los Angeles. Historian Richard Griswold del Castillo found that the significance of these ceremonial displays served as unifying elements for all sectors of the Mexican community. Before each holiday, La Junta usually organized a parade which preceded the speech making and the fiesta. During the 1878 celebration of Cinco de Mayo, José J. Carrillo headed the procession as grand marshall and was followed by a band led by Hinlo Silvas. Next came the respected orators of the day—Reginaldo del Valle and Eulegio de Celis, the editor of La Crónica and president of La Junta—who rode together in a flowered carriage. They were followed by Trinidad Muñoz and other Californio representatives of the City Guard carrying the American and Mexican flags. After them came the two hundred members of La Junta Patriótica, followed by Pantelon Zabatela’s Guardia Zaragosa. Ten units representing the upper class and other Mexican American social and political organizations marched in the parade. Indeed, the parade also displayed the changing orientation of the city’s Spanish-speaking community. For example, under Mexican rule, most community celebrations had been religious, with members of the upper class playing central roles. However, under American rule, religion and class became less important. The community began to place greater emphasis on political ideology and ethnic origin. Del Castillo concluded that “as loyalties ceased to revolve around the church and the landlords, more abstract sentiments, having to do with Mexican nationalism, began to bind the Spanishspeaking together.”104

By the end of the 1860s, the Plaza, like the city as a whole, was losing

its “Mexican-ness.” The Californios were stripped of their land and social standing. Many gave up their Plaza residences, and many others left Los Angeles altogether in the wake of impending change. Those who stayed in the pueblo found it difficult to bear the changes occurring around them. On the northwest corner of the Plaza, Pedro Seguro’s popular gambling house was purchased by John G. Downey, an Irish immigrant who would soon become governor of California. This building became the U.S. District Court House, and after that, the Los Angeles Star reported that the Reverend W. E. Boardman had begun conducting weekly Protestant services in the old adobe, 70

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just a few steps from the Catholic church.105 Ygnacio del Valle, who lived on the east side of the Plaza next to the Lugos, moved to Rancho Camulos near Newhall, the bucolic site that would later inspire Helen Hunt Jackson’s epic novel Ramona. Along Olvera Street, Encarnación Sepúlveda de Avila’s daughter, Francisca, continued to live in her father’s adobe with her German husband, Theodore Rimpau, until 1868, when the couple and their children moved to the embryonic city of Anaheim.106 On the southeast corner of the Plaza, once-wealthy ranchero and ayuntamiento member Francisco Ocampo also saw his spacious adobe change hands. It eventually became the site of the city’s first firehouse. Harris Newmark recalled that in Ocampo’s later years, “he used to sit on the curbstone near the Plaza, a character quite forlorn, utterly dejected in appearance, and despondently recalling the by-gone days of his prosperity.”107

Before the city could move forward, it was compelled to confront the

bitter racial and class antagonisms that emerged after 1850. Before the advent of the railroads, the Plaza’s isolation and changing demographics left the majority of the Mexican population vulnerable to periodic outbreaks of violence. And while lynchings of Mexicans in Southern California persisted until the 1890s, no other group during this period of Anglo ascendancy was as socially ostracized or more vulnerable to spontaneous acts of violence than the Chinese.108

Gum Saan—Chinatown

Since their arrival in the city in 1850, the Chinese of Los Angeles faced

particular racial stereotypes and circumstances that set them apart from other non-English-speaking settlers in the city. These images and events crystallized within the boundaries of the old pueblo and, similarly to the Mexican community in Sonoratown, reinforced a particular sense of place through Chinatown’s evolution on the eastern edge of the Plaza. It was long speculated that a Chinese settler, Antonio Miranda, may have been part of the original forty-four pobladores of 1781. In fact, the first appearance of Chinese in Los Angeles occurred during the Gold Rush years. In 1854 Joseph Newmark became a pioneer in Jewish religious and philanthropic life of Los Angeles. He arrived with his wife, six children, and a Chinese servant. Newmark’s nephew, Harris Newmark, wrote in his memoirs that his uncle’s male The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 71

servant was the first Chinese to arrive in Los Angeles.109 However, historian William Mason, who corrected the long-held belief concerning Miranda and the Chinese in the founding of the pueblo, disagreed with Newmark. He found that the 1850 Census listed two Chinese house servants, Ah Luce and Ah Fou, and 1850 therefore became the year a Chinese presence was established in Los Angeles.110

The rise of the Chinese community of Los Angeles was an outgrowth

of larger developments in the United States during the nineteenth century. Chinese males from Canton arrived in Gum Saan, or Gold Mountain—the Chinese name for the United States—in response to rumors of quick wealth in the California gold fields and subsequently were recruited as railroad workers. In theory, they planned to return home once they had earned enough money to sustain themselves in China. In reality, few succeeded in attaining sizable wealth working in the gold mines and railroads because of severe labor exploitation and virulent anti-Chinese rhetoric espoused by organized labor and the San Francisco press—racial sentiments that were often acted out on the streets.

After the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point,

Utah, in May 1869, the demand for Chinese railroad labor was drastically reduced, forcing them to seek new avenues of employment. Later that year, several Chinese laborers were recruited from northern California to build a wagon road in Newhall, slightly north of Los Angeles.111 However, the Chinese as a group were banned increasingly from regular wage labor by nativist agitation and government regulation. Therefore, by default, the Chinese of Los Angeles came to fill an important sector of the economy as entrepreneurs. Some became proprietors and employees of small hand laundries and restaurants; some were farmers and wholesale produce peddlers; others ran gambling establishments; and some occupied other areas left vacant by the absence of workers in the Gold Rush migration to California. Indeed, every city had room for Chinese who could fill these noncompetitive gaps in the urban economy.

According to the 1860 Census, only fourteen Chinese residents were

listed in Los Angeles. By 1870 a recognizable Chinese community had appeared, with a population of nearly two hundred, about half of whom lived on Calle de los Negros, where much of the city’s vice and violence of the previous decade persisted.112 Despite residents’ desire for law and order, Los Angeles was burdened by the dual characteristics of an open city—provid72

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ing opportunity for some and lawlessness for others—while undergoing dramatic demographic change. The decline in gold production, the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad, and drought that caused a sharp drop in farm production brought large numbers of unemployed white laborers into California towns from Sacramento to San Diego. Thus, in a climate of exploitative labor and corporate monopoly by railroad barons, white labor unions misdirected their attention to the Chinese, who they believed were lowering the wages and living standards of white workers.113 Combined with the inflammatory anti-Chinese news articles of the San Francisco press that Los Angeles journalists sought to emulate, the city was rife with anti-Chinese fervor.

In the early evening of October 24, 1871, the city witnessed its most cal-

lous act of racial violence—the notorious Chinese Massacre.114 A riot occurred after Robert Thompson, an Anglo in the company of a local police officer, Jesús Bliderrain, was killed after being caught in a crossfire between two rival Chinese secret societies, or “tongs,” that had been feuding over the ownership of a woman.115 With the news of Thompson’s death, an estimated crowd of five hundred “people of all nationalities” that included leading citizens, police, news reporter H. M. Mitchell of the Los Angeles Star, and City Council member George M. Fall took part in a brutal racial assault on the Chinese on Calle de los Negros (renamed Los Angeles Street in 1877). The violence began at the one-story adobe built by Ignacio Coronel (owned by his son, Antonio Coronel) and spread through the Plaza area. Much to his objection, which almost cost him his life, John Goller’s wagon shop on the southwest corner of Commercial and Los Angeles Streets as well as Tomlinson’s corral on New High Street served as makeshift gallows.

Prominent shopkeepers even dealt out free rope to the mob to use for

hanging any Chinese male they encountered. Emiliano Acevedo, a barber from Mexico, gave sworn testimony that soon after Thompson’s shooting he saw Councilman Fall, a thirty-two-year-old native of Ohio, pick up a board and strike a passing Chinese man in the face. He later saw Jesús Martinez and A. R. Johnson, with pistol in hand, preparing to hang another Chinese man.116 The fact that no Chinese women were among the murder victims may provide evidence as to the cause of the riot. Was it about race? Was it about class, given the dramatic change in the socioeconomic status of Southern California following the end of the rancho economy and rising unemployment in post–Civil War Los Angeles? Or was it simply, as William R. The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 73

Chinese woman and child in Los Angeles, 1890. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

Locklear argued, the last gasp of localized lawlessness that plagued the city during the 1850s and 1860s?117 Tellingly, Officer S. H. Bryant stated under oath that he saw Johnson on Temple Street near the gateway of Griffin’s old lumberyard yell out to the large mob that “the cheap labor was done away with now; the sons of bitches were hanged.”118 One of his victims, Wong Tuck, was hanged at the corner of Temple and New High Streets across from Saint Athanasius Episcopal Church with rope provided by Broderick and Reilly’s bookstore. In the end, nineteen (other reports say twenty-two) Chi74

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nese men and boys were lynched, shot, or stabbed to death, including the community’s respected Dr. Chin Lee Tong, who pleaded for his life in English and Spanish.119 Most of the dead bodies were placed in the city jail yard at Franklin and Spring Streets for public viewing. Several Chinese homes and businesses were looted. And on the following morning, the leading local newspapers began reporting on the bloodshed in chilling detail. The Los Angeles Daily News consistently expressed its outrage at the violence and even attempted to put a human face to the violence by listing the names of the dead and causes of death. Chee Long Tong (known as Gene Tong or Chin Lee Tong) was stripped of his clothing and jewelry, shot through the head, and hanged; one of his fingers was cut off to remove a ring. Wa Sin Quai, a resident of Calle de Los Negros for five years, was shot eight times in the abdomen and legs. Chang Wan, who lived with Dr. Tong, was hanged. Long Quai died from hanging. Joung Burrow was shot through the head and left wrist. Ah Long, a cigar maker, was hanged. Wong Chin, a member of the Win Yong tong, or association, was hanged. Tong Wan, who had just arrived by steamer from San Francisco (most likely as a paid gunman in the ongoing tong dispute), was stabbed, shot, and hanged. Ah Loo, a recent arrival from

Calle de los Negros, scene of the 1871 Chinese Massacre, ca. 1885. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 75

China, was hanged. Wan Foo, a member of the Wing Young association, was hanged. Day Kee was hanged. Ho Hing was hanged. Ah Waa was hanged. Ah Cut, a liquor manufacturer, was shot in the abdomen and extremities. Lo Hey, of the Wong Young association, was hanged. Ah Wan, of the Win Young association, was hanged. Wing Chee, of the Sam Yeun association, was shot and hanged. Another victim was unidentified but probably was Wong Tuck; this victim was the first to die, after being hanged and dragged to the cemetery near Fort Moore Hill. Fun Yu was shot through the head and died on October 27.120

Conversely, the pro–Southern Democrat, pro-slavery Los Angeles Star

printed a special two-page account of the massacre describing the Chinese as “fiends in our midst,” “uncivilized barbarians,” “a people who value life so lightly,” and the entire event of the previous evening as “intense excitement” and a “glorious victory.”121 Ironically, on the same page as the headline story, it was announced that a special public meeting was being called by the Board of Directors of the Agricultural Association “for the purpose of calling the attention of our citizens to the necessity of extending hospitality to [all] visitors.”122 Perhaps the Agricultural Association was anticipating the extension of the Southern Pacific Railroad to Los Angeles, an event that Horace Bell noted to have put an end to “ruffianism” and entered the city in “the list of orderly American municipalities.”123 But the Agricultural Association may have forgotten that this “civilizing” achievement that connected Los Angeles with San Francisco and the rest of the nation was largely made possible by Chinese railroad labor.

Two days after the massacre, some measure of justice was carried out. A

coroner’s jury “recommended that the grand jury consider over one hundred persons as involved in the massacre” and concluded that the mob was composed of people of various nationalities.124 Among those named were A. R. Johnson, Patrick M. McDonald, Refugio Botello, Esteban Alvarado, Louis Mendel, L. P. Crenshaw, Ramón Dominguez, Adolfo Celis, D. W. Moody, Jesús Martinez, and Charles Austin. But while the accused did in fact reflect the emerging cosmopolitan-immigrant makeup of the city, the leading merchants, professionals, and politicians who played a central role in the bloodshed were never brought to trial. For example, Johnson was a thirty-five-year-old plasterer and recent immigrant from Ireland; Botello was a forty-six-year-old butcher from Mexico; Moody was a twenty-one-year-old Missouri-born farmer; Austin was a forty-one-year-old native of Maine and 76

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a farmer; Mendel was a thirty-three-year-old clerk from Poland; and Crenshaw was a twenty-year-old drifter from Nevada.125

In November 1871, Los Angeles County Judge Ignacio Sepúlveda, a re-

spected leader of the Mexican era, presided over a county grand jury inquiry into the massacre. In February 1872 the case was sent before Judge Robert Maclay Widney of the Seventeenth Judicial District. During the riot, Widney had distinguished himself by standing up against the mob, with pistol in hand, in an effort to rescue four Chinese from certain death.

Nine men were eventually tried for the murder of Dr. Tong. Dominguez

had previously filed a motion that he could not receive a fair and impartial trial, and his case was likely discharged.126 Crenshaw asked for a separate trial and was found guilty of manslaughter weeks before Widney’s court began. When the verdict was heard on March 28, Celis and Moody were acquitted, and seven others were convicted on a reduced charge of manslaughter. Johnson, Botello, Mendel, Martinez, Austin, Alvarado, and McDonald were sentenced to terms of two to six years in San Quentin prison.127

All day long after the verdict, the sounds of firecrackers could be heard

from Chinatown. On being asked why they were celebrating, one Chinese man answered: “Yo sabe God” (perhaps meaning to say “I know God”), while another declared that “it was in honor of the martyred.”128 However, one year later, the California Supreme Court reversed the verdicts on appeal. The court ruled that under an 1863 law, a Chinese person could not testify against a white man in court, which in effect placed the Chinese outside the protection of the law. And since “Judge” Widney was not an attorney at the time of the trial—he was admitted to the bar in 1876—but was in fact a real estate entrepreneur, it was ruled that the defendants did not receive a fair trial. Finally, the indictments against Crenshaw and the rest of the rioters for having aided in the murder of Dr. Chin Lee Tong failed to establish that the doctor—despite being shot and hanged—had been murdered at all.129 Those who disagreed with this reversal of justice were careful not to voice their opinions in public, especially on the streets of Los Angeles.

Thus, in an echo of San Francisco mob violence of earlier years, the Chi-

nese Massacre became a major point in time in the urbanization of Los Angeles. It was the first time the city made headline news around the world and even supplanted front-page coverage of the Great Chicago Fire that occurred two weeks before. The massacre also exposed an undercurrent of racism and xenophobia that would periodically burst to the surface, briefly interruptThe Rise and Decline of the Mexican Plaza ˚ 77

ing as well as redirecting the urbanization process.130 But if Los Angeles was ever to come out of its long isolation and grow as an American city, mob violence had to be wiped out. In 1877 Calle de los Negros was renamed Los Angeles Street, marking the growing desire for law and order.131 What is more, the Chinese themselves perceived these changes with an understanding that the rule of the lynch mob could no longer serve the economic interests of Los Angeles, interests in which they played an important part. Their response to the massacre took many forms. Beginning in 1875, the ancient Chiao ritual was introduced to allow the community to express its collective pain and loss through a public ceremony of renewal and hope for the future. Historian Cesar Lopez noted that the public ceremony also served to reaffirm the spatial links between the Plaza and Chinatown: “Lasting four nights and three days, the events surrounding the Chiao centered within the old Chinatown and the Plaza area. However, organizers openly invited the public at-large to attend and participate. On the third day, a feast, a turtledove and a ceremonial march marked a day that centered on a procession that began at the Plaza and ended at the Los Angeles River.”132 But when necessary, the Chinese took a less ceremonial approach in their interactions with the larger city.

Tellingly, in the winter of 1878–1879, Chinese wholesale vegetable ped-

dlers at the Plaza objected to the harsh license fees and regulatory ordinances that were imposed by the City Council. They formed the Wai Leong Hong (Good People Protective Association)—and then did something completely unexpected by the majority of residents who depended on Chinese produce—they went on strike! As a result, Los Angeles went without vegetables for several weeks until city officials agreed to sit with Chinese farmers at the bargaining table. This little-known event may have helped the Chinese to better understand their role in the local economy as well as the power of organization as a means for community self-defense. The strike was a sign that Los Angeles was undergoing dramatic social, economic, and technological change and that the Chinese were an integral part of that change.133 But the federal Chinese Exclusion Acts were passed in 1882, anti-Chinese legislation was enacted by the Los Angeles City Council, and local employers signed agreements not to hire Chinese workers.134 The city legislation would never take full effect; employers knew that a large and able labor supply was available within the Plaza area, and whether they spoke Spanish or Cantonese mattered less than the profits to be gained. 78

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So if the railroads and new red-brick architecture symbolized the Ameri-

canization of Los Angeles, so did the city’s dependence on Mexican and Chinese labor. Indeed, with the dramatic change in government and the end of the rancho economy and culture in Southern California, the transformations that were taking place at the Plaza came to symbolize the reality that Los Angeles was entering a new era and was well on its way to becoming an American city.

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Chapter three

From Ciudad to City

The 1870s signaled the beginning of several cultural, technological,

demographic, and economic transformations that further defined Los Angeles as an emerging American city, and they were most reflected by the changes at the Plaza. Railroads were central to the growth of this new economy based on agriculture, oil production, real estate, and tourism. Blake Gumprecht has observed: “The completion of a transcontinental railroad line to Los Angeles in 1876 changed Southern California forever.”1 Los Angeles was an isolated community until the Southern Pacific roared into town. More lasting than the violence of the previous decades that made international headlines, the railroad put the city on the map. It is not just that it brought thousands of people—it was the harbinger of the urban-industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the overall specter of change during the last two decades of the century brought an end to the rancho economy and culture along with the significance of the Plaza as the civic center. Gradually, the old square and the city were thought of as two separate spaces in the public mind—one represented the past, while the other represented the present and future. Anglo population growth and increased segregation of Mexicans north of the Plaza in Sonoratown also meant that the historic

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community-wide Mexican fiestas, patriotic celebrations, and other forms of recreation were discontinued or replaced by modified, usually more exclusive forms of entertainment.

Historian Albert Camarillo found a similar set of circumstances occur-

ring at Santa Barbara: “In the years following the Gold Rush, for example, the Barbarenos had been entertained annually by a traveling Sonoran-Mexican circus; this circus was actually a troupe of acrobats and musicians who performed feats of physical ability and other entertainment. In 1874 the Mexican circus discontinued its performances in the community and were replaced shortly thereafter by an American circus from San Francisco.”2 Other traditional forms of cultural recreation that once unified the Mexican pueblo were modified as well, reflecting the larger social transformations taking place: “By the mid-1870s, Anglos [were capitalizing] on the commercial value of the horse races by introducing new, alien forms of competition (i.e., the steeplechase and the Irish hurdles). A formal racetrack was constructed, and an admission charge ended the customary free Sunday amusements.”3

Some traditional Mexican public rituals and fiestas were therefore dis-

continued or modified as a response to dramatic demographic changes. Other activities were initiated as a means for greater community cohesion and as expressions of a growing sense of mexicanidad (nationalism) among Californios and more recent immigrants from Mexico. The Plaza was the center of the community and would be the scene where these modified activities occurred, placing less emphasis on religious ritual and more on political expression. It would also be the place that most reflected the change in the overall look and direction of Los Angeles from a Mexican ciudad to an American city. And if one year epitomized this change, 1876 was marked by three events that signaled the rise of Anglo cultural and economic dominance and the declining significance of the Plaza. The first was religious and spatial, the second was symbolic, and the third was everything that came with the railroad.

Construction of the Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, Los Angeles’ second

Catholic church, was begun in 1871 and completed in 1876. Under Bishop Amat, the cultural alienation of the Plaza’s Mexican parishioners that had been taking place since the 1850s also became spatial. The new church was an imposing edifice for its day and was located far south of the Plaza on Second and Main Streets “in the increasingly fashionable, affluent, English-speaking

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Plaza area map, 1879, by A. J. Stahlberg. Andrés Pico’s adobe on Calle Principal (Main Street) is incorrectly listed as that of Pío Pico, his brother. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

residential district of the community.”4 Amat’s plan for the new cathedral was based upon the memory of his own childhood parish, San Miguel del Puerto in Barcelona, Spain. The architectural style of Saint Vibiana’s was neo-baroque. It was constructed of brick rather than adobe with disregard for the Hispanic colonial heritage and materials of the old Plaza church.5 Thus, Saint Vibiana’s came to symbolize the cultural and geographic separation between the city’s new political and economic center near the junction of Temple and Main Streets and the Mexican “past” that remained at the Plaza. Del Castillo concludes that, in effect, Saint Vibiana’s soon became the exclusive place of worship for the Anglo population. The Plaza church became a segregated church for the Spanish speaking. Despite

From Ciudad to City ˚ 83

their isolation and fall from prominence, Mexican Americans took a special pride in their little church on the Plaza. An anonymous letter writer in 1893 found it “infinitely more bright and beautiful” than the new Cathedral. With the construction of other predominately Anglo churches, St. Vincent’s and St. Joseph’s in 1888, the Plaza church fell into official insignificance.6

Indeed, the emergence of a new, less-tolerant Catholic hierarchy and the construction of new religious centers hastened the Plaza’s decline just as much as random violence or public celebrations signaled change at the old square.

In February 1876, sixty-six-year–old Andrés Pico, the former Mexican

general and state senator and one of the signatories of the state constitution, was found badly beaten and unconscious near his brick townhouse on Main Street. The once-wealthy ranchero was just a few steps from the Plaza and the old Church that witnessed the various chapters of his life. He lingered for a few days and then died in his home at 212 North Main Street. His widowed older brother, Pío Pico, wrote to their sister Isadora Pico de Forster in San Diego that his heart “was an irreparable void of tears and desolation”; he knew that Los Angeles was changing.7

On July 4, the city celebrated one hundred years of American indepen-

dence on soil that had been part of the United States for only thirty years. The entire city was decorated for the occasion with the stars and stripes and pictures of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. A large parade was attended by more than three thousand people.8 The procession made its way from the wool mills on Aliso Street to the Round House on Main Street; in it were floats carrying thirteen young women who represented the original colonies and the triumphant chariot of the French Benevolent Society.9 Marching past the Plaza were members of Fire Engine Company No. 38, Forty-Niners with picks and shovels, butchers and other tradesmen, and a couple dressed as George and Martha Washington riding in a float representing the Philadelphia Brewery.10 Harris Newmark was an eyewitness to the event and recalled that an interesting feature of the parade was the inclusion of forty-two members of the division of (Anglo) U.S.-Mexican war veterans, many of whom were prominent in civic life. And even though the Plaza no longer was the center for public celebrations, the Pico House was elegantly

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adorned and displayed a banner that read: “1776. 1876. Now for 1976! To the patrons of the Pico House: May you live 100 years! No North, no South, no East, no West!”11

Two months later, on September 6, the Southern Pacific Railroad con-

nected San Francisco and Los Angeles. Almost immediately, the crowded trains carrying scores of new settlers from the east began arriving at the rail station north of the Plaza. Land booms lured thousands of immigrants to Los Angeles, whose population grew from 11,000 in 1880 to 50,000 by the decade’s end, the vast majority now Anglo Americans.

Thus, Pico’s death, as well as the Unites States’ centennial and the ar-

rival of the railroad, symbolized the changes that had come to the city and the Plaza. The expansion and consolidation of Anglo American rule led to a profound transformation in the symbolic meaning of the space. Instead of the business and political elite residing around the Plaza to attend church and conduct business, as was the custom during the period of Mexican rule, the new Anglo elite moved the center of business and civic life farther west to the junction of Temple and Main, where city hall presently is located.12 Thus, with the movement of civic activity away from the Plaza and exodus of the rancheros from their adobes, the blighted condition of the space began to draw public attention. A new effort to revive the old square began, but also would reflect a new vision for the city.

A Changing Landscape

Since the founding of the present Plaza in the 1820s, local residents

voiced their concern for the visual layout of Los Angeles. In 1836 a commission was appointed to study the problems that resulted from the arrangement of streets, alleys, and open spaces and “report a plan for repairing the monstrous irregularity of the streets brought about by ceding house lots and erecting houses in the city.”13 In 1845 a city beautification movement was launched by the influential regidor (councilman) Leonardo Cota. The regidor made a dramatic appeal before the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles: It appears that the time has come in which the City of Los Angeles has begun to figure in the political sphere of things and with appreciable ele-

From Ciudad to City ˚ 85

The Plaza, view looking west, ca. 1881. To the left of the Plaza church wall is the adobe of Andrés Pico. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

ments of progress; what is now required in order to finish the work? Although this small city is beginning to show its astral magnificence and brilliance in a manner that when a traveler comes to the City of Los Angeles everybody tells him that it will be the Mexican paradise; but not as it finds itself today, with the majority of buildings presenting an appearance so 86

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melancholy, somber, sad, and dreadful that the hecatombs of ancient Rome made a better impression than the buildings of a free people.14



The ayuntamiento members were so moved by Cota’s statements that

they passed five new ordinances, drafted by Pío Pico and Juan Bandini, for the purpose of city beautification.15 In 1847, shortly after armed conflict between the United States and Mexico ended, there was wide concern over the irregular shape of the Plaza caused by encroachment by private residences and businesses. Outspoken members of the community, led by Agustín Olvera and Juan Sepúlveda, petitioned the ayuntamiento for assistance in returning the Plaza to its original symmetrical shape.16

From the 1870s to the turn of the century, a new civic center gradually

emerged southwest of the Plaza—today’s City Hall. Several efforts were made to save the Plaza from further decline. In 1861, under the administration of Padre Blas Raho, “a genial, broad-minded Italian,” the old Plaza church was practically rebuilt, and Sanchez Street, which terminated at the Plaza, was opened by the Common Council.17 Between 1869 and 1870, Pío Pico mortgaged his vast land interests in the San Fernando Valley (co-owned by his younger brother, Andrés) in order to invest $85,000 to build his magnificent Pico House hotel, which fronted the Plaza from the southwest. The Pico House was the first three-story building in Los Angeles and the most elegant hotel south of San Francisco (facing page). It was designed in the Italianate style by architect Ezra F. Kysor on property once owned by Pico’s brotherin–law, José Antonio Carrillo.18 With exterior walls painted to resemble blue granite, the building was the architectural statement of its time and could be seen for miles from all directions. It was also a forerunner to the modern resort hotel, complete with running water and restrooms on all three floors and a central courtyard with palm trees and live parrots screeching out from metal cages.

Throughout the 1870s, the Pico House allowed the aging former gover-

nor to regain some of the social standing that he and other Californio elites had lost in the previous decades. It also helped the Plaza regain some of its fading prestige. During the 1870s, stagecoaches would pick up passengers at the port in San Pedro and carry them to the hotel in the heart of town. But Pico was often beset by poor business judgment and confused by the English–speaking courts and dishonest lawyers or was simply too trusting of others. By 1880, he could not pay his creditors and lost the hotel to forecloFrom Ciudad to City ˚ 87

Pico House, ca. 1870. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

sure. It was sold at auction for $16,000 to San Francisco Savings and Loan Company.19 The Pico House was soon surpassed by the Saint Elmo Hotel, which was located closer to the new business district.20

A second attempt to stem the southward movement of the city’s cen-

ter was the construction in 1870 of the Merced Theater adjacent to the Pico House. The property was owned by William Abbot and his Mexican wife, Mercedes Garcia de Abbot. They also owned the old El Dorado saloon on the same site on Main Street, which was moved closer to the new civic center. Soon after the El Dorado was moved in August, work on the Abbots’ Merced Theater, a three-story structure also designed by Kysor, began in September. It was named for Mercedes and opened just a few steps from the Plaza in December 1870, and it became the center for live English and Spanish theater in Los Angeles.21

Indeed, throughout the 1870s the Plaza was able to retain some of its

former prestige as an important focal point in civic affairs. A Catholic school had been in operation since 1855 in the two-story Lugo House on the eastern edge of the Plaza. It would eventually move to the western side of down-

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town.22 Yet despite these efforts, the gradual westward expansion of the Anglo city permanently transformed the geographic and symbolic importance of the Plaza.

Anglo business and political elites, besides creating a new civic center

southwest of the Plaza, sought to locate their private residences spatially distant from the Plaza, and these became forerunners of the suburban commuter zones. This inverted sociospatial arrangement stood in sharp contrast to the Plaza’s role in the original urban plan for Los Angeles. Ultimately, this contributed to the city’s gradual decentralization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as did the ongoing process of urban segmentation along racial and class lines.

The privatization of Los Angeles began at the Plaza with the develop-

ment of the city’s embryonic public works. In December 1867 the local press announced the opening of the Los Angeles Gas Works across from the Plaza on Main Street, followed by the Los Angeles Water Company in the early 1870s and Los Angeles Electric, located on Commercial and Alameda Streets, in 1885.23 Amid the summer dirt and dust, the mud in winter, and the clamor of horse-drawn wagons along Main Street, the powerful stench of burning La Brea tar to fuel the city’s first gas works always caught the attention of passersby at the old square.

In fact, complaints about the unsightly appearance of the Plaza area were

frequent news items during the late 1860s. Particularly offensive to the editorial eye was the water tank in the middle of the Plaza and the dead dogs, cats, and chickens frequently found near the brick structure. The Plaza’s declining significance also figured into local politics and the evolution of Los Angeles Park, today known as Pershing Square. In 1866 Los Angeles Mayor Cristobal Aguilar—a former Plaza resident—signed an ordinance that set aside five acres of the pueblo to be called la plaza abaja, or lower plaza, for common use of the people. This new plaza was not intended to compete with or take precedence over the city’s main Plaza.24 Aguilar was the last Mexican mayor under American rule and understood the Plaza’s significance in the life of the city.25 However, Harris Newmark observed that the belief prevailed that little or nothing could be done toward persuading the Common Council to beautify the Plaza. A movement to lay out and embellish the five-acre tract bounded by Hill and Olive, and Fifth and Sixth

From Ciudad to City ˚ 89

streets, met with such favor that, by the first week of October, some [$800] had been subscribed for the purpose. On November [19] a public meeting was held, presided over by Prudent Beaudry, [with] Major H. M. Mitchell serving as Secretary; and it was suggested to call the proposed square the Los Angeles Park.26



Given this apparent rejection of the old Plaza by the Common Council,

Los Angeles Park, in effect, became “an Anglo American counterweight to the Mexican Plaza and, for a brief time, became a beacon for the southern expansion of the Anglo business district.”27 Sentiments for improving the Plaza as a source of civic pride sometimes were voiced in the local press almost as much as was the ongoing criticism. In 1869 the Los Angeles Daily News expressed its views on the fate of the Plaza: What we want is a place for public promenade, where little children can throw themselves upon the grass and sport in the shade of umbrageous trees. This is what we ought to have. The Plaza is big enough. Remove the ungainly looking excrescence from the center of the Plaza, plant trees, make grass and flower plots, walks, erect benches, and place a fountain in the midst, and in a short time we would have a place of recreation for our citizens, that would be conducive to health and reflect credit upon the taste of the City Fathers.28



Public outcry over the Plaza’s deteriorating condition eventually led to a

movement to save the space. In February 1871, the Common Council ordered that a standing committee be appointed on water and plaza improvements. The committee’s main charge was to determine the needs and allocate sufficient funds for improvements and regular maintenance of the Plaza and Los Angeles Park. Therefore, what the Daily News advocated in 1869 appeared to confirm the growing understanding that the Plaza area had taken on new cultural meaning for Anglo Los Angeles. As such, the physical transformation of the Mexican Plaza to a landscaped ornamental or “garden” park in the 1880s closely mirrored the broader cultural transformation of Los Angeles from Mexican-Catholic to Anglo-Protestant rule. In other words, the analysis of the Plaza underscores the ongoing cultural contestation taking place as economic forces restructured the city’s original public space. These changes also revealed that the Plaza’s most enduring quality lay in the dy90

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The Plaza, view looking west from Los Angeles Street, 1880s. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

namics of its aesthetics and social use, which continually changed in response to personal action or broader sociopolitical forces. As testimony to this changing landscape, Plaza advocates of the day endorsed a design and use of the square in accordance with the reformist ideal of public space that was gaining acceptance in the far west. Specifically, they sought to emulate the urban park philosophy and design concepts advanced by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of New York’s Central Park, and his co-designer Calvert Vaux.

The public park was a product of nineteenth-century urbanization and

industrialization—a piece of country in the city.29 The park would serve as a palliative to the urban landscape. It would soothe, heal, and allow needed breathing space in the crowded, growing metropolis. The park became “the green lungs of the city,” a resort of cool breezes and cleansing sunlight against the disease–laden vapors of the city.30 Indeed, the motivation for creating urban parks was reformist, and their role was physical, social, and moral—built on an expectation of improving the environment, social conFrom Ciudad to City ˚ 91

ditions, and the human spirit. Olmsted conceived Central Park and other public landscapes as social safety valves, mixing diverse classes and ethnicities in common (bourgeois) recreations and pleasures. His philosophy was steeped in conservative reform that sought deference to authority and social order: “No one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who visit [Central] Park, can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city–-an influence favorable to courtesy, self-control, and temperance.”31

Olmsted believed that the urban park represented an antidote and

counterforce against the evils of industrialization and the city.32 For him, the pleasure offered by the park was a highly contemplative sort of recreation. He believed that rural scenery imposed a calming sense of its own sacredness on the city’s rough elements. But as time passed and populations grew, he placed increasing emphasis on the hygienic and sociological benefits of the urban park. Consequently, the distinctiveness of the pastoral and picturesque, the Olmstedian ideal for most park designs in the United States, found its way to Los Angeles during the “Gilded Age.” And even while Los Angeles of the 1870s, with a population of less than six thousand, was certainly not the imposing, crowded city of Olmsted’s New York, Plaza advocates sought to create an ornamental park that would inspire civic pride and serve as a magnet for tourists and residents alike, far outweighing any moral or health benefits it might produce.

By the early 1870s, significant changes in the physical appearance of the

Plaza had taken place. The water system, brick tank, and franchise passed through several hands until, in 1870, it became the Los Angeles City Water Company. In 1871 the original rectangular shape was changed to its present circular design.33 The following year, the brick water tank—long seen as the city’s unrivaled eyesore—was replaced with an ornamental fountain, complete with a boy on a dolphin spouting water from its mouth.34 The water was to be kept running as a tribute to Felipe de Neve, the founder of the city.

In 1880, after much public outcry, the City Council voted to provide

$5,000 for long-term Plaza improvements. Evergreen trees were planted in a circular row and trimmed in a conical shape. But this not only resulted in a loss of space, it also affected the multiple uses of the Plaza from decades past.35 A “greening” period ensued. New concrete sidewalks, wrought–iron fencing, benches, lawn grass, and four Morton Bay fig trees planted by Elijah

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Hook Workman (that still stand today) drew resounding praise from local boosters. The Los Angeles Herald lauded this achievement: “The Plaza is now a thing of beauty. Under the skillful hand of Councilman Workman and a landscape gardener, it [became] pleasing to the eye and [blossomed] with semi–tropical vegetation.”36 Although it was somewhat isolated from the southwestern expansion of the business district, the Plaza would continue to be a functioning part of downtown life by providing succeeding generations of Angelenos, especially working-class Mexican, Chinese, and European immigrants, with important social and cultural space.

This spatial continuity between the Plaza and the emerging American

city of Los Angeles was not always the case for other former Mexican pueblos during this dramatic period of change in California. For example, in Santa Barbara and San Diego, the areas surrounding their presidios and plazas were physically isolated from Anglo urban development. Santa Barbara’s pueblo viejo, or old town, that surrounded the presidio became a slum for working– class Mexicans, while the town’s version of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district of brothels, saloons, and gambling houses developed in Chinatown, next to and encroaching on el pueblo viejo. This present-day resort town was founded as a presidio in 1782 and had no plan to accommodate its civilian population growth. The irregular footpaths, narrow dirt streets, and small adobe homes of el pueblo viejo “often drew the ire of Americans.”37

Albert Camarillo writes that during the 1850s, “the new gridiron street

pattern imposed by Anglo planners and Santa Barbara businessmen overran el pueblo viejo, destroying much of the Mexican city.”38 These actions forced many Mexicans to fight city hall; Josefa Moreno de la Guerra was among them.39 In 1875, one year after the death of her husband, Pablo de la Guerra, Santa Barbara’s most influential statesman, construction was begun on a new city hall at the corner of today’s de la Guerra and State Streets. The project was completed in 1876 at a cost of $12,000. In May 1877, Josefa filed a lawsuit in superior court against the city and county of Santa Barbara for wrongfully and unlawfully ousting her from property that she inherited from her husband and for withholding compensation in the amount of $5,000. She ultimately lost the suit, her property, and subsequent appeals.40 Even so, Josefa de la Guerra’s case served to illustrate the ongoing conflicts in the transformation of Mexican pueblos into American cities. Likewise in San Diego, a separate and distinct Anglo American “new town” was established in the

From Ciudad to City ˚ 93

French businessman Philippe Garnier, builder of the Garnier Block, his wife, Jeannette, and their four children, ca. 1890. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

late 1860s on the bay, physically distant from the old pueblo surrounding the presidio that eventually attained the status in the twentieth century of a picturesque tourist attraction.41

Historian Lisbeth Haas has found that in the rural communities of Cali-

fornia, Anglo territorial conquest was far less dramatic than in the populated centers. In San Juan Capistrano, the Californio population “was not overwhelmed numerically by Anglo American migration as were Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego by 1880 or 1890, when barrios formed in the old urban cores of these pueblos and city space became increasingly dominated by American planning ideals.”42 Consequently, in Los Angeles, even though much of the old pueblo had deteriorated, the Plaza was never completely cut off from the city and continued to be a magnet for the growing immigrant population. In July 1889, it served as the starting point for a large parade led by the French colony, which gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.43 The colony, or French-Town, as it was 94

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known, flourished between the 1870s and the 1890s on the southeast side of the Plaza, near Chinatown along Los Angeles, Aliso, and Arcadia Streets.

In 1886, Bath Street, slightly west of Olvera Street, became an extension

of Main Street. Eighteen feet were cut off from properties running along both sides of Bath Street to accommodate the Main Street extension. After the street widening, several new buildings (some of which still stand) were constructed near the Plaza, along Main Street. These buildings include the Sepúlveda House built in 1887, the Jones Building during the late 1880s, the Simpson-Jones Building in 1894, and the Italian Hall in 1907–1908. It is important to note that the changing appearance of the Plaza, or “Plaza Park,” was directly linked to this street extension project.

In August 1886, the Times reported that the Plaza had fallen on hard

times. The cement fountain in its middle was “filled with tin cans, cast-off clothing, green scum and stagnant water,” and the space served as “a reservation for tramps, opium fiends and vagrants of all descriptions.”44 Nature took its toll with an invasion of the scale bug, which made it imperative for the city to cut off and burn most of the park’s vegetation, including several citrus, magnolia, and towering cypress trees. So with the opening of Main Street, “it became necessary to make the Plaza Park, lying on direct route of the traveler from the depot to his hotel, a little more inviting in appearance than an abandoned graveyard.”45 To achieve this, a new fountain was installed, as well as two circular cement walks interspaced with flowerbeds, new plants, trees, and an ornamental iron fence. This is largely how the Plaza would look well into the twentieth century.

The razing of Calle de los Negros in 1887 did very little to improve the

surrounding area, especially on the east side of the Plaza. Even though the violence that had characterized the area from the 1850s to the early 1870s had largely declined, prostitution continued to flourish and actually experienced something of a boom during this period. To be sure, prostitution had been a visible—albeit controversial—part of the community since the early days of the pueblo. For example, during the 1820s, civic leaders in Southern California were concerned about the rise in prostitution, rape, adultery, and abortion. Women who were found guilty of immoral behavior were punished by having their heads shaved and then were displayed on church steps or in the Plaza for public humiliation.46 While men were subject to the law for such violations, patriarchal legal and social norms often allowed the courts to interpret the law in ways that treated men with much less severity.47 From Ciudad to City ˚ 95

The Los Angeles Padrón, or census, of 1836 listed 15 out of 250 non-Indian women residing within the pueblo’s limits with the classification of Mala Vida, “bad life” (i.e., prostitute).48 The increase in the numbers of settlers from the United States and Europe contributed to the increase in prostitution. Horace Bell observed that during John Frémont’s military occupation of Los Angeles in 1847, he was often seen in the company of Doña Ramona, “sometimes known as Mrs. Frémont, [a] well–known lady of the demi-mode [who] . . . cast the sunshine of her affection on the conquering hero.”49

The Gold Rush brought a new dimension to prostitution in Los Angeles.

In 1853 San Francisco, now oversupplied, sent a shipload of prostitutes to San Pedro. They were bound for Los Angeles and provided the local bawds with, in the words of W. W. Robinson, “a sort of all–nations aspect.”50 Prostitution grew with the town throughout the 1860s, and there was no attempt to control or segregate it. Brothels were found along upper Main Street and Fort Street (present-day Broadway) to Los Angeles Street between First and Short Streets.

However, it grew to such a point that in May 1874, the City Council

passed an ordinance prohibiting prostitution from the new central business district.51 As a result, brothels multiplied west of the Plaza along Bath Street (now North Main), North Broadway and into Sonoratown, and east of the Plaza near the emerging Chinatown, along Alameda and Commercial Street. Prostitution thrived along the small section of Los Angeles Street within feet of the Plaza—the former Calle de los Negros.52 Brick buildings supplanted crumbling adobes in Chinatown on the Plaza’s east side during the 1870s and 1880s. Many units were designed with small cubicles or “cribs” for the specific purpose of sex for cash.53 They appeared on several maps of the day on Ferguson Alley, Los Angeles, Alameda, and Aliso Streets simply as “female boarding.”

Prostitution peaked in the 1890s with the support of local police and

elected officials, many of whom were regular visitors to the elegant bordellos near the business district, as well as the “crib quarters” near the Plaza. Brothels on North Alameda Street, along the Southern Pacific tracks, were the most active. As such, they became the first view of Los Angeles for arriving train passengers. The Plaza’s red light district became so much a part of the landscape that in 1897, a special advertising brochure for the annual celebration of La Fiesta de Los Angeles included the cribs as an official venue. It was aptly entitled “Souvenir Sporting Guide” and allowed “Madame Wier of 312 96

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North Alameda, [who] needs no introduction to the sportively inclined,” to advertise her trade. Another ad featured Madame Bolanger’s Octoroom at 438 North Alameda: “This house is of wide reputation and is composed of misses Minnie Wilson, Bessie Berlina, Edna Nanet, May Wilson and Madeline Moss some famous Southern beauties of the octoroon type, who will give you more fun and good healthy amusement than you would find in a day’s walk.”54 During La Fiesta, these brochures were so popular among the “sportsmen” of the city that they even went through a second printing.

Public outcry against legal prostitution peaked in the early twentieth

century under the administration of Mayor Arthur C. Harper (1906–1909). Not only were the mayor and his political allies less than enthusiastic about regulating the brothel industry, they were well-known patrons of the bricklined bordellos. A scandal from this behavior finally led to Harper’s recall in 1909.55 Progressive Era reformers in Los Angeles were led by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who fought city hall until the passage of the Red Light Injunction and Abatement Law in 1913 ended legal prostitution in the city.56

Throughout the late nineteenth century, despite the persistence of vari-

ous forms of vice, a few remaining Californio families continued to maintain their Plaza townhouses. In 1887 Eloisa Martinez de Sepúlveda built a new residence and boarding house slightly north of the Plaza on Main Street (formerly Bath Street). The Sepúlveda House replaced her mother’s adobe and was built in the Eastlake Victorian style. Like Pío Pico’s Italianate design for the Pico House on the opposite side of the Plaza, it reflected the efforts by Mexicans to adapt to the changing cultural landscape. More and more, however, Plaza adobes were being replaced by fired-brick buildings. For example, Italian settler Antonio Pelanconi married Isabel Ramirez—a member of a prominent Mexican family—and built a two-story brick structure (the oldest in the city), the Pelanconi House, on Wine Street in 1855–1857. In 1884 the city’s first firehouse building replaced Francisco Ocampo’s adobe townhouse on the southeast corner of the Plaza. Other new structures included the fivestory Vickery/Brunswig Building (1888), the adjacent Plaza House (1883), and the Garnier Block on the southeast side of the Plaza, constructed in 1890 by Frenchman Philippe Garnier to house businesses serving the Chinese community. Together these buildings symbolized the dramatic change that had taken place since the American conquest. More to the point, William Deverell notes that in the transformation of the city from Spanish to English and From Ciudad to City ˚ 97

from Catholic to Protestant, adobe was consigned to the “unusable past.” Fired brick was indeed a metaphor for the larger changes taking place at the Plaza. “Brick stood for the Anglo future.”57

These changes at the Plaza that marked the city’s Americanization were

seen in April 1894 when civic leaders and businessmen, led by the Merchants Association, staged the first Fiesta de Los Angeles. The city’s new and very American sense of self-promotion—prostitution notwithstanding—was now ritualized in an enormous public spectacle that discovered a “usable,” albeit mythic, Spanish-Mexican past as a means to promote a new cultural and economic direction for Los Angeles.58 The rise of what Carey McWilliams called the “Spanish myth” at this particular time in the social and economic transformation of Southern California is similar to the romantic vision of the antebellum South that emerged after the Civil War. Through La Fiesta, the Spanish myth was used to separate Mexicans—especially recent immigrants, who were an increasing part of the labor force—from the history of Mexicans in Los Angeles who were designated “Spanish.” This bifurcation of the Mexican community, which McWilliams detailed in his classic 1948 study North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States, enabled Anglo city boosters to flaunt a regional history that was curiously devoid of Mexicans and thus devoid of their role in the violent past. Within this social climate, conflicts arose between civic leaders who sought to destroy what was left of the built Mexican past and an embryonic historic preservation movement.

The Fight for the Plaza

The earliest effort to preserve Spanish-Mexican historic sites in South-

ern California and throughout the state began in the 1880s with individual priests of the Catholic Church who sought to preserve the Franciscan missions. However, their major concern was restoring the structures as places of worship rather than giving attention to architectural and historical integrity.59 During the 1890s, the Native Sons of the Golden West and Los Angeles city librarian Tesa L. Kelso joined forces to preserve the crumbling structures. Kelso was possibly inspired by the missions to recapture the “romance” of California’s pre-Anglo past, much as Helen Hunt Jackson’s epic 1884 novel Ramona had done. And with the assistance of the Historical Society of South98

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ern California, Kelso formed the Association for the Preservation of the Missions. They made progress in raising public consciousness and some initial funds, but the effort languished when Kelso moved to the East.60

In 1895 the Landmarks Club of Southern California was established by

Charles Fletcher Lummis primarily to carry on Kelso’s work in preserving the missions. The club began operations in the office of Land of Sunshine, the local magazine he edited, and was the first organization in the western United States to have as its principal goal the preservation of historic buildings.61 But before the club could begin work on its first major project of saving Mission San Juan Capistrano, it became embroiled in a public fight to save the Los Angeles Plaza from demolition.

On January 23, 1896, Mayor Frank Rader chaired a meeting of the Los

Angeles City Board of Park Commissioners, which recommended to the City Council that “the Plaza be abandoned as a [city] park and the ground be used for public market purposes.”62 The Landmarks Club was immediately placed in a defensive mode, especially after the Los Angeles Express published its support for the measure: For some little time Mayor Rader has been advocating in a quiet way the abandoning of the Plaza as a city park and the establishing of a public market there. In his annual message to the Council he touched briefly on this subject. At the meeting of the Park Commission, this morning, the Mayor suggested to the Board that it recommend to the Council that the Plaza be selected as the site for the public market. All the Commissioners thought well of the proposition. Park Superintendent Meserve stated that it costs the city $600 to maintain the Plaza and that the Park is the loafing place of hobos. Commissioner Workman thought no better place could be selected. Geographically the Plaza was the very center of the city. One of the Commissioners was of the opinion that the Plaza would be out of the way for a market; but Mr. Post called attention to the fact, however, that the residence part of the city is not confined solely to the southwest. After a long discussion of the subject, the clerk was directed to communicate to the City Council that the Board favored the abandoning of the Plaza for park purposes and establishing of a public market there.63



The fact that the proposal was met with such resounding favor among

elected officials could be linked to two issues. The first was economic, as the From Ciudad to City ˚ 99

city’s finances were under significant constraint. For on the same day the city park commissioners passed their Plaza market proposal, the City Council approved drastic cutbacks in government, laying off several employees and closing the city corral, for a total savings of $3,000.64 The second motive was concerned with the fact that since the late 1870s, the Plaza was the public gathering place for a growing number of the poor—a use of the space that would carry on into the twentieth century. The Times reported on this problem of “bums and hobos” in the Plaza and expressed the particular concerns of the newly formed Merchants Association: “Down with the bums is the war cry of the Merchants Association. The crowd of dirty, lazy, whiskeysoaked hobos who blockade the sidewalks of North Main and Los Angeles Streets have aroused the ire of all respectable people who have business to transact in that region of the city. The directors of the Merchants Association last evening delegated Messrs. Pridham, Coulter and Lichtenberger to protest against the nuisance before the Police Commissioners.”65

Such fervent opinions reflected the new business-booster mandate of

intolerance to labor unions, the unemployed, the foreign-born, and other “undesirable” groups in the city. Los Angeles Superintendent Meserve perhaps summarized the negative judgment against the Plaza when he informed the board that in addition to the high cost of maintaining the old square, “little benefit was derived by the public from the resort, owing to its proximity to the Chinese and [prostitution] crib quarters.”66 Sensing the impending threat to the symbolic and historic center of his newly adopted city, Lummis outlined plans for a full-scale defense of the Plaza, as noted in his diary: “Council approved covering Olvera Street [the Plaza] and converting it to a market. We must oppose this immediately. A hurriedly called meeting was held and it was agreed that a protest to the Council should be made Pronto!!!”67

The Landmarks Club proposed its own resolution at this meeting: Whereas it has been proposed by certain city officials to confiscate to the users of a public market building the public park known as the Plaza and, whereas, the Plaza is the center around which cluster all the historic and political associations of Los Angeles from the founding of the pueblo in 1781 up to within the very recent years of the new city, aside from its historic association, it is of material importance as the only green spot in a

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quarter of the city which seriously needs such adornment; an attraction to tourists and a pleasure to thousands of residents, therefore, be it resolved that this club, incorporated specially to preserve from decay and vandalism the historic landmarks of Southern California, we feel it a duty to protest against such perversion and practical obliteration of the most important landmark in this city; and that it will, if necessary, exhaust all legal measures to prevent such perversion.68



Lummis counted on his friendship with his former boss, Times owner

General Harrison Gray Otis, for support.69 The General had shown initial interest in the Landmarks Club soon after it was founded by contributing $5 instead of the annual $1 dues and accepted an appointment to its advisory board of prominent citizens. He then joined in the club’s protest by publishing two letters to the editor in defense of the Plaza. One Otis letter was signed under the pseudonym Charles J. Fox. The letter reminded readers of Section 113 of the City Charter, which irrevocably dedicated city park lands for public park purposes; thus he directly challenged the City Council: “Keep your seats, gentlemen! The first vandalistic hand that is outstretched to mar the present beauty of the Plaza Park will instantly be paralyzed by an order of injunction from the Superior Court.”70 Consequently, with support from General Otis and the Times to offset the opposition from the mayor and the rival Express, the Lummis force created such uproar at city hall that within a few days the City Council received the following communication from City Attorney William E. Dunn, stating his opinion on the matter: In the matter of the conversion of the old Plaza Park into a market place, I have examined the records and find that this Plaza has been in existence since the first settlement of the city of Los Angeles. I find that, on December 20, 1856, the City Council formally defined the lines of the Plaza. This action is set forth on page 156 of Vol I of the Complete Ordinances of the city. Many references are made to the Plaza after this time, but the first formal action took place on the 6th day of April, 1886, when the Council passed a resolution formally declaring the plan of the park as adopted on March 30, 1886, official. The various steps taken have, in my opinion, dedicated the Plaza for park purposes, or at least for the purposes for which plazas were, and are still used in Mexican pueblos. These purposes are at vari-

From Ciudad to City ˚ 101

ance with the use of the property for a market place, and under the charter and law of public uses I am of the opinion that a formal change of this public use cannot be made without the assistance of the legislature.71



With Dunn’s recommendation, the movement to demolish the old

square died when the City Council took no further action to seek permission for the proposed change from the Legislature. The Plaza was saved. Lummis and the Landmarks Club did not hesitate to take credit for the demise of the Plaza market proposal. They reported in the next edition of Land of Sunshine that “certain Los Angeles city officials having started a movement to confiscate the historic Plaza and cover it with a market building, the Landmarks Club made a vigorous protest and promised to resist such perversion by all legal steps; whereupon the scheme was abandoned.”72 Although the idea to raze the Plaza originated with Mayor Rader with support from the park commissioners and the Merchants Association, the proposal to build a city market building at the Plaza died when the City Council proved unwilling to seek the assistance of the state legislature.

The Plaza was saved in 1896; but what it was saved for was yet to be de-

termined. Some scholars were correct to point out that Lummis was against the practical use of the Plaza among immigrants as an outdoor wholesale fruit and vegetable market, revealing a certain class and cultural chauvinism. Even so, his effort did save the space from complete physical destruction.73 For without the open space that the proposed market building was to replace, the Plaza’s vibrant social and cultural life, including traditional Mexican religious and patriotic festivals, would have been moved if not lost.

A renewed, albeit romantic, sense of historic preservation began to

flourish around the old square and was most evident at the Plaza church. By the turn of the twentieth century, the present mission-style belfry replaced the Victorian gazebo that had symbolized Anglo cultural ascendancy during the 1860s. William McClung has observed that the new belfry conjured up a misleading image of Indians returning from their toil in the fields to the sound of its peals and evoked an iconography of Old Spain. Hence, the Plaza church gradually assumed the image of a mission around which a town had grown.74 Other Plaza buildings, some dating back to 1818, were razed or continued to deteriorate until the turn of the century. Pío Pico’s former

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Pío Pico’s one-story adobe residence (center), ca. 1895, also served as the capitol of Mexican California. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

adobe townhouse, which had once served as the capitol of Mexican California, was razed to make way for I. W. Hellman to construct a one-story brick building on the corner of Sanchez and Plaza Streets.75 Ironically, only weeks before the former governor’s death in 1894, the floats of the first Fiesta de Los Angeles rolled past the crumbling townhouse, his adjacent Pico House, and the church where he was married and took the oath of office. Through its romantic imagery and appropriation of Mexican culture by costumed Anglo business and political leaders on horseback, La Fiesta, as with Pico’s death, marked the final days of the Californios at the Plaza.

The attempts to transform the Mexican Plaza to a landscaped park by

the end of the nineteenth century revealed that its original function did not augur well with the segmented urbanism of Anglo Los Angeles. Robert Fogelson perhaps more than any contemporary scholar has described the symbolic force of this changing landscape: “Indeed, nowhere in Southern California was the new order and new destiny promised by the conquerors in

From Ciudad to City ˚ 103

The Plaza, view looking east, ca. 1893. The two-story Lugo adobe fronts the Plaza on the right, and the Olvera adobe is on the far left. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

the 1840s more evident than in the emergence of Los Angeles as an [Anglo-] American town by the 1880s.”76 Carey McWilliams, however, offers perhaps the most poignant assessment of this cultural transformation: With the great influx of immigrants into Southern California in the 1880s, the Hispano element was almost completely eclipsed. . . . The typically Spanish appearance of the Southern California towns changed overnight. With a truly awful swiftness of transition, they became undeniably gringo villages. As much as anything else, the transition was symbolized by the disappearance of the adobes, and the disappearance of the adobes symbolized the eclipse of the Hispanos.77



The expansion and consolidation of the Anglo city meant that future

urban growth was directly at odds with the existent Mexican urban form. Instead of the Mexican preference for living in the city center near the Plaza, Anglo elites sought to reside away from the center. The emerging social landscape of Los Angeles would be segmented according to race, ethnicity, and class, as seen in the rise of Sonoratown, Chinatown, and the colonias adjacent to the Los Angeles River and railroad yards.78 Thus, the increased “bar104

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rioization” of Mexicans within the Plaza area during the second half of the nineteenth century only served to extend the socioeconomic and political forces that had preceded it—military conquest, expropriation of land, loss of political power, and economic transformation. Their subsequent incorporation into the emerging agricultural-industrial labor market as low-wage unskilled or semiskilled workers completed the structure of subordination of the Mexican community.

The Plaza as a space for informal social functions as well as formal cele-

brations was foreign to the Anglo city. In its place, an array of government buildings—City Hall, courthouse, post office, and city jail—arose in a “formal setting” based upon the courthouse-square model that was characteristic of Midwestern cities. Main Street and the new central business district became the “center” of Anglo Los Angeles. Unlike their Spanish-speaking predecessors, Progressive planners of the late nineteenth century, like the modernists of the 1920s, wanted to “kill the street,” revealing their general fear of public space and the ontology of a segmented city that would be dominated by private life.79

Chinese New Year parade on Marchessault Street in Old Chinatown, view looking west toward the Plaza, ca. 1895. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. From Ciudad to City ˚ 105

First La Fiesta de Los Angeles parade passing the Plaza church on North Main Street, 1894. Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.



If there is one human parallel that mirrors the conflicts over history,

space, and cultural meaning that the Plaza came to symbolize at the end of the nineteenth century, it can certainly be found in the last years of Pío ­Pico’s life. In 1893, one year before his death, a committee of local history buffs and boosters made arrangements for Pico to travel by train and be on display as the “last California don” at the Chicago World’s Exposition. This was the same exposition at which Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his landmark thesis on the closing of the American frontier.

The committee was confident and excited about the possibilities for in-

creased tourism by the presence of Pico alongside Chumash baskets, local flora and fauna, and succulent California oranges. However, the impoverished former governor perceived this gesture as an affront to his dignity. His response to a reporter appeared in the San Francisco Morning Call and perhaps summarized the frustrations among Californios at the loss of their land and political power as well as their resistance to the new cultural order: “No, I will not go, for two good reasons. The first is because I am poor, and the second is because I do not intend to go to the big show to be one of the animals on exhibit. If those gringos imagine for a moment that they can take me back there and show me in a side tent at two bits a head they are very mistaken.”80 And true to his words, Pico stayed home, penniless but proud. He was unwill106

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ing to be “classified” with the animals and dead artifacts of romantic California. He continued to exist in his own space near the Plaza until he died on September 11, 1894, at age ninety-three, only weeks after the city staged its first La Fiesta de Los Angeles.

The year 1894 not only celebrated what was being left behind, it also fore-

told things to come. Clearly La Fiesta symbolized the businessman’s vision for Los Angeles’ industrial growth based upon the open shop. Conversely, shortly before the carriage floats of La Fiesta ran down Main Street, the first major outburst of the city’s emerging labor movement occurred. A nationwide rail boycott by Pullman employees who had affiliated themselves with the American Railway Union under Eugene Debs deeply affected agriculturally minded Los Angeles, whose recently harvested crops sat rotting for lack of transportation. How these oppositional forces would play out in the next century and the significance of the Plaza as the dramatic stage for this conflict is the subject of our next chapters.

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Chapter four

Homelands Remembered A Plaza of Nations

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Anglo majority

who now called Los Angeles their home were a sharp contrast to the Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and European immigrants with whom they lived. Many of these new Anglo residents came from small Midwestern towns and farms, and despite the strands of populism among their ranks, many brought with them the Protestant values of small-town life. These values were antithetical to the culture and Catholic, Buddhist, and Taoist faiths of the Mexican, Italian, and Chinese immigrants who dominated Plaza life. These Anglo newcomers were generally suspicious of big cities and were alarmed by the mixture of cultures, faiths, and crowded living conditions that they found throughout the Plaza area. So they sought ways to shield themselves from contact with supposedly “inferior cultures,” and many moved away from downtown altogether. In response, Progressive Era reformers initiated programs to “Americanize” these supposedly inferior people in the name of modern education, sanitation, anti-radicalism, and domestic economy.1

Ethnic diversity and class divisions were essential components in the

industrial and geographic expansion of Los Angeles. As previously noted, 109

during the 1890s the city sought to distinguish itself from heavily unionized San Francisco by attracting new business by virtue of the “open shop.” This low-wage working class of Los Angeles that was so integral to industrial expansion was accomplished through large-scale immigration from Mexico, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Asia. Such an industrial strategy was reflected in the distinct geographic segregation and social inequality that spread in early-twentieth-century Los Angeles, especially in residential areas. Mexican immigrants in particular reclaimed the landscape slightly north of the Plaza in Sonoratown, creating a uniquely “Mexican” sense of place downtown, a México de afuera—Mexico outside of Mexico. Historian Devra Weber found that the overwhelming numbers were workers, but there was also a small Mexican elite as well as political refugees from the bloody conflicts of the Mexican Revolution: Others were members of a nascent and small middle class: store keepers, barbers, school teachers, and traders. Mexicans had worked in agriculture, in the mines, in factories, in stores and offices and on railroads. Many wanted to return to Mexico; others wanted to stay. Some liked the U.S.; others hated it and worried that their children were becoming agringada. Men complained about Mexican women changing in the U.S. They were religious, they were anti-clerics. Catholic and Protestant. They were Wobblies, Magonistas, Villistas, Carrancistas and the apolitical. Some fought in the revolution, all had been affected by the fighting, and many had moved north in its wake. They held in common their pride in being Mexican, in Mexican culture, and their almost-unanimous refusal to become citizens of the United States.2

Arriving in Los Angeles, they lived in barrios, boxcar colonias, company towns, agricultural camps, and cheap hotels.3

Besides the concentration of Mexican diaspora there, the Plaza area

was significantly multi-ethnic before World War I. In fact, the foreign-born population in the first decade of the century accounted for more than twenty ethnic groups, although an examination of city directories between 1902 and 1908 reveals that Mexicans were the only group residing on all sides of the old square. Northeast of the Plaza near Ann Street was a mixture of Irish, Orthodox Jews, Mexicans, Russian Molokani, Slavs, Italians, Lithuanians, and other eastern Europeans. Directly east of the Plaza, Chinatown was bor110

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dered by Macy, Vignes, and Commercial Streets. A few Chinese residences and businesses occupied the Plaza proper, along Sanchez Street on the south and on the north in the old Olvera adobe. Mexican households lined the periphery of Chinatown along Ramirez, Avila, Macy, and Alameda Streets.

