Prudent Street in Maps

Beaudry Street, named for the Beaudry brothers, still exists.

Victor Street, named for Victor Beaudry, still exists (although it was bisected by the 101 long ago).

Victor Heights, also named for Victor, still exists (although it tends to get lumped in with Echo Park). 

There is no street named for Prudent Beaudry specifically.

Anymore, that is. There was a Prudent Street!

1894 Sanborn map showing Prudent Street

1906 Sanborn map showing Prudent Street

1920 Sanborn map key detail showing Prudent Street

Sanborn map revised 1923, showing Prudent Street

Sanborn Map republished 1953, still showing Prudent Street

A 1950 atlas page that is unfortunately too blurry to post here indicates that Prudent Street was close to Naud Junction, the Bauchet Tract, and the elusive (because the street grid is gone) Ballesteros Tract.

So Prudent Street did exist, and no longer does. Where did it go?

As shown above, railroad tracks and freight houses were built right alongside Prudent Street. A 1912 news article notes the Southern Pacific Railroad applied for permits to legalize 18 existing railroad spurs. All of the spurs were either on Prudent Street or in its immediate vicinity.

Before the railroad came to this part of LA, it was residential. Two news blurbs from the 1880s reference people who lived on Prudent Street.

Those Southern Pacific spurs are lost to time now, Union Station having made them redundant. As for Prudent Street, its site is currently a big dirt lot near Metro's Chinatown Station.

Erase, Rewind, Erase Some More

I've previously written at length about the Beaudry brothers' vital roles in developing early downtown LA. 

The houses built under the Beaudrys' downtown development plans are all gone - except for the home of John J. Ford, which was moved to Heritage Square Museum. The Ford house stood on Beaudry Avenue, at a corner shared with Mignonette Street.

The surrounding neighborhood, Temple-Beaudry (formerly the Park Tract), echoes Bunker Hill a mile away. Originally a middle class neighborhood filled with modest Victorian homes, it slowly became less fashionable, less expensive, and less valued to city leaders who didn't live there. The original buildings were lost to freeway construction or redevelopment over the years. Only the Beaudry brothers' street names remained.

Until now.

Beaudry Avenue and Victor Street are still here, but we'll be saying goodbye to at least part of Mignonette Street.

The city has not only approved, but accelerated, a street vacation for about 230 feet of Mignonette Street. A street vacation is a type of easement giving a public street's right-of-way to a private owner. The City of Los Angeles requires about $15,000 in deposit fees to the Bureau of Engineering, environmental review, public investigation, and public hearings to proceed with a street vacation, and the process normally takes at least a year.

It took all of three minutes for me to find this and this. 

Long story short, it appears that billionaire developer Geoffrey H. Palmer is building another one of his big, faux-Italian complexes. The street vacation was most likely requested to turn that portion of Mignonette Street into a parking garage entrance (or something similar).

I have concerns about this. I'm surprised the city doesn't. 

Oh, wait, no I'm not. City Hall only cares about money, developers, and lobbyists.

Besides the $20 million negligence lawsuit against Palmer filed in 2016 (which the city settled for a mere $400,000), there's the matter of his buildings being a little pricey. Currently, a small studio at the Orsini will set you back at least $1600. While that's certainly not as expensive as some downtown apartments, it does nothing to fulfill the city's need for affordable units. Which isn't surprising. 

So we're losing at least part of a surviving French-named street. I will need to update my street-name list (and, possibly, my parking-lot list). I should be upset about that, but I'm more irritated that a billionaire who appears to despise historic preservation and poor people has seemingly been given carte blanche to do as he pleases, regardless of how that affects anyone else.

I used to manage two apartment buildings. I took my role as a housing provider very seriously, and if every landlord did, Los Angeles would probably not be facing such a severe housing usage crisis.

Cerro Gordo Needs Some Help

Regular readers will know a bit about Cerro Gordo from my entries on Victor Beaudry and Remi Nadeau. The silver lead bullion mined at Cerro Gordo helped to put Los Angeles on the map, since Remi shipped it via the port of San Pedro.

Cerro Gordo has been in the public eye here and there lately, since the town came up for sale in 2018, was featured on "Ghost Adventures", and opened to day visitors.

Co-owner Brent Underwood, who lives in Texas, came to Cerro Gordo a few months ago so the town's caretaker could check in on his wife in Arizona when the coronavirus outbreak began. It was supposed to be a short visit, but Brent was quickly snowed in and has now been in Cerro Gordo for about three months. Read some transcribed Zoom interview questions with Brent here (look for a picture of Victor Beaudry's smelter!).

