Lost French Los Angeles Tour Going Dark Through April 11

I love giving my Lost French Los Angeles tour, and I am deeply grateful for the support it's received.

However, in light of the COVID-19 virus spreading, I'm suspending tours for the next few weeks.

I will continue to monitor the situation, and May/June tour dates will be decided later. (As of this writing, you can still book July through December.)

If you live in Los Angeles and have a few minutes to spare, please contact your councilperson (and/or the Mayor) and ask what they are doing to help homeless Angelenos. They are very vulnerable right now. (Especially in Echo Park, where the bathrooms are being locked at night. Really, Mitch?!)

Low-income children often do not get enough to eat when schools are closed. If you can, support food banks, feeding programs, etc. (Do you have more backyard fruit and veggies than you can use? Some programs accept donated produce.)

When you can, support small businesses. One month of low sales can mean layoffs or even having to close.

Stay safe and look out for each other.

Goodnight from Frenchtown,

C.C.

We Need to Talk About Taix

Sometime around 1870, a family of bakers and sheepherders from the Hautes-Alpes left France, emigrating to Los Angeles.

For decades, customers have hotly debated how to pronounce their surname - Taix. Long story short, the family says it's pronounced "Tex".

In any case, the family purchased property in Frenchtown - specifically, at 321 Commercial Street - and opened the Taix French Bread Bakery in 1882.

1911 and 1912 were tough on Marius Taix Sr. In September 1911, his sister Leonie Allemand died in France. In the spring of 1912, Adrian Taix (co-owner of The French Bakery at 1550 West Pico Boulevard), died. By summer, brother Joseph Taix died, also in France. And finally, in the summer of 1912, Joachim Taix (who owned the other half of The French Bakery) also died.

That same year, Marius Taix Sr. tore down the Commercial Street bakery, building the Champ d'Or Hotel on the land and leasing the ground floor to a restauranteur.

Marius Taix Jr. was a pharmacist by trade, and owned the French-Mexican Drug Company nearby at 231-235 N. Los Angeles Street. Ads boasted "French and Mexican Preparations Our Specialty". (With the Plaza and Sonoratown so close by, featuring both French and Mexican medicines was a smart move on Marius Jr.'s part.)

Two stories are told about the origin of the Taix family's eponymous restaurant. One is that Marius Jr. got into an argument with the restaurant owner. The other is that Prohibition agents busted the restaurant owner for illegally selling alcohol, and that Marius Jr. confronted him about it.

This isn't too surprising. Prohibition spelled the end for Frenchtown, since it rendered French restaurant owners unable to serve wine (the vintners had long since sold off their vineyards for development). Without wine, diners didn't want to linger at a French restaurant for an hours-long dinner (Little Italy, on the other side of the Plaza, faced the same issue). The overwhelming majority of Los Angeles' French community took pride in being law-abiding, and although Prohibition was decidedly unpopular, it was still the law. Better to close the restaurant and change jobs than to break the law.

In either case, one day in 1927, words were exchanged, the restauranteur threw the keys at Marius Jr. before storming out, and the Taix family rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

Taix French Restaurant in the 1950s

Marius Taix Jr. started out serving 50-cent chicken dinners at long, family-style tables, with private booths available for an extra 25 cents (he got around Prohibition by selling "medicinal wine"). He partnered with a French immigrant who had become an experienced restauranteur and baker, Louis Larquier. He also continued to run the pharmacy - a very busy guy!

Six years later, Taix French Restaurant could legally serve wine without having to call it "medicinal". Today, they serve more than 400 wines, along with affordably priced country-style French cuisine.

Marius Jr.'s two sons, Raymond and Pierre, grew up washing dishes in the restaurant. In 1962, the beloved Sunset Boulevard location opened under the name "Les Fréres Taix" - the Taix Brothers.

Taix French Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard

The original restaurant at 321 Commercial Street was forced to close in 1964 to make way for new government buildings, including a courthouse and jail (the same block once included the corral where Michel Lachenais was hanged). The Sunset Boulevard location has a bar called the 321 Lounge, presumably in honor of the original restaurant.

The two different restaurant names - Taix French Restaurant and Les Fréres Taix - were reportedly confusing to diners, and the Sunset Boulevard location dropped "Les Fréres" from its name.

In 2012, the intersection in front of Taix was officially designated Taix Square by the City Council. Intersections are typically named after important Angelenos - very few restaurants receive the same honor.

Alas, the good times will be coming to an end, at least for a while.

Taix has been a Los Angeles institution for 92.5 years. It's popular with couples, families, hipsters, Francophiles, foodies, city bigwigs, and Dodgers fans (Dodger Stadium is 5 minutes away). It even managed to survive Echo Park's decline into LA's scariest drug den (before the hipsters moved in). But the restaurant business has changed a lot, and in the 58 years that Taix has been open in Echo Park, the building's six banquet rooms are used less and less.

A building Taix's size, on a lot as big as Taix's, costs serious money to maintain. And in order for a business - even a legacy business - to stay open, it has to make enough money to cover expenses. That's hard to do when wholesale food prices have risen, labor costs have risen, and much of the building isn't being put to sufficient use.

Raymond Taix's son Michael, who currently owns the restaurant, sold the property in August 2019 for $12 million and is leasing the building as a tenant. The real estate developer which now owns the property plans to build a housing and retail complex, which will include a smaller version of Taix (6,000 square feet vs. the current 18,000 square foot building).

