Jean Trébaol Vanishes

Sometimes, people just disappear.

It's much less common in the digital age. It would have been relatively easy to vanish without a trace - either intentionally or unintentionally - in 1919, when Jean Trébaol was last seen alive.

Born in Brest, he came to the States in 1893 at the age of 24, and soon married another Brest native, Jeanne de Kersauson de Pennendreff. The couple rented a house at 125 4th Street and would eventually have fourteen children (with thirteen surviving infancy).

Jean was a teacher and linguist, but took a job editing the French-language newspaper Le Progrès either with or under the notoriously unsavory J.P. Goytino. A squabble prompted Jean to leave and establish his own paper, Le Français. He boasted in English-language advertisements that Le Français was "the only French newspaper in Southern California established, published, and owned by a Frenchman." 

This must have come as quite a surprise to Pierre Ganée, a fellow French immigrant who established, published, and owned rival paper L'Union Nouvelle. 

The Herald published an article in 1897 about Constance Goytino (wife of J.P. and daughter of Joseph Mascarel) horse-whipping Mme. Trébaol outside a courtroom after a hearing. Jeanne's 17-year-old brother Robert, who was to inherit a considerable sum of money, had nominated J.P. as his legal guardian. Jeanne and her sister Isabel had concerns about Goytino's appointment. Constance also accused the Trébaols of trash-talking her. Jean sent a letter to the Herald politely informing them that Constance had attacked Jeanne unprovoked, that Jeanne had not actually taken the stand, and that "Judge Clark granted what we were intending for, namely, that Goytino as a guardian be put under heavy bonds and be restrained from incurring any liabilities on the principal of his ward."

Le Français merged with L'Union Nouvelle in 1900, and Jean went back to teaching.

With a large family to support and teacher pay being less than robust, Jean had more than one job. He taught French at Los Angeles High School, taught night classes at Polytechnic High School, taught at the Ebell Club of Pasadena, and taught privately. 

He also wrote for the Herald occasionally. Of particular note is Jean's 1901 essay "The Corset Question". While Jean wasn't 100 percent correct on the history of corsets, he expressed concerns over the health effects of tightlacing and predicted - correctly - that some women would continue to wear body-shaping undergarments (although these days waist trainers and other shapewear are far more common than corsets) instead of embracing their natural shape. While he chalks this up to vanity, I surmise he was unaware of the pressure to look a certain way that many women still face, well over a century later.

In 1903, Jean suffered a breakdown from stress, overwork, and starving himself for months to feed his children. He was sent to the San Gabriel sanitarium for a few weeks to recover. A newspaper blurb solicited financial assistance for the Trébaols, who had five children by this point. (Given the date of the article and the birthdates of their children, Jeanne would have been caring for 8-month-old Yvonne and was already expecting Edouard.)

1903 blurb regarding Jean Trébaol's hospitalization due to a breakdown

Blurb regarding a subscription, or donation fund, for the Trébaols

Jeanne was appointed legal guardian to her husband after his breakdown. A real estate transaction listed in the newspaper suggests she sold the family home on his behalf.

1909 newspaper blurb mentioning Trébaol's second hospitalization

A snippet from one of the San Francisco papers indicates that Jean lost or pawned a bag filled with important papers and photographs (which were an expensive luxury in 1909) prior to being committed to a mental hospital again. Jeanne came to San Francisco and requested police assistance in locating the bag. 

When World War One broke out in 1914, Jean tried to enlist. He was turned down due to being in his forties and having thirteen living children. (Georges Le Mesnager, by contrast, had five children, four of whom had reached adulthood.)

The Trébaols moved to Hollywood, which was still semi-rural. The family's three cows got out one day, prompting the judge to order Trébaol to keep them in another neighborhood and secure them properly.

1917 blurb about the Trébaol family's cows escaping

Jean took a job at the French Consulate for a while, then accepted a teaching post at the Mare Island YMCA in Vallejo, teaching French to sailors from the naval base bound for France. He published a small textbook related to this post. The rest of the Trébaols remained in the family home in Los Angeles.

Jean was known to the staff of the Echo de l'Ouest, one of the Bay Area's own French-language newspapers. He stopped by the newspaper's office on May 31, 1919, appearing to be severely depressed, and told the staff that he needed a complete rest. According to them, he was not himself that day. 

On June 1, Jean spent the night at the home of his brother René, who lived in Vallejo. The San Francisco Call stated that he was suffering from a nervous breakdown. He vanished the following morning.

Jean Trébaol was never seen again.

One colleague noted that there was talk of him drowning, which is certainly plausible given Vallejo's location on the Bay. It was widely assumed that he must have died in either an accident or - especially in the light of his apparent depression - by suicide.

Jean never found out that he had just been selected as the Vallejo schools' French teacher. 

Jeanne came up from Los Angeles to search for her missing husband, but it was to no avail. 

The California Historical Society Quarterly claimed that "Mascarel offered Madame Trébaol a house of prostitution as a good source of revenue after her husband's disappearance, but she declined, especially as she would have to live in it herself!" While the French Colony was known to step up for those in need, this story isn't even possible; Joseph Mascarel had passed away twenty years earlier in 1899 at the age of 83.

Jeanne DID need money, of course. She was a mother of thirteen living children, and although her two oldest children were in their twenties, the youngest was only four years old.

Six of the Trébaol children were already "appearing in motion pictures", as the Call put it, when their father disappeared. The other seven were soon looking for acting gigs as well. 

Jean had suffered from memory loss during previous mental health episodes, and had once spotted a newspaper advertisement placed by Jeanne, recovered his memory, and returned home. Besides earning money in the movies, the family hoped Jean would see and recognize one of his children on the screen.

Older brothers Hervé and Oliver went overseas (presumably to fight in the war), returning in 1919 and going on to higher education (in Hervé's case, becoming a priest and serving for years at St. Mariana in Pico Rivera). Eldest daughter Cecile helped Jeanne keep house and worked as a telephone operator at night. The other ten siblings continued to act.

