Saloons, Suicides, and Chop Suey: The Long-Lost Jennette Block

When Philippe Garnier clawed his way back from bankruptcy, he commissioned three buildings in the Plaza.

The Garnier Block survives, housing part of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes.

The Garnier Building (well, part of it, anyway), survives, housing the Chinese American Museum. (Ironically, too much of the building was removed, and now it needs to be expanded.)

The 1888 Jennette Block, which was named after Philippe's wife and stood next to the Garnier Building, was torn down at the same time as the southern wing of the Garnier Building. But something that is gone need not be forgotten.

One early tenant, probably the Jennette Block's first, was inexpensive restaurant Bouillon Duval. It isn't clear if this Bouillon Duval was in any way related to the French Bouillon Duval chain or if it simply appropriated the name. Regardless, surviving newspaper ads indicate it was open for business in 1889, offering hot soup and schooner lager beer for five cents. (Schooner lager is a type of beer from eastern Canada. One wonders if the restaurant's proprietor was Québecois.)

Ad for Bouillon Duval restaurant, Los Angeles Herald,  November 1889.

The 1890 city directory doesn't list the Hotel du Lion D'Or or Bouillon Duval; I surmise the hotel had not yet opened and that the restaurant (which only ran ads for two months) may have been short-lived.

Although the Jennette Block's existence had been documented earlier (such as in the 1889 ads for Bouillon Duval), it did not appear in the City Directory until 1891. The same edition of the Directory lists the Hotel du Lion D'Or in print, at 403 North Los Angeles Street (placing it squarely inside the Jennette Block). George Lacour was listed as the hotel's proprietor.

Lacour soon added another revenue stream; the 1892 directory indicates he was running Cook's Headquarters and Saloon at 401 North Los Angeles Street, also in the Jennette Block. Presumably he reopened the building's restaurant space. While he was simultaneously managing the Hotel du Lion D'Or and Cooks' Headquarters, he was also serving as Vice President of the French Benevolent Society - a very busy guy.

1894 Sanborn Map detail showing Jennette Block at Arcadia and Los Angeles Streets

This Sanborn map detail from 1894 shows the Jennette Block in its early years. At this point, it was hosting the Hotel du Lion D'Or. Today, Arcadia Street runs through where the missing wing of the Garnier Building once stood.

A Water and Power photograph states the Jennette Block was at Los Angeles and Aliso Streets, but this isn't quite correct; Aliso ended at Los Angeles Street. Arcadia was quite close, however, so it's an easy mistake to make.

George Lacour brought on his three stepsons Eugene, Frank, and Jacques Puissegur, with Eugene as the clerk and Frank and Jacques tending bar, The 1894 city directory lists another Eugene, last name Laurent, living in the hotel and waiting tables at the onsite Restaurant du Lion D'Or - presumably Cooks' Headquarters closed or changed names. 1895 saw yet another Eugene added to the hotel's personnel - Eugene Perrin, hotel cook. A second clerk must have been needed, since Miss Francoise Laffose was hired for that purpose. More cooks, Emil Gaurie, George Clausz, and Louis Ferre, came on board as well.

There was no shortage of wine and liquor stores in Victorian Los Angeles, and Lacour operated one out of the Jennette Block. Lacour would later open a second liquor store at 367 Aliso Street. 

By 1896, one William Ellis was running a bootblack stand at the Jennette Block. During that year's election, the building doubled as a polling place for the city's Eighth Ward (today's council districts were a long way from existing).

Chauncey Durkee was a tall, handsome, well-dressed turfman (that is, he had worked as a bookmaking cashier) who lodged at the hotel. Since he took care of his room's upkeep himself, the hotel staff seldom went inside. One day in 1897, Lacour went to Durkee’s room to collect the rent, found the door locked, and realized no one had seen Durkee in days. Lacour forced the door open and discovered Durkee’s lifeless body on the bed, clad only in underwear. Durkee had slashed his left wrist with a razor, arranging himself so that the blood would fall into an unspecified vessel on the floor next to the bed. When Durkee bled out, the vessel overflowed, forming large pools of blood on the carpet. Blood spatter around the room and blood on Durkee’s feet suggested that he got up and walked around the room as he ended his life.

Lacour called the police, who soon discovered Durkee had left a suicide note:

Monday Morning, 11 o'clock.

To My Mother and Two Sisters:

Life without my sweetheart and brother to me is not worth living, and you are all better off with me out of the way. I love every one of you and could never be able to do anything for you, as my mind is with Clara and Charles. 

Your Son and Brother,

Chauncey Durkee

Clara was Durkee's wife, who had passed away three years earlier. Charles was Chauncey's brother, who had employed him at the bookmaking firm of Durkee & Fitzgerald. Chauncey had become despondent upon Charlie's death a year earlier, and had mentioned to friends, more than once, that he was tired of life with his wife and brother gone.

