He Built This City: Mayor Prudent Beaudry

Possessing boundless energy, exceptional business sagacity and foresight, Prudent Beaudry amassed five fortunes and lost four in his ventures, which were gigantic for that time, and would be considered immense today.

- Le Guide Francais, 1932

Have a seat, everyone...the lifetime I'm chronicling this week is best described as "epic".

Jean-Prudent Beaudry was born July 24, 1816 in Mascouche, Quebec - close to Montreal. When he was a young boy, the family moved to the neighboring town of Saint-Anne-des-Plaines.

There were five Beaudry brothers (and three Beaudry sisters). All of the Beaudry brothers worked hard and got rich, but Prudent, Jean-Louis, and Victor would make the history books. (Victor, the only other Beaudry to settle in Los Angeles, will be covered in another entry, because this one is going to be LONG.)

The Beaudrys, an industrious family of traders, sent their sons to good schools in Montreal and New York. Prudent and his brothers had the benefits of a great education and English fluency when they went into business for themselves.

Which they did, many times over.

Prudent started out in his father's mercantile business, then went to work at a different mercantile house in New Orleans, returning to Canada in 1842 to partner with one of his brothers. By 1844, he left the business to join Victor, the youngest Beaudry brother, in San Francisco. The Gold Rush was a few years away, but Victor had already established a profitable shipping and commission business in the city. Before long, the brothers were in the ice business (Victor later partnered with another future mayor, Damien Marchesseault, in distributing ice harvested in the San Bernardino Mountains). Perhaps not surprisingly for a native of Quebec, Prudent also got into the syrup business. Two years later, after Prudent had lost most of his money on real estate speculation (and more of it when insufficiently insured stock was destroyed in a fire), Los Angeles beckoned.

I'll let Le Guide Francais take it from here:

Starting with $1,100 in goods and $200 cash in a small store on Main Street, where the City Hall now stands, it is said that he cleared $2,000 in thirty days, which enabled him to take a larger store on Commercial Street. From that time on, Prudent Beaudry was one of the preeminent men of the economic, social, and political life of the Southwest.

(The book, just to clarify, refers to the current City Hall, not the old Bell Block down the street. After Beaudry vacated the Commercial Street shop, Harris Newmark moved in. Ironically, Beaudry sold his dry goods business to Newmark twelve years later.)

Having earned a well-deserved vacation, Prudent left Los Angeles for Paris in 1855. The chief items on his itinerary were seeing the Exposition Universelle and consulting the great French oculist Dr. Jules Sichel. Prudent visited Montreal on his return trip to visit his brother Jean-Louis, who would serve as Mayor of Montreal for a total of ten years between 1862 and 1885. The Beaudrys, needless to say, were just as prominent in business, politics, and society in Quebec as they were in Southern California.

While Prudent was away, Victor was capably managing his brother's business interests. Prudent had purchased a building on the northeast corner of Aliso and Los Angeles Streets in 1854 for $11,000. Victor spent $25,000 - an absolute fortune at the time - on remodeling and improving the building. In this case, it was money well spent. After the Beaudry Block was improved, it was considered the finest building in Southern California for the time. Rents increased from $300 per month to $1,000 per month.

Prudent returned to Los Angeles in 1861 (Victor had been offered a contract to supply the Army of the Potomac and found it difficult to manage his brother's business interests at the same time). He continued in the mercantile business until 1865. Due to stress, he retired...but not for long. The Beaudrys just weren't capable of being unproductive.

In 1867, Prudent Beaudry made one of his greatest real estate investments. The steep hill above New High Street, which he purchased at a Sheriff's Department auction for the pittance of $55 (I can't believe it either), was known as Bunker Hill. It would soon become famous for its Victorian mansions.

This purchase set Beaudry on a path that made him California's first realtor and first large-scale developer, in addition to an urban planner. Before long, he was buying extensive tracts of land, dividing them into lots, and selling them, working out of an office opposite the Pico House. One 20-acre tract, between Charity (Grand) and Hill from Second to Fourth, cost $517 and netted $30,000. Another tract, consisting of 39 acres bordered by Fourth, Sixth, Pearl (Figueroa) and Charity (Grand), earned $50,000.

The Beaudry brothers (smartly) kept buying land. They predicted - correctly, and beyond their wildest dreams - that after railroad lines connected Los Angeles to San Francisco and the East Coast, new settlers would pour into Southern California in droves. (If they could only see how right they were!) Prudent also bought land in modern-day Arcadia and near the Sierra Nevada mountains (building aqueducts to redirect mountain streams to his properties), and helped to found the cities of Pasadena and Alhambra.