1919 news article with picture of Jean Trébaol

When he was cast as the Artful Dodger in the 1922 version of Oliver Twist, Edouard told the San Bernardino Sun that "somebody asked mother to try to get some of us in the movies and so finally mother took a few of us around to picture studios. It was hard work, walking from studio to studio, and there was very little for us then. In fact it was many weeks before we received our first call. That was for a picture with Miss Pickford. Since then, the picture directors have been very kind. After they learned about our dad...they seemed glad to give any of us work when they could. Now every one of us is in pictures. Why, even mother herself sometimes plays."

1922 picture of Jeanne with her 13 children.
Headline reads "Thirteen Children Act in Movies But Want Their Daddy Not Fame."

Out of the thirteen Trébaol children, IMDB lists acting credits for Edouard, Jeanette, François (credited as "Francis"), Philippe, Yves, and Marie. I hasten to add that in the very early days of the motion picture industry, actors were not always credited by name, and it's likely that the other children worked as extras or in uncredited roles, since Jeanne did.

In an interesting footnote, Jeanette was apparently not put off teaching by her father's struggles. A 1946 news article mentions her joining the summer school staff at San Pedro High School thirty years earlier, teaching English and Spanish. That fall, she stayed on, teaching at Polytechnic High during the day and night school in the evenings.

Bastille Day in Old LA

On this day in 1789, the French Revolution began.

I an pretty open about having a complicated relationship with La Fête Nationale/Bastille Day. My dad is a descendant of an earlier French monarch, which makes both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette my very distant cousins. My mom's family comes from centuries of French peasant stock.

Still, I wish I could take a time machine to Old LA on this day. The French community put on quite a Bastille Day celebration.

In fact, it used to be a pretty big deal in LA.

Los Angeles Herald, 1881

One of the earliest references I can find lists the parade route: Aliso to Arcadia, Main to the Plaza, then to Spring, Spring to Second, Second to Fort (Broadway), Fort to Fourth, Fourth to Main, Main to the junction with Spring, and to the Turnverein Hall for speeches. "A representation of the Bastille" (i.e. a very early parade float) was included in the procession.

This route would have effectively started in the French Colony, gone to the Plaza, doubled back and wound through downtown, ending up where the Convention Center parking lot is today. For comparison, the Rose Parade follows a roughly 5.5 mile route.

Two of the speakers were Pascal Ganée and Georges Le Mesnager, who was quite well known for his speeches! More on that in a minute. 

Bastille Day 1881 concluded with a banquet at the Pico House, prepared under one of LA's early celebrity chefs, Victor Dol.

On this day in 1882, the festivities began with a 21-gun salute at sunrise from Fort Hill. The Mayor, the President of the City Council, "delegates from fire companies and civil societies", French citizens of varying prominence, and a beauty queen - the Goddess of Liberty - all made appearances.

The Goddess of Liberty chosen for the event, by the way, happened to be 14-year-old Narcisse Sentous, eldest daughter of Jean Sentous. She was carried in a "Car of Liberty" with several maids of honor, all girls from the French Colony.

Los Angeles Herald, 1882 (snippet of much longer article)

The parade procession was big enough to have two divisions, both made up of prominent citizens and local societies. Besides the Car of Liberty, another car had Marie Deleval representing France, Mathilde Reynaud representing the United States, Honoré Penelon (eight-year-old son of the late Henri Penelon) dressed as the Marquis de Lafayette, and ten-year-old Auguste Lemasne dressed as George Washington. Rounding up the rear were citizens riding donkeys in tribute to the city's butchers.

Eugene Meyer, the "President of the Day" (i.e. Grand Marshal) and then-Agent for the French consulate, gave a speech in French and introduced Frank Howard (who gave a quick history lesson on Bastille Day in English). "The Star-Spangled Banner" was sung, the band played, "La Marseillaise" was sung, and Georges Le Mesnager gave a speech in French.

And that wasn't all. A large model of the Bastille had been built on Fort Hill. After the sun went down, it was stormed and set on fire. (Good thing two fire companies were there!)

The day concluded with a party at Armory Hall.

In 1886, the French Colony invited the editor of the Los Angeles Herald to attend the Bastille Day celebration. He had a prior commitment in Long Beach that day, but thanked the French Colony in the newspaper.

Los Angeles Herald, 1886

The newspaper did still cover the event, of course. 

In spite of a half-hour rainstorm (an extreme rarity during a Southern California summer), the parade went on, although many people who had planned to join the parade waited inside the French Theatre for the rest of the day's events. The President of the Day was Jean-Louis Sainsevain this time - and again, one of the last speeches was given by Georges Le Mesnager.

The biggest celebration of them all was held in 1889 - the 100th anniversary of the French Republic. Besides the usual festivities, an extravagant banquet and ball was held at the Pico House, then owned by Pascal Ballade and renamed the National Hotel. The speech Georges Le Mesnager gave on this day was particularly well remembered by French Angelenos - and you can read most of it (thoughtfully translated into English by the Los Angeles Herald) here.

Los Angeles Herald, 1891.

An interesting footnote to the 1891 celebration is that one of the vocalists was J.P. Goytino, who despite having some musical talent was also a highly problematic newspaper editor/slumlord/all-around dirtbag.  Goytino is perhaps most notorious for stopping issuance of a marriage license five years later when his extremely wealthy father-in-law, Joseph Mascarel, sought to legally marry his common-law second wife. (He needn't have bothered; Mascarel left most of his fortune to his grandchildren from his first marriage.) I could do a pretty ugly deep dive on Goytino, but David Kimbrough already did a very thorough one on Facebook (warning: it's a 12-parter).

Los Angeles Herald, 1900

Los Angeles Herald, 1901

Los Angeles Herald, 1908

Los Angeles Herald, 1908

By 1908, Bastille Day was a big enough celebration that it was held at Chutes Park - and pyrotechnics were part of the event (no gunfire here!).