The note was dated Monday morning. Lacour discovered Durkee's death on a Wednesday evening. A friend of Durkee's had come to his room on Tuesday morning, knocking on the door in vain, before finally assuming Durkee must have gone out. What a sad way to go.

Quack medicine was common during the Victorian era, and the Jennette Block was not immune. One Jean Duco Lafforge took out a rather large ad in the Los Angeles Herald in 1889 offering to be interviewed at the hotel on behalf of Prof. Joseph Fandrey, "European Specialist in Rupture Curing".

At least one of LA's many French-language newspapers, L'Union Nouvelle, had offices in the Jennette Block for a time - a newspaper ad places it there in 1890.

John Kiefer, a German immigrant who had found success as an orchardist, vineyardist, and liquor merchant, owned several buildings including the Jennette Block at the time of his death in 1901. A few months later, hotel guest P.H. Don, who was ill and had recently been released from the San Diego County Hospital, was found dead in his bed, apparently of natural causes.

The 1902 directory listed what was at each address in the city, block by block, with the hotel at 401, then Louis Schmidt's real estate office at 403 (Schmidt also lived in the hotel for some time), then over a dozen of the Garnier Building's Chinese tenants next door including Sun Wing Wo & Co. apothecary (which has been recreated inside the Chinese American Museum), then a saloon at number 437 belonging to one Giovanetti Aladino. 

Just five years after Chauncey Durkee, another long-term lodger died of suicide. Lacour and his stepsons fumigated the hotel frequently to keep it free from bedbugs, always doing so in the morning and leaving the windows open so the lodgers could safely return to their rooms at night. A bedbug-killing fluid would be poured into pans and placed on the floors of each room. The hydrocyanic gas in the formula would then dissipate and kill any bugs that might be present.

Henry Kellar, a 64-year-old cook from Lorraine, was in the habit of taking a nap in the middle of the day. Frank Puissegur stopped him on the stairs, warning him not to go into his room because of the poisonous gas. Puissegur continued on his way, but Kellar kept going down the hall, unlocked the door, and lay down.

Early that afternoon, another lodger, Ed Horst, returned to his own room and could hear Kellar struggling to breathe. Looking over a partition and seeing Kellar unconscious, Horst called for help. Lacour had to break down the door - Kellar had locked it behind him. Kellar had also closed the windows, meaning the gas could not escape the small space. The other rooms were checked for more potential victims, an act that saved the life of Harry Ruff, who had left his windows open and wasn't quite as affected as Kellar.

Both men were taken to the receiving hospital, but due to Kellar's age and the severity of his condition from a few hours of breathing in poison in a closed room, there wasn't much the doctors could do for him, and they had to focus on saving Ruff (who survived). 

Three years earlier, Kellar had unsuccessfully attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. The coroner found a letter in his coat pocket addressed to Lacour and dated the previous year, stating that his brother in Lorraine would settle any debts after his death. In light of these facts, along with the locked door, closed windows, and Kellar knowing about the poison gas, his death was ruled a suicide. 

By 1904, at least one Chinese merchant, Sue Chong, was doing business out of the Jennette Block. 1905 saw a barber, William Thibault, setting up shop in the hotel.

George Lacour left the hotel business to focus on his wine and liquor business with his son Frederick, turning the Hotel Du Lion D'Or over to stepsons Frank and Eugene and retiring a few years later to a ranch in La Crescenta. By 1907, the brothers had Anglicized the hotel's name to the Golden Lion Saloon. Don't let the "Saloon" part fool you; they were still running a residential hotel (long-term tenants included laborers, teamsters, a plasterer, and a clerk). Cheung Suey sold tobacco out of the storefront space at number 405 (it isn't clear if Sue Chong and Cheung Suey were the same person or two different people with similar names; print media hasn't always been careful with Asian names and it still sometimes isn't). 

The Golden Lion doesn't seem to have stuck for long; by 1908 it was listed as Puissegur Brothers Saloon. Louis Schmidt was still running his real estate office out of number 403, although by this time he had moved out of the hotel. The onsite bootblack stand was now run by a Samuel Hazelwood.

By 1912, the hotel had changed hands, becoming Hotel de Paris. That year, Police Chief Charles Sebastian (who went on to become Mayor) held a special banquet honoring his executive secretary E.C. Snively and Father Edward Brady of St. Vibiana Cathedral. Brady was made a special officer for his work as a prison chaplain; Snively was honored by newspaper reporters (which happened to be his previous career). 