Beyond Chinatown, along the Los Angeles River was a fifteen-square-

block Italian neighborhood bordered by Macy, Vignes, and Turner Streets and stretching across Macy to Clara, Garibaldi, and Lyon Streets. Across from Chinatown, at the corner of Alameda and Macy Streets and slightly south of Alhambra Avenue, roughly fifty Mexican and Chinese families lived side by side. Southeast of the Plaza, along Alameda and Los Angeles Streets to Second Street was largely a Japanese area shared with Mexicans and the last remnants of the French community, who continued to operate businesses along Aliso, Commercial, and Ducommun Streets and on the Garnier and Jeanette Blocks of Los Angeles Street. This ethnic residential distribution in the Plaza area corresponded to the location of commercial establishments. Interestingly, Anglo residences were largely found west and slightly northwest of the Plaza, while their business establishments were located southwest and southeast of the Plaza.

Mexicans and Italians would emerge as the principal ethnic groups, ac-

counting for 76 percent of the Plaza’s population.4 As a result of the social and economic transformations taking place, Sonoratown would undergo significant change. New railways and streetcars allowed wealthier families—some descendants of nineteenth-century Californios—to move away from downtown. Those who remained, like Doña Dolores Aguilar, the widow of former two-time mayor Cristobal Aguilar, found themselves living in increasing poverty with immigrants from Mexico. In April 1903, the Times reported that Doña Dolores was living in virtual poverty at 414 Bellevue Avenue in Sonoratown. The aging widow was said to be living alone in an “ancient frame cottage perched on a hillside” and was “dependent upon charity for food and clothes.”5

But for the majority of the Mexican immigrants who came to Los Ange-

les at the turn of the century, the “house courts” of Sonoratown—the city’s first barrio—became home, refuge, and, in the opinion of Progressive reformers, part of the “indigenous slum” of the city. Sonoratown housed some 3,000 to 5,000 mostly Mexican inhabitants during this period. Geographer James R. Curtis found that Sonoratown was a relatively independent and inward-oriented enclave that did not rely on outside communities or exterHomelands Remembered ˚ 111

Sun Wing Wo store in Old Chinatown in 1902, housed in the Garnier Block on Los Angeles Street for more than forty years. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

nal resources for its economic livelihood.6 The house courts of Sonoratown supplanted or mixed in with the earlier adobe structures. They were defined by housing officials as three or more dwellings on a single lot with a vacant parcel held in common. House courts in Sonoratown emerged primarily because of the explosion in the city’s low-wage labor population and the corresponding demand for low-cost housing.

Progressive reformers took note of this transformation in Sonoratown as

a result of immigration from Mexico; among them was Amanda Mathews. In her 1906 collection of short stories, she described Sonoratown as a place that was “detested by the citizens of Los Angeles . . . and adored by the tourist. . . . Behind the adobes occupied by the descendants of proud old Spanish families, poor now, but with the tradition of the halcyon days before the gringo invasion, are numerous courts concealed from the street and swarming with the despised cholos, imported by the railroads for cheap labor. Here the low life of Mexico is duplicated.”7 Mathews’ descriptions reflect, in many 112

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respects, the perspectives of the settlement house social workers in Los Angeles. One year later, Dana Bartlett, Protestant cleric and superintendent of the Bethlehem Institute settlement house, described the residential transformation of Sonoratown as “a remnant of its original Mexican dwellers in adobe houses, crowded by the incoming Italians, Slavonians and Syrians. For these newcomers, one-story shacks were built in the rear of the old Mexican houses. As might be expected, these courts, as they were called, soon became as vicious as the tenement conditions in Eastern cities, save that here fresh air and out-door life could be had the year around.”8

Yet despite descriptions of the dilapidated and often unsanitary condi-

tions in the house courts, Sonoratown was a cohesive immigrant community with extensive internal social and economic networks. And in addition to the adobes and house courts, several industries had developed in and around the small residential structures. On its southern edge was the Los Angeles Pacific Railway Company at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Buena Vista (now North Broadway); on its northern edge were Capitol Milling on North Spring Street and Baker Iron Works. Between College and Buena Vista Streets was the Southern Pacific Railroad freight and passenger depot, a major employer of local residents. Slightly east of Sonoratown, between the Southern Pacific yards and the Los Angeles River, was the city’s first industrial area,

Mexican family entering El Progreso restaurant near the Plaza at 414 North Main Street, 1916. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino. Homelands Remembered ˚ 113

Sonoratown adobe with adjacent house court, near Sunset Boulevard, 1900. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

the foundry district. Industries such as Llewellyn Iron Works, Stearns Gas Engine Works, Wilson and Hanson furniture plant, and Barber Asphalt Paving Company—many dating to the late nineteenth century—provided the necessary materials and labor for the construction of the city’s vast infrastructure. These factories were interspersed with saloons, schools, churches, small stores, and hotels that catered to the mosaic of cultures and nationalities north of the Plaza.

Other important institutions included the old Calvary Cemetery on

Buena Vista (now North Broadway), the Sisters Hospital on Bellevue, and the Maison de Santé (later known as the French Hospital), established in 1869.9 Tom McCarey’s Naud Junction boxing arena (also known as McCarey’s Pavilion), in the days of the old “twenty-rounders,” was in the foundry district slightly northeast of Alameda Street on Chavez and Queirolo Streets. The likes of Stanley Ketchel, Tommy Ryan, Jim Jeffries, and the great Jack Johnson were notable boxing luminaries who filled the wooden bleachers at the indoor arena, constructed in 1905.10 Early in his career, heavyweight champion Jeffries was often introduced as “The Boilermaker” because he was once an employee in the foundry district. Not to be left out of the pugilistic scene, Ah Wing, a laundry worker from Los Angeles’ Chinatown, may have been the only Chinese professional boxer in California during this time. With his 114

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long braided que and heavy punch, he was always a popular draw at McCarey’s Pavilion.

Prize fighting enjoyed a large and enthusiastic following in Los Angeles,

especially after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which temporarily ended prize fighting in that city. Sonoratown and the foundry district produced a crop of local heroes during this period, such as the great Solly Smith (Solomon Garcia Smith) of Irish-Mexican descent, the first world champion who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Sonoratown, and the lightweight great Joe Rivers, whose real name was José Ybarra. He was a native Angeleno and descendant of an early-nineteenth-century ranchero and former alcalde, Gil Ybarra, who was granted the Rancho Rincon de La Brea in 1841.11 In the 1920s, Rivers’ young neighbor and understudy, José ( Joe) Salas, a descendant of early Los Angeles pioneers Julian Chavez and José Dominguez, lived on Solano Avenue on North Broadway. He was one of four amateur fighters from Los Angeles to represent the United States at the 1924 Paris Olympic games. Salas’ Olympic teammates and childhood friends Fidel La Barba (later to become world flyweight champion) and Ad Allegrini were Italian Americans who lived just a few blocks away. In fact, Allegrini often signed his photographs by boasting to be “the middleweight champion of Sonoratown.”12

Sonoratown was indeed a bustling immigrant community and provided

a significant share of the labor force for the city and surrounding agriculture. But as a recognized slum and because most slums were inhabited by immigrants, the problem found in the Sonoratown area by Progressive reformers became one of Americanization. In effect, this meant initiating programs that would help immigrants in the “foreign district” to mediate the problems and inequalities of urban life.

One solution was the settlement house movement, which had its ori-

gins in Sonoratown in the 1890s following a visit to Los Angeles by Jane Addams of Chicago’s Hull House. Casa de Castelar on College Street became the first settlement house west of the Mississippi River. It was founded by the Los Angeles Settlement Association, the local branch of the College Settlement Association. The organization originally occupied a rented room at Alpine and Cleveland Streets in February 1894. However, the association needed more space and moved to several rooms on New High Street, then rented the Begón adobe in December 1895, and finally purchased the property in 1902.13 The adobe was renamed Casa de Castelar and served Sonoratown, where, observed Katherine Coman in the language of her time, “huddled Homelands Remembered ˚ 115

together in rapidly narrowing quarters, dwell Aztec Indians, Mexican halfbreeds and people of pure Spanish blood.”14 Despite Coman’s cultural chauvinism, Casa de Castelar boasted a number of social clubs as well as a resident nurse, the Caroline M. Severance Kindergarten, a public library branch, a night school, a clothing department, a savings bank, and a lecture program that covered a wide range of subjects, from ancient history to zoology.15

As the industrial and commercial district north of the Plaza grew,

rising property values meant that the adobes and house courts of Sonoratown would soon be replaced by more factories and warehouses. Thus, as the gradual residential displacement of Mexican and European immigrants occurred in Sonoratown, the Plaza’s role as the center of immigrant social and religious life took on greater significance. In 1914 sociologist William W. McEuen described the Plaza as “a small park north of the Post Office which was the center of town of the original Mexican Pueblo and which now serves as a stand for express wagons and a gathering place for idle men. Here the Mexican men congregate in large numbers and loaf when unemployed.”16

But the area immediately surrounding the Plaza also provided a host

of small businesses and for-pay services. The main social and leisurely endeavors centered around three institutions: the pool hall, the live and motion picture theater, and the outdoor Plaza, where all forms of discussion— though mostly political—took place. Women and children rarely mingled with the crowds of men sitting in the Plaza during this time. Instead, they used the open space as an island refuge where they began their dangerous zigzag runs past the electric street cars, horse-drawn beer wagons, and buggies to reach the old church and several small businesses along North Main Street—such as Goodwill Industries, the Parisian Pastry store, Farmacia Hidalgo, and Manuel G. Gonzalez’ popular grocery adjacent to the church. His daughter, Myrtle Gonzalez, worked in the store with her father and sang and danced at all of the Plaza’s Mexican celebrations at the turn of the century. She joined the renowned David Belasco Theater on Main Street and later became a major star of the silent-movie era.17

Such activities catered to the large number of Spanish-speaking immi-

grants who dominated Plaza life. Most were solteros (single men) who were employed by local industries like the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads and public works. Several small businesses, including Mexican restaurants, food vendors, bakeries, money exchange offices, bathhouses, and employment offices, catered to these single male workers. Pool halls, room116

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Mexican workers at the Plaza, 1911. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

ing houses, and saloons operated by Japanese immigrants as well as theaters that featured live stage performances from vaudeville to side shows were the most popular social centers for Mexican workers during this period. Some theaters—before the advent of air conditioning—such as Teatro Hidalgo (owned by theatre mogul Frank Faust) and the Plaza Theater at the corner of Republic and Main Street—could accommodate as many as seven hundred people.18 But these venues, like the Plaza area itself, were not exclusively the domain of Mexican immigrants.

Italians had a presence in the Plaza area dating back to the early nine-

teenth century, when periodic flows of Italian immigrants came to Los Angeles from the northern regions of Italy—Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Ticino, and western Tuscany. The early part of the twentieth century brought large numbers of southern Italians, from Apulia, Sicily, and Calabria. Mexican and Italian Catholics sat side by side in the wooden pews of the old Placita church. Many Italians acquired proficiency in Spanish before English, and many marriages occurred between the two communities. By 1900, the foreign-born population of Los Angeles would reach 11,183. The Italian community numbered about 2,000, and by 1917 it would grow to 10,000. Of this number, many Sicilians who had worked as vintners in Palermo and some Piedmontese lived around the Plaza. Popular community gathering places were Tognetti’s cigar factory, Luigi Terrile’s Cosmopolitan Bakery, and Homelands Remembered ˚ 117

Giovanni Piuma’s imported Italian food market across from the Plaza church at the corner of Main and Sunset.

Across the street from Piuma’s was the Italian Hall, which became the

central meeting place for the tapestry of immigrant, social, and political associations that congregated at the Plaza. It was a two-story, glazed-brick building built in 1907—the same year the Model T Ford came to town—by a Frenchwoman, Marie Ruellan Hammel, on North Main Street. The building was used primarily by Italian social and patriotic associations, such as Il Circolo Operaio Italiano (the Italian workingman’s club), Societá Unione e Fratellanza Garibaldina, and Societá di Mutua Beneficenza (sometimes referred to simply as the Italian Club or Italian American Club).19 The second floor had a spacious hall with a stage that could accommodate large numbers of people from the growing Italian American community. One year after the hall’s opening, L’Eco della Colonia (surviving today as L’Italo-Americano) began publication as the first Italian-language newspaper in the city. In 1916 Societá Unione e Fratellanza Garibaldina and Societá di Mutua Beneficenza merged into the Societá Garibaldina, and for more than twenty years after its opening, the society leased the second floor of the Italian Hall for banquets, meetings, weddings, plays, and regular Saturday night socials at which younger members of the Italian community danced to the foxtrots, waltzes, and mazurkas played by Peter Pontrelli’s popular band.20 Together, L’Eco della Colonia and Italian Hall were unifying symbols for Italians at the Plaza.

México de Afuera

While the Plaza area was still an ethnic polyglot during the early 1900s,

immigration from Europe virtually came to a halt with the outbreak of World War I. Consequently, the continuing influx of Mexican immigrants began replacing Italians, Russians, Greeks, Irish, Yugoslavs, and other Europeans in the Plaza area. By 1920, Mexicans were the majority ethnic group and, in effect, reclaimed the Plaza. There were an estimated 18,000 Mexican laborers in the city, and many were railroad and streetcar workers who earned between $1 and $2.50 per day. They were frequent patrons of the Plaza, where daily activities for the largely male population included attending regular church services, patronizing the taco and fruit carts that criss-crossed the 118

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Frank Arconti, manager of Italian Hall, with his wife, Adele, and daughters, Victoria and Matilda, 1900. Courtesy of Robert Arconti.

Men and women of Il Circolo Operaio Italiano, one of the fraternal organizations that met in Italian Hall on North Main Street, 1919. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

open space, and joining in conversations on endless topics. On weekends, streetwise shoeshine boys (bootblacks) equipped with their handmade wooden boxes and quick fists to protect their business space charged five cents per shine and earned as much as $1 to $1.50 per day.21 A variety of printed literature was sold from periodical carts whose owners paid the city a monthly license fee of $1. Spanish-language newspapers, magazines, and books published in San Francisco, Mexico, Texas, Cuba, Italy, and Spain attracted a large readership. Among the most widely distributed newspapers were those with a revolutionary message, including Regeneración, La Prensa, La Pluma Roja, and Fuerza Consciente.22 This dynamic mixture of nationalities continued to capture the interest of social scientists.

Between 1926 and 1927, the distinguished Mexican anthropologist Man-

uel Gamio—who was a student of Franz Boas—found a large and thriving Mexican immigrant community in Los Angeles. He conducted research into the lives of Mexican immigrants living in the United States.23 To complete his ambitious project, Gamio hired assistants to conduct onsite interviews with Mexican immigrants in various rural and urban centers across the country. 120

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Among them were Elena Landazuri, a Chicago social worker; anthropologist Robert Redfield; and Luis Felipe Recinos, a native of El Salvador. According to Devra Weber, Gamio met Recinos in October 1926 while he was employed at La Prensa, the leading Spanish-language daily in San Antonio, Texas.24 Recinos presented himself to Gamio as a journalist, and several days later he was hired. Recinos apparently was not well educated, as his notes revealed poor spelling and grammar. Even so, he had a quick wit and was genuinely concerned about the conditions and treatment of Mexican immigrants.

In 1927 Gamio sent Recinos to Los Angeles, where he made several im-

portant observations about the social atmosphere among Mexicans around the Plaza. In his observaciones, now housed at the Bancroft Library, he commented on a number of daily activities and businesses that he discovered around the Plaza. For example, he found several dance halls on North Main Street that catered to the large population of Mexican braceros (workers) but that Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, and Anglos attended as well. Recinos found that the dance-hall girls made their income working long nights dancing with mostly Mexican laborers for ten cents for una vuelta al salón (one turn around the hall). And while Recinos observed that dance halls

Shoeshine boys (bootblacks) at the Plaza, 1911. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. Homelands Remembered ˚ 121

Horse-drawn delivery wagons at the Plaza, 1916, that increasingly would compete for space with automobiles and electric rail cars. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

were a popular excursion for Mexican workers, they also reflected the diverse ethnic makeup of the Plaza area: One of the most frequented halls was termed “Latino,” and which opens every night at 7:30 and closes at 1:00 in the morning. The owners are American, the employees of the same Americans, there are also “pocho” employees (Mexican Americans born in California). In said hall there are Mexican immigrant girls, many “pochas,” Americans, Italians and even Japanese; the Mexican and the Mexican American girls make up the majority of the ones that go to the said dance hall that passes for the Academy [dance hall]. The orchestra consists of blacks and they only play American piezas; the hall entrance is illuminated by green, white and red lights, the colors of the Mexican flag. The hall’s interior is decorated with frayed edges of the Mexican colors as well. The entrance fee is $0.25, and then, the person who wishes to dance has to buy a ticket, each ticket is $0.10, each one is worth for “una vuelta al salon” (“one turn around the hall”), not for one pieza, for the orchestra does not ceases to play for a moment, from 7:30

122

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until 1 in the morning, every day, excluding Sundays by prohibition of the law; on Saturdays they only play until 12:30.25



Juana Martinez was among those dancers. She was born in Mazatlán,

Sonora, and came to Los Angeles in 1924. After failing to find work in the movies, she became a dance-hall girl on North Main Street. At first she disliked the work of “dancing with strangers,” averaging as many as a hundred bailes cortos (short dances) per night. Often on Saturdays she would get out of work casi muerta (almost dead) from exhaustion. But she eventually came to enjoy her work and the steady pay of as much as $20 to $30 a week. Most of the men were respectful, and she felt in control of her environment. “But whenever they made vulgar or inappropriate propositions to me and after saying no to them, I could always have them thrown out of the dance hall by the police.”26

Recinos reported on the variety of small businesses that provided much

of the street life at the Plaza. These Mexican-owned enterprises had familiar names that attracted customers, and reinforced a sense of mexicanidad for the crowds of homesick solteros who left distant villages to come north. Restaurants had names reminiscent of Mexico: Xochimilco, El Progreso, Moctezuma, and El Veracruzano. A popular clothing store welcomed customers to La Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City), and a barber shop proudly displayed the name and face of President Benito Juárez. There was a Jalisco shoe store and an Azteca jewelry store; a pharmacy, theater, and hotel incorporated the name Hidalgo in honor of Father Miguel Hidalgo, the father of Mexican independence. Together, these small businesses that clustered around the Plaza served as powerful visual markers for a new sense of place in downtown, a México de afuera.

Recinos took careful note of the variety of customers he found at various

businesses around North Main Street, New High, Buena Vista (now Spring Street), and North Broadway. Restaurante Bohemia, for example, was a popular gathering place for writers and artists from the Mexican theaters and generally lived up to its name as the gathering place of the bohemian community.27 He observed that Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles were patronized by a diverse cross-section of the city—Spaniards, Central and South Americans, numerous Anglos, and European immigrants who enjoyed Mexican food. Besides sit-down restaurants, Recinos found street vending to be a

Homelands Remembered ˚ 123

thriving business throughout the city, especially at the Plaza. Mobile tamale and taco carts—some in automobiles—appeared at various work sites and public spaces displaying familiar patriotic symbols and well-crafted advertising slogans that appealed to solteros dressed in overalls and Mexican families alike: Tamale and taco vending through the streets has come to form a good business. The proprietor’s [family] prepares the tamales, enchiladas and the tacos. He drives the lorry (truck) and one of his daughters is in charge of the sale. He passes through the major streets in the early hours and in the evenings where Mexicans reside and then he positions himself near “La Placita” where hundreds of Mexicans gather daily. He remains there close to midnight which is the hour which he generally finishes selling all his goods [and then] returns the following day.28



Recinos’ firsthand account of the vibrant street life around the Plaza was

echoed by contemporary writers who chronicled the human drama taking place in the heart of the city. In 1928 Mexican journalist Daniel Venegas published The Adventures of Don Chipote. This largely forgotten work was first published in Los Angeles in several editions of the Spanish-language daily newspaper El Heraldo de México.29 The satirical work was read by thousands of Mexicans throughout the Southwest and Mexico. The basic plot of the novel was the helpless journey to el norte of an immigrant farmworker, Don Chipote de Jesús María Domínguez, who naively leaves behind his wife and children in their Mexican village to seek riches in the United States, where he is assured “one can sweep gold up from the street.”30 Don Chipote was accompanied by his good friend Policarpo and his faithful dog, Skinenbones. The trio never found any streets laden with gold; instead, they encountered an unforgiving Sonoran desert, the prejudice of Anglo bosses, the conceit of assimilated pochos, and speeding automobiles, and they fall prey to pickpockets and gold-digging “flappers.”

Venegas’ announced purpose in the tragicomic novel was to illustrate

why Mexican workers should not come to the United States at all and that if they did come, they should not assimilate into the United States. Another achievement of the novel, as it relates to the Plaza, was Venegas’ desire to historicize his narrative. He vividly captured the social reality of 1920s Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of the same immigrant workers that Reci124

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nos encountered. For example, as their journey through the border region led them to Los Angeles, Don Chipote, his dog, and Policarpo were besieged by the sheer size and instant danger of the city. And while Don Chipote was being hospitalized from driving a pick-ax into his foot at their previous job on the traques (railroad tracks), Policarpo and Skinenbones ventured alone into the congestion and uncertainty of downtown: The sun had come full circle and shipped out for some shut-eye when Policarpo and Skinenbones reached the infamous Main Street, after having experienced a thousand and one frights at the hands of those darned automobiles, which tried to run them over every other second. In this frightened state, the two reached First Street and, again, drawn like magnets, continued toward the Placita.31



Once the two reached the Plaza’s familiar landscape, Policarpo was over-

come by homesick emotion: Immersed in his thoughts, and pondering how bad things are for his countrymen in these lands, he didn’t even realize that night had already fallen upon him. But this allowed him to hear the melancholy toll of the church bells of Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, calling the faithful to pray the rosary with its chime. Those big bells, which mean nothing to those who have lived for a while in Los Angeles, are very significant for new arrivals, who still have the smell of their native land in their nostrils.32



Yet despite their hardships, what is significant in Venegas’ characters is

that in an often hostile and disorienting metropolis, the physical legacy of Mexican Los Angeles offered immigrants spatial and psychological elements for survival. Indeed, spatial identification was not always possible for succeeding waves of Mexican immigrants who came to el norte, especially those who found themselves in cities that were not rooted in a Mexican past—cities without plazas. This was the childhood memory for Dr. Ernesto Galarza, the distinguished Chicano scholar-activist. In his poignant 1971 autobiography, Barrio Boy, Galarza recalled his arrival in Sacramento in 1911 from the mountain village of Jalcocotán in the western Mexican state of Nayarit. The young immigrant and his mother had fled the violence of the revolution and come to California. They settled in Sacramento. However, despite its SpanHomelands Remembered ˚ 125

ish name, the state capital, founded during the Gold Rush, was an Anglo city in design and population. This fact had an immediate effect on young Galarza. “[There were] no parks in the barrio and the ones uptown were cold and rainy in winter, and in summer there was no place to sit except on the grass. Sacramento did not have a mercado and a plaza with the cathedral to one side and the Palacio de Gobierno on another to make it obvious that there and nowhere else was the center of the town.”33 Thus, for Mexicans and other immigrants arriving in Los Angeles, the Plaza became a powerful link to their culture and to their survival in the city. Most lives revolved around the old Catholic church, that is, until the arrival of a new Protestant church in the 1920s that would change the Plaza’s social and visual character.

Two Churches, One Plaza

Although Catholic and Protestant churches in early-twentieth-century

Los Angeles appeared to be inspired by the social gospel movement, little was being done in the city’s Mexican barrios. Within the Plaza’s boundaries, including Sonoratown and the industrial district, Our Lady Queen of Angels Church was the only continuous parish to minister to the community’s social and spiritual needs. Methodist missionaries had been in the Plaza since the late nineteenth century and had begun conducting church services in an adobe on the northeast side of the square and at Goodwill Industries in the Merced Theater on Main Street.34 Hence, to serve the needs of the Plaza’s growing Mexican immigrant population, La Iglesia Metodista de la Placita (Plaza Methodist Church) was constructed between 1925 and 1926. An adjoining building was constructed and used as the Plaza Community Center—later to become the United Methodist Church Conference Center.35 The church introduced a new architectural and spatial element to the Plaza’s already complex history. For unlike the plazas of Mexico and Latin America where a single Catholic church or cathedral dominates public space with adjacent civic buildings, the Plaza Methodist Church revealed the tension between the city’s Mexican-Catholic past and its Anglo-Protestant present.

This tension was felt as early as 1916, when the priests at Our Lady Queen

of Angels expressed serious concern about Methodist missionary work in the city and the construction of a Methodist church at the Plaza. In his yearly report to the Claretian Fathers in Madrid, Manuel Milagro, stated that “right 126

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now, Methodists were planning to construct a 10-story building next to our church in order to elevate the social, spiritual and material level[s] of the Mexicans of Los Angeles. The building will have a library, places for recreation and departments where occupations will be taught; close to this house they will build a church for religious services.”36 Milagro concluded his report by stating, “We are hoping that the project fails,” but he noted that the Methodists “should have good success as they do not lack resources.”37

While Milagro may have overestimated the size of the proposed Meth-

odist church and the Plaza Community Center next door, what was clear from the Catholic standpoint was that the new church and its well-financed ministers were perceived as a threat to the Catholics’ status at the Plaza. The new church was designed by the architects Train and Williams and was built in the Spanish churrigeresque style, with sculptural ornamentation and an imposing tower topped with a Moorish dome of yellow-and-green tile with a garlanded finial. It was considerably higher and more attractive than the modest adobe structure across the street and bore a strong resemblance to the churches in numerous Mexican towns from which the new immigrants came. Indeed, the new church and community center attracted a stream of new converts under the leadership of Mexican-born and Mexican-educated Dr. E. M. Sein. For in addition to offering an alternative to the Catholic faith, the Methodists’ adherence to the social gospel, which was an aid to Americanization programs, offered extensive social services to impoverished Mexican immigrants.38

Under the Methodists, the Plaza became one of the most active spaces for

Americanization programs designed specifically for the Mexican population. The Plaza Community Center offered legal aid, employment, naturalization, and deportation services as well as relief and rehabilitation programs. And in light of the long-held public image of Mexican social depravity as expressed in a 1924 outbreak of plague, historian Ricardo Romo notes, “as an added assistance to the poor colonia, the church provided a well-equipped medical clinic staffed by trained personnel.”39

The financially strapped Placita church could not compete with the

relief programs taking place across the street. Even so, the Catholic priests could not argue that the new church significantly improved the lives of many impoverished Mexican immigrants. Many other residents of the 1920s and 1930s recall the dynamic mixing of cultures, faiths, and personal lives that made the Plaza unlike any other place in the city. Homelands Remembered ˚ 127

Shared Memories

For Tyrus Wong, vivid memories of the Plaza and Old Chinatown swirl

in his mind like the colorful brush strokes that defined his career as a renowned artist for Walt Disney Studios. He was born Tai Yu Wong in 1910 in Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) in southern China. He came to the United States in 1919 to be reunited with his father, Sai Po Wong, who had found work in Los Angeles. Wong recalled his first days in Chinatown, sleeping on the floor in a squalid, crowded bachelors’ quarter above a restaurant with several migrant laborers. He later found work as a waiter at the famous Dragon’s Den Restaurant, which was located in a basement on Marchessault and Alameda Streets and was popular among non-Chinese, especially people from the Hollywood film industry. And after working long, hot summer nights serving customers, Tyrus and his fellow waiters would occasionally cool their feet in the Plaza fountain. Other vivid memories reveal the sense of connection that the young artist had with the residents of Old Chinatown and with the surrounding Plaza community: the sound of firecrackers, red lanterns, the shaking ground from trains traveling along Alameda Street, the red-brick buildings and narrow, dusty alleyways along Apablasa Street, incense from the Buddhist temple in the top floor of the Lugo House, the Sun Wing Wo Store in the Garnier Block that also housed a Japanese bathhouse, the high-pitched shouts of evangelical orators near the fountain, and the sweet aroma from La Esperanza Mexican bakery on Main Street.40

These same sights, sounds, and senses comprised the boyhood memo-

ries of Hiroshi “Bill” Shishima on the west end of the Plaza during the Depression years. He was born in 1930 in the upper floor of the old Plaza House at 413 North Main Street, where, since the 1920s, his Japanese-born parents, Katsuke and Hatsuko Shishima, managed the Plaza Hotel.41 Hatsuko cared for her seven children and ran the hotel, which was located across from the Plaza. Katsuke operated a second family business, Mercado Plaza, a popular grocery store at the corner of North Main and Republic Streets. He recalled that Mercado Plaza, like the hotel, was one of several Japanese-run businesses along North Main Street that catered to the large Mexican population. His father was fluent in Spanish and was known to give credit to many of his customers who were hard-pressed for cash during the Depression. In fact, the entire Plaza community, as a sign of respect and affection, referred to Katsuke as “Papa San.” 128

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Mercado Plaza featured a soda fountain, meat department, and large

variety of Mexican products sold in the store or delivered by truck to the surrounding neighborhoods in Chavez Ravine, Alpine, Macy Street, and Bunker Hill: 25-, 50-, and 100-pound sacks of flour, as well as beans, dry chiles, candy, chorizo, eggs, corn, produce, lengua (cow’s tongue), borrego (sheep), cabeza de vaca (roasted cow’s head), and canned goods. In fact, he recalled that as a kid, he ate more Mexican food than any other food, and the Plaza was more home than Little Tokyo. Shishima found plenty of childhood excitement, friendship, and occasional mischief outside of his father’s store: Main Street was my playground. I remember the giant trees across the street, the noise from the street cars passing my house, the live eels that were kept in a glass jar inside Botica Ruiz, the Mexican pharmacy that was just a few doors from the Plaza church. I remember peeking inside the bars and pool halls, playing on the sloping green lawn of city hall, running through Olvera Street, buying comic books at the Goodwill store next to the Pico House, and going to Chinatown to buy firecrackers right before the Fourth of July. I also remember the aroma of Mexican bread on the ground floor of our building. That’s where Ezequiel Moreno and his family ran La Esperanza bakery. His son Rudy Moreno was my best friend.42



La Esperanza, like the Sun Wing Wo store, Teatro Hidalgo, and Italian

Hall, helped to define the rich ethnic makeup of the Plaza district. Moreno and his wife, Guadalupe de la Torre, came to Los Angeles in 1916 and settled in East Los Angeles. He had been trained as a baker in his native state of Zacatecas, Mexico. By 1918 he had three horse-drawn carts on the road selling and delivering Mexican bread to the surrounding neighborhoods of Maravilla, Belvedere, and Boyle Heights. By the 1920s he had a string of horsepulled and motor vehicles delivering bread to the expanding barrios of Los Angeles County. Moreno would eventually establish five restaurant-bakeries from North Broadway to Watts, but his primary location was across the street from the Plaza at 507 North Main Street. It was in the bottom floor of the Plaza House and had sixty-five chairs and five waitresses serving customers from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. At eighty-five years old in 2006, Beatriz Moreno de Guzman recalled memories of the bakery and the Plaza area: “I used to love working for my dad. There is something comforting about working in Homelands Remembered ˚ 129

Store employee Sentaro Tanaka with young Toru Shishima (seated) and Takeshi Shishima, 1928, at Mercado Plaza, 413 North Main Street, a Japanese-owned grocery store and soda fountain that catered primarily to the Mexican community. Courtesy of Bill Shishima.

a bakery. And the Placita, this was the ultimate place where east met west, where families met, where friends met, and where we grew up.”43

La Esperanza was among the businesses most frequented by the entire

community—downtown employees came for coffee in the morning and “American style” lunch, and during the evening and on weekends the restaurant catered mostly to the Mexican community, serving menudo, huevos rancheros, tacos, and enchiladas. Moreno recalled that her father knew just about everyone downtown, from elected officials to Hollywood movie stars, and that he had a tremendous empathy for the plight of the immigrant poor: During the Depression many of our business locations closed, except on Main Street. We would sell our bread and food to people who came through the front door, and Dad would be giving it away from the back door to anyone who was hungry. That’s just the way he was. Dad was grateful for everything that he had, and he believed in helping anyone in need of op-

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portunity, and it showed in our employees—we had Mexicans, blacks, and whites working in the bakery.44



Moreno’s business success rested on his ability to interact with every sec-

tor of the community, and this applied particularly to the diverse social and political makeup of the Mexican immigrant community that came north in the wake of the Revolution. Even former President Plutarco Elias Calles, who was forced into exile from 1934 to 1941, became a regular at La Esperanza: “He never seemed to have any money. My father felt sorry for him and always offered a plate of food whenever he came in. Then they would go across the street to the Pico House and play pool in the bar on the first floor.”45

La Esperanza Mexican bakery and restaurant at Plaza House, 507 North Main Street, ca. 1935. Courtesy of Cruz Moreno.

Homelands Remembered ˚ 131



Among Beatriz’ fondest memories of her Plaza childhood was going

down the block to El Teatro Hildalgo to listen to former revolutionary Pedro J. González and his group, Los Madrugadores (The Early Risers), play traditional Mexican canciónes and corridos for their live broadcast on KMPC radio. The charismatic González became a close family friend and advertised La Esperanza during his daily broadcast as having “the finest Mexican bread” in the city. During the Depression years Los Madrugadores were the most popular Mexican American music group in Southern California and the Southwest, and González was the first major Mexican radio personality north of the Mexican border. He eventually used his broadcast from the Plaza to become an outspoken activist against the massive deportation of Mexicans, and in doing so he helped to mobilize the community in its fight for justice in the early 1930s.46

Esperanza in Spanish means “hope,” and La Esperanza was a fitting name

for a business that reflected the hopes and dreams of the diverse immigrant communities that made the Plaza their home. In our next chapter we will explore the diverse immigrant life that flourished during the first half of the twentieth century and the accompanying hope for a better world through organized social and revolutionary movements. Immigrants would use the old square, more than any other place in the city, as a rallying place to fight oppressive governments in distant homelands and to address their new status as American workers.

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C h a p t e r fi v e

Revolution and Public Space

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Plaza was once again

transformed. In 1898 Henry E. Huntington purchased the Los Angeles Railway Company (LARY). Two years later, he formed the Pacific Electric Railway Company, the electric streetcar system that replaced cable cars in 1885.1 Together these companies provided Los Angeles with mass transportation until the mid-twentieth century. In 1903–1904 the first and largest of fourteen substations built to supply electric power for Huntington’s LARY (and known for their resounding noise) was constructed at the Plaza. The LARY operated the narrow-gauge track, yellow streetcars that provided transportation for metropolitan Los Angeles between 1896 and the 1960s, and was considered the best public transportation system in the world.

As real estate development in Los Angeles expanded southwest toward

Central Park (later renamed Pershing Square), the Plaza’s function as a spatially controlled “garden park” led to its reclamation by surrounding industries, a diverse community of recent immigrants, and the city’s poor and disenfranchised who settled near this oldest section of the city. This fact was noted on the morning of March 11, 1899, when John Scott appeared in court with his head bandaged and his shirt covered with blood, as a result of a severe beating administered by Minor M. Mead, the gardener at Plaza Park. 133

Mead said that Scott was drunk, persisted in forcing his way into the fencedoff portion of the Plaza after being ordered away, and tried to fight, and Mead was compelled to use his club on him. Scott denied creating any disturbance. He said that “he simply wished to enter the park, as he thought he had the right to do,” but he pleaded guilty of being slightly intoxicated and was fined $2.2 Scott’s protest would usher in a new era for the Plaza, where contesting views on public space and the tide of world revolutionary movements converged and often collided.

Revolutionaries All

As previously noted, the Plaza came to symbolize the social transforma-

tions taking place in Los Angeles by serving as a gateway for newly arrived immigrants, especially Mexicans and Italians, who made up the majority population of Sonoratown, easing the often painful transition into American urban life and industrial labor.3 Many of these immigrants came to Los Angeles with the radical political traditions of their homelands, especially anarchism. Thus from the early 1900s through the 1930s, the Plaza was a central meeting place for various working-class social and political movements. This left wing included Mexican, European, and American radicals such as the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) led by the exiled brothers Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón, the immigrant Russian anarchist Emma Goldman, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Socialist Party mayoral candidate Job Harriman, and novelist Upton Sinclair. Various radical or marginalized groups, including Chinese revolutionaries and Japanese workers, all found supportive audiences who congregated within the shaded open space of the old square. The Socialist Party was perhaps the first political organization in Los Angeles to use soapbox oratory in public places. However, Old Chinatown on the eastern edge of the Plaza would be the scene of a world revolutionary movement that would ultimately lead to the Chinese Revolution.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a local revolutionary movement

began under the leadership of (future general) Homer Lea, a graduate of Occidental College, and his Stanford law school roommates Allen Chung and Lou Hoy from San Francisco’s Chinatown. From this friendship the Western Military Academy was established on the Plaza’s eastern edge at 416 Marchessault Street and became known as the Armory. The academy received an offi134

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cial California school charter and was advertised as an orthodox military academy with the goal of transforming young Chinese American men into model citizens and community leaders.

Downtown business and political leaders offered their support to such

a noble cause. General Harrison Gray Otis of the Los Angeles Times even lent his name to its board of directors, which apparently never held meetings.4 The real intent of the academy, known only to its students and members of the secret revolutionary Po Won Wui society, was to train young cadets to take part in the coming revolution designed to topple the Dragon Throne of Empress Dowager Tsu Hsi of the Manchu Dynasty.

Presumably in order to obtain their school charter, Lea (an Anglo) and

his associates had to produce a school catalog. The resourceful team thought for a moment, changed a few titles, and then proceeded to copy their Stanford law school catalog word for word. Once they were in operation, students were instructed to make sure that their textbooks were always held “right side up” whenever a school inspector came knocking on the door. By 1903 Lea and his associates had units of a hundred or more young Chinese soldiers drilling in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno.5 Even the quiet foothills of Eagle Rock surrounding his Occidental College alma mater served as stand-ins to prepare the young insurgents for the rugged terrain of northern China. And while the cadets prepared to fight abroad, Lea understood that the conflict over China’s future was also being played out on the streets of Chinatown.

Ever since Los Angeles’ Chinatown was formed in the nineteenth cen-

tury, the community was divided between those loyal to the Ch’ing or Manchu Dynasty and those who wished to overthrow the Forbidden City’s throne and move China toward a republic. In June 1904 Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the 1911 Chinese Revolution and “father of modern China,” came to Los Angeles during his world travels to organize support for the revolution. He came to Chinatown, where he spoke to a large audience in a building on Apablasa Street. He returned in early September 1905 and stayed at Lea’s home in Long Beach, where the two conducted late-night strategy sessions and charted the revolution’s final course.6

Finally, on September 30, Dr. Sun was brought to a large two-story build-

ing in Chinatown, the popular Tuey Far Low restaurant adjacent to the Plaza at the corner of Marchessault and Alameda. A high price had apparently been placed on his head, for shortly before his speech, two imperial assassins Revolution and Public Space ˚ 135

unsuccessfully attempted to kill him with knives. Dr. Sun was unshaken by this incident. He addressed a packed room of more than six hundred people about the plight of the Chinese under the Manchu Dynasty and made a tremendous impression on the crowd. As a result, several cadets from the academy, along with Homer Lea, who was head of the local branch of the Young China Society, and a few residents of Chinatown followed Dr. Sun to China and proceeded to change the course of world history with the outbreak of the Chinese Revolution in October 1911.7

Otis and Chandler

While the politics of the Chinese Revolution continued to fragment

Chinatown, the use of the Plaza for international revolutionary-political activity was primarily the domain of the Mexican community, pitting the interests of immigrant workers and political exiles against the forces of business and industry. And in the particular case of Times bosses General Otis and his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, their response to the rise of radical labor and political activity at the Plaza was intricately tied to events in Mexico and their personal involvement in both places.

Downtown business leaders were led by Otis and Chandler, who were

committed to a vision of Los Angeles as an agricultural-industrial empire and citadel of the open shop. This vision developed from the wreckage of the 1880s real estate boom.8 At that time, Otis and his associates rationalized that the only way for Los Angeles to establish itself as an industrial center was to undercut the high wage structure of highly unionized San Francisco. However, to achieve this end, they needed to attract the necessary capital to Los Angeles in the form of tourists and a constant influx of cheap labor that made possible the retention of the open shop.9 The general and his associates in the Chamber of Commerce and Manufacturers Association believed that labor unions would impede the city’s economic growth. Thus, they gave monetary, moral, and logistical aid to businesses faced with labor troubles. Where aid from business organizations could not overcome losses from a costly strike, the Los Angeles Police Department could be counted on to protect strikebreakers. Their strategy proved effective. The Times led the struggle for the open shop and became a central focus for the national conflict between labor and capital that culminated in the bombing of the 136

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Dr. Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Revolution, and his wife, Soon Qing-ling, ca. 1910. Courtesy of the Hoover Institute Archives, Joshua Powers Collection, Stanford University.

“Chop Suey” sign on roof marking Tuey Far Low restaurant, corner of Marchessault and Alameda in Old Chinatown, ca. 1930. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

newspaper building by brothers John J. and James B. McNamara in October 1910.

Industry would no longer be confined to small-scale local markets for

consumer goods. The rapid growth of agriculture, light industry, and transportation infrastructure brought a mass influx of workers from Mexico and elsewhere to Los Angeles. Mexican immigration to the city also increased from the economic and political turmoil of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917. Immigrants from Mexico comprised the greatest new demographic growth in barrios beyond Sonoratown. And while these new communities grew primarily east of the Los Angeles River in Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Belvedere, and Maravilla, the Plaza served as a focal point for the city’s revitalized Mexican population. Ironically, as these new arrivals adjusted to their surroundings so far from the violence and poverty they left behind, Otis and Chandler were immersed in the conflict across the border. The consequences of their activities in Mexico would have dramatic reper-

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cussions in Los Angeles among the crowds of displaced workers and political exiles who gathered at the Plaza.

At the turn of the century, a land syndicate headed by Otis and Chandler

purchased thousands of acres in Baja California.10 These holdings eventually would stretch north across the border into Southern California’s Imperial Valley. Syndicate members included Otis’ longtime business associates General Moses H. Sherman and Otto Brant. The Mexican and Imperial Valley lands were incorporated as the California-Mexican Land and Cattle Company, or C-M Ranch. The C-M investors made tremendous profits while enjoying the favor of Mexican President Porfirio Díaz; however, it did not come without a price. For in exchange for favorable reports on the Díaz regime in the Times, Otis and his associates enjoyed unfettered business freedom in Baja California. In effect, Otis and Chandler were playing high-stakes political poker on both sides of the border.11 They prospered from cotton agriculture on an immense ranch they acquired in Calexico in Baja California. Under President Díaz, foreign capitalists, especially Americans, acquired millions of acres of Mexican land, mines, manufacturing plants, banks, oil rights, public utilities, and most of the nation’s railroads. The Díaz regime was marked by increasing poverty and violent political repression.

By early 1910, the world’s first full-scale social revolution of the century

broke out in Mexico. Revolutionary forces, who once were united in their opposition to Díaz, divided into two factions. The reformists were led by the wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero and the anarchist Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM, Mexican Liberal Party) under the leadership of Ricardo Flores Magón. Flores Magón went far beyond Madero’s vision for Mexico, which focused primarily on political reform. Through the PLM, Flores Magón sought to achieve a radical overhaul of Mexico’s political, social, and economic system.12 This began in the winter of 1910–1911 when armed insurrection spread across the northern half of Baja California and the boundaries of the C-M Ranch. Given Baja California’s relative isolation from the rest of Mexico—and its proximity to the large Mexican population in Los Angeles—the chances for success were high. The Baja Revolution, as it came to be known, was led by the PLM.

Historian Juan Gómez-Quiñones has noted that Flores Magón occupies

a unique position as both a hero in the revolutionary mythology of modern Mexico and a forerunner of the political and social activism of the twentieth-

Revolution and Public Space ˚ 139

century Mexican-Chicano/a community in the United States. His early display of radicalism, well grounded in his reading of anarchist-collectivist Mikhail Bakunin and anarchist-communist Pëtr Kropotkin, helped to push him to the forefront of the anarchist movement.13 While the historical anarchist movement was a jigsaw of failure and success, only the Mexican and Spanish anarchists were able to transform its attitude of dissent and its actions of rebellion into sustained, organized efforts at revolution. This fact placed Flores Magón and the PLM in a position to be feared when Madero assumed the presidency of Mexico in 1911.

Though numbering no more than two hundred, the Baja insurgents

posed a direct challenge to Otis and Chandler’s hold on the border region. The liberales were a diverse mixture of Mexican and American anarchists, socialists, and Wobblies (members of the IWW). Their basic goal was the redistribution back to Mexican peasants of land in Baja California, of which 78 percent was owned by foreign interests.14 The Mexican Revolution had suddenly and dramatically reached Otis and Chandler—longtime benefactors of the Díaz administration and its most repressive forms of social control—in the border region and in Los Angeles.

Rebel troops made frequent raids on C-M Ranch property, taking food,

horses, and other supplies. In addition, the participation of American radicals in the Baja Revolution made it logical for Otis and Chandler, through their reporting in the Times, to draw connections between the Mexican insurrectionists and the bitter wave of labor strikes that hit Los Angeles during the same period. This conflict came to a head with the bombing of the Times in 1910.15 The explosion paralyzed the city, killed twenty people, and injured seventeen.

Two months later, on December 25, the Llewellyn Iron Works plant was

bombed. It was in the foundry district on the eastern edge of Sonoratown, adjacent to the Southern Pacific Railroad depot at North Main and Redondo Streets. The eleven-acre plant founded in 1887 employed 710 workers and was in the midst of a strike when the dynamite blast went off at 2 a.m. After the Llewellyn bombing, an emergency meeting was called of the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, and other civic bodies. At this meeting, “radical and practical measures [were] considered and steps taken for the adaption of such as are adequate to cope with a situation tardily recognized as the gravest that Los Angeles has ever been called upon to face.”16 140

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PLM leaders Ricardo Flores Magón (left) and his brother, Enrique Flores Magón, at Los Angeles County Jail, 1916. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.



In light of the crisis, Otis and Chandler were faced with two critical and

interrelated problems. The first was their desire to crush the labor movement in Los Angeles. The second was the impact that the Mexican Revolution was having on their sizable investments in Baja California. If anything, the bombing of the Times served to heighten their attack on organized labor and soon encompassed the entire radical spectrum in the city. For when the McNamara brothers—both of whom were iron workers—were erroneously identified as anarchists instead of as trade unionists in the editorial hysteria of the Times, attempts were made to link Flores Magón and the PLM to the Times bombing.17

While Otis and Chandler faced tremendous anxiety over the Times

bombing and a revolutionary uprising in Mexico, the Plaza became a visual and audible manifestation of both conflicts just a few blocks from their offices. Even so, as manufacturers won a prolonged battle for the open shop Revolution and Public Space ˚ 141

and the principle of “industrial freedom” following the conviction of the McNamara brothers, organized labor was curtailed by the aggressive recruitment of cheap labor from Mexico—a strategy that would characterize the entire twentieth century.

With the steady rise in Los Angeles’ Mexican population, however,

nativist elements in the city stepped forward to oppose immigration from Mexico, contending that Mexicans were unassimilable. What is more, it was believed that the liberal political ideas brought by the PLM and other exiles would ignite a new wave of labor conflict.18 The Mexicans of Los Angeles, along with alleged radicals and “labor agitators,” became the primary scapegoats for various social and economic dislocations. This period, between 1913 and 1918, came to be known as the brown scare and reflected a general fear of and xenophobia toward Mexican radicalism stemming from conflicts along the border and the presence of exiled revolutionaries in American cities, especially in Los Angeles.

La Placita and the PLM

In 1909 the City Council passed an ordinance that placed a ban on free

speech from public streets and private property within city limits—except for the Plaza. The council was responding to pressure from business leaders, especially the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, which was determined to combat the growth of radical labor and socialist agitation, particularly that of the IWW, by containing free speech in a single space.19 Logistically, the Plaza was the ideal place to contain free speech. It was far enough away from the business district and close enough to the police department and city and county jails. Later, in 1914, two concrete speakers’ rostrums were built on the Plaza’s south side to serve as a safety valve with the intent of “letting hot emotion escape into the air.”20

As the Plaza became increasingly marginalized from an expanding

downtown, though, it redefined itself as a center for immigrant community life and free speech, notably as a space for organizing opposition to the openshop practices of the Times and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association. Mexican political exiles had an active presence at the Plaza during this period. From 1906 to 1919, Los Angeles was the headquarters of the PLM, the

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most progressive ideological force of the Mexican Revolution, first opposing the Díaz dictatorship and later opposing the constitutionalist governments while criticizing U.S. government policies. PLM members, along with other revolutionary exiles, would gather at central parks and plazas in cities throughout the Southwest with large Mexican populations, where they appealed to the masses of loyal followers.

Local observers took a somewhat critical notice of the use of the Plaza

among various radical factions. Supporters of all radical and revolutionary factions also were found at the Plaza, among them adherents of the IWW and PLM. The Plaza was indeed the public forum of the city’s working class, and the PLM was the most prominent radical force during this turbulent era in the city’s history.

The original headquarters where the PLM published Regeneración was

slightly north of the Plaza at 767 San Fernando Street.21 The party later moved to 519 East Fourth and Towne Streets near present-day Little Tokyo before finally moving in 1913 to a large brick building in Sonoratown at the corner of Yale and Alpine Streets that was formerly the Los Angeles Orphans Home. The site became known as La Casa del Obero Internacional and served as a Mexican community and educational center as well as a place to advance the revolutionary program of the PLM.22

Flores Magón understood the broader symbolic significance of the Plaza,

however, and made wide use of the open area in front of the old church for organizing massive rallies in opposition to the Mexican government and raising consciousness among Mexican workers. His solution for correcting the injustice in his country, true to the anarchist tradition, was “direct action.” He once wrote: “We do not struggle for abstractions, but for materialities. We want land for all, bread for all. Inevitably blood must run, so that conquests obtain benefits for all and not for a specific social class.”23 While most writings in Regeneración, the PLM’s widely circulated bilingual weekly, reported on the political and economic crisis in Mexico, the newspaper also addressed a wide range of social conditions in the United States and throughout the world, such as the American penal system, the plight of Mexican industrial and agricultural workers living in the United States, child labor, Margaret Sanger’s crusade for women, and the ongoing struggle against the open shop in Los Angeles.24 Subscribers to Regeneración—contrary to the popular stereotype of anarchists as being exclusively European

Revolution and Public Space ˚ 143

Front-page headline of Regeneración, September 12, 1910: “Liberty’s Sun Shines on Mexican Horizon.” Courtesy of Juan Gómez-Quiñones.

males—were a diverse mixture of women and men, native and foreign-born, workers and professionals. Most readers were railroad workers whose workplace and housing was only a short walk from the Plaza.25

Through its reports on local issues and regular advertisements, Regen-

eración connected Mexican immigrants and the larger community to a variety of services and cultural offerings within the expanding Plaza area. 14 4

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For example, Dr. A. R. Gómez, whose office was on Spring Street, regularly advertised his skill as a “specialist in women’s illnesses.” Likewise, Eloisa L. Moreno, “Professor of Spanish,” announced that her “new method,” offered at her Clara Street office east of the Plaza across from Chinatown, guaranteed any person “to transact business [in Spanish] in three months.”26 But the primary purpose of Regeneración was direct political action. Flores Magón was a gifted journalist and orator who used the newspaper—much like he used the Plaza—to call upon Mexicans in the United States to form labor unions to better their conditions as workers and to engage in revolutionary struggle to free their homeland from years of tyranny. With such strong convictions and commitment, the PLM was bound to attract the attention of local authorities.

In June 1911 the Fourth Street office of Regeneración was raided by the

police. Ricardo and his younger brother, Enrique Flores Magón, along with Librado Rivera and Anselmo Figueroa were arrested and charged with conspiracy to organize armed expeditions from the United States territory against a “friendly nation.” Bail was set at $2,500 each.27 In their defense, PLM members and hundreds of supporters began a campaign to raise funds

Mexican workers near news cart across from the old Plaza church, 1916. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino. Revolution and Public Space ˚ 145

for legal aid to free the arrested leaders, an effort that went directly to the Mexican community. PLM women were at the forefront of this effort. They were led by María Talavera, Francisca Mendoza, Mercedes Figueroa, Lucille Norman (Quidera), and Concha Rivera. The women “spoke almost daily [at the Plaza] and raised money. This work resulted in . . . extraordinary crowds at the trial.”28 Support for the arrested leaders also came from well-known American radicals. In October, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, the socialist labor organizer, came to Los Angeles and met with Flores Magón in an unsuccessful attempt to make peace between the PLM and President Madero.29 Among the many other American radicals who supported the Mexican exiles were John and Ethel Duffy Turner, Eugene V. Debs, wealthy Boston socialite Elizabeth Darling Trowbridge, and Emma Goldman.

Goldman went to San Diego in early May 1912 to support the IWW in its

highly publicized fight against the city’s ban on free speech.30 She went to Los Angeles on May 16 and spoke before a large crowd at the Italian Hall in support of the PLM and the struggles in San Diego. No doubt the arrival of the famous anarchist was seen as a threat to the anti-Magonista, anti-labor factions in the city, especially by the Times, since many of the Wobblies who were waging the free-speech fight in San Diego were directly linked to the PLM-led revolution in Baja California. Yet despite this show of support, when the verdict was announced on June 22 the four accused PLM leaders were sentenced to twenty-three months at MacNeil Island, Washington. After the verdict, when the four prisoners were taken from the federal building to the nearby county jail, Lucille Norman and Mercedes Figueroa led a boisterous demonstration of several hundred people in front of the jail, for which they were arrested. The crowd grew and later marched to the Plaza carrying red flags and shouting, “Down with Taft!” and “Down with the United States!”31

In the ensuing days, rumors began circulating that an attempt would be

made to free the four prisoners. The Plaza seemed ready to explode! Finally, on the evening of July 4, local authorities carried out a plan to transport the accused out of town. Throughout the day, the attention of the city was focused on the Independence Day celebration and the riot that followed the controversial decision in the world championship fight between Ad Wolgast and Joe Rivers, the local Mexican hero from Sonoratown, only hours before at the Vernon arena at Thirty-eighth and Santa Fe. Near midnight, the pris-

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American anarchist Emma Goldman, 1907. Courtesy of the Chicago History Museum.

oners were secretly rushed to the Arcade depot and placed on a train bound for Washington.32 Thus, with the Flores Magón brothers in prison and rising unemployment in the city, tensions between the growing crowds of workers, led by the PLM and the IWW, and local police at the old square reached a breaking point.

The Plaza Explodes

Throughout the 1910s, while the PLM attracted scores of Mexican

workers to its anarcho-syndicalist philosophy, the IWW was the only national labor-based organization that made sustained efforts to organize un-

Revolution and Public Space ˚ 147

skilled workers in the Southwest. The group was founded in 1905 by the radical wing of unionism and by militant socialists who sought an alternative to the conservative “white only” policies of the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor. The Wobblies, as members of the IWW came to be known, appealed chiefly to migratory workers in the lumber camps, mines, and the harvest fields of the Far West. They rejected the concessions of middle-class reformers and moderate socialists alike for direct action, the mass strike, and even sabotage to achieve their goal of a single national industrial union of workers and the right to defend themselves against the hostile forces of capitalism.33 American capitalists and their government allies employed every means possible, including violence, to thwart such activities, which in Los Angeles were centered at the Plaza.

During the winter of 1913, the nation was in the midst of a mild depres-

sion. This was felt by the city’s Mexican population, as the aggressive labor recruitment efforts of the railroad industry and the Chamber of Commerce had flooded the local labor market. The Christmas Day Riot, as it came to be known, resulted when an IWW rally of five hundred people gathered at the Plaza to protest on behalf of the city’s growing population of unemployed. The pro-labor Los Angeles Record reported that the rally was initiated by Mexican Wobblies who were protesting the recruitment of new workers and calling upon local government for assistance in finding jobs. The Plaza was the logical place to hold such a public demonstration because of its reputation for free speech and because the IWW had its headquarters at 420 North Los Angeles Street—only a few steps from the Plaza. The rally began at 2:30 p.m. near the Plaza fountain and attracted an initial crowd of 200 people, mostly Mexican IWW members and unemployed activists.34

The first speaker was William Owen, an English immigrant and an editor

for Regeneración, who stood on a box and addressed the crowd in uninterrupted English for ninety minutes. The Times attempted to discredit Owen by explaining why, as an Anglo, he would speak before a largely Mexican audience. They described him as “a clean-shaven young man, with the appearance of a sort of cross between a moving-picture hero and a habitué of the Latin quarter.” In other words, Owen associated with Mexicans.35

The next speaker was thirty-one-year-old Armando Ojeda, who ad-

dressed the growing crowd in Spanish. The conflict began after Police Lieutenant Herman W. R. Kreige received a call from an officer on duty that

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speaking was taking place inside the park without a permit. Kreige arrived at the scene with five officers and attempted to enforce the city public speaking ordinance. Conflicting versions arose concerning what occurred after Kreige’s arrival, though all reports agreed that Kreige arrived more than ninety minutes after Owen finished speaking. However, civilian witnesses said that while Ojeda was speaking, Kreige ordered him to stop and pulled the chair he was standing on out from under him. When a man from the crowd protested, Kreige “replied by striking the [man] violently in the forehead with his club, leaving a great triangular gash from which the blood flowed freely.”36 Lieutenant Kreige’s statement was printed in the Times and offered a far less aggressive version of his actions: A man was on the stand, addressing the crowd in Spanish. I touched him on the leg and said: say, mister, you’re not allowed to speak in the park without a permit. I repeated this, because he paid no attention to me. Then I heard someone in the crowd shout something about “go at ‘em Boys” and at the same time someone struck me on the back of the head. They tried to pull my club away from me. This was in my pocket up to that time. I grabbed my stick and turned about. It seemed they were laying for us and just were waiting for us to say something to them. They knew or should have known, they had no right to speak inside the park. I believe they deliberately went in there to start something.37



Deputy Sheriff Joseph Salomon was at the scene and corroborated

Kreige’s statement before the City Council Public Safety Committee. He offered his recollection of Ojeda’s response to the police, which was not mentioned in Kreige’s original statement. “At the very instant when Lt. Kreige touched the Mexican speaker and told him he might not speak in the park without a permit, the words coming from the speaker [Ojeda] were rankly seditious, according to Deputy Sheriff Salomon. . . . Damn the flag and all it stands for. Damn the police and their laws. Let us remain here if we choose.”38 Nevertheless, several civilian witnesses said that after the officers attacked the speaker, they waded through the scattering crowd and randomly hit people with their clubs.39 Several people in the crowd responded by pelting the police with rocks.