One newspaper advertisement from 1873 lists 83 (yes, 83!) separate lots for houses, in addition to two full city blocks, multiple city tracts, and large land parcels in Rancho San Pedro, Verdugo Ranch, and the Warner and de la Hortilla land grants. A similar ad from 1874 notes, in bold, which of the streets with lots for sale had already had water pipes installed. It's no wonder Beaudry was able to keep his real estate business going every time he lost most (or all) of his money.

Severe flooding in January 1868 had undone nearly all of Jean-Louis Sainsevain and Damien Marchesseault's hard work on the city's primitive water system. As a developer, Beaudry was very concerned about improving the city for its residents. On July 22, 1868, a 30-year contract for the water system was granted to the newly-established Los Angeles City Water Company. The three partners in the Company were Dr. John Griffin, French-born businessman Solomon Lazard, and, of course, Prudent Beaudry (most of the employees were also of French extraction - chief amongst them, Charles Lepaon, Charles Ducommun, and Eugene Meyer - more on them in the future).

The Los Angeles City Water Company replaced Sainsevain and Marchesseault's leaky wood pipes with 12 miles of iron pipes, and continued to regularly make improvements on the water system until the contract expired 30 years later (the city purchased the system for $2 million - in 1898 dollars!). Although nothing could cancel out the previous water problems or Marchesseault's tragic suicide, the city of Los Angeles finally had a reliable water system that wouldn't turn streets into sinkholes. (If you live in Los Angeles and you like having running water, thank a Frenchman. Seriously, you guys owe us.)

You're probably wondering how Prudent managed to supply water to his hilltop property. In those days, hills weren't desirable places to build homes because water had to be transported in barrels via trolley or other vehicle. The city water company wasn't interested in solving the problem. But in case you haven't noticed yet, Prudent was smart, resourceful, and didn't give up easily. He knew that if running water was available, prospective homeowners would be more likely to consider hilltop lots and pay a good price for them. So he constructed a huge reservoir and a pump system that supplied water from LA's marshy lowlands to Bunker Hill. The pump system worked perfectly - and so did his plan. (I'll bet every land speculator in Southern California wished they had thought of that.)

Before long, Bunker Hill became THE place to build grand homes. At least two of its fabled Victorian mansions were built for other French Angelenos - entrepreneur Pierre Larronde and model citizen Judge Julius Brousseau.

Let it be known, however, that Beaudry developed for everyone. It's true that he built mansions and had a keen interest in architecture, but he also built modest homes on small lots for working families. And because he made modest properties available for small monthly payments, he made home ownership possible for buyers with lower incomes. He made considerable improvements to his land - paving roads, planting trees, and providing for water usage.

And Beaudry just kept developing land for the rest of his life. This Lost LA article includes an 1868 map showing five tracts recently developed by Beaudry.

The Bellevue tract included a garden he dubbed "Bellevue Terrace". This early park rose 70 feet above downtown, boasting hundreds of eucalyptus and citrus trees. Beaudry eventually put the site up for sale. The State of California bought it to develop a Los Angeles campus of the State Normal School, which would later become UCLA. When UCLA moved to Westwood in the 1920s, the hill was graded down and replaced with Central Library.

A few miles away, where North Beaudry Avenue meets Sunset Boulevard, there is an oval-shaped parcel of land that currently holds a church, a restaurant, and The Elysian apartment building. In the early 1870s, this was Beaudry Park - another garden paradise on a hill, boasting citrus groves and eucalyptus trees (and vineyards!). But the Beaudrys put it on the market a decade later. The Sisters of Charity snapped it up in 1883, building a newer facility and relocating St. Vincent's Hospital (sometimes called the Los Angeles Infirmary) here.

Beaudry owned a large tract containing one block of stagnant, foul-smelling marshland. No one wanted to build on the land, and it wasn't ideally suited to building anyway. In 1870, Beaudry got the idea to drain the marsh and turn the land into a public park. Naturally, he spearheaded the plan. Originally called Los Angeles Park, the land was renamed Central Park in the 1890s...and was renamed again later.

You know this park. There's a good chance you've been there (and there's a VERY good chance you absolutely hate its current incarnation).

Give up yet?

It's Pershing Square. (It used to be a very nice park. Trust me on this.)

Beaudry's dedication to developing, planning, and improving the city got him started in politics. He was elected to the Los Angeles Common (City) Council for three one-year terms (1871, 1872, and 1873). In 1873, he became the first president of the city's new Board of Trade. His name appeared in Los Angeles newspapers frequently throughout the 1870s and 1880s - mostly in the real estate sections (and in a bankruptcy case...the Temple and Workman Bank failed and took most of his money with it).