The Mexican Revolution was going on at the time, and Americans living in Mexico were evacuated in 1912 due to unrest. Hotel de Paris' new proprietor, Frank Zucca, kindly offered free accommodation to about twenty evacuees. Chief Sebastian reported that two men believed to be spies had followed the Americans to Los Angeles and tried, unsuccessfully, to book rooms at the Hotel de Paris.

I've mentioned previously that French and Italian Angelenos often associated with each other. A 1912 Herald blurb mentions the Dante Alighieri Society (which promotes the Italian language and Italian culture) holding a banquet at the Hotel de Paris, raising $1,000 for local Italian-language schools. 

Four years later, Angela Bertonne had a harrowing experience that came to an ugly head at the Hotel de Paris, where a would-be trafficker, Primo Cerbari, had brought her. The Herald quoted Sra. Bertonne thusly: 

I knew Cerbari back in Italy. He found me with my husband and two children at San Francisco. He asked me many times to leave with him. I refused. Then he began to threaten me. Finally he said that unless I elope with him he would kill my children. I wanted to save them, and so I left with him. We came to Los Angeles. He began to abuse me and tried many times to force me to live a life of shame. I refused. Last night he came into the room. He had a revolver. He again asked me if I intended to obey his commands to be a woman of the streets. I answered no. Then he shot me and killed himself. I know my husband will understand. He will come to Los Angeles and take me back to our children.

Cerbari's choice of hotel may not have been coincidental; the Plaza area was next to the red-light district. Sra. Bertonne's doctors stated that she was expected to recover from the gunshot. 

1913 saw the hotel's address listed under both the Hotel de Paris and the Cafe de Paris. Although the Zuccas were Italian, they continued to exclusively serve French food, and the cafe was popular with tourists.

Jennette Block with "Hotel de Paris" signage, taken around 1920

In 1919, Zucca's widow sold the Hotel de Paris to prominent Chinatown businessman Quan Hay, who turned it into an authentic Chinese restaurant. (Old Chinatown was more or less next door, so the Jennette Block was a logical location for a Chinese restaurant.) It was called the New Paris Cafe, at least at first. Years later, a 1935 newspaper blurb pondered "for what reason that old Chinese down on Arcadia Street named his chop suey joint the Hotel de Paris." (The name is kind of a funny coincidence, considering that several decades earlier, two Frenchmen and a Prussian operated a French restaurant called the Oriental Cafe, just a few short blocks away.) 

Due to the fact that there were several Cafes de Paris in Los Angeles (and Hotel de Paris is a surprisingly common hotel name), it becomes very difficult to pin down the Jennette Block after the 1930s. The only thing I can state with certainty regarding its last years is that it was torn down in or around 1953 to make room for the 101.

Take a moment to contemplate this: the west wing of the Garnier Building was lopped off. If it was still there, it would extend into where Arcadia Street runs now. When you drive north on the 101 in the slower lanes and pass under the Los Angeles Street overpass, you drive right under where the Jennette Block used to stand. They say that only death and taxes are certain in life, but for Los Angeles I would add two more things: erasure and traffic.

Never Give In: Philippe Garnier

Winston Churchill said it best: "If you're going through hell, keep going."

The Garnier brothers' glory days at Rancho Los Encinos had ended in financial ruin, foreclosure, and Eugene Garnier returning to France.

Philippe Garnier had no money and a family to support. He could have thrown in the towel and gone back to France, just like Eugene.

But he didn't give up. And he had a profound effect on a treasured surviving portion of Old Los Angeles.

In 1878, Philippe Garnier was flat broke.

In 1879, Philippe began serving as a director of the Farmers and Merchants Bank and slowly rebuilt his savings.

Between 1888 and 1890, Philippe Garnier built three commercial buildings in the Plaza area.

Jennette Block, housing the Hotel de Paris

The Jennette Block stood at Los Angeles and Arcadia Streets, with the Hotel de Paris occupying the building. (It's sometimes reported that the Jennette Block was at Los Angeles and Aliso Streets. Most of the French-owned hotels fell within a one-block radius of Alameda and Aliso Streets. However, a surviving picture of the Jennette Block puts it right next to the Garnier Building. It's much more likely that the Hotel de Paris was based in different buildings at different times, since there are records of a Hotel de Paris at Alameda and Aliso and at Main and Turner opposite the Pico House.)

In any case, the Jennette Block was razed for the 101 Freeway.

Garnier Block
(Home of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes)

Many years ago, a French sea captain (no, not that one - he lived on the next block) and his wife lived in the Plaza, across Main Street from the Pico House. Their adobe house was demolished to build the two-story Garnier Block. Retail stores occupied the ground floor; the tiny Plaza House Hotel was on the second floor.