Then the disturbance moved from the fountain area to the intersection

Revolution and Public Space ˚ 149

of Plaza and Sanchez Streets on the Plaza’s south side near the Pico House. At this point, police chauffeur Alfred Koenigheim stated that he saw patrolman E. E. Brown chasing several people down Sanchez Street: When I saw a fellow draw a blue-steel .38 and stick it in Brown’s back, I fired from the hip and he went down in a heap. I remember he went down right under a big Bull Durham sign at the mouth of the [Sanchez Street] alley. Then I went after the crowd that had Kreige down and was knifing him. I guess I fired four or five times, but all but the one that took the fellow in the stomach went wild. Then things sort of cleared, for the other reserves had come, and we looked around for the fellow I hit, but he had been carried off, though the dead one [was] found in the IWW Hall.40



Koenigheim’s report was later confirmed when the dead man was iden-

tified as a thirty-five-year-old Mexican, Rafael Adames, a resident of 615 New High Street in Sonoratown. He was described by the Times as having “an unsavory reputation as an IWW and troublemaker.” After falling to Koenigheim’s bullet, Adames was taken across the street to the IWW headquarters on Los Angeles Street in Chinatown, where police later found his body on a bench inside the building under a picture of Karl Marx.41 According to the police, rioting in the Plaza continued until 7:30 p.m. “with an army of policemen battling separate gangs of Mexicans at a dozen different locations.”42 Three days after the riot, the Times reported that “Silvio Luti, a youthful Italian, [was] arrested Sunday night for giving an anarchistic speech at the Plaza.” He was charged with saying in a speech before two hundred Mexicans, “We must find out the policeman who killed our brother, Rafael Adames, and kill and maim him and others if we have to. We must revolt.”43

In the days following the riot, the Plaza was reclaimed by government au-

thorities, surrounding streets were cleared, and martial law was imposed. Police detective George Home and the LAPD began an invasion of Mexican businesses in the Plaza district in a search for possible suspects. The Times reported that the most popular targets for the weeklong raids were the many restaurants, bars, pool halls, penny arcades, and theaters along North Main Street. The sweep was apparently so thorough that “North Main Street was practically under martial law after 8 o’clock and no [Mexican] male was permitted to pass the Plaza without being subjected to search for possible concealed weapons.”44 These actions, as well the opinions voiced by city officials, the press, 150

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Mexican and Italian railroad workers in Los Angeles, ca. 1913. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

and private citizens, reaffirm the contested nature of Plaza space. The conflict heightened when manifest forms of protest occurred in the form of public demonstrations or the appropriation of space by marginalized groups—in this case, immigrant street vendors, labor unions, and the unemployed.45

A total of seventy-three men were arrested, fifty-six of whom were Mexi-

can. Criminal charges were filed, and a trial date set for January 21, 1914. Job Harriman, the city’s recently defeated Socialist mayoral candidate, served as defense attorney. City officials and the Times stood firm in their position that the riot was the premeditated work of the IWW, the pro-labor Record, and to a lesser extent the Evening Express for advertising the rally. Councilman Martin Betkouski voiced the shared sentiments of city officials and many citizens regarding the Mexican presence at the Plaza by calling for a new city ordinance to control indiscriminate street speaking. The measure was also endorsed by the Times and T. C. Horton, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Bible Institute. Horton was the main author of the ordinance and, according to the Times, had “wide experience in street work.”46 Revolution and Public Space ˚ 151



The ordinance addressed the issuing of speaking permits by the Police

Commission “to responsible citizens of Los Angeles only” and the ability to “revoke the permit promptly upon proof of traitorous, blasphemous or other objectionable utterances.”47 Given the strong presence of the PLM in the city, Horton was even more direct in linking the Christmas Day Riot with what he believed was the radical left’s ability to incite the passions of “resentful” Mexicans and “irresponsible” Southern European immigrants: “I would advocate the passage of a new ordinance now, while the people are aware [of ] the danger of permitting anarchistic teachings that inflame ignorant and excitable Mexicans and irresponsible foreigners of other nationalities, and give excuse to the criminal loafers and trouble-makers to attack the police.”48

The Times wasted no time in making reference to these “other” elements

at the Plaza, particularly Mexican street vendors, who were believed to be equally responsible for the riot: “The tamale wagons were present in force during the early afternoon, all expecting a huge business. At these places, much of the revolutionary flub-tub of that portion of the city is hatched.”49 Such reference to street vendors as co-conspirators in the riot revealed a growing anxiety about Mexicans in the city and the influence of groups such as the PLM and IWW. For just like the majority of unemployed and Wobblies who participated in the rally, or even the curious onlookers who comprised the regular crowd at the Plaza, the mobile tamale wagons were seen as cultural subversives that heightened the ongoing power struggle between political activists, small business, and government over free speech and public space.50 The proposed public speaking ordinance intensified the conflict between radicals and government.

Regeneración was among the first to object to the ordinance, citing its

intent to exclude “non-citizens.” In the issue that followed the riot, Regeneración attributed the violence to elected officials: “There is such a tangle of ordinances in this law and monopoly-ridden village that no one really knows when he is and when he is not acting illegally. It is sufficient to say that it is proposed to ‘put the Plaza in the restricted district, against indiscriminate street speaking,’ and this statement is an acknowledgement that the Mexicans were right when they declared that, from time immemorial, the Plaza always had been the peoples Open Forum.”51

In response, the City Council’s Public Safety Committee—the official

body investigating the cause of the riot—was intent upon issuing a final re152

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port favorable to the police. This was confirmed on the first day of hearings when the committee allowed only one civilian, an arrested Wobbly, to testify. All other witnesses brought before the committee were policemen who gave exactly the same story. Historian Edward Escobar notes that the investigation would have ended after only one day had it not been for independent council members like Frederick C. Wheeler, a Socialist, who was not on the Public Safety Committee. The Record also put pressure on the committee by running front-page stories and editorials demanding to hear more testimony from non-police witnesses.52

In the end, the City Council adopted the Public Safety Committee’s final

report and exonerated the police of any wrongdoing. Even so, the conciliatory tone of the committee’s findings revealed that in fact the police could be subject to public review. For example, after reviewing the role of the police in attempting to enforce a city ordinance on a largely Spanish-speaking crowd, the committee concluded that “the Police Department was within its rights in enforcing the provisions of the ordinance, but they might have used a little more discretion and tact in handling the situation as it then existed. We are of the opinion that if signs are not placed within the park prohibiting street speaking, that they should be placed therein in all languages so as to avert a similar occurrence in the future.”53

Three months later, on January 10, 1914, Councilman Haimes W. Reed

presented perhaps the most drastic alternative to what the Record earlier described as the “Cossack methods” of the police. He proposed a resolution to amend City Ordinance No. 20534, the ordinance that prohibited street speaking. Reed’s amendment would exempt the Plaza from the ordinance and require that “said Plaza be, and is hereby declared to be an open forum where people are free to speak without interference from public authorities so long as meetings are conducted in an orderly manner, and so long as the laws of the United States, the State of California and the ordinances of Los Angeles are not violated.”54 Councilman Reed concluded by proposing a council resolution for constructing a permanent concrete speakers rostrum in the Plaza. The resolution recognized free speech as an important “safety valve of expression to allow the escape of ideas and theories which become harmless when exposed and freely voiced, but become dangerous when smothered and restrained.”55 The City Council unanimously passed the resolution. Although Reed’s rationale in wording the resolution was naive as to the ongoing conflict between industry and labor, the resolution enRevolution and Public Space ˚ 153

sured the continuation of free speech at the Plaza and thus reinforced its role as the city’s preeminent public space.

As for the fate of the men arrested at the riot, they faced opposition

from government, business, and Times reporting that portrayed them as “IWW labor-union-Socialist gangsters.” Attorney for the defense Job Harriman—who previously assisted Clarence Darrow in defending the McNamara brothers for the Times bombing—was reasonably successful in arguing that the police were the primary cause of the riot. Harriman presented several witnesses who gave compelling testimony that the police beatings that caused the violence and the attack on officer Kreige had come after the shooting of Rafael Adames and not before, as the police argued. His skill as an attorney was partially rewarded on February 6, 1914, when the jury returned innocent verdicts for fifteen of the remaining defendants and guilty verdicts for ten.

In passing sentence, Police Judge Thomas White summarized the senti-

ments within the criminal justice system concerning the prevailing attitude toward Mexicans, the perceived threat of “the brown scare,” when he stated: If the men came from a country where they were accustomed to liberty and into a land where the iron heel of oppression was ever present, it would place a different aspect on their actions. However, they came from Mexico to the United States and were allowed the full privileges accorded [United States’] citizens. [These] sentences . . . will warn all . . . agitators that they cannot dispute men who have been vested by the people of the land with authority to enforce the laws.56

Perhaps ironically, only days before Judge White read these words to the accused, the two “agitators” that the legal community feared most—the Flores Magón brothers—had just returned to Los Angeles as heroes.

Tierra y Libertad

Following their release in January 1914, Ricardo Flores Magón and his

wife, María Talavera (also known as María Brousse), her daughter Lucille Norman, his brother Enrique and Enrique’s companion Teresa Arteaga, and sev154

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eral other PLM members and their families lived on five acres of rented farm land in Edendale, near Silver Lake. They shared this space slightly north of downtown with a pre-Hollywood film colony. The PLM members lived the communal lives they envisioned for the rest of the world by raising fruit, vegetables, and chickens at Edendale (now Edendale Place in Silver Lake) that they sold on the streets of Los Angeles and at the Plaza’s open market. With their farming proceeds, they purchased necessary goods such as printing supplies to continue publishing Regeneración. Many of Ricardo Flores Magón’s essays, notably his famous manifesto Tierra y Libertad, along with Regeneración, sold for ten cents and were widely distributed at the Plaza and in Mexican neighborhoods throughout the Southwest.57

As anarchists, the PLM members adhered to communalism and sexual

equality. They enlivened their daily struggle with dances, public oratory, publishing, and selling their farm produce. They observed such internationally recognized events as the Paris Commune on March 18, May Day on May 1, and the Day of Martyrdom on May 4 to commemorate the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square tragedy. Such PLM events usually featured picnics, speeches, musical concerts, and dramatic theater. In fact, Flores Magón even wrote an original dramatic play, Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty), which was first performed in Los Angeles in 1915. The play’s title echoed the revolutionary banner adopted by Emiliano Zapata’s peasant movement in Morelos, Mexico, and had wide appeal in the barrios of Los Angeles.58

During this time, amid the shouts of barefoot “newsboys” and street

vendors hawking tacos de berria, tropical fruits, and roasted corn, the Plaza was the scene of intense rivalry between Mexican revolutionary and antirevolutionary factions. In one case, the Times was said to have been directly linked with a small anti–Flores Magón faction operating in the Plaza. This incident involved Adolfo Moncado Villarreal (no relation to one-time PLM revolutionary Antonio I. Villarreal). During the months of the Baja insurrection, Villarreal was reported to have been observing the Regeneración offices (or perhaps spying on them for the Los Angeles district attorney). He later used the free speech atmosphere at the Plaza to attack the Flores Magón brothers and the PLM, claiming that they were selling out Baja California to foreigners, presumably American radicals such as the IWW. But Villarreal attracted only a scant following at the old square and later joined the federales on the Mexican Peninsula.59

Thus, in an echo of Haymarket Square in Chicago—a labor icon of the Revolution and Public Space ˚ 155

late nineteenth century—the Plaza in the early twentieth century became a safe haven for orations of the radical left. And while socialists, anarchists, communists, trade unionists, and other radicals differed on issues of political philosophy or practice, there was a general atmosphere of acceptance and, in some cases, cooperation on major issues, such as opposition to the open shop and abuse by police. For example, while at its original San Fernando Street headquarters, the PLM shared its building with other progressive political organizations and offered a reading room with periodicals in English, Spanish, and Italian. And owing to similarities in language and culture as well as shared neighborhoods in Sonoratown, Mexican radicals in particular found support from the Italian community. Other forms of support came from the Socialist Party and various Los Angeles labor organizations. However, Socialist Party members in Los Angeles could not overcome their cultural ambivalence about the Mexican people themselves or the insinuations that Mexican labor depressed wages for white workers. Coupled with Flores Magón’s growing radical militancy, the PLM and Socialist Party did not form a united front.60

Regeneración was part of a newspaper exchange with five other local

publications: the Daily Tribune, Pacific Press, and California Social Democrat, published in English; La Rivolta, published in Italian; and El Rebelde, the Spanish-language publication of the IWW. This cooperation among a diverse community of radicals in Los Angeles was evidenced in Regeneración, which regularly announced political rallies at such venues as the Symphony Hall at 232 South Hill Street, Burbank Hall at 542 South Main Street, or the Labor Temple on Maple Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets. On these occasions, Regeneración announced that eloquent orators such as Ricardo Flores Magón (speaking in Spanish), Rosa Markus (speaking in English), D. Gisner (speaking in Hebrew—Yiddish), and Michele Fasano (speaking in Italian) would address the audience. Closing songs for these meetings included “Hijo del Pueblo,” “La Bandera Roja,” “La Marseillaise,” and “The Internationale.”61

Italian Hall, under the management of Frank Arconti and located only

steps from the Plaza, was the favorite rallying place for Italian and other European radicals and their Mexican counterparts in the PLM. During the critical years of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917, the hall was often used by Mexican exiles and their supporters. Throughout the month of September 1910, it was rented on weekends by La Junta Patriótica de Obreros in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the struggle for Mexican Inde156

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pendence. The event was advertised as the Gran Fiesta Obrera and featured musical and theatrical performances, speakers, and dances.62 In October 1913, La Junta Probicional de Socorros held a large fund-raiser and dance for Mexican hospitals that cared for the victims of the Revolution. The PLM was perhaps the most active Mexican revolutionary organization to use the Italian Hall during this period. Throughout the PLM’s exile from 1906 to 1919, its members used the facility as a gathering place to denounce the events in Mexico and the abuse of Mexican workers under the American capitalist system. In 1915, Luz y Vida (Light and Life), an exclusively women’s anarchist organization under the umbrella of the PLM, held a dance in the Italian Hall to raise money for Regeneración—the kind of event that always attracted a multiethnic audience as well as the police.63

After the subsequent arrest of Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón in Feb-

ruary 1916 on charges of defamation and sending indecent material through the mails, Emma Goldman returned to the Plaza and the Italian Hall to speak in their defense. Ricardo was the main defendant and was sentenced to one year at Leavenworth; however, he secured bail through donations raised at the Italian Hall and other rallying sites in the city. In March 1917 he gave what was perhaps his most compelling public speech at the Italian Hall to the International Workers Defense League. He addressed an estimated audience of seven hundred and boldly denounced Mexican President Venustiano Carranza as a “lackey” of President Woodrow Wilson and a “bandit” of Wall Street.64 The entire speech was reprinted in Regeneración and distributed throughout the Southwest and in Mexico.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 had a severe impact on the radical

movement in the United States. In 1917 Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera were arrested under the Espionage Act with the allegation that their manifestos in Regeneración and revolutionary propaganda sent through the U.S. Postal Service hindered the war effort. While they awaited trial, María Talavera, her daughter Lucille Norman (Ricardo’s adopted daughter), and Norman’s husband, Raoul Palma, widely known as the “boy orator of the Plaza,” spoke to large crowds in defense of their comrades.65 Talavera was arrested and charged by a federal grand jury with violating the Espionage Act but was later released. Finally, in 1918, as part of a large-scale effort by the federal government to eradicate radicalism, Ricardo Flores Magón and Rivera were sentenced to prison terms of twenty and fifteen years, respectively, and fined $5,000 each.66 The presence of the PLM in Los Angeles and the colorful Revolution and Public Space ˚ 157

oratory it brought to the Plaza had come to an end. By 1920, organized PLM activities at the Plaza were gone, and Regeneración went out of circulation.

Even so, since the Christmas Day Riot, a general fear and anxiety over

Mexican radicalism persisted in Los Angeles. When General Francisco “Pancho” Villa raided the provocatively named border town of Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916, anti-Mexican hysteria escalated as rumors spread about a possible border uprising. Links between Villa’s northern revolutionary movement and crime in the Los Angeles area appeared in the local press. And when the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, fear of Mexican insurrection reached xenophobic proportions after the discovery of “the Zimmermann letter,” which told of a German offer of an alliance with Mexico against the United States. A wave of anti-German hysteria swept through the nation and was particularly strong along the border region where, in the minds of the press, Mexican revolutionaries were in collusion with the Kaiser in a plot to invade the country.67

In May 1917, the Times reported heavy police surveillance of Mexicans

at the Plaza during the three-day celebration of Cinco de Mayo, and several PLM members were arrested after they attempted to address the large crowd.68 However, after the Armistice in 1918, anti-German sentiment in the nation lessened, as well as the xenophobia concerning Mexican revolutionary activity along the border and in Los Angeles. Much of this change stemmed from the success of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which caused Americans to redirect their anti-German campaign back to radical labor and political groups that had opposed the war; this was known as the Red Scare of 1919– 1920. The Times reported the redirection to local radicals in June 1918, when Egbert Adams of the Los Angeles Playground Commission, in the same spirit of reformers of the previous decade, announced the inauguration of weekly programs at the Plaza of music and speakers including Ramón S. Arriola, the vice consul of Mexico, for the purpose of “stamping out IWWism among the ignorant classes and put Americanism in its place.”69

Meanwhile, despite support from PLM members and the Mexican com-

munity, as well as the tireless work of attorney Harry Weinberger, Ricardo Flores Magón continued to linger in the high-security federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. On November 21, 1922, he died alone in his cell. PLM leader Ricardo Flores Magón—the intellectual-revolutionary—had lived in exile in the United States since 1904.

Rumors abounded regarding the cause of his death. He had been in poor 158

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health and was denied medical attention. The official report from the prison doctor listed “cardiac attack” as the cause of death. Shortly thereafter, however, José Martinez, a Mexican inmate and devoted admirer of the charismatic leader, brandished a self-made knife and killed A. H. Leonard, the head prison guard suspected by inmates as being Flores Magón’s murderer. Martinez was immediately killed by other guards.70

The mystery surrounding Flores Magón’s death, along with evidence

brought against him over the years by local and federal courts, remained unanswered. His wooden coffin was covered with red and black flags and bright flowers. It was brought to the Breese Brothers Mortuary on South Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles, where thousands paid their respects. His body then was taken for the last time past the old Plaza, where it all began, before crossing the border, with María Talavera and Lucille Norman by his side. Initial plans were made to bury him in the New Calvary Cemetery in the heart of the growing Mexican barrio, and his corpse was placed in a vault at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights until the details could be worked out. In the end, it was decided to return the fallen revolutionary to the land that he fought to liberate from oppression. And true to the anarchist tradition, Talavera rejected the offer from the Mexican government to transport her husband’s remains; instead, she accepted the offer from the Mexican Confederation of Railway Unions to transport the body of their dead hero. In mid-January, his coffin arrived for burial in Mexico City. The crowd was enormous, consisting of government officials, union leaders, and thousands of workers who sang “La Marseillaise” and “The Internationale.”

Ricardo Flores Magón was laid to rest at the French Pantheon. In 1945,

however, his remains were exhumed by the Mexican government and reburied at La Rotunda de Hombres Ilustres in the Panteón de Dolores, not far from where he was first arrested as a young student demonstrator. This was indeed a remarkable tribute to a revolutionary who refused throughout his life to recognize the very same government that honored him in death.71 Perhaps, if the choice were his, he would have stayed at Evergreen Cemetery, close to the Plaza and surrounded by the emerging barrios of East Los Angeles.

By the early 1920s, though the anarcho-syndicalist tradition spear-

headed by the PLM and IWW had faded, radical labor and political activity surged in Los Angeles, and the Plaza continued to be the preeminent rallying place in the city. Aging Magonistas remained a presence as colorful and provocative orators and as influential members of emerging Mexican workers’ Revolution and Public Space ˚ 159

organizations such as the Confederación de Uniones de Obreros Mexicanos, organized in Los Angeles in 1928.72 Other members merged into the Communist Party, which gradually came to dominate political life at the Plaza during the post–World War I era. The experiences at the Plaza of two members of the Communist Party offer a rare glimpse of life on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s from the perspective of political activists whose single purpose was to advance the movement for worldwide socialist revolution.

“Nobody Was Wearing Neckties”

Meyer Baylin was born in Bukaraine, Russia, in 1904 and entered the

United States with his family at Ellis Island, New York, in 1913.73 The family moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he learned Spanish while selling newspapers and delivering groceries in the largely Mexican neighborhood. In the early 1920s the family settled in Los Angeles in the close-knit and largely Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. As a teenager he was attracted to radical politics and the plight of working people. The Plaza was a natural attraction for young Baylin, with its immigrant working-class mixture of restaurants, theaters, and soapbox politics. He joined the Communist Party and recalled that Jewish party members had their own meeting hall and bakery in Boyle Heights in the 3700 block of Brooklyn Avenue. Baylin was bright, idealistic, and dedicated to the cause of socialist revolution. He eventually became educational director and organizer for the party, working out of the Los Angeles headquarters at 224 Spring Street.

Throughout the 1930s Baylin seemed to be everywhere in the city. He

recruited Jews and fellow immigrants into the party and organized a highly successful general strike among thousands of immigrant Dutch and German dairy workers in Los Angeles County who were working seven days a week for $30 per month. During the Great Depression, he organized large groups of unemployed workers and their families to peacefully march into Grand Central Market in downtown, where he instructed them to “help themselves to the food.”

Baylin also recalled many long days “passing out party leaflets and copies

of the Western Worker on Central Avenue among blacks and in the Mexican community.” He spent a great deal of his time at the old Plaza, where he par160

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ticipated in numerous Communist Party demonstrations and rallies organized by other radical organizations. Indeed, the Plaza was the one place in the city where he felt most alive, surrounded by the sounds of passing trucks and streetcars, the aroma of Mexican bread from La Esperanza bakery, and the intense shouts of evangelical orators. Baylin was impressed by the support shown by the large crowds at the old square composed largely of recent immigrants: The Plaza became a symbol of the struggle that was going on. Many of the people who supported us were not yet citizens and couldn’t afford to be arrested or get involved, so they would stand across the street near the church to watch how the police were treating us. By just being there, they were taking chances, but they still did that, and it made me believe that the revolution was around the corner, and I felt it was just a matter of time.74



Baylin, pensive and soft-spoken in his nineties in August 1996, noted

that unlike Pershing Square, the Plaza was an official space for political meetings, and he remembered the speakers’ podium on the south side of the Plaza, opposite Olvera Street. The receding hairline of the radical revealed the scars from numerous encounters with police batons, as happened at a massive 1927 vigil in protest of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, rallies in support of the unemployed, and a large demonstration in 1932 in support of unemployed World War I veterans, the so-called Bonus Army. For such activities, he was arrested more than thirty times in Los Angeles. In fact, he considered himself to be a regular face at the old Lincoln Heights jail.

On one occasion, while organizing the 1932 Bonus Army demonstration,

Baylin attended a planning meeting at the Italian Hall on North Main Street near the Plaza. He recalled that “the police broke up the meeting, kicking-in the door, and they knew that I was the instigator, so they beat the hell out of me. The rest of them [fellow communists] scattered—they couldn’t come to my rescue with these guys armed with guns and clubs. Then the police [Red Squad] wanted to take me to a hospital, but I wouldn’t let them. I was afraid that they would surely finish me off.”75

After the opening of Olvera Street as a colorful Mexican marketplace for

tourists in 1930, the Communist Party continued to stage large demonstrations at the Plaza. Baylin admitted being somewhat critical of the commercialized nature of the revived Plaza area, but he never felt that he or the party Revolution and Public Space ˚ 161

were in conflict with the new tourist attraction on Olvera Street. Perhaps stemming from his childhood in San Antonio, Texas, he noted that he and his young wife, Vera (a fellow party member), enjoyed listening to the liturgical music in the old church, attending the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration, and enjoying the Mexican atmosphere and food on Olvera Street. Party members were careful not to disrupt daily business along the new tourist venue: “We never touched Olvera Street. It seemed to be a small commercial place, and we felt it would interfere with the people trying to make a living there. It was not a rich man’s place.”76 Thus, with all of its pain and promise, the Plaza was the place that Baylin chose to spend much of his time in Los Angeles, sharing experiences with fellow party members such as his longtime friend Karl Goso Yoneda.

Yoneda was a Kibei-Nisei—an American-born child of Japanese parents

who was raised and educated at least partially in Japan. His Japanese immigrant parents, Hideo and Kazu Yoneda, fled the oppressive working conditions on Hawaiian sugar plantations and settled in Glendale, California, where Karl was born in 1906.77 In 1913 the family returned to their native village just outside the city of Hiroshima. His father died of tuberculosis in 1915, leaving his mother to raise Karl and his two younger sisters by herself. After World War I, he attended high school in Hiroshima, where at age fifteen he helped organize a newspaperboys’ strike against the powerful Chugoku Shimbun after the newspaper’s owner increased delivery routes for the boys but not the pay.

Such encounters moved young Karl toward progressive ideas. He av-

idly read the writings of noted socialists and anarchists Kropotkin, Bakunin, Marx, Engels, and Vasily Eroshenko, the blind Russian anarchist-poet whom he eventually befriended.78 Karl participated in numerous pro-labor demonstrations and was arrested several times in Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima. In 1926 he left his mother and sisters and returned to California to avoid being conscripted by the Japanese Imperial Army. Despite his U.S. citizenship, he spent two painful months with other Japanese and Chinese immigrants at the Immigration Detention House on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. After his release he returned to Los Angeles and began a new life.

He changed his first name in homage to Karl Marx and began working at

various jobs as a dishwasher near busy Fifth and Main Street and as a window washer in Hollywood, earning $5 a day. During his spare time he distributed Communist Party literature on the streets and back alleys of downtown. He 162

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recalled his unbridled spirit as a young Communist and the influence of the Plaza on his political maturation and attraction to working people: “I was a young dreamer back then, you know, the utopian type. The Plaza was my very first experience with mass demonstrations. It was easy to go over there because you felt like you were with your own kind of people—no dressed-up people there, nobody was wearing neckties.”79

Yoneda became a member of the Los Angeles Japanese Workers Associa-

tion ( JWA) and the American Communist Party. He was assigned to organize in the Plaza area, where several Japanese-owned rooming houses, pool halls, and grocery stores thrived along Main Street. He found it easy to organize Mexican and Filipino workers because of the long history of discrimination that both groups experienced. Among party members and the police he was known as “Hama,” which means “beach” or “sand.” Yoneda encountered other Japanese radicals in the Plaza area and discovered that the second floor of the old Pico House was composed largely of Communist Party members.80 In fact, the multi-ethnic makeup of the Plaza area proved to be a safe haven for young Hama, especially during the numerous Communist Party demonstrations that often led to bloody encounters with the police: “As soon as the Red Squad police came, we would disappear behind the Plaza on Los Angeles Street. Once you got to Ferguson Alley in Chinatown, we would slow down and walk—it was pretty hard to spot you.”81 Indeed, the young Communist blended in with the vibrant cultural and political scene at the Plaza, and he was steadfast in his determination to change the world.

Yoneda joined the JWA and the Communist Party in May 1927. He met

Meyer Baylin and participated in one of his first major Communist Party rallies at the Plaza, on August 22 in support of the anarchist political prisoners Sacco and Vanzetti, who were scheduled to be executed in Boston later that night. The rally attracted more than three thousand people who faced the machine guns of LAPD Captain William “Red” Hynes. Baylin recalled that no one made speeches that afternoon—people “simply gathered in a circle holding hands or signs around the Plaza in quiet demonstration until the Red Squad gave the signal to attack us.”82 Yoneda recalled that after 9 p.m., “someone shrieked, ‘Did you hear that! They murdered Sacco and Vanzetti! Let’s march to City Hall!’ All hell broke loose as the crowd attempted to break through the police line. The officers used tear gas, night sticks, and brass knuckles against men and women who fought back with bare hands.”83

Yoneda found that life on the streets of Los Angeles for a struggling orgaRevolution and Public Space ˚ 163

nizer required immense personal sacrifice: “We didn’t have any money for restaurants. We were very poor. Main Street had several doughnut shops and Mexican bakeries. Back in those days, five cents would buy you coffee and six doughnuts; that was your breakfast and lunch.”84 In Little Tokyo in the heart of the Japanese community, he was a respected hero to some and scorned by many others: “People in Japan Town would yell out as I walked by: ‘Look, here comes the party boss.’”85

In August 1929 the Communist Party led two demonstrations at the

Plaza, together drawing close to 5,000 people. The first was the August 1 anti-war rally, which drew 2,500 workers, students, housewives, and Young Pioneers to denounce U.S. imperialism and Japanese intervention into Manchuria and to offer support to the Soviet Union. Shouts of “Down with U.S. and Japanese imperialism,” “Support the Gastonia strikers,” “Fight against imperialist war,” and “Defend the Soviet Union” echoed through the large fig trees that still surround the Plaza.86 Yoneda said that because of the large turnout, the Red Squad made no arrests that day. But three weeks later, on August 22, a second rally drew more than 2,000 people to the Plaza to commemorate the second anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution. Yoneda, representing the JWA, was among the speakers who gathered at the concrete rostrum on the Plaza’s south side. Meyer Baylin recalled that as a non-citizen, he rarely spoke at the Plaza due to the high visibility of the space and the harsh repercussions, such as a police beating, arrest, or deportation. Rather, he said, “I usually spoke on a soapbox on skid row at Townsend Street.”87

Yoneda, despite his U.S. citizenship, typically spoke at smaller spaces

away from the Plaza’s high visibility and police presence. Among the most popular free-speech sites was an open lot on Eighth and Alameda Streets that attracted an assortment of the city’s most disenfranchised residents. He said the lot usually was occupied by several members of the Unemployed Council. Another popular gathering place was in Little Tokyo in the back lot of Hori Brothers Department Store at 231 East First Street, where party members took advantage of the daily crowds at this “unofficial” public space. He recalled that “after the Salvation Army would beat their drums and bring in a large crowd, communists would use the same crowd to organize.”88 Baylin recalled with pride that during one six-month period he recruited more than fifty new members to the party, and much of this success occurred at the Plaza: “It was a great place to organize.”89 As the county’s economic and

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political crisis worsened, the crowds of jobless and disillusioned Angelenos steadily grew at the old square.

The year 1929 began with harsh cuts in wages and dismissal notices, a far

cry from President Hoover’s contemptuous promise that “every family will soon have a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Soon after the October stock market crash, the country’s economic and social fabric collapsed, and the nation entered the Great Depression. Unemployment estimates ranged from fourteen million to more than fifteen million.90

The Communist Party and the Trade Union Unity League responded to

this crisis by spearheading an Organize the Unemployed Campaign. They called for a nationwide demonstration of the unemployed on March 6, 1930. More than a million people demonstrated throughout the nation on that day, and the Plaza would play a major role as the site for one of the largest demonstrations in the city. About ten thousand people gathered at noon around East First, North Spring, and North Main Streets. The police feared an attack on the civic center and placed a human barrier around city hall. At one point, according to Yoneda, “Carl Sklar, Communist Party organizer stood on a bench and shouted, ‘The police stopped us from going inside the City Hall; let’s march to the Plaza.’ The entire police force started to swing their night sticks.”91

Even with the gradual restoration of the Plaza area with the opening of

Olvera Street as a tourist site, which was intended to curtail free speech and political demonstrations, the crowds continued to grow. This was seen on May 1, 1930, one month after Olvera Street opened. More than ten thousand demonstrators congregated just outside the Plaza carrying various banners: “Immediate Aid to the Unemployed and Their Families,” “Unemployed Insurance,” “Work for Food,” and “Down with Police Terror.” However, due to the heavy police barricade, the crowd was prevented from entering the Plaza area, “and so the demonstrators chanted the slogans as they gathered at several intersections along North Main, North Los Angeles, and Temple Streets.”92 The police then attacked the demonstrators, “who fought back with their bare hands.” Yoneda vividly recalled that during the tension, Captain Hynes spotted him in the crowd and shouted out: “Get that yellow bastard!” But a human barricade formed by his comrades kept him from harm.93

In February 1931, Yoneda was badly beaten on Main Street by the po-

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Karl Yoneda and Elaine Black, 1933. Photo by Toyo Miyatake, courtesy of Tom Yoneda.

lice and jailed for his participation in the National Unemployment Insurance Day demonstration. He was bailed out by Elaine Black, a fellow party member and secretary of the International Labor Defense Committee. She was a New York–born daughter of Russian-Jewish revolutionaries and had acquired the sobriquet “Red Angel” for her knack of turning up whenever activists needed help getting out of jail and as “Tiger Woman” by the Hearst newspapers for her ability to “raise hell.” They fell in love but were unable to marry in California because of existing anti-miscegenation laws.94

In 1935, fearing reprisals for their “moral turpitude,” they accepted

a loan from friends for train fare to Seattle, Washington, where they were legally married. They returned to Los Angeles, and together they marched, passed out petitions, and participated in some of the largest demonstrations 166

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in the city’s history. Yoneda revealed with some humorous irony just how small Los Angeles was back in the 1930s by recalling that he and Elaine, as members of the Communist Party, were just as visible as couples from the opposition, and it occasionally created awkward moments: “Captain Hynes knew where we lived, and we knew where he lived. Sometimes Elaine and I would bump into him and his wife shopping at the same store—and sometimes, without knowing what else to say, we simply said hello.”95

As political activists, Karl and Elaine Yoneda lived a life of great per-

sonal sacrifice for their political ideals. They would continue to organize and march at the Plaza until the outbreak of World War II. Together, they would walk through the gates at the Manzanar War Relocation Center.96

With the United States’ entrance into World War II, the conflicts that his-

torically pitted labor and the radical left against business and industry eased as efforts mounted to support New Deal programs at home and defeat fascism abroad. President Franklin Roosevelt secured a “no-strike” pledge from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and independent unions. Locally, Communist Party members “increasingly shifted their attention from neighborhoods and public streets to the large rubber, steel, aircraft, auto, and other factories proliferating through the Los Angeles basin.”97 The Plaza’s era of radical free speech and mass demonstrations had come to an end—for the time being.

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Chapter six

Reforming Culture and Community

When silent film legend Charlie Chaplin first arrived in Los Angeles in

1913, he was immediately captivated by the buildings and streets surrounding the Plaza and Old Chinatown because they were reminiscent of his impoverished tenement boyhood spent in Lambeth, London, so much so that some of his most memorable films—Caught in a Cabaret (1914), Police (1916), Easy Street (1917), and The Kid (1921)—were filmed almost entirely at the Plaza and in Chinatown.1 Chaplin showed compassion for the plight of the poor and disenfranchised as dramatized through his bowler-hatted persona “the Little Tramp.” Meanwhile, however, from the 1880s to the 1930s the prevailing images of slum, poverty, race, and disease were put to another service by the business and political establishments that sought to justify—in the name of progress—the displacement of ethnic communities surrounding the Plaza. This effort was aided by the findings of health officials and other Progressive reformers who sought to improve the conditions of the foreignborn through improved education, housing, and sanitation; by literary observers who found an alluring story line at the multi-ethnic Plaza; and by history buffs and preservationists who sought to restore or “create” history and romance at the city’s old core.

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Un-American Disease

Perhaps the earliest image of the Plaza area as a place that needed to be

cleansed from the scourge of disease and inferior cultures emerged out of the ashes of the Chinese Massacre of 1871. In 1882 a bipartisan and bicoastal antiChinese alliance led by the Workingman’s Party passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The law applied to “Chinese laborers, skilled or unskilled, from any foreign port, and was to be enforced by penalties of fine or imprisonment of shipmasters found in violation and by forfeiture of vessels. In addition, state and federal courts were forbidden to naturalize Chinese.”2 Natalia Molina points out in her recent study of public health and race in Los Angeles that across the country the perceived threat that Chinese immigration posed to the economy—a major factor in the movement for exclusion—also rested on the belief that the immigrants endangered the nation’s health. By the 1870s, public health officials and doctors in San Francisco and Los Angeles “had sufficient credibility to construct what being ‘Chinese’ meant—namely, dirty, depraved, and disease ridden.”3 From the 1880s to the turn of the century, health officials in Los Angeles assigned blame for the outbreaks of disease on the squalid structures of Old Chinatown on the eastern edge of the Plaza and the general hygiene practices of the Chinese residents. Unmentioned in their conclusions that the Chinese were “carriers of disease” was the fact that the residents of Chinatown did not own their buildings or that the unfinished municipal sewer system stopped at the Plaza. As a result, “Chinese (and Mexican) residents who lived and worked in the Plaza area had to endure raw sewage spilling into their streets from the open end of the unfinished main line.”4

In March 1900 an “outbreak” of bubonic plague was discovered by the

San Francisco Board of Health after the autopsy of a deceased Chinese man indicated that he apparently had succumbed to the disease; however, proof of the diagnosis remained questionable. Quarantine was immediately imposed upon Chinatown. Opponents of Mayor James D. Phelan claimed that the Board of Health fabricated the plague for the mayor’s own political purposes. Phelan was closely tied to organized labor, especially to the building trades under Patrick Henry McCarthy, who had recently been appointed to the city’s Civil Service Commission. Together, city hall and organized labor were campaigning for the renewal of the 1893 Geary Act, in itself a renewal

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of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The Geary Act required that all Chinese who had not registered one year after its passage would be considered illegal entrants and subject to deportation. When the single case of plague in Chinatown was eventually confirmed, the prospect of widespread contagion, either real or imagined, played into Phelan and McCarthy’s campaign against the Chinese.5

The effects of the San Francisco plague were felt throughout the nation.

In Los Angeles beginning in 1904, local health officials complied with a State Board of Health mandate to autopsy all deaths in Chinatown, but no evidence of the plague was found.6 The stench of the open sewer line continued to spill onto the streets of the community, and Chinese produce vendors and laundries were zoned out from white residential areas. Conversely, Molina found that prior to the 1910s, “Mexicans scarcely came under the purview of local [health] officials.”7 In fact, between 1897 and 1911, records of the Los Angeles Board of Health Commissioners only mentioned Mexicans on one occasion.8 All this would change with the massive influx of Mexicans into the city with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The threat of “Mexican disease,” shaped by the racial images that were formed about the Chinese, would now occupy the attention of state and local health officials in a new campaign to reform the Plaza.

Between 1917 and 1919, the Commission of Immigration and Housing

of California conducted a community survey of eleven “foreign districts” in Los Angeles with the goal of finding “ways and means to reach (and Americanize) the foreign born.”9 But while the intent of the survey was to gain valuable information on the city’s non-white immigrant population, it also succeeded in advancing the notion that race and culture—especially those of the Mexican and Chinese communities—were closely linked to infectious disease and other contagions. Three of the survey districts comprised the areas surrounding the Plaza. Districts 10 and 11 comprised all of Chinatown east of the Plaza to the Los Angeles River, farther south along the river to First Street, and taking in all of Little Tokyo. The survey team substantiated its worst fears in these districts: All the evils of a foreign quarter characterize this part of the city. It includes Chinatown with the usual vices of that nationality. It includes the largest Japanese colony, and everywhere there is bad housing, frightful overcrowd-

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ing, and congestion of peoples in houses and of houses on lots. Nothing except the social agencies, including the schools, bring any American influence to this neighborhood.10



Although the 1918 influenza epidemic had a devastating effect through-

out the city—and the nation and the world—the survey team focused most of its attention on the majority Mexican population northwest and northeast of the Plaza in District 2. The district included all of Sonoratown and Palo Verde (Chavez Ravine) southwest and west of the Southern Pacific freight and passenger depot and the smaller community that was east of the tracks near Ann Street surrounded by industry and the Los Angeles River. Most of the district’s residents were poor Mexicans and Italians living in crowded shacks and house courts; however, the survey failed to mention that the district was also cosmopolitan: In the second district there are principally Mexicans and Italians. The Palo Verde neighborhood is entirely isolated by hills from the rest of the city. Here, after a summer of primitive freedom, the children’s minds have to be reclaimed from the desert waste to at least a sluggish interest in education. In the Ann Street district, situated among the tracks, there is poverty and the resulting disease to be expected among the Mexicans and Italians.11



Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the dramatic growth in the city’s

Mexican population—much of it stemming from the Mexican Revolution— prompted even greater interest and concern among government agencies, reformers, and intellectuals toward the subject of Mexicans. For some, it became “the Mexican problem” as it related to issues of public health. This surfaced in October 1924 when an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague occurred near the Plaza in the poor and largely Mexican Macy Street community. Historian William Deverell has found that the outbreak was devastating for the small neighborhood, and in more ways than one.12 Approximately thirty-four of the thirty-nine cases diagnosed were fatal.

Besides its deadly results, health experts, elected officials, and city boost-

ers linked the outbreak to rodents and the substandard hygienic, economic, and cultural traits believed to be inherent in the Macy Street community. And since plague represented the “apex of uncleanliness” for reformers, the only permanent solution was Americanization.13 Quarantine was placed around 172

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the neighborhood—isolating as many as 2,500 people—and then extended to two additional Mexican neighborhoods, encompassing the Plaza itself. According to Deverell, such reductionist conclusions based on perceived stereotypes about Mexicans and their living conditions and hygiene provided the official explanation for the outbreak; this reasoning overlooked “the tendency of the Mexican to visit relatives and friends during their illness” and the fact that the outbreak was primarily “limited to friends and relatives.”14

Even with the plague’s containment, a general fear of Mexican deprav-

ity became more ingrained in the public consciousness, owing in part to the close proximity of the Macy Street community to downtown industry and business. Deverell found that a growing disdain and fear of a Mexican presence took hold in downtown: “Nor did people relish the thought of Mexicans . . . coming into downtown, as they did every single day. . . . Cafe, restaurant and hotel workers who lived in the Macy Street district lost their jobs, as did others characterized simply as Mexican, therefore dangerous.”15 If the growing fear of “Mexican diseases” and other social depravities were centered on one recognizable space, it would certainly be the old Plaza, which had long attracted the attention of social reformers as well as members of the literary community.

Literary Observations

Los Angeles writers of the late 1920s and the 1930s were captivated by the

unique character of the Plaza and by what some described as the interplay between romance, race, and social depravity. Writer Louis Adamic sought to debunk the local literati of his time by closely following the city’s bitter labor strife, race relations, religion, and other facets of public life, or what historian Mike Davis describes as “the white supremacist pseudo-history of the Boosters.”16 In his 1927 diatribe The Truth About Los Angeles, Adamic made some rather harsh observations about the old square and its diverse mixture of people, lamenting its long-forgotten Mexican history while criticizing its impending transformation: Today, the Plaza is a little park across the way from the Mission, which is practically all that is left of the old pueblo. However, even as it is, the Plaza district is the most interesting part of Los Angeles. For the most part, it conReforming Culture and Community ˚ 173

Aerial view of Plaza, 1922. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. sists of cheap wooden tenements occupied by Mexicans and Chinks, of various camouflaged bawdy houses, dance halls, foreign-looking hotels, bootleg dives, hop joints, movie shows, tamale stands, peep shows, shooting galleries, and stores selling rosaries and holy pictures. Main Street North, the principal thoroughfare of the district, is a moron stream, muddy, filthy, unpleasant to the nose . . . an awful stew of human life. On Sunday afternoon the Plaza park is known as the Los Angeles “free speech area.”

The doom of the Plaza district is sounding. A few millionaire realtors

. . . got together with the railroads running into Los Angeles and cooked up a scheme to build a Union Station on the Plaza, which would give a tremendous boost to the land values in that vicinity; and the voters recently signified their approval of it. So the Old Mexican [plaza] . . . shall soon give way to Babbitt, Progress, and Chemical Purity.17



While crude in their descriptions, Adamic’s observations nonetheless

offer a firsthand account of the impending physical transformation of the Plaza area. For other writers, the fear and fascination surrounding racial mixing downtown found their way into eastern newspaper journalism. In the 174

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summer of 1930, Mildred Adams of the New York Times described what she found in Los Angeles. She was immediately awestruck by the contrasting cultural juxtaposition between Hollywood and the multi-ethnic Plaza, “where Mexicans lived cheek-by-jowl with Chinese, Japanese, blacks and indigent whites in a dark, crowded section, hot and thick, as full of mysterious ingredients as chili con carne, and as quick to burn.”18 In her view, the Plaza was “a hotbed of vivid, violent life, as fertile as Hollywood is sterile.”19

Similarly in Aldous Huxley’s 1939 novel After Many a Summer Dies the

Swan, the protagonist Jeremy Pordage, a naive, Cambridge-educated, middleaged Englishman, arrived in Los Angeles and was mesmerized by everything he found at the Plaza. It became his visual baptism into the city: “The first thing to present itself was a slum of Africans and Filipinos, Japanese and Mexicans. And what permutations and combinations of black, yellow and brown! What complex bastards! And the girls—how beautiful in their artificial silk! And the negro ladies in white muslin gowns. He smiled to himself. And meanwhile the slum had given place to the tall buildings of a business district.”20 But for the multi-ethnic residents of the 1920s and 1930s, the Plaza area was a place that had long been of interest to developers.

The Civic Center–Union Station Movement

From the late 1910s through the 1920s, downtown business leaders like

General Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler were embroiled in several development schemes. One critical project would have a major impact on the Plaza area—the long and bitter dispute over where to build a new railroad terminal and civic center. The dispute pitted businessmen and property owners from the northern part of downtown against those from the southern part, all of whom hoped the new civic center and station would help stabilize their respective section of the city.21 Most commercial interests were led by the Los Angeles Times, which favored a plan to locate the new station in the old northeastern section of downtown. This plan entailed restoration of the Plaza with new surrounding architecture designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. However, selecting a location to realize this plan was a major political battle that entrenched competing downtown business and political interests for several years.

By 1920, sentiment for downtown planning had grown to the extent Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 175

that a city planning commission was created by an amendment of the city charter.22 The new commission was composed of fifty-one members and laid the foundation for incorporating the development of a civic center in the larger business of city planning. Finally, in the election of June 5, 1923, Los Angeles voters went to the polls to determine the new civic center site and to approve a $7,500,000 bond issue to build a new city hall. In the end, voters approved the new civic center site nearest to the Plaza—at First, Sunset, Hill, and Los Angeles Streets—and approved construction of a new city hall.

Several leading architects proposed various concepts for a civic center.

Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, submitted perhaps the best plan for a “memorable visual image” of the city in the form of a “civic center that would also furnish much-needed operational space.”23 As of 1924, no plan was considered to be official. The two most popular plans were proposed by Allied Architects Association and W. D. Cook and George Hall Architects. Both plans were completed in 1925 under joint contracts with the City and County of Los Angeles. The Allied plan was endorsed by the county and comprised five Spanish-named districts or plazas. Each plaza had a specific function, such as government-administration, transportation, or cultural usage, that was reflected in its architectural design and relation to other sites. The Cook and Hall plan was favored by the city but was not as ambitious—or as expensive—as the Allied plan. It emphasized the grandeur of city hall and the reduction of civic center traffic.

A compromise had to be reached between the county-backed Allied plan

and the city-backed Cook and Hall plan. This compromise was subsequently drawn by Warren Ruchti of the Regional Planning Commission and eventually was accepted by both units of government as the only official plan. The plan was finalized in 1927 and became an important blueprint for the city’s future and its original core at the Plaza.24

Today’s City Hall at 200 North Spring Street was designed by Albert C.

Martin Sr., John Parkinson, and John Austin. It opened in 1928 and was based on the Cook and Hall plan. Thus, in assessing the overall twenty-year history of planning in downtown Los Angeles, the city’s original civic center at the Plaza always figured in the designs for a new civic center. In fact, as far back as 1909, when architect Charles Mulford Robinson brought his “City Beautiful” movement to Los Angeles from the East Coast, preserving the oldest section of town was firmly in the minds of architects and city planners. Among

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Robinson’s stated purposes of the City Beautiful movement was to create a physical civic ideal that would promote local patriotism, stimulate business, and strengthen the underlying social control.25

What is more, according to Richard Foglesong, “the creation of public

parks was perceived by Progressive reformers as a way to divert workers’ attention from the world of work, while partially compensating them for the alienating and debilitating effects of work.”26 The rationale of City Beautiful closely paralleled that of Hausmann’s Paris, with great boulevards, ornamental parks, and public architecture seen as “public expenses that would contribute to the public good by enhancing land values, encouraging tourism and stimulating private investment.”27 Thus, as the city architect who was hired to lay plans for a greater Los Angeles, Robinson was determined that part of a new civic center’s function would be to dignify and emphasize the historic Plaza. However, adding beauty to downtown could not proceed without consolidating railroad service in the city.

As early as 1905, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce began to take a

serious interest in building a new union terminal station for the public benefit. The city was faced with a growing public safety issue because the three transcontinental railroads—the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Santa Fe—crossed and recrossed Los Angeles streets, causing numerous accidents and heavy congestion. By 1916, the problem of grade crossing was closely tied to the movement to build Union Station. In 1917 the City Council petitioned the State Railroad Commission to conduct a study of grade crossing and union terminal proposals.28 But the study was only partially completed due to the United States’ entrance into World War I.

In the commission’s preliminary findings, the report of chief engineer

Richard Sache considered three possible terminal sites: the Plaza between Alameda and Main Street, the Santa Fe Depot on Santa Fe Avenue between First and Fourth Streets, and the Southern Pacific Arcade Depot on Alameda between Fourth and Sixth Streets. After careful study, the Plaza was considered to be the most desirable site. In 1911 the City of Los Angeles hired internationally known transportation expert Bion Arnold to investigate and report on its transportation system. In his report filed with the City Council and covering a wide range of issues, Arnold paid particular attention to the need and location of a new station. He noted that if “all the competing steel roads can be brought to consider a union depot, independent of the Arcade

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Station, then the most natural thought is to have a grand monumental portal, with an appropriate setting of open spaces, parkways and surrounding buildings.”29

Arnold concluded that the city needed a union station and that it should

be located adjacent to the Plaza. In 1921 the California Railroad Commission ordered the three railroads to build new stations (at their expense) to eliminate grade crossings. The commission also directed plans for a central union depot near the Plaza. But the railroads bitterly objected and in 1923 appealed to the State Supreme Court, which ruled that the California Railroad Commission had no jurisdiction in this matter. The Railroad Commission and the City of Los Angeles responded to this ruling by appealing to the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington, D.C. And for the next ten years, the three transcontinental railroads, the City of Los Angeles, and the state and federal governments would be interlocked in the battle over Union Station.30

In 1924 the California Railroad Commission presented a plan for a Union

Passenger Terminal Station on Alameda Street opposite the Plaza. The Interstate Commerce Commission indicated that it would approve a Plaza station depot, and if the three railroads refused to cooperate with the state and city, the federal government would impose mandatory orders. Throughout 1925 and early 1926, as the possibility of placing the Union Station issue before voters came closer to reality, the railroads, their supporters, and the city proceeded to carry on a heated war of words. The conflict was distorted by some commonly held beliefs about race and ethnicity. Those who opposed Union Station attempted to stir the anger of preservationists by reporting that the Plaza site for Union Station actually meant the destruction of the Plaza itself, or they expounded that the Plaza was the worst location for the proposed terminal due to the presence of Chinatown.

In April 1926 City Attorney Jess Stephens spoke for the pro–Union Sta-

tion interests and assured voters that “the steam shovels are now at work creating the great civic center which will mark the passing of Chinatown, and in its place will be the great City, County, State and Federal buildings and the Union Depot. The Plaza Park will be retained. Not a single foot of the Plaza Park or Church will be harmed, but the park will be beautified and will be located in front of the grand entrance to the Depot.”31 Attorney Marshall Stimson was even more direct in stating what the pro–Union Station faction

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had in mind for Chinatown: “With the completion of the Civic Center and Union Station, there will be no more Chinatown. In place of the dirty, ramshackle buildings of the present Chinatown, will rise stately buildings of the City, County and Federal Government.”32

Finally, in a special municipal election on April 30, 1926, the people of

Los Angeles had their say in the debate over Union Station. Two propositions were placed on the ballet. Proposition 8 addressed the need for a union depot: “Shall a Union Railway Passenger Terminal for all steam railroads be established in the City of Los Angeles?” The majority of votes were in favor. Proposition 9 considered the location of the station, if approved: “Shall a Union Railroad Terminal for all steam railroads be constructed in the district bounded by Commercial Street, North Main Street, Redondo Street, Alhambra Avenue, and the Los Angeles River, known as the Plaza Plan?” The majority of votes were cast in favor of the proposition.33

Despite the support for Union Station from Los Angeles voters, the

Interstate Commerce Commission affirmed that the ICC was without authority to order the railroads to build the new depot. So the railroads continued to wage their fight against the project. In 1928 the California Supreme Court ruled that the fate of Union Station must be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. And in the following year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal Transportation Act did not empower the Interstate Commerce Commission to require the construction of a union station. But this decision did not deny the power of the California Railroad Commission to enforce the project. As a result, in 1930 the California Supreme Court upheld the authority of the Railroad Commission. In May 1931 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the authority of the California Railroad Commission, and in June 1933 the three railroads stated that they would not pursue any further legal measures to prevent the construction of Union Station near the Plaza.34

With the concession of the railroads, the next issue to be resolved con-

cerning the civic center–Union Station projects focused on the surrounding Plaza neighborhoods. Specifically, this concerned the question of what to do with the large Chinese and Mexican communities that were in the way of the proposed construction. This was a particular problem for Harry Chandler, who owned sizable properties in this section of downtown. But as far as the city’s business and political elites were concerned, these communities were much less a barrier to profit than they were an eyesore and embarrassment

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to their vision of the City Beautiful. In effect, the civic center–Union Station movement became a redevelopment project to remove the core of the city’s downtown Chinese and Mexican communities.

As early as 1920, the fate of the Mexican community was being discussed

in relation to the proposed Plaza site for Union Station. G. Bromley Oxnam conducted a survey for the Interchurch World Movement of North America in which he projected shifts in the Mexican population: It is quite likely that the Mexican now situated around the Plaza and in the Macy Street District, will be forced to go to other parts of the city within the next five years. For a long time the city has planned the erection of a Union Passenger Terminal. . . . This selection of the Plaza site will affect [land] values in Sonoratown and in a few years would cause a complete change in that section, forcing the present dwellers elsewhere. The same changes may be predicted of the Macy St. and Vignes St. district, although the process of change would be somewhat slower. . . . In all probability, the Plaza site will be chosen. This means that between five and ten thousand Mexicans will have to move to other sections of the city.35



Ten years later, Oxnam’s speculation became prophecy. By the 1930s

the Mexican population within the Sonoratown-Plaza area was mostly displaced. They moved east of the Los Angeles River into Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Belvedere, and Maravilla and farther south of the Plaza into the community of Watts. Historian Ricardo Romo identified four key factors that contributed to this rapid movement of Mexicans from the Plaza area between 1910 and 1930. The first was the increase in the population stemming from the exodus during the decade of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, a process that continued after 1920 and led to a housing shortage in the Sonoratown-Plaza area. Second, the growth of industry and commerce north of the Plaza contributed to crowding. The demand for industrial and commercial sites in the central business district significantly increased after construction of a deep-water harbor and completion of the Panama Canal in 1914. North and south of the Plaza, railroad depots attracted warehouses, wholesale distributors, and light industry. A third factor was the development of the city’s interurban transportation network. This began in 1901 with Henry E. Huntington’s Pacific Electric Railway, which contributed to the decentralization of light industries and the expansion of the residential180

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commuter boundaries of the city.36 Finally, a sharp rise in racial bias and intolerance prevented the movement of Mexicans and Chinese residents into the northern and western sections of the city. The social and economic forces that led to the uprooting of thousands of Mexican residents from Los Angeles’ original Sonoratown barrio during the late 1910s through the 1920s, as well as the complete destruction of Old Chinatown, became the final chess moves in building a new civic center and Union Station in the north section of downtown. During the first three decades of the century, then, the Plaza gradually became less of a geographic and cultural reference point as a result of the demographic and territorial expansion of the city.

Historian Robert Fogelson found in his classic study Fragmented Metropo-

lis that territorial expansion of Los Angeles was at first gradual, from 28 square miles of the original 1781 pueblo to 43 square miles by the end of the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the boundaries of the city increased dramatically, from 101 square miles in 1910 to 364 miles in 1920. By 1930, Los Angeles would increase to 442 square miles, making it geographically the largest city in the nation.37 City Hall became the new geographic center of civic power. Although the destruction of Old Chinatown would not begin until 1933, as far as the city fathers were concerned the issue of building a new Union Station adjacent to the Plaza without the presence of Chinatown was never a matter for debate. But in the process of removing Mexican and Chinese residents from the core of downtown, a paradox remained. For the same people who were instrumental in razing Sonoratown and Chinatown would soon play a key role in constructing simulated Mexican and Chinese landscapes in the void left where the neighborhoods once stood. The development of these landscapes and the tensions that resulted were a turning point in the Plaza’s history.

Olvera Street

During the heated downtown political battles of the 1920s that focused

on the Civic Center and Union Station, Christine Sterling began her campaign to save the Plaza area from the demolition crew and create the Olvera Street Mexican marketplace as a center for local romance and tourism. Her flair for California Spanish-Mexican romance stemmed in part from her family background in San Francisco. Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 181

Daily life at the Plaza, 1928. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.



She was born Chastina (later changed to Christine) Rix in Oakland, Cali-

fornia, in 1881 and was one of four children of strict Protestant parents. They traced their family lineage back to fourteenth-century England’s John Rix, the earl of Oxford, who was beheaded by order of King Henry VIII in 1525 for defending the King’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.38 Sterling’s grandparents were Alfred and Chastina Rix, who moved to San Francisco from New England in the early 1850s. Before settling in California, Alfred Rix was an attorney and schoolteacher for a brief time in Vermont. In 1855 he was elected San Francisco justice of the peace and later police court judge.39 He also became a leading member of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, a semi-legal group organized by middle-class residents to combat the rampant lawlessness and crime that followed the Gold Rush.

Sterling’s father was Edward Austin Rix, a noted scientist at the Univer-

sity of California, Berkeley. He was born in 1855 at the family home on San Francisco’s Market Street. After his mother died in 1857, he spent his childhood in the care of his aunt on a farm near the decaying Petaluma rancho of 182

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General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. As Edward matured, much of his time was spent near old Mission Dolores in San Francisco, where descendants of the original Mexican families lived.40 He was a member of the first graduating class of the University of California and became known as the dean of the compressed-air profession and father of the Cyclotron, the world’s first atom smasher.41

As a young woman at the turn of the century, Christine Sterling entered

Mills College near Oakland. She intended to study art and design but grew disinterested in college life and returned to San Francisco shortly before the great earthquake. She married and soon divorced. She later married Jerome Hough, a San Francisco attorney. They had two children—a son, Peter, born in Santa Clara in 1915, and a daughter, June, born in 1917. Shortly after Peter’s

Christine Sterling, “Mother of Olvera Street,” ca. 1940. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 183

birth, the Houghs moved to Hollywood, where Jerome found work in the burgeoning motion picture industry.42 They arrived in Southern California just as the Mexican Revolution was coming to an end, and a flowering of cultural relations between the United States and Mexico created “an enormous vogue” among Americans for all forms of Mexican art and architecture. This vogue was evident in the 1920s with the arrival of the Mexican masters Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, who were commissioned to paint thematic murals in major U.S. cities.43 This period was also Hollywood’s Golden Era, the days when Mary Pickford, dubbed “America’s Sweetheart,” and Rudolph Valentino, “The Great Lover,” played memorable roles as romantic Latin characters.44

Sterling’s exposure to Mexican art and Hollywood movies, as well as her

own art training and family background, became critical elements in her overall vision for the Mexican marketplace on Olvera Street. But in order to realize Mexican romance in her adopted city, she needed the support of the local business and political establishment. She first approached the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and was advised to speak with Harry Chandler, publisher of the Times, who was perhaps the most influential figure in the city. For Chandler, the opportunity to support Sterling’s vision for historic preservation at the old Plaza—albeit romantic—had personal meaning that connected memories of his past with the realities of the present.

Chandler was born in the rural village of Landaff, New Hampshire, in

1864. He was a descendant of William Chandler, an English immigrant who settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1637. His parents were Moses Knight Chandler and Emma Jane Little Chandler. Harry was the eldest of four children—three boys and one girl. As a boy, he spent much of his time roaming the storied countryside immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1882 but was soon stricken with tuberculosis. So like many ailing Americans from the east, Chandler’s parents sent him west in the hope that the hype would prove true and the curative dry climate might restore their son’s health.45 He arrived in Los Angeles when the city had fewer than twelve thousand inhabitants and still retained much of its Mexican past, particularly in many of the adobe-lined streets and in the sizable Mexican population that congregated around the Plaza. And even while the center of town was gradually shifting southwest, away from the Plaza, the old square would continue to be an important landmark and gathering place during his early days in the city. In 1959, Times columnist Edward Ain184

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sworth chronicled these early memories in a sentimental tribute to his boss. It was entitled Memories in the City of Dreams and bore a close resemblance to the epic fables of Horatio Alger. Ainsworth recalled Chandler’s arrival in the city as a frail, homesick youth who could not afford to lodge at the Pico House. Even so, young Chandler was immediately captivated by the Mexican character of the city: Close by was the Plaza, a spot still used by residents of Mexican descent as a gathering place for conversation and relaxation. Here it was that the original tiny pueblo had been founded upon orders of Spanish Governor Felipe de Neve. Here it was that the life of the community had centered from the earliest days . . . It came rather as a shock to the New England stripling to encounter a serene and confident people who had been well-established in literature and the arts on the American Continent, and indeed were printing fine books on their own presses, a half century before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Boston and Philadelphia suddenly lost some of their traditional cultural standing, by comparison.46



If the Plaza area held strong sentiment for the young Chandler, as a man

and head of the powerful Times it also posed a complex set of challenges to his sizable business interests. Although Chandler was primarily a newspaperman from his early days working for his future father-in-law at the Times circulation desk, property would become the source of his economic power. By 1930 he owned more than two million acres in ranches, agricultural property, cattle and cotton operations, and suburban lots. Thus, much more than the sentimental writings of loyal employees, the restoration of the Plaza area was an important project in Chandler’s overall plans for downtown. This largely involved his role in developing an industrial base for Los Angeles, a project that complemented his plan for a new civic center, railroad terminal, and Times headquarters in the old northern section of downtown where most of his urban real estate holdings were concentrated.47 This fortuitous meeting with Sterling would add a unique element to his plans for downtown.