In 1874, Prudent Beaudry became Los Angeles' third French mayor, serving two terms. At the same time, his brother Jean-Louis Beaudry was serving as mayor of Montreal.

After finishing his second term, Beaudry bought the local French-language newspaper, L'Union. (I will cover LA-based French newspapers - three or four are known to have existed - at a later date.) Beaudry was already a director of the Los Angeles City and County Printing and Publishing Company.

Nearly all of Los Angeles' Victorian houses have been torn down over the years. However, neighborhoods like Angelino Heights still have Victorian-era homes. Guess who developed Angelino Heights? That's right - Prudent and Victor Beaudry (architect Joseph Newsom designed many of the houses). Carroll Avenue, beloved by preservationists for its high concentration of surviving Victorian homes (kitsch king Charles Phoenix even includes it on his annual Disneyland-themed DTLA tour as "Main Street USA"), is well within the original boundaries of Angelino Heights.

In the 1880s, Angelino Heights was one of LA's earliest suburbs. Cars would not be commonly used for quite some time. To serve the transit needs of potential home buyers, the Beaudry brothers (with several other real estate promoters) built the Temple Street Cable Railroad. This streetcar ran along Temple Street from Edgeware to Spring (it was soon extended to Hoover Street) every ten minutes and ran for 16 hours each day, making transportation fast and simple for residents of Angelino Heights and Bunker Hill. The Pacific Electric Railway eventually purchased the line (switching from cable cars to electric trolleys in 1902), and in time it passed to the Los Angeles Railway. The Temple Street Cable Railroad - far and away the most successful streetcar line in the city's history - ran from 1886 to 1946. SIXTY YEARS. Which is especially impressive considering the Pacific Electric Railway didn't even exist until 1901, and its less-traveled streetcar lines were converted to bus routes in 1925.

Funnily enough, Beaudry had sued the Los Angeles Railway in 1891. He claimed the Railway had excavated First and Figueroa Streets without the proper authority, rendered the streets useless, and blocked access to his property. (He also occasionally sued people who damaged his properties. Can you blame the guy? Building a city is hard work.)

When "Crazy Remi" Nadeau decided to liquidate most of his freighting company's equipment, it was purchased by the Oro Grande Mining Company...which counted Prudent and Victor Beaudry among its shareholders. In the 1880s, the Beaudrys began to take on fewer and fewer projects, but they both remained vocal supporters of developing and improving Los Angeles.

Prudent Beaudry passed away on May 29, 1893, a week after suffering a paralytic stroke (Victor had passed away in 1888, with Prudent acting as executor of his sizable estate). An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County stated:

Prudent Beaudry, in particular, has the record of having made in different lines five large fortunes, four of which, through the act of God, or by the duplicity of man, in whom he had trusted, have been lost; but even then he was not discouraged, but faced the world, even at an advanced age, like a lion at bay, and his reward he now enjoys in the shape of a large and assured fortune. Of such stuff are the men who fill great places, and who develop and make a country. To such men we of this later day owe much of the beauty and comfort that surround us, and to such we should look with admiration as models upon which to form rules of action in trying times.

Beaudry died a wealthy man (despite losing his fortune FOUR times), but ironically, he might have died even wealthier. A 1905 article in the Los Angeles Herald stated that nearly forty years previously (i.e. in the 1860s), he had begun to dig a well on one of his hilltop properties. After several hundred feet, he struck a deposit that "looked and smelled like tar." He promptly abandoned the half-dug well. That's right - Beaudry struck oil. But he wasn't looking for oil and had no use for it. Had he made the same discovery a few decades later, things may have been a little different.

The late Mayor's body was returned to his native Quebec. Like the rest of his family, he is buried at Notre Dame des Neiges (Canada's largest, and arguably most beautiful, cemetery). He never married and had no children, so his estate went to the other Beaudry siblings and their families.

Prudent Beaudry's importance as an urban planner and city developer is almost completely forgotten today. His work lingers in the names of Beaudry Avenue, Bellevue Avenue, and various other French-named streets in tracts he developed long ago. (Hill Street was once called Montreal Street in honor of the brothers' hometown - it isn't clear when it was renamed.)

(And, thankfully, Angelino Heights is still standing. I will lose my last remaining shreds of faith in humanity if something bad happens to those precious few surviving Victorians.)