In 1946, the County of Los Angeles purchased the building. It was used as County office space, with a Sheriff's Department crime lab on the second floor. Unfortunately, the 1971 earthquake shook some of the elaborate exterior ornamentation loose, which prompted the County to remove ALL of it (blasphemy!), board up the building, and leave the Garnier Block to rot (double blasphemy!).

The Garnier Block was renovated into the La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, which opened in 2011.

Garnier Building
(Home of the Chinese American Museum)

Although LA's first Chinese market opened during Damien Marchesseault's tenure as Mayor nearly thirty years earlier, Chinese Angelenos often didn't have an easy time securing commercial buildings to rent, and they weren't legally permitted to own property in the United States.

Philippe Garnier commissioned architect Abram Edelman (co-designer of the Shrine Auditorium) to design a long, two-story sandstone and red brick building - the Garnier Building - with Chinese tenants in mind. The lease was signed before the building was even finished, and for the first three years of the lease, the rent on the entire building was only $200 a month. The building used to be much larger (the southern wing was razed in the 1950s along with the Jennette Block), so Philippe's tenants were initially paying below market rate.

Chinese-American social organizations, businesses, schools, and churches were all based in the Garnier Building. It was, in effect, Chinatown City Hall from 1890 to 1953 (when the state purchased the Plaza buildings). The original Chinatown was razed for Union Station, so the Garnier Building is the only remaining structure from Old Chinatown.

Interestingly, the building occupies the corner of Arcadia and Los Angeles Streets - where the 1871 Chinese Massacre broke out.

Today, the remaining half of the Garnier Building houses the Chinese American Museum.

Take a moment to consider this: the Plaza is known for its Spanish/Mexican history and character, so much so that angry activists vocally opposed plans to restore the Italian Hall (also in the Plaza) and reopen it as a museum. Yet, no one ever talks about the fact that the Plaza is also home to a historic property commissioned by a French immigrant, designed by a Polish-Jewish architect, and built for the city's most hated ethnic group of the era - the Chinese. And only half of that building was lost to freeway construction. That's pretty amazing.

Philippe Garnier may not be well remembered today, but two (well, one and a half) of his buildings remain in the Plaza.

Eugene Garnier Just Couldn't Take It Anymore

It's high time I introduced my readers to the four French families who owned Rancho Los Encinos - one of my favorite places in Los Angeles - one after the other, for close to a century.

Quick overview for context:

Rancho Los Encinos (sometimes called Rancho El Encino, now Los Encinos State Historic Park) was a Spanish land grant given to LA's first mayor, Francisco Reyes. When the authorities discovered Reyes had been mistreating his Native American hired hands, they revoked the grant and Governor Pio Pico reassigned it to three of the very same workers Reyes had been exploiting.

Don Vicente de la Osa bought the rancho from the Tongva ranchers, raised cattle, built the adobe house that still stands on what's left of the property (it's the second oldest structure in the Valley), turned the house into a stagecoach stop and roadhouse when the cattle market collapsed, and eventually sold the rancho to a Yankee named Jim Thompson.

Jim Thompson sold Rancho Los Encinos in 1869. The buyers, Eugene and Philippe Garnier, were immigrants from France. (There were other Garnier brothers - Abel, Camille, and Léon, but little is known about them except that Camille and Léon were two of the city's biggest spenders and could often be seen dining at one of Victor Dol's restaurants.)

Philippe merits his own entry, and you'll understand why when you read it. Anyway...

Faux marbre dining salon at Rancho Los Encinos

Like so many other French immigrants who settled in Southern California in the 19th century, the Garniers were in the sheep business, and had a reputation for producing high-quality wool.

The rancho was still on the stagecoach route (today it's Ventura Boulevard). And, being from France, the Garniers knew how to top even Don Vicente's fine hospitality.

The brothers had the adobe's dining room painted with stunning faux marbre panels. Despite being almost 20 miles from what was then the heart of the city (long before the 101 existed...or, for that matter, the car), the Garniers served such good food that Andrés Pico - brother of Pio Pico - made a point of bringing VIP guests to the rancho for breakfast. In those days, it was a tiring, 15-mile horseback trip on a dirt road from Pico's house. I can't even imagine getting up before dawn and spending a couple of hours on a rough, sweaty horseback ride just to eat breakfast in Encino*, but apparently it was worth the trip for Pico and his guests.

Eugene built a two-story limestone house - a copy of the family home in France - opposite the adobe. The Garniers lived in the adobe; the limestone house was a bunkhouse for the ranch hands and for tired travelers. Today, the house is Rancho Los Encinos' visitor center.