Los Angeles Daily Times, 1926

By 1926, two thousand French Angelenos were coming to the Bastille Day celebration. That evening's grand ball was a fundraiser for the French Society for the French War Orphans - and hosted by Felix Clavere.

Los Angeles Daily News, 1930

Hollywood Citizen-News, 1940

Bastille Day took on a somber significance in 1940, with two-thirds of the country having fallen under Nazi control. The following year, the Colony was nearly as divided as France, but everyone agreed that a big party wasn't appropriate during a time of war. Supporters of the Free French (who accounted for most of the Colony), believing France would rise again, had their own event at the Riverside Breakfast Club. Supporters of the Vichy government spent the day in mourning.

Los Angeles Daily News, 1941

In 1943, Capt. Paul Perigord addressed the United Nations Committee at the Hotel Clark. His keynote? "France is rising again." While there understandably doesn't seem to have been a celebration, the Fighting French tricolor flag was flown from City Hall's flagpole. (In case anyone needs to be reminded: the French are fierce fighters.)

Los Angeles Times, 1943

Los Angeles Times, 1946

Los Angeles Times, 1947

After the war, Bastille Day was back - and hosted by the Los Angeles Breakfast Club! 

Two years later, Bastille Day was marked by a flag ceremony at City Hall.

Los Angeles Daily News, 1949

Los Angeles Times, 1951

Hollywood Citizen-News, 1952

Los Angeles Times, 1957

Highland Park News-Herald and Journal, 1957

Los Angeles Times, 1960

Bastille Day was a big enough event to merit an annual flag ceremony at City Hall and draw a crowd of thousands to the Colony’s celebration. That certainly isn't the case now, and I fully expect Mayor Garcetti to ignore Bastille Day again, as Mayors of Los Angeles have tended to do for years.

What happened? 

Bastille Day fell on a Sunday in 1968. 

Any city employees involved in the ceremony would have had to come in on their day off, and overtime pay would have more than doubled the usual cost of the ceremony. The City Council didn't want to pay for it, voted against increasing the budget, wanted to scrap the ceremony entirely, and Councilman Wilkinson sniped "you ought to remember what France has done to us in the past year or two". 

French Consul General Gerard Peres put an end to the uproar by canceling the ceremony himself "so that City Hall personnel will not lose a day off and municipal expenses will not be increased at a time of financial difficulties". 

Mayor Sam Yorty sent Peres an official apology for the Council's rudeness, and the French tricolor did still fly alongside the US flag in the Civic Center.

At one of my lectures, I was asked when the last Bastille Day parade was held. I can't be 100 percent certain when the parade was retired, but the last time the city officially acknowledged Bastille Day at all (although wordlessly flying a flag barely counts) seems to have been in 1968.

Knowing that the flag ceremony was retired for budgetary reasons, when the city now spends a fortune lighting up City Hall in different colors for just about everything, is pretty irritating. There is no liberté, egalité, or fraternité in regards to what the city chooses to consider important enough to recognize.

Have a good Fête Nationale anyway, dear readers!

A Very Brief History of French Bakeries in Old Los Angeles

Once upon a time, a long long time ago by Los Angeles standards, the city was just a tiny pueblo that lacked a proper bakery.

You might assume that the first bakeries in Los Angeles specialized in Mexican baked goods. You would, however, be mistaken. For LA's first 72 years of existence, the ONLY bread baked in the city was French bread.

In those very early days, Andre Mano and Pierre Domegue set up shop in the Plaza area, baking French sourdough around the corner from the Plaza Church. 

Andre Mano was born in France around 1809, is listed in the 1850 Federal census as a baker, and shared a house with 28-year-old Pedro Dornes (or Domec), a cooper who was also from France. Ten years later, the 1860 census still listed Andre as a baker, with another French housemate, laborer Martin Echepare.

Little seems to be known about Pierre Domegue, except that he was married to, and also baked bread with, a Native American woman whose name and nation aren't mentioned in the few sources I've found. 

Joseph Lelong, who set up shop in 1851, inexplicably named his French bakery after Swedish opera superstar Jenny Lind. There was a Lelong Block on Spring, south of Fifth, at least as late as 1890. If Lelong did indeed own property on that block (tax assessments suggest he had assets), he would have counted two other French bakers (Augustus Ulyard and Louis Mesmer) and a French grocer (Auguste Chauvin) as his neighbors. 

Lelong was the busiest baker in town...for a couple of years, anyway. He faced strong competition when Augustus Ulyard arrived in 1853. Ulyard, born in Philadelphia to French parents, started out with French bread, but soon added German and American breads and pastries, appealing to the growing Yankee and German communities. Ulyard added fresh crackers in 1860, filling another market gap (crackers shipped from San Bernardino or San Francisco tended to arrive stale). The former site of his bakery is now home to the Alexandria Hotel.

Ulyard eventually retired from baking, selling his bakery to Louis Mesmer. 

As Louis Mesmer merits his own entry, I'll restrict this to his activities as a baker. 

Besides the former Ulyard bakery, Louis Mesmer owned the New York Bakery at Sixth and Spring (the very first Ralphs Bros. Grocery stood next door). Mesmer, a devout Catholic, was the first baker in Los Angeles to bake matzo for the local Jewish community.

Los Angeles gained an army camp in 1861 in case local Confederate sympathizers revolted (Southern California had a lot of ex-Southern residents, and Los Angeles in particular leaned Confederate during the Civil War). An army marches on its stomach, and Camp Latham needed baked goods. Louis Mesmer got the contract, and erected a bakery at the camp along Ballona Creek (he also sold baked goods to neighboring rancheros). He was still operating the New York Bakery downtown. When Camp Latham moved to Highland Park, he supplied baked goods from the New York Bakery instead of building another bakery location.

