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.