Eugene Garnier's French farmhouse at Rancho Los Encinos

Rancho Los Encinos had its own freshwater spring - a VERY desirable feature anywhere in Los Angeles County, and especially in the hot, dry San Fernando Valley. Eugene built a brick-lined pond to collect the spring water - and he took care to shape it like a Spanish guitar. Novelty shaped swimming pools - i.e. Jayne Mansfield's heart-shaped pool - may well owe a debt to Eugene Garnier's guitar-shaped pond.

Eugene put a great deal of work into making Rancho Los Encinos what it was at its peak - and what it still is today.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.

In the late 1870s, the wool market collapsed. And it couldn't have collapsed at a worse time for the Garniers, who had overextended themselves financially during a brutal drought that dried up their grazing fields. And to make matters worse, the roadhouse business had waned due to fear of stagecoach robbers...followed by stagecoach service ending when the railroad came to Los Angeles in 1876.

The Garniers continued to run a tavern on the premises, but like so many other French immigrants in the sheep trade, they had to find a new primary source of income.

Isaac Newton Van Nuys, who owned most of the southern Valley, had introduced dryland grain farming a few years previously. It was a no-brainer for the Garniers to turn their grazing land into wheat fields.

Unfortunately, there was the matter of their other neighbor, Don Miguel Leonis.

Leonis, possibly the most ambitious transplant in the history of Greater Los Angeles (and THAT is saying something), snapped up land whenever he could, and controlled most of the western Valley. Rancho Los Encinos, right next to Leonis' Rancho El Escorpion, was a very desirable property - especially because it had its own supply of fresh water.

You know where this is going, right?

In 1878, Eugene Garnier stated, under oath in a Los Angeles courtroom, that Leonis and his hired thugs had beaten the Garniers' hired hands and burned the rancho's wheat fields.

When asked if Leonis was his enemy, Eugene confirmed this, adding that he was forced to testify and that he would not be in the same courtroom with Leonis if he'd had a choice.

Having lost their wheat crop, the Garniers couldn't pay the bills anymore, and the rancho was bought at auction by Gaston Oxarat (who had previously obtained a lien on the rancho when he loaned money to the brothers).

Eugene Garnier went back to France soon after that day in court, never to permanently return to Los Angeles.

But can you blame the guy? He just couldn't take it anymore.

*This is not a snobby Westsider jab at Encino. I'm from Sherman Oaks.

We're Still Here, Part 3B: Rancho Los Encinos

Moving on to the next historic location in the Valley, we find a very special property that many Angelenos don't even know exists. 

Los Encinos State Historic Park is all that remains of Rancho Los Encinos (sometimes called Rancho El Encino). The original rancho was established by Francisco Reyes (first alcalde, or mayor, of Los Angeles), re-granted to three Tongva ranchers by Pio Pico (Reyes allegedly mistreated his Native American ranch hands), sold to the de la Osa family, and sold to a Yankee named Thompson...who sold it to Philippe and Eugene Garnier in 1869.

The Garnier brothers were the first of four French families to own the property. 

Philippe Garnier, Gaston Oxarat, Simon Gless, and Domingo Amestoy.

Former residents. Note the prevalence of Basque surnames.

The original de la Osa adobe house. This is the second oldest structure in the Valley - and the only one that is pretty much unaltered.

Philippe Garnier's shaving stand.

Gaston Oxarat's saddle. This finely tooled piece was originally covered with tiny silver conchas (shells).

Juanita Amestoy wore this beautiful gown when she married Simon Gless.

Don Vicente de la Osa had previously turned the adobe into a stagecoach stop and roadside inn. The Garnier brothers, being from France, kicked the hospitality up a notch.

The Garniers had one of the adobe's rooms painted with beautifully detailed faux marbre panels.

Can you believe some idiot PLASTERED OVER these stunning walls? For over a century, no one knew this fine paint job was even there.

Try, if you can, to let your imagination fill in the blanks. It's a beautiful room now - it must have looked even better then.

I do hope someone else takes the time to notice that the plastic food on the table is French in theme. (Why is there a red candle? Did red paraffin even exist in the 1870s?)

The Northridge earthquake of 1994 severely damaged the adobe (one outer wall caved in, requiring extensive repairs). However, there was one silver lining: the earthquake may have damaged the house, but it shook much of the offending plaster right off the salon's walls. As you can see, some of the faux marbre is still covered by plaster. There is a good reason for this: the adobe is very old and very delicate. Some things are best left alone, even if they're not perfect.

What's that next to the adobe?

It's a French farmhouse!

No joke: the Garnier brothers built this two-story limestone house, said to be a copy of the family home in France, to house their employees. They also built a brick-lined pond shaped like a Spanish guitar to collect water from the natural spring on the property.