Sometime around 1870, the Taix family arrived in Los Angeles. The Taix French Bread Bakery opened its doors in 1882 at 321 Commercial Street. Later, Adrian and Joaquin Taix owned The French Bakery at 1550 West Pico Boulevard. When the family tore down their bakery in 1912 to build the Champ d'Or Hotel (which would house the original Taix restaurant beginning in 1927), the Taix bakery moved, ending up in Northeast Los Angeles.

Dominique Foix, born in Haut-Garonne, arrived in 1882. He established a tannery and saddlery in his Macy Street home, later founding Foix French Baking Company downtown in 1886 and delivering bread door to door with a horse-drawn wagon. Foix often traded goods with customers who were short on cash, and received so many live frogs as payments that he was able to start a frog farm and sell frogs' legs to the many French restaurants in town. This led to Foix supplying bread to restaurants, which necessitated moving the bakery into a bigger facility in Highland Park. The bakery's flour came from Capitol Mills, housed in the oldest industrial building in the city - a three-story brick flour mill erected by Abel Stearns in 1831.

Foix turned over the bakery to his son in his later years, and Foix's grandsons were running the bakery at least as late as 1941. That same year, a broken water main below Elysian Park's reservoir flooded the bakery. Louis Foix evacuated all 15 employees, but the water and mud ruined 6000 pounds of flour. The bakery unfortunately seems to have closed down in the 1990s.

French Basque immigrant Jean-Baptiste Garacochea founded the National French Bakery in 1908, later changing the name to Pioneer French Baking Company. Pioneer operated in Venice from 1920 to 2006, operated by several generations of the Garacochea family. Great-grandsons John Baptiste and Charlie Garacochea co-own the Etxea Basque Bakery, which supplies bread to restaurants.

To hell with counting carbs - good French bread is an LA tradition! Pass the sourdough.

Erasing Frenchtown in Maps

I have been mapping historic French LA for 8.5 years.

It's harder than it looks. Among the many, MANY changes to the street grid, the intersection of Alameda and Aliso was erased, with Aliso rerouted into Commercial at Alameda Street in the 1950s to accommodate the 101 Freeway.

I get a lot of questions about this, and I think it's easier to explain with maps.

Aliso Street always had a bend in it - now it's more of a long diagonal. Here we see, from top to bottom, Main, Los Angeles, and Alameda Streets intersecting with Aliso. This is from 1894.

As you can see, Aliso and Commercial Streets are still parallel (and would be for about another 60 years), and Frenchtown still had plenty of houses.

This 1894 map detail shows the Maier and Zobelein brewery, formerly the El Aliso winery, in the bottom left corner. By this point, Jean-Louis Vignes' vineyard (formerly ground zero for the French community in LA) had been thoroughly developed into a mostly-residential neighborhood, and was still full of French residents like the Ducommuns, the Lazards, and Joseph Mascarel (who died in his Lazard Street home just a few years after this map was made). Maier and Zobelein was rebranded as Brew 102 in the 1940s, with the brewery tanks easily visible from the freeway and in photos.

Zoom in and you can see that Ducommun Street (misspelled here as "Ducummen") and Lazard Street were once two separate streets. Today, it's all Ducommun and it no longer reaches all the way to Alameda Street.

Republished in 1923, this map detail shows Aliso and Commercial are still parallel. Lazard Street is now Ducommun, which may be related to the fact that Ducommun Industries was, by then, headquartered along Ducommun Street (a bus parking facility now occupies the old Ducommun Yard).

North of Aliso, Marchesseault, Apablaza, Napier, and Juan Streets still existed in 1923, although multiple corrections to this map (originally published in 1906) show Old Chinatown/Little Paree gradually being torn down. Today, this is Union Station, the Metropolitan Water District, a park, and (what else...) a parking lot.

This revision, added in December 1937, shows Union Station in place of Old Chinatown/Little Paree, and shows the rerouting of Bauchet Street and the disappearance of Marchesseault Street (renamed East Sunset Boulevard). A local Chinatown historian once told me that if you could walk Marchesseault Street today, you'd more or less be walking into Union Station's front door.

Venturing northeast to where Frenchtown, the Plaza, and Old Chinatown formerly collided, we can see that Sanchez Street used to be longer. The Jennette Block, which housed the Hotel du Lion d'Or and the Hotel de Paris at different times, is now gone, along with the western wing of the Garnier Block. (The Garnier Block houses the Chinese American Museum, and ironically now needs to be expanded because too much of the building was lopped off in 1953 and the Museum needs more space. Oh, the irony.) Note that the Pico House is still called the National Hotel here.

This map is from 1953. Here we see one-third of Sanchez Street missing - lost to the 101 (Hollywood) Freeway. Today, Arcadia Street stands between Sanchez and the freeway and Market no longer exists. Look for the words "being dismantled" - much of what is still shown was gone within five years. 

One more snippet from 1953 - this is closer to today's street grid, except widening of the freeway bumped this section of Aliso further south. El Aliso (the tree itself, not the winery where it stood) was about where Vignes Street dead-ends at Commercial Street today (and, again, this section is now Commercial Street).

Want to see the current street grid laid out over the old one? Wikimedia’s got you covered. (While I firmly believe that Wikipedia is unreliable and should not be used for serious research, this map corresponds with what you’ll see in old maps of LA.)

When the original street grid has been altered to this extent, mapping French LA is a bigger challenge than everyone thinks it is. On top of that, LA added numbering fairly late. I do still plan to reveal the Great Big Map of French LA someday; I'm just not sure when (or if) I'll ever be "done" enough. 

To Los Angeles On Her 239th Birthday

Dear Los Angeles:

Whether September 4, 1781 was your exact founding date has been the subject of some debate, but no one alive today was there to see it, so like most Angelenos I'm content to consider today your birthday.

I know. It's a weird birthday and you can't celebrate like usual. Hopefully next year will be better. And ten years after that, your 250th should really be a big deal.

I think of you often, Los Angeles. I may live in a suburb (for reasons beyond the scope of this entry), but you've certainly been on my mind today. And it's because you're not okay.