Two days ago, a fire broke out in Cerro Gordo. Dry mountain air + very old, very dry wood frame buildings = highly destructive fires.

The American Hotel, Crapo House, and Ice House all burned down. There were a few hundred buildings in Cerro Gordo during the town's heyday, but fewer than 20 buildings are left.

The town needs volunteers to help clean up the mess from the fire. Brent and his business partner Jon Bier also need money to build a new hotel. The hotel's blueprints have survived, so the goal is to build a new hotel with electricity and running water while paying homage to the lost American Hotel. (As it stands, Cerro Gordo doesn't have running water at all.) When such a hotel is completed, the town will be able to accept overnight guests. (No, I haven't been to Cerro Gordo yet. Yes, I definitely want to go.)

Contact Brent and Jon via the Cerro Gordo website or on Instagram.

The Forgotten Beaudry Brother

Victor Beaudry (date unknown)

We know that the Beaudry family had five sons, who all made fortunes. Three remained in Canada (one of them becoming Mayor of Montreal), but two settled in Los Angeles and became U.S. citizens.

We've covered Prudent Beaudry. But Victor, the youngest of the eight Beaudry siblings, is completely forgotten today.

Like his older brothers before him, Victor was born in Quebec in 1829 and educated in the best schools Montreal and New York had to offer. And like the rest of his brothers, he had a head for business and spoke fluent English. Since he arrived rather late in his parents' lives, Victor faced a challenge his brothers did not: he was only three years old when their father died.

In the late 1840s (sources disagree on whether it was before or after the Gold Rush began), Victor (now in his late teens) moved to San Francisco and established a successful shipping and commission business. Prudent, who was thirteen years older than Victor, later joined him, and the brothers then got into the ice business.

By 1850*, Victor was living in Los Angeles. He got back into the ice business with Damien Marchesseault, harvesting ice in the San Bernardino mountains and shipping it via mule train to Los Angeles. From the port of San Pedro, some of their ice was shipped to saloons in the faraway, but no less thirsty, city of San Francisco. Their ice house is long gone, but the area is still called Ice House Canyon. Victor also did some mining in the San Gabriel Valley and co-founded the Santa Anita Mining Company with Marchesseault in 1858. From 1855 to 1861, Victor managed Prudent's many business interests, at one point remodeling the aging Beaudry Block into Southern California's finest commercial building. He became a U.S. citizen in 1858 (beating older brother Prudent to citizenship by five years).

Three years later, Victor received a contract to supply the Army of the Potomac and joined the First Regiment of Infantry in the United States Army, fighting for the Union cause. He remained in the Army until the bitter end of the Civil War, suffering health problems for much of his life as a result of his wartime experiences.

After the war, several of Victor's good friends from the Army were stationed at Camp Independence in Inyo County, and suggested he open a store there. This was a natural enough task for Victor, since he came from a family of successful merchants.

Victor soon acquired an interest in the Cerro Gordo silver mines, partnering with Mortimer Belshaw. Due to the mines' prodigious output (An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County puts the figure at 5,000,000 pounds of bullion per year), 400 mules were needed to haul the bullion 200 miles to San Pedro, where it would be sent via ship to San Francisco. Remi Nadeau (who had started his empire by borrowing $600 from Prudent to buy a freight wagon and mules) formed the Cerro Gordo Freighting Company with Victor and Belshaw. Years later, when Nadeau liquidated most of his freighting company's equipment, it was largely purchased by the Oro Grande Mining Company - which just so happened to be partially owned by the Beaudry brothers. But we'll get into the details when we get to Remi Nadeau.

Because the Cerro Gordo mines stimulated so much business in the area (and on the route to LA), the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad was built. Before too long, the Southern Pacific Railroad also branched out to the Mojave Desert.

Victor returned to Montreal in 1872. The following year, he married the Sheriff of Montreal's daughter, Mary Angelena Le Blanc. Before long, the couple had five children (Victor, Oscar, Abel, Alva, and Mathilda). Victor returned to Los Angeles with his wife and children in 1881, building a house at 405 Temple Street (near Montreal Street, which was later renamed Hill Street) and working with Prudent in real estate development. You know this story. Angelino Heights, Temple Street Cable Railway, half of modern-day downtown...I won't rehash it here. Victor's name appeared in the real estate section of local newspapers almost as often as Prudent's (mostly regarding properties in the Angelino Heights and Beaudry Water Works tracts). The April 8, 1883 Los Angeles Daily Herald even lists Victor as the seller of Beaudry Park to the Los Angeles Infirmary (aka St. Vincent's Hospital).