The Garniers hit tough times: they overextended themselves financially, the wool market collapsed, and Miguel Leonis tried to intimidate the brothers out of their home by burning their wheat fields and beating up their ranch hands. (Fight me on the subject of Leonis if you want, but Eugene Garnier's court testimony backs this up.) They lost the rancho to foreclosure in 1878, and it passed to Gaston Oxarat.

Gaston Oxarat, in turn, left the rancho to his nephew, Simon Gless. Legend has it that one day, Gless bought a large block of ice downtown and, upon returning to the rancho, found that it had already melted away. This was too much for Gless (I can't blame him one bit, since I know how hot it gets in the Valley - and this was long before air conditioning or swimming pools). He decided to sell the property and move to Boyle Heights (the Gless farmhouse in Boyle Heights is, incredibly, also still standing).

Simon Gless was married to Juanita Amestoy, and her father Dominique already had significant land holdings elsewhere in Los Angeles County. Dominique, commonly called "Don Domingo", smartly snapped up Rancho Los Encinos. Other members of the Amestoy family lived on the property until 1945. 

The Amestoys began to sell off bits of the rancho in the early 20th century, but it wasn't until after World War II that the bulk of it was subdivided into modern-day Encino and Sherman Oaks (my neighborhood).

Supposedly, the adobe was used as a sales office for the new housing tracts and (what else...) subsequently slated for demolition. Concerned neighbors fought hard to have the buildings preserved (thank God).

The last remaining scrap of Rancho Los Encinos has been a California state historic park since 1949 and can be visited Wednesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm (excluding holidays). There is a pedestrian entrance on Ventura Boulevard, but virtually no one seems to notice it is even there.

We're Still Here, Part 3: The San Fernando Valley

Continuing my series on surviving places linked to Southern California's forgotten French community, we come to a place that hits close to home.

Because it IS my home. I'm a genuine, authentic Valley girl (hang around me long enough and you just might detect bits of my old accent).

(Well, it was my childhood home, anyway. I've lived in various beach towns continuously since 2001.)

Let's start in Calabasas and work our way east...

Michel Leonis, nicknamed "Don Miguel" out of fear rather than respect, discovered a dilapidated adobe house on the grounds of Rancho El Escorpion (huge naming opportunity missed here: Rancho El Escorpion sounds so much more badass than Calabasas - Spanish for "squashes"). He and his Chumash wife, Espiritu Chijulla, fixed it up (enclosing the rear staircase and adding the balcony), moved in, and lived here until their respective deaths.

The house - long empty and once again severely neglected - was nearly torn down in 1962 for - you guessed it - a supermarket parking lot. Thankfully, it's still with us today.

(I will devote separate entries to Leonis and to the Leonis Adobe Museum.)

Moving east, we find...

Running north-south from Ventura Boulevard to Granada Hills (okay, fine, it's interrupted in a couple of places), Amestoy Avenue was named for another French Basque ranching family - the Amestoys.

(The Amestoys will get their own entry.)

Just a few blocks east of Amestoy Avenue is one of their former homes - Rancho Los Encinos.

Four French and French Basque families - Garnier, Oxarat, Gless, and Amestoy - owned the rancho in turn. The original adobe is on the right. The two-story house on the left was built by the four Garnier brothers to house the rancho's employees, and is said to be a copy of the family home in France.

Although slightly beyond the scope of this entry, but worth noting, is the fact that Eugene Garnier once testified against Michel Leonis in court. Leonis, a brutal and terrifying thug who added to his vast land holdings through harassment and intimidation, burned the Garniers' newly planted wheat field and beat their employees. Eugene stated in court that he was testifying only because he was forced to do so, and later returned to France. His brother Philippe Garnier, bloody but unbowed, went on to build the Garnier Building and lease it to Chinese tenants.

I include this photo as proof that culture and beauty do, in fact, exist in the Valley if you know where to look. The Garnier brothers were legendary for their hospitality - so much so that Pio Pico's brother Andrés used to bring very special guests all the way to Rancho Los Encinos (from what is now downtown) - ON HORSEBACK. For BREAKFAST.

And those very special guests dined in the Garniers' grand salon, which boasted the most striking faux marbre walls in the history of Los Angeles. (I hope someone else takes the time to notice that the plastic food on the table is French in theme - grapes, brie, asparagus, and crusty-looking bread.)

At some point, an incredibly foolish individual elected to plaster over the faux marbre. The adobe was severely damaged in the Northridge earthquake of 1994, but with one silver lining - much of the plaster covering the salon's elaborately painted walls fell off. (Portions of the offending plaster remain. This is a very delicate old house, and that paint is well over 100 years old. Some things are best left well enough alone.)

(All four families merit, and will get, their own entries. Ditto Los Encinos State Historic Park, where the adobe and the ranch hands' quarters are located.)