I care about you, Los Angeles. I am bothered by the fact that you're not being looked after as well as you should be (with the exception of your wealthiest areas, you've been dirty and suffering from some degree of deferred maintenance for my entire life) and I am bothered that we keep losing so much of what makes you great to apathy, corruption, and greed. I am especially not happy with the poor stewardship you've been subjected to for all of this century and too much of the last one. It's not right and you deserve better.

I worry about you, Los Angeles. I worry about Angelenos who are struggling to survive on the street, or who are facing that prospect. I worry about you when a fire breaks out, and if a big enough earthquake hits (I haven't forgotten the 1994 Northridge quake), I'll worry then too. I worry about you when civilians clash with law enforcement. I worry that a certain subsection of the population - the people who just want to watch the world burn - hasn't learned anything from the 1871 Chinese Massacre, the 1965 Watts Riots, or the 1992 riots, and won't learn anything from 2020.

I weep for you, Los Angeles. I weep for the shameful and cruel way homeless Angelenos are treated. I weep for your public schools that are mediocre at best and shouldn't be. I weep for our losses - LACMA, Bunker Hill, pre-concrete Pershing Square. I weep for every exhausted commuter who can't live close to work due to finances or safety issues and rarely sees their loved ones. I weep for every Angeleno who doesn't have the right look or the right brand and thinks they're not enough (and I know a thing or two about this - I'm a pale, dark-haired, curvy Valley Girl who plays with scale models).

I pray for you, Los Angeles. I pray for civility, understanding, and peace between Angelenos. I pray that we'll stop losing the best of you to corruption, bribery, massive egos, and political favors. I pray for developers to think more like Prudent Beaudry (who developed for the wealthy, the working class, and everyone in between) and less like the people who plan to replace the Viper Room with a 15-story tower. I pray that we can save more of what makes you unique and special. I pray that the neglected Pico House doesn't rot from the inside out. I pray you'll have good, honest, and competent leadership in the near future, since in your 239 years of history you've had a lot of bad mayors and a lot of bad council members, and the people currently in charge are grossly unfit to care for you.

I love you, Los Angeles. Which is why I'm scared for you.

On this day I'm reminded of a scene from "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels". Tiago asks Lewis how they're going to save Los Angeles. Lewis responds that they're just trying to survive her. But how will you survive, Los Angeles?

My grandparents loved you so much. My parents say you used to be a great place to live. No one wants to see you turn into New York (both in terms of ugly skyscrapers and in terms of crime rate and livability).

Happy birthday, Los Angeles. May you rise from the ashes of 2020, no matter how impossible it seems (even Hurricane Katrina couldn't kill New Orleans).

With love from one of your millions of kids,

C.C.

The Crazy Life of Rémi Nadeau

Born in Canada to French parents, Rémi Nadeau is the one forgotten Frenchman every Angeleno should know about. After all, he helped to put sleepy little Los Angeles on the map.

Anglos called him "the crazy Frenchman". French Angelenos called him "crazy Rémi".

Was he really crazy? Was he hypersane? Or was he an eccentric visionary with a head for business?

We may never know the answer. But we do know his big dreams and "crazy" ideas made him rich.

Rémi Nadeau moved to Los Angeles in 1861. He quickly settled into the local French community - and secured a $600 loan from Prudent Beaudry.

With that loan, Rémi bought a wagon and a team of mules and set up his own freighting company.

Initially, Rémi made supply runs to faraway Salt Lake City - which took more than a month each way in those days. Harris Newmark reported that Rémi spent a few years in San Francisco, returning in 1866.

Rémi owned an entire city block - the same one where the Millennium Biltmore Hotel now stands. In his day, the land held his house, a stable, a corral, and a blacksmith shop.

Rémi's reputation as an eccentric was well earned: the Nadeau family's housekeeper wasn't allowed to clean the master suite. Mrs. Nadeau would do it herself. One day, when Mrs. Nadeau had fallen ill, Rémi's young niece Melvina Lapointe came over to help with the cleaning. While dusting, Melvina came upon a vase of fake flowers that seemed unusually heavy for its size. She pulled several wads of yellowed newspaper out of the top of the vase. To her surprise, the vase was filled with gold pieces! Mrs. Nadeau came into the room and instructed Melvina to put the vase back EXACTLY as she had found it so Uncle Rémi wouldn't change the hiding place.

In 1869, Rémi landed a very desirable contract: hauling silver and lead ore from the Cerro Gordo mines (near Lake Owens) to the Port of Los Angeles, where they would then be sent to San Francisco via ship for refining. (One of the partners in the Cerro Gordo mines was, of course, Victor Beaudry.)

The land in between Cerro Gordo and Los Angeles was rough, uninhabited, and in those days, devoid of roads. Rémi developed a large, heavy wagon with wide metal wheels that would be pulled by teams of twelve or more mules (depending on the load, twenty or more mules might pull a single shipment). The mines produced so much bullion that Rémi soon had 32 mule teams making regular runs to Cerro Gordo.

To maximize profits, Rémi sent the wagons to Cerro Gordo loaded with grain and other provisions. These would be sold to the miners, and the wagons would be reloaded with silver ingots for the return trip to San Pedro.

The owners of the Cerro Gordo mines demanded a reduction in freighting fees when Rémi's contract expired in 1871. Believing no one else could handle the task as well as his employees, he refused.

Barley prices had risen, and feeding hundreds of mules became very expensive. Rémi had taken out a loan from H. Newmark and Company to expand. Uncertain of his ability to pay the balance, he offered to turn over the freighting business to them. The company, believing in Rémi's ingenuity, encouraged him to find another contract instead.

Surely enough, a new opportunity soon arose when large deposits of borax were discovered in Nevada, and Rémi landed the contract. Boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax still reference Rémi's mule teams to this day.

When Rémi refused to renew his contract at a low rate, the mine owners had to route the silver bullion through other freighters in San Buenaventura (Ventura) and Bakersfield. Neither town could handle the output, and silver ingots began to pile up.