Her efforts to rescue the Plaza area began in 1926 when she discovered

the deteriorated condition of the Avila Adobe, the city’s oldest existing house, which was located on Olvera Street. This was the same year that Los Angeles voters approved a plaza referendum that paved the way for the conReforming Culture and Community ˚ 185

struction of Union Station next to the Plaza in Old Chinatown. One previous plan called for the new station to be built at the Plaza, which would have meant its destruction.48 Like her predecessor, Charles Fletcher Lummis, who directed local preservation movements by linking the region’s historical mythology with tourism and real estate development, Sterling was determined to save the city’s birthplace. After several failed attempts to gain support from business and civic groups, she met with Chandler to discuss her plan to restore the Avila Adobe and create a tourist attraction on Olvera Street.49

The newspaper scion was immediately intrigued by Sterling’s idea for

restoring the Plaza area as “a mixture of romance and capitalism” because it complemented his own vision for downtown.50 In fact, Chandler had long favored a plan to renovate the Plaza section of downtown, where he owned a considerable amount of property whose commercial value would increase with the construction of Union Station.51 Sterling’s proposal to attract tourists to the Plaza area also may have provided Chandler and the downtown business establishment with a method for dealing with and settling the nagging problem of radical labor and political activity. Indeed, the creation of a colorful tourist attraction undoubtedly appeared to be a novel solution to fighting labor unions, communists, and other enemies of free enterprise who continued to gather at the city’s Hyde Park.52

Thus, Sterling and Chandler found good reason to form an alliance.

Through the Times, he provided a public forum for her development plan. He assigned senior columnist John Steven McGroarty, the dean of local romantics and author of The Mission Play—a romantic California stage production that ran from 1912 to 1929—to write the feature articles in support of Sterling’s project. McGroarty’s first front-page story—“Shall Our City Forfeit Its Last Heritage from Old Spain?”—introduced Mrs. Jerome (Christine) Hough as “a woman of vision, a woman with brains. And a woman with a passion for beauty. She knows what bait to use when she goes fishing. A woman whose ulterior object is the achievement of beauty, but who realizes that in this day and generation, romance can live only if it can be made to pay.”53 But at a time when the growing Mexican population was foremost in the minds of local government and health officials, educators, and law enforcement, McGroarty also assured his readers of Sterling’s unique ability to address “the Mexican problem”: “She knows the Latin heart and the Latin soul, and [even] what goes on in the Latin mind.”54

Subsequent articles were just as candid in their sentiment for the Plaza 186

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area, but financial support did not come forward. By 1928 the fate of the Avila Adobe had reached a critical level. In late November, Sterling found a notice of condemnation from the Department of Health posted on the front door of the building. In response, according to local lore, she posted her own hand-painted sign condemning the shortsightedness of city officials for failing to preserve an important city landmark.55 Sterling gained the support of the Rimpau family of Anaheim, descendants of Don Francisco Avila, builder of the 1818 adobe.56

The Rimpaus entrusted the adobe to Sterling, who was now more than

ever determined to save the structure. She was undaunted in her efforts and noted in her diary entry of December 8, 1928, that she painted a large tenby-twelve-foot sign and placed it in front of the adobe in an effort to attract public attention. It was a long handwritten statement entitled “Shall We Condemn?”57

The publicity stunt succeeded beyond her expectations. Local news-

papers provided front-page coverage of Sterling’s one-woman campaign to save “Old Los Angeles.” The City Council followed suit by rescinding the order of condemnation. Support for restoring the old adobe rushed in from throughout the city.58 But while the fate of the Avila Adobe appeared to have changed for the better, Sterling still lacked the necessary funds to transform Olvera Street—then a muddy and unpaved alley—into a romantic Mexican marketplace as part of her overall plan for reviving the Plaza area. So in an effort to raise the necessary cash, she hosted a spring barbecue luncheon in 1929 for city officials on the patio of the rescued adobe. The event had all the props and colorful ambiance that reflected her vision of “old Mexico” and her practical business sense, both in its sensory presentation and in her use of a long-standing booster formula: she linked the region’s romantic past to urban growth, the tourist industry, and real estate in order to convey to her guests the impending loss of “their” heritage.59

This manipulation of national and local historical symbols as a means

to gain favor with her Anglo supporters became a basic strategy that Sterling would rely upon throughout her career. Hot Mexican food, cold beer, strumming guitars, colorful confetti, and costumed señoritas soothed and serenaded her guests while she made an emotional plea for help. And by all accounts, the strategy hit its mark. Local elected officials who were hardened by traditional lobbying from traditional business interests suddenly found themselves donning sombreros, dancing, and eager to help. Police Chief Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 187

James “Two-Gun” Davis even promised to send Sterling a crew of prison inmates from the city jail, shackled with ball and chain, to do the lion’s share of the “hard labor” if the others would agree to cover the necessary purchases.60 Truckloads of building materials came from Blue Diamond Cement and the Simons Brick Company, which was staffed by an army of Mexican laborers from Michoacán.61

Sterling found a powerful ally in Florence Dodson de Schoneman, a

member of the Sepúlveda family that once owned Rancho Los Palos Verdes.62 Schoneman was an influential figure in Los Angeles social circles and a staunch advocate for the preservation of California’s Spanish-Mexican landmarks. She was head of the California History and Landmarks Committee of the Native Daughters of the Golden West, chairwoman of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, and president of the Friday Morning Club. Thus, Schoneman’s support proved to be an essential component in Sterling’s overall plan for preserving the Plaza area.63 With such enthusiastic support, Sterling became a known personality in downtown social circles.

In her campaign to create a romantic California version of the City

Beautiful, Sterling oversaw the entire Olvera Street construction project with the same sense of purpose that characterized Progressive-era reformers who were imbued with what historian Peggy Pascoe called “Victorian female moral authority.”64 With the assistance from various women’s clubs and local historical organizations—among them the Ramona Parlor of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, who dressed in overalls and carpenter aprons—construction began on November 7, 1929.65 Unwavering in her determination to complete the project, Sterling noted one night in her diary that “one of the prisoners is a good carpenter, another an electrician. Each night I pray they will arrest a bricklayer and a plumber.”66

The project benefited from her personal resolve, ample supplies, and

“volunteer” labor yet still lacked solid financial backing. Sterling’s dilemma was finally resolved when Harry Chandler came forward with funds collected at one of his famous “$1,000-a-plate” luncheons with selected businessmen.67 Longtime Los Angeles Superior Court Judge and Olvera Street patron McIntyre Faries recalled that “all knew that when Harry Chandler gave a luncheon one should bring his checkbook.”68 Luncheon “guests” included former general Moses H. Sherman, who held extensive interests in Southern California real estate, public utilities, and the streetcar and interurban railways; Henry O’Melveny, head of the city’s most powerful law firm; Lucien 188

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Napoleon Brunswig, head of the Brunswig Drug Company; banker and developer James Martin; attorney David M. Faries; Harry Bauer of the Southern California Edison Company; and, perhaps the least known of the group, real estate developer Rodolfo Montes.69 After discussing the importance of saving the Plaza area, the group agreed to contribute $5,000 each toward the establishment of Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation. The new company would be headed by Chandler and would operate as a for-profit venture with stock options. This, in effect, became the financial basis for the restoration of the birthplace of the city.70 And for most members of the new corporation, this was merely another chance to get in on another Chandler investment opportunity. But for Rodolfo Montes, the restoration of Olvera Street was also an opportunity to reconnect with the personal and often painful memories of his native Mexico.

Montes was born in the state of San Luis Potosí and became one of the

most notable Mexican businessmen of his generation. He rose to national prominence during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. During the 1920s, Montes became president of the British-owned El Águila (Mexican Eagle) Oil Company, which later evolved into PEMEX Oil when Mexico nationalized its oil in the 1930s under President Lázaro Cárdenas. In the early years of the twentieth century, Mexican oil was dominated by two rival companies. El Águila was led by the Englishman Sir Weetman Pearson (later to become Lord Cowdray), and Pan American Petroleum was led by Edward L. Doheny.71

Montes was a conservative, a devout Catholic, and a respected public

figure. He was forced into exile in the mid-1920s stemming from a bitter ideological conflict with President Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles was a staunch anti-cleric who sought to destroy the Church structure and eliminate religious influences from Mexican society, including powerful businessmen with close ties to the Church. Montes was forced to liquidate all of his Mexican assets, and he brought them in cash to Los Angeles. Calles himself would become a familiar face at the Plaza during his years of exile from 1934 to 1941. Montes arrived in 1927 with his wife, Consuelo Hernandez de Toranzo, and their two sons, Rodolfo and José Luis. The Montes family reunited with friends and family members who composed a small but influential community of wealthy Mexican exiles. The family purchased a home in Pasadena and another in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles, where they intermixed with the business and social elite of Southern California.

Montes invested in real estate that included ranchlands near Los Angeles Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 189

and landmark property in downtown. But as a member of Chandler’s Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, Montes’ interest went beyond his financial investment. For the former Mexican business mogul, helping Los Angeles recover its forgotten Mexican past—albeit through Olvera Street tourism—was an opportunity for him and other Mexican exiles to create a México de afuera, a visual and symbolic memory of a homeland that many never would see again. Rodolfo and his family became frequent visitors to Olvera Street, and they attended regular Sunday mass at La Placita church among the crowds of working-class faithful. The Plaza area became a cultural reference and daily homecoming for the Montes family and especially for Rodolfo, who would never again set foot on Mexican soil. When the Depression hit, his investments in property and an early Spanish-language movie company plummeted. He died of heart failure in 1934 at age fifty-four and was buried at the New Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, near many of the city’s earliest pioneers.72

In its own way, the Plaza area also was a place of lingering sentiment for

Harry Chandler, dating back to his arrival in the city. Ultimately, however, it was a place of business, and his role as president of the new corporation was unquestioned, according to Judge Faries: “A suggestion had been made that the corporation be non-profit, but Chandler opposed this. He told me later that he wanted to write off his investment, which was $25,000. At the time, he envisioned restoring and operating Olvera Street and also New China City, which he wanted to move to the north of the Mexican restoration.”73

Thus, with the financial support in place, the next phase in the revival

of the Plaza area began on Easter Sunday, 1930, with the opening of Paseo de Los Angeles, which later became popularly known by its official street name, Olvera Street. Christine Sterling’s romantic revival had finally come to pass. It was an overnight success as a local tourist destination and was heralded in the local press as “A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today.” La Opinión, the leading Spanish-language daily, praised the opening event as una calleja que recuerda al México viejo (a typical street that recalls old Mexico).74 After Olvera Street’s grand opening, Sterling laid initial plans for preserving several other buildings and spaces within the Plaza vicinity. Just like Charles Lummis before her, it was clear that she had a sincere vision for preserving the entire Plaza area as a heritage site. Her vision embraced her tendency to romanticize Mexican folk culture as well as to publicize her “expertise” on all things Mexican. 190

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Olvera Street marketplace, Sterling’s romantic image of pre-industrial Mexico set against the bustle of downtown and City Hall (tall building in background). Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.



And as a successful tourist attraction and hub of social activity for down-

town business and political leaders as well as the Hollywood film industry, Olvera Street was arguably, according to David Rieff, the first theme park in the world. “Before that, theme parks were transient phenomena, erected for the duration of a world’s fair or national exposition and struck immediately after the closing ceremonies. People think of theme parks as Walt Disney’s Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 191

invention, but actually Olvera Street’s creation antedates that of Disneyland’s by 36 years.”75

This is only partially true if we overlook Abbot Kinney’s romantic land-

scape, Venice of America. Kinney was the former U.S. Indian commissioner who accompanied Helen Hunt Jackson on her fact-finding sojourn through Southern California to investigate the condition of the “mission Indians.” This trip ultimately served as the impetus for Jackson’s popular 1884 novel Ramona. In 1904, after making a fortune in the East from cigarette manufacturing, Kinney purchased a 160-acre tract of coastal sand dunes and marshes south of Santa Monica. He drained the marshes; built a breakwater and several piers; erected facilities for a theater, concerts, hotels, and private homes; and dug a network of canals to service a fleet of gondolas staffed by twentyfour Italian gondoliers imported from “the old country.” Thus, Kinney’s Venice of America became a forerunner both to the modern theme park and to vernacular-style architecture.76 Kinney’s Venetian ideal by the sea eventually floundered, while Sterling’s Mexican marketplace in downtown thrived.

Historian Phoebe Kropp found that Olvera Street’s appeal “lay in the

total environment, the immersion, . . . where the object of consumption was the experience itself.”77 Clearly, Olvera Street’s single commodity was based on another imagined landscape—“romantic Mexico”—and could be found throughout the narrow space. On the exterior facades of the brick buildings and on the small wooden puestos, or vendor stalls, that began lining the street in 1932 were objects that depicted recurrent themes on both sides of the border. Colorful piñatas, hanging puppets in white peasant garb, Mexican pottery, serapes, mounted bull horns, leather huaraches, oversized sombreros, and the always popular life-size stuffed donkey were all available on Olvera Street. These items were strategically placed at the entrance to the street for the “perfect photo opportunity.”78 However, the single most widespread image in Sterling’s version of old Mexico was the ceramic statue of the Mexican campesino reclining against a giant saguaro cactus with his knees drawn up to his chest and his sombrero tilted over his face while he took a siesta. This was the quintessential stereotype in the American popular mind—the “lazy Mexican.”79 What is more, Sterling clearly understood that this “pre-industrial laziness” could be used to turn a buck.

Paradoxically, in the midst of industrialization and the larger decen-

tralization and segmentation of the city along racial and class lines, Olvera Street’s growing image as an ethnic theme park made a powerful case for 192

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the control of free speech and large political demonstrations at the Plaza. This duality between the theme park model of carefully controlled tourist space on Olvera Street and the free speech atmosphere at the adjacent Plaza is noted by urban theorist Michael Sorkin: “The theme park presents its happy, regulated vision of pleasure—all those artfully hoodwinking forms— as a substitute for the democratic public realm, and it does so appealingly by stripping troubled urbanity of its sting, of the presence of the poor, of crime, of dirt, of work. In the ‘public’ spaces of the theme park or the shopping mall, speech itself is restricted: there are no demonstrations in Disneyland.”80 In other words, the effort to reclaim the Plaza and downtown as a whole is the struggle of democracy itself. Regionally, Olvera Street came to reflect the problematics of the border, since it was primarily intended to attract non-Hispanic tourists to a quaint, colorized, and non-confrontational environment.81 But confrontation, whether real or symbolic, could never be avoided.

Sterling understood that tourists would eat, drink, and purchase selec-

tive goods and services in an idealized Mexico—a Mexico that was insulated from Mexico itself but that still evoked a veiled sense of excitement and foreign adventure. As such, Olvera Street was successful and even surpassed Mexican tourist zones along the border in Tijuana and Mexicali because it fulfilled tourists’ preconceived notions about Mexico and the quaintness of its culture without risk or “reality” of actually crossing the border. Anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett found that the power of the recreated village was in many ways similar to museums that exhibit “foreign cultures” because they essentially serve as a surrogate for travel, transporting a sight—in this case, Mexico to Los Angeles—otherwise removed in time and space.82

This duality of Olvera Street as “A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of

Today” is what distinguished Sterling’s landscape from other Mexican tourist sites. For by providing tourists with an illusion of Mexico that was free of the abominations of rural Mexican village life—conspicuously its poverty and its dirt—Mexicans on Olvera Street were reincarnated to perform a way of life they no longer lived. They were relegated to the “usable” past made safe for public consumption by exhibiting their assimilation into the fabric of American culture. What is more, Olvera Street was located in the middle of or adjacent to the threat—as it were—of Mexico that had moved north. The dialectic that became the Plaza’s new reality was one of an increasing Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 193

population of poor Mexicans in the city and the backdrop of a faux SpanishMexican dichotomy set against the exigencies of the Depression, communist protests, and mass deportations.

But if Olvera Street’s 1930 opening transformed popular images about

Mexico and its people, it also transformed Christine Sterling. Separated from her husband and nearly bankrupt, she swapped the last name Hough for Sterling at a time when name changes were in vogue among the Hollywood movie crowd. During this transformation in her personal life, she found a civic cause in rescuing the old Plaza area that also brought renewed social status.83

Ultimately, in saving the Plaza area as a heritage site and then being hired

as its first administrator, Sterling managed to reinvent herself in Depressionera Los Angeles. But in doing so, she assumed what was commonly accepted as a feminine role found within the preservation histories at many of the nation’s historic sites, namely that of honoring and caring for the memory of heroic men. In fact, across the country and across the decades, women were central in movements to protect the country’s sacred shrines. Among the first efforts was the preservation of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon in the mid-1850s. It was led by Ann Pamela Cunningham and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), who saved the historic home from possible development as a hotel. The MVLA was the first successful national preservation effort and among the first successful women’s organizations in the United States.84 Likewise, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) organized in 1890 and became a national force in historic preservation. DAR members marked and preserved historic sites related to colonial and Revolutionary War events, such as Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and the Betsy Ross House, Cowpens National Battlefield in South Carolina, and the Yorktown Battlefield.85

During the early twentieth century, Progressive women’s clubs whose

mission focused on community improvement through the promotion of art, libraries, public health, and home economics also addressed the care of historic sites. For example, the Denver Women’s Club organized the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association and led a campaign to designate Mesa Verde as a national archaeological monument. In 1916 the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) led a successful effort to save the home of Frederick Douglass in Anacostia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. During the 1920s, urban preservation efforts in Charleston, South Carolina, were led by Susan 194

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Pringle Frost, while Elizabeth Thomas Werlein led an effort to preserve New Orleans’ French Quarter. Frost was among the first preservationists to recognize the need to revitalize the historic cores of American cities. She was a major real estate developer and advanced the role of private investment as a means of preserving historic structures, a formula that became the basis for the preservation of the Plaza.86

This legacy of women’s leadership in historic preservation provided

an opportunity to expand the definitions of women’s activities in civic life that was passed on to Sterling upon her first walk through the Plaza. And like many other preservation efforts across the nation, Sterling’s restoration of the Avila Adobe centered on a triumphant Anglo narrative. She drew on real events in the history of Los Angeles stemming from the defeat of Mexican forces in 1847. Specifically, she embraced a male trinity composed of Robert F. Stockton, Kit Carson, and John C. Frémont, celebrated heroes in the war with Mexico. She discovered that U.S. troops under Stockton briefly made their headquarters in the old adobe during the final occupation of the city in January 1847. In her own writing and public speeches, Sterling clearly understood the currency of this Alamo-like birth legend for Los Angeles and how patriotic symbols could be manipulated in her appeals to Anglo boosters and elected officials in her effort to save “their” heritage:87 S h all W e Co n d e m n ?

This old adobe, outcast and condemned, was the headquarters of Commodore R. F. Stockton upon final occupation of Los Angeles in 1847 by the Americans. It has seen the flags of Spain, Mexico and [the] United States flying over the pueblo. It has lived through the peaceful happy days of early California before the Americans came, and its walls sheltered the Americans after they came. The retaking of Los Angeles by the United States is as thrilling and perilous as any record in history. The defeat of General Kear‑ ney at San Pascual, the heroism of Kit Carson, the surrender of General Andrés Pico, the American soldiers marching into the Plaza on the morning of January 10, 1847, and at last this home as a place of rest. This is but a tiny part of the history these men left behind them in the meshes of these walls and this memory is condemned. The old steps have broken under the countless footsteps of the men and women who were the builders of this city. The old Plaza Church and this century-old adobe are the grandparents of modern Los Angeles. If there is no deference due age, if this old landmark Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 195

is not worthy of preservation, then there is no Sentiment, no Patriotism, no Country, no Flag. Los Angeles will be forever marked a transient orphan city if she allows her roots to rot in a soil impoverished by neglect. The nation honors Plymouth Rock, Lexington Green, and Bunker Hill. Philadelphia has preserved . . . Independence Hall and the home of Betsy Ross. Boston honors the home of Paul Revere, South Church, and Kings Chapel.

The homes of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson have become . . .

American Shrines. This old adobe belongs to the history of Los Angeles. It is not ours to destroy, but [is] an entrusted heritage left to us to preserve and pass on to future generations. By all that is fine and sincere; by every Sentiment responsive to Patriotism, let the people of Los Angeles show honor and respect to the history of their city by making sacred and inviolate the last of the old landmarks and that spot where the city of Los Angeles was born.88



Amid this evolving birth legend for Anglo Los Angeles, Sterling herself

figured into the story for her tireless exertions and self-sacrifice to rescue the Avila Adobe from the wrecking ball. Her presence as a maternal symbol in the effort to save the old adobe—where Stockton once slept—was not unlike the preservation histories at other historic sites, especially those sites where socially connected middle-class women played a central leadership role.

Anthropologist Holly Beachley Brear finds a compelling preservation

story in the campaign to save the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas.89 Since the Mexican siege of the Alamo in 1836, Anglo Texans have embraced the site as a symbol of their identity. By the 1920s, however, the Alamo was earmarked for demolition. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) initiated an effort to save the decaying structure. They were led by Clara Driscoll, their most celebrated daughter, who resurrected a heroic trinity composed of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B. Travis in her campaign rhetoric to save the Alamo for the people of Texas. Driscoll was made a martyr in Texas lore for her tireless self-sacrifice in saving the Texas shrine, while she and the DRT became important maternal figures in the Anglo creation mythology of Texas.

Similarly, during Sterling’s thirty-three-year tenure as administrator of

the Plaza area (today known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument), she was known in the local press as “the Mother of Olvera Street.” However, unlike her counterparts of the restored Alamo, she did not preside 196

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over a lifeless, static museum. For upon completion of her original task of preserving the Avila Adobe, she “created” the Mexican marketplace on Olvera Street, complete with costumed merchants, to provide living testament to the consequences of conquest and, perhaps, of ongoing contestation. Unknowing visitors to Olvera Street were instantly confronted with Sterling’s point of view that romance and history were not only inseparable, they were very often indistinguishable. A flair for romance often found its way into her diary: “The Street opened last night in a blaze of glory. Thousands of people came and every one seemed happy. Festivities centered around the old ‘wine cellar’ which had been transformed into picturesque ‘Casa La Golondrina.’ Once more the surface of the old street felt the touch of dainty slippers and polished boots. Romance sang the love song of yesterday, and vendors softly called, Dulces mexicanos, señora, pruebe Ud. uno.”90

When history, romance, and preservation converge in a single space,

they reflect a particular kind of cultural hegemony, particularly when we consider the relationship between those who engage in preservation and what is actually being preserved. In this case, like the wind guiding the swallows back to Capistrano, Olvera Street returned Mexicans to the Plaza—the center of the former Mexican city and the site of their resistance to the Anglo invasion of California. In effect, Olvera Street proposed a reconciliation of contesting parties from the past. So by offering a view of history that was at best ambiguous, Sterling revealed just how much she was a product of her time. For the Mexicans whom she returned to Olvera Street were “good Mexicans,” born from the depths of her imagination—free of poverty, disease, and rebellion.

So, how does one begin to understand the relationship between the Plaza

and Olvera Street and the impact of that relationship on 1930s Los Angeles? The introduction of tourism on the street coincided with increased policing at the adjacent Plaza. For example, “bum-proof” diagonal brick (which still remains) encircling the Plaza’s fountain was installed in the early 1930s to discourage loitering and public demonstrations. But radical labor and political activity did not disappear from the old square. As previously noted, just weeks after Olvera Street’s grand opening, the Communist Party joined forces with the Trade Union Unity League and staged a massive rally, drawing more than ten thousand people.91 Communists and other radicals would remain at the Plaza throughout the 1930s, organizing events that often led to bloody encounters with the infamous Red Squad under Captain William Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 197

Christine Sterling (row behind children, tenth from left) and merchants of Olvera Street, ca. 1930. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

“Red” Hynes of the Los Angeles Police Department.92 The primary duty of the Red Squad—formed in the 1920s as a special unit of the LAPD—was to protect the city’s business interests from political agitators and subversives, a task that, by all accounts, they carried out with extreme vigor.

Indeed, the policing and the racial attitudes that guided Sterling’s re-

forms are as ironic and compelling as the historical past she sought to preserve. Olvera Street’s re-creation occurred at a time when Mexican immigrants in the city and elsewhere were being routinely apprehended and repatriated for Depression-era hardships; among them were many U.S. citizens.93 In Sterling’s effort to “clean up” the oldest and most ethnically diverse section of the city, Olvera Street may have served to ease or distract anti-Mexican sentiments by providing an alternative to the harsh social realities under which Mexicans in Los Angeles lived and worked. While Anglos shopped on Olvera Street, they also interacted with Mexicans—occasionally forming lasting friendships—in ways that they had never done before. To be sure, things Mexican were in vogue throughout Southern California during the 1930s. In nearby Claremont, Anglo promoters of the Padua Hills Theatre featured “authentic” Mexican Players (also known as the Paduanos) who performed before and delighted thousands of middle-class tourists.94 198

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Sterling’s mythic “Mexicoland” could not escape from the social and

economic realities of contemporary Los Angeles. But for Harry Chandler, Olvera Street was a welcome stand-in for Mexico and its people, an ideal place to interact and do business with Mexicans who were safely contained in time and space and far more predictable than in his previous encounters with armed revolutionaries along the border or Magonistas at the Plaza.95

Chandler became a familiar face on the street, reasserting his authority

with every visit. He embraced the culture and the people while serving as the beloved padrino (godfather) to the merchants, who bestowed quiet deference—Buenos dias, señor Chandler. Former merchant Belle Valadez recalled a time-honored ritual that personified their relationship with their padrino and benefactor.96 Each year on his birthday, a caravan of merchants walked to Chandler’s Times office, where they presented him with offerings of gifts, abrazos, and the singing of Las mañanitas. Chandler was so taken in by Olvera Street’s Munchkin-land appeal that he rarely missed an opportunity to “dress Mexican.” In fact, Norman Chandler recalled that his father often pre-

Harry Chandler (beside decorations) costumed as padrino of Olvera Street, 1938. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. Reforming Culture and Community ˚ 199

ferred to wear the soft handmade leather huaraches (woven sandals) at his Times office—drawing the anger of Mrs. Chandler.97

But this was not all purely form over function. On the contrary, besides

romantic nostalgia and tourist consumption, Sterling offered Angelenos new cultural identity. Olvera Street emerged as both a tourist view of rural Mexico and the quintessential Los Angeles landmark—mentally located somewhere between Hollywood and Jalisco. But, unlike Tijuana with its hard-edged tourist trappings and legendary vice, this homogenized presentation of Mexico in the middle of an American city is what was so original about Olvera Street. Never before had such a public image of Mexico and its people come so far north past the tourist zones along the border.98 In contrast to deportation, Olvera Street represented a kinder and gentler solution to “the Mexican problem.”

At the same time, however, it must be said that Sterling had a tremendous

heart and cared deeply for the merchant community, many of whom were in desperate poverty before they opened their small shops. She was genuinely kind and led a fairly modest life with her two children, Peter and June. Longtime Olvera Street merchant Benjamin Sousa recalled his fellow merchants’ relationship with Sterling as one of affection and reverence tempered by an awareness of the consequences of challenging her authority, which included eviction from the street: “Oh she was a beautiful lady. She was strict. I mean she would get mad and her eyes would burn just like fire.”99

While her views on historic preservation and Mexican culture were

guided by the romance and reformist agenda of her time, Sterling’s dedication to the well-being of the merchant community was genuine: “Olvera Street holds for me all of the charm and beauty which I dreamed for it, because out of the hearts of the Mexican people is spun the gold of Romance and Contentment. No sweeter, finer people live on this earth, than the men and women of Mexico and what ever evil anyone might believe about them has been bred in the darkness of ignorance and prejudice.”100 Together, Sterling and the merchants fought for economic survival while learning to negotiate the corridors of City Hall at a time when local government was often hostile to women and Mexicans. Their tactics in gaining support from city hall took on many forms: colorful fiestas, lavish banquets for City Council members at Consuelo de Bonzo’s Casa La Golondrina restaurant, and, if that failed, press conferences or direct lobbying by an onslaught of costumed merchants. This access to downtown political power would have long-range 200

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implications for Olvera Street and for the larger Mexican American community that did not have a voice on the City Council.

No doubt, she was engaged in the adaptive reuse of the built environment

(an early example of Los Angeles post-modernism), but she was neither naive nor disinterested in local history before the arrival of Anglos and Europeans. For example, during the grading of Olvera Street in late 1929, workers found an underground section of the original Zanja Madre running across Olvera Street. Sterling immediately understood the significance of this vital water system for the early pueblo and its currency as an important element in her overall plan for historic preservation and tourism.101 Today, sections of the ninety-mile zanja system continue to be found by construction crews, and the zanja is a major topic of research for local scholars and preservationists.

It is clear that without Sterling the entire Plaza area would have been

lost. Like Charles Lummis before her, she must be understood within the context of her time. Lummis was certainly a man who reflected all the prejudices, arrogance, and ambiguities of his time. And if he profited from the cult of the missions, he was also responsible for the preservation of significant architecture of the Spanish-Mexican era and for effecting more humane policies on behalf of California Indians. Similarly, Sterling was a product of the early twentieth century. She was paternalistic and naive to the complex social and economic realities faced by the contemporary Mexican community. But to her credit, she prevented the complete erasure of the city’s remaining Spanish-Mexican and early American architecture at the Plaza. As historian Kevin Starr put it: “Olvera Street might not be authentic Old California or even authentic Mexico, but it was better than the bulldozer.”102

And if Olvera Street was better than the bulldozer, it was also a successful

and deeply complex tourist site that celebrated a mythic pre-industrial past that was both appealing and useful to Anglos while at the same time obscuring the contemporary reality of Mexicans in Los Angeles. Eventually, these dual narratives of an imaginary past and an unjust present were destined to collide at the birthplace of the city.

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Chapter seven

Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers

In 1952 director Kurt Neumann offered an uncompromising glimpse of

the institutionalized bigotry that Mexican Americans faced in post–World War II Los Angeles in The Ring, starring Lalo Rios and Rita Moreno.1 The film evolves around the Cantaños family, who live in the crumbling Alpine district in downtown. The main character, Tomas Cantaños (Rios), is young, unemployed, and alienated from mainstream society. So he turns to boxing as a means to fight poverty and racial prejudice—much against the wishes of his sweetheart (Moreno). However, the opening scene that sets the tone for this pre-Rocky “fight out of the neighborhood” film involves Tomas’ father, Vidal Cantaños, who has just lost his job at the railroad yard. In desperation, he goes to find work on Olvera Street, where he has longed to own his own small stand and sell leather goods. But the only job available is to dress in Mexican peasant garb and pretend to be asleep while sitting under a tree, the quintessential lazy Mexican. Cantaños refused the offer because, in his words, “it is without dignity.”2 His refusal to become a caricature of himself for the curiosity of tourists underscores the tensions between the historical narratives that were reflected in the lives of the diverse working-class immigrants who made their homes at the Plaza and the efforts to control public

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space with the growing heroic Anglo birth legend of the city and the advent of tourism.

Public Pageantry as History

Perhaps no other event epitomized the growing conflicts between the

real life surrounding the Plaza and Sterling’s “Mexican marketplace” view of history than the 1931 Fiesta de Los Angeles in celebration of the city’s 150th anniversary. The idea of holding a sesquicentennial celebration began in the mid-1920s at the suggestion of the Historical Society of Southern California, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, and the City Planning Association.3 Mayor John C. Porter, an Iowa-born former used-car dealer, called upon select community leaders to organize the event, which ran from September 4 to 13. All this occurred as the city braced for the ensuing economic depression. Despite initial skepticism from the business community, the event was one of the largest municipal natal anniversaries in the country and a rousing financial success. The celebration had all the trappings of earlier Fiestas in terms of economic intent, but this time La Fiesta was presented on a monumental scale.4 Nearly 600,000 people attended events for which admission was charged, and an equal number witnessed the pageant from the streets.5 La Fiesta presented a golden opportunity for Sterling to focus public attention on the Plaza’s history as well as her new project on Olvera Street.6

Opening ceremonies for La Fiesta began at city hall on September 4 with

the raising of the official Fiesta flag. This set the tone for a ten-day romanticized pageant of local history that had its origins in the first Fiesta de Los Angeles in 1894. The light-skinned descendants of a 1781 poblador couple—indio Basilio Rosas, sixty-seven years old at the founding, and his mulata wife, María Manuela Calixtra, then forty-three years old—dressed in fancy Spanish lace, rebozos, and mantillas. After generations of intermarriage, they were introduced to the crowd as “Spaniards” for the flag-raising ceremony.

The true racial origins of the Rosas family were not revealed, and for good

reason. In 1931, the founders of the city were thought of as Europeans—Los Angeles became the new Jamestown. This was certainly a comforting cultural connection for the displaced Midwesterners who were now ruling Los Angeles. And Sterling—with John Steven McGroarty’s writing—understood 204

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the need to recast local history in her rhetorical campaign to win the hearts and minds of potential supporters of her quest to save the birthplace of the city. This distortion of the city’s beginnings, which Carey McWilliams once described as the “fantasy heritage of the Southwest,” became even more evident at the Plaza during the reenactment of the founding of the pueblo.7 John D. Weaver was present that day and took note of the tendency of pageant makers to carefully invent local history: Some 10,000 spectators, uncomfortable in the hot, late summer sun, jammed the Plaza for a reenactment of the myth-makers’ conception of the pueblo’s founding. Four acolytes in white surplices and red cassocks, carrying a cross and candles, led a procession of soldiers, priests and settlers. Eleven white couples, with 22 white children in tow, represented the 44 black and brown pobladores who came north from Mexico to establish the settlement on the banks of the Porciúncula. If the spirits of those first inhabitants of El Pueblo were near, the strains of ‘When at Thine Altar,’ a chant ascribed to the Cathedral of Cologne in 1623, must have sounded pleasingly familiar to their ears. More likely, the spirits of the settlers would have been wondering what happened to their complexions.8



This seemingly backward look at the origins of the city and the exclu-

sion of black and mestizo Angelenos, the population who most resembled the original forty-four pobladores, occurred at a time when non-white residents were beginning to feel the harshest effects of the Great Depression. Loren Miller knew this all too well as a feature writer for the California Eagle, the leading newspaper for the black community. He wrote that Los Angeles “has no money to waste in senseless decorations, flags, rodeos and other schoolboy stunts. We are facing a winter in which hundreds of poor and destitute men, women and children will go without adequate food, clothing and shelter and it is little short of criminal to waste money on Fiestas which serve no purpose except to cram money into the pockets of the promoters and sellers of gewgaws.”9 The following week, the Eagle’s editorial page was even more direct in calling attention to the distortion of history during the “reenactment” of the founding of the city by noting that Fiesta organizers blatantly ignored the citizens “from whose ranks [Los Angeles] drew more than fifty per cent of its founders and attempted . . . to change the color of its founders’ skins one hundred and fifty years after their death.”10 Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 205



As a public pageant, La Fiesta de Los Angeles was an exercise in cultural

power. Susan G. Davis has found several examples of this phenomenon in her case studies of parades and public ceremonies in early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. She found that even so broadly inclusive a celebration as the Washington Centennial was shaped by the power relations in the city at the time: “Images of social relations were filtered through a complex process of inclusion, exclusion, influence, and planning, until the parade expressed power and special interest more than unity and consensus.”11

Because public pageants like the 1931 Fiesta have such a widely inclu-

sive theme (“our history”), they do not necessarily translate into wide or equal participation. On the surface, the ten-day event appeared to be vastly inclusive. It was highlighted by a Grand Historical Parade that featured eighteenth-century California soldiers, Spanish ladies, cowboys and Indians, an endless stream of horses, marching bands, jingling spurs, U.S. cavalrymen, Canadian Mounties, dog sleds, Mexican charros, Bedouins, Russian Cossacks, and the always popular Chinese Dragon Dance.12 As the parade made its way through downtown and into the Memorial Coliseum at Exposition Park, a crowd of more than 100,000 was led by Mayor Porter and Governor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Jr., who were slightly overdressed as Spanish dons. Finally, Elizabeth Hicks, the granddaughter of 1850s pioneer Ozro W. Childs Sr., was crowned Queen of La Fiesta before an adoring crowd. She was a fitting choice, given the influence that many Anglo pioneer descendants had in local business and politics.

What actually occurred during the 1931 Fiesta was an exercise in the

power dynamics of the city. Tellingly, through its inclusion and exclusion, the historical reenactment at the Plaza was not only an appropriation of the past—it was also an affirmation of who wielded cultural and economic power in the present. With this understanding, the domain that public pageantry such as La Fiesta occupies, although transient in nature, must be viewed like the Plaza as structured and contested terrain. In June 1932, as the city prepared to host the pageant of the Olympic Games, officials prevented Communist Party presidential candidate William Z. Foster from speaking at the Plaza.13

Rumors then began circulating that a local chapter of the John Reed Club

was holding secret meetings in the old Sepúlveda House on Olvera Street.14 Sterling was compelled to maintain strict social control. In fact, she noted in her diary a letter from an angry Harry Chandler, warning her of the John 206

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Reed Club’s potential, stating that “this is poison and will eventually wreck El Paseo [Olvera Street].”15 The John Reed Club and other unwelcome groups would eventually be removed from the Plaza area—but the following year, an unexpected challenge to Sterling’s romantic narrative appeared with the arrival of one of Mexico’s most celebrated artists.

América Tropical

In 1932 Los Angeles was hosting the Tenth Olympic Games. Olvera Street

was advertised as an official Olympic tourist venue and a focus of booster pride. During this same year, exiled Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros arrived in Los Angeles.16 In earlier years, the veteran of the Mexican Revolution had traveled extensively in Europe, where he was influenced by modernist artistic movements in France, Italy, and Spain. Between 1922 and 1924, while working with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco on the governmentsponsored mural campaign in Mexico City, he resumed his revolutionary activity by joining the Mexican trade union movement as a member of the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors.17 Later, in his home state of Jalisco, he became president of the National Federation of Mine Workers. Siqueiros eventually became secretary of the Mexican Communist Party and was sent to prison in 1931 for his participation in a banned May Day celebration. Upon his release, he was exiled from Mexico and made his way to the United States. Art historian Shifra M. Goldman writes that “Siqueiros always considered his art a political tool and vehicle of revolutionary thought, with concepts inseparable from aesthetics.”18 Following in the footsteps of Rivera and Orozco, Siqueiros decided to come north to gain a deeper understanding of an advanced industrial society, and in the process he strengthened his persona as the consummate artist and activist.

During his six-month stay in Los Angeles, Siqueiros taught courses

in muralism and lectured at the prestigious Chouinard School of Art. He painted commissioned portraits for some of the city’s leading arts patrons, such as Joseph Von Sternberg, the flamboyant director of the movie classic The Blue Angel.19 Siqueiros served as an international juror for the Olympics Arts Competition, which was held at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art in Exposition Park.20 But his major imprint in Los Angeles was the painting of three murals: Encuentro en las Calles (Street Meeting), painted Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 207

Mexican hat dance performed for crowd in front of Avila Adobe in 150th anniversary celebration of the city’s founding, 1931. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

at Chouinard; the fresco Portrait of Present Day Mexico, painted at a private residence in Pacific Palisades and moved to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2001; and his most important and controversial mural, América Tropical (Tropical America).

A masterpiece measuring eighteen by eighty feet, América Tropical was

commissioned by Franz K. Ferenz, who owned the Plaza Art Center on Olvera Street. It was painted along an exterior second-floor wall of the Italian Hall that overlooked Olvera Street and where Ferenz ran his art center.21 With Encuentro en las Calles and América Tropical, Siqueiros broke new ground by exploring the possibilities of mural painting. Indeed, by experimenting with waterproof white cement and the air brush, his desire was to make murals truly “public” endeavors by moving them outdoors, where traditional fresco surfaces of lime and sand could not be used. And unlike older cities with long-standing histories of architectural preservation, Los Angeles

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offered him several modern buildings with concrete walls that required new methods that would complement the architecture and the dynamic activity of contemporary urban life.

Siqueiros consulted with renowned architect Richard Neutra, who also

was employed by Chouinard, as well as with Sumner Spaulding.22 He was assisted in the forty-seven-day mural project by a collaboration of artists that became known as the Bloc of Mural Painters and may have included Jackson Pollock.23 They began work in August 1932. Noted artist Dean Cornwell, who had just completed a five-year mural project for the Los Angeles Public Library Rotunda, also joined in.24 With such support, Siqueiros began by sketching a luxurious jungle scene filled with huge, tangled vegetation, vaguely erotic and threatening and a distinct departure from Ferenz’ expectations. Goldman says “Ferenz did not care about Siqueiros’ communist politics. He was an opportunist and was only interested in the publicity generated from the mural.”25 This was certainly true, since Ferenz, a native of Vienna, was one of Southern California’s most active Nazi propagandists.26 Everyone who was not directly involved with the mural, particularly Sterling and her downtown supporters, assumed that the mural’s subject matter would be merely “exotic and picturesque,” complementing the idyllic image of Southern California that was being promoted by the Olympic Committee, the local press, the Chamber of Commerce, and Olvera Street businesses.27

In 1980 Angélica Arenal de Siqueiros noted that what most people ex-

pected to find in her husband’s mural was “a kind of paradise or promised land, represented by a jungle full of exotic birds and fabulous fruit, and its inhabitants . . . happy with their abundant riches.”28 However, the mural was painted as Los Angeles moved deeper into the Depression and as the growing Mexican community faced the trauma of mass repatriation. By 1930, the Mexican-born population of the city had risen to 368,000, compared to 8,000 at the turn of the century. Between 1930 and 1931, led by a concerted effort of the U.S. Department of Labor and Los Angeles city and county officials, “tens of thousands of Mexican nationals—and an unknown number of their American-born children—were pressured into returning to Mexico.”29

Shortly before Siqueiros began painting the mural, the front page of La

Opinión—the leading Spanish-language daily—reported that Mexicans in the city were being indiscriminately apprehended at the Plaza and given one-way rail tickets to Mexico.30 These events had a deep effect on the artist,

Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 209

Front-page headline of La Opinión, February 27, 1931: “11 Mexicans Arrested in Bold Raid on Plaza.” Courtesy of La Opinión.

especially when contrasted against the appropriation of Mexican culture on Olvera Street. Longtime merchants recalled that Siqueiros spent time in the Plaza talking with many of the aging veterans of the Mexican Revolution who congregated at the old square to recall bygone days. In particular, he was seen in the company of the exiled Generals Fausto Topete (1890–1954) and José María Maytorena (1867–1948). Besides being Plaza regulars, the generals were former northern leaders from Sonora who had befriended Siqueiros during the Revolution.31

So with the human drama of the deportations and Siqueiros’ reunions

with revolutionary expatriates, América Tropical was unveiled to the public on October 9, 1932. And as the cloth covering was removed, all anticipations of an artwork depicting Southern California as an idyllic land of perpetual sunshine, the missions, and the open shop were instantly shattered. Siqueiros was true to his conviction that art and politics were inseparable. América Tropical dramatically depicted the violent destruction of indigenous cultures. Fallen pyramids, armed revolutionaries, and the central figure of a 210

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crucified Indian tied to a double cross with an imposing bald eagle perched above his head clearly symbolized Yankee imperialism.32

The mural sparked an immediate controversy in Los Angeles. The city

fathers were left shocked and speechless, while the reaction from the art community was overwhelmingly positive. In fact, during his formal address at the unveiling, Dean Cornwell described the mural as a new era in Southern California art: “Whether this form of art shows in the decoration of the walls of theaters, libraries, the sides of buildings or even on billboards, it will be a good thing, for then we shall have something beautiful in place of something blank.”33

Shifra Goldman notes that América Tropical was a major departure from

Siqueiros’ earlier murals at the National Preparatory School in Mexico in that it represented a break from the view that “Indianism” was synonymous with “folklorism” or “folk art,” which was the basic story line on Olvera Street.34 However, depicting the struggle against U.S. imperialism in such a bold and public setting outraged local civic leaders. Siqueiros’ allegorical imagery of oppressed Indians did not conform to Olvera Street’s narrative as a sanitized and docile Mexican village. Sterling soon had a section of the mural that was visible from Olvera Street whitewashed, and with it, the belief that social

América Tropical, David Alfaro Siqueiros’ 18-by-80-foot mural shortly before it was whitewashed, 1932. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Examiner Collection, Special Libraries and Archival Collections, University of Southern California. Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 211

order had been restored. In the years that followed, she would only renew the lease of the second floor of the Italian Hall on the condition that the mural would be completely covered over.35

As for Siqueiros himself, the mural became another chapter in his po-

litical struggles. For on the morning of the unveiling, the Los Angeles Times wrote almost prophetically that “the Mexican artist who came to this country on a visitor’s permit, it was learned yesterday, recently has applied for an extension which has not yet been granted.”36 On the day after the unveiling, the extension of the visa was denied. Siqueiros was forced to join his Mexican compatriots in the massive wave of deportations from the United States.37 He would never return to Los Angeles. Instead, he boarded a plane for Buenos Aires but with a renewed enthusiasm for the possibilities of public murals in major cities such as Los Angeles, which today is world-renowned for its murals. The controversy surrounding América Tropical was a turning point in the life and work of one of Mexico’s most influential artists, and he would later note: “We will work on the outside walls which are visible, in the most strategic places visible, in the workmen’s living quarters, in the public plazas, in the sport arenas, and in the open-air theaters.”38

Siqueiros and América Tropical serve to illustrate how latent forms of

protest by symbolic or artistic representation enhance our understanding of the Plaza as a contested arena for the ongoing struggle over historical narratives.39 Indeed, the power of the mural resonated over time and space. For as with a written manifesto, América Tropical was painted within the larger context of the 1930s and created potential political and cultural capital for Mexicans confronting the deportations as well as for free speech in the Plaza.40 Sterling and her supporters were well aware that they were faced with a serious challenge over the control of historical narratives, and their response did not take long. Soon after the deportation of the artist and the whitewashing of the mural, new symbols of cultural dominance began to appear in the form of statues and plaques dedicated to Kit Carson and John C. Frémont, as well as the installation of “bum-proof” brick to discourage “loitering” in the Plaza.41

The merchants on Olvera Street could not free themselves entirely from

Siqueiros’ counter-hegemonic interpretation of history. This was seen in March 1938 when Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated the assets of seventeen foreign oil companies that were conducting business in the country. Several nations, led by the United States, imposed a boycott 212

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Communist Party rally at the Plaza, 1934. Courtesy of the Regional History Center, University of Southern California.

on Mexican oil. Later that month, Olvera Street merchant Alejandro Díaz Velasco, a soft-spoken, well-educated man who was fluent in Italian, had just completed counting his daily sales—it had been a good day. He recalled that an Anglo woman walked up to his small puesto and began to stare at him for the longest time. Puzzled, he asked her in the standard Olvera Street salutation: “Buenas tardes, señora, can I help you?” After a pause, the woman yelled out toward Velasco: “You took our oil, you damn Mexicans.”42 Such an incident, which Velasco recalled to have needed no further explanation, illustrates the fact that Olvera Street, though dependent at best, on a vague sense of history, had the potential like no other space in the city to place Mexicans at the center of public discourse between the United States and its neighbors to the south. Juxtaposed with the 1930s and América Tropical, the transformation of Olvera Street into a colorful tourist site was a Pandora’s box releasing the complex layers of past and present historical meanings at the Plaza. These meanings were semiotically encoded in the ongoing struggle for space, art, and architecture and became the subtext for other forms of conflict. Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 213



During the 1930s, the challenge to Sterling’s vision for Mexican romance

and historic preservation took on other forms besides the public demonstrations that continued to be held at the Plaza or the political statements by artists. This began in 1929 when Constance Deighton Simpson, the daughter of immigrants who settled in Los Angeles, argued that Sterling’s success in persuading the City Council to pass an ordinance to close Olvera Street to vehicular traffic was unconstitutional.43 Her argument was also personal. As a native Angeleno who had lost access to the rear of her family’s Plaza property as a result of the street closure, she brought suit against the City of Los Angeles, former mayor John C. Porter, Harry Chandler’s Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, and Sterling.44

Apparently, Sterling’s plans for Olvera Street and her own social stand-

ing were in jeopardy. In 1934 an appellate court decision reversed an earlier approval to block the street from traffic. The District Court of Appeals concluded that a municipality, by virtue of its police power alone and purely for “aesthetic purposes,” could not limit the use individuals made of their property. The opinion of the court added: “We have yet to learn that the passage of an ordinance which opens the way for the establishment of a show place on a city street is an act having for its purpose the elevation of morals or in any wise tending to promote the general welfare.”45

In response, Sterling declared that “Olvera Street was a dirty alley before

being gentrified and 250 Mexican families were removed from the county welfare rolls and became self-supporting citizens.”46 She threatened to carry the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, and she would not be alone. The Los Angeles Times continued to provide unwavering support for Sterling and the city ordinance by reminding local readers of the special place that Mexican romance had in the hearts and minds of Angelenos: “Señoritas, with tresses like midnight and flashing eyes that never have been taught to hide behind their fringed veils, swayed with sinuous grace to the cadence of native melodies. Olvera Street, as it has been since it came into being a few years back through the untiring efforts of Mrs. Christine Sterling, was at peace with the world. To all appearances it [Olvera Street] was doing not a whit about the ponderous court ruling—and caring less.”47

But if the Times editors believed that the merchants cared little for court

decisions or the world of politics outside their “little street of yesterday,” Sterling made certain that they did. She was keenly aware that if Mexican romance could attract crowds of tourists and turn a profit, it also could be used 214

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to sway the thinking of elected officials—this strategy certainly had worked before. Soon after the appellate court decided in favor of Simpson, Sterling carried out her unique method for courting city hall. On December 5, 1934, the Mother of Olvera Street and a caravan of costumed merchants (mostly señoritas) descended on city hall to voice their support of the street closure. It was a media event of the first order. During their recess, City Council members scurried back to their offices, where they were met by an Olvera Street contingent bent on keeping the street closed. Cornered in the hallway and in their offices, council members proclaimed that they would do everything possible to preserve Olvera Street as a walking tourist site. And that was good enough for Sterling and the merchants. The Los Angeles Examiner reported that “several señoritas threw their arms around the necks of some of the Councilmen and kissed them.”48

This well-orchestrated appeal apparently worked. For when the coun-

cil resumed, the members unanimously voted in favor of their original ordinance prohibiting vehicles on Olvera Street and even suggested that an appeal to the state Supreme Court be taken to Sacramento personally by the city attorney.49 The future of Olvera Street as a Mexican marketplace appeared to have taken a positive turn. The Simpson lawsuit would be tied up in the courts for the next two decades, losing on a final appeal at the state Supreme Court. Olvera Street now was permanently open for business, and there would be no turning back.

Thus, by the end of the 1930s, as the memory of América Tropical and

Olvera Street’s legal battles began to fade, the construction of Union Station on the eastern edge of the Plaza took center stage. This achievement for the city’s growth, one of the last stations of its kind in the nation, would have a profound impact on the Plaza area and specifically on Old Chinatown, which occupied the same space as the future station. As with Olvera Street, Union Station embraced a mythic Spanish-Mexican past that was consistent with the booster history of romantic Southern California and the accompanying Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style that was making its impact on downtown.

Allied Architects’ 1925 plan for the central administrative district for the

city involved the restoration of the Plaza area as part of a unifying theme for downtown. Between the Plaza and city hall, there was to be an interconnected series of smaller plazas and low-lying buildings designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. But if this was an attempt, as Reyner Banham once Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 215

said somewhat romantically, to confer a “cultural immortality” on the city’s Spanish-Mexican past, the city fathers’ idea concerning the present Mexican residents was far less sentimental. Where possible, they were to be driven out of the Plaza area entirely, along with their Chinese neighbors.50

Remembering China

Between 1933 and 1939 the residents of Old Chinatown were faced with

the destruction of their community to make way for Union Station. Threats to Chinatown’s existence—beyond the 1871 massacre—can be traced to 1912, when the federal government made it illegal to smuggle opium into the country, and the local police began enforcing anti-gambling laws.51 The gradual movement of Chinatown residents to the new produce center and nearby residential district south of the Plaza also contributed to its decline.52

Another contributing factor to Chinatown’s decline was the outbreak of

the Chinese Revolution in 1911 that ended the Ch’ing or Manchu Dynasty and caused social fragmentation in Los Angeles. Many older Chinese residents refused to part with their braided hair, or ques, which were regarded by many as open symbols of Manchu subjugation. They were pressured to return home by younger and increasingly more Americanized Chinese residents who wanted to break away from old traditions. Coupled with exclusionist immigration laws and demographic changes at home, the social dislocations in China had a detrimental impact on the viability of Chinatown. Furthermore, the hard promotion of import trade from China between 1906 and the 1920s, World War I, and the general prosperity associated with the Roaring Twenties hastened the decline of Chinatown’s financial and social infrastructure.53

The Chinese of Los Angeles were certainly aware of two other forces that

had threatened their future since their arrival in California. The first was an awareness of the powerful yet distorted image of the competitive role that the Chinese played in the local economy, particularly the view among organized labor that they depressed wages of white workers.54 The second was an understanding of the disparaging racial and cultural images that many whites and others held about the Chinese and the strangeness of their language and cultural practices. These distorted images ranged from the mysterious to the exotic and the distasteful, all of which contributed to the belief 216

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that the Chinese were inassimilable.55 Combined, these images fueled hostility toward the Chinese in Los Angeles during the nineteenth century, culminating in the massacre in 1871 and the Exclusion Act in 1882 that barred further Chinese immigration into the country. In 1924 the Chinese Chamber of Commerce issued a resolution of good intentions in order to reshape the overall image of Chinatown in the public mind and, its members hoped, to reverse the downward trend for Chinese business: We, the merchants of Chinatown, use every opportunity to induce white people of the city and tourists to visit Chinatown; that we extend to visitors every courtesy on visiting our shops and places of interest. Second, that we use every opportunity to spread the word that Chinatown is a safe place for women to come to, whether escorted or alone. Third, that we use every opportunity to suppress rowdyism among the lower class of white people visiting Chinatown; that the chop suey houses will see that any rudeness on the part of their guests be stopped and that order be kept if the same is not already being done. Fourth, that we extend to Los Angeles an invitation to visit Chinatown on the celebration of the New Year and see for themselves the conditions that prevail here.56



But the conditions to attract tourists to celebrate the Fourth of July or

any other holiday did not prevail. The Great Depression had a devastating impact on the residents of Chinatown. Bankruptcies and applications for county relief were glaring indications of the harsh conditions faced by Chinatown residents and their Plaza neighbors. Attempts by the Chinese to promote business and tourism with “white people” throughout the 1920s were largely in vain due to the impending transformation. In 1931 the issue of where to locate a new railroad terminal was settled by the state Supreme Court. Two years later, City of Los Angeles plans for the construction of Union Station required the demolition of all structures in Chinatown east of Alameda Street.57 While the demolition was being prepared, various relocation plans for Chinatown’s three thousand residents were proposed, some of which were acceptable to the Chinese community and the City of Los Angeles.

The most ambitious plan was designed in 1933 by George Eastman, an

engineer and former president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Eastman visualized a planned community of shops, restaurants, a Buddhist Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 217

Razing of Old Chinatown, 1933. Chee Kung Tong Company building (background), 315 Apablasa Street, awaits its fate. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

temple, a theater, gardens, and plazas set in a Chinese architectural motif. Despite its broad approval, the Eastman Plan called for an outlay of $1 million and was therefore considered too costly and never materialized.58 Historians Suellen Cheng and Munson Kwok concluded that the aftermath of the Eastman Plan did have “the net effect of starting the wrecking ball to swing.”59 With eviction notices posted “in English” throughout the community, the demolition of Old Chinatown began in December 1933.

It was perhaps ironic that the first building to be razed was home to a

Chinese grammar school—a tragic symbol for the community’s ambiguous future. What is more, on September 23, 1934, the Times reported that a “children’s pageant of nations” was held earlier that week to recognize the passing of Old Chinatown and to make way for Union Station.60 Opening entertainment for the pageant featured the popular operatic star Countess Emma Leffler de Zaruba, who sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” before an adoring crowd. Accompanying the Times article was a photograph of several children dressed in European costumes who welcomed smiling Chinese 218

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kids into the family of nations. The article concluded by stating that Chinese children were better sources than their elders for justifying the destruction of Old Chinatown: “Strangely contrasted with the bright eyes and laughing faces of the children—Americanized [Chinese] children, who were looking forward to the time when they would live in shiny new houses facing paved streets, were the wistful expressions worn by many of the old Chinese.”61

As the bulldozers plowed through their community, many Chinese An-

gelenos moved south from Chinatown to the City Market area on San Pedro Street, east to Central Avenue, and as far south as Jefferson and East Adams Boulevard. Many others dispersed to smaller residential enclaves throughout the city, while the old bachelors and poorest families remained in the parts of Old Chinatown that were still standing.62 With the failure of the Eastman Plan, two new development plans emerged and would chart the future for the Chinese community—and Christine Sterling would play a major role. After the failed Simpson lawsuit, the Mother of Olvera Street was now ready to enter the scene on behalf of another ethnic group.

Sterling was deeply moved by the plight of the city’s displaced Chinese

residents, and thus she began her search for a new Chinese district, as noted in her diary: “The artists and ‘atmosphere’ hunters would throw a fit of delight over a Chinatown in some of the buildings I poked through this morning. Sagging roof lines—patches of light and shade—old doorways leading into funny little courtyards—great stuff! I can just feel the old fighting blood racing through me to be at it again. Clean the place up—present its charm to the public, and sow the seeds for a future Chinatown.”63 She wasted no time by repackaging her “native village” concept for Olvera Street and presented it as “China City.” It was a place for tourists and locals alike to explore the ancient mysteries and charm of Cathay. But her determination and energy were matched by her lack of understanding of Chinese culture.

For Sterling “to be at it again” she needed money, and she knew where

to go. She gained financial support from her trusted benefactor, Harry Chandler, and other local businessmen. Ironically, the railroad companies whose new station was being constructed on the ruins of Old Chinatown contributed to the project. And after city officials worked out the legal issues, the project fell into place. Bamboo came from the Parks and Recreation Department, sandstone from the old Federal Building, cobblestones from the city streets, and Sterling provided the romance.64

China City opened on June 6, 1938, to the public with the aroma of inParades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 219

cense and the sounds of firecrackers and dragon drums. It was slightly north of Olvera Street, bordered on the north by Ord Street, on the east by North Main Street, on the south by Macy Street, and on the west by North Spring Street. As with Olvera Street, Sterling’s penchant for romance and nostalgia intermixed with occasional doses of history were echoed in her speech at China City’s grand opening: Since the days of Marco Polo the world has heard of the wonders and beauty of Cathay, its old civilization and its contributions of culture to the Western world. With this background, the Chinese came into California in the Gold Rush of 1849, and became a part of [the] Pacific Coast tradition. They helped build the Central Pacific, [the] first railroad; and the merchants and mandarins brought from China rare works of Chinese art and literature and so, because all of this must not be lost or forgotten in the progress of modern times, China City was created.65



As an offshoot of the Mexican marketplace, China City featured an on-

slaught of popular images and notions of what it meant to be Chinese American, particularly in Los Angeles. It was enclosed by nothing other than a “great wall” that wrapped its way around Alameda, Spring, and Ord Streets. China City offered everything that Sterling had imagined for the site—small curio shops staffed by costumed merchants and hidden passageways such as Dragon Road and Passage of Many Surprises to stir the emotions of tourists. Visitors were also captivated by speeding rickshaw drivers in their coolie hats and speaking to them in broken English (“Good morling”); one of the drivers was young Cruz Ledesma, a Mexican immigrant who would later reincarnate as the “Mexican blacksmith” of Olvera Street.66 The complex exhibited hanging roasted ducks, a theater, the Chinese Junk Cafe, and several other restaurants that served traditional Cantonese favorites as well as a novel addition to the local palate, the All-American “China burger.”67 Sterling’s deepest fantasies about the Chinese, perhaps dating back to her childhood in San Francisco, had come to life in Los Angeles and were beginning to make a buck.

