The Forgotten Alley in the Fashion District

 

I know the Fashion District well...or so I thought.

It's no secret that some Fashion District businesses are accessible only through alleys. Heck, the Santee Alley is quite well known to locals (and even tourists).

I never noticed that one of the District's alleys had a French name...but in my defense, it doesn't have any signage. You can only see the name on maps.

East Ducasse Alley, which runs from San Pedro Street to Crocker Street between 10th and 12th Streets, is all that remains of the Ducasse Tract. Mark at LA Street Names sent me this map of the Ducasse Tract, surveyed in 1889.

Peter Leon "P.L."Ducasse was born in San Francisco to French immigrants and worked as a court translator, translating both French and Spanish. He was an occasional delegate for the local Democratic Party, a sometime deputy, and a friend of local attorney M.V. Biscailuz. Ducasse was married to a woman named Margaret; they had two children named Grace and Eugene.

Ducasse's mother, Marie Larceval, died in 1886, leaving an estate. The land dubbed the Ducasse Tract was sold by Ducasse to James Pedgrift, John Grant, and James Smith in 1887.

Ducasse made the news a few times: he fought with another interpreter, complained about low wages, and on one occasion was arrested for assaulting a bartender who ejected him from the saloon. (One wonders if he had picked up some of Biscailuz's drinking habits; Biscailuz was known for drinking himself to the point of what a judge called "temporary insanity".)

Ducasse died in 1907 from sarcoma of the neck. It is perhaps fitting that a forgotten man lent his name to an alley that bears no signage to distinguish it from any of the other alleys downtown.

Save the French Hospital!

Dear Readers: the French Hospital is in danger of being torn down by a San Francisco developer. 

I have sent the following letter to the Office of Historic Resources and to the Cultural Heritage Commission. 

Should you wish to do the same, here is the Office of Historic Resources' directory and the Cultural Heritage Commission's email address is chc@lacity.org.

Dear Principal City Planner Bernstein et. al., 

I am writing to inform the Office of Historic Resources that a San Francisco developer wishes to tear down a historic hospital associated with a long-lost ethnic community. They are claiming, falsely, that there are no historic buildings on or adjacent to the site. The case file can be viewed here: https://planning.lacity.gov/pdiscaseinfo/search/casenumber/ENV-2025-3354-EAF

I have spent the past 12 years documenting and mapping Los Angeles’ once-thriving French and Francophone community (about 14 percent of the city’s 1860 population alone per census data), which was based in what is now Little Tokyo/the Arts District. 531 W. College Street was the French Hospital from 1870 to 1989.

French and Italian Angelenos laid the cornerstone for the original adobe hospital building in 1869. The only other hospital in Los Angeles at the time was St. Vincent’s, making the French Hospital the first non-sectarian hospital in the city. The hospital was rebuilt and modernized in 1915, with an expansion added in 1926. An old Chinatown legend has it that part of the original adobe hospital building is encased within the 1915 hospital’s walls. 

I would like to invite you to examine Sanborn fire insurance maps from before and after the 1915 rebuild. The two hospitals have similarities to their footprints, and it’s certainly possible that a portion of the 1869 hospital may indeed remain. Further, who knows what may be buried underneath the 1915-1926 building? At bare minimum, an archeological survey needs to be conducted.

For over a decade, I have spoken for the lost French Colony because no one else was representing it accurately. I will speak for this hospital. It is indeed a historic building, and it matters to generations of French Angelenos and their descendants. It is also significant to the Chinatown community and to the countless Angelenos of all ethnicities who were born or treated at the hospital over the past 155 years.

The French Colony vanished with virtually no traces during the postwar era. There are NO surviving buildings from the former Colony proper, and the core of the community - the original intersection of Alameda and Aliso Streets - gave way to freeway development in 1953. Only two surviving street names - Vignes and Ducommun - testify to the fact that it ever existed.

This hospital is one of a VERY few rare survivors related to the Colony. Must it go the way of California’s first commercial vineyard, the original headquarters of California’s oldest corporation, and the dozen or so hotels that formerly catered to French newcomers (all of which formerly stood in the Colony)? Surely a solution can be found that doesn’t require its destruction.