Over the years, city directories and voter rolls simply listed Victor's occupation as "capitalist".

The Beaudrys returned to Montreal in 1886. Victor had experienced health issues since his stint in the Army, and by this time was suffering from inflammatory rheumatism. He passed away in Montreal on March 7, 1888. Prudent was notified by telegram that evening, and Victor's obituary appeared in the following morning's Los Angeles Herald.

For a few years after his death, Prudent and F.W. Wood, executors of Victor's estate, slowly liquidated Victor's impressive real estate holdings. (In November 1888, they were sued over an alleged one-fourth interest in the Old Cemetery tract Victor held. One of the plaintiffs was George S. Patton Sr. - General Patton's father.) Prudent is well known to local historians as a prodigious developer and real estate agent, but Victor's real estate interests were nothing to sneeze at.

The house on Temple Street is long gone. Today, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels takes up most of the block. The former site of Victor's house is very close to the Cathedral's gift shop.

When Victor is remembered at all, he is remembered as Prudent's brother. While partnering with Prudent made him even wealthier, Victor accomplished quite a lot on his own and with different business partners. He should be remembered for his own merits, not merely for being the baby brother of two mayors.

*One source says Victor spent a few years in Nicaragua for business purposes. It does sound like something a Beaudry would do - however, I can't find a proper source citation, and the older sources say 1850. In the absence of proof, I'll leave 1850 as the date.

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.)

Rest in Peace, Mr. Mayor: Damien Marchesseault

Los Angeles has had three French mayors, and Damien Marchesseault was the first. (Grab some tissues. Not every story gets to have a happy ending.)

Damien Marchesseault was born in 1818 in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. In 1845, he left for New Orleans and became a riverboat gambler. (I should note that gambling professionally was considered socially acceptable at the time, not stigmatized as it sometimes is today.)

In 1850, Marchesseault left New Orleans for California, settling in Los Angeles. He soon partnered with another French Canadian, Victor Beaudry (whose brother, Prudent Beaudry, would also become mayor), in the ice business. In those days before refrigeration, ice had to be harvested and transported to cities to keep food from spoiling and keep drinks cold. Beaudry and Marchesseault built an ice house and operated a mule train to bring ice from the San Bernardino Mountains to Los Angeles and beyond (their customers included saloons in faraway San Francisco). Ice House Canyon, located between Mount Baldy and Mount San Antonio, is named for their ice house. In 1858, he again partnered with Beaudry, this time in the Santa Anita Mining Company.

Marchesseault also owned a saloon - and kept up his gambling skills. He became a popular local figure and was asked to run for Mayor. Which he did, winning the election and serving a one-year term in 1859-1860. (Mayors of Los Angeles served one-year terms at the time, but could serve an unlimited number of terms.)

Before long, Marchesseault's mettle was tested by disaster. The winter of 1859-1860 brought the worst rains and flooding Los Angeles had seen in many years, and the Los Angeles River shifted its bed by a quarter mile. Much of the original pueblo was destroyed.

Undaunted, Marchesseault put his considerable energy to work helping to rebuild his adopted city, including the all-important Plaza Church.

Marchesseault was elected again in 1861, serving four consecutive terms afterwards. This was a very trying time for Los Angeles - the Civil War was raging back East, the economic effects of war were felt strongly in California, a deadly measles outbreak killed a number of Angelenos, another flood destroyed the primitive water system (again), and Southern California suffered a drought so severe that farmers let their fields go fallow and ranchers had no choice but to cull many of their cattle.

Through it all, Marchesseault was applauded by Los Angeles residents for his capable management of the city. Under his tenure, the Wilmington Drum Barracks were established (just in case...), new brick buildings went up, the first Chinese market opened, the city's first public mural was commissioned from Henri Penelon, gas streetlights and telegraph wires were installed, and the Mayor himself helped organize LA's first municipal gas company (remember, this was before LA had home electricity).

In 1863, Marchesseault met Mary Clark Gorton Goodhue, who came to California from Rhode Island and had been widowed twice. She was a talented musician and spoke several languages. The Mayor and the sophisticated widow married in San Francisco in October of that year.