Novelist Lisa See wrote, in her poignant family history On Gold Mountain:

The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family, that most visitors to China City had good reason to believe that they were in the middle of a Hollywood movie set. Most of the construction materials were, in fact, do220

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nated by Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio (MGM) from producer Irving Thalberg’s epic film The Good Earth (1937), based on Pearl S. Buck’s sprawling novel.68 See also discovered that to make The Good Earth, starring Paul Muni, Louise Rainer, and a host of Chinese American extras, MGM constructed an entire rural Chinese village in the San Fernando Valley using authentic building materials imported from China. Eventually, many of these set materials including the House of Wang found their way to China City.

Sterling’s flair for Latin and Asian romance had come full circle. Tourists

and locals could now escape from the congestion of downtown and explore the ancient mysteries of Canton or the romance of Jalisco, all within safe walking distance of Union Station and the civic center. But in doing so, she honored a fictional Mexican and Chinese past at the expense of the realities of the present. These concepts were soon challenged by Chinese Americans through a rival Chinatown project.

During the mid-1930s, when China City was in its developmental phase,

a rival New Chinatown project emerged under the leadership of Peter Soo Hoo. He was a young engineer and respected community leader who was raised in Old Chinatown.69 Soo Hoo and his business associates originally met with Sterling to discuss the needs of the displaced Chinese community. But upon realizing the apparent differences in their projects, Soo Hoo was convinced that the Chinese of Los Angeles had been exploited long enough and that the only way to avoid further degradation was for the Chinese themselves to establish a residential and commercial district—New Chinatown—organized on the basis of a modern corporation. The result was the Los Angeles Chinatown Project Association, which oversaw fund raising, site acquisition, design, and construction.70 The Southern Pacific Railroad showed its support by providing a sizable parcel of land north of the Plaza and slightly west of Sterling’s China City project. The property was bounded by North Broadway, Bernard Street, Yale Street, and College Street and encompassed a major section of Sonoratown, the city’s first Mexican barrio.

After years of planning, Soo Hoo’s New Chinatown opened on June 25,

1938, three weeks after Sterling’s China City opened its doors. Almost all the Chinese civic, social, and family organizations that held much of Old Chinatown together remained in what was left of Old Chinatown, between Los Angeles and Alameda Streets. They finally moved to New Chinatown when the last remnants of Old Chinatown were demolished between 1949 and 1951. David R. Chan writes that “North Spring Street, north of China City, became Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 221

Promotional map of China City. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

House of Wang from The Good Earth film set, transferred to China City, with villagers, ca. 1940. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

the center of the Chinese-oriented, non-tourist commerce. So, where . . . all facets of Chinese life in Los Angeles . . . had been concentrated in old Chinatown, these functions were now widely fragmented. The destruction of the heart of old Chinatown also destroyed the concept of a Chinese ‘community’ in Los Angeles.”71 Essentially, the opening of China City and New Chinatown meant that Old Chinatown east of the Plaza belonged to the past. The question now was whether two seemingly different concepts of Chinatown could coexist.

On the surface, China City and New Chinatown shared common quali-

ties in that both were responses to the destruction of Old Chinatown and were planned development projects. But their differences were far greater. New Chinatown began as an autonomous, Chinese-controlled corporation that understood its relationship with the larger city, thus striving to be “modern” while retaining its ethnic aesthetics and serving the needs of the Chinese American community. On the other hand, China City by design attracted smaller entrepreneurs, some of whom were without previous business experience and who had not lived in Old Chinatown.72

From 1938 to 1948, China City prospered and enjoyed a harmonious, Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 223

if not planned, coexistence with Olvera Street. Hollywood movie stars, servicemen on leave, suburban families, and downtown civil servants were encouraged to take an adventure at Sterling’s ethnic theme parks. Even Eleanor Roosevelt understood this relationship. The first lady was a regular visitor to Olvera Street since the early years of the FDR administration. During a 1939 visit to the city, she returned to Olvera Street “to do a bit of early Christmas shopping” and to express her gratitude to the candlemaker for a previous gift.73 Never one to miss an opportunity for public support, Sterling guided Mrs. Roosevelt two blocks north to her new China City project, where the distinguished visitor marveled at the drama and “authenticity” of The Good Earth set.

But what Sterling probably did not fully understand was that the exis-

tence of two Chinatown projects next to each other could eventually lead to conflict. This was realized on the morning of February 20, 1939, when a major fire erupted in the main section of China City along Dragon Road, causing an estimated $200,000 in damage.74 Sterling met with reporters and was emphatic in stating that “China City would not be rebuilt.”75 Now there was only one Chinatown in Los Angeles. Theories about the cause of the fire abounded, with one suspect claiming to be the arsonist; however, the cause was never determined.76

Without hard evidence, an understanding of the contrasting ideologies

between New Chinatown and China City, their economic competitiveness, and even possible underlying class tensions may provide an answer for the destruction of the city’s second Chinatown. Despite Sterling’s initial statement to the press about not rebuilding, China City reopened six months later with an elaborate public celebration featuring magicians, Chinese opera, fireworks, dragons, and for visitors a complimentary pair of souvenir chopsticks from every restaurant.77 But China City could never completely recover. It continued to operate for ten more years before mysteriously burning down for a second time in 1949, and this blaze led to its final closure.

Facing the real possibility of arson, Sterling discontinued her efforts to

recreate “Oriental romance” in Los Angeles. Angered and bewildered, she discontinued her association with the Chinese American community altogether. During the 1950s, historian Glenn W. Price, then a young University of Southern California graduate student conducting research at the Plaza, recalled that she was easily upset whenever the subject of Chinatown came up: “I never heard her express anything but a negative attitude toward 224

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Throngs of tourists at New Chinatown north of the Plaza in 1938, shortly after its grand opening, with “Chop Suey” sign marking Tuey Far Low restaurant’s new location. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

the Chinese.” She was particularly troubled at having Chinese occupants in the old Plaza firehouse, which was used as a tobacco shop, drugstore, and private residence. “She did not want the Chinese to be intermingled with Olvera Street and the Plaza. She wanted the Plaza to be kept to represent the Hispanic beginnings of Los Angeles.”78

Sterling was not alone in lacking a multi-ethnic perspective on local

history, though her attitude toward Chinese occupants in the Plaza area was probably the end result of her experience with China City. No doubt her views of Chinese Americans were shaped by her early life in San Francisco and later by the distorted images that many Angelenos held about Old Chinatown that were formed in the nineteenth century and remained unchanged into the 1930s.79 William Mason notes that during the mid- to late 1940s, longtime Sterling supporters from the historical and business communities were intent on removing the remaining structures of Old Chinatown between the Plaza and Union Station, and for one simple reason: “This was the old prostitution or crib house court. They wanted to tear those buildParades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 225

ings down and erase them from L.A.’s past because this had been the city’s red light district. And there was a lot of legend here that it was a ‘Chinese red light district,’ though no Chinese girl ever worked there.”80 Sterling’s objection to the Chinese residing in the Plaza firehouse, the Garnier Building, and the old Lugo House may have been motivated by the prevailing image about Old Chinatown—an image that she intended her sanitized China City project to replace. Such an exercise in replacing one historical narrative for another through the “creative destruction” of the built environment could not have been more evident than in 1939 when business and political leaders, led by Harry Chandler and the Times, prepared to assert permanent control in this oldest section of the city.

Union Station

After twenty-five years of political and legal conflict to consolidate and

improve railroad services in Los Angeles, Union Station was finally completed in 1939. The forty-four-acre tract was built on the east side of the Plaza at a cost of $11 million by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads. It featured a combination of Spanish Colonial Revival and Streamlined Moderne architecture, as designed by architect Donald B. Parkinson. The aesthetics of the new station complemented the landscape of the adjacent Plaza and Olvera Street as well as the future design plans for downtown that celebrated a “Spanish past.”81 Harry Chandler was widely praised by elected officials, by business leaders, and certainly by the press as the man most responsible for the realization of the project.

The official opening of Union Station on May 7, 1939, was preceded by

three days and nights of elaborate ceremonies that rivaled La Fiesta de Los Angeles. The events were organized by the Union Station Celebration Committee, which had selected legal mogul Henry W. O’Melveny as its general chairman. What was apparent from the beginning was that program organizers wanted colorful pageantry and historical tutelage to be the centerpiece of the celebration, with a particular emphasis on regional history, both real and imagined. And never to be left out of local affairs, Sterling figured prominently in the program. In fact, she chaired of one of the forty-two official celebration committees that focused on events at the Plaza.

But the highlights of the celebration were a massive two-hour parade 226

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and the dramatic Romance of the Rails pageant that followed in a specially constructed outdoor amphitheater on top of the new train tracks.82 The parade ran north along Alameda Street to Union Station and was viewed by an estimated crowd of 500,000, or about one-third of the city’s population.83 The pageant was written and directed by John Ross Reed and was a mammoth production straight out of Hollywood. It featured music from a men’s chorus of costumed railroad workers and elaborate staging that conveyed an evolutionary story of Southern California through changing forms of transportation. With technical assistance from Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, and Cecil B. DeMille Productions, “Romance of the Rails” embraced almost every imaginable fantasy about local history and the triumph of industry in the conquest of the American West. Wooden carretas and stage coaches carried the light-skinned descendants of the city’s oldest Mexican families, touted as “Spanish dons.” They were led by Hollywood comedic actor Leo Carrillo, a descendant of the prominent Californio José Antonio Carrillo. All other marchers seemed to effortlessly fall into place: Plains Indians in headdresses rode amicably with Anglo pioneers in covered wagons; Boy Scouts marched alongside the Army trucks of the Sixty-third Coast Artillery; L.A. Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz’ mounted posse drew cheers; and the Santa Fe All-Indian Marching Band—brought by rail all the way from Winslow, Arizona—played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Sterling secured the construction of two “small” floats representing the

participation of Olvera Street and China City; however, noticeably absent from the crowds of parade onlookers were the recently uprooted residents of Old Chinatown.84 Did three thousand people simply disappear? One local reporter noted that during the parade, the “best vantage point seemed to be the [remaining] lofts of Chinese restaurants along Alameda Street. Here the flags of China and Old Glory waved.”85 Indeed, it appeared ironic that the opening of a new railroad station, largely considered to be an act of the nineteenth century—and the last of its kind in the country—revealed much more about the politics of race and nationality in 1930s Los Angeles. The opening of Union Station, like La Fiesta de Los Angeles, was certainly about race, or at least about the place of race and ethnicity in the agreed-upon narratives of the region. The diverse groups that participated in the festivities as well as the Chinese (by their absence)—served to underscore the encoded message that social progress and industry were accomplished on the backs of a multiethnic workforce, masking the long-term effects of Manifest Destiny.86 Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 227

Plaza map showing significant historical communities, sites, and landmarks. By the author with Bill Mertz.



The absence of the Chinese was perhaps logical since many bitter feel-

ings remained among the former residents of Chinatown. And when we consider the subliminal “progress through conquest” theme of the parade and pageant, the Chinese occupied a particular place in the historical order of exploited groups. After all, completion of the transcontinental railroad depended upon Chinese labor. The Chinese—along with African Americans—did not share the same historical place as Native Americans and Mexicans of the nineteenth century because they were not indigenous others who were encountered and then conquered in the narrative of the American West. With the opening of Union Station, the Chinese were best tolerated when least seen. They were perceived as invisible outsiders, an attitude that 228

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marked much of their experience since the mid-nineteenth century. In contrast, the Mexican community as envisioned by Sterling, Chandler, and “Romance of the Rails” played a role in the three-day event as useful historical relics. Their presence in welcoming the new station was portrayed in noble Spaniards and spectators, local art and architecture, and colorful costumes, music, and cuisine. As always, throughout the festivities, all “bums,” misfits, and troublemakers were cleared from the Plaza area by the police. And so it was that Union Station was born.

Urban theorist Don Parson has observed that civic and business lead-

ers have long been aware that one way to quell the popular control of public space by oppositional groups is through the grand spectacle.87 Southern California’s history of self-promotion through such events as La Fiesta de Los Angeles, Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days, or the Tournament of Roses Parade may offer several case studies in the ongoing conflict between labor and capital and the curtailment of First Amendment rights. And judging from the opening ceremonies at Union Station, local civic and business leaders appeared to have made considerable progress in their quest to control public space and create a new historical narrative for the city. These efforts were marked by their successful campaign to remove undesirable communities from the Plaza area while constructing simulated landscapes in the void left behind. This was certainly the case of Olvera Street, which served as a permanent living pageant that presented a view of ethnic culture and social harmony—while masking deep-seated historical tensions between the United States and Mexico.

By the end of the 1930s, Olvera Street, China City, and New Chinatown

actually helped strengthen the hold that Chandler and his associates had on the northern section of downtown. Their larger plan for a new civic center, Union Station, and Times headquarters meant that the Plaza area would gain in prestige and real estate value. The aging newspaperman once said: “The best interests of Los Angeles are paramount to the Los Angeles Times. They have always been. The city and this newspaper have grown up together. With humility, those in charge of its conduct realized that it grew because it was, in a certain sense, the voice of a lusty, energetic, progressive community. [Los Angeles] prospered because it echoed the call of a triumphant pioneer spirit.”88 And while the steamrollers continued to plow through this oldest section of the city, Sterling and the Olvera Street merchants were preparing to celebrate ten years as “A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today.” Parades, Murals, and Bulldozers ˚ 229

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Chapter eight

Politics and Preservation

When the Great Depression waned and prosperity returned, Christine

Sterling was still exerting administrative control over daily affairs on Olvera Street. She exercised the power to evict any merchant who did not yield to her authority, and when necessary, she fashioned potent images of Mexican romance and impending doom to gain the attention of elected officials and the press. This strategy proved effective in April 1940, when Olvera Street celebrated its tenth anniversary. Sterling seized the occasion by lobbying city hall on behalf of the Mexican marketplace. The Times extended its support by reporting that Sterling and a large female contingent of “helpless” merchants paid a visit to Mayor Fletcher Bowron and the entire City Council, who congratulated the party on the ten-year milestone.1 But the seasoned lobbyists had other items on their agenda. They presented the mayor with a petition containing more than 1,500 signatures requesting city officials to “protect and beautify the Plaza, ease traffic congestion, remove street vendors, and remove the vociferous fanatics [in the Plaza area] who [held] forth there.”2 And to make sure that their pleas for help were heard, Sterling walked to the podium to address the council. She expressed her appreciation for its previous support. However, before leaving she offered a subtle reminder of Olvera Street’s ability to affect public opinion if their request 231

was not granted: “You are very fine men, no matter what some people say.”3 There was a silent response.

Two months later, she hosted a follow-up luncheon for council mem-

bers on the patio of the Avila Adobe. Her goal was to gain their support in ousting “cheap concessions” from Olvera Street. But what was not explained to the council was that “cheap” actually meant those vendors who were not submitting to her authority. As always, the Times reported on the event by reinforcing Sterling’s carefully crafted image of “women in distress” as an effective strategy to sway the thinking of elected officials. It was appropriately titled “Mother of Picturesque Mexican Section Pleads for Protection of Quaint and Historic Buildings.”4 The article featured a photograph of the council members sitting at a table wearing borrowed sombreros. As she had planned, a Mexican feast of “Chiles stuffed with melted cheese, hot tamales, frijoles and fragrant enchiladas mellowed them to the point where a siesta seemed the natural order of business for the afternoon.”5

But this was no free meal. Mellowing councilmen with spicy food and

cold beer was a proven lead-in for a Sterling request. What she wanted was council support in removing undesirable businesses on Olvera Street. This included fortune tellers, “cheap” jewelry concessions, and real estate booths that she described as being detrimental to the Plaza’s historical integrity: “The Plaza is a historic spot and I’ve promised to keep it in character. Can you help me?”6 Coincidentally, since the “problem” concessions that she mapped out for the slouching council members were on the west side of Olvera Street—the same side where Constance Simpson, the Arcontis, the Gibbs, and other upstart families ran their businesses—the luncheon proved to be a feast in local politics. Sterling’s plan for Mexican romance in this section of Olvera Street was being impeded by private businesses that refused to take part in festive tourism. After perceiving the real reason they were invited to lunch, Council President Robert Burns reminded his colleagues that “the Mother of Olvera Street has never been refused a favor by the City Council, since her first appearance 10 years ago—a woman babbling about sentiment and turning a dirty alley into a gay and colorful tourist attraction.”7

Councilman Harold Harby of Venice, another veteran of Sterling’s power

luncheons, was even more to the point as he rose from the table and proposed: “I move that we grant whatever Mrs. Sterling wants.”8 The luncheon ended with the City Council promising to confer with the city attorney’s office regarding Sterling’s problems on the west side of the street. In effect, 232

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Plaza, Main Street, and old church in view looking north, ca. 1939. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

the deal was sealed. The next day, the Times reminded its readers of Sterling’s proven ability to deal with the Mexicans by recalling how “she built the street out of a dream that removed some 500 Mexicans from relief rolls, and was now fighting to maintain the street as a quaint spot.”9 Sterling’s proposal was not simply a response to the ongoing Simpson lawsuit—it was a preview of her vision for acquiring the entire west side of Olvera Street to become part of a future state historic park. But while Sterling was reaffirming her support from city hall and being lauded in the local press, maintaining Olvera Street’s image as an oasis from the problems of contemporary urban life was being challenged.

Not So Quaint or Picturesque

In the summer of 1943, racial tensions flared in Los Angeles when Anglo

sailors from the Chavez Ravine Naval Base became involved in street fighting with Mexican American teenagers, causing the so-called Zoot Suit Riots. Politics and Preservation ˚ 233

During this period, many Mexican American urban youth wore a variation of the zoot suit that was popularized by Cab Calloway, a hip musician of the era. Historian Mauricio Mazón writes that when the street fighting broke out, the Los Angeles press avoided direct racial characterization by substituting the term “zoot suit” for “Mexican.”10

Soldiers and Marines stationed in San Pedro boarded taxi cabs and

joined the sailors and civilians in roaming the streets of downtown, where they encountered, beat, and stripped Mexican American youths while police looked on. In some encounters, African Americans, Filipinos, and other minority groups walking the streets of downtown became victims of similar acts of violence. Beatriz Moreno de Guzman recalled how during the height of the rioting, her father, Ezequiel Moreno, hid Mexican youths in the basement of La Esperanza bakery and then faced off with soldiers who tried to enter his business on Main Street.11 The riots made national and world headlines and finally ended when the Armed Forces restricted its personnel from downtown. Later that summer, the Los Angeles City Council stated that zoot suits, rather than race, were the object of the riots. And to substantiate these findings, the council banned the wearing of zoot suits within city limits.12

After the riots, law enforcement agencies as well as community and

civic officials were awakened to the need for greater social services within the Mexican American community. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations was established to investigate sources of and remedies for racial tension in the city. In this climate of reform, Sterling came forward in November 1943 and announced that she was ready to solve the Mexican gang problem in the city.13 To achieve this, she gained the support of actor Leo Carrillo, Mario Valadez (her close administrative assistant), and Joe Salas, the former Olympian and professional boxer of the 1920s. She acquired the bottom floor of a vacant building at the corner of Alameda and Macy Streets, which was conveniently located between Olvera Street and China City. From there, she organized Club Los Pachucos to rid the city of gangs. The club would be a tightly controlled space in which to reform the character of Mexican youth, just as Olvera Street was established to reform Mexican culture.

Taking a cue from Father Flannigan’s motto for Boys Town in Omaha,

Nebraska—“There’s no such thing as a bad boy”—Sterling touted the club to potential benefactors as a self-governing, gang-neutral recreational facility that welcomed “more than 30 gangs in which Pachucos are divided in units 234

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from 75 to 300 members.”14 The club had a dance hall, refreshment counter, and regulation boxing ring—courtesy of Joe Salas—where she believed rival gang members would pick leaders who would square off in the ring and settle their differences.15 The local press even took note that the club would attract rival gang members from the barrios of Dogtown, Flats, and Happy Valley and their “pompadour-dressed girl friends, the Black Widows.”16 And with that, the club opened with the usual “Sterlingesque” fanfare. Civic leaders could now feel secure in the belief that with the Mother of Olvera Street in charge, the latest “Mexican problem” was well on its way into history.

But beyond the dance hall and the boxing gloves, Club Los Pachucos

became a real place. It was not a re-created Mexican or Chinese village where good manners were always on display. Shortly after its public opening in 1943—on Armistice Day, November 11—Club Los Pachucos was destroyed by rival gang members. Joe Salas Jr., a retired California probation officer, recalled that as a young boy he accompanied his father to inspect the damage: “The look of despair on my dad’s face told the story.”17 The club never reopened. For all of Sterling’s genuine sincerity, the prospect of implementing a “Bowery Boys” clubhouse solution to the complex social and economic realities faced by Mexican American urban youth was perhaps just as naive to negative repercussions as was her desire to create Mexican and Chinese romance. The problem of Mexican American youth gangs actually grew after the Zoot Suit Riots, as did police abuse toward people of Mexican descent in general. Despite Olvera Street’s mythic quaintness and reputation as a crime-free tourist site, Mexican Americans there learned that they were not immune to these realities, especially after the death of Harry Chandler in 1944.

On Easter Sunday 1945, seventeen-year-old Raymond Morales and his

eighteen-year-old cousin, Juan Cruz Morales, walked to Olvera Street after attending a movie downtown.18 After having a bite to eat, the boys began walking home when they were stopped on the street for no apparent reason by LAPD officer Wilfred Wilson and his partner, officer Joe Castro. The boys were not wearing zoot suits but were asked to show their identification. Because Raymond was under-age and technically in violation of the city curfew ordinance, Wilson ordered him to go home. But while leaving Olvera Street, he turned and looked at Wilson in a manner that apparently offended the officer. According to eyewitnesses, “Wilson responded by calling Morales a ‘son of a bitch’ and beating the boy with a nightstick about the head, shoulPolitics and Preservation ˚ 235

ders, back, legs, and kidneys and eventually arresting him.”19 One of the few Anglo merchants on Olvera Street, Arthur Whipple, witnessed the beating and tried to intervene on Morales’ behalf, protesting while Wilson continued to beat the handcuffed and bloodied boy. Neither boy was charged with any crime; however, Whipple was arrested and charged with resisting an officer in the performance of his duty.20 This incident served as another reminder for Sterling that Olvera Street was not impervious to the problems of the city but was indeed a very real place of very real people. There, for example, dancer Chavela Flores moved between her dreams of stardom and the disappointments of real life.

Chavela

Her real name was Elizabeth Dolbeer Jones, and she was born in Brook-

lyn, New York, in 1919 to English-Welsh parents, William Morris Jones and May Adele Emerson. William Jones was a successful diamond importer who built a life of luxury for his wife and young children. However, when the stock market crashed in 1929, he jumped to his death from a window of a New York skyscraper. So with only a few dollars and the remainder of her jewelry, May Adele Jones and her two daughters, Blanche, twenty-three, and Elizabeth, ten, left New York by boat. They made a long journey through the Panama Canal, finally arriving in Los Angeles in December 1929. They settled in Hollywood to fulfill Blanche’s dream of becoming an actress and Elizabeth’s hopes to become a dancer.

Elizabeth enrolled in her first tap-dancing class at Eduardo Cansino’s

popular dance studio on Hollywood Boulevard. Cansino was actress Rita Hayworth’s father and was impressed with Elizabeth’s natural talent. He encouraged her to learn “Spanish dance,” but her mother could not afford the ninety cents per lesson. Although they found Hollywood less glamorous than they had imagined while still in New York, the Joneses were captivated by the possibility of stardom. Among their close friends was their bachelor neighbor, Maylon Norville, who fashioned himself the “astrologer to the stars.” They knew him back in New York, and he “thumbed” his way to Los Angeles six months after their arrival. This friendship would soon change young Elizabeth’s life. In 1933, the day after the great Long Beach earthquake, he drove the family to inspect the damage. And on their way 236

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home, Flores recalled that they stopped at the old Plaza: “Norville took us to the Plaza. That was the day I saw Olvera Street for the first time, and I loved it right from the start. I was so hungry. I smelled those taquitos. It was the most beautiful smell I ever smelled. I should have been born Mexican.”21

She attended Le Conte Junior High but left after the eighth grade. Then,

in 1935, at age sixteen, she was hired as a showgirl at Hollywood’s famous burlesque theater, Minsky’s Music Hall. Elizabeth earned $30 per week under the name Betty Dare, which she borrowed from Betty Roland, the famous Los Angeles stripper. But her career was cut short by a strike by the Burlesque Equity Union. She then took a job as a seamstress working six days a week for the U.S. government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) Sewing Project earning $55 per month. In 1939 Jones met José Nava, a talented nightclub dancer on Olvera Street. And after just a few lessons, she was hired as a dancer at the Caliente Club. She soon moved a few doors down Olvera Street to dance at El Paseo Inn. Elizabeth was young and beautiful and soon acquired the nickname “Chavala” or “Chavalita” (“little girl”). Eventually, she was called “Chavela” by everyone on Olvera Street. Nellie Fernandez, the popular Mexican dancer of the 1940s, became Chavela’s idol and always complimented the young dancer whenever she dined at El Paseo Inn. In 1946, Chavela married Tomás Valencia Flores, El Paseo’s handsome bartender. They separated within a year, but she kept her married name. And from then on, the tall blonde from New York was known to all as Chavela Flores.

The 1940s were the golden years for nightlife on Olvera Street. The two

main restaurants, Mrs. de Bonzo’s Casa La Golondrina café and Mrs. Peluffo’s El Paseo Inn, competed for customers and stayed open until the early hours of the morning. By day they were popular tourist restaurants. However, by night they were full-fledged nightclubs that catered to the elite of Holly‑ wood film. Rita Hayworth, George Raft, Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Orsen Welles, Lupe Velez, and Lana Turner were regular customers. Indeed, Flores recalled that she found a new identity and real Holly‑ wood glamour on Olvera Street: “Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, wow, they were so beautiful! And I had such a big crush on Johnny Weissmuller, you know, Tarzan.”22

Beyond the glitter and excitement of the nightclub, though, Flores faced

many more sobering reminders of life in downtown. She earned minimal wages. After paying for her meals and for cleaning and repair of her costumes, she usually went home broke. She lived with her mother across the street at Politics and Preservation ˚ 237

the old Lincoln Hotel at the corner of Macy and Main Street. Her mother, May Adele Jones, was a familiar face among Olvera Street regulars. Former El Paseo Inn doorman “Big” Johnny Torres recalled that Mrs. Jones was extremely poor and was always dressed in tattered clothing: “Some people called her the rag lady. And every night around 1 a.m., she would cross the street to wait for Chavela to get out of work. She did not want to embarrass her daughter, so she never entered the nightclub.”23 Early one morning in 1954, as she had done every night, May Adele crossed Macy Street to wait for her daughter. She was run over by a truck and died en route to General Hospital. Chavela was devastated. At age thirty-five, her dreams of Hollywood glamour, which had come so suddenly when she first stepped onto the dance floor, suddenly were gone. She continued to dance throughout the 1950s. But by the decade’s end, as the surrounding neighborhoods were razed and freeways sent Angelenos away from downtown, nightlife on Olvera Street disappeared. Olvera Street’s golden era, like that of the rest of downtown, was coming to an end.

Going Latin

After World War II, while nightlife on Olvera Street thrived, the Plaza

area embarked upon its first major redevelopment project since the opening of the Mexican marketplace. The postwar years brought new life to the preservation movement in California, much of which was stimulated by the Gold Rush centennial celebration in 1948. Governor Earl Warren also took steps to revitalize the State Park Commission by appointing new members such as Joseph R. Knowland with a broad vision for preservation.24 Locally, a major campaign to improve the Plaza was led by the Plaza de Los Angeles Inc. and its president, Superior Court Judge McIntyre Faries. In early 1948, they presented the City Council with a $7 million proposal for the redevelopment of the Plaza area. The plan was a mixture of Sterling’s standard formula for Mexican romance and FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy. It called for transforming the Plaza into a Pan American Center where the offices of several Latin American consulates and “Spanish businessmen,” complete with Spanishspeaking secretaries, were to be housed.25

The plan also called for the construction of a thousand-car parking lot

but did not contemplate interpretive uses for the surrounding buildings. His238

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Chavela Flores dancing to Latin rhythms at El Paseo Inn restaurant, ca. 1949. Author’s collection.

toric buildings “would be renovated and restored to useful income-producing use, yet still preserve the style and atmosphere of old Spanish California.”26 The Pan American planners were aware of its place in downtown urban development. In fact, it drew on several previous plans for downtown, such as the 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region, which showed an appreciation for the region’s Hispanic cultural legacy.27 This plan envisioned a sweeping and expansive spatial link between Union Station, the old Plaza, and the new civic center: “A visitor to this city would step out of the Station into a leisurely Latin American center which preserves the historic structures of the past with the colorful Latin atmosphere of the present.”28

The Plaza de Los Angeles/Sterling proposal was also steeped in patriotic

symbolism and Cold War ideology, reflecting the national concern for hemiPolitics and Preservation ˚ 239

spheric deference from south of the border. However, in terms of scale and content, this new endeavor was far more sophisticated than her previous projects, as reflected in a speech by Sterling in support of the plan: The Plaza can be reconstructed into one of the greatest tourists’ attractions any city in the world could offer to visitors and schoolchildren. The Nation honors Plymouth Rock, Lexington, Bunker Hill and other historic monuments. [Will] future Los Angeles be satisfied to be a machine-made, standardized city without [a] history or family background? The Old Plaza in Los Angeles can be incorporated into the new Civic Center, as a living vital element and not only will it be passed down . . . to future generations, but it can be made to fulfill a true Pan American ideal as endorsed by our named government.29



Through the Pan American Center plan, Sterling and Plaza de Los An-

geles Inc. were able to think ambitiously about the Plaza. But if they were to convince potential supporters of the viability of their plan to develop a business center that would symbolize a modern Latin America—and perhaps a solution to the “Mexican problem”—Sterling needed to distinguish the new plan from her original symbol of pre-industrial Mexico: “The Plaza Project presented at this time to the various planning agencies of the city of Los Angeles does not embody in any request the ideas, plans or designs along the lines of Olvera Street. The pendulum is to swing just the other way and all the accent placed on fine outstanding architectural details, refinement, and good taste throughout.”30

She understood the difference between what Dean MacCannell de-

scribes as a space that is purely “touristic” (Olvera Street) and space that would allow Mexicans and other “Latin Americans” to engage at all levels with the larger society.31 But the Pan American Center plan never attracted enough local support. The restoration of the Plaza area ultimately would be left to the power of the state legislature.

A State Park Is Born

The Cold War years brought widespread prosperity and a renewed assault

on the political left and ethnic minorities in particular. Locally, the issue of 240

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Mexican gangs continued to make headlines. In the same issue in May 1950, the Herald-Express paired two strikingly different yet related stories—one describing the perceived problem of Mexican youth gangs and the other offering a radical solution. A front-page story reported on a “Mexican Wolf Pack” that allegedly assaulted a woman and a police officer on Los Angeles streets.32 The article featured a grotesque picture of rats chained together in an attempt to conjure up the same image of “Mexican crime” that characterized anti-Mexican journalism during the zoot suit hysteria of the previous decade. The second story, by inference, appeared to be a novel solution to this problem. The article was titled “Mother of Olvera Street Tells Dream for Plaza and Old Missions” and outlined a proposal by which, in Sterling’s words, “no Mexican American who is able to work shall be on relief.”33

In light of her failure with Club Los Pachucos, this new proposal to put

the parents of Mexican American youths to work appeared to be the answer to the gang problem. Sterling’s proposal would transform 400,000 Mexican Americans in Los Angeles County into colorful silversmiths, basket weavers, pottery makers, tinsmiths, and shepherds at the old California missions. The article gave her ample credit for conceiving the plan and cited its merits as well as noting her now-legendary expertise on all matters relating to the Mexican people and the California Indian: “California needs a constantly available labor supply for the ranches, farms and orchards. These people must go on relief in off seasons. They hate it, for the Mexican loves to work with his hands. I suggest the Missions, two of which are state-owned, return to their original purpose and form workshops for the Indian and Mexican craftsmen.”34

But as grandiose as her plan may have appeared, Sterling’s primary mo-

tive was to gain public attention for her campaign to secure more control over the Plaza as a heritage site. The article revealed that she was particularly troubled by her legal conflicts with private property owners, namely the lawsuit by Constance Deighton Simpson, as well as her fledgling Pan American Center. She then presented a solution by tying her broader plan for the missions and explaining that all of her local problems could be solved through state acquisition of the historic structures surrounding the Plaza, and Mexican Americans and the general public would benefit: “Tourist trade is the area’s biggest business. An expanded Olvera Street, under state control, can hire many more of these men, silversmiths, weavers and others.”35 She added that “the Mexican Americans and Indians would obtain economic security Politics and Preservation ˚ 241

and [go] off relief. The Missions would fill their purpose and, with the state, would profit. The tourists would be fascinated. Relief rolls would drop and taxpayers [would] benefit.”36

This plan to revive the old missions and fill the Plaza with gainfully em-

ployed craftsmen may have appeared to be an original concept. However, earlier thoughts of transforming Mexican immigrants into quaint, living dioramas against the backdrop of California history preceded her. Historians Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez find that during the 1930s an attempt to keep Mexican agricultural workers off relief and away from the cities was proposed by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.37 To achieve this, “Mexican villages” would be established in the rural areas of Southern California. Another plan, much like Sterling’s, envisioned Mexican villages as colorful adjuncts to the three local missions: San Fernando, San Gabriel, and San Juan Capistrano. In fact, one local sage during this period put it best when he observed that “Mission San Juan Capistrano was famed for the yearly return of the swallows, but in this instance the Mexicans would be the real pigeons.”38 But even as ill-conceived and patronizing as the Sterling and Chamber of Commerce plans appeared, collectively they represented efforts to conceal critical social and economic issues stemming from the general fear and xenophobia about the growing Mexican population in greater Los Angeles, fears that extended to any mention of the diverse ethnic history of the Plaza becoming part of Sterling’s campaign to declare the site a state park.

This became clear in the latter part of 1950 when a group of business

associates and residents from Old Chinatown led by Bernice Lum, Harry L. Lew, and Eddy See, representing the Lung Kong Tin Yee Association, made a plea before the City Council to save the old Lugo House from demolition. The adobe was built in 1838 on the eastern edge of the Plaza by Vicente Lugo and was the first two-story house on the Plaza. It had survived floods, wars, and the dramatic physical transformations at the Plaza. Since 1890, it served as home to a Buddhist temple, the Hop Sing Tong, and various Chineseowned businesses. And in light of the destruction of Old Chinatown during the 1930s, the old adobe had assumed even greater significance as a cultural symbol for the displaced Chinese.

But Sterling and her downtown supporters had other plans for the house.

Specifically, she was determined to have the structure removed as a local eyesore and because it interfered with her plans for the Plaza. In December 1945 242

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The Lugo House as it appeared in 1890 as a business and religious center for Old Chinatown. Courtesy of the Huntington Library and Art Collection, San Marino.

she expressed her views on historic preservation to Supervisor John Anson Ford, a longtime advocate of local historic structures: “No one has more genuine Sentiment for the old Landmarks of Los Angeles than I have, but the time has now come when we must either present our history in a dignified, refined manner or destroy it. To talk of placing ‘Markers’ on the remaining historic buildings at the Plaza is to advertise the now sordid condition which exists there. I am reconciled to letting the Lugo House go.”39

By the late 1940s, the Lugo House was scheduled for demolition, and

this drew the ire of such longtime Sterling supporters as Parlor No. 124 of the Native Daughters of the Golden West: “The buildings in the vicinity of the Plaza should be maintained in their original forms, with appropriately enhanced surroundings, so that visitors who arrive by rail will be duly impressed with the city’s historical background, and so Angelenos may have a locality in which this revered background may be fully appreciated. For these reasons, we urge that the historic structures of Los Angeles be properly safeguarded and converted into shrines which will stand as monuments for Politics and Preservation ˚ 243

all time.”40 In September 1950, Supervisor Ford gave his final opinion on the matter to the City Council: It is my considered opinion after inspecting this structure that no substantial public injury will be sustained by its demolition or removal to another site. On the contrary, I feel that the public interest will be seriously and unfavorably affected if this structure is permitted to remain in the midst of an extensive and expensive expanse of public grounds. Furthermore, local governments have moral obligation to the railway companies. When the railway companies finally acceded to public demand and invested many millions of dollars in the present beautiful Union Station and grounds, they were given definite assurance that a beautiful open area would be developed in front of the station, unhampered by unsightly buildings.41



The Chinese proposal to restore the Lugo House and adjacent “unsightly

buildings” was unprecedented for its time. The Lung Kong Tin Yee Association raised approximately $500,000 to finance restoration of the adobe and adjacent buildings, which they agreed to turn over to the city. The plan involved restoring the first floor of the building as a museum where a permanent exhibit on the Plaza’s multi-ethnic history would be housed. But ample support for the plan from city hall or Olvera Street never surfaced. City Council members Orville R. Caldwell, who also served as deputy mayor and chairman of the Civic Center Authority, and Edward J. Davenport, known in most instances for his fiery temper and racial politics, bitterly objected to the proposed demolition.42 But amid rumors of a tong war with the nearby merchants of New China Town and China City (possibly started by Sterling and her supporters), the Mother of Olvera Street appeared in the local press as “one of the bitterest opponents of the new plan.”43 She believed that if the entire area between the Plaza and Union Station could not be cleaned up and cleared from commercialism, the entire area “should be torn down and the property used as a parking lot.”44 Without her support the restoration project was doomed. So in a desperate effort, the Chinese took their proposal to the entire City Council and Mayor Fletcher Bowron.

Meanwhile, a solemn vigil was held by Chinese elders who wore tra-

ditional Buddhist robes and sat in prayer in the old temple on the second floor of the adobe. They were joined by local preservationists and the Jesuit Fathers of Loyola University, whose humble beginnings in 1865 as Saint 24 4

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Vincent’s College dated back to the old adobe. But in the end, the proposal was flatly rejected.45 In February 1951 the Lugo House and adjoining structures were razed.46 Sterling’s reputation as the defender of the region’s fading Spanish-Mexican adobes was overshadowed by her desire to remove the last remnants of Old Chinatown. Historic preservation had lost another battle.

Perhaps, had John C. Frémont or Kit Carson slept in the old adobe during

the American siege of the pueblo, the outcome would have been different. By endorsing the demolition of the Lugo House, Sterling and her supporters demonstrated that they were actively engaged in “selective preservation” in order to advance a monolithic and romantic historical narrative for the Plaza.

The destruction of the Lugo House paved the way for the campaign to

claim the entire Plaza area as a state historic park. One week after the adobe fell, the Times announced that Assemblyman Jonathan Hollibaugh of Huntington Park had introduced a bill to designate the Plaza area as a state park. His original bill provided for $2 million from the State Park Fund to acquire the Plaza properties and refurbish the buildings, with additional funds to come from the City and County of Los Angeles.47 While Hollibaugh sought support for his bill in Sacramento, Sterling and her allies worked the local scene. Later that year, she hosted another well-orchestrated luncheon at Olvera Street for state, city and county officials, other civic leaders, and Latin American consular corps in an effort to gain their support. Judge McIntyre Faries presided over the Valentine’s Day event as president of Plaza de Los Angeles Inc. He made an emotional appeal to the guests by calling upon their sense of nostalgia for the city’s historic past that was quickly fading in the wake of profit-driven urban development. Ironically, his appeal to “save” and “preserve” lamented the loss of the Lugo House, the very same building he helped to destroy: “This area is shrinking. The Lugo House is gone. This is all there is left and there isn’t going to be any more. We would like to recreate the Spanish atmosphere in the area south of the Plaza—restore the Pico House in all its glory and the Merced Theater and the Masonic Temple. We must do this for the benefit of our children, who have no recollection and will look on them only as history once they are gone.”48

Sterling was next on the program. However, she took a more pragmatic

approach, mixing shrewd business judgment with her unique formula for historic preservation and social engineering. She outlined six advantages in her restoration proposal, arguing that the Plaza’s designation as a state park Politics and Preservation ˚ 245

would “help unite the Americas; preserve the history of California; make the greatest tourist attraction any city could have; provide visual education for thousands of school children; make a locale for fiestas; and insure a permanent labor supply of Mexicans.”49

In the end, Hollibaugh’s bill was unanimously passed by the state as-

sembly and senate committees. But before the bill left senate committee, an amendment was added to allocate money for restoring the Plaza from the State Beach Fund instead of taking it out of the State Park Fund. The rationale for this amendment was to preserve state park money for “existing” parks, which included the giant redwoods. So the Hollibaugh bill went to Governor Earl Warren’s desk as a “beach bill,” and he vetoed it. Warren cited that since the land-locked Plaza was in fact not a beach, he could not take monies out of the State Beach Fund.50

Finally, in March 1953 news came from Sacramento that the Plaza area

was officially designated as a State Historic Park and State Historic Landmark. The new park encompassed a forty-four-acre area bounded by Main, Arcadia, Alameda, and Macy Streets (now Avenida Cesar E. Chavez). Back home on Olvera Street, it was a time for celebration. Sterling and Consuelo de Bonzo led the merchants in a solemn procession from Olvera Street to the Plaza church for a prayer service of thanks that ended in a daylong fiesta.51

With the designation of the Plaza as the newest addition to the State

Park System, the state legislature appropriated $750,000 with matching funds from the City and County of Los Angeles to acquire several buildings surrounding the Plaza to serve as anchors for the permanent historic monument. This included the outspoken property owners on the west side of Olvera Street. As a result, Sterling’s legal troubles were now over. The new park designation also created a new bureaucratic chapter in the Plaza’s history. In 1955 a tripartite agreement between the state and the City and County of Los Angeles authorized the Los Angeles City Department of Recreation and Parks to act as administrator of the new historic monument. In the following year, the State Parks Commission approved a management agreement whereby El Pueblo de Los Angeles, a non-profit corporation, would manage Olvera Street. Without hesitation, they named Sterling as the park’s first manager, a position that she would hold for the rest of her life.52

But while Mexican romance and tourism on Olvera Street had received

a new lease on life, the situation in the larger Mexican American community was dramatically different. During this same period of Plaza restoration, 246

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anti-immigration fears were exacerbated by the xenophobia accompanying the Cold War. The result was a massive campaign initiated in 1954 by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with the assistance of local government to deport undocumented or “illegal” Mexican immigrants from the United States. It was crassly labeled Operation Wetback, and in its first year alone, more than one million Mexicans were deported. A large number of the apprehensions occurred in Los Angeles at the Plaza amid the festive backdrop of Olvera Street, and numerous departures occurred at Union Station across the street.53

Unresolved History

With state acquisition of the property in 1953, the use of the Plaza as the

center of civic activity, free speech, and diverse immigrant life had largely come to an end. The Plaza’s “historic” period was largely over. Its reincarnation as a touristic Mexican marketplace and state historic park point to the “preservation history” of a heritage site, which, in most cases has no turning back. And with the exception of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles (Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church), Plaza Methodist Church, and the bench-lined Plaza that continue to function as two active congregations and a vibrant public space, all other buildings were converted to adaptive use in the new state park. With this achievement, the romantic SpanishMexican narrative that was rooted in the cult of the missions and repackaged by Sterling found new currency in the 1950s as a state park. Even a statue of Father Junipero Serra that in previous years had guided speeding motorists from its concrete pedestal in the middle of Sunset Boulevard was brought to the Plaza to be part of the iconic landscape. It mattered less to management that the father of the missions had nothing to do with the founding of Los Angeles or any other California pueblo. The Plaza was an evolving narrative, and in their minds, Serra fit the bill.

In fact, historical accuracy appears to have been a lingering problem for

Sterling and her supporters. This could not have been more apparent than with the subject of the original founders of the city. As part of historian Glenn Price’s graduate research project on the Plaza for the State Park System, he had a large wooden plaque made that accurately listed the name, age, and racial category of each of the 1781 founders of city, the majority of Politics and Preservation ˚ 247

whom were negro or mulato. He then had the plaque displayed in front of the old Avila Adobe for public viewing. But to his surprise, his initiative and attention to historical detail did not please Sterling: “The plaque was immediately removed and rumors circulated that it may have even been burned.”54 Price was dismayed by such a deliberate attempt to conceal the city’s history, and for what purpose? Indeed, what he may not have fully understood at the time was that the racial origins of the pobladores—the original founders of Los Angeles—were part of an ongoing conflict between members of the black community who knew the truth and Anglos who sought to justify their economic and political dominance by maintaining that the city was settled by their “European” forebears. The conflict occurred in many arenas—the local press, historical circles, public parades and pageants, and even in the local schools.

In 1946, at the request of Superintendent Vierling Kersey of the Los

Angeles Unified Schools, a narrative list of the original founders of the city was published for distribution within the district. This publication, as with Price’s plaque, correctly designated the racial or caste identification—negro, indio, mulato, mestizo, or español—of each of the forty-four settlers. To accomplish this task, the visionary school chief had joined forces with community members and local historians, especially Miriam Matthews, the city’s first black librarian and an expert on the African American origins of Los Angeles. And since local historical societies and the management of El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park under Sterling had resisted any public acknowledgement concerning the city’s racial background, the new publication was unprecedented for its time. It may have also signaled the growing conflicts on race and ethnicity in post–World War II Los Angeles.

Tellingly, in 1950, the same year that ten social scientists wrote The

UNESCO Statement on Race that declared that the biological fact of race and the myth of race should be abolished, a major controversy surrounded the proposed exhibit “Man in Our Changing World” by the curators of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art.55 The central theme of the exhibit was “racial equality” and rested on the belief that social and environmental factors such as income, education level, and discrimination—not race—were the determining factors of cultural accomplishment. However, dissention immediately arose between liberal museum supporters who advocated the similarities between the races and opponents who feared that the exhibit endorsed the “mixing of the races,” an event that in their view would 248

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lead to social unrest. “Man in Our Changing World” eventually opened to widespread approval, though it reflected a broader ideological conflict over the changing views of race relations that manifested locally with regard to the racial identities of the city’s founders.

In 1951 Alexander J. Stoddard, the new superintendent for Los Angeles

Unified Schools, authorized the publication of three new textbooks with “new” information on the founders of Los Angeles. The outcome was a sweeping revision of the 1946 textbooks published under Kersey. And once the textbooks reached the children of Los Angeles city schools, the reaction from the black community was one of disbelief. Charlotta Bass, a civil rights activist and the publisher of the California Eagle—the same newspaper that admonished the city in 1931 for distorting the historical facts during La Fiesta de Los Angeles—responded to this latest rewrite of local history: The editors of these three books eliminated all reference to the racial composition of the founders; the words “Negro” and “colored” do not appear anywhere in any of the three textbooks, which are standard texts now used in the Los Angeles School System in teaching this subject. Even worse was the fact that one of them printed a double-page illustration which purported to be a picture of all 44 founders, in 11 family groups, plus the one family group “left behind in Loreto.” All are represented as Caucasian or white; therefore, since there is no reference whatsoever to the Negro contribution to the founding of the city, the impression students now receive is that Los Angeles was founded by white settlers.56



Certainly from the perspective of the African American community, Los

Angeles public schools under Stoddard had taken on the character of Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen EightyFour.57 In the book, Smith lives in a totalitarian society and works as a clerk for the Ministry of Truth, where his job is literally to “rewrite historical documents” so that they match the current party line.

What is more, such attempts by Sterling and the school district to instill

an Anglo birth legend for the city were also embraced by the descendants of the original pobladores, many of whom through generations of intermarriage had taken on a “European look.” Ana Begue de Packman was one of these descendants. From the 1930s to the 1960s, she was an author and secretary of the Historical Society of Southern California, the state’s oldest and most Politics and Preservation ˚ 249

prestigious historical organization. She was a direct descendant of Francisco Reyes, a mulato from present-day Jalisco who served as alcalde of Los Angeles in 1793. Packman proudly touted her family lineage in Southern California and the blood that ran through her veins as “pure Castillian.”58

During a late 1950s history conference, however, William (Bill) Mason,

a UCLA graduate student and admirer of revisionist historian Carey McWilliams, raised his hand from the audience and proclaimed that the black contributions to early Los Angeles, which included Reyes, had been neglected in the historical record. He recommended that the true racial makeup of these early pioneers be noted with pride in all future historical writings and public ceremonies. Mason also recalled the silence in the room and the look of outrage on Packman’s face as soon as he began to unveil long-buried family secrets.59 It would take many years before the city would recognize and celebrate its multi-ethnic origins.

Meanwhile, as the Plaza area was undergoing its last major physical

transformation with the construction of the Hollywood Freeway and the razing of surrounding structures such as the Lugo House, Sterling managed to salvage a few ideas from her failed Latin American redevelopment project. In 1959 the Simpson-Jones Building became the first recognized unit of the new El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park. The brick building was constructed in 1894 on the north end of the Plaza and was a functional and rather modest example of late-nineteenth-century industrial design that developed throughout the city.60

After the surrounding industry gradually declined in the late 1920s and

into the Depression years, the building housed several small businesses, including the Diamond Shirt Company, the Soochow Chinese Restaurant, and a joke and novelty shop. During the late 1950s, the building was remodeled under the authority of the state parks as a branch of Bank of America. The renovation included arched windows and bright Mexican tiles that were intended to convey a Mediterranean look of a Mexican banco, complete with Spanish-speaking personnel. Later, a Mexican restaurant, La Luz del Dia, moved into the eastern side of the building and added to Sterling’s penchant for Latin American aesthetics with a tiled-roof portico supported by wooden posts and wrought-iron trim; the bougainvillea grew on its own time.61

This trend to alter Plaza architecture to conform to the popular “Ramon-

aland” narrative of Southern California, as previously noted, began as early as 1900 with the addition of a new bell tower to the old Plaza church to make 250

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it look like a California mission.62 Today, schoolchildren and visiting tourists leave the Plaza believing that they have just seen one of Father Serra’s creations. So in the transformation of the Simpson-Jones Building from industrial workshop to Chinese restaurant to joke and novelty shop and finally to a Latin American banco, the joke has actually been played on the throngs of tourists who, with cameras clicking, come to the Plaza to capture the flavor of “old Los Angeles.”63 With the Plaza’s new status as a state historic park, Sterling and her supporters in the business and historical community continued to mold history at the Plaza by sifting through the past and erasing complex and discomforting racial memories in their effort to re-imagine early Los Angeles as a romantic Spanish-Mexican paradise.

Throughout the 1950s, while Mexican consular, community, and busi-

ness leaders like Consuelo de Bonzo sponsored traditional Mexican patriotic observances at the Plaza such as Cinco de Mayo and Dieciseis de Septiembre, Sterling continued to control the fate of Olvera Street and the Plaza. She presided over other traditional or transplanted public events such as Las Posadas, Blessing of the Animals, Flower and Camera Day, and the city’s birthday. With the aid of her benefactors and local preservation groups, she coordinated the installation of several new historical markers, statues, and plaques and a Mexican-style kiosko (bandstand) in 1962 that further defined the thematic boundaries of El Pueblo Monument as a visual repository of the city’s past.

Fading Memories

Throughout her storied career as champion and administrator of Ol-

vera Street, Sterling remained a staunch Republican. She was stern and often uncompromising in her authority as manager and amateur historian at the city’s birthplace. Longtime merchant Alfredo Bonzo, a former member of the John Birch Society, recalled her outburst at the sight of California’s Democratic Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown in 1960 walking into the Avila Adobe with Senator John F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign, an event that attracted thousands: “She yelled out from her office: ‘Get that fat guy out of here.’”64 However, tempers were finally calmed and the future president even spent a few minutes with Sterling and then took a short nap on a leather couch inside the old adobe. Soon afterward, Sterling made arPolitics and Preservation ˚ 251

rangements for the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, to visit Olvera Street.

Despite her partisan politics and legendary temper, she also was a de-

fender, albeit a patronizing one, of the Mexican community. In fact, since the late 1930s, she had been listed in the Los Angeles City Directory as a resident of 935 Chavez Ravine Road, where she lived in a re-created adobe constructed with the assistance of several Olvera Street merchants.65 Numerous working-class Mexican American and Italian American families refused to vacate their modest homes and were eventually forced out by authorities at gunpoint. Ironically, many of the residents of Chavez Ravine had been uprooted from their previous homes in Sonoratown during the 1920s. Sterling family members recalled her sense of outrage toward city fathers for their callous disregard for the people of Chavez Ravine. In 1959, after receiving an official notice of condemnation, Sterling and several Olvera Street merchants with sledgehammers in hand destroyed her re-created adobe home rather than allow the city to bulldoze the structure by right of eminent domain.66

Edward R. Roybal, the only Mexican American member of the Los Ange-

les City Council during this time, was among the few council members who defended the Chavez Ravine community. He was present when the last resident, Aurora Arechiga, was dragged from her home by the police: “It was a sad day for a thing like that to be happening in a civilized community.”67 As a trusted friend and ally of Sterling and Consuelo de Bonzo, the former U.S. congressman recalled with a sense of bitter irony the experience of having to interact with the same council members on Olvera Street who donned sombreros, serapes, and unabashedly indulged in the food and music of the Mexican people while simultaneously enacting the harshest measures, such as eminent domain, that would ultimately destroy the city’s oldest barrio: “Back in those days, the support for the Mexican American community was nonexistent in my opinion. I came to understand that the right of eminent domain was, in reality, the legal right to steal. I knew that behind their smile was an attitude that hadn’t changed.”68

And so it was that by the end of the 1950s, as the rapid pace of urban

development transformed much of downtown Los Angeles and led to the loss her home in Chavez Ravine, Sterling moved into the Avila Adobe and became a living diorama of sorts—greeting people as they entered and certainly animating her image as the Mother of Olvera Street.69 But as old age and failing health set in, she relinquished her authority to Mario Valadez, 252

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her trusted assistant who had for many years managed the daily business affairs of Olvera Street.70 Finally, on the morning of June 21, 1963, Christine Sterling died in her sleep at age eighty-two. Her death in the old adobe was perhaps a fitting tribute to a life that was forever transformed by the humble structure that she encountered during that first walk through the Plaza in 1926. And with her passing, an era in the Plaza’s preservation history that looked inward while denying its multi-ethnic past was coming to an end. A new era that would gradually connect this past to the larger city would take its place.

Beyond the Piñatas

One month before Sterling’s death, a largely forgotten newspaper article

appeared in the Los Angeles Herald that foretold the growing parallels between the Plaza’s changing use and meaning with those of the larger city.71 For generations, few people knew or even cared about the fate of Governor Felipe de Neve, the visionary architect of the founding of Los Angeles. Did he return to Los Angeles, or did he leave Mexico altogether and return home to Spain? As noted at the beginning of this book, after leaving his post as governor of California in 1782, he was named commander of the provincias internas, or internal provinces, of Mexico. In June 1784, while traveling from Arispe to Chihuahua, he became gravely ill and was taken to the Hacienda del Carmen on the trail through the rough Sierra Madre that separates Sonora and the coastal plain from Chihuahua. He knew that the end was near and proceeded to write his last will and testament, making a profession of faith and asking for forgiveness for all his sins. He died of dysentery on August 21 and was buried in a small cemetery at the hacienda. And with the town, he faded into obscurity.

During the Mexican Revolution, the hacienda was the scene of numer-

ous encounters between the northern armies of General Francisco “Pancho” Villa and federal troops. In 1922 the hacienda was purchased by the Mexican government under President Álvaro Obregón and renamed as the town of Ricardo Flores Magón in honor of the anarchist-revolutionary who inspired popular resistance in this northern territory. This was the same Flores Magón who challenged the legacy of colonialism at the Los Angeles Plaza during his years of exile. Readers of the 1963 article learned that Neve, the Politics and Preservation ˚ 253

colonialist-visionary of Los Angeles who was lionized by Sterling and her supporters with a larger-than-life bronze statue in the Plaza that still stands, was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in a hacienda that bore the name of his extreme opposite, the anarchist-revolutionary. Ironically, at the same time that the Herald article reminded readers of Neve’s historical legacy at the Plaza, the whitewash that once covered América Tropical began to fade and reveal Siqueiros’ revolutionary mural—a historical legacy of Flores Magón and the PLM—just as a new wave of Mexican immigrants moved to the city.

The 1960s saw a reawakening of social consciousness stirred by the civil

rights movement, creating a new climate of liberalism. For many members of the Mexican American community, this new optimism was symbolized by the election of John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, as president of the United States. Mexican Americans in Los Angeles emerged as the largest minority group in the city. This fact was noted by the Kennedy campaign, which made a concerted effort to court the Catholic–Mexican American vote.72 Edward R. Roybal recalled that after Kennedy addressed a crowd from the steps of the Avila Adobe on Olvera Street, “he walked across the Plaza to the old church to pay his respects, and it made a big impression on the crowd.”73 Kennedy’s visit to the Plaza was not only an affirmation of the emerging demographic and political reality that Mexican Americans represented on a regional and national scale, it was also an acknowledgment of their historical imprint on the city as reflected in the continuing cultural and political significance of the Plaza. What was clear to many Angelenos and especially to Mexican Americans was that Sterling’s maternal benevolence could no longer guide the Plaza and Olvera Street along a politically and culturally narrow path.

This period saw greater involvement among Mexican Americans in

mainstream politics, as well as the emergence of activism by Mexican American youth in East Los Angeles and the Southwest as a whole. For many, the terms “Chicano” and “Chicana” replaced “Mexican American” as symbols of self-determination and cultural pride. This new consciousness generated organized activities on a regional and national level that became known as the Chicano and Chicana Movement. The 1960s and 1970s were indeed periods of intense discussion concerning the problems of people of Mexican descent. For many Chicanos and Chicanas in Los Angeles, América Tropical and Olvera Street restaurants were rediscovered and given new meaning as powerful cultural symbols and critical spaces to meet and plan the next stages of the movement. For activist Phil Montes, western regional director 254

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for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Plaza still lingers in his memory as the one place that embodied his greatest hopes and most painful memories of those days.74

In late August 1970, Montes, Charles Erickson (his colleague on the

Civil Rights Commission), and Father Henry J. Casso (a local parish priest from the Pico-Union district) were called to a meeting by their longtime friend Ruben Salazar, a Times reporter. They met at La Luz del Dia restaurant, where the Plaza and Olvera Street converge and which continues to be a favorite meeting place for locals. Salazar had developed a reputation for his hard-hitting essays on the Mexican American community, many of which focused on discrimination and police abuse.75 He called the luncheon to tell his closest friends that plain-clothes police officers arrived at his other office at the Spanish-language television station KMEX-TV and made a threat on his life. He told them that the officers were angered by what they described as one-sided news reports on police abuse and if he continued, “they would get him.”76 Montes recalled that while they all understood that Salazar was entirely serious, his fears were somewhat exaggerated because they knew that “Ruben had a romantic soul, which sometimes bordered on the dramatic.”77

Four days later, Salazar was covering the National Chicano Moratorium

march for which thirty thousand people converged in East Los Angeles to oppose the Vietnam War and social inequality at home. The march ended in a confrontation with police and the largest riot in the city since Watts in the summer of 1965. Salazar was shot through the head by a high-velocity L.A. sheriff’s tear-gas projectile while sitting in the Silver Dollar Café on Whittier Boulevard. In the week following Salazar’s death, the Plaza’s yearly celebration of the founding of the city was canceled for the first time, according to the local press, “due to tension in the Mexican American community.”78 More than thirty years later, Montes cannot speak about his fallen friend without deep emotion. Although it remains a mystery whether Salazar was assassinated or killed accidentally in the fray, his death gave the Chicano and Chicana Movement a martyr and galvanized the quest for social justice by many Mexican Americans in Los Angeles.79

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Chicano and Chicana Movement

gradually diffused. Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were faced with more complex social and political changes based on the transformation of Mexican communities as a result of large-scale immigration from Mexico and Politics and Preservation ˚ 255

Central America. The 1980s became the so-called Decade of the Hispanic. Locally, Father Luis Olivares became a prominent voice for Latino and Latina immigrants, attending to their spiritual and social needs at Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church. In defiance of the Catholic hierarchy, he declared the old church a sanctuary for Central American political refugees and the undocumented, and he urged all Americans to violate provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which prohibited the hiring of undocumented workers.80

Writer-journalist Ruben Martinez notes that before Olivares came to

the city in 1981, the Plaza church “leaned toward a touristy quaintness and was mainly attended by the Chicano and Mexicano middle class.”81 But after his public declaration for sanctuary, “shrines paying tribute to the various Latino communities that [made] up the parish [adorned] the walls of the church—El Cristo Negro de Esquipulas (Guatemala), El Santo Niño de Atocha (El Salvador), El Señor de los Milagros (Peru), and, Olivares’ favorite, the expressionistic lithograph depicting the assassination of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.”82

The priest’s bold declarations did not always find favor with business-

people on Olvera Street who perceived the activist cleric as an impediment to tourism; their fears, however, were eclipsed by the 1992 riot, which struck a critical blow to downtown business and tourism. Before his untimely death in 1993 after becoming infected with the AIDS virus from a medical injection with a contaminated needle, Olivares reminded the city and the world that the Plaza had always been a place for hope and compassion and that Los Angeles was once again becoming a Latino city. This impact on Latino and Latina immigrants, legal and undocumented, was reinforced with the passage of IRCA, the outbreak of Indian uprisings in the mid-1990s in the Mexican state of Chiapas, which contributed to the escalating number of immigrants to Los Angeles, and the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied undocumented immigrants and their families in California health care, welfare, and public education.