Sincerely,

C.C. de Vere

Nerd-in-Chief, frenchtownconfidential.blogspot.com

The French Hospital Is Critically Endangered

 In 1869, members of the French Benevolent Society laid the cornerstone of LA's original French Hospital - not in the French Colony, but a mile away on the edge of town where it was significantly easier and cheaper to buy four adjoining lots. 

That original hospital building was a two-story adobe, and when the FBS ran out of money during construction, they opened the finished ground floor while raising more money to finish the upstairs. A wooden dormitory building was constructed onsite to house the nurses.

The hospital was rebuilt and modernized in 1915, then expanded in 1926, and it's long been rumored that a portion of the original adobe building is entombed within its walls. 

The French Hospital became Pacific Alliance Medical Center in 1989, then became an urgent care center when it was sold to Allied Pacific in 2018. Allied Pacific rehabilitated the building rather than replacing it.

Unfortunately, this is Los Angeles, and a developer wants to tear it down for a mixed-use building. They are falsely claiming there are no historic buildings on the site.

Oh, and the developer isn't even local. Applicant AGI Avant Group Partners LLC is a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco. Representative 531 W College LLC is also a Delaware corporation (although the two people associated with it are both in Alhambra). 

I'm firing off a letter to both the Cultural Heritage Commission and the Office of Historic Resources right now (to be posted VERY soon). 

So I Had To Write Another Letter To The Editor...

Dear Editors:

Today's otherwise delightful article on LA's oldest restaurants contained a factual error. 

It stated "At Philippe’s second, current home — where it’s stood since 1918..." and unfortunately, that's not accurate. 

I have been working on a map of French and Francophone history in Los Angeles since 2013. 

From 1908 to 1918, Philippe the Original stood on Alameda Street, south of Temple Street.  The restaurant moved to Alameda Street east of Los Angeles Street in 1918. Another location (purchased by Philippe Mathieu in 1925) stood on Aliso near Alameda Street - the core of the now-lost French Colony. (In fact, all of the first three locations were within the French Colony's original boundaries of Aliso Street, Main Street, First Street, and the river.)

The restaurant stayed on Aliso Street until 1951 (you can even see it in the background of that infamous 1948 picture of a train crashing through a wall at Union Station and hanging over Aliso Street), when plans for the 101 prompted its move to its current location in Chinatown.

Thank you.

P.S. On a personal note, my parents used to go to Philippe's on dates. 

All About the Amars

Le Guide Français claims that Edouard Amar's name "was once synonymous with San Pedro". I suspect this is a slight exaggeration, although I can confirm that he played a significant role in its history.

Like so many other French immigrants in Southern California, Edouard was a sheep rancher, raising tens of thousands of sheep on Rancho Alamitos while building some of San Pedro's earliest bungalows and developing Pacific Avenue's commercial district. In fact, a residential street in northeastern San Pedro still bears the name Amar Street and the San Pedro News Pilot dubbed him "the Father of Pacific Street".

Amar was well-liked; he was the Grand Marshal of the annual Bastille Day celebration in 1889, the one hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. In 1889, San Pedro was relatively remote, much smaller than it is now, and technically not part of the City of Los Angeles (which didn't absorb San Pedro until 1909). 

Amar's accomplishments sadly didn't shield him from tragedies. His first wife Marie Garineaux died at the young age of 32 in 1887, leaving Edouard to raise their two-year-old daughter Irma.

Edouar remarried the following year, this time to Josephine Boisserand, who hailed from his Alpine hometown of St. Bonnet. 

By 1895, the Amars had lost three babies to croup - Edouard at one year, Emmanuel at one month, and Henri at nine months. Leon and Eloi survived infancy.

Leon was a bright, promising student who played cornet in the Angel Gate youth band, served as president of the Fifteenth Street School's literary society (Fifteenth Street School, which is now an elementary school, also housed San Pedro High School at the time), and began attending Santa Clara College in San Jose at seventeen. 