The Warren Buffett of Early LA: Mayor Joseph Mascarel

Joseph Mascarel, second French mayor of Los Angeles, on a small information kiosk outside the French Hospital.

Joseph Mascarel was born in the French seaport of Marseille on April 1, 1816. At the tender age of 8 (that's not a typo), he first glimpsed the port of San Pedro while serving as a cabin boy. Legend has it that he swore to one day live in California.

In 1827, 11-year-old Joseph was a cadet on the Jeannette, bound for Hawaii and Tahiti. The Jeannette made a stop in San Pedro, where one of the passengers - Jean-Louis Vignes - did some trading in port before the ship left for Hawaii. (It isn't clear if Vignes and Mascarel became acquainted on this voyage.)

Mascarel continued to sail around the world, working on ships and trading on the side. By 1844, he had saved enough money to buy the Jeannette. Mascarel, now 28 and the ship's captain, sailed his ship back to San Pedro, sold it, and bought an entire city block with the profits. (Specifically, Main to Los Angeles Streets at Commercial Street - on the northern edge of the original Frenchtown.) He also purchased forty acres of farmland in modern-day Hollywood, north of Gower Street, and grew tomatoes. (It's so funny to think of tomato plants growing along Gower Street today.) Mascarel lived in an old adobe house on Main Street for many years, but don't bother looking for it today...the corner where it once stood is now (drumroll please...) a parking lot adjoining Olvera Street. (The sheer number of Frenchtown sites that have since become parking lots is really beginning to depress me. But I digress.)

Mascarel was accompanied by a friend from Marseille - M. Lemontour. In fact, Mascarel had assisted Lemontour with travel expenses. Lemontour worked for Mascarel until he had paid him back, then moved on to Mexico City (Los Angeles, still a small and sleepy pueblo, wasn't as exciting as Lemontour liked). Many years later, Lemontour had become a wealthy Mexican official, and he met up with his old friend Mascarel to catch up and trade stories.

Although there was a growing French community by 1844, the vast majority of Angelenos were Mexican or Spanish. Mascarel - who was one of the few Caucasians to settle in Sonora Town - learned to speak Spanish fluently and was soon dubbed "Don José" by his neighbors. He also became a part owner of Los Angeles' first bakery (Angelenos weren't paranoid about carbs yet). Before too long, he was in the wine industry, got into mining, and distributed lime. A Chatsworth History program states that in 1845, he worked for Jean-Louis Vignes as a cooper.

In spite of his gruff, stern exterior and imposing presence (he was over six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds - enormous for a Frenchman), Mascarel was a decent and generous man, and became a very popular local figure.

Mascarel got into some trouble in 1847. California was still part of Mexico, and Mascarel was one of a band of volunteer soldiers supporting the United States. The volunteers were captured and detained at Rancho Los Cerritos (i.e. modern-day Long Beach). However, they were in luck: their host was Don Juan Temple, an Anglo settler who had been appointed alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles by Commodore Stockton. Temple responded by bringing two barrels of wine to Rancho Los Cerritos, plus his family for company, to ease the volunteers' "captivity". Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

The volunteers had to promise not to bear arms against the Californios in order to secure their release. Mascarel and Louis Robidoux (founder of Jurupa/Riverside) decided to obey the letter of their promise rather than its spirit. Robidoux supplied General Frémont's troops with flour from his grist mill, and Mascarel provided vegetables and livestock.

Supporting the United States was a potentially risky endeavor for Mascarel. His new bride, Serilda Lugo, was related to a prominent Californio family - the Alvarados of San Juan Capistrano. (Records disagree on whether Serilda was Native American, Spanish, or mixed race.) I have yet to find any reference to Mascarel having trouble with his in-laws, but the couple got along well enough to have eight children.

In 1853, Mascarel decided to visit France. He took $40,000 with him (about $1.2 million today) and left Serilda behind to manage his business (besides wine, farming, and mining, he was an avid investor and speculator). Mysteriously, Mascarel needed Serilda to send money for his return trip three years later. To this day, no one knows how Mascarel managed to lose such a large amount of money (my best guess would be a bad investment). Fortunately, Serilda was more than capable of managing Mascarel's business interests on her own.

In 1861, Mascarel and a business partner constructed a block of buildings along the south side of Commercial Street between Main and Los Angeles Street. The Mascarel-Barri block, which replaced several crumbling adobe buildings, was divided in 1865.

Another Frenchman, Damien Marchesseault, had served several terms as Mayor. His re-election streak was broken only by Joseph Mascarel, who served as Mayor from 1865-1866.