The Los Angeles business community wanted the silver trade back (it was the town's biggest moneymaker at the time), and tried to negotiate with the Southern Pacific Railroad - which announced a raise in freighting rates that would have made the plan too expensive.

Finally, the mine's owners (and the newly formed Chamber of Commerce) had to eat their humble pie and work out a fair contract with Rémi. He agreed to resume freighting silver bullion - on the condition that the mine's owners put up $150,000 to build freighting stations along his routes.

The Cerro Gordo Freighting Company soon had 65 stations ranging from San Pedro to Nevada to Arizona to San Francisco. Each station was a combination of hotel, trading post, blacksmith shop, and wagon repair shop, with stables and corrals for mules. Nadeau eventually had over 300 employees, and was so busy he put his brother-in-law, Michel Lapointe, in charge of the wagon works.

If you don't mind a 275-mile drive, Cerro Gordo is now open for tours (reservations required).

Some of the freighting stations grew into towns. In fact, one of them became the desert suburb of Indian Wells.

Eventually, railroads began to stretch across the Mojave Desert, reducing demand for mule teams. The Cerro Gordo Freighting Company sold off its mules and equipment, and Rémi began his next enterprise.

Rémi owned 3400 acres in South Los Angeles (the area is still referred to as Nadeau, or Nadeau Station), and tried his hand at growing sugar beets and refining the sugar. Unfortunately, it was a disaster. Harris Newmark, who was one of Rémi's best friends, recalled that "it was bad at best, and the more sugar one put in coffee, the blacker the coffee became."

Undaunted, Rémi turned to (what else...) wine, replanting the sugar beet fields with eight varieties of grapes (with a whopping two million grapevines total) and enlisting vintner Francois Escallier as supervisor. He also built a winery, and was successful at first. Unfortunately, the grapevines were destroyed by a sudden and unexpected insect infestation.

During the brief period of time that the Nadeau vineyard existed, it was believed to be the largest vineyard in the world.

Rémi also planted barley on the Centinela Rancho (modern-day Inglewood)...until extreme heat and a drought put an end to the barley crop.

In the 1880s, the Plaza and surrounding streets were still the city's primary business district. Rémi bought land at First and Spring Streets, and even Harris Newmark - Rémi's close friend and greatest supporter, who knew firsthand how smart and capable he was - called him crazy for buying land so far from the Plaza.

As per usual, Rémi didn't care what anyone else thought.

Initially, he planned to build a grand opera house or theatre with 1500 seats. (Even I think that was a crazy idea, considering Los Angeles' 1880 population was less than 12,000.) But that idea gave way to the city's tallest and grandest building of the era - a four-story business block, equipped with Southern California's first passenger elevator (made by Otis) and four fire hydrants on each floor, with apartments and office spaces planned for the upper floors and storefronts planned for the ground floor. No expense was spared, and the building was even equipped with twenty bathrooms - a VERY high number of bathrooms for the time.

Everyone laughed.

Everyone called the plan "Nadeau's folly."

Everyone said Rémi Nadeau, the crazy Frenchman, was crazier then ever.

Then "Crazy Rémi" leased the entire building to Ed Dunham, an experienced hotelier.

And just like that, everyone who was anyone checked into the Nadeau Hotel when they stayed in Los Angeles. It was the first truly first class hotel in the city. (Sorry, Pio Pico, but the Pico House didn't have an elevator, let alone twenty bathrooms.)

Sadly, it would be the final time Rémi got the last laugh. Less than a year after the Nadeau Hotel's 1886 grand opening, he passed away at age 68.

Rémi left the hotel property to his second wife, Laura, along with enough money to pay off its mortgage so she wouldn't have to come up with payments. His children from his first marriage (to Martha Frye) felt this was too generous a bequest for their stepmother and contested the will (sound familiar?).

The Nadeau Hotel was torn down in 1932 for the Los Angeles Times building.

Laura Nadeau decided to honor Rémi's memory with a 30-foot-high monument, topped with a marble statue of an angel, at the Nadeau family plot in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery.

Unfortunately, the Nadeau family plot happens to be very close to a rather large mature tree. Several years ago, according to a docent (who couldn't pronounce "Nadeau" correctly, plainly stated that she didn't know what Rémi did for a living, and rudely blew me off when I mentioned that he was a freighter...), a particularly windy rainstorm sent a very heavy tree branch crashing right onto the Nadeau plot. Every time I've visited Angelus Rosedale, a large and heavy chunk of monument has been in the same spot on the ground at a cockeyed angle. I was told that Rémi's living relatives couldn't justify the high cost of having it repaired. I get it - stonework is expensive.

When the monument was unveiled, the Los Angeles Herald claimed that Rémi's own accomplishments were the only monument needed to keep his memory alive. Rémi’s business interests accounted for ONE QUARTER of all exports leaving Los Angeles between 1869 and 1882. An earlier article in the Herald claimed Nadeau “has given employment to more men, and purchased more produce, and introduced more trade to Los Angeles than any other five men in this city.” 

You'd think that would be enough. Sadly, you'd be as mistaken as the Herald.

Rémi's name is forgotten today, surviving only in the family plot and on street signs - Nadeau Street, in the Florence/Nadeau neighborhood, and Nadeau Drive (which most likely honors Dr. Hubert Nadeau, no relation), in Mid-City.

Now THAT is crazy.

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.

They Paved Frenchtown and Put Up a Parking Lot

One of the most frustrating things about digging through Los Angeles history is finding out something with character, charm, historical significance, or cultural significance was lost long ago...to build a parking lot. Yeah, THAT's a fair trade-off.

Obviously, Los Angeles needs parking facilities. I just wish developers would tear down something ugly for once.

I've been mapping historically French sites in Southern California for six years. I've inventoried almost 500. Many more have been torn down for other reasons. These historic locations, associated with Los Angeles' lost French community, have all been partially or completely replaced by parking lots (and, in some cases, parking garages).