Unfortunately, Leon was also diabetic, and diabetes was much harder to treat in the early twentieth century than it is now. His health took a turn for the worse in 1912, and in September of 1913, his worsening condition resulted in being taken to Sisters' Hospital (aka St. Vincent's), then located in Echo Park.

Leon's surviving siblings were summoned. Irma, by this time married and living in San Francisco, could not get to Los Angeles in time to say goodbye to her youngest brother. Eloi, who was in Imperial County at the time (Edouard owned a ranch in Brawley), was also unable to get to the hospital quickly enough. Leon's remains were handled by Godeau & Martinoni, with a funeral at the Plaza Church and interment at Calvary Cemetery. Six of his schoolmates served as pallbearers. 

1938 press photo of Eloi Amar

Eloi was a football star at St. Vincent's College (Loyola Marymount University), spent a year studying in Europe (picking up French, Spanish, Italian, and even Basque), raised sheep with his father and cattle on Catalina Island (of which he was general manager under the Bannings and the Wrigleys), got into the mercantile business, and was organizer and president of the San Pedro Golf and Country Club. He was a very popular man about town in San Pedro; hardly any organization didn't boast Eloi or his wife Bessie as a member.

Eloi eventually became president of the Harbor Commission. It would prove to be his downfall - at least temporarily. 

Dr. Geraldine Knatz has a great write-up on Eloi's alleged misdeeds, so I won't rehash it here. TL;DR: gambling.

But don't feel too bad for Eloi. While he was found guilty, he soon landed a job as General Manager of the Long Beach Harbor Department and got his revenge on Los Angeles by shifting as much business as possible to Long Beach, which was flush with oil money at the time.

Gone Too Soon: Pierre Louis Eschardies

Pierre Louis Eschardies Jr., known as "Pete" to his friends, had it all, or was about to.

Tall, dark, and athletic, Pete was born in Los Angeles to French immigrant parents in 1893. He was named for his uncle Pierre and his father Louis.

Pete may have been mechanically inclined from a young age - the 1910 census lists a teenage Pete as a helper in a foundry.

Pete was a noted amateur boxer, a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and according to the Los Angeles Herald "one of the most daring road drivers who ever tackled a mountain race."

The automobile industry was young, and Pete was already one of its rising stars, at least on the West Coast.

Pete worked for J.W. Leavitt, first as a mechanic, then adding sales to his skill set. 

Leavitt's firm sold Overland and Willys-Knight cars, but took over Chevrolet sales from the Ryus Motor Car Company (sources disagree over whether this was in 1916 or 1917). 

In 1915, the manager of Chevrolet's sales division and driver Fred Aubert came up with the idea of demonstrating the new Chevrolet 490 by lighting up Mount Wilson on Labor Day evening and racing the car to the top, setting a record driving time of 36 minutes (hey, it was 1915!). The race took place again on Labor Day, 1916, but Aubert was injured in an accident on a practice run, and a replacement driver had to be arranged on very short notice. About twenty Chevrolet salesmen clamored for the chance, but Pete, or "Wild Pete", as the newspaper called him, was selected.

Pete spent Labor Day in its entirety making practice runs up and down Mount Wilson to familiarize himself with the 120 curves along its 9.5 miles of road. By 7:30 pm, it was dark and foggy, and Pete was tired, but about a thousand spectators were waiting to watch Pete drive the 490 up the mountain. 

In the words of the Los Angeles Herald:

With a roar and a blast Pete was on his way. With lights flashing in and out around the curves and in the canyons, he climbed rapidly upward until he was lost in a fog bank three miles from the top. A few minutes of anxious suspense and then a great red flare broke out at the summit announcing that he had arrived safely.

Pete not only made it to the top of Mount Wilson despite the fog and a long day of practice runs - he set a new record of 35 minutes.

Pete quickly worked his way up to Chevrolet sales manager in 1918 at the tender age of 25. The buzz around Auto Row that summer was that Pete was going to marry his sweetheart, Esther Lind, and then go off to fight in World War One (he had registered for the draft the year before). It didn't quite pan out that way.