Finally, on March 25, 2006, an estimated one million protesters staged

La Gran Marcha on City Hall in response to the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437), whose provisions would make “unlawful presence” an “aggravated felony”—in effect making criminals of millions of undocumented immigrants and their family members. It was the largest public demonstration in California history, and simul256

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Father Luis Olivares (center) at a press conference, 1987; Peter Schey (left), Fernando Tafolla (right), and United Farm Workers Vice President Dolores Huerta. Courtesy of La Opinión.

taneous marches across the country made this date a major event in the nation’s history. The immigrants’ rights movement was now a front-page story. In the weeks of preparation for the march, the Plaza was the central meeting place for organizers to gather and strategize. But beyond the impact that the march will no doubt have on future immigration policy (and now there are plans in Washington to build a “defensive” wall along the U.S.-Mexico border), the national and international media coverage of La Gran Marcha reported on something much more profound that will have lasting impact on the Plaza.

This book began with an understanding of the spatial and cultural roots

of Los Angeles originating with the founding of the pueblo in 1781 by the pobladores who came north from Mexico. In the nineteenth century, the ambivalent relations between the United States and Mexico began as a fight over land, with Mexico losing its northern territories that comprise the present U.S. Southwest. And ever since, there has remained an anxiety between the Politics and Preservation ˚ 257

two nations about the memory of that conflict. In the 2000 U.S. Census, Latinos in the United States numbered more than forty million, most of them immigrants from the nations with the largest populations of Indians and mestizos. In the recent immigration protests, Mexicans marched side by side with Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, and Colombians—not as members of separate ethnic or national groups, but rather as some new nation of the Spanish-speaking world.

At the same time, author Richard Rodriguez notes, Americans are wit-

nessing the reunion of the hemisphere from another angle: “America is discovering itself within the Americas. This is quite a new discovery for a country that has traditionally written its history from east to west. Now it is populated by millions of people, here legally and illegally, who describe the U.S. as El Norte. Their presence forces the country to also imagine itself anew along a north-south axis.”83

For many of these millions, the journey to el norte, crossing and recross-

ing into ancestral homelands in the U.S. Southwest, will no doubt bring renewed imagination and meaning to the City of Dreams and its Plaza.

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Chapter nine

The Persistence of Memory

Today, the Plaza continues to grow in cultural significance, especially

for Latinos, who have become the city’s majority population. The site is also going through an interpretive revival among other ethnic groups that are rightfully reclaiming visible representation in El Pueblo’s expanding historical narrative.1 Administratively, the problems of managing El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument have often taken on nightmarish proportions, and not surprisingly, preservation of the resources has occasionally been compromised. In addition, the bureaucratic problems of how to manage the resources are compounded by the more esoteric problems of what to preserve.

In 1981, after generations of misinformation and organized denial re-

garding the racial origins of the original founders of the city, Miriam Matthews, the first black librarian in the city and an expert on African American history and culture, led a community-wide effort to install a founders plaque in the Plaza for the city’s bicentennial. The plaque correctly lists the names and racial identities of the forty-four pobladores and today is the starting point for all walking tours of El Pueblo Monument. In addition, many of El Pueblo’s buildings have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and many needed physical improvements have been made. 259

Other preservation efforts, however, have been far less comprehensive. In 1986 the Gabrielino people, who had been largely missing from the Plaza’s historical narrative, were memorialized with the so-called Indian Garden, a small fenced-off flowerbed and a bronze plaque on the northeast side of the Plaza. The intent of the garden was to point out to visitors important indigenous plant life perhaps more than indigenous people. It was dedicated with a public ceremony attended by Mayor Tom Bradley and other local politicos and celebrities, as well as a sacred blessing by Hollywood’s own faux but sincere Chief “Iron Eyes” Cody, who actually was a second-generation Italian American. Today the Gabrielinos, numbering more than two thousand in Southern California, are at a crossroads in their history. Some are trying to reclaim their lost or forgotten history and culture, some are fighting to protect ancestral burial grounds and other sacred sites, and some are seeking federal tribal recognition in part to secure rights to open gambling casinos.2 Many also have incorporated the name Tongva with Gabrielino as an acknowledgment of earlier terms of linguistic and cultural identity.

During the 1990s, a group of stargazers came up with plans (which later

died) for a Latino Hollywood walk of fame to encircle the Plaza. In their plan, everyone from Ricky Ricardo to Selena would be enshrined right next to the plaques of the pobladores, Pico House, and Zanja Madre. During this same period, a local veterans group won the approval from the City Council to erect a twenty-foot-tall war memorial in the shape of an Aztec pyramid. Recently, one of El Pueblo’s seemingly endless stream of administrative heads decided it would be a good idea to plant a row of palm trees on the east end of the Plaza to enhance the “L.A. look.” However, what these projects reveal is that El Pueblo Monument today is actually an eclectic combination of physical, historical, and cultural resources that have been created as much by myth and the current political agenda as they have by real history.

But far beyond the administrative challenges and the predictable tourist

experience on Olvera Street, the Plaza, as symbolized through Father Olivares and La Gran Marcha, has witnessed a rebirth among Latino immigrants. Street vendors sell everything from bootleg CDs to tamales, fresh fruit, Mexican ice cream, T-shirts, and plastic images of Juan Diego, the recently canonized Mexican-Indian saint. According to Mexican Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Diego, an Indian peasant, in 1531 as the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was La Morenita (the beloved dark virgin), and since the six-

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Site map, 2004, of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a 44-acre historic district managed as a City of Los Angeles department. Map by Jean and Phil Orozco; courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

The founders plaque at the Plaza, dedicated in 1981 City of Los Angeles bicentennial commemoration, correctly listing names and racial backgrounds of the original pobladores. Photo by Ezekiel Tarango.

Local residents portraying Los Angeles’ Indian and African roots during the 1981 bicentennial. Courtesy of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

teenth century, she has provided comfort and hope (esperanza) to the indigenous poor of Mexico and throughout Latin America. And since Diego’s canonization in 2002, the tile image of La Virgen de Guadalupe on the exterior north wall of the church’s administrative annex has become one of the city’s most visited and sacred shrines. Worshipers, wedding and baptismal parties, and the urban poor all stop and kneel at the open-air altar.

Across the street on the Plaza are elderly men on benches, Chinese se-

nior citizens, scurrying schoolchildren, tourists from throughout the world, and Aztec dancers performing a symbolic confrontation in front of the statue of King Carlos III. They are joined by Andean musicians, aging braceros protesting for economic redress, sweethearts embraced in the passion of the moment, drug dealers, prostitutes, and a growing homeless population who have been uprooted by downtown gentrification. They have all reappropriThe Persistence of Memory ˚ 263

ated this quintessential place that continues to serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration for all Angelenos.

Among the central goals for this study was to document the Plaza’s

history in order to understand the cultural and political meaning of public space in contemporary Los Angeles. This is especially timely in light of the city’s changing demographics and loss of public space. In the late twentieth century, Los Angeles systematically turned inward. The expansion of privatized space in downtown supplanted traditional streets and spaces that once brought people together. The Olmstedian vision that public landscapes and parks were designed, albeit from the perspective of conservative reform, as social safety valves where disparate classes and ethnicities could congregate in common spaces and shared recreation has largely come to an end.3

The development of a new business district west of Hill Street in the old

Bunker Hill neighborhood contributed to the creation of two spatial realities for downtown Los Angeles in the late twentieth century. This new downtown was designed to ensure a seamless continuum of middle-class work, consumption, and recreation that was insulated from the city’s immigrant poor. Public and private policing, electronic surveillance, and other physical barriers formed a new architectural defense in warding off the city’s disenfranchised. Bunker Hill’s modernist corporate acropolis seeks to reshape downtown Los Angeles into something that mimics the lifestyles of the great cities of the East Coast and Europe. Its most recent offspring include a “quasipublic” space known as California Plaza; a renovated Pershing Square; and billionaire developers Eli Broad’s Grand Avenue project and Philip Anschutz’ Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District (also popularly called Times Square West and L.A. Live) near the Staples Center on South Figueroa Street—both endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and funded with help from the pockets of taxpayers in the form of loans, tax breaks, and fee waivers. This concept of a Times Square and Champs Élysées for L.A., complete with shops, theaters, condo towers, boutique hotels, a central park, and high security, reflects a national movement toward defensible urban centers and the corresponding loss of public space.4

As we enter the twenty-first century, we are a society that is seeking con-

nection—with our history, our ethnicity, our environment, and each other. Urban parks and plazas are some of the few venues where a pure expression of this connection is possible. However, Los Angeles has become less public. The rise of corporate Bunker Hill, the renovation of Pershing Square, and 264

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later development schemes serve as the most recent examples of this trend to “kill the street,” thereby contributing to the eroding of public space. So where does that leave the Plaza in the analysis of diminished public space in postmodern Los Angeles? The old notion of the city as a coherent place has largely disappeared. Since the postwar decentralization, Los Angeles has become more of a region than a metropolis, and such agglomerations cannot provide the urban and civic identity it once offered.

To understand this reality, all one has to do is consider queer space in the

city (West Hollywood notwithstanding), which appears to be nonexistent when compared to that of other major cities. Moira Rachel Kenney notes that this geographic sprawl in part explains why in Los Angeles (unlike New York’s Greenwich Village or San Francisco’s Castro district) gay, lesbian, and transgender life has largely been one of “being present and visible within the urban whole, rather than in designated enclaves.”5

The enigma of Los Angeles begins with its geography, or more precisely,

its expanding geography as it grew from its original 28.01 square miles (four square leagues) to 465 square miles by the twentieth century. There was certainly a time, perhaps before the 1950s, when Angelenos constructed their mental maps of the city based on particular geographic and iconic references in and around downtown, and the Plaza was understood as a central reference point in relation to such places as City Hall, Union Station, Little Tokyo, Grand Central Market, Chinatown, and the old courthouse. Along with this loss of identity has come a deep distrust of the public realm that cities once celebrated and enjoyed. Idealistic appeals for its restoration may not change the current mood, as seen in the recent and highly publicized eviction of a multi-ethnic community garden in South Central Los Angeles by a private developer. So the question remains: If the current political and economic trends have led to the death of public space, can the Plaza offer any alternatives for its possible recovery?6

Demographically, Los Angeles has certainly become a Latino city whose

main arteries run through the old business center on Broadway and Spring Streets and whose symbolic heart remains at the Plaza. By 1998, Latinos outnumbered Anglos in Los Angeles County by more than one million and by 2005 comprised more than 50 percent of the population of the city and county. Beyond sheer numbers, however, as seen with the election in 2005 of Antonio Villaraigosa as the first Hispanic mayor since 1872, Latinos in Los Angeles are renegotiating their political and economic position as well as The Persistence of Memory ˚ 265

their visibility in the city. The Latinization of the city is bringing redemptive energy to its worn-out cores and inner suburbs and imprinting its own aesthetic sensibilities and cultural practices. This can be seen at all levels, from the spoken word to public art, from family-run shops along Broadway to elaborate Mexican-themed retail developments in the suburbs to the reactivated front yards in the residential areas from East Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley.7 Thus, local spaces such as the Plaza continue to provide the emotional and symbolic basis for maintaining cultural identity.8

During several interviews in and around the Plaza, people commented

on how happy they were to be there as tourists, as merchants, as employees, and even as homeless people. They enjoyed the “green shade,” the food, the music, and the church bells ringing. Also important was the opportunity— or the belief—that they were purchasing culture-specific merchandise that could not be found in other parts of the city. Speaking their native language in such an aesthetic setting was also deeply meaningful. Kevin Lynch once wrote that the “imageability” of a place is deeply connected with the meaning of being there.9 Such places provide the symbolic as well as the economic and practical sustenance for everyday life. What is more, the vernacularization of urban space, even in such contrived landscapes as Olvera Street, has acquired a particular kind of authenticity and may serve as a powerful and important corrective to offset the impact of the sameness and placelessness of globalization.10

Postmodern Los Angeles indeed finds itself in a paradox—saddled with

an antiquated planning apparatus characteristic of a period of high modernism, it is unable to mobilize the civic will to legitimize formal urban development schemes.11 The recent victory by a diverse, multi-ethnic coalition that successfully prevented the development of an industrial park in the old Cornfield, a former Southern Pacific freight and passenger depot located slightly north of the Plaza, serves as powerful evidence that the old planning models that led to the destruction of historic neighborhoods discussed in this book no longer work. A key component on the side of the community victory at the Cornfield rested on the fact that the original Zanja Madre water system—portions of which are still visible at the site—connected the history of this thirty-two-acre property with the Plaza and Los Angeles River. The California Department of Parks and Recreation has purchased the parcel along with Taylor Yard slightly north of the Cornfield for a total of sixtytwo acres. Plans are now under way to convert the sites into state parks—a 266

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victory for public space.12 Only time will tell if their final designs will complement their historic relationship with the Plaza and perhaps serve as a new planning model for downtown.

By following the Plaza’s transformative history, I have gained new

understanding of the important political dimensions of the meaning of public space as an arena where differences and conflicts over social, cultural, or political objectives become concrete and visible, where the discourse about power and knowledge are transformed into actual relations of power.13 As a daily observer, I have also learned that designated sites such as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, which features ongoing programs in history, archaeology, and architectural preservation, are, in many ways, similar to libraries and museums as public repositories of the past. However, it is assumed that these collections, seemingly containing the raw material of the collective past, are diverse and comprehensive enough to represent the full range of urban histories that are demanding to be heard. But what I have been reminded of is that historic sites, like the scholarship they inform, are contingent upon the social and political circumstances that bring them into being and therefore are highly fragmentary and tendentious in nature. They reflect commonly held beliefs and myths about the nature of city life and the value of various population groups by virtue of their presence or absence in the official history.14

Therefore, it is my hope that future studies will address the broader so-

ciospatial history of Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the publicprivate dyad over various periods of urban development. Finally, if the Plaza is a particular kind of urban space—complex, sacred, and contested—it is so because it resonates with a profound sense of collective memory. This fact was the single unifying theme that I found during several oral history interviews conducted during the 1990s and early 2000s.

At this writing, Tyrus Wong is in his late nineties and is regarded as a

local art and cultural treasure. He is a beloved elder at the recently opened Chinese American Museum on Los Angeles Street but still finds it difficult to walk past the old Plaza Firehouse, where he met his late wife, Ruth, in 1935 when the building housed Dr. Chee’s New Asia drugstore and soda fountain. Karl Yoneda and Meyer Baylin passed away in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and were still optimistic about the prospects for radical change and social justice in our society. Beatriz Moreno de Guzman is in her late eighties and spends most of her time with her large extended family. The family The Persistence of Memory ˚ 267

Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Plaza, 2002. Photo by Frank Damon.

is proud that the old sign of La Esperanza bakery was saved from demolition and is now on display in a museum. Bill Shishima is a retired school teacher and a volunteer at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. He often visits the Plaza to have lunch with old friends and walk past the parking lot where his family’s former business, Mercado Plaza, once stood. Chavela Flores, the former dancer, is approaching her ninetieth birthday and recently moved from her Hollywood duplex to a convalescent hospital on Washington Boulevard. She is unable to walk and spends her days in a hallway or in her room surrounded by a small collection of mementos from her past—photographs, a tattered Mexican dress, and fading memories of those exciting nights on the dance floor at El Paseo Inn long ago, when she was a star.

But of all the interviews and personal memories that I have recorded in

order to gain a deeper understanding of the past and present meaning of the Plaza, none has had more lasting impact on this author than one brief interview that took place during the summer of 1994. His name was Luis. He was a twenty-two-year-old newly arrived immigrant from Mexico. He had been sleeping in and around the Plaza for the previous several days, among the 268

˚ the los angeles plaza

growing numbers of the city’s homeless. According to Father Steve, a compassionate priest at La Placita church, this population of Plaza residents is varied and often difficult to gauge, comprised of people from all walks of life, circumstances, and nationalities: single male immigrants from Mexico and Central America, African Americans, Anglos, women, children, the undocumented, veterans, drug addicts, gang bangers, prostitutes, the jobless, the homeless, and the mentally ill. Luis, however, carried a backpack and looked like a traveler. His eyes were clear, and in them was the same tragic determination that brought so many of his impoverished countrymen before him.

Throughout our conversation, Luis was understandably nervous about

speaking to a stranger with a writing pad—was I an undercover policeman or INS agent?—so I didn’t push for too much detail. He disclosed very little about himself, displaying a characteristic sobriety and silence that some might call machismo and others would simply describe as typical of people who risk their lives to cross the border. He said that he was from a small town in Sinaloa, Mexico, and that he had come to the United States by bus, by car, and by foot, across the desert, more than twelve hundred miles. His hope was to find a job and a place to stay so he could send money back home to help his family. One day, he hoped to get married and raise children. But he found Los Angeles to be a large, confusing, and dangerous city. Life on the streets was one of constant wariness about one’s survival. Even so, he was determined to succeed, and he even managed to smile about some of his experiences while traveling to el norte and then murmured: “I have faith in God.”

We were standing near the kiosko, just a few feet from the plaque bearing

the names of the original 1781 pobladores of Los Angeles, when the significance of our conversation, which crossed the boundaries of time and space, became eminently clear. I began to recall my earliest childhood memories of the Plaza, especially the lessons of my parents and grandparents, who instilled a sense of history and meaning for the old square in the life of the city and of our family. What I learned from those lessons (and was reminded by Luis) is what is perhaps most significant about the Plaza and, ultimately, the question of what enduring human attachments to the birthplace of the city will determine its survival in the twenty-first century.

Before we ended, I asked him to tell me why he was attracted to the Plaza.

Why this place? He said that the people, the bandstand, and the church reminded him of the little placita back home in Sinaloa; it felt like Mexico. And The Persistence of Memory ˚ 269

given what he found in the streets and crowded back alleys in downtown Los Angeles, he also felt safe here. He then gazed intently past the old Pico House toward the Hollywood Freeway and civic center and said: “You know, it’s very strange, I really cannot explain it, but for some reason, I feel like I have been here before.”

270

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Notes

Introduction 1. Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (London: Chato and Windus, 1939), 4–5. 2. Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Santa Barbara, California: Peregrine Smith, 1946), 67. 3. Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other Real-andImagined Places (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996), 5. 4. Jon Amsden, “Historians and the Spatial Imagination,” Radical History Review 21 (Fall 1979): 11–30. 5. Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 33. 6. Ibid., 180. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 33. 9. Louis Adamic, The Truth About Los Angeles (Girard, Kansas: HaldemanJulius Publications, 1927), 10. Chapter 1 1. McCawley, The First Angelinos: The Indians of Los Angeles (Banning, California: Malki Museum Press and Ballena Press Cooperative, 1996), 2. 271

2. Ibid. 3. Bernice Eastman Johnston, California’s Gabrielino Indians (Highland Park, California: Southwest Museum Papers), 1962. 4. McCawley, First Angelinos, 2. 5. Sherburne F. Cook, “The Aboriginal Population of Upper California,” in The California Indians: A Sourcebook, ed. R. F. Heizer and M. A. Whipple (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 66–71. 6. McCawley, First Angelinos, 2. 7. Ibid., 9–10. 8. Cook, “Aboriginal Population,” 66–71. 9. This river was given this name by Gaspar de Portolá, who camped on the riverbank on August 2, 1769. 10. Lisa Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction During the Spanish Colonial Period: The Plaza Church Site, Los Angeles” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), 183. 11. The American Southwest had a history of slavery during the Indian, Spanish colonial, Mexican national, and Anglo-American periods. An important area and link in the slave trade of the Southwest was the ancient Mojave trade route; see Gerald A. Smith and James Clifford, Indian Slave Trade Along the Mojave Trail (San Bernardino, California: San Bernardino County Museum, 1965), 1–17. 12. Gerónimo Boscana, “Chinigchinich: An Historical Account of the Origins, Customs, and Traditions of the Indians of Alta-California,” in Life in California, trans. Alfred Robinson (Santa Barbara: Peregrine, 1970), 4–14; Bruce Miller, The Gabrielino (Los Osos, California: Sand River Press, 1991), 2; Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction,” 174–188. 13. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Los Angeles Barrio, 1850–1890: A Social History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 3. 14. Miller, The Gabrielino, 5–7. 15. McCawley, First Angelinos, 4–7. 16. Antonio Ríos-Bustamante, Mexican Los Angeles: A Narrative and Pictorial History (Encino, California: Floricanto Press, 1991), 45. 17. Charles E. Chapman, A History of California: The Spanish Period (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 43–69. 18. Herbert Eugene Bolten, Frey Juan Crespi, Missionary Explorer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927), 147–148. 19. John Reps, The Forgotten Frontier: Urban Planning in the American West Before 1890 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 5–7. 20. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. Everett E. Edwards (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938), 52–53. 21. John Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1965), 24.

272

˚ Notes to pages 16 –21

22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 3. 24. Low, On the Plaza, 89. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 86. 27. Ibid., 89. 28. Zelia Nuttall, “Ordinances Concerning the Laying Out of New Towns,” Hispanic American Historical Review 4 (1921), 743–753. 29. Daniel D. Arreola, “Plaza Towns of South Texas,” Geographical Review 82 ( January 1992): 57. 30. Ibid. 31. Don Parson, “Mexican Urbanism in the United States, 1994.” Unpublished manuscript, 3. 32. Low, On the Plaza, 94. 33. Dora P. Crouch, Daniel J. Garr, and Axel I. Mundigo, Spanish City Planning in North America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), xvii. 34. Parson, “Mexican Urbanism,” 3. 35. Jorge E. Hardoy, Pre-Columbian Cities (New York: Walker, 1973), 531. 36. Paul Zucker, Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 136. 37. Francis A. MacNutt, trans. and ed., Fernando Cortes, His Five Letters of Relation to the Emperor Charles V, vol. 1 (Glorieta, New Mexico: Rio Grande Press, 1977), 256–258. 38. Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo, Spanish City Planning, xv. 39. Okah Jones Jr., Los Paisanos: Spanish Settlers on the Northern Frontier of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), 3, 14, 20–21. 40. Low, On the Plaza, 87. 41. William Marvin Mason, The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California (Menlo Park: Ballena Press, 1998), 82–86. 42. Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction,” 208. 43. Ibid. 44. Parson, “The Search for a Centre: The Recomposition of Race, Class, and Space in Los Angeles,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17, no. 2 (1993): 1. 45. Ibid., 12. 46. Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction,” 20. 47. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: History Company, 1886), 1:346. 48. Gilberto R. Cruz, Let There Be Towns: Spanish Municipal Origins in the American Southwest, 1610–1810 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988), 111. 49. Bancroft, History of California, 1:340.

Notes to pages 21–27 ˚ 273

50. Doyce B. Nunis Jr., ed., The Founding Documents of Los Angeles: A Bilingual Edition (Historical Society of Southern California and Zamorano Club of Los Angeles, 2004), 161–162. 51. Mason, Census of 1790, 61. 52. Antonio Ríos-Bustamante and Pedro Castillo, An Illustrated History of Mexican Los Angeles (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 1986), 27. 53. Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction,” 201. 54. Ríos-Bustamante and Castillo, Illustrated History, 31. 55. Bancroft, History of California, 1:359–362. 56. Harry Kelsey, “A New Look at the Founding of Los Angeles,” California Historical Quarterly (Winter 1976), 328. 57. Edwin A. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve: First Governor of California (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1971), 107. 58. Bancroft, History of California, 1:361–366. 59. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 107–108. 60. Mason and Duque, “Los Angeles Plaza,” 15. 61. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 22. Robinson believed that the exact site of Yaanga was uncertain. He placed it in the area of the present City Hall near Spring Street. 62. Kelsey, “New Look,” 328–330. 63. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 87. The Reglamento was completed in June 1779 and became effective in January 1781. 64. Kelsey, “New Look,” 330; Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 85–96. 65. Kelsey, “New Look,” 333–335. This also may refute the claim by Lieutenant José Darío Arguello that de Neve instructed him to escort the pobladores to the selected site, and there, on September 4, 1781, he made the distribution of solares (house lots) and suertes (planting fields). Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 108. 66. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 108. 67. Kelsey, “New Look,” 336. 68. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 22. 69. James Gregg Layne, Annals of Los Angeles 1769–1861, Special Publication No. 9 (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1935) 30. 70. Ibid. 71. Until the 1890s, when the metric system was adopted in Mexico, the vara was a unit of linear measurement. Introduced into the Americas by the Spanish, it measured 33.36 inches, nearly equivalent to the English yard (36 inches) and the meter (39.37 inches). 72. Cruz, Let There Be Towns, 117; Reps, Town Planning, 43. 73. Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo, Spanish City Planning, 4. 74. Cruz, Let There Be Towns, 112–113. 75. McCawley, First Angelinos, 202; William Wilcox Robinson, The Indians of

274

˚ Notes to pages 28 –35

Los Angeles: Story of the Liquidation of a People (Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1952), 15–17. 76. Charles W. Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1964) 94, 96, 119, 224–236. 77. A fanega was a Spanish dry measure. In California, it was considered to be about 1.6 bushels or 100 pounds, though it varied from region to region throughout Mexico; Mason, Census of 1790, 94. 78. Cook, “Aboriginal Population,” 97–98. A peso was a monetary unit of eight reales. 79. Kealhofer, “Cultural Interaction,” 174–188. 80. William D. Estrada, “Toypurina, Leader of the Tongva People,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, ed. Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. Gonzalez, vol. 4, 242–243 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 81. William Marvin Mason, “Fages’ Code of Conduct Toward Indians, 1787,” Journal of California Anthropology 2, no. 1 (1975): 90–100. 82. Ibid., 91. Though Fages did not crusade for Indian rights, his inclusion of an Indian policy for Los Angeles in the 1787 code perhaps was influenced by his battle experiences with the Apache on the Sonoran frontier, in San Diego (the Kamias Revolt of 1775), along the Colorado River (the Quechan Revolt of 1781), and in later outbreaks of violence at Mission San Gabriel. 83. Ibid., 98. 84. Bancroft, History of California, 1:661–662. 85. Mason, “Fages’ Code of Conduct,” 75. 86. William Marvin Mason, “The Garrisons of San Diego Presidio: 1770– 1794,” Journal of San Diego History 24, no. 4 (1978): 411. 87. Cook, “Aboriginal Population,” 142. 88. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 3. 89. Jack D. Forbes, The Tongva of Tujunga to 1801, Archeological Survey Annual Report, appendix 2 (Los Angeles: University of California, 1966). 90. Beilharz, Felipe de Neve, 89–90; Mason, “Fages’ Code of Conduct.” 91. Parson, “Mexican Urbanism,” 1.

Chapter 2 1. Bancroft, History of California, 2:452. 2. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 17–18. 3. Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 44. 4. Guinn, “Story of a Plaza,” 247; Gumprecht, Los Angeles River, 139–141. 5. Thomas J. Owen, “The Church by the Plaza: A History of the Pueblo

Notes to pages 35–44 ˚ 275

Church of Los Angeles,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 42, no. 1 (March 1960): 9. 6. Guinn, “Story of a Plaza,” 247. 7. Michael J. Gonzalez, “The Child of the Wilderness Weeps for the Father of Our Country: The Indian and the Politics of Church and State in Provincial California,” in Contested Eden: California Before the Gold Rush, ed. Ramón A. Gutiérrez and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 164. 8. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 45. 9. Guinn, “From Pueblo to Ciudad,” 216. 10. Ibid. 11. Arthur P. Botello, trans. Don Pío Pico’s Historical Narrative (Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark, 1973), 61, 64. 12. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 52. 13. Ibid. 14. Bancroft, History of California, 4:295. 15. Pío Pico served for twenty days as jefe político (temporary governor), from January 27 to February 16, 1832. See Douglas Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 175. 16. Owen, “Church by the Plaza,” 15; Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt, Los Angeles A To Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 86; Francis J. Weber, The Old Plaza Church: A Documentary History (Los Angeles: Libra Press, 1980), 219–222. 17. After Leandri’s death, Francisca married Francisco Ocampo. The Leandris’ front patio facing the Plaza became Ocampo’s plazuela (minor plaza), which was used for cock fighting; Ana Begue de Packman, “Landmarks and Pioneers of Los Angeles in 1853,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 26, nos. 2/3 ( June–September 1944): 57–94. 18. Gloria Lothrop, “The Italians of Los Angeles,” Californians (May/June 1987): 28–43. 19. Interview with Gloria Lothrop by the author, October 13, 2002, Los Angeles. 20. European settlers to Los Angeles originally came by land, traveling north from Mexico City. Many were former members of Napoleon’s Old Guard and had taken part in Mexico’s independence struggle against Spain. Later, settlers came by land routes from the United States, while others traveled from Europe to ports in New York and New Orleans, then by sea around Cape Horn to the port of Valparaiso, Chile, and continued north to Acapulco and on to San Pedro harbor in Alta California. Others chose to travel directly from Europe to Buenos Aires, around Cape Horn and then northward along the South American coast or across the Isthmus of Panama and then north by land. Bancroft, History of California, 3:632.

276

˚ Notes to pages 4 4–4 7

21. Charles Dwight Willard, History of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: KingsleyBarnes and Neuner, 1901), 64. 22. Fernand Loyer and M. C. Beaudreau, Le Guide Français de Los Angeles et du Sud de la Californie, English edition (Los Angeles: Franco-American Publishing Company, 1932), 30. 23. Ibid., 19. 24. Ibid., 18–19. 25. Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast and Twenty-Four Years After, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, Harvard Classics, 1969), 96. 26. Botello, Don Pío Pico, 112. 27. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 53–54. 28. Bancroft, History of California, 4:518–545. 29. Marie E. Northrop, ed., “The Los Angeles Padron of 1844 as Copied from the Los Angeles City Archives,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 42, no. 4 (December 1960): 360–417. 30. The main proponent of this view was Robert Fogelson, in The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 5–23. 31. The Sanchez adobe was the first two-story structure built in the pueblo. Vicente Sanchez, who was alcalde in 1831, and his wife, Doña Victoria Higuera, had several children who were born in the spacious tile-roofed adobe. Their grandson, Tomas Sanchez, was an officer under Andrés Pico during the United States and Mexico war and was sheriff of Los Angeles during the American era from 1860 to 1867. Sanchez Street, which runs from the present Arcadia Street to the Plaza, was opened by the Common Council in 1861. Newmark, Sixty Years, 99, 114, 275, 293. 32. Begue de Packman, “Landmarks and Pioneers,” 77–78. 33. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 24. 34. Bancroft, History of California, 5:267–268, 281–282. 35. Ibid., 5:279. 36. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 55. 37. Neal Harlow, California Conquered: War and Peace on the Pacific, 1846– 1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 50–51. 38. Bancroft, History of California, 5:305–306; Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 33. 39. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 33. 40. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 57. 41. Bancroft, History of California, 5:309n21. 42. Ríos-Bustamante and Castillo, Illustrated History, 89; Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo. 43. Bancroft, History of California, 5:315.

Notes to pages 48–53 ˚ 277

44. Newmark, Sixty Years, 101. 45. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 59. 46. Bancroft, History of California, 5:392–399. 47. Guinn, “From Pueblo to Ciudad,” 220. 48. Neal Harlow, Maps and Surveys of the Pueblo Lands of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1976), 45. 49. Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo, Spanish City Planning, 164. 50. William Wilcox Robinson, Maps of Los Angeles: From Ord’s Survey of 1849 to the Boom of the Eighties (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1966), 8. 51. Mary P. Ryan, “A Durable Centre of Urban Space: The Los Angeles Plaza,” Urban History 33, part 3 (December 2006): 464. 52. Robinson, Indians of Los Angeles, 11–17. According to Robinson, Yaanga continued to function as a Gabrielino village for more than fifty years after the founding of Los Angeles and then was abandoned sometime between 1830 and 1836. 53. Ibid., 20–25. 54. Cook, “The Aboriginal Population,” 226–227. 55. Ibid., 259. 56. Newmark, Sixty Years, 21–22. Newmark observed that upon the admission of California to the Union in 1850, a public celebration was held at the plaza in San Francisco. The plaza was festooned with streaming banners, music played, and a symbolic “meeting of gold-seeking pioneers and lassoing [Californio] natives” marked the occasion. 57. Paul Bryan Gray, “A Biographical Sketch of Francisco P. Ramirez,” paper presented at the conference El Clamor Público: 150 Years of Latino Newspapers in Southern California, at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, October 28, 2005, 7–8. 58. In the 1850s approximately 50 percent of the city’s population was Mexican, and nearly all Californios could point to Sonoran or Sinaloan ancestors. This included the majority of the “new arrivals,” among them returning Mexican miners who were driven out of the gold fields by racial violence and the imposition of the 1850 foreign miners’ tax. Thus, by the 1860s, the area slightly north of the Plaza became known as Sonoratown, the city’s first barrio. 59. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 64. 60. Ibid., 67; Begue de Packman, “Landmarks and Pioneers,” 86. 61. Martin Cole, Pío Pico Miscellany (Whittier, California: Governor Pico Mansion Society, 1978), 71–74. 62. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 61. 63. The origin of this street name has been a subject of discussion among Los Angeles scholars and historians. Some incorrectly theorized that an early colony of black pioneers lived on the street, hence the name. The best explanation for the street name can be found in a letter to the editor in the March 24, 1877, edition of the Los Angeles Express concerning the City Council’s passage 278

˚ Notes to pages 53–59

of a resolution changing the name Nigger Alley to Los Angeles Street. The letter stated that in the early 1840s, the property on the unnamed street was “owned by some of the most substantial citizens of Los Angeles” who were “men of very dark complexion.” The letter went on to explain that one morning, “when the people arose, they found a placard put up at each end of the alley bearing the words Calle de los Negros,” which they interpreted as a sign of reproach. The letter concluded by explaining that the residents of the street traced the authorship of the insulting placards to prominent ranchero José Antonio Carrillo. The aggrieved parties filed a complaint with the alcalde. After the unabashed Carrillo admitted his role in the incident, the charges were dismissed, but the new street name remained. 64. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 65. 65. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 141. 66. Villa, Barrio Logos, 25. Also see Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West, 1850–1935 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006). 67. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 61. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Begue de Packman, “Landmarks and Pioneers,” 65. In 1896 a fastgrowing Los Angeles called for a “new” Calvary Cemetery. A large parcel of land on Whittier Boulevard east of the Los Angeles River was dedicated for that purpose, and many of the remains from the old graveyard on North Broadway were transferred there. 71. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 13. 72. Engh, Frontier Faiths, 83. 73. Loyer and Beaudreau, Le Guide, 37. 74. Lawrence B. De Graff, “The City of Black Angels: Emergence of the Los Angeles Ghetto, 1890–1930,” Pacific Historical Review (August 1970): 327. De Graff cites the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, vol. 1, Population (Washington, D.C., 1853), 969–970. De Graff notes that the “modern black community began not with the founding party [of 1781] but with the land boom of 1887–1888 which increased the Negro population in the city to 1,258, or 2.5 percent of the total in 1890” (327). Robinson, in Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo (113), states that the first federal census recorded a city population of 1,610, with a county population of 3,530, including 2 Chinese, 334 Native Americans, and 15 Negros. The foreign-born population totaled 699. 75. Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 90. 76. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 22; Newmark, Sixty Years, 137. 77. Newmark, Sixty Years, 137. 78. Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 90. 79. Ibid. 80. Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 21–23. Notes to pages 60–62 ˚ 279

81. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 138; Naomi Bradley, “A Glorious Past: California’s Black History,” Turning Point (February–April 1997): 21–23. 82. William Mason and James Anderson, The Los Angeles Black Community, 1781–1940, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County History Division Bulletin No. 5 (1969), 48. 83. Newmark, Sixty Years, 161; Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 51. 84. Newmark, Sixty Years, 101–102. 85. Mason and Duque, “Los Angeles Plaza,” 16. 86. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 39. 87. Mason and Duque, “Los Angeles Plaza,” 16. 88. The park was formally dedicated in 1866. See Burton L. Hunter, Evolution of Municipal Organization and Administration Practice in the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Parker, Stone, and Baird Publishers, 1933), 1–5; Al Goldfarb, 100 Years of Recreation and Parks—City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, 1989), 6–7. 89. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 16. 90. Ibid. 91. Reginaldo del Valle Collection (A3580-617), Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 92. Newmark, Sixty Years, 385. 93. Engh, Frontier Faiths, 172. 94. Ibid., 174. 95. Ibid., 175. 96. Ibid. 97. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 167. 98. Arturo Bandini, Navidad: A Christmas Day with the Early Californians (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1958): 16. 99. Hesiquio Treviño, “Fundadores de Ensenada: Lic. Francisco P. Ramirez,” Vivir en Ensenada ( July 1992): 5. 100. Gray, “Biographical Sketch,” 2–3. 101. Letter from Pablo de Celis to Don Antonio F. Coronel asking to be relieved as editor of the newspaper. Antonio F. Coronel Collection (1001/387, 525), Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 102. La Crónica, various editions from May 4, 1872, to February 5, 1873. 103. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 135. 104. Ibid; also see David E. Hayes-Bautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin, “Cinco de Mayo’s First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, 1862–1937,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 89:1 (Spring 2007): 23–64. 105. Los Angeles Star, “Public Worship,” December 29, 1860. 280

˚ Notes to pages 63–7 1

106. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 29. 107. Newmark, Sixty Years, 100. 108. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 107. 109. Newmark, Sixty Years, 123. 110. The 1781 census for the pueblo of Los Angeles listed Antonio Miranda Rodriguez as a fifty-year-old “Chino,” which he was not. Some insisted he was from China, while others regarded “chino” as a caste term for a white-Indianblack mixture, since there was such a term in common use throughout much of Latin America. However, on Mexico’s west coast, the term applied to natives from the Philippines to distinguish them from Mexican Indians, since both groups were called indios. Miranda was a native of Manila and apparently was a Malayan Filipino. He enlisted in Sinaloa as a widower with two children. One child died in Sinaloa, and when the expedition bound for Los Angeles reached Loreto in Baja California, his second daughter was stricken with smallpox, the epidemic that followed the expedition from Sinaloa. Miranda remained behind with his daughter while the rest of the pobladores continued north. The daughter died at Loreto, and Miranda stayed there for two more years. Thus, contrary to earlier writings on the founding of the pueblo, Miranda was not among the founding forty-four, nor did he ever come to Los Angeles. When it was learned that he was an able gunsmith, Miranda was sent to Santa Barbara as a soldier and armorer for the presidio. He arrived in October 1783 but served only eight months before he died in May 1784. Miranda certainly was Santa Barbara’s first Filipino resident, and perhaps he was the first permanent Filipino resident of Alta California. Thomas Workman Temple II, trans., “First Census of Los Angeles,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California 15 (1931): 148–149; William Marvin Mason and Roberta Kirkhart Mason, “The Founding Forty Four,” Westways ( July 1976): 20–23; Mason, Census of 1790, 40; William Marvin Mason, “The Chinese in Los Angeles,” Museum Alliance Quarterly (Fall 1967): 15; Engh, Frontier Faiths, 23. 111. Mason, “Chinese in Los Angeles,” 15. 112. Ibid., 16. 113. Diane Mei Lin Mark and Ginger Chih, A Place Called Chinese America (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendal Hunt, 1982), 33. 114. Paul M. De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 42, no. 1 (March 1960): 57–85, and no. 2 ( June 1960): 161–185; Marco N. Newmark, “Calle de Los Negros and the Chinese Massacre of 1871,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 26 (1944): 98. Among the earliest accounts of the massacre outside of newspaper coverage is C. P. Dorland’s “Chinese Massacre at Los Angeles in 1871,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California (1894): 22–26. 115. Chinese Free Masonry developed into tongs (secret societies) in China as a means to plan for the overthrow of the Ch’ing (Manchu) Dynasty, which lasted from 1644 a.d. to 1911 a.d. See Garding Lui, Inside Los Angeles Chinatown (Los Angeles: Garding Lui, 1948): 40–41. Notes to pages 71–73 ˚ 281

116. Los Angeles Daily News, “The Tragedy of Negro Alley-Coroner’s Inquest—Etc.,” November 4, 1871. 117. William R. Locklear, “The Celestials and the Angels: A Study of the Anti-Chinese Movement in Los Angeles to 1882,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1960): 92. 118. Los Angeles Daily News, “The Tragedy of Negro Alley-Coroner’s Inquest—Etc.,” November 4, 1871. 119. De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” 61; Dorland, “Chinese Massacre,” 24. 120. Los Angeles Daily News, “The Tragedy of Negro Alley,” October 28, 1871. 121. Los Angeles Star, “Murder!,” October 25, 1871. Also see De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” no. 2, 161–162. 122. Los Angeles Star, “Murder!,” October 25, 1871. 123. Bell, On the Old West Coast, 164–177. 124. Paul R. Spitzzeri, “Judge Lynch in Session: Popular Justice in Los Angeles, 1850–1875,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 87, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 108. 125. Great Register (Sacramento: H. S. Crocker and Company, Steam Printers and Stationeries, June 12, 1866–August 26, 1872). 126. Spitzzeri, “Judge Lynch in Session,” 108. 127. Ibid., 110. 128. Los Angeles Daily News, “Chinese Gala Day,” March 30, 1872. 129. De Falla, “Lantern in the Western Sky,” no. 2, 178, 184; Spitzzeri, “Judge Lynch in Session,” 110–111. 130. Edward W. Soja and Allen J. Scott, eds., The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 4. 131. Newmark, “Calle de Los Negros,” 98. 132. Cesar Lopez, “El Descanso: A Comparative History of the Los Angeles Plaza Area and the Shared Racialized Space of the Mexican and Chinese Communities, 1853–1933,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 2002: 94–95. 133. William Andrew Spalding, History and Reminiscences: Los Angeles City and County, California, vol. 1 (Los Angeles: J. R. Finnell and Sons, 1931), 230; George and Elsie Yee, “The Chinese and the Los Angeles Produce Market,” Chinese Historical Society of Southern California Gum Saan Journal, no. 2 (December 1986): 5. 134. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 33. Chapter 3

1. Gumprecht, Los Angeles River, 89. 2. Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to 282

˚ Notes to pages 73– 82

American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 60. 3. Ibid., 60, 62. 4. Engh, Frontier Faiths, 178–179. 5. Ibid., 178. 6. Griswold del Castillo, Los Angeles Barrio, 169–170. 7. Letter from Pío Pico to Isadora Pico de Forster, March 7, 1876, Reginaldo del Valle Collection (A3580-575), Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Los Angeles Times, “Pío Pico’s Brother,” November 27, 1895, 8; Paul Bryan Gray, Forster vs. Pico: The Struggle for the Rancho Santa Margarita (Spokane, Washington: Arthur H. Clark, 1998), 227. 8. Loyer and Beaudreau, Le Guide Français, 71–72. 9. Newmark, Sixty Years, 500. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. William D. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza and Olvera Street: Imagined and Contested Space,” California Folklore Society Western Folklore 58, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 110. 13. Daniel D. Garr, “Los Angeles and the Challenge of Growth, 1835–1849,” Southern California Quarterly (Summer 1979): 147; Guinn, “From Pueblo to Ciudad,” 218. 14. Los Angeles Council Minutes, Los Angeles City Archives, Ayuntamiento Records (hereinafter cited as Los Angeles Council Minutes), vol. 2 (April 19, 1845), 298–300. 15. Ibid.; Garr, “Los Angeles,” 153. 16. Los Angeles Council Minutes, 540, 543, 548, 601. 17. Newmark, Sixty Years, 293–294. 18. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 31. 19. Ibid. 20. Sarah Bixby Smith, Adobe Days (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987) 103. 21. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 34. 22. Mason and Duque, “Los Angeles Plaza,” 19. After Lugo vacated the adobe townhouse, he presented the building to the parish priests at the Plaza church. The two-story adobe became known as La Casa de los Padres. The padres’ house became a boys school. This institution grew into Saint Vincent’s College and later became Loyola Marymount University. 23. “Gas,” Los Angeles Semi-Weekly News, December 3, 1867, 3; Roberta S. Greenwood, Los Angeles Gas Works, Archaeological Monitor Report (Los Angeles: Greenwood and Associates, History Division, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 2001). 24. Parson, “Search for a Centre,” 234. 25. Aguilar served two terms as mayor, 1866–1868 and 1871–1872. In 1868 he Notes to pages 82–89 ˚ 283

made perhaps the most important decision by a Los Angeles mayor by vetoing a City Council proposal to sell the city’s “publicly owned” water rights to private interests. Had he not made this monumental decision, the city would not have retained exclusive ownership of water rights, preventing its ability to become a major metropolis. Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z, 7. 26. Newmark, Sixty Years, 417. 27. Parson, “Search for a Centre,” 234. 28. Los Angeles Daily News, “Plaza,” January 18, 1869. 29. Cynthia L. Girling and Kenneth I. Helphand, Yard, Street, Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994), 40. Girling and Helphand write: “The first parks were ‘people’s gardens,’ a democratization of the landscape spaces of the elite and powerful. Parks represented a social ideal of public open space as a meeting ground for persons of different social classes. They were an urban response to the Industrial Revolution and the modern world, an environmental answer to a society increasingly alienated from nature. Public parks inherited the garden’s positive associations. In the park, one was in direct contact with nature, which was physically and emotionally healthful and, as part of the prevailing transcendental and romantic ideology, an uplifting moral force. Here, the world was less structured, [individuals] felt freer, and beauty resided in nature’s forms. In contemporary America, we retain, in muted fashion, aspects of all these values.” 30. Geoffrey Blodgett, “Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape Architecture as Conservative Reform,” Journal of American History (December 1975–March 1976): 878. 31. John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 15. 32. Blodgett, “Frederick Law Olmsted,” 869–889. 33. Los Angeles Star, “Plaza,” August 11, 1871. 34. Ibid.; Newmark, Sixty Years, 417–418. 35. Girling and Helphand write in Yard, Street, Park (39) that the evolution of the romantic suburb in Britain and then the United States saw a transformation of the common (green) areas and picturesque parks in terms of scale, community access, and design, usually from a large open space to a reduced circular shape. In subsequently designed suburbs, common areas and picturesque parks were created, but often in a much–truncated fashion, initiating a trend in suburban history of favoring private pleasures over community opportunities. A neoclassic formalism of circles and crescents replaced the grand scale of the common, and the public green space progressively diminished under pressure to build more houses. 36. Los Angeles Herald, “Plaza-Misc.,” June 20, 1875. 37. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 34. 38. Ibid. 39. Gabriel Gutiérrez, “Con Sus Calzones al Revés, With His Underpants on 284

˚ Notes to pages 90 – 93

Inside Out: Cultural Economy and Patriarchy in Pablo de la Guerra’s Letters to Josefa Moreno de la Guerra, 1851–1872,” JSRI Occasional Paper No. 60 (East Lansing: Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University, 1999), 23. 40. Ibid. 41. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 123–126. 42. Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities, 76. 43. Loyer and Beaudreau, Le Guide Français, 92. 44. Los Angeles Times, “The Plaza,” August 26, 1886. 45. Ibid. 46. William Wilcox Robinson, Tarnished Angels: Paradisiacal Turpitude in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1964), 6. 47. Miroslava Chavez, “Pongo Mi Demanda: Challenging Patriarchy in Mexican Los Angeles, 1830–1850,” in Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake Allmendinger (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1999), 272–290. 48. Robinson, Tarnished Angels, 7. 49. Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger, 25. 50. Robinson, Tarnished Angels, 14. 51. Ibid., 15. 52. Pitt, Decline of the Californios, 264–265. 53. Robinson, Tarnished Angels, 16. Also see Earl F. Nation, “Fallen Angels in the Far West,” Branding Iron, no. 143 ( June 1981): 1–9. 54. Robinson, Tarnished Angels, 33, 35. 55. Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z, 409; Hector Tobar, “Evidence of Seamy Past Is Dug Up in Downtown L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1996. 56. Engh, Frontier Faiths, 200. 57. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 135. 58. McWilliams, Southern California, 278. 59. Nadine Hata, The Historic Preservation Movement in California, 1940–1976 (Sacramento: California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation, 1992), 3. 60. Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis, Editor of the Southwest (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1955). 61. David G. Cameron, “The Landmarks Club and Los Angeles’ Plaza: The Embryonic Preservation Movement and the Fight to Save an Historic Park,” photocopy, unpublished paper, 1990, 2. 62. Los Angeles Times, “The Old Missions,” January 24, 1896. 63. Cameron, “Landmarks Club,” 3. 64. Ibid. 65. Los Angeles Times cited in Cameron, “Landmarks Club,” 4. The Merchants and Manufacturers Association (M & M), was a militant employers organization devoted to the “open shop” policy. Formed in 1896 at the suggestion of General Harrison Gray Otis, it involved a merger of two entities: the Merchants Notes to pages 93–100 ˚ 285

Association and the Manufacturers Association. Among the founders were R. W. Pridham and Felix J. Zeehandelaar. Initially, M & M’s purpose was to boost general business interests in Los Angeles, but soon, at General Otis’ urging, it began to pursue an aggressive anti-union policy. M & M had a huge war chest and was successful in keeping wages and union membership low until the late 1930s. Also see Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z, 321–322. 66. Los Angeles Times, “Park Commissioners,” January 24, 1896. 67. Cameron, “Landmarks Club,” 4. 68. Ibid. 69. Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859–1928) met General Otis at the San Gabriel Mission on February 1, 1885, at the end of Lummis’ celebrated walk from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Los Angeles (1884–1885). Along the 3,500-mile route, he sent breezy reports about his travels through the Southwest to the Los Angeles Times that General Otis found to his liking. After meeting at the San Gabriel Mission, Lummis and Otis made a triumphant eleven-mile march to Los Angeles. Lummis’ arrival in Los Angeles was reported in the February 3, 1885, edition of the Los Angeles Times. He then served as the paper’s city editor, established the Landmarks Club in 1895, and in 1907 co-founded the Southwest Museum, which opened in 1914. He served as Los Angeles city librarian from 1905 to 1911. In 1903 Lummis completed his two-story stone house on the Arroyo Seco, which he called El Alisal (The Sycamore). The home became a gathering place for artists, antiquarians, writers, and publicists who were known as the Arroyo Set. 70. Los Angeles Times, Letters to the Times, February 1, 1896. 71. Ibid. 72. Cameron, “Landmarks Club,” 8. 73. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, 72. 74. McClung, Landscapes of Desire, 86. McClung notes that a further irony was the exact inversion of this process at Mission San Gabriel, where not only did a town slowly crystallize but the 1923 city hall and adjacent arcaded shops and San Gabriel Mission Elementary School also clustered around the mission, as if to imply that the mission always was a pueblo church presiding over a tiny “Spanish” settlement. 75. Builder and Contractor (Los Angeles), “Among the Architects,” October 26, 1898, 1. 76. Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 23. 77. McWilliams, Southern California, 64–65. 78. Ibid., 217. McWilliams notes the type of settlement in Southern California known as colonias, which were inhabited almost exclusively by Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Colonias were “located in unincorporated areas adjacent to a town or city, but invariably on ‘the other side’ of something [railroad track, bridge, river, highway]. Site location was determined by a combination of factors: low wages, cheap rents, low land value, prejudice, closeness to employment, undesirability of the site.” 286

˚ Notes to pages 100 –104

79. Trevor Boddy, “Underground and Overhead: Building the Analogous City,” in Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Noonday Press, 1992), 123–153. By the 1920s, the separation of pedestrian movement from motorized traffic on streets had become a cornerstone of the urbanism promoted by the Congres Internationale d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and most notably by Le Corbusier. In Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier recommends removing pedestrian movement from the ground plane. His dislike of the fast-paced congestion of streets is well known, and formulating a more rationalized alternative became the generative idea of his urbanism. See Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: Architectural Press, 1965). 80. San Francisco Morning Call, “Why the Old Governor Did Not Visit the World Fair,” July 5, 1893.

Chapter 4 1. John H. M. Laslett, “Historical Perspectives: Immigration and the Rise of a Distinctive Urban Region, 1900–1970,” in Ethnic Los Angeles, ed. Roger Waldinger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996), 50. 2. Devra Weber, “Mexican Immigrants of the 1920s: Conversations, Interviews and Competing Constructions,” photocopy, 2002, 35. Also see Devra Weber, Roberto Melville, and Juan-Vicente Palerm, eds., Manuel Gamio, el imigrante mexicano: La historia de su vida, entrevistas completas, 1926–1927 (Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 2002), 265–408. 3. Douglas Monroy, Rebirth (13–14), writes, “The word colonia, as the Mexican press, consulate, and literati used it, refers to a group of Mexicans living in a cluster of boxcars or any other assemblage of tents, shanties, ‘house courts,’ old adobes, apartments, or houses. (Sometimes, though, the press used colonia to refer to all of the Mexicans residing in Los Angeles.) The word carries with it the connotation of a newborn settlement, even of impermanence. A colonia differs in essence from a barrio, or neighborhood, in which affinities of kin ties, godparentage, church attendance, and schools connect people in more organic ways. Colonias expressed a new ideal for a cityscape—the division of the people by spatial area according to their history, culture, appearance, and wealth (which some would argue was the principal determining factor). Los Angeles was once a Mexican pueblo of considerable caste divisions wherein everyone participated [albeit] unequally, but often . . . together in such experiences as droughts and earthquakes, the remarkable fiestas and brutalizing fights with the Indians, as well as vice and faith. The colonias (like Indian reservations, harbingers of the ghetto) marked the advent of the modern era in which disparate people, now more spatially separated, experienced and imagined the events of the city in sharply different ways—the advent of segregation, in other words.” Notes to pages 105–110 ˚ 287

4. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, 72. 5. Los Angeles Times, “Poverty of An Heiress,” April 12, 1903. 6. James R. Curtis, “Barrio Space and Place in Southeast Los Angeles, California,” in Daniel D. Arreola, ed., Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: Community and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 130–132. 7. Amanda Mathews, The Hieroglyphics of Love: Stories of Sonoratown and Old Mexico (Los Angeles: Artemisia Bindery, 1906), 67. 8. Dana Bartlett, The Better City: A Sociological Study of a Modern City (Los Angeles: Neuner Company Press, 1907), 72. 9. Engh, Frontier Faiths, 152–153. 10. William R. Schroeder, “Stadiums and Arenas in Which Championship Boxing Contests Have Been Held in Los Angeles” (Los Angeles: Bicentennial Project, Citizens Savings Athletic Foundation, 1975), 12; DeWitt C. VanCourt, The Making of Champions in California (Los Angeles: Premier Printing, 1927) 12, 32, 72. 11. Ríos-Bustamante and Castillo, An Illustrated History (19), write that this was the thirty-fifth California rancho grant and consisted of 4,453 acres. Part of this grant comprises the present Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Page Museum, and La Brea tar pits. The Ybarras once owned the land near the arena. It was granted to the family in 1836 and was long referred to by locals as Huerta de los Ybarras (Orchard of the Ybarras) until the Southern Pacific Railroad bought the land and laid tracks in 1873. 12. Interview with Joe Salas (1905–1987) by the author, November 1983, Los Angeles, California. 13. Commons, “A Settlement in Adobe: Interesting Phases of Work in the ‘Casa Castelar’ at Los Angeles,” vol. 2 (May 1897): 3–4. 14. Katherine Coman, “Casa de Castelar,” Commons 7 ( January 1903): 12. 15. Los Angeles Settlement Association. Brochure (Los Angeles: College Settlement, 1905). 16. William Wilson McEuen, “A Survey of the Mexicans in Los Angeles,” master’s thesis, Department of Economics and Sociology, University of Southern California, 1914, 68. 17. Dean Smith, La Gloria Escondida: The Guerrero Story (Phoenix: Sims Publishing, 1967): 61–62. 18. McEuen, “Survey of the Mexicans in Los Angeles,” 74. 19. Lothrop, “Italians of Los Angeles,” 28–43; interview with Robert Arconti by the author, January 12, 2002, Los Angeles. Frank Arconti, a native of Lonate Pozzolo in northern Italy, was among the earliest and longest resident businessmen in the Plaza–Olvera Street area. He owned a fuel store and feedlot on the future site of the Italian Hall between 1893 and 1907. In 1908 he signed a five-year lease with Mrs. Hammel for the management of Italian Hall at a rent of $275 per

288

˚ Notes to pages 111–118

month in gold coin. In 1908 he opened Arconti Hardware next door to Italian Hall in the Hammel Building. Arconti also was fluent in Spanish. He and his descendants operated stores in the Italian Hall, the Hammel Building, or on Olvera Street until 1987. 20. Lothrop, “Italians of Los Angeles,” 28–43. 21. McEuen, “A Survey of the Mexicans in Los Angeles,” 23, 26–27. 22. Ibid., 88–89, 92–94. 23. Manuel Gamio, The Life Story of the Mexican Immigrant: Autobiographic Documents Collected by Manuel Gamio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), 29–40. 24. Devra Weber, “Mexican Immigrants of the 1920s,” 24. 25. Luis Felipe Recinos, “Los salones de baile,” Z-R 5 (3), April 15, 1927, 3.12. Manuel Gamio Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereinafter Gamio Papers). 26. Weber, Melville, and Palerm, Manuel Gamio, 278. 27. Luis Felipe Recinos, “Datos sobre decoración de cafes y restaurantes,” Gamio Papers, Z-R 5 (3), April 2, 1927, 3.12. 28. Luis Felipe Recinos, “Vendimas [sic] por las calles,” Gamio Papers, Z-R 5 (3), August 6, 1927, 3.12. 29. Daniel Vanegas, The Adventures of Don Chipote, or, When Parrots BreastFed (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2000), 1. 30. Ibid., 3. 31. Ibid., 95. 32. Ibid. 33. Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971), 204. 34. G. Bromley Oxnam, The Mexican in Los Angeles: Los Angeles City Survey (San Francisco: California Interchurch World Movement of North America, 1920; reprint, San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1970), 18. 35. The Methodist church was built on the site of the original adobe of Bartolo Tapia, who was once alcalde of Los Angeles. Tapia passed the 1830 building on to his son, Tiburcio. In 1856 Don Agustín Olvera, the first county judge of Los Angeles, bought the adobe, where he often held court proceedings. Over this distinguished home also presided Agustin’s wife, Doña Concepción Arguello de Olvera, daughter of Southern California’s celebrated Don Santiago Arguello, the owner of Rancho La Punta and the lands of Agua Caliente, which is the present city of Tijuana in Baja California. Upon Olvera’s death in 1876, the adobe went to his daughter, Luisa Olvera de Forbes. From the 1880s to 1893, the building was leased by Chinese residents, followed by Methodist missionaries who leased and used the building to evangelize among the Mexican people. Later, the Los Angeles Land Company bought the adobe from Luisa Forbes and then sold it to the Methodists in the early twentieth century. In 1917 the Olvera adobe was razed

Notes to pages 118–126 ˚ 289

to make way for the future Plaza Methodist Church and Plaza Community Center (United Methodist Church Conference). In 1965 the center was renamed in honor of retired Los Angeles Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. 36. Manuel Milagro, Anales de la Congregación de Misioneros Hijos del Inmaculado Corazón de María, vol. 16 (Madrid, September 9, 1916), 625–626. 37. Ibid. 38. Ricardo Romo, East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 145. 39. Ibid. 40. Interview with Tyrus Wong by the author, November 30, 2004, Los Angeles. 41. Interview with Bill Shishima by the author, May 7, 2002, Los Angeles. 42. Ibid. 43. Interview with Beatriz Moreno de Guzman by the author, November 5, 2006, South Pasadena, California. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Steven Loza, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 33–34.