Mascarel was a very tough mayor. He responded to the city's abysmally high rate of violent crime by banning residents from carrying any weapons whatsoever (even slingshots were prohibited). This wasn't his most popular move (LA was still the Wild West), but Mascarel was often credited with maintaining order in a divided Los Angeles. Although California was a Union state, many of Los Angeles' white inhabitants were Southerners, the city leaned Confederate (read Los Angeles in Civil War Days if you don't believe me), and the Civil War was raging. Keeping the peace with a populace divided over a highly contentious war is quite a task.

Mascarel was held in high esteem by French, Spanish, and Mexican Angelenos. However, the growing Anglo minority took issue with Mascarel's inability to speak English. In fact, the April 23, 1866 edition of the Los Angeles Weekly News included a savage classified ad: "Wanted. A Candidate for Mayor who can read and speak the English language, by Many Citizens." (This may not have been an entirely fair demand, considering that the vast majority of Angelenos were native Spanish speakers, French was the second most common language, and English would remain a distant third for some time.)

Still, Mascarel's political career wasn't quite over. He was popular enough to be elected to the City Council seven times between 1867 and 1881. In later years, he would lend support to others who ran for office.

While serving as Mayor, Mascarel signed a significant land grant to the Pioneer Oil Company, the first of Southern California's many oil companies. (One of Pioneer's organizers was Charles Ducommun, a Francophone Swiss watchmaker we'll meet again later.)

According to an account by Horace Bell, Mascarel quietly kept a close eye on Mayor Joel Turner and the City Council. He dutifully reported their corrupt dealings, which included interfering with the water system, to the Grand Jury, which promptly indicted Turner and the councilmen. Turner was sentenced to ten years in prison. He never served a day of his sentence (can't win them all), but control over the Los Angeles River was taken out of the Mayor's hands and given back to the water commissioners. (Good thing, too - in those days, Angelenos were still raising crops and livestock. The city could easily have lost most of its food sources.)

In 1871, Mascarel helped to found the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, serving as one of its trustees (by this time, the city directory listed his occupation as "capitalist"). According to an old newspaper obituary for one of Mascarel's granddaughters, he owned a cannon (courtesy of the Mexican-American War) and placed it at the corner where the first Farmers' and Merchants' Bank originally stood. This cannon was later moved to Exposition Park.

Serilda Lugo Mascarel passed away in 1887. Mascarel and his family soon took out an ad in the newspaper thanking their friends and acquaintances for their kindness and support.

It isn't clear when Joseph Mascarel met his second wife, Maria Jesus Benita Feliz. Nor is it clear when they moved in together and began their common-law marriage. But we do know that they didn't legally marry until 1896 (Mascarel's children with Serilda vocally opposed the marriage and son-in-law J. P. Goytino successfully blocked issuance of a marriage license). Maria had been very ill, and the belated marriage ceremony was carried out in the Catholic Church (a license was not necessary in this case). A Los Angeles Times article published just two days later stated that the 80-year-old former mayor and his 60-year-old bride had been "for all intents and purposes" living as a married couple for thirty years and had several adult children. This very likely means that Joseph and Serilda chose to separate in or before 1866. (Believe it or not, there was a time when divorce was rare in LA.) The 1870 federal census indicates that Serilda and her seven surviving children were no longer living with Joseph.

I should note that Mascarel was one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles at the time. In spite of his penchant for quietly donating large sums of money to charitable causes, he was worth over a million dollars (and in 1896, that was a LOT of money). The Times noted that Goytino opposed the marriage due to concerns over inheritance of property. (In some ways, LA hasn't changed all that much.)

Joseph Mascarel died of heart failure on October 6, 1899, at his home on Lazard (now Ducommun) Street. He was 83 years old. Mascarel left behind Maria, children from both wives, grandchildren from his first marriage, and the remainder of his fortune. (The bulk of this money was willed to Mascarel's grandchildren from his marriage to Serilda. Maria's children promptly contested the will.) Mascarel had owned land in four counties, but began to give it away to to friends and loved ones in his later years. A solemn high mass was held at the Old Plaza Church in his honor.

Joseph Mascarel is buried at Calvary Cemetery. His headstone lists his first name as "José". The headstone is otherwise in English - ironic, given that he neither spoke nor read the language.

A Los Angeles Daily Herald article from 1889 states "Everybody knows who Jose Mascarel is, as as he lacks but little of being one of the oldest settlers of this city." Today, he has faded from LA's collective memory. A street was named for the former mayor and investor, but it is misspelled as "Mascarell Street."