Shortly after World War One ended, the Spanish influenza pandemic broke out, and several members of the Eschardies household were stricken. 

The Spanish flu was a brutal killer, claiming the lives of many otherwise perfectly healthy adults. On the night of January 8, 1919, it became apparent that Pete was not going to live for much longer.

Despite quarantine restrictions, someone sent for Esther Lind and a minister. Esther stood on the Eschardies' porch, Pete's bedside window was opened, and the minister performed the marriage ceremony.

Pete died the next day and is buried at Calvary Cemetery. 

The French (and Italian) Funeral Home

It's not exactly a secret that San Francisco had quite a large French community of its own. Hell, San Francisco had an active French Hospital until relatively recently (it still exists, but is now a "campus" of a larger hospital).

Julius Stephen Godeau, who went by J.S. Godeau professionally, was born in San Francisco to French immigrant parents. He was a director of the aforementioned French Hospital and belonged, incredibly, to 40 fraternal organizations.

Atkins-Massey, founded during the Gold Rush and by far the oldest funeral home in the city, went up for sale in 1895. Godeau snapped it up.

Godeau went on to open an Oakland branch, and much later, one in Stockton. But in 1910, Los Angeles beckoned.

Ad for Godeau & Martinoni, March 11, 1910.
Do note that "Lady attendant" probably refers to Katherine Martinoni.

Godeau knew that the growing city of Los Angeles had large French and Italian communities, and sought to tap that market. But he couldn't be everywhere at once, and travel took longer in those days. So he took business partners for the Los Angeles branch - James Martinoni and his wife Katherine Piombo Martinoni. (Godeau and Martinoni may have known each other due to their mutual membership in a fraternity, the Ancient Order of Druids.) James held the role of funeral director, Katherine was a mortician.

Yes, there was a woman working as a mortician in Los Angeles over 100 years ago. Pretty cool, huh?

James passed away just a few years later in 1914, but Katherine kept working.

Excerpt from James Martinoni's 1914 death notice. Like Godeau, he was a high-ranking member of multiple fraternities.

1910 news blurb from the Times. Godeau's membership in 40 fraternities very likely brought in a good amount of referral business, as in this case of a deceased Mason.

1910 ad from The Tidings, published by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.

In an interesting coincidence, J.S. Godeau poached a hardworking teenage boy from a rival's casket business - Raymond Malburg, future son-in-law of J.B. Leonis - to work at the Los Angeles branch. Raymond, who had started out building coffins, became a mortician himself.

In Godeau and Martinoni's early days, the mortuary was located at 827 South Figueroa Street, and young Raymond lived onsite (as did the Martinonis). It later moved to "Mortuary Row" on Washington Boulevard.

The Martinonis' niece, Florine Olivieri, helped with the books while earning her degree in Accounting at Southwest University. 

It's not unusual for members of an ethnic or cultural community to patronize each others' businesses, and Godeau and Martinoni received a good amount of their business from the French and Italian communities of Los Angeles. 

1913 funeral announcement for Leon Amar, teenage son of San Pedro pioneer Edward Amar. 

1912 funeral notice for French immigrant Emil Louis Barclay. 
The notice references the Court Français and the Legion Français - one wonders if Godeau belonged to either or (more likely) both.

1913 funeral notice for Italian immigrant Mary Magdalena Zanoni

1913 funeral notice for French immigrant Joseph Luquet

1919 funeral announcement for Pierre Louis Eschardies.

1913 funeral announcement for French immigrant Antoine Begon

There are far too many funeral notices to post here; suffice it to say that Godeau and Martinoni was a very busy firm for decades.

Godeau and Martinoni even handled the funeral for Mickey Cohen's infamous bodyguard Johnny Stompanato.

When Katherine Martinoni passed away in 1938, 30-year-old Florine took over as senior partner (working with two transplanted brothers from Ohio, Dick and Frank Palmieri), staying until her own death in 1968.

J.S. Godeau's Bay Area funeral homes closed in the 1970s. Godeau and Martinoni was bought out by Pierce Brothers in 1984.