Chapter 5 1. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 114–115; Also see Fred H. Whipple, The Electric Railway (Detroit: Wm. Graham Printing, 1889; reprint, Paris, California: Orange Empire Railway Museum, 1980), 98–99. 2. Los Angeles Times, “Police Court Notes,” March 12, 1899. 3. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, 25–26. 4. Carl Glick, Double Ten: Captain O’Banion’s Story of the Chinese Revolution (London: McGraw-Hill, 1945), 58–59. 5. McWilliams, Southern California, 94. 6. Glick, Double Ten, 174, 182–183. 7. Ibid., 176–177. 8. McWilliams, Southern California, 274. 9. Ibid., 277. 10. Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1977), 165–184. 11. Ibid., 176–177. 12. Thomas C. Langham, Border Trials: Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Liberals (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1981), 6. For background see Andrew Rolle, “Futile Filibustering in Baja California, 1888–1890,” Pacific Historical Review 20, no. 2 (May 1951): 159–166. 290

˚ Notes to pages 127–139

13. Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores: Ricardo Flores Magón y el Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique (Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles Chicano Studies Center and Aztlán Publications, 1973), 8. 14. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 168. 15. Ibid., 84–105, 168–169. 16. Los Angeles Times, “Dynamite Bomb Fails to Cripple Llewellyn Iron Works Plant,” December 26, 1910. 17. Colin M. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magón in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 43. 18. Ibid., 105; Romo, East Los Angeles, 91. 19. McWilliams, Southern California, 287. 20. Joseph Seewerker, Nuestro Pueblo: Los Angeles, City of Romance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940), 58. 21. Gómez-Quiñones, in Sembradores (31), writes that before Regeneración, the PLM published two other newspapers—Revolución (1907) and Libertad y Trabajo. 22. Ibid., 50. Also see James A. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904–1923 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 129. Sandos appears to have placed this building at 914 Boston Street. See Los Angeles Times, “Rebel Headquarters for Los Angeles?” February 9, 1913. 23. Langham, Border Trials, 20. 24. Antonio I. Villarreal, “Reminiscences of My Prison Life,” Regeneración, September 4, 1910; February 7, 1914; January 15, 1916. 25. Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 23–52; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, 130. 26. Regeneración, September 24 and November 5, 1910. 27. Edward J. Escobar, “Mexican Revolutionaries and the Los Angeles Police: Harassment of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, 1907–1910,” Aztlán 17, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 11; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 48–49. 28. Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 48–49. 29. Langham, Border Trials, 35. 30. Rosalie Shanks, “The IWW Free Speech Movement: San Diego 1912,” Journal of San Diego History 19, no. 1 (Winter 1973): 25–33. 31. Langham, Border Trials, 48. 32. Los Angeles Times, “Rivers-Wolgast Battle Ends in Near-Riot” and “Heavy Guard Secretly Rushes Magons North,” July 5, 1912. 33. Edward J. Escobar, Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 42. As the IWW strove to overthrow the capitalist system and establish in its place a socialist entity, various states proceeded against the organization. In 1918 the federal government sentenced to prison its most influential leaders for opposition to American entry into World War I. By Notes to pages 140–148 ˚ 291

the mid-1920s, IWW membership, which at its height numbered sixty thousand, had drastically declined. 34. Ibid., 42–48. 35. The Los Angeles Times of December 26, 1913, reported that there were only two speakers before the outbreak of violence. William C. Owen, English immigrant anarchist and co-editor of Regeneración, confirmed in an editorial on January 3, 1914, that he was the speaker in question: “I had spoken because those present asked me, and in such circumstances, I never refuse. I had not the slightest idea that I was committing an illegal act, and I am well satisfied that the other speakers and the audience itself were in equal ignorance.” 36. Escobar, Race, Police, 43. 37. Los Angeles Times, “Rips the Mask from Unemployed Riots,” December 27, 1913. 38. Ibid. 39. Escobar, Race, Police, 44. 40. Los Angeles Times, “Plaza District Put Under Martial Law,” December 26, 1913. “In the face of stones and rocks, [Koenigheim] fired straight into the crowd and four men went down.” With the exception of Adames, the fate of the other three never was determined. 41. Ibid. 42. Los Angeles Times, “Rumbling: Still Talking About Parade,” December 30, 1913. 43. Ibid. 44. Los Angeles Times, “Plaza District,” December 26, 1913. 45. Low, On the Plaza, 183. 46. Los Angeles Times, “Rumbling,” December 30, 1913. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Los Angeles Times, “Plaza District.” 50. The Los Angeles Times (“Rioters Must Face the Law,” December 28, 1913) reported that J. D. Button, a local mortician, was preparing a petition to have all the Plaza street vendors “ordered away by municipal authorities”; Low, On the Plaza, 183. 51. Regeneración, “Behind the Puppets Lurks the Power,” January 3, 1914, 1. 52. Escobar, Race, Police, 45. 53. Los Angeles City Council Minutes, October 18, 1913–January 15, 1914, Records, Los Angeles City Archives, vol. 94, 516. 54. Los Angeles City Council Minutes (1913–1914), vol. 94, 562–563. 55. Ibid., 563. 56. Escobar, Race, Police, 48. 57. Monroy, Rebirth, 219–220; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, 128–129. 58. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, 129; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 42. 292

˚ Notes to pages 148 –155

59. Ethel Duffy Turner, Revolution in Baja California: Ricardo Flores Magón’s High Noon, ed. Rey Davis (Detroit: Ethridge Books, 1981), 39. 60. Mark Wild, Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early TwentiethCentury Los Angeles (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 161. 61. Regeneración, no. 91, May 25, 1912, 4; no. 175, February 7, 1914, 3; no. 235, April 22, 1916, 4. 62. Regeneración, September 3, 1910, 1. 63. McEuen, “Survey of the Mexicans,” 21; Emma Perez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 67. 64. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, 84. 65. Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 60; Mark Wild, Street Meeting, 169. 66. Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 60. 67. Romo, East Los Angeles, 104–105. 68. Los Angeles Times, “Nip Incipient Riot in Bud,” May 7, 1917, and “Police Eyes on Mexican Jollity: Special Squads of Officers Patrol the Plaza,” May 15, 1917. 69. Los Angeles Times, “Plan to Counteract I.W.W. Influence,” June 9, 1918. 70. Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, 154. 71. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, 108–109. 72. Monroy, Rebirth, 221–222. 73. Interview with Meyer Baylin by the author, August 9, 1996, Oakland, California. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. In late May 1932, approximately 1,000 unemployed ex-servicemen of World War I converged on Washington, declaring that they would remain there until Congress authorized the immediate cash payment of the twenty-year bonus voted in 1924 for World War I veterans. Other veterans arrived in the city, bringing the total number to more than 15,000 by mid-June. By mid-July most of them departed, but some 2,000 refused to disband. Believing that the Bonus Army might eventually resort to some kind of violence, President Hoover ordered the use of infantry, cavalry, and tank corps to drive the remaining veterans from the capital. 76. Ibid. 77. Interview with Karl Yoneda by the author, August 8, 1996, Fort Bragg, California. 78. Karl Yoneda, Ganbatte: Sixty-Year Struggle of a Kibe Worker (Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles Asian American Studies Center, 1983), 9. 79. Interview with Karl Yoneda. 80. Ibid. He was born Goso Yoneda in 1906. In 1927 he adopted a new name, Kiyohi Hama, which literally means “Clean Day Beach,” while in detention at Angel Island. He noted that “even [Police] Captain Hynes called me Hama.” Yoneda also recalled that a Japanese doctor sympathetic to radical politics had Notes to pages 155–163 ˚ 293

an office in an upper floor of the Pico House and could be counted on for medical assistance for party members injured by police during demonstrations. 81. Ibid. 82. Interview with Meyer Baylin. 83. Yoneda, Ganbatte, 18. 84. Interview with Karl Yoneda. 85. Ibid. 86. Yoneda, Ganbatte, 31. 87. Interview with Meyer Baylin. 88. Ibid. Also see William M. Mason and John A. McKinstry, The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1869–1920 (Los Angeles: County Museum of Natural History, 1969), 31. 89. Interview with Meyer Baylin. 90. Raymond C. Atkinson, Louise C. Odencrantz, and Ben Deming, Public Employment Service in the United States (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 3. 91. Yoneda, Ganbatte, 37. 92. Ibid., 39–40 93. Ibid., 40. 94. Los Angeles Times, “Karl Yoneda; Japanese American Radical, Union Activist,” May 16, 1999; interview with Karl Yoneda. In 1880 California passed laws prohibiting the issuance of licenses for marriage between a white person and “a Negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.” In 1948 the California Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage. It was legalized nationally by the United States Supreme Court in 1967. 95. Interview with Karl Yoneda. 96. In the camp, Yoneda found that the detainees were bitterly divided between those who were loyal to the Japanese emperor and those who were critical of the Unites States but against imperial Japan; he found, too, that he was hated by both sides. He emerged as one of the leaders of a faction that advocated working with the U.S. government. He believed that Japanese Americans should first work to defeat fascism in Japan and Germany and then to address the injustice of the internment. Karl Yoneda eventually volunteered for the U.S. Army intelligence and served as a translator in the Pacific. He spent the postwar years as a chicken farmer and longshoreman in San Francisco and continued as an active member of the Communist Party as editor of Rodo Shimbun, the Communist Party–sponsored Japanese-language newspaper. In later years he wrote a book on Japanese American labor and, with Elaine, was active in the redress movement. 97. Mark Wild, Street Meeting, 198.

294

˚ Notes to pages 163–167

Chapter 6 1. John Bengtson, Silent Traces: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Charlie Chaplin (Santa Monica, California: Santa Monica Press, 2006). 2. Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 177–178. 3. Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 26. 4. Ibid., 16. 5. Saxton, Indispensable Enemy, 230, 243–244. 6. Molina, Fit to Be Citizens, 29. 7. Ibid., 44. 8. Ibid., 45. 9. Commission of Immigration and Housing of California, “A Community Survey Made in Los Angeles” (San Francisco, 1919). 10. Ibid., 15. 11. Ibid., 14. 12. William Deverell, “Plague in Los Angeles, 1924: Ethnicity and Typicality,” in Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake Allmendinger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999): 172–200. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 190. Outbreak of disease affected the Mexican and Indian residents of Sonoratown since the nineteenth century, and the same cultural practices in the care of the sick may have played a role in the spread of disease. For example, in January 1863, a smallpox epidemic hit Los Angeles. By February, physicians counted 276 cases and scores of deaths. The most affected area was Sonoratown, the predominantly Mexican section of town (with a smaller population of Indians). Sonoratown’s population was composed of longtime Californio residents of the city and a growing number of poor immigrants from Sonora who either were unfamiliar with the remedy of vaccine or refused to apply it; Benjamin Hayes, Pioneer Notes from the Diaries of Judge Benjamin Hayes, 1849–1875 (Los Angeles: Marjorie Tisdale Wolcott, 1929). Hayes attended the funeral of the nephew of Antonio Coronel at the Calvary Cemetery and then ventured into the community, where he encountered a quarantine atmosphere. There was “not a soul in the streets, except the funeral procession. [Antonio] Coronel pointed out to me one house in which eleven had died, in another three, in this, two remained sick, in that, three, in that, one, and so on. I felt relieved at last to meet the venerable Bishop in his carriage, passing up into this adobe of sorrow” (284). Pitt writes, in Decline of the Californios (246–247), “While the reaction from the Anglo community in 1863 was certainly more empathetic than in 1924, . . . [Sonoratown residents] went from house to house administering folk medicine to the sick and dying, thereby furthering the contagion, until the hamlet had more corpses than gravediggers.” Notes to pages 169–173 ˚ 295

15. Deverell, “Plague in Los Angeles,” 188. 16. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 83. 17. Adamic, Truth About Los Angeles, 10–11. 18. John D. Weaver, El Pueblo Grande: A Non-Fiction Book About Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1973), 85. 19. Ibid. 20. Huxley, After Many a Summer, 4–5. 21. Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001), 211. 22. Nina Jermain, “History of the Civic Center Movement” (master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 1934), 25. 23. Thomas S. Hines, “The Blessing and the Curse: The Achievement of Lloyd Wright,” in Lloyd Wright: The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., ed. Alan Weintraub and Dana Hutt (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 11–37. 24. Jermain, “History of the Civic Center Movement,” 40–41; 31–39. 25. Richard E. Foglesong, Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), 136–146. 26. Ibid., 91. 27. Ibid., 140. 28. Jermain, “History of the Civic Center Movement,” 50–53. 29. Ibid., 51. 30. Ibid., 59. 31. Los Angeles Evening Express, “Los Angeles Landmarks Soon Will Be Buried in Oblivion,” August 4, 1925. 32. Ibid. 33. Los Angeles City Council Minutes, 1926, Los Angeles City Archives, vol. 168, 64. 34. Jermain, “History of the Civic Center Movement,” 80. 35. Oxnam, Mexican in Los Angeles, 23. 36. Romo, East Los Angeles, 61–63. 37. Fogelson, Downtown, 226–227. 38. Elizabeth Rix DeWolf, “Biography of Edward Austin Rix,” Edward Austin Rix Papers, 79/77C:1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1979. 39. Ibid., 1. 40. Ibid. 41. Christine Sterling, Olvera Street: Its History and Restoration (Long Beach, California: Privately published by June Sterling Park, 1947), 26. 42. Ibid., 23. 43. Helen Delper, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992), 125–164 44. Mary Pickford actually starred in D. W. Griffith’s 1910 film adaptation of 296

˚ Notes to pages 173–184

Helen Hunt Jackson’s epic novel Ramona, published in 1884. See Victor Valle and Rodolfo D. Torres, Latino Metropolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 77–78. 45. In the 1870s the medical profession freely prescribed a change of climate for a long list of complaints and disorders. By that time Los Angeles and its environs were readily accessible by rail and sufficiently “civilized” to be attractive to individuals in the east who were lured west by what they believed were the healing powers of balmy sunshine. Shortly after 1900, doctors became more inclined to cure the sick where they were, but by that time, according to John Bauer’s calculations, a quarter of the population of Southern California was attributable to “the health rush.” For an analysis of the health rush and its impact on Los Angeles, see John E. Bauer, The Health Seekers of Southern California (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1959), 33–53. 46. Edward Ainsworth, Memories in the City of Dreams (Los Angeles: Christine Sterling and Edward M. Ainsworth, 1959), 6–7. 47. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 151. 48. Bill Bradley, The Last of the Great Stations: 40 Years of the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal (Los Angeles: Interurban Press, 1979), 58–75. 49. McIntyre Faries, Rememb’ring: One Man’s Journey (Glendale, California: Griffin Publishing, 1993), 109. 50. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 95. 51. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 155; David Rieff, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 71. 52. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 152. 53. John S. McGroarty, “Shall Our City Forfeit its Last Heritage from Old Spain?” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1926. 54. Ibid. 55. Sterling, Olvera Street, 5. 56. The Avila Adobe was constructed in 1818 by prominent ranchero Francisco José Avila, a native of Sinaloa, who was alcalde of Los Angeles in 1810. Following Francisco Avila’s death in 1832, his second wife, Encarnación Avila, continued to live in the house with her two daughters. The Los Angeles Census of 1844 lists Encarnación Avila, age forty, as a widow living in the house with one daughter. For a brief time, from January 10 to 19, 1847, the adobe was commandeered as a military headquarters by the invading North American army under Robert F. Stockton. After Encarnación Avila died in 1855, the home passed to her two daughters, Luisa and Francisca, and their husbands, Manuel Garfias and Theodore Rimpau, a native of Germany. Francisca and Theodore Rimpau and their nine children lived in the adobe from 1855 to 1868, when they moved to Anaheim, where Theodore served as the first mayor. From 1868 to the early 1920s, the adobe was rented and used as a restaurant and rooming house for transients or was frequently vacant. In the late 1880s, the Piedmontese Secundo Guasti (who arrived from Mexico in 1887) and Rosa Morelli ran their Hotel Italia Unita in the Notes to pages 184–187 ˚ 297

adobe. The condition of the building deteriorated, and it was finally condemned in 1926 by the City Health Department. This caught the attention of Christine Sterling, who began a public campaign to save the adobe. Today, the Avila Adobe is open to the public as a museum and is furnished as it might have appeared in the late 1840s. 57. Sterling, Olvera Street, 11–18. 58. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 100–101. 59. Phoebe S. Kropp, “Citizens of the Past? Olvera Street and the Construction of Race and Memory in 1930s Los Angeles,” Radical History Review 81 (Fall 2001): 38. 60. Sterling, Olvera Street, 7. Davis, whose moniker referred to his extraordinary marksmanship with a pistol, also was responsible for launching in 1936 a foreign excursion of sorts—a “Bum Blockade” on the state borders that prevented Dust Bowl migrants from entering the state and specifically Los Angeles—a transient influx estimated during the Great Depression at 100,000 a year and immortalized in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. 61. Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z, 331. 62. Robinson, Los Angeles from the Days of the Pueblo, 98. 63. Florence Dodson Schoneman was born at Rancho Palos Verdes and was the daughter of James Hilsey and Rudecinda Sepúlveda de Dodson. She was educated at Miss Head’s Seminary in Berkeley and graduated from the University of California. During the 1920s, in addition to the aforementioned associations, she served as vice president of the City Planning Association for Los Angeles and as a member of the Southern California Women’s Press Club. She arranged for the first donation of Californio-era artifacts to the restored Avila Adobe, many of which were Sepúlveda family possessions. See Who’s Who in Los Angeles County: 1930–1931 (Los Angeles: Chas. J. Lang, 1932), 232; Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1970), 139. 64. Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 32; Sterling, Olvera Street, 7. 65. Sterling, Olvera Street, 6. 66. Ibid., 9. 67. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 155. 68. Faries, Rememb’ring, 109. 69. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 77; Faries, Rememb’ring, 109. 70. Faries, Rememb’ring, 104. 71. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 229. 72. Interview with Lupe Alcocer, niece of Rodolfo Montes, by the author, July 29, 1995, Los Angeles. 73. Faries, Rememb’ring, 110. 298

˚ Notes to pages 187–190

74. L. F. Bustamante, “Calle típica mexicana en el Sonora Town,” La Opinión, April 11, 1930, 5. 75. Rieff, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (New York: Simon and Schuster, Touchstone Books, 1991), 72. Rieff is incorrect, however, in stating that Olvera Street antedates Disneyland Park by thirty-six years. Disneyland’s opening in 1955 marked a twenty-five-year difference between the founding of the two theme parks. 76. McWilliams, Southern California, 130–131. 77. Kropp, “Citizens of the Past?,” 39. 78. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza,” 115. 79. Daniel D. Arreola and James R. Curtis, The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993), 90. 80. Michael Sorkin, ed. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Noonday Press, 1992), xv. 81. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza,” 116. 82. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 163. On the development of tourism and the American West see Martin Padget, Indian Country: Travels in the American Southwest, 1840–1935 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004). 83. June Sterling Park, “The Life Story of Christine Sterling,” in Olvera Street: Its History and Restoration (Los Angeles: Sterling Park, 1947), 23. During the late 1920s, Christine Sterling dropped her married name of Hough and began calling herself Christine Sterling. Her descendants recalled that “coming up with a new name was in vogue among the Hollywood people that [Christine] associated with, and ‘Sterling’ just sounded good to her.” It was also during this time that Jerome and Christine may have separated, as there is no further reference to him after the opening of Olvera Street. He apparently died in the early 1930s in northern California, according to a telephone interview with John Park, grandson of Christine Sterling, by the author in February 1999. 84. Barbara J. Howe, “Women and Architecture,” in Reclaiming the Past: Landmarks of Women’s History, ed. Page Putnam Miller (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 29–31. 85. Ibid., 32. 86. Ibid., 33–34. 87. Sterling’s grandchildren denied several requests by researchers for access to the entire diary, which was written between 1930 and 1932. In 1996 Jean Bruce Poole, historic museum director of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, secured sole access to the diary to edit for publication. 88. Sterling, Olvera Street, 5–6. 89. Holly Beachley Brear, Inherit the Alamo: Myth and Ritual at an American Shrine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 37. Also see Richard R. Flores, ReNotes to pages 190–196 ˚ 299

membering the Alamo: Memory, Modernity, and the Master Symbol (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 28. 90. Sterling, Olvera Street, 12. 91. Yoneda, Ganbate, 39. 92. Joseph Gerald Woods, “The Progressives and the Police: Urban Reform and the Professionalization of the Los Angeles Police” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1973), 1–10. 93. The Great Depression of the 1930s had a severe impact on the Mexican community of Los Angeles. No longer considered an invaluable workforce, Mexicans were scapegoated as undesirable aliens and resented as competitors for scarce jobs and recipients of public relief funds. One harsh manifestation of this growing anti-Mexican movement was the government-sponsored Repatriation Program. In the early 1930s, about one-third of Los Angeles’ 150,000 Mexican residents were repatriated to Mexico, among them many U.S. citizens. For an excellent assessment of the impact of the repatriations in Los Angeles see Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 45. 94. Matt Garcia, A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 121–154. 95. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza,” 119. 96. Interview with Belle Valades by the author, August 1995, Los Angeles. 97. Ainsworth, Memories in the City of Dreams, 35–36. 98. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza,” 119. 99. Interview with Benjamin Sousa by the author, San Marino, California, November 1995. 100. Sterling, Olvera Street, 12. 101. After the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, workers found another section of the Zanja Madre while constructing an annex to the Avila Adobe. Today, this exposed eight-foot section of the early zanja system serves as the main feature of El Pueblo Monument’s permanent History of Water in Los Angeles exhibit, which was produced in 1981 by the Department of Water and Power. 102. Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 205.

Chapter 7 1. Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin’s 2002 Movie and Video Guide (New York: Signet, 2001), 1157; also see The Ring (United Artists, 1952). 2. Ibid. 3. Lawrence L. Hill, “A Great City Celebrates Its 150th Anniversary: La Fi-

300

˚ Notes to pages 197–204

esta de Los Angeles, September 4–13, 1931,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1931): 8. 4. A good overview of the first years of La Fiesta is Christina Wielus Mead’s “Las Fiestas de Los Angeles: A Survey of the Yearly Celebration, 1894–1898,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 31, nos. 1–2 (March–June 1949): 61–113. 5. Hill, “A Great City Celebrates,” 39. 6. Ibid., 11, 48. 7. McWilliams, Southern California, 81–83; also see Manuel P. Servin, “California’s Hispanic Heritage: A View into the Spanish Myth,” Journal of San Diego History 19, no. 1 (Winter 1973): 1–9. 8. Weaver, El Pueblo Grande, 79. 9. Loren Miller, “Not My Fault,” California Eagle, September 4, 1931, 8. 10. Loren Miller, “The Failure of La Fiesta,” California Eagle, September 11, 1931, 8. 11. Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 5. 12. Hill, “A Great City Celebrates,” 30. 13. Los Angeles Times, “Police Win Court Fight to Block Red Speaker,” June 26, 1932. Meyer Baylin confirmed this incident and recalled that Foster eventually was allowed to speak at Pershing Square and was somewhat disappointed with the turnout; interview with Meyer Baylin. 14. The clubs were named after the muckraking journalist and radical John Silas Reed (1887–1920); they were aligned with the Communist Party and intended primarily to foster young leftist talent. 15. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 65. 16. Estrada, “Los Angeles’ Old Plaza,” 122. 17. Shifra M. Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 89. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 90. 20. Catalogue of Competition and Exhibition of Art, Tenth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art and Neuner Printing and Lithograph, 1932), 7. 21. Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas, 93. 22. Shifra M. Goldman, “Siqueiros and Three Early Murals in Los Angeles,” Art Journal 33, no. 4 (Summer 1974): 323. 23. Ibid., 327. 24. Ibid., 323. 25. Interview with Shifra Goldman by the author, April 1995. 26. Report of the Joint Committee on Un-American Activities, California

Notes to pages 204–209 ˚ 301

State Archives, Sacramento, 1943: 241. Ferenz was considered a hostile witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in California. He was subpoenaed and testified on October 17, 1941 (vol. 4, 1152–1174). He was one of the most active Nazi propagandists in Southern California, where he posed as an exhibitor of foreign language films and operated the Continental Book Store located at 2509 W. Seventh Street in Los Angeles. Ferenz also was the publisher of the 1934 book entitled Hitler, a collection of favorable propaganda essays concerning the Fuhrer. 27. Los Angeles Times, “A Great Art Work to be Unveiled,” October 9, 1932. 28. Angélica Arenal de Siqueiros’ article “Páginas sueltas con Siqueiros,” quoted in David Alfaro Siqueiros: An Exhibition at Plaza de La Raza, September 15– October 31, 1985, curated by Antonio González Reynoso (Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles Plaza de La Raza, 1985), 24. 29. David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 72. Gutiérrez notes scholars’ estimates that nationally at least 350,000 and perhaps as many as 600,000 persons of Mexican descent were repatriated during the decade of the Depression. 30. La Opinión, “11 Mexicanos Presos en un Aparatoso Raid a La Placita,” February 27, 1931; Francisco E. Balderrama, In Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican Consulate and the Mexican Community, 1929 to 1936 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 18–19. 31. Interview with Albert Gribbell Velasco by the author, Los Angeles, October 27, 1995; interview with Alejandro Díaz Velasco by the author, Los Angeles, November 19, 1996. Alejandro, a descendant of an illustrious Sonoran family, noted that General Topete, who owned a service station in East Los Angeles, was a relative on his mother’s side. Diccionario Porrúa de Historia, Biografía y Geografía de México (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1986), 1810–1811, 2965. 32. Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas, 93. 33. “Siqueiros’ Plaza Art Dedicated,” Los Angeles Times, October 10, 1932. 34. Goldman, “Siqueiros and Three Early Murals,” 324. 35. Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas, 95. 36. Los Angeles Times, “Great Art Work to be Unveiled,” October 9, 1932. 37. Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas, 95. 38. Siqueiros, “Paginas sueltas con Siqueiros,” 25. 39. Low, On the Plaza, 183. 40. Interview with Meyer Baylin. Baylin stated that he and other members of the Communist Party were well aware that Siqueiros was from the “Mexican party” and that he was attempting to make a political statement with the mural. Baylin, however, did not see the mural until much later, as he and several party members were busy with their plans to stage a demonstration at the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games being held at the Olympic Stadium (the Los Angeles Coliseum), an activity for which Baylin was arrested. 302

˚ Notes to pages 209 –212

41. With the assistance of the Historical Society of Southern California and the Ramona Parlor of the Native Sons and Daughters, Sterling coordinated the installation of several statues and plaques which focused on the heroics of Anglo Americans. Only months before the unveiling of América Tropical, the Daughters of the American Revolution marked the Avila Adobe. A plaque dedicated to Kit Carson’s role in the American conquest of Los Angeles was placed in front of the adobe, within eyesight of where the mural would be painted. Several new placards and statues were installed following the controversy over América Tropical. 42. Interview with Alejandro Díaz Velasco (1913–1997) by the author, November 11, 1995, Los Angeles. 43. Constance Deighton Simpson was the daughter of an Englishman, Captain John A. Jones, who came to San Francisco in 1848 and in 1851 settled in Los Angeles and became a successful businessman and wholesale grocer, and Doria Deighton, who emigrated from Scotland in 1854. Constance was born in a large adobe facing the Plaza that her father purchased in 1868 from former California governor John G. Downey. The adobe previously was owned by Pedro Seguro and two-time mayor of Los Angeles Cristobal Aguilar. When Jones died in 1876, he left the property to his wife, Doria. In 1886 the property was rendered uninhabitable due to the widening of Main Street. In 1894 Doria constructed a two-story brick building for industrial use on the site. This structure, which faces the Plaza, is now known as the Simpson-Jones Building. After Doria died in 1908, she left the property to her daughter, Constance. Constance, who was educated in the United States, France, and England, married Henry Williams Simpson, a prominent attorney in New York, where they resided and raised five children. She moved to Los Angeles after Henry’s death. Active in various philanthropic endeavors, Constance was socially prominent in the United States and in England. Her estate was located in the 1700 block of West Pico Street (now Pico Boulevard) and measured about one hundred acres. 44. Boyle Workman, The City That Grew, as Told to Caroline Walker (Los Angeles: Southland, 1936), 119. 45. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera Act Ruled Void,” November 22, 1934. 46. Ibid. 47. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera Street Menaced by Ruling, Still Carefree,” November 23, 1934. 48. Los Angeles Examiner, “Olvera Wins Plea for Ban on Traffic,” December 6, 1934. 49. Ibid. 50. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 60–61. 51. Edwin R. Bingham, “The Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese” (master’s thesis, Occidental College, Los Angeles, 1942), 104. 52. Suellen Cheng and Munson Kwok, “The Golden Years of Los Angeles Notes to pages 212–216 ˚ 303

Chinatown: The Beginning,” in The Golden Years: 1938–1988 (Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 1988), 39. 53. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 131. 54. Numerous scholars have examined an ill-defined but often rumored image that the Chinese lowered wages and thus increased labor demands, causing widespread economic hardship for white workers. Among those works on California is Alexander Saxton’s now-classic study, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California; see page 158. 55. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 23. 56. Ibid., 125. 57. Thomas Allen McDannold, “Development of the Los Angeles Chinatown: 1850–1970” (master’s thesis, Department of Geography, California State University, Northridge, 1973), 59; also see David R. Chan, “Los Angeles and the Chinese,” in Chinese New Year Book (Los Angeles: Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 1975), 21. 58. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 142. 59. Cheng and Kwok, “Golden Years,” 34–35. 60. Los Angeles Times, “Passing of Chinatown Observed in Pageant,” September 23, 1934. 61. Ibid. 62. Chan, “Los Angeles and the Chinese,” 21. 63. Sterling, Olvera Street, 23. 64. Ruby Ling Louie, “Reliving China City,” Gum Saan Journal, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California 11, no. 2 (December 1988): 2. 65. Ibid. 66. Interview with Jean Bruce Poole by the author, July 1994, Los Angeles. 67. Jan Lin, “The Reclaiming of Asian Places in Downtown Los Angeles,” Hitting Critical Mass (Spring 1998): 69. 68. Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a ChineseAmerican Family (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 211–215. 69. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 144. 70. Cheng and Kwok, “Golden Years,” 41. 71. Chan, “Los Angeles and the Chinese,” 21. 72. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 154. 73. Los Angeles Times, “President’s Wife Visits China City,” March 24, 1939. 74. Bingham, “Saga of the Los Angeles Chinese,” 156. 75. Los Angeles Examiner, “Midnight Blaze Causes Extensive Damage,” February 21, 1939. 76. Los Angeles Times, “China City: Mystery Blaze Does $200,000 Damage,” February 21, 1939. 77. Chan, “Los Angeles and the Chinese,” 21. 78. Interview with Glenn W. Price by the author, August 1996, Sebastopol,

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California. Price served as district historian for the California State Park Service in Los Angeles during the mid-1950s. 79. Sojin Kim, “Curiously Familiar: Art and Curio Stores in Los Angeles’ Chinatown,” Western Folklore 58, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 133–133. 80. Interview with William Mason by the author, August 9, 1996, San Diego. 81. Spanish Colonial Revival can be divided into two phases. The first, Mission Revival, was influenced by the literary romanticizing of the region in Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel, Ramona, and dates from the 1880s. It became popular locally between 1900 and 1915. It is characterized by the various mission furnishings that mythologized the period (i.e., arched openings, mission bell towers, white stucco walls, tile roofs). The style was used in many arenas, such as railroad stations, libraries, schools, churches, and private homes. See David Gebhard, “The Spanish Colonial Revival in Southern California (1895–1930),” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 26 (May 1967): 131–149. Streamlined Moderne was one of two phases of the modernist mode. The Zigzag Moderne, or Art Deco, style was especially prominent in the 1920s and was more synthetic and eclectic, drawing on a wide variety of sources such as the pre-Columbian forms that Frank Lloyd Wright used in the 1920s, the vivid geometry that drew on American Indian designs, various Egyptian motifs, and the more rectilinear phases of Art Nouveau itself. “The Streamlined Moderne style drew its inspiration from the more curvilinear features of the International Style itself and especially from imagery of transportation carriers—the train, the auto, the ocean liner, the airplane, the blimp, the spaceship—strongly suggesting the spirit of flight, of movement, of ‘getting away,’ if not on a rocket at least on the Super Chief”; Thomas S. Hines, “Machines in the Garden: Notes Toward a History of Modern Los Angeles Architecture, 1900–1990,” Sex, Death and God in L.A., ed. David Reid (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 277–278. 82. Bradley, Last of the Great Stations, 8; Irving S. Fritzen, “Streamlining a Pueblo: Los Angeles Opens a New Union Station,” Santa Fe Magazine, June 1939, 11. 83. Fritzen, “Streamlining a Pueblo,” 11–12. 84. Letter from Waldo T. Tupper, managing director, Union Station Celebration Committee, to Christine Sterling, April 26, 1939, June Sterling Park Collection, archives, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. 85. Los Angeles Times, “Colorful Parade Recalls Early Transportation Era,” May 4, 1939. 86. Ibid. 87. Parson, “The Search for a Centre,” 238. 88. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 155.

Notes to pages 225–229 ˚ 305

Chapter 8 1. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera Street,” April 20, 1940. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera St. Calls on Council to Oust Cheap Concessions,” June 19, 1940. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Mauricio Mazón, The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), 7. 11. Interview with Beatriz Moreno de Guzman. 12. Mazón, Zoot Suit Riots, 75. 13. Los Angeles Times, “Pachucos Club Formed to Give Youths Chance,” November 5, 1943. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Interview with Joe Salas Jr. by the author, July 1994, Carlsbad, California. 18. Escobar, “Mexican Revolutionaries,” 271. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., 271–272. 21. Interview with Chavela Flores by the author, November 24, 1996, Hollywood. 22. Ibid. 23. Interview with John Torres by the author, December 13, 1996, Los Angeles. 24. Hata, Historic Preservation Movement, 31–39. 25. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera Street and Plaza Pan-American Urged,” April 12, 1948. 26. Ibid. 27. See Greg Hise and William Deverell, Eden by Design: The 1930s OlmstedBartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 28. Los Angeles Times, “Olvera Street and Plaza Pan-American Urged,” April 12, 1948. 29. Speech by Christine Sterling, 1948, June Sterling Park Collection, Archives, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Box 1. 30. Ibid. 306

˚ Notes to pages 231–240

31. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 189. 32. Los Angeles Herald-Express, “Mexican Wolf Pack,” May 17, 1950. 33. Los Angeles Herald-Express, “Mother of Olvera Street Tells Dream for Plaza and Old Missions,” May 17, 1950. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Balderrama and Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal, 86. 38. Ibid. 39. Letter from Christine Sterling to John Anson Ford, December 11, 1945, John Anson Ford Collection, Huntington Library and Art Collection, Ford ( J. A.) Box 5/B19. 40. Letter from Bernice Setterberg, President, to William A. Smith, Chairman, Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County, July 25, 1949, John Anson Ford Collection, Huntington Library and Art Collection, Box 5/B19. 41. Letter from John Anson Ford to the Los Angeles City Council, 27 September 1950, John Anson Ford Collection, Huntington Library and Art Collection, Box 5/B19. 42. Los Angeles Times, “They Want Lugo House to Remain—but Where?” September 29, 1950. 43. Los Angeles Times, “Hot Fight Rages to Save Plaza Historic Features,” September 28, 1950; Raymond Zeman, “Lugo House,” Los Angeles Westerners Corral Branding Iron, (Spring 1990): 1–6. 44. Los Angeles Times, “They Want Lugo House to Remain—but Where?” September 29, 1950. 45. Edward M. Ainsworth, “Detailed Plan for Preserving of City Plaza Area Presented,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1950. 46. Raymond Zeman, “Wreckers Go to Lugo House and 18 Other Ancient Adobes,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1951. 47. Los Angeles Times, “Save the Plaza Area, Plea to Officials,” February 15, 1951. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Faries, Rememb’ring, 116. 51. Los Angeles Times, “Park Plan Celebrated by Olvera Street,” March 27, 1953. 52. General Plan, El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1980, 16. 53. Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 3rd edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 267. 54. Interview with Glenn Price. Price made reference to John M. Weatherwax, The Founders of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Bryant Foundation, 1954). This small monograph (reprinted in 1976), which correctly described the ethnicNotes to pages 240–248 ˚ 307

racial origins of the “founding forty-four,” was largely ignored by the historical community of the 1950s. 55. Howard Shorr, “‘Race Prejudice Is Not Inborn—It Is Learned’”: The Exhibit Controversy at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, 1950– 1952,” California History, Fall 1990, 276–283. 56. Charlotta Bass, Forty Years: Memoirs from the Pages of a Newspaper (Los Angeles: Privately published by Charlotta Bass, 1960), 2. 57. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949). 58. See Ana Begue de Packman, Leather Dollars: Short Stories of Pueblo Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Times-Mirror Press, 1932), and Early California Hospitality (Fresno, California: Academy Library Guild, 1952). 59. Interview with William Mason. 60. Roger Hatheway, “El Pueblo: Myths and Realities,” Society of Architectural Historians, Southern California Review 1, no. 1 (Fall 1981): 1–5. 61. Bruce Poole and Ball, El Pueblo, 114–115. 62. McClung, Landscapes of Desire, 86. 63. Hatheway, “El Pueblo,” 2. 64. Interview with Alfredo Bonzo by the author, November 1995, Los Angeles. 65. This largely Mexican neighborhood, which dates back to the midnineteenth century, was earmarked in the 1940s for a major federal housing project. However, when the project was rejected after much political turmoil, the community later was slated for demolition by the City of Los Angeles to make way for the construction of Dodger Stadium in 1959. 66. Telephone interview with Nicole Park, granddaughter-in-law of Christine Sterling and Sterling family historian, by the author, June 2002. 67. Interview with Edward R. Roybal by the author, September 26, 1996, Los Angeles. 68. Ibid. 69. One particular work that appeared six years after her death and placed Sterling’s preservation campaign, albeit distorted and factually incorrect, within the broader history of early Los Angeles is Frieda I. Salas’ Wind in the Pepper Tree: The Story of Los Angeles’ Colorful Olvera Street (New York: Exposition Press, 1969). 70. Interview with Belle Valades. 71. Donovan E. Roberts, “Felipe de Neve—Founder of L.A., Where the Body’s Buried,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, May 12, 1963. 72. Acuña, Occupied America, 284, 308–309. 73. Interview with Edward R. Roybal. 74. Interview with Phil Montes by the author, June 6, 2002, Los Angeles. See Robert J. Lopez, “Journalist’s Death Still Clouded by Questions,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1995.

308

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75. Among Ruben Salazar’s first articles for the Times was “Old Plaza Church Still Has 19th-Century Air,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1959. 76. Interview with Phil Montes. 77. Ibid. 78. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, “Fiesta Called Off Due to Tensions,” September 5, 1970. 79. See Mario T. Garcia, ed., Ruben Salazar, Border Correspondent: Selected Writings, 1955–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 80. Ruben Martinez, “La Placita,” in Sex, Death, and God in L.A., ed. David Reid (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 225–255. 81. Ibid., 230. 82. Ibid. 83. Richard Rodriguez, “The Return of the Native,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2006.

Chapter 9 1. Rodolfo Acuña, Anything But Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1996), 19–42. 2. Jessica Garrison, “Battle over a Casino Plan Divides Gabrielino Indians,” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2006. 3. Davis, City of Quartz, 226–228. 4. Parson, “Search for a Centre,” 234–235; Joel Kotkin, “Hands Off My Backyard, Mr. Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, op-ed, November 13, 2005; Cara Mia DiMassa, “Grand Avenue Project Clears First Hurdle,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2006. 5. Kenney, Mapping Gay L.A., 4–5. 6. See Michael Dear, “In the City, Time Becomes Visible: Intentionality and Urbanism in Los Angeles, 1781–1991,” in The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Edward W. Soja and Allen J. Scott (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 76–77. 7. The most ambitious Mexican-themed retail development project is Plaza Mexico, which opened in 2003 on East Imperial Highway in the City of Inglewood (in Los Angeles County). When fully developed, the thirty-six-acre site will have more than 450,000 square feet of retail, food, and office space, complete with plazas, kioskos, fountains, carretas, and statues of Benito Juárez and La Virgen de Guadalupe. The design mimics the architecture of pueblos like San Miguel de Allende, Dolores Hidalgo, and Oaxaca and prominent urban centers such as Guadalajara and Mexico City. Seminal writings on the visual and visceral Mexicanization or Latinization of Los Angeles include: James Thomas Rojas, “The Enacted Environment: The Creation of Place by Mexicans and Mexican Ameri-

Notes to pages 255–266 ˚ 309

cans in East Los Angeles” (master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991), 1–10; Gustavo Leclerc and Ulises Diaz, eds., Ciudad Hibrida/Hybrid City: The Production of Art in Alien Territory (Los Angeles: Southern California Institute of Architecture [SCI-Arc] Public Access Press, 1998), 1–5; Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City (London: Verso, 2000), xi–xvii; Gustavo Leclerc, Michael J. Dear, and J. Dallas Dishman, El Nuevo Mundo: The Landscape of Latino Los Angeles (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Southern California Studies Center, 2000), 14–19; Gustavo Leclerc, Raul Villa, and Michael J. Dear, La Vida Latina en L.A.: Urban Latino Cultures (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1999), 1–6; and Villa, Barrio Logos, 35. 8. Jan Lin, “Globalization and the Revalorizing of Ethnic Places in Immigration Gateway Cities,” Urban Affairs Review (November 1998): 313–339. 9. Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1960): 52. 10. An important work on the impact of globalization on Los Angeles is Steven P. Erie’s Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004). 11. Dear, “In the City,” 77. 12. Los Angeles Times, “State, Youth Sports Advocates Clash Over Best Use of Parks,” December 22, 2002. 13. Soja, Thirdspace, 234. 14. An important work in this area is James Clifford’s Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), 188–219.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abbot, Mercedes Garcia de, 88 Abbot, William, 88 Acevedo, Emiliano, 73 Adames, Rafael, 150 Adamic, Louis, 5, 12–13, 173–174 Adams, Egbert, 158 Adams, Mildred, 175 Addams, Jane, 115 adobe structures, 10, 49, 58, 96–98, 104, 114, 277n31, 283n22. See also Avila Adobe; Olvera Adobe Adventures of Don Chipote, The (Ve­ negas), 124–125 AFL, 148, 150. See also labor unions African Americans: businesses of, 62; and civil rights movement, 254; land ownership by, 62–63; Matthews as librarian, 248, 259; in mid-nineteenth century, 62–63, 63; newspaper for, 205, 249; population

of, 279n74; and preservation work, 194; in Spanish colonial period, 25, 28, 62 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 63 Africans (negros), 25, 28, 248 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (Huxley), 175 agriculture, 36, 43, 48, 50, 73, 81, 138, 139. See also ranchos and rancheros; viticulture Aguilar, Cristobal, 89, 111, 283– 284n25, 303n43 Aguilar, Doña Dolores, 111 Ainsworth, Edward, 184–185 Alameda Street: as boundary of Plaza State Historic Park and State Historic Landmark, 246; as boundary of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 261; boxing 329

arena near, 114; brothels on, 96; businesses on, 69, 138; and China City, 220; church near, 44; electric company on, 89; free speech site on, 164; French immigrants on, 48; and Old Chinatown, 111, 138, 217, 221; and railroad terminal, 177; trains traveling along, 128; and Union Station Celebration parade, 227; Yaanga village near future Alameda Street, 48, 56 Alamo Mission (San Antonio, Texas), 196 Alamos (Sonora), and founding of Los Angeles, 29 Alberti, Leon Batista, 22 Alexander, David, 62 Alexander, Henry N., 66 Alisal, El (The Sycamore), 286n69 Aliso Street, 44, 68, 84, 95, 96, 111 Allegrini, Ad, 115 Allied Architects Association, 176, 215 Alpine Street, 115, 143 Alta California. See Spanish colonial period Alvarado, Esteban, 76, 77 Alvarado, Juan B., 46 Alvarado, María Anita, 59 Alvarado, María Ignacia, 45, 59 Amat, Bishop Thaddeus, 67, 82–83 American Communist Party. See Communist Party American Federation of Labor (AFL), 148, 150. See also labor unions América Tropical (Siqueiros), xii, 13, 208–212, 211, 254, 302n40–41 Ann Street, 110, 172 Anschutz, Philip, 264 Anza, Juan de, 29 Apablasa Street, 128, 135, 218 Arcadia Street, 58, 95, 246, 261 archaeology, 15–17 architecture and buildings: adobe 330

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versus brick structures, 10, 49, 58, 83, 96–98, 102–104, 114; Art Deco or Zigzag Moderne, 305n81; brick structures, 83, 96, 97–98, 103, 303n43; Eastlake Victorian style of Sepúlveda House, 97; International Style, 305n81; Italianate style of Pico House, 87, 88, 97; Mission Revival, 305n81; neo-baroque style of Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, 82–83; Plaza church, 102, 250–251; of pueblos, 309n7; Simpson-Jones Building, 250; in Spanish colonial period, 26, 31; Spanish Colonial Revival, 215–216, 226, 305n81; twostory adobe structures, 65, 277n31, 283n22; two-story brick buildings, 97, 303n43; two-story stone house, 286n69; Union Station, 226. See also preservation; urban planning; and specific buildings Arconti, Frank, 119, 156, 288–289n19 Arconti family, 119, 232 Arechiga, Aurora, 252 Arguello, José Darío, 274n65 Armory, 134–136 Arnold, Bion, 177–178 Arreola, Daniel, 23 Arriola, Ramón S., 158 Arroyo Set, 286n69 Arteaga, Teresa, 154–155 Association for the Preservation of the Missions, 99 Austin, Charles, 76–77 Austin, John, 176 Avila, Encarnación Sepúlveda de, 54, 71, 297n56 Avila, Francisco, 54, 58, 68, 187, 297n56 Avila, Petra, 68 Avila Adobe: annex to, 300n101; artifacts in, 298n63; construction of, 297n56; and Democratic politi-

cians, 251; Estrada’s memories of, 2, 3; history of, 297–298n56; map location of, 40; plaque for, 303n41; preservation of, 185–187, 195–197, 298n56; as Sterling residence, 252– 253; Sterling’s political lobbying at, 232; as Stockton’s headquarters, 3, 297n56 ayuntamiento, 46, 71, 85–87. See also City Council; Common Council Bacall, Lauren, 237 Bachelot, Rev. Jean Augustine, 48 Baja California and Baja Revolution, 19, 139–141, 146, 155 Bakunin, Mikhail, 140, 162 Balderrama, Francisco, 242 Ball, Tevvy, 6 Bancroft, Herbert Howe, 43 Bandini, Arcadia, 58 Bandini, Arturo, 67 Bandini, Juan, 58, 87 Banham, Reyner, 215–216 Banning, Phineas, 66 barbers and barber shops, 62, 123 Barrio Boy (Galarza), 125–126 barrioization, 104–105 Bartlett, Dana, 5, 113 Bass, Charlotta, 249 Bath Street, 95, 96, 97 Bauer, Harry, 189 Bauer, John, 297n45 Baylin, Meyer, 160–162, 163, 164, 267, 301n13, 302n40 Baylin, Vera, 162 Beaudry, Prudent, 90 Beaudry, Victor, 66 Bell, Horace, 4, 61, 64, 96 Belvedere, 138, 180 Bernard Street, 221 bicentennial of Los Angeles, 259, 263 bicycle track, 66 Biggs, Peter, 62

Biscailuz, Eugene, 227 Black, Elaine, 166–167, 166, 294n96 blacks. See African Americans Bliderrain, Jesús, 73 Boardman, Rev. W. E., 70–71 Boas, Franz, 120 Bogardus, Emory, 5 Bogart, Humphrey, 237 Boleyn, Anne, 182 Bolshevik Revolution, 158 Bonus Army, 161, 293n75 Bonzo, Alfredo, 251 Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, 256–257 Botello, Refugio, 76, 77 Bouchard, Hippolyte de, 47 Bouchette, Louis, 48 Bowron, Fletcher, 231, 244 boxing and boxers, 114–115, 146, 203, 234 Boyle Heights, x, 56, 138, 160, 180 Bradley, Tom, 260 Brant, Otto, 139 Brear, Holly Beachley, 196 Brent, Joseph Lancaster, 57 Broad, Eli, 264 Broadway, 96, 265. See also North Broadway brothels. See prostitution Brousse, María. See Talavera, María Brown, E. E., 150 Brown, Edmund G. “Pat,” 251 Bruce Poole, Jean, 6, 299n87 Brunswig, Lucien Napoleon, 189 Bryant, S. H., 74 bubonic and pneumonic plague, 12, 170–173 Bucareli y Ursua, Antonio María de, 27 Buck, Pearl S., 221 Buena Vista Street, 61, 113, 123. See also Spring Street Index ˚ 331

buildings. See architecture and buildings; and specific buildings Bull Street, 64 Bunker Hill, 264 Burns, Robert, 232 Burrow, Joung, 75 businesses: of African Americans, 62; and China City, 219; of Chinese community, 72, 111, 112, 128, 138, 217, 225, 267; and civic centerUnion Station movement, 175–181, 229; of Italian immigrants, 47, 69, 117–118, 288–289n19; of Japanese immigrants, 11, 116–117, 128–129, 130, 268; and labor unions, 110, 286n65; Los Angeles business district (1990s), 264; of Mexican community, 113, 116, 123–124, 129–132, 131, 268; and Plaza Mexico, 309n7; and preservation of Los Angeles Plaza, 188–190. See also Chamber of Commerce; Merchants Association; Olvera Street Button, J. D., 292n50 C-M Ranch, 139, 140 Cabrillo, Juan Rodriguez, 18 Cahuenga Pass, Battle of, 46 Caldwell, Orville R., 244 California Constitution (1849), 57 California Department of Parks and Recreation, 266–267 California Eagle, 205, 249 California Federation of Women’s Clubs, 188 California Park Commission, 238, 246 California Plaza, 264 California Proposition 187, 256 California Railroad Commission, 177, 178, 179 California Social Democrat, 156 California statehood (1850), 57, 278n56 332

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California Supreme Court, 77, 178, 179, 215, 217, 294n94 Californios, 4, 10, 70–71, 93, 94, 97. See also Mexican community/Mexican Americans; Mexican era Calixtra, María Manuela, 204 Calle de las Vinas. See Olvera Street Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks), 59, 60, 61, 64, 72, 73, 75, 75, 78, 95, 278–279n63. See also Los Angeles Street Calle del Toro (Bull Street), 64 Calles, Plutarco Elias, 131, 189 Calloway, Cab, 234 Calvary Cemetery and New Calvary Cemetery, 61, 114, 159, 190, 279n70, 295n14 Camarillo, Albert, 82, 93 Campbell, Mrs., 69 Campo Santo. See cemeteries Cansino, Eduardo, 236 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 189, 212–213 Carlos III, King, 234 Carr, Harry, 5 Carranza, Venustiano, 157 Carrillo, Carlos, 46 Carrillo, José Antonio, 45, 46, 53, 65, 87, 227, 279n63 Carrillo, José J., 70 Carrillo, Juan J., 69 Carrillo, Leo, 227, 234 Carson, Kit, 3, 53–54, 195, 212, 245, 303n41 Casa de Alto, La, 51 Casa de Castelar, 115–116 Casa de Obero Internacional, La, 143 Casa La Golondrina restaurant, 197, 200 Casso, Father Henry J., 255 castas (castes), 25, 28 Castelar Street, 64 Castillo, Pedro, 28, 288n11 Castro, Joe, 235

Castro, José, 49, 52 Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, 82–84 Catholicism: and Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, 82–84; feastdays of, 64, 67; and Jesuit Fathers, 244–245; in Mexican era, 67; in mid-1850s to 1900, 66–67, 82–84; and missions and missionaries, 9, 16, 18–20, 25– 26, 29–31, 35–39, 98–99; and Sisters of Charity, 61. See also La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles cattle business, 57, 58, 60, 62. See also ranchos and rancheros Celis, Adolfo, 76, 77 Celis, Eulegio de, 70 cemeteries, 61, 114, 159, 190, 279n70 Central Avenue, 219 Central Pacific Railroad, 73, 220. See also railroads Chamber of Commerce, 136, 140, 148, 177, 184, 209, 217, 242 Chan, David R., 221, 223 Chandler, Emma Jane Little, 184 Chandler, Harry: birthday of, 199; and China City, 219; and civic centerUnion Station movement, 175, 185, 226, 229; death of, 235; family background and early life of, 184–185; on John Reed Club, 206–207; and Los Angeles Times, 136, 184, 185, 186, 199–200, 299; Mexican dress of, 199–200, 199; and Mexican Revolution, 139–141; and Olvera Street marketplace, 188–190, 199–200, 199; and open shop policy, 136, 140–142; and preservation of Los Angeles Plaza, 184–186, 188–190, 199–200, 214; property owned by, 139–141, 185, 186 Chandler, Moses Knight, 184 Chandler, Norman, 199–200 Chandler, Raymond, 5

Chaplin, Charlie, 169 Chapman, Joseph (Pirate Joe), 47 Charles V, King, 24 Chavez, Julian, 115 Chavez Ravine, 129, 252, 308n65 Cheng, Suellen, 218 Chiapas uprisings (1990s), 256 Chicago Haymarket Square tragedy, 155–156 Chicago World’s Exposition (1893), 106–107 Chicano/Chicana Movement, 3, 254–255 children’s pageant of nations, 218–219 Childs, Ozru W., 66, 206 Chin, Wong, 75 China City, 13, 219–224, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229, 244 Chinatown (Los Angeles): boundaries of, 110–111; businesses in, 72, 111, 112, 128, 138, 217; and Chaplin, 169; and Chinese Massacre, 10, 73–78, 217; Chinese New Year parade in, 105; and Chinese Revolution, 134– 136, 137, 216; decline of, 216–217; demolition of, 13, 14, 178–179, 181, 216–219, 218, 221, 223; in early twentieth century, 110–111, 128, 129; and gambling, 216; and Great Depression, 217; iww headquarters in, 150; in nineteenth century, 71– 79, 96, 104, 105; and opium smuggling, 216; and prostitution, 96, 225–226; survey of, in early twentieth century, 171–172; and Union Station, 178–179, 186, 215–219, 227– 229; Western Military Academy in, 134–136. See also China City; New Chinatown Chinatown (Santa Barbara), 93 Chinese American Museum, xii, 128, 267 Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 217 Index ˚ 333

Chinese community: attitude of labor unions on, 72, 73, 216, 304n54; businesses of, 72, 111, 112, 128, 138, 217, 225, 267; and Chiao ritual, 78; and China City, 219–224, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229, 244; and Chinese Revolution, 134–136, 137, 216; and diseases, 12, 170–171; early immigrants, 71–72; in early twentieth century, 110–111, 128, 129; and Gold Rush, 58, 71, 72; and Great Depression, 217; legislation on, 78, 170–171, 217; and Lugo House, 128, 226, 242–245, 243; and New Chinatown, 190, 221, 223–224, 225, 229, 244; photograph of woman and child, 74; population of, 72, 279n74; prejudice against and stereotypes of, 10, 71, 72, 73–78, 170, 216–217, 224–226, 228–229, 304n54; and preservation of Lugo House, 242–245; and radical political activism, 134–136; railroads built by Chinese immigrants, 72, 220, 228; relocation of, after demolition of Chinatown, 217–218, 219; strike by vegetable peddlers, 78; violence against, 10, 71, 73–78, 217; and Wai Leong Hong (Good People Protective Association), 78; and Western Military Academy, 134–136. See also Chinatown Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 78, 170, 171, 217 Chinese Free Masonry, 281n115 Chinese Massacre, 10, 73–78, 217 Chinese Revolution, 134–136, 137, 216 Chouinard and Chouinard Art School, 207, 209 Christianity. See Catholicism; churches; Protestantism Christmas Day Riot, 148–154, 292n40 Chung, Allen, 134

334

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churches: African Methodist Episcopal Church, 63; Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, 82–84; Plaza Methodist Church, 126–127, 247, 289–290n35. See also Catholicism; La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles; Protestantism CIAM (Congres Internationale d’Architecture Moderne), 287n79 Cinco de Mayo, 2, 69–70, 158, 162, 251, 268 CIO, 167. See also labor unions circus, 64–65, 82 City Beautiful movement, 176–177, 180, 188 City Council: and Avila Adobe preservation, 187; and Chavez Ravine community destruction, 252; and Christmas Day Riot, 152–153; and Lugo House demolition, 243, 244; member of, and Chinese Massacre, 73; and name change of Nigger Alley, 278–279n63; and Olvera Street, 100, 200–201, 215, 231–233, 252; and ordinance prohibiting prostitution, 96; and Plaza improvements in late nineteenth century, 92–93; and Plaza market proposal, 99–102; and speech in public places, 151–154; and Union Station, 177–178; and water rights, 284n25; on Zoot Suit Riots, 234. See also ayuntamiento; Common Council City Hall, 85, 87, 105, 176, 181. See also civic centers city planning. See urban planning civic centers, 10–11, 85, 87, 89, 105, 175–177, 181, 215–216, 229, 240. See also City Hall civil rights movement, 254 Civil War, 10 Clamor Público, El, 4, 68–69

Clara Street, 111, 145 Claremont, 189, 198 Cleveland Street, 115 Club Los Pachucos, 234–235, 241 Cody, Chief “Iron Eyes,” 260 Cold War, 239–240, 247 College Settlement Association, 115 College Street, 113, 115, 221 colonial period. See Spanish colonial period colonias, 104, 110, 127, 286n78, 287n3 Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association, 194 Columbus, Christopher, 9, 21 Coman, Katherine, 115–116 Commercial Street, 48, 56, 69, 73, 89, 96, 111, 179 Common Council: Plaza designated as first City Park by, 65; and Plaza improvements, 89–90; Sanchez Street opened by, 277n31; and water tank in Plaza, 65. See also ayuntamiento; City Council Communist Party, 158, 160–167, 197– 198, 206–207, 207, 213, 294n96, 301n14, 302n40 Confederación de Uniones de Obreros Mexicanos, 160 Congres Internationale d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), 287n79 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 167. See also labor unions Cook (W. D.) and George Hall Architects, 176 Cornfield, xi, 266 Cornwell, Dean, 209, 211 Coronel, Antonio, 66, 73, 295n14 Coronel, Ignacio, 73 Corpus Christi festival, 64 Cortes, Hernando, 24 Costanso, Miguel, 19 Costa Rica, plazas in, 8

Cota, Leonardo, 85–87 Cota, Pablo, 39 courthouse-square model, 105 Cowdray, Lord, 189 coyotes (mixed-race descendants of Spanish and Indian unions), 25 Crenshaw, L. P., 76, 77 Crespi, Father Juan, 19 Crónica, La, 4, 69, 70 Cruz, Carlos L., 69 Cruz, Gilbert, 27 Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 194 curanderas (spiritual healers), 36–37, 39 Curtis, James R., 111–112 Cut, Ah, 76 Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 48–49 dance. See music and dance dance halls, 121–123 Daniel, Pancho, 60 DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), 194, 303n41 Darrow, Clarence, 154 Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, 61 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 194, 303n41 Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), 196 Davenport, Edward J., 244 Davis, James “Two-Gun,” 187–188, 298n60 Davis, Mike, 173 Davis, Susan G., 206 de Bonzo, Consuelo, 200, 237, 246, 251, 252 Debs, Eugene V., 107, 146 de Croix, General Teodoro, 27, 28–29, 31 De Graff, Lawrence B., 279n74 Deighton, Doria, 303n43 de la Guerra, Josefa Morena, 93

Index ˚ 335

de la Guerra, Pablo, 93 De la Torre, Guadalupe, 129 Denver Women’s Club, 194 deportation of “illegal” immigrants, 247. See also repatriation Depression. See Great Depression de Schoneman, Florence Dodson, 188, 298n63 Deverell, William, 6, 65–66, 97–98, 172–173 Díaz, Porfirio, 139, 140, 143, 189 Dieciseis de Septiembre (Mexican Independence day), 69–70, 251 diseases: bubonic and pneumonic plague, 12, 170–173; and health rush to Los Angeles, 184, 297n45; of immigrants, 12, 170–173; of Indians, 30, 56; influenza epidemic, 172; measles epidemic, 61; in midnineteenth century, 61; smallpox epidemic, 30, 61, 281n110, 295n14; in Spanish colonial period, 30, 281n110 Disneyland, 191–192, 299n75 Dodger Stadium, 308n65 Dodson, Rudecinda Sepúlveda de, 298n63 Doheny, Edward L., 189 Dominguez, José, 115 Dominguez, Juan, 58 Dominguez, Juan José, 38 Dominguez, Ramón, 76, 77 Dominguez Ranch, Battle of, 53 Douglass, Frederick, 194 Downey, John G., 60, 66, 70, 303n43 Driscoll, Clara, 196 DRT (Daughters of the Republic of Texas), 196 Dryden, W. G., 65 Ducommun, Charles, 69 Ducommun Street, 111 Duffy Turner, John and Ethel, 146 Dunn, William E., 101–102 336

˚ the los angeles plaza

Duque, Jeanne, 6, 30 Dust Bowl migrants, 298n60 earthquakes, 26, 115, 236, 300n101 Eastern European immigrants, 110, 113, 118 East Los Angeles, 2, 190, 254–255, 266, 302n31 Eastman, George, 217–218 Eastman, J., 66 Edendale, 155 education. See schools Eighth Street, 164 ejidos (common lands), 35, 44 El Dorado saloon, 88 electricity, 89, 133 El Paseo Inn, 237, 238, 239, 268 Encuentro en las Calles (Siqueiros), 207–208 Engels, Friedrich, 162 Engh, Michael, 6, 67 Erickson, Charles, 255 Eroshenko, Vasily, 162 Escobar, Edward, 153 españoles (Spaniards), 25, 248. See also Spanish colonial period Esperanza bakery, La, 129–132, 131 Espinoza, Luis, 46 Espionage Act (1917), 157 Estrada, Rudolph, 1–2 Estrada, William David, 1–3, 7, 269 Estudillo, Dolores, 58 ethnicity and race. See African Americans; Chinese community; immigrants; Italian immigrants; Japanese immigrants; Mexican community/ Mexican Americans; prejudice; race and ethnicity factories. See industries Fages, Pedro, 19, 37, 39, 275n82 Fall, George M., 73 Faries, David M., 189