Consider this list a "work in progress." I've been meaning to write it for a few years now...but I keep finding parking lots (and every time I do, a little piece of me dies). I'll be adding them to the list as I continue to dig. If you know of a site I should add, please comment below.

Cue "Big Yellow Taxi"...

Plaza/Chinatown

• Mayor Joseph Mascarel's adobe house. The Talamontes-Mascarel adobe, built in 1834, was torn down in 1957. The Huntington Library has the only surviving picture of which I'm aware, and I am eternally grateful to them for letting me see it in person. Now it's Olvera Street parking.
• L'Union Nouvelle offices. Los Angeles' most popular French-language newspaper (which was still being published when the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner ran its last edition) had offices at Arcadia and Main Streets for many years. Now Plaza employees park there. 
• Viole-Lopizich Pharmacy site. The Viole family served Los Angeles as pharmacists and physicians for many years. Their pharmacy is now a Plaza parking lot.
• Signoret Block. This classy mansard-roofed brick building also housed Chevalier's pharmacy. Part of the same parking lot as the Viole-Lopizich pharmacy site. 
• Another Viole-Lopizich Pharmacy site (and residence). Stood several doors down from the previous Viole-Lopizich pharmacy. Part of the same parking lot.
• Oriental Café. Co-owned by Benjamin Flotte, Victor Dol's uncle. Dol later ran the Restaurant Française in the same building. Part of the same parking lot as the Viole-Lopizich pharmacies and Signoret Block.
• Brunswig Annex. Formerly adjoined the Vickrey-Brunswig Building, which survived and houses La Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Again, same parking lot as the Oriental Café building and Viole-Lopizich pharmacies.
• Le Progrés offices. This politically independent weekly French-language newspaper stood on New High Street in the late 19th century...and its offices disappeared for the same Olvera Street parking lot as the Talamontes-Mascarel adobe. 
• Sentous Block. Christine Sterling dressed in widow's weeds and hung a black wreath on the main door when this building was condemned. Pio Pico lived in one of the upstairs apartments after losing everything. Like Mayor Mascarel's house a few doors down, it was demolished in 1957 for Olvera Street parking.
• Jean Bernard's brickyard. A motel and private parking facility stand on the site today.
• Former site of Naud's warehouse. Yes, it burned down. But it also gave the neighborhood (Naud Junction) its name. And now it's parking spaces.
• Prudent Beaudry's house/real estate office. Southern California's first large-scale developer (and builder, two-term mayor, and investor) was working from home way back in the 1880s, owning a house/office on New High Street, behind the Brunswig Building. Now the site is part of a Plaza parking lot. (The Beaudry brothers predicted that people would flood into Southern California once the railroad came to town. They were correct...beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Now LA is overcrowded. Oh, the irony.)
• At least one plot owned by Georges Le Mesnager. 1660 N. Main Street, owned by George before he got into wine and liquor production, is now a parking lot for a DWP facility.
• Georges Le Mesnager's Hermitage Winery. 207-209 N. Los Angeles Street, formerly Georges' walled vineyard (Harris Newmark compared it to a European chateau) is now part of the Los Angeles Mall...and its underground parking garage. Doesn't seem like a fair tradeoff, does it?
• The Amestoy Building. Built in 1888 in the same block that is home to City Hall, the three-story building was dubbed the city's "first skyscraper" (even though the Nadeau Hotel was taller) and formerly housed the Los Angeles Supreme Court. The Amestoy building survived the Civic Center's redevelopment in the 1920s/1930s...only to be demolished in 1958 for a City Hall parking lot. 