The Amestoy family - the last French owners of the rancho - held onto much of the land (including these buildings) until 1944. After World War II, Rancho Los Encinos was subdivided into (what else) Encino and (my neck of the woods) Sherman Oaks.

On a personal note, my mother was completely shocked to learn that the Los Encinos adobe was a) still standing, b), continuously French-owned for much of its existence, c) right above Ventura Boulevard (a thoroughfare my family knows pretty well), and d) less than six miles from our old house in Sherman Oaks. She's said that if she had ANY idea, she would have taken me there when I was a child (in addition to Olvera Street, Chinatown, etc.).

Moving further east...

A street in Mission Hills was named for onetime mayor Joseph Mascarel. I suspect he owned land in the area (he owned significant amounts of land in FOUR counties). Today, he is so little-known that whoever made this sign didn't bother to check the spelling.

Heading further east...

Solomon Lazard was both French and Jewish, and was so popular with Angelenos of all ethnicities that he was nicknamed "Don Solomon" and often acted as floor manager for fandangos. He was the first President of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, co-founded the City Water Company (later LADWP) with Prudent Beaudry and Dr. Griffin, founded the City of Paris department store (which he later sold to his cousins, Eugene and Constant Meyer), and was active in the Golden Rule Lodge and the Hebrew Benevolent Society. Today, he's been reduced to a street sign on a cul-de-sac in San Fernando. (There was a different Lazard Street long ago, and Mayor Mascarel lived there until his death. It was renamed Ducommun Street. I'll explain why when I get to Charles Ducommun.)

Heading even further east, we reach our final stop in the furthest reaches of Glendale...

You know who Georges Le Mesnager was. This stone barn was built for his vineyard, located in what is now Deukmejian Wilderness Park. When it was damaged in a fire, his son converted it into a farmhouse - which the family lived in until the 1960s.

The barn has been undergoing a remodel/conversion into an interpretive center.

I knew nothing about any of these places until I began to research LA's forgotten French history - and one of them was just a few miles from my house. Small wonder that most Angelenos have NO idea about Frenchtown.

Deed Restrictions and the Renaming of Frenchtown

Last weekend, I gave a presentation on the French in Southern California at San Diego Mensa's Regional Gathering in Palm Springs (video coming soon - IF I can get the darn thing uploaded).

The first, and most revealing, question in the Q&A concerned why LA's historically French neighborhoods are now associated with other ethnic groups.

The original Frenchtown - bordered by Main Street, 1st Street, Aliso Street, and the LA River - is now largely split between Little Tokyo and the industrial core, with the Civic Center bleeding into the northern end of the neighborhood.

As Frenchtown expanded to the north, it grew to include modern-day Chinatown. Why is Joan of Arc standing outside Chinatown's only hospital? Because it was the French Hospital until 1989, and until the 1930s, it was a French neighborhood. Naud Junction, the Fritz houses, and Philippe the Original (creators of the French Dip sandwich; in that location since 1951) are all in Chinatown for the very simple reason that it wasn't always Chinatown. (LA's original Chinatown was demolished in 1931 to build Union Station - long after the Sainsevain brothers lost their uncle's vineyard).

Pellissier Square is now called Koreatown. Why? Because much of central LA declined after the 1930s, making it an affordable place for Korean immigrants to live and start businesses by the time the Korean War ended.

They weren't the first Koreans in Los Angeles. Historically, Korean Angelenos tended to live in Bunker Hill.

(Incidentally, "Koreatown" is something of a misnomer. HALF of Koreatown residents are Latino, and only about one-third are Asian. Korean Angelenos do, however, account for most of the area's businesses.)

There are still clues to Koreatown's French origins. Normandie Avenue, one of the longest streets in Los Angeles County (stretching 22.5 miles between Hollywood and Harbor City), runs smack down the middle of Koreatown. The Pellissier Building, including the legendary Wiltern Theatre, proudly towers over Wilshire and Western. And if you look at the neighborhood's architecture - sure, it's largely Art Deco, but some of it is also French-influenced.

In the early days, Los Angeles was a fairly tolerant place. It wasn't a utopia by any means (case in point: the Chinese Massacre of 1871), but Los Angeles was more tolerant of non-WASPs than most North American cities.

By the 1920s, a plague began to infest Los Angeles on a grand scale.

Deed restrictions.

Sometimes called restrictive covenants, deed restrictions barred ethnic and/or religious groups from buying homes in particular areas.

Why? Who would do something so hateful?

Let's start by rewinding the clock to the 1850s.