The onslaught of droughts, flooding, and more droughts inspired Marchesseault to seek better water management for Los Angeles. At the end of his 1865 term, he was appointed Water Overseer, a more important (and higher-paying) job than Mayor in parched Los Angeles, and served for one year.

Marchesseault temporarily served as Mayor for four months in 1867 and returned to his duties as Water Overseer before being elected Mayor again. He pushed on with improvements in the water system, awarding a contract to a business partner, engineer Jean-Louis Sainsevain. Sainsevain had been awarded the contract previously, in 1863, but gave up due to extreme difficulty and excessive costs.

Sainsevain and Marchesseault installed pipes made from hollowed-out logs, which had a frustrating tendency to leak or burst. (One of these logs, bound with metal and wire and and showing multiple splits, is displayed at the Natural History Museum’s “Becoming Los Angeles” exhibit.) By the middle of summer, stories about their water system turning the streets into muddy sinkholes were becoming all too common. Meanwhile, the fact that Sainsevain was Marchesseault's business partner did not escape notice, drawing accusations of corruption.

The Mayor was under a great strain. His administration was being harshly criticized, he had lost large amounts of money on bad investments and his partnership with Sainsevain, he had borrowed money from everyone he knew, and he was unable to repay his debts. The fact that the stress caused him to drink heavily and gamble more than ever didn't help. Mary offered to get a teaching job, but Marchesseault wouldn't hear of it.

Early in the morning of January 20, 1868, the deeply distressed Mayor entered an empty chamber at City Hall. He wrote a letter to his beloved Mary:

My Dear Mary -

By my drinking to excess, and gambling also, I have involved myself to the amount of about three thousand dollars which I have borrowed from time to time from friends and acquaintances, under the promise to return the same the following day, which I have often failed to do. To such an extent have I gone in this way that I am now ashamed to meet my fellow man on the street; besides that, I have deeply wronged you as a husband, by spending my money instead of maintaining you as it becomes a husband to do. Though you have never complained of my miserable conduct, you nevertheless have suffered too much. I therefore, to save you further disgrace and trouble, being that I cannot maintain you respectably, I shall end this state of thing this very morning. Of course, in all this, there is no blame attached - contrary you have asked me to permit you to earn money honestly by teaching and I refused. You have always been true to me. If I write these few lines, it is to set you right before this wicked world, to keep slander from blaming you in way manner whatsoever. Now, my dear beloved, I hope that you will pardon me, and also Mr. Sainsevain. It is time to part, God bless you, and may you be happy yet.

Your husband,

Damien Marchesseault.

The progressive six-term Mayor then shot himself in the head with a revolver.* The next day, his suicide note appeared in the Los Angeles Semi-Weekly News and the funeral was held at his home.

Damien Marchesseault was buried in the Los Angeles City Cemetery (I surmise he was ineligible for burial at Calvary Catholic Cemetery due to his suicide). Mary remarried after his death (to Italian-born Eduardo Teodoli, who published Spanish-language newspaper La Cronica), but was buried in the City Cemetery along with Marchesseault and her son from her first marriage when she passed away in 1878.

When the old City Cemetery was taken over by the city and turned into (what else...) a Los Angeles Board of Education parking lot, surviving family members moved Mary, Marchesseault, and Mary's son C.W. Gorton to Angelus Rosedale Cemetery.

Although Marchesseault and Sainsevain were ultimately unsuccessful in their struggle to bring reliable water service to the city of Los Angeles, their successors prevailed. A few months after Marchesseault's death, Sainsevain transferred the contract to Prudent Beaudry, Solomon Lazard, and Dr. John S. Griffin. They founded the Los Angeles City Water Company, which was fittingly located at the corner of Alameda and Marchesseault Streets.

Good luck finding Marchesseault Street on a map today - it’s now Paseo de la Plaza. 

There is a memorial plaque to the forgotten Marchesseault in the sidewalk outside the Mexican Consulate and Hispanic Cultural Center. The details of his service to the city are, I'm sorry to say, not listed entirely accurately on the plaque.

Some historians credit Marchesseault's leadership with turning the Pueblo into the City of Los Angeles, citing his many accomplishments and capability in rebuilding the ruined pueblo. Today, he is completely unappreciated by the city that once loved him so.

Repose en paix.

*Okay, fine...the Semi-Weekly News reported that the bullet entered the Mayor's skull next to his nose and lodged in his brain. Which is a polite way of saying he shot himself in the face (think about it...). For Mary's sake, I sincerely hope it was a closed-casket funeral.