Downtown/Little Tokyo

• Original site of Philippe's. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, including its adjoining parking lot, stands on the approximate location of Philippe's original (1908-1918) sandwich shop. (It could be worse...the site of Philippe and Arbin Mathieu's previous restaurant currently hosts the city jail.) 
• Michel Lachenais' ranch. Okay, Lachenais was a violent convicted murderer. But his former homestead now boasts a Paragon Parking location, so it still makes this list. 
• Ducommun Yard. This site has had quite a history of its own! Well within the original boundaries of Frenchtown, it housed Los Angeles' first passenger depot and locomotive roundhouse, and by the 1920s it was a DWP facility (fittingly, Charles Ducommun was one of the DWP's original stockholders). Ducommun Industries operated on the site before moving to South Los Angeles in 1941. The property is currently a large depot and parking facility for buses.
• One of Louis Mesmer's New York Bakery sites. Part of the Ducommun Yard property, on Alameda Street.
• Hotel de Strasbourg. Ducommun Yard on Alameda Street, again.
• M. Sainsevain's feed store. Also part of the Ducommun Yard property.
• Much of El Aliso/Sainsevain Brothers Vineyard. Jean-Louis Vignes' 104-acre property has been divided over and over, so multiple parking lots/garages are on this chunk of land roughly bordered by the Los Angeles River to the west and the 101 Freeway to the north. 
• Former Larronde-Etchemendy mansion. The beautiful Victorian mansion at 237 N. Hope St., home to the blended Larronde-Etchemendy family for nearly 80 years, was torn down along with the rest of Old Bunker Hill. The house stood about where the DWP parking lot is today. 
• Raymond Alexandre's Roundhouse. LA's earliest known example of fantasy architecture, LA's earliest amusement park, LA's earliest kindergarten...and within the former grounds is a large Paragon Parking lot.
• Ponet Square Hotel. Formerly the largest apartment building in Los Angeles (built 1906), this hotel was torn down in the days immediately following a deadly arson fire in 1970 (which led to a badly needed update to the 1943 fire code) and promptly turned into (what else...) a parking lot. It's been a parking lot ever since.
• Two other portions of Ponet Square itself. Ponet Square includes two additional parking lots, albeit smaller ones.
• Pershing Square. Technically still there, but mostly paved over and altered beyond recognition. This is the worst public park in Southern California, partly because building an underground parking garage and elevating the park to allow for said garage has led to too much concrete and not enough tree shade. Pershing Square can be scorching hot on 60-degree days. The previous design should have been left the hell alone (if it isn't broken, don't "fix" it!). Oh well, at least the Doughboy isn't going anywhere.
• Mesmer Building. Louis Mesmer built a two-story building at the corner of Los Angeles and Requeña Streets, later opening Requeña to Alameda Street. Requeña Street was renamed Market Street and no longer exists. Mesmer's building was replaced by a City Hall parking garage.
• The entire Sentous tract, including the Sentous Street School. Razed in 1969 to build a massive parking lot for the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Staples Center (and its parking garages) now take up much of the land. Sentous Street was renamed L.A. Live Way.
• First Methodist Church. While most French Angelenos were Catholic, Melvina Lapointe Lott - niece of Remi Nadeau - belonged to this church and donated three Tiffany mosaic panels said to be Tiffany's very finest work. The church was razed (for a parking lot, what else) in the 1980s (thankfully, the Tiffany panels now belong to the Lake Merritt United Methodist Church in Oakland). On a personal note, I have used that parking lot many times...and I became very nauseous when I realized I'd repeatedly parked on the former site of a Tiffany masterpiece.
• Germain Pellissier's house. Entire block is now occupied by a hideous multi-level parking facility across the street from the Walt Disney Concert Hall. 
• Jean Sentous' dairy farm. The farm, bordered by Grand, Washington, Main, and 21st Streets, changed hands a few times, becoming Chutes Park in 1900. There are now several parking lots and a courthouse parking structure on the land.
• One of Pascale Ballade's saloons. Ballade had a few drinking establishments to his name, and the one at 742 S. Main Street is now a parking lot!
• Remi Nadeau's city block. Nadeau's land holdings included most of the block bordered by Hill, 4th, Broadway, and 5th Streets. His freighting business was headquartered here - corrals, stables, blacksmiths, and a wagon repair shop stood on the land. Today, there are multiple commercial properties, a government office...and two parking lots. 
• Louis Mesmer's house. The approximate location of 127 S. Broadway is now the entrance to a courthouse parking garage.
• André Briswalter's home (possibly). Briswalter lived at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Main Street. One of the four corners of the intersection is now a large parking lot. 
• Dehail House Hotel. Like all the other French-owned boarding houses in the area, it's long gone. Most would have been too close to the 101 Freeway to survive the 1950s, but this one is - you guessed it - a Little Tokyo parking lot. 
• Charles Ducommun's mansion. By 1892, the Ducommuns had moved out, and the house became a boarding house for newsies and other young working boys. It later became a men's boarding house, and finally a boarding house for Japanese tenants. And now the site is a parking facility.
• Victor Dol's house. There's ONE parking lot on this block...and its location corresponds to the talented chef's address. 
• Old Calvary Catholic Cemetery. The Diocese of Los Angeles decided the cemetery would better serve its needs as Cathedral High School's parking lot and athletic fields. Numerous Catholic Angelenos, many of them French, had to be re-interred at New Calvary. (Marcelina Leonis' original headstone is installed in the field fence like it's an art piece...as if dying of smallpox at age 20 wasn't bad enough. I, personally, find it disrespectful.)
• City Cemetery. The French Benevolent Society had its own parcel at the cemetery for members. Now it's a parking lot for the Board of Education.
• Champ d'Or Hotel/Taix Restaurant. The Taix family tore down their circa-1882 bakery to build the hotel in 1912. In 1927, Marius Taix Jr. took over the ground-floor restaurant from a tenant. Taix opened its current location in Echo Park in 1962. The 1912 building was torn down in 1964...for a very large parking structure across Alameda Street from the Justice Department and the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Koreatown

• Portions of Germain Pellissier's sheep ranch. It's unclear how much land Pellissier actually owned (sources disagree wildly). However, there are parking facilities adjacent to the Wiltern Theatre, which was built by Pellissier's grandson on land Pellissier had owned (and now my newer readers know why the entire 12-story structure is called the Pellissier Building).
• The Godissart home. Cosmetics mogul Joseph Godissart and his family moved to 810 S. Harvard Boulevard, which has been replaced by an apartment block...with a parking garage.

Mid-City

• Léon Bary's home. French actor/director Léon Bary's home is now an auto body shop...and its parking lot.

South Los Angeles

• Firmin "Frank" Toulet's house. Frank Toulet, founder of Musso and Frank Grill, was living at 1813 W. 79th Street at the time of his death. Now it's a fenced parking lot behind a commercial property.

The Hollywoods

• Paul de Longpré's home and gardens. The great painter's roses are long gone, with a parking garage occupying part of the site. 
• Various swaths of Victor Ponet's farm. Ponet owned much of modern-day West Hollywood. There are too many parking facilities, public and private, to list.

Santa Monica

• L. Giroux's grocery and home. Monsieur Giroux spotted Santa Monica, fell in love with it, and built a combination home/grocery store (Santa Monica's second house, supposedly, after Eugene Aune's). The house is long gone and the land is occupied by Parking Structure 6. (And I thought I'd run out of reasons to hate the Third Street Promenade!)

Glendale

• Le Mesnager vineyard. As glad as I am that the Le Mesnager family's barn survived (and reopened to the public in 2022), Deukmejian Wilderness Park's parking lot IS uncomfortably close to the buildings. I'm just saying, it *could* have been placed closer to the park's entrance.

And one "near miss" that was saved...

In 1962, the Leonis Adobe was very nearly torn down to make way for a grocery store parking lot (are you #$%@ing kidding me?!). For the second time in its existence, the adobe had been abandoned for years and left to rot. Thankfully, the newly established Cultural Heritage Board intervened...and the Leonis Adobe became Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1.

Honorable Mention: the original intersection of Alameda and Aliso - the core of the French Colony - was erased and paved in the 1950s. When you drive under the Alameda Street overpass on the 101, you’re driving through Frenchtown. In theory, the 101 is a freeway. In practice, it becomes a sort of parking lot when traffic is heavy enough.