In 1850, California became a state. Legally, Los Angeles should have started opening public schools at this point (due to separation of church and state), but LAUSD wasn't founded until 1853. By this time, there was a growing number of Protestant families - most of them Yankees - in town. The few schools that did exist in the area were all Catholic, and Protestant parents objected - loudly - to the idea of sending their kids to Catholic schools. (Many Catholic schools do accept non-Catholic students, and many non-Catholic parents may prefer them if the local public schools aren't good enough. But things were a little different 164 years ago.)

Fast-forward to the 1880s.

When railroads first connected Southern California to the rest of the United States, newcomers flooded the area. Most were WASPs, and the majority were from the Midwest.

Guess where else deed restrictions were common? That's right - the WASPy Midwest. (No offense to any WASPs or Midwesterners who may read this, but I don't believe in hiding the truth. I sure as hell have never pretended French Californians were perfect.)

Before too long, deed restrictions barred people of color from much of the city. Some even excluded Jews, Russians, and Italians. Homeowners' associations and realtors often worked together to keep restricted neighborhoods homogeneous. (My skin is crawling as I write this.)

Excluded ethnic and religious groups, therefore, tended to live in areas that weren't restricted against them.

French Angelenos, however, were a pretty tolerant bunch.

The first baker in the city to make matzo was Louis Mesmer, who was Catholic. His daughter Tina married a Protestant.

Harris Newmark - German and Jewish - was one of Remi Nadeau's best friends.

Prudent Beaudry's sometime business partner Solomon Lazard - French and Jewish - was so popular among Angelenos of all ethnicities that Spanish speakers called him "Don Solomon".

French Basque Philippe Garnier built a commercial building specifically to lease it to Chinese merchants, who weren't considered human beings by the United States government at the time.

No one batted an eye at the fact that quite a few of LA's earlier Frenchmen (including Louis Bauchet, Joseph Mascarel, and Miguel Leonis) married Spanish, Mexican, or Native American women.

Frenchtown didn't have deed restrictions. (It's true that we don't always get along with everyone, but you won't find many French people willing to do something that asinine.)

The original core of Frenchtown was largely taken over by the civic center and industry when the area was redeveloped in the 1920s (and when the 101 sliced through downtown). But part of it became Little Tokyo. Why? No deed restrictions.

In fact, when Japanese American internment emptied Little Tokyo during World War II, African Americans (many working in the defense industry) poured into the neighborhood, and for a time it was known as "Bronzeville". Again, it was still one of the few areas with no deed restrictions. (On a personal note, the original paperwork for my childhood home in Sherman Oaks - built in 1948 - included a restriction against selling to African Americans. No other ethnicities were excluded. Which should give my dear readers a rough idea of what African American home buyers faced at the time - and renters had even fewer choices. Deed restrictions were legally struck down in California in 1947 and nationwide in 1948, but in Los Angeles, they persisted into the 1950s. Nationwide, it was probably worse.)

LA's original Chinatown was emptied and razed to build Union Station. Where did all the Chinese Angelenos go? The area now known as Chinatown was full of French Angelenos first. Wikipedia incorrectly states that it was originally Little Italy. It's true that Italians did live in the neighborhood, but the French arrived before the first Italians did, and made up a larger percentage of the population. Why did the demographics change? No deed restrictions to keep out Chinese residents - or, for that matter, Italian residents. (Catholics of all origins occasionally clashed with Chinese Angelenos over religious differences, but the French community welcomed newcomers from Italy. Case in point: two of the French Benevolent Society's founding members were Italian. And the French Hospital did accept Chinese patients at a time when most hospitals wouldn't.)

LA's Jewish community was largely based in Boyle Heights for many years. Guess who else lived in Boyle Heights back in the day? There were Anglos, sure, but there were also Basque farmers. In fact, Simon Gless' big Victorian house was used as office space for the Hebrew Shelter Home and Asylum for many years (the last time I checked, it was a boarding house for mariachi musicians). Once again - no deed restrictions. (Why does Los Angeles County have so many Jewish residents? Because Jews have, historically, been more welcome in Los Angeles than in many other places. Los Angeles was a tiny frontier town when the first Jewish residents arrived, and in the Old West - where people had to work together to stay alive - how you treated people mattered more than what house of worship you attended.)

I haven't found anything on whether Pellissier Square ever had deed restrictions or not, but there's a reason Korean Angelenos originally clustered in Bunker Hill. Prudent Beaudry - who developed for everyone - developed Bunker Hill. Like Angelino Heights, Bunker Hill was unrestricted.

How did Frenchtown cease to be called Frenchtown?

Simple. As the city expanded westward, and as many French Angelenos moved west or left the city entirely in search of land for grazing livestock/farming/growing grapes, people who weren't welcome in other areas moved to the historically French - and historically unrestricted - neighborhoods.

If you were in the same situation, wouldn't you?