Faries, McIntyre, 188, 190, 238, 245 Fasano, Michele, 156 Faust, Frank, 117 Ferenz, Franz K., 208, 209, 302n26 Ferguson, Jesse, 47 Fernandez, Nellie, 237 Fiesta de Los Angeles, La, 13, 96, 97, 98, 103, 106, 107, 204–207, 208, 229, 249 fiestas, 51, 53, 58, 67, 70, 82, 157, 200 Figueroa, Anselmo, 145 Figueroa, José, 45 Figueroa, Mercedes, 146 Filipinos, 121, 163, 175, 234, 281n110 films. See movies firehouse. See Plaza Firehouse fires in China City, 224 First Street, 96, 125, 164, 165, 171, 176, 177 Flannigan, Father (of Boys Town, Omaha), 234 flooding, 9, 26, 30, 60 Flores, Chavela, 236–238, 239, 268 Flores, José María, 53, 54 Flores, Juan, 60 Flores, Tomás Valencia, 237 Flores Magón, Enrique, 134, 141, 145, 147, 154–155, 157 Flores Magón, Ricardo, 12, 134, 139– 141, 141, 143, 145–147, 154–159, 253 Fogelson, Robert, 103–104, 181 Foglesong, Richard, 177 Foo, Wan, 76 Food Collecting Period, 16 food vending, 123–124, 152, 155, 260, 292n50 Forbes, Luisa Olvera de, 289n35 Ford, John Anson, 244 Forster, Isadora Pico de, 84 Foster, William Z., 206, 301n13 Fou, Ah, 72 founders of Los Angeles. See pobladores (founders)

founders plaque in Los Angeles Plaza, 259, 262, 269 Franciscan missionaries. See missions free speech. See speech in public places Frémont, John C., 3, 52, 54, 96, 195, 212, 245 French Benevolent Society, 69, 84 French immigrants, 47, 48, 61, 67–69, 84, 94–95, 111 French-Town, 94–95 Fresno, 135 frontier thesis, 20, 106 Frost, Susan Pringle, 194–195 Gabrielinos: early history of, 9, 15–17; Indian Garden as memorial to, 260; in mid-nineteenth century, 56–57; population of, 56, 260; during Spanish colonial period, 27, 35–39, 41; in twenty-first century, 260; and Yaanga village, 9, 15, 17, 30, 35, 40, 48, 56, 274n61, 278n52. See also Indians Galarza, Ernesto, 125–126 Galvez, José de, 18–19 gambling, 45, 58, 59, 60, 61, 70, 72, 93, 216 Gamio, Manuel, 5, 120–121 gangs, 14, 234–235, 241 Garfias, Manuel and Luisa, 297n56 Garibaldi Street, 111 Garnier, Jeannette, 94 Garnier, Philippe, 94, 97 Garnier Block, 97, 111, 112 gas works, 89 Geary Act (1893), 170–171 German immigrants, 47–48, 71 Gibbs family, 232 Gillespie, Archibald, 52–53 Girling, Cynthia L., 284n29, 284n35 Gisner, D., 156 Goldman, Emma, 12, 134, 146, 147, 157 Index ˚ 337

Goldman, Shifra M., 207, 211 Gold Rush, 10, 57–58, 60, 71, 72, 96, 126, 182; centennial celebration of, 238 Goller, John, 73 Gómez, A. R., 145 Gómez-Quiñones, Juan, 139 Gonzalez, Manuel G., 116 Gonzalez, Michael J., 45 Gonzalez, Myrtle, 116 González, Pedro J., 132 Good Earth, The (Buck), 221 Good Earth, The (film), 221, 223, 224 Grand Avenue project, xii, 264 Gran Fiesta Obrera, 156–157 Gran Marcha, La (2006), 256–257, 260 Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), 298n60 Gray, Paul Bryan, 57 Great Depression, 165, 190, 194, 205, 209, 217, 298n60, 300n93 grid-plan plazas, 20–25, 21, 27, 33–35, 34, 41 Griffin, John S., 60–61 Griffith, D. W., 296–297n44 Griswold del Castillo, Richard, 39, 67, 70, 83–84 Groningen, John, 47–48 Guardia Zaragosa, 70 Guasti, Secundo, 297–298n56 Guerrero, Rafael, 64 Guerrero, Vicente, 64 Guinn, J. M., 4, 45 Gumprecht, Blake, 81 Guzman, Beatriz Moreno de, 129–130, 132, 234, 267–268 Haas, Lisbeth, 7, 94 Hama. See Yoneda, Karl Goso Hammel, Marie Ruellen, 118 Hancock, Henry, 56 Harby, Harold, 232 Hardoy, Jorge, 24 338

˚ the los angeles plaza

Harlow, Neal, 54 Harper, Arthur C., 97 Harriman, Job, 12, 134, 151, 154 Harvey, David, 8 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 184 Hayes, Benjamin, 62, 295n14 Haymarket Square tragedy, 155–156 Hayworth, Rita, 237 health problems. See diseases Hellman, I. W., 103 Helphand, Kenneth I., 284n29, 284n35 Henry VIII, King, 182 Hey, Lo, 76 Hicks, Elizabeth, 206 Hidalgo, Father Miguel, 123 Higuera, Dona Victoria, 277n31 Hill, Chapin, 5 Hill Street, 56, 156, 176, 264. See also South Hill Street Hilsey, James, 298 Hines, Thomas S., 296n23, 305n81 Hing, Ho, 76 Hispanics. See Latino immigrants; Mexican community/Mexican Americans Historical Society of Southern California, 98–99, 204, 249–250, 303n41 historic preservation. See preservation Hollibaugh, Jonathan, 245, 246 Hollywood Freeway, 250, 261 Home, George, 150 homeless population, 263, 268–270 Hoover, Herbert, 165, 293n75 Hop Sing Tong, 242 horse-drawn delivery wagons, 122 horse racing, 58, 82 Horton, T. C., 151–152 hospitals, 114 hotels, 87–88, 88, 88, 128, 297–298n56 Hough, Christine. See Sterling, Christine Hough, Jerome, 183–184, 299n83

Hough, June, 183, 200 Hough, Peter, 183, 200 Hoy, Lou, 134 Huerta, Dolores, 257 Huntington, Henry E., 133, 180 Huxley, Aldous, 5, 175 Hynes, William “Red,” 163, 165, 167, 197–198 Ibarra, Gil, 46 ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission), 178, 179 Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, La: bell tower of, 102, 250–251; construction of, and decline of missions, 39–40, 44, 47; Estrada’s memories of, 2–3; and Italian community, 117; La Virgen de Guadalupe image on annex of, 263; map location of, 40; and Methodist church, 126–127; photographs of, 68, 233; and Pico’s inauguration, 49–50; and Plaza as state historic park, 247; priests at, 48, 67, 126–127, 256, 269; rebuilding of, in 1870s, 87; as sanctuary for Latino immigrants, xii, 256; Weber on, 6 Iglesia Metodista de la Placita, La (Plaza Methodist Church), 126–127 illnesses. See diseases immigrants: businesses of, 11, 47, 69, 72, 111, 112, 116–118, 128–129, 130, 138, 288–289n19; California Proposition 187 on, 256; deportation of illegal immigrants, 247; and diseases, 12, 170–173; in early twentieth century, 11–13, 110–132, 134, 138; and immigrants’ rights movement, 256–258; Latino immigrants in late twentieth century, 256–258, 260, 268–270; legislation on, 78, 170–171, 217, 256–257; during Mexican era, 47–48, 50, 51, 276n20;

from 1950s to present, 14, 247, 254; and Olivares, 256; population of, 117, 279n74; repatriation of, 198, 209–210, 210, 300n93; survey of, in early twentieth century, 171–172. See also Chinese community; Italian immigrants; Japanese immigrants; Mexican community/Mexican Americans; revolutionary activism immigrants’ rights movement, 256–258 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 247 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 256 Indian Garden, 260 Indians: diseases of, 56, 295n14; and Kamias Revolt (1775), 275n82; marriage between pobladores and, 38, 41; medical practices of, 38–39; during Mexican era, 44–45; and missionaries, 9, 16, 18–20, 25–26, 30–31, 35–39; population of, 279n74; and Quechan Revolt (1781), 29–30, 275n82; during Spanish colonial period, 24–25, 28–31, 35–39, 41, 275n82; and Spanish language, 38–39; and Sterling’s project for preservation of missions, 241–242; and U.S. takeover of Los Angeles in mid-nineteenth century, 56–57, 60. See also Gabrielinos indios/indias, 28, 248 Industrial Workers of the World (iww), 134, 140, 142, 146–155, 158, 291–292n33 industries, 113–114, 133, 136, 138–142, 180. See also labor unions influenza epidemic, 172 Ingelwood, 309n7 INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), 247 “Internationale, The,” 156, 159 Index ˚ 339

International Labor Defense Committee, 166 International Workers Defense League, 157 Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), 178, 179 IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act), 256 Irish immigrants, 70, 110 Italian Hall: Arconti’s management of, 119, 288–289n19; construction of, 95; fraternal organizations meeting in, 120; radical political activities in, 146, 156–157, 161; Siqueiros mural on, xii, 208, 211–212 Italian immigrants: businesses of, 47, 69, 117–118, 288–289n19; and diseases, 172; in early twentieth century, 110, 111, 113, 117–118, 134, 151; fraternal organizations of, 47, 48, 69, 120; in nineteenth century, 97; photographs of, 119, 120; and radical political activism, 156; and viticulture, 48 iww (Industrial Workers of the World), 134, 140, 142, 146–155, 158, 291–292n33 jacales (huts), 26 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 71, 98, 192, 297n44, 305n81 Japanese American National Museum, 268 Japanese immigrants: businesses of, 11, 116–117, 128–129, 130, 268; and diseases, 171–172; neighborhood of, 111; as political radicals, 162–167, 293–294n80 Japanese Workers Association (JWA), 163, 164 Jeffries, Jim, 114 Jesuit Fathers, 244–245

340

˚ the los angeles plaza

Jewish community, 4, 64, 71–72, 110, 160 jimson weed cult, 17 John Reed Club, 206–207, 301n14 Johnson, A. R., 73–74, 76, 77 Johnson, Jack, 114 Jones, Elizabeth Dolbeer. See Flores, Chavela Jones, John A., 303n43 Jones, Mary Harris “Mother,” 146 Jones, May Adele Emerson, 236, 237–238 Jones, Thomas Catesby, 51 Jones, William Morris, 236 Jones Building, 95 Juan Diego, 260 Juárez, Benito, 68, 123, 309n7 July 4 celebration, 84–85 Junta Patriótica de Juárez, La, 69–70 Junta Patriótica de Obreros, La, 156–157 Junta Probicional de Socorros, La, 157 JWA ( Japanese Workers Association), 163, 164 Kamias Revolt (1775), 275n82 Kealhofer, Lisa, 25–26 Kearny, Stephen Watts, 53–54 Kee, Dan, 76 Keller, Mathew, 66 Kelso, Tesa L., 98–99 Kennedy, John F., 251, 254 Kenney, Moria Rachel, 7, 265 Kersey, Vierling, 248, 249 Ketchel, Stanley, 114 Kinney, Abbot, 192 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 193 Knowland, Joseph R., 238 Koenigheim, Alfred, 150, 292n40 Kreige, Herman W. R., 148–150, 154 Kropotkin, Pëtr, 140, 162 Kropp, Phoebe S., 6, 7–8, 192

Kwok, Munson, 218 Kysor, Erza F., 87, 88 La Barba, Fidel, 115 labor unions: American Federation of Labor (ALF), 148, 167; and anti-Chinese attitudes, 72, 73, 216, 304n54; and bombing of Los Angeles Times building, 136, 138, 140, 141, 154; business opposition to, 100, 286n65; Chicago Haymarket Square tragedy, 155–156; and Christmas Day Riot, 148–154; Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 167; iww (Industrial Workers of the World), 134, 140, 142, 146–154, 155, 158, 291–292n33; and Mexican labor, 142; “no-strike” pledge by, during World War II, 167; and open shop policy, 12, 110, 136, 140–142, 156, 285–286n65; and police protection of strikebreakers, 136; and railroads, 107; in San Francisco, 110, 136; women as labor organizers, 146. See also industries Lafayette, Marquis de, 84 L.A. Live, 264 Landazuri, Elena, 121 Landmarks Club, 99–102, 286n69 landscaping of Los Angeles Plaza, 65, 90, 92–93, 95 LAPD. See Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Laredo, 20 LARY (Los Angeles Railway Company), 133 Laso de la Vega, Alférez Ramon, 29 Latinization of Los Angeles, 265–266 Latino immigrants, 256–258, 260, 268–270. See also Mexican community/Mexican Americans Laughlin, Richard, 47

Laws of the Indies, 20, 22–23, 27, 33 Lea, Homer, 134–136 Leandri, Giovanni Batista, 47, 276n17 Le Corbusier, 287n79 Ledesma, Cruz, 220 Leonard, A. H., 159 Lew, Harry L., 242 libraries and librarians, 116, 209, 248, 259, 286n69 Linares, Pío, 60 Lincoln, Abraham, 68, 196 Lincoln Heights, 138, 180 Little Tokyo. See Japanese immigrants Llewellyn Iron Works plant, 114, 140 Locklear, William R., 73–74 Long, Ah, 75 Loo, Ah, 75–76 Lopez, Cesar, 6, 78 Loreto, 29 Los Angeles: and Anglo American rule in mid-nineteenth century, 26, 54–71, 65; barrioization in, 104–105; bicentennial of, 259, 263; boundaries of, 180–181; business district of, 264; as capital of Alta California, 43, 46, 49; City Hall in, 87, 176, 181; civic centers of, 10–11, 85, 87, 89, 105, 175–177, 181, 215–216, 229, 240; cultural and historical origins of, 9, 15–41; decentralization of, 89, 265; economy of, 36, 43–45, 48–51, 57– 58, 72, 81; in 1870s to 1890s, 81–107; founding and founders of, 9, 13, 14, 15, 20, 27–33, 41, 185, 204–205, 247–250, 259, 262, 307–308n54; future of, xii–xiii; Hancock’s survey of, 56; indigenous roots of, 15–17; Latinization of, 265–266; mass transportation in, 133, 180– 181; in Mexican era, 9–10, 43–50; Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan (1930) for, 239; Ord’s survey of, 10, 54–56,

Index ˚ 341

55; original location of pueblo of, 30; original plan of pueblo of, 33–35, 34; plans for, in nineteenth century, 85–87; population of, 50, 51, 60, 62, 72, 85, 111, 117, 172, 180, 209, 265–266, 278n58, 279n74; real estate booms in, 55–56, 62, 85; residences of Anglo elites in, 10, 89, 104; sesquicentennial celebration in, 13, 204–207, 208; size of, 265; in Spanish colonial period, 27–41; street names in, 56; in twenty-first century, 14, 264–270; and U.S. and Mexican War (1846–1848), 51–54; vice and violence in, during nineteenth century, 59–61, 72–73, 93, 95–97. See also businesses; City Council; immigrants; Los Angeles Plaza Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, 234 Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art, 248–249 Los Angeles Daily News, 4, 75, 90 Los Angeles Daily Tribune, 156 Los Angeles Examiner, 4, 215 Los Angeles Express, 4, 99, 101, 151 Los Angeles Herald, 93, 253–254 Los Angeles Herald-Express, 241 Los Angeles Park, 89–90, 133 Los Angeles Plaza: adobe versus brick structures in, 10, 49, 58, 96–98; aerial view of, 174; and Anglo American rule in mid-nineteenth century, 26, 54–71, 65; cultural and historical origins of, in Spanish colonial period, 9, 15–41; in 1870s to 1890s, 10–11, 81–107, 86, 91, 104; Estrada’s memories of, 1–3, 269; ethnic diversity in, during early twentieth century, xii, 109–118, 173–175; founders plaque at, 259, 262, 269; fountain in, 92, 95, 128, 342

˚ the los angeles plaza

197; free speech atmosphere in, 142, 153–154, 193, 247; function of, as civic and religious center, 26, 43, 50–51, 64; as gathering place for poor and unemployed, 4, 95, 100, 116, 133–134, 197, 212, 229; and immigration in early twentieth century, 11–13, 109–132; and immigration of 1960s to present, 14, 254; improvements for, in 1880s, 90–93, 95; landscaping of and vegetation in, 65, 90, 92–93, 95; location and boundaries of, 30, 33, 44, 246; maps of, 40, 83, 228, 261; market proposal for, 99–102; in Mexican era, 9–10, 43–50; overview of themes on, 9–14; as park, 10, 11, 65, 90–93, 100–101, 133–134, 280n88; plan of, during Spanish colonial period, 31, 33, 34; plans of, during nineteenth century, 45, 87; Plaza de Los Angeles/Sterling redevelopment proposal (1948) for, 238–240; preservation of, 5, 11, 13, 14, 99–103, 184, 185–201, 204–205; radical political activism in, 4–5, 12, 133–167, 186, 197–198, 213, 231; reform of image of, in early twentieth century, 12–13, 169–201; as State Historic Park and State Historic Landmark, 14, 245–247, 250–251; Sterling as administrator of, 194, 196–197; Sterling’s preservation campaign on, 5, 13, 14, 184, 185–201, 204–205; as thirdspace, 7; in twenty-first century, 14, 264–270; and U.S. and Mexican War (1846– 1848), 51–54; vice and violence in, during nineteenth century, 59–61, 72–73, 93, 95–97; water tank in, 65, 89, 92; Weber on, xi–xiii; writings on, 3–8, 173–175. See also Olvera Street; and specific buildings Los Angeles Police Department

(LAPD): and Chicano/Chicana Movement, 255; and Christmas Day Riot, 148–154, 292n40; and Communist Party rally, 163, 197–198; and demonstrations by unemployed, 165–166; and eviction of Chavez Ravine residents, 252; and radicals generally, 5, 156, 161, 163; “Red Squad” of, 5, 161, 163, 197–198; and Salazar, 255; strikebreakers protected by, 136; and Union Station celebration, 229; violence and abuse against Mexican community by, 235–236, 255 Los Angeles Railway Company (LARY), 133 Los Angeles Rangers, 60, 61 Los Angeles Record, 148, 151, 153 Los Angeles River, xi, 9, 17, 26, 30, 34, 40, 44, 104, 266 Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District, 264 Los Angeles Star, 4, 64, 68, 70–71, 73, 76 Los Angeles Street: brothels on, 96; Chinese American Museum on, 267; civic center site on, 176; and Communist Party members, 163; FrenchTown along, 95; iww headquarters on, 148, 150; Japanese immigrants along, 111; name change of Nigger Alley to, 73, 78, 278–279n63; and Old Chinatown, 221; political demonstration on, 165; problems of, 100; and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 261. See also Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks) Los Angeles Times: and anti-Flores Magón faction, 155; bombing of Times building, 136, 138, 140, 141, 154; and Chandler, 136, 184, 185, 186, 199–200, 229; on Chandler’s memories of Los Angeles, 184–185;

on children’s pageant of nations and demolition of Chinatown, 218–219; on Christmas Day Riot, 148–151, 154; and Goldman, 146; headquarters of, 185, 229; on Lummis, 286n69; on Olvera Street, 214, 231–233; and open shop policy, 142; and Otis, 101, 135, 136; on Plaza as gathering place for poor and unemployed, 4, 95, 100; on Plaza as rallying place for radicals, 4–5, 158; on preservation of Los Angeles Plaza, 186; Salazar as reporter for, 255; on Siqueiros, 212; on Sonoratown, 111; on Union Station, 175 Low, Setha M., 8, 22, 23–24 Loyola University, 244–245, 283n22 Luce, Ah, 72 Lugo, Don Antonio María, 47 Lugo, Vicente, 58, 242 Lugo House: Catholic school in, 88–89; and Chinese community, 128, 226, 242–245, 243; destruction of, 14, 242–245, 250; photographs of, 65, 104, 243; preservation of, 242–245 Lum, Bernice, 242 Lummis, Charles Fletcher, 99–102, 186, 190, 201, 286n69 Lung Kong Tin Yee Association, 242, 244 Lupino, Ida, 237 Luti, Silvio, 150 Luz y Vida (Light and Life), 157 Lynch, Kevin, 266 lynching, 60, 69, 71, 73–77. See also violence Lyon Street, 111 MacCannell, Dean, 240 Macy Street, 111, 129, 172–173, 180, 220, 234, 238, 246 Madero, Francisco I., 139, 140, 146 Index ˚ 343

Madrugadores, Los (The Early Risers), 132 Main Street: Andrés Pico’s home on, 84; Bath Street extension of, 95; as boundary of Plaza State Historic Park and State Historic Landmark, 246; brothels on, 96; businesses on, 1, 11, 62, 66, 69, 88, 113, 116–118, 123, 128–130, 130, 131, 150, 163, 164; Cathedral of Saint Vibiana on, 82–84; as center of Anglo Los Angeles, 105; and China City, 220; after Christmas Day Riot, 150; City Hall on, 85; dance halls on, 121, 123; La Fiesta de Los Angeles parade on, 106, 107; gas works on, 89; Italian Hall on, 161; Llewellyn Iron Works plant on, 140; Merced Theater on, 88; Methodist missionaries on, 126; El Palacio on, 58; photographs of, 68, 233; Plaza House on, 1, 128; political rallies on, 156, 165; problems of, 13, 100, 174; in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 261; Sepúlveda House on, 97; Shishima’s memories of, 128–130; Spanish name for, 56; and Union Terminal, 177, 179; in Venegas’s novel, 125; widening of, 303n43; and Zoot Suit Riots, 234 Manifest Destiny, 227 “Man in Our Changing World” museum exhibit, 248–249 Manufacturers Association, 136, 285– 286n65. See also Merchants and Manufacturers Association Maravilla, 138, 180 Marchessault, Damien, 61 Marchessault Street, 105, 128, 134, 138 marketplace. See Olvera Street Markus, Rosa, 156 marriage: and California antimiscegenation laws, 166; legality of

34 4

˚ the los angeles plaza

intermarriage, 294n94; in Mexican era, 10; during Spanish colonial period, 38, 41, 204 “Marseillaise, La,” 156, 159 Martin, Albert C., Sr., 176 Martin, James, 189 Martinez, Jesús, 73, 76, 77 Martinez, José, 159 Martinez, Juana, 123 Martinez, Ruben, 256 Marx, Karl, 150, 162 Mason, Bridget “Biddy,” 62–63, 63 Mason, Ellen, 62 Mason, William Marvin, 6, 28, 30, 38, 72, 225–226, 250 Matthews, Amanda, 112–113 Matthews, Miriam, 248, 259 Maytorena, José María, 210 Mazón, Mauricio, 234 Mazzini, Louis, 69 McCarey, Tom, 114–115 McCarthy, Patrick Henry, 170–171 McClung, William, 7–8, 102, 286n74 McDonald, Patrick M., 76, 77 McEuen, William W., 5, 116 McGroarty, John Steven, 5, 186, 204 McNamara, John J. and James B., 138, 141, 142, 154 McWilliams, Carey, 5, 98, 104, 205, 250, 286n78 Mead, Minor M., 133–134 Mendel, Louis, 76, 77 Mendoza, Francisca, 146 Mercado Plaza, 128–129, 130, 268 Merced Theater, 88 Merchants and Manufacturers Association, 140, 142, 285–286n65. See also Manufacturers Association; Merchants Association Merchants Association, 98, 100, 102, 285–286n65 Mesa Verde, 194

Meserve, Superintendent, 100 mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture), 27, 38, 39, 41 mestizos, 24–25, 27–28, 38, 39, 41, 205, 248 Methodist Church. See Plaza Methodist Church Mexicali, 193 Mexican art and architecture, xii, 13, 184, 207–212, 211 Mexican community/Mexican Americans: barrioization of, 104–105; and brown scare of revolutionary activism (1913–1918), 142–160; businesses of, 113, 116, 123–124, 129–132, 131, 268; and Chicano/Chicana Movement, 3, 254–255; and Club Los Pachucos, 234–235, 241; and deportation of “illegal” immigrants, 247; and diseases, 12, 170–173, 295n14; displacement of, by 1930s, 179–180; in early twentieth century, 110–116, 118–126, 134, 170–173; and evictions from Chavez Ravine, 252, 308n65; and gangs, 14, 234, 241; and Great Depression, 300n93; and immigrants’ rights movement, 258; and La Junta Patriótica de Juárez, 69–70; and Kennedy’s election, 254; in latter half of nineteenth century, 69–71, 278n58; lynchings of Mexicans, 60, 69, 71; Mexican workers in early twentieth century, 117, 118– 119, 121, 145, 151; México de afuera, 118–126; movie on, 203–204; negative stereotypes of and prejudice against, 104–105, 173, 203–204, 213, 242, 300n93; police violence and abuse against, 235–236, 255; population of, 111, 172, 180, 209; repatriation of Mexicans to Mexico, 198, 209–210, 210, 300n93; and Spanish-

language newspapers, 67–69; and Sterling’s project for preservation of missions, 241–242; surveys of, in early twentieth century, 172, 180; and Union Station celebration, 227, 228; and Zoot Suit Riots, 2, 233–234, 235. See also Catholicism; Sonoratown Mexican era: ayuntamiento during, 46, 71, 85–87; Catholicism in, 67; economy of Los Angeles during, 43–45, 48–51; government during, 50; governors’ inauguration ceremonies in Los Angeles during, 46, 49–50; immigrants to Los Angeles during, 47–48, 51, 276n20; Indians during, 44–45; location of Los Angeles Plaza during, 44; Los Angeles as capital of Alta California, 43, 46, 49; Los Angeles Plaza in, 9–10, 43–50; and Mexican Independence, 26, 43; plan of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Plaza during, 45; and plazas generally, 41, 43; political conflict between northern “centralists” and “federalists” of Southern California during, 46, 49; ranchos during, 44, 47, 54; wedding of Pío Pico during, 45–46 Mexican Independence, 26, 43, 156–157 Mexican Revolution: and Baja Revolution, 139–141, 146, 155; immigration of Mexicans into Los Angeles due to, 110, 138, 171, 172, 180; and Otis and Chandler’s land holdings in Baja California, 139–141; and PLM, 142–143, 156–157; political refugees from, 110, 156–157; and radical political activities in Italian Hall, 156–157; veterans of, 207, 210 Meyer, Eugène, 69

Index ˚ 345

Micheltorena, Manuel, 46, 49, 51 Milagro, Manuel, 126–127 Miller, Loren, 205 Milling Stone Period, 16 Miranda Rodriguez, Antonio, 71, 72, 281n110 The Mission Play, 186 Mission San Gabriel, 9, 16, 29–31, 36– 39, 41, 275n82, 286n74 missions: preservation of, 98–99, 241– 242; school at, 286n74; in Spanish colonial period, 9, 16, 18–20, 25–26, 29–31, 35–39. See also Spanish colonial period Mitchell, H. M., 73, 90 Moerenhout, Jacob A., 61 Molina, Natalia, 170, 171 Monroy, Douglas, 6, 287n3 Monterey, California, 19, 20, 29, 43, 45, 46, 49, 51, 54 Montes, Phil, 254–255 Montes, Rodolfo, 189–190 Moody, D. W., 76, 77 Moraga, José, 27 Morales, Raymond, 235–236 Morelli, Rosa, 297–298n56 Moreno, Eloisa L., 145 Moreno, Ezequiel, 129–131 Moreno, Rita, 203 Moreno, Rudy, 129 Mount Vernon, 194, 196 Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), 194 movies and movie stars: The Blue Angel, 207; Chaplin’s movies, 169; and Chief “Iron Eyes” Cody, 260; Edendale film colony, 155; The Good Earth, 221, 223, 224; Hough’s work in film industry, 183–184; and Latino Hollywood walk of fame, 260; Myrtle Gonzalez as silent movie star, 116; and Olvera Street night-

346

˚ the los angeles plaza

life, 237; Ramona, 296–297n44; The Ring, 203; Spanish-language movie company, 190; and Union Station opening, 227 mulatos/mulatas, 25, 28, 62, 204, 248, 250 Muni, Paul, 221 Muñoz, Trinidad, 70 murals, xii, 13, 184, 207–212, 212, 254, 302n40 Murieta, Joaquin, 60 music and dance: and California statehood celebration, 278n56; and Chavela Flores, 236–238, 239; at children’s pageant of nations, 218; dance halls, 121–123; at Gran Fiesta Obrera, 157; and Italian community, 118; Mexican American music group, 132; Mexican hat dance, 208; Olvera Street nightlife, 237, 238, 239; at Plaza generally, 158, 263; at political rallies, 156 MVLA (Mount Vernon Ladies Association), 194 National Association of Colored Women (NACW), 194 National Unemployment Insurance Day demonstration, 166 Native Americans. See Indians Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, 98–99, 188, 204, 243– 244, 303n41 Naud Junction, 114–115 Navidad, La, 21 Nazism, 209, 302n26 Negro/Nigger Ally. See Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks) negros (Africans), 25, 28, 248 Neumann, Kurt, 203–204 Neutra, Richard, 209 Neve, Felipe de: biographical infor-

mation on, 253; death of, 253; and establishment of civil pueblos in Alta California, 20, 27; and founding of Los Angeles, 27, 29–31, 33, 44, 92, 185, 274n65; as governor of California, 20, 27, 29–31, 33, 39; and Reglamento, 30–31, 39; statue of, 254 Neve, Theresa de, 30 New Calvary Cemetery. See Calvary Cemetery and New Calvary Cemetery New Chinatown, 190, 221, 223–224, 225, 229, 244. See also China City; Chinatown (Los Angeles) New Deal, 167, 237 New High Street, 73, 74, 115, 123, 150, 261 Newmark, Harris, 4, 64, 71–72, 84–85, 89–90, 278n56 Newmark, Joseph, 71–72 New Spain. See Spanish colonial period newspapers, 4–5, 64, 67–69, 120, 143– 145, 144, 155, 156, 190, 205, 209, 210. See also Los Angeles Times; and other specific newspapers New York City: Central Park in, 91–92; Greenwich Village in, 265 New York Times, 175 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 249 Nixon, Richard M., 252 Norman, Lucille, 146, 154–155, 157, 159 North Broadway, 11, 61, 113, 115, 123, 221, 279n70 North Spring Street, 113, 165, 176, 220, 221, 223, 261. See also Spring Street Norville, Maylon, 236–237 Obregón, Álvaro, 253 Ocampo, Francisco, 64, 71, 97, 276n17

Occidental College, 134 oil industry, 189, 212–213 Ojeda, Armando, 148–149 Old Chinatown. See Chinatown (Los Angeles) Olivares, Father Luis, 256, 257, 260 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 91–92, 264 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan (1930), 239 Olvera, Agustín, 87, 289n35 Olvera, Doña Concepción Arguello de, 289n35 Olvera adobe, 104, 289–290n35 Olvera Street: and anti-Mexico attitudes, 213; Avila Adobe on, 54; closure of, to vehicular traffic, 214–215; as ethnic theme park, 191–194, 191, 229, 299n75; marketplace on, xii, 2, 3, 8, 13, 161, 188–194, 191, 197–201, 198, 199, 224, 231–233; nightlife on, 237, 238, 239; opening of, 190; removal of undesirable businesses from, 232–233; Simpson lawsuit on, 214–215, 233, 241; Sterling as administrator of, 194, 196–197, 200, 206–207, 231–233, 241–242; Sterling as manager of, under state administration, 246, 248; Sterling’s creation of, 13, 188–194, 197–201; tenth anniversary of, 229, 231–233; and tourism, xii, 161–162, 165, 188–194, 197–201, 207, 213, 241–242; Valadez as manager of, 252–253; Zanja Madre (mother ditch) on, 2, 26, 34, 44, 56, 201, 300n101 Olympic Games, 115, 206, 207, 209, 302n40 O’Melveny, Henry W., 188, 226 open shop policy, 12, 110, 136, 140– 142, 156, 285–286n65 Operation Wetback, 247 Opinión, La, 190, 209, 210

Index ˚ 347

opium smuggling, 216 Ord, Edward O. C., 10, 54–56, 55 Ord Street, 220 Organize the Unemployed Campaign, 165 Oropesa, Faviana de, 69 Orozco, José Clemente, 184, 207 orphanage, 61, 143 Ortega, Don José María, 47 Ortega, Trinidad, 59 Orwell, George, 249 Otis, Harrison Gray: and Baja California land investments, 139–141; and civic center-Union Station movement, 175; and Los Angeles Times, 101, 135, 136; and Lummis, 101, 286n69; and Merchants and Manufacturers Association, 285–286n65; and Mexican Revolution, 139–141; and open shop policy, 136, 140– 142; and preservation of Los Angeles Plaza, 101; and Western Military Academy, 135 Our Lady Queen of Angels Church. See La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles Ovando, Nicolas de, 21 Owen, William C., 148, 292n35 Owens, Robert and Winnie, 62 Oxnam, G. Bromley, 5, 180 Pacific Press, 156 Packman, Ana Begue de, 249–250 padrino (godfather), 30 pageantry. See Cinco de Mayo; Dieciseis de Septiembre (Mexican Independence day); La Fiesta de Los Angeles; fiestas; parades Palacio, El, 58 Palma, Raoul, 157 Panama Canal, 180 Pan American Center plan, 238–240, 241 348

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parades, 13, 70, 84–85, 105, 206, 226– 227, 229, 248. See also fiestas Park, John, 299n83 Parkinson, Donald B., 226 Parkinson, John, 176 parks: California Park Commission, 238; and Cornfield, xiii, 266; Los Angeles Park, 89–90, 133; Los Angeles Plaza as, 10, 11, 65, 90–93, 100– 101, 133–134, 280n88; Los Angeles Plaza as State Historic Park and State Historic Landmark, 14, 245–247, 250–251; New York City Central Park, 91–92; and urban planning, 91–92, 177, 264, 284n29, 284n35 Parson, Don, 24, 41, 229 Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), 134, 139–147, 154–158 Pascoe, Peggy, 188 Paseo de Los Angeles. See Olvera Street pastores and pastorelas, 64, 67 Pearson, Sir Weetman, 189 Pelanconi, Antonio, 69, 97 Pelanconi House, 97 Peluffo, Mrs., 237 Penelon, Henri, 69 Perez Nieto, Manuel and Crispin, 38 Pershing Square, 89–90, 133, 161, 264 Phelan, James D., 170–171 Philadelphia, 206 Philip II, King, 20 Pickford, Mary, 184, 296–297n44 Pico, Andrés: and celebration for completion of telegraph, 66; death of, 84; home of, 86; land holdings of, 87; and Los Angeles Rangers, 60; and U.S. and Mexican War, 52, 53, 54, 277n31 Pico, María Ignacia Alvarado, 45, 59 Pico, Pío: and Chicago World’s Exposition (1893), 106–107; and city beautification, 87; death of, 103, 107; and death of brother Andrés, 84; family

of, 59; as governor during Mexican era, 2, 45, 49–50, 103; home of, 53, 102–103, 103; and horse racing, 58; and Pico House hotel, 2, 87–88; and U.S. and Mexican War, 52; wedding of, 45–46, 103 Pico, Salomon, 60 Pico House: architecture of, 87, 88, 97; and Communist Party, 163; construction of, 87; development of, xii; Estrada’s memories of, 2; and La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 103; as hotel, 63, 87–88; and July 4 celebration, 84–85; pastorelas performed at, 67; photographs of, 65, 88 Pico Street/Boulevard, 303n43 Pico Union, x Pitt, Leonard, 6, 51, 52, 295n14 Piuma, Giovanni, 117–118 Placita. See Los Angeles Plaza Placita church, La. See La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles plague, 12, 170–173 plays. See theaters and theater performances plaza abaja, la (lower plaza), 89 Plaza Community Center, 126, 127, 290n35 Plaza de Los Angeles Corporation, 190, 214 Plaza de Los Angeles Inc., 238–240 Plaza Firehouse, 71, 97, 225, 226, 267 Plaza Hotel, 128 Plaza House, 1, 97, 128, 131 Plaza Methodist Church, 126–127, 247, 289–290n35 Plaza Mexico, 309n7 plazas: in Costa Rica, 8; grid-plan plazas in Spanish colonial period, 20–25, 21, 27, 33–35, 34, 41; market plazas, 23; Mesoamerican plaza, 24; and Mexican urbanism, 41,

43; military occupation of, 51–52; monumental plazas, 23; organic plazas, 23; in Spain, 23–24; types of, 23. See also Los Angeles Plaza; urban planning PLM (Partido Liberal Mexicano), 134, 139–147, 154–158 pobladores (founders), 9, 13, 15, 26–33, 36–39, 41, 44, 71, 204–205, 247–250, 259, 262, 274n65, 307–308n54 police. See Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) political activism. See revolutionary activism Pollock, Jackson, 209 Ponet, Victor, 69 Pontrelli, Peter, 118 Porter, John C., 204, 206, 214 Portolá, Gaspar de, 19 Portrait of Present Day Mexico (Siqueiros), 208 posada, xi, 67, 251 prejudice: against Chinese community, 10, 71, 72, 73–78, 170, 216–217, 224–226, 228–229, 304n54; against Mexican community/Mexican Americans, 104–105, 173, 203–204, 213, 242, 300n93. See also African Americans; Chinese community; immigrants; Italian immigrants; Japanese immigrants; Mexican community/Mexican Americans preservation: of Alamo Mission in San Antonio, 196; of América Tropical by Siqueiros, xii, 254; of Avila Adobe, 185–187, 195–197, 298n56, 298n63; business support for, 188–189; and California Park Commission, 238; and Chandler, 184–186, 188–190, 199–200, 199; of Los Angeles Plaza, 5, 11, 13, 14, 99–103, 184, 185–201, 204–205; Los Angeles Plaza as State Historic Park and State Historic Index ˚ 349

Landmark, 14, 245–247, 250–251; of Lugo House, 242–245; and Lummis, 99–102, 186, 190, 201; of missions, 98–99, 241–242; in 1980s-1990s, 259–264, 261, 262; and Schoneman, 188; Sterling on, 243; Sterling’s preservation campaign, 5, 13, 14, 184, 185–201, 204–205, 308n69; women’s role in, 194–196 presidios, 19–20, 25–29, 36–38, 93–94. See also Spanish colonial period Price, Glenn W., 224–225, 247–248 Pridham, R. W., 100, 286n65 Prior, Nathaniel, 47 prize fighting. See boxing Progressive Era, 97, 109, 112–113, 115– 116, 169, 177, 188 Proposition 187, 256 prostitution, 56, 59, 93, 95–97, 100, 225–226, 263, 269 Protestantism, 67, 70–71, 126–127, 289–290n35 public health. See diseases public pageantry. See Cinco de Mayo; Dieciseis de Septiembre (Mexican Independence Day); La Fiesta de Los Angeles; fiestas; parades Puebla, Battle of, 69–70 Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles, El, 20, 31–41. See also Los Angeles; Spanish colonial period Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, El, 8, 196, 251, 259–270, 261, 299n87, 300n101. See also Los Angeles Plaza Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park, El, 14, 245–248, 250–251. See also Los Angeles Plaza pueblos, 17, 20, 25–41. See also Spanish colonial period Quai, Long, 75 Quai, Wa Sin, 75 350

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Quechan Revolt (1781), 29–30, 275n82 queer space, 265 Queirolo Street, 114 Quintero, Luis Manuel, 28 Quintero, María Petra, 28 race and ethnicity: and China City, 219–224; ethnic diversity in Los Angeles Plaza during early twentieth century, xii, 109–118, 173–175; and La Fiesta de Los Angeles, 13, 96, 97, 98, 103, 106, 107, 204–207, 208, 229, 249; of founders of Los Angeles, 227, 247–250, 259, 262, 307–308n54; and “Man in Our Changing World” museum exhibit, 248–249; and mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture), 27, 38, 39, 41; mestizo society in Spanish colonial period, 24–25, 27–28, 38, 39, 41; and myth of Spanish purity, 24–25, 27; Olvera Street as ethnic theme park, 191–194, 191, 229, 299n75; UNESCO Statement on Race, 248; and Union Square celebration, 247–248. See also African Americans; Chinese community; immigrants; Italian immigrants; Japanese immigrants; Mexican community/Mexican Americans; prejudice race riots. See violence racism. See prejudice Rader, Frank, 99, 102 radical political activism. See revolutionary activism radio, 132 Raft, George, 237 Raho, Padre Blas, 87 railroads: building of, 72, 73, 76, 79, 81, 85, 288n11; and China City, 219; and Chinese immigrants, 72, 220, 228; and economic growth of Los Angeles, 81; employment by, in Los

Angeles, 113, 116; and labor unions, 107; and New Chinatown, 221; and population growth of Los Angeles, 85; transcontinental railroad, 72, 81, 228n11; and Union Station, 177–181, 185–186, 215–219, 226–229 Rainer, Louise, 221 Ramirez, Francisco P., 68–69 Ramirez, Isabel, 97 Ramírez, José Antonio, 47 Ramona ( Jackson), 71, 98, 192, 296– 297n44, 305n81 Ranchería de Poblanos (Settlement of the People), 56 rancherías, 30, 35, 36–37, 56 Rancho La Brea, 16 ranchos and rancheros: end of, 73, 79, 81, 85; and Gold Rush, 58; during Mexican era, 44, 47, 54; in mid1850s, 57, 58, 64, 182–183; during Spanish colonial period, 9–10, 17, 35, 37–39, 41 real estate booms, 55–56, 62, 85 Rebelde, El, 156 Recinos, Luis Felipe, 121–124 Redfield, Robert, 121 Redondo Street, 179 Red Scare (1919–1920), 158. See also Communist Party Reed, Haimes W., 153 Reed, John Ross, 227 Reed, John Silas, 301n14 Regeneración, 143–145, 144, 152, 155–158 Reglamento, 30–31, 39 Renaissance, 22, 23 repatriation, 198, 209–210, 210, 212, 300n93. See also deportation of “illegal” immigrants Republic Street, 117, 128 restaurants, 2, 113, 116, 123, 128, 138, 200, 225, 237, 250, 254, 255 revolutionary activism: Bolshevik

Revolution and Red Scare (1919– 1920), 158; bombing of Llewellyn Iron Works plant, 140; bombing of Los Angeles Times building, 136, 138, 140, 141, 154; and brown scare (1913–1918), 142–160; and Chinese Revolution, 134–136, 137; and Christmas Day Riot, 148–154, 292n40; and Communist Party, 158, 160–167, 197–198, 206–207, 213, 301n14, 302n40; and free speech in Los Angeles Plaza, 142, 153–154; and Goldman, 12, 134, 146, 147; and Harriman, 134; and Industrial Workers of the World (iww), 134, 140, 142, 146–154, 155, 158, 291– 292n33; and John Reed Club, 206– 207, 301n14; and Lea, 134–136; in Los Angeles Plaza, 4–5, 12, 133–167, 186, 197–198, 213, 231; and Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), 134, 139– 147, 154–158; and police activism against radicals, 148–154, 156, 161, 163, 165–166; and Sinclair, 134; and Socialist Party, 134. See also Mexican Revolution Reyes, Francisco, 39, 250 Reyes, Inocencia, 53 Ricardo Flores Magón (town of), 253–254 Rieff, David, 191–192, 299n75 Riley, Bernard, 54 Rimpau, Theodore and Francisca, 71, 187, 297n56 Ring, The, 203–204 Río de la Porciúncula, El. See Los Angeles River Rios, Lalo, 203 Ríos-Bustamante, Antonio, 28, 288n11 riots. See violence Rivera, Concha, 146 Rivera, Diego, 184, 207 Rivera, Librado, 145, 157 Index ˚ 351

Rivera y Moncada, (Alférez) Fernando, 19, 27, 28–29, 31 Rivers, Joe, 115, 146 Rivolta, La, 156 Rix, Alfred and Chastina, 182 Rix, Edward Austin, 182–183 Rix, John (earl of Oxford), 182 Robinson, Charles Mulford, 176–177 Robinson, William Wilcox, 5, 46, 61, 96, 274n61, 278n52, 279n74 Rodriguez, Pablo, 27–28 Rodriguez, Raymond, 242 Rodriguez, Richard, 258 Rodriguez, Rosalina María, 28 Roland, Betty, 237 Rolph, James “Sunny Jim”, Jr., 206 Romans, 21–22 Romero, Oscar Arnulfo, 256 Romo, Ricardo, 127, 180 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 224 Roosevelt, Franklin, 167, 238 Rosas, Basilio, 38, 204 Rosas, José Carlos, 38 Rosas, Máximo, 38 Royal Ordinances (1573), 22, 33 Roybal, Edward R., 252, 254 Ruchti, Warren, 176 Ryan, Mary P., 6, 55–56 Ryan, Tommy, 114 Sacco and Vanzetti execution, 161, 163, 164 Sache, Richard, 177 Sacramento, 73, 125–126, 135 Saenz, Lillian (Estrada), 1–2 Saint Elmo Hotel, 88 Salas, Frieda I., 308n69 Salas, Joe, Jr., 235 Salas, José ( Joe), 115, 234, 235 Salazar, José Ines, 1 Salazar, Miguel, 1 Salazar, Ruben, 255 Salomon, Joseph, 149 352

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San Antonio, 20, 121, 160, 196 Sanchez, George, 6 Sanchez, Tomas, 277n31 Sanchez, Vicente, 46, 51, 277n31 Sanchez Street, 87, 150, 277n31 San Diego: Anglo urban development in, 93–94; iww in, 146; and Kamias Revolt (1775), 275n82; Pico family in, 84; Spanish colonization of, 18, 19, 29; unemployed white laborers in, 73; during U.S. and Mexican War, 53–54 San Fernando Street, 156 San Francisco: Castro district in, 265; Chinese in, 73, 76, 77, 135, 220, 225; earthquake (1906) in, 115; and horse racing in Los Angeles, 58; labor unions in, 110, 136; railroad connecting Los Angeles and, 85; in Spanish colonial period, 20, 27; Sterling’s youth in, 182–183, 220, 225; Tenderloin district of, 93 San Francisco Morning Call, 106 San Gabriel Mission. See Mission San Gabriel Sanger, Margaret, 143 San José, 27 San Juan Capistrano, 94 San Pascual, Battle of, 53 San Pedro Street, 58, 219 Santa Barbara: Anglo urban development in, 93, 94; Chinatown in, 93; Chumash in, 17; circus in, 82; founding of, 27, 93; lawsuit by Josefa Moreno de la Guerra against city hall in, 93; and Mexican independence, 43, 44; Old Spanish Days in, 229; pueblo viejo in, 93; in Spanish colonial period, 36, 281n110 Santa Fe, 20 Santa Fe Railroad, 116, 177, 226. See also railroads; Union Station Santa María, Padre Vicente de, 39

Santa Monica Bay, 16, 18 Santo Domingo, 9, 21, 21 Saxton, Alexander, 304n54 Schey, Peter, 257 schools: Catholic schools, 88–89, 244–245, 283n22, 286n74; Chinese grammar schools, 218; Estrada’s memories of, 2, 3; kindergarten, 116; Loyola University, 244–245, 283n22; public schools on founders of Los Angeles, 248, 249; Western Military Academy, 134–136 Scott, John, 133–134 Second Street, 82–83, 111 See, Eddy, 242 See, Lisa, 220 Seguro, Pedro, 70, 303n43 Sein, E. M., 127 Sepúlveda, Eloisa Martinez de, 97 Sepúlveda, Ignacio, 77 Sepúlveda, José Andrés, 58 Sepúlveda, Juan, 87 Sepúlveda House, 95, 97, 206 Serra, Father Junipero, 19, 25, 247, 251 sesquicentennial celebration in Los Angeles, 13, 204–207, 208 settlement house movement, 115–116 sewer system, 170, 171 Sherman, Moses H., 139, 188 Shishima, Hiroshi “Bill,” 128–129, 268 Shishima, Katsuke and Hatsuko, 128 Shishima, Takeshi, 130 Shishima, Toru, 130 shoeshine boys (bootblacks), 120, 121 Silvas, Hinlo, 70 Silver Lake, 155 Simpson, Constance Deighton, 214– 215, 232, 233, 241, 303n43 Simpson, Henry Williams, 303n43 Simpson-Jones Building, 95, 250, 251, 303n43 Sinclair, Upton, 134 Siqueiros, Angélica Arenal de, 209

Siqueiros, David Alfaro, xii, 13, 207– 212, 211, 254, 302n40 Sisters of Charity, 61 Sitton, Tom, 6 Sixth Street, 156, 177 Sklar, Carl, 165 slavery, 17, 57, 62, 68, 272n11 smallpox epidemic, 30, 61, 281n110 Smith, A. J., 62 Smith, Jedediah, 3 Smith, Robert and Rebecca, 62 Smith, Solly, 115 social gospel movement, 126 Socialist Party, 134, 151, 153, 156 Soja, Edward W., 7 Sola, Pablo Vicente de, 44 Sonoratown: Anglos’ perceptions of, 66; beginning of, 10, 58, 278n58; boxing in, 114–115; and diseases, 170–173, 295n14; displacement of Mexican residents from, by 1930s, 179–180, 252; in early twentieth century, 110–116, 114; house courts of, 111–113, 114; industries in, 113– 114, 116; Mexican immigrants in, 11, 81–82, 104, 110–116; poverty of, 111; and settlement house movement, 115–116; surveys of, in early twentieth century, 172, 180; and Union Station, 180. See also Mexican community/Mexican Americans Soo Hoo, Peter, 221 Soon, Qing-ling, 137 Sorkin, Michael, 193 Sousa, Benjamin, 200 Southern Pacific Railroad, 76, 81, 85, 113, 116, 177, 221, 226, 288n11. See also railroads; Union Station South Hill Street, 156. See also Hill Street Spanish colonial period: architecture and buildings in, 26, 31; economy of Los Angeles during, 36; exploration Index ˚ 353

and colonization of Alta California, 18–20; founding and founders of Los Angeles in, 9, 13, 14, 15, 20, 26– 33, 36–39, 41, 44, 71, 204–205, 247– 250, 259, 262, 274n65, 307–308n54; government during, 50; grid-plan plaza during, 20–25, 21, 27, 33–35, 34, 41; Indians during, 24–25, 28–31, 35–39, 41, 275n82; indigenous roots of Los Angeles Plaza during, 15–17; inhabitants of Los Angeles during, 31–33; and Laws of the Indies, 20, 22–23, 27, 33; location of Los Angeles Plaza during, 30; Los Angeles Plaza in, 9, 26–27, 31–41; map of Los Angeles Plaza during, 40; marriage during, 38, 41, 204; mestizo society in, 24–25, 27–28, 38, 39, 41; missions and missionaries during, 9, 16, 18–20, 25–26, 29–31, 35–39; and myth of Spanish purity, 24–25, 27; plan of Los Angeles Plaza during, 31, 33, 34; presidios in, 19–20, 25–29, 36–38; pueblos in, 17, 20, 25–41; ranchos in, 9–10, 17, 35, 37–39, 41; and Reglamento, 30–31, 39; and Royal Ordinances (1573), 22, 33; size of Los Angeles Plaza during, 33; social relations between Indians and settlers in Los Angeles, 35–41; town planning in, 9, 20–25, 21, 27–41, 34, 40 Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, 215–216, 226, 305n81 Spanish myth, 24–25, 27, 98 Spaulding, Summer, 209 speech in public places, 142, 151–154, 164, 193, 247 Spring Street, 56, 63, 75, 123, 145, 160, 220, 265. See also Buena Vista Street; North Spring Street Stanford, Frederick, 69 Starr, Kevin, 201 Stearns, Abel, 58 354

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Steinbeck, John, 298n60 Stephens, Jess, 178 stereotypes. See immigrants; prejudice Sterling, Christine: as administrator of Plaza area, 194, 196–197, 200, 206– 207, 231–233, 241–242; and América Tropical mural, 209, 211–212; attitude of, toward Chinese, 224–226; and Avila Adobe preservation, 185– 187, 195–197, 298n56; children of, 183, 200; and China City, 219–224, 226, 227; choice of last name by, 299n83; and closure of Olvera Street to vehicular traffic, 214–215; and Club Los Pachucos, 234–235, 241; death of, 253; diary of, 299n87; education of, 183; family background and early life of, 181–183, 220; and fires in China City, 224; and historic statues and plaques, 303n41; home of, 252; and Lugo House, 242–245; as manager of Olvera Street under state administration, 246, 248; marriages of, 183–184, 194, 299n83; Olvera Street Mexican marketplace created by, 188–194, 191, 197–201, 198, 199; photographs of, 183, 198; and Plaza as State Historic Park, 245–247, 250, 251; and Plaza de Los Angeles redevelopment proposal (1948), 238–240; political lobbying by, 187–188, 214–215, 231–233, 245–246; preservation of Los Angeles Plaza by, 5, 13, 14, 184, 185–201, 204–205, 238–240, 308n69; and preservation of missions, 241–242; as Republican, 251–252; and Simpson lawsuit, 214–215, 233, 241; and tenth anniversary of Olvera Street, 229, 231–233; and Union Station celebration, 226, 227 Stevenson, Colonel, 60–61 Stevenson, Jonathan D., 59

Stimson, Marshall, 178–179 Stockton, Robert F., 3, 51–54, 195, 297n56 Stoddard, Alexander J., 249 streetcars, 133 streets. See Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks); Los Angeles Street; Main Street; Olvera Street; urban planning; and other specific streets street vending, 123–124, 152, 155, 260, 292n50 Sunset Boulevard, 113, 114, 176 Sun Wing Wo store, 11, 112, 128 Sun Yat-sen, 12, 135–136, 137 Supreme Court. See California Supreme Court; U.S. Supreme Court Tafolla, Fernando, 257 Talavera, María, 146, 154–155, 157, 159 Tanaka, Sentaro, 130 Tapia, Bartolo, 289n35 Tapia, Tiburcio, 289n35 Taylor, Quintard, 62 telegraph, 66 Temple, John, 58, 66 Temple Street, 10, 66, 74, 83, 165 Tenochtitlán, 24 Teodoli, Eduardo, 69 Terrile, Luigi, 117 Texas revolt (1836), 51 Thalberg, Irving, 221 theaters and theater performances, 1, 64, 88, 116, 117, 132, 157, 186, 198 Thompson, Robert, 73 Tierra y Libertad (manifesto by Flores Magón), 155 Tijuana, 193, 200, 289n35 Times Square West, 264 Tong, Chee Long, 75, 77 Tong, Chin Lee, 75 Tong, Poo Ji, 69 Tongva, 9, 260. See also Gabrielinos Topete, Fausto, 210, 302n31

Toranzo, Consuelo Hernandez de, 189 Torres, “Big” Johnny, 238 tourism: and China City, 219–224, 222, 226; and Chinatown, 217; and Disneyland, 191–192, 299n75; MacCannell on touristic space, 240; in Mexico, 193, 200; and Olvera Street, xii, 161–162, 165, 188–194, 191, 197– 201, 198, 199, 207, 213, 241–242; and Padua Hills Theatre in Claremont, 198; and Venice of America, 192 town planning. See urban planning Townsend Street, 164 Toypurina (curandera), 37 Trade Union Unity League, 165, 197 Train and Williams architects, 127 trains. See railroads Travis, William B., 196 Treaty of Cahuenga, 54, 59 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 54, 56 Trowbridge, Elizabeth Darling, 146 Tuck, Wong, 74, 76 Tucson, 20 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 20, 106 Turner, Lana, 237 unemployment, 165 UNESCO Statement on Race, 248 Union Pacific Railroad, 177, 226. See also railroads; Union Station unions. See labor unions Union Station, 177–181, 186, 215–219, 226–229 urban planning: and City Beautiful movement, 176–177, 180, 188; courthouse-square model of, 105; for Los Angeles, 10, 33–35, 34, 54– 56, 55, 85–87, 175–181, 229, 264; in medieval Europe, 22, 23; and parks, 91–92, 177, 264, 284n29, 284n35; in Renaissance, 22, 23; by Romans, 21–22; separation of pedestrian movement from motorized traffic, Index ˚ 355

287n79; in Spain, 23–24; in Spanish colonial period, 9, 20–25, 21, 27–41, 34, 40. See also architecture and buildings; plazas Uribe, María Francisca, 47, 276n17 U.S. and Mexican War (1846–1848), 51–54, 62, 195, 257, 277n31 U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 255 U.S. Department of Labor, 209 U.S. District Court, 66, 70 U.S. Supreme Court, 179, 294n94 utility companies, 89 Valadez, Belle, 199 Valadez, Mario, 234, 252–253 Valentino, Rudolph, 184 Valenzuela, Joaquin, 60 Valle, Ignacio del, 58 Valle, Reginaldo del, 70 Valle, Ygnacio del, 71 Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe, 183 Vanzetti and Sacco execution, 161, 163, 164 vaqueros, 39, 62 Vaux, Calvert, 91 Velasco, Alejandro Díaz, 213, 302n31 Velez, Lupe, 237 Venegas, Daniel, 124–125 Venice of America, 192 Verdugo, Mariano and José María, 38 vice. See gambling; prostitution Vickery/Brunswig Building, 97 Vietnam War, 255 Vignes, Jean Louis, 48, 68 Villa, Francisco “Pancho,” 158, 253 Villa, Raúl Homero, 7, 60 Villaraigosa, Antonio, 264, 265 Villarreal, Adolfo Moncado, 155 Villarreal, Antonio I., 155 vineyards. See viticulture violence: bombing of Llewellyn Iron Works plant, 140; bombing of Los Angeles Times building, 136, 138, 356

˚ the los angeles plaza

140, 141, 154; against Chinese immigrants, 10, 71, 73–78, 217; Christmas Day Riot, 148–154, 292n40; in 1850s-1870s, 59–61, 72–73; Indian violence, 29–30, 60, 275n82; and lynching, 60, 69, 71, 73–77; by Mexican bandits, 60; by police against Mexican Americans, 235–236, 255; by police against radicals, 148–154, 156, 161, 163, 165–166; against poor and disenfranchised, 133–134; Watts riot, 255; and Zoot Suit Riots, 2, 233–234, 235 Virgen de Guadalupe, La, 260, 263, 309n7 viticulture, 48, 68, 69 Vitruvius, 21–22 Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 18, 19 Von Sternberg, Joseph, 207 Waa, Ah, 76 Wai Leong Hong (Good People Protective Association), 78 Wall Street, 157 Wan, Ah, 76 Wan, Chang, 75 Wan, Tong, 75 Warner, J. J., 69 Warren, Earl, 238, 246 Washington, George, 84, 194, 196 Washington Centennial, 206 water company, 89, 92 water system. See zanja (ditch) water system water tank, 65, 89, 92 Watts, 180, 255 WCTU (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union), 97 Weatherwax, John M., 307–308n54 Weaver, John D., 205 Weber, Devra, xi–xiii, 110, 121 Weber, Monsignor Francis J., 6 Weinberger, Harry, 158

Weissmuller, Johnny, 237 Welles, Orson, 237 Werlein, Elizabeth Thomas, 195 Western Military Academy, 134–136 Wheeler, Frederick C., 153 whippings, 64 Whipple, Arthur, 236 White, Thomas, 154 Whittier Boulevard, 255, 279n70 Widney, Robert Maclay, 77 Wilson, Wilfred, 235–236 Wilson, Woodrow, 157 wineries. See viticulture Wing, Ah, 114–115 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World (iww) Wolfskill, William, 69 Wolgast, Ad, 146 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 97 women: African American women, 62–63, 63, 248, 259; Indian women, 56; as labor organizers, 146; and PLM, 146, 157; and prostitution, 56, 59, 93, 95–97, 100; radical political activism by, 12, 134, 146, 147, 157, 166; role of, in historic preservation, 194–196. See also specific women women’s clubs, 188, 194–195 Wong, Ruth, 267 Wong, Sai Po, 128 Wong, Tyrus, 128, 267 Workingman’s Party, 170

Workman, Elijah Hook, 92–93 World War I, 157, 158, 216 World War II, 167, 294n96 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 176 Wright, Lloyd, 176 Yaanga, 9, 15, 17, 30, 35, 40, 48, 56, 274n61, 278n52 Yale Street, 221 Ybarra, Gil, 115, 288n11 Ybarra, José, 115 Yoneda, Hideo and Kazu, 162 Yoneda, Karl Goso, 162–167, 166, 267, 293–294n80, 294n96 Young China Society, 136 Young Pioneers, 164 youth gangs. See gangs Yu, Fun, 76 Zabatela, Pantelon, 70 zanja (ditch) water system, 2, 9, 21, 26, 34, 39, 44, 56, 201, 261, 266, 300n101 Zanja Madre (mother ditch), 2, 26, 34, 44, 56, 201, 261, 266, 300n101 Zapata, Emiliano, 155 Zeehandelaar, Felix J., 286n65 Zimmerman letter, 158 zoot suit, 234 Zoot Suit Riots, 2, 233–234, 235, 241 Zucker, Paul, 24 Zuñiga, (Alférez) José de, 29–30, 31

Index ˚ 357