The plan is to store the bar, lounge, and signage, and reinstall them in the smaller future space - essentially shrinking Taix, but keeping everything that makes Taix what it is.

Except for the current building. Unless the developer decides to somehow convert the existing building (which I seriously doubt will be the case), it's doomed.

As of this writing, Taix is still open. Go while you can - no one knows for sure when the developer will get the go-ahead to start construction. And when it starts, count on waiting a good 18 months before Taix reopens.

Merci France-Amérique!

I am thrilled to announce that France-Amérique magazine, published in New York in both English and French, recently interviewed me about this blog and my Lost French Los Angeles walking tour.

The article is now live - read it in English or in French.

Note to my dear readers: beginning next weekend (3/14), all tours will book through Eventbrite. In the meantime, there is still some room on this Saturday's tour.

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.

Rémi and the Bandit

Rémi Nadeau - freighter, hotelier, entrepreneur - is the one dead Frenchman every Angeleno should know about.

In the next entry, I'll cover what we know to be true about Rémi's remarkable life. Today, I'll tell you a story - a legend, really - about two very different people who (allegedly) formed an unlikely friendship.

In the days when most of California was undeveloped, bandits often preyed upon stagecoaches, freight wagons, and anyone who dared travel too far from civilization. The most notorious bandit of them all was Tiburcio Vasquez.

Strangely, Rémi Nadeau's freighters were never attacked by Vasquez or his gang.

Ranchers and business leaders assumed he was just lucky. But the story - if it's true - is more interesting than sheer dumb luck.

One day, while accompanying a mule team through the treacherous desert, Rémi Nadeau came upon a wounded man who was stranded with no food or water, a broken wagon, and a damaged harness. He was too weak to mount his own horse.

Rémi tended to the man's injuries, carried him to the next freighting station, and left instructions that the man be cared for there. He also instructed his employees to fix the stranger's wagon and harness.

The stranger greeted Rémi when he arrived at the station on his return trip, offering payment for his board and the repairs to his wagon and harness. Rémi declined, saying he didn't want to be paid for what anyone would do for him in those circumstances.

The stranger asked Rémi if he had ever heard of the bandit Vasquez. He had.

The stranger revealed, "Mr. Nadeau, I am Vasquez, and I will tell you now, so that you may rest at ease in your mind, so long as I live none of my men will ever bother you or your teams or any of your property, and I will pass the word along to others that I, Vasquez, wish Nadeau and whatever is his to be respected."

And with that, the stranger rode off.

Supposedly, Rémi's wife scolded him for not turning Vasquez over to the authorities. (Vasquez had escaped from San Quentin.)

Rémi's take? "Freighting is my business and so long as my freighters are not bothered by Vasquez, Vasquez is not bothered by Nadeau."

Fast forward to 1874.

According to legend, Nevada Senator William Stewart won a silver mine in the Cerro Gordo area (it isn't clear which one) in a card game. Upon hearing that the losing players planned to get their revenge by stealing the next shipment of silver, the Senator thwarted them by having the shipment cast in two enormous ingots weighing 500 pounds each.

After a few hours, the would-be thieves gave up. The Senator arranged for Rémi Nadeau to transport the ingots to Los Angeles with two teams of mules, each wagon carrying one of the massive silver bars.

The mule teams were intercepted by Vasquez en route. History doesn't record HOW Vasquez managed to steal a 500-pound silver ingot (this is a legend, after all), but supposedly, he took only one of the ingots and left the other.

Vasquez was captured May 18, 1874, at his desert hideout, now known as Vasquez Rocks. He was tried and sentenced in San José not long after his capture.

Despite being guilty of numerous crimes, Vasquez was a very popular figure, and had many visitors while behind bars awaiting execution. One of those visitors was, supposedly, Rémi Nadeau.

It's said that Rémi asked "I saved your life once, mi amigo, and we had an agreement that you would never rob my freighters. Why did you do this?"

Vasquez is said to have replied "A card dealer friend had tipped me off to the silver and I also had an obligation to him. That is why I took only one ingot from you."

We may never know how much truth went into this story (one of my older books practically treats the  first half of the tale as gospel), but it's certainly a legendary story about two legendary men.

Domingo Amestoy, 30,000 Sheep, and the Skyscraper

Born in St. Pierre d'Irube, France, in 1822, Dominique Amestoy left home for Argentina at age fourteen. Many French Basques went to Argentina to raise sheep (or in some cases cattle), but young Dominique was going to learn shoemaking.

In 1851, Dominique decided to try his luck in California's gold fields. He didn't strike it rich (very few miners did), but he was lucky enough to find work on a cattle ranch. After earning enough money to buy his own herd of cattle, Dominique drove them to Santa Barbara for several weeks of grazing, then drove them to market in San Francisco. He saved the profits, departed for Los Angeles, and worked on a sheep ranch, saving his earnings until he was able to buy his own flock of sheep.

Dominique returned to France in 1862, married 19-year-old Marie Elizabeth Higuerre, and brought his new bride to Los Angeles. In order to keep growing Dominique's sheep business and keep their large family fed (they had thirteen children), the couple needed a second income stream. They started a laundry business, with Marie doing the actual washing (in an open tub with no running water) and Dominique handling pickup and delivery in a horse-drawn cart.

Finally, in 1875, Dominique - "Don Domingo" to Los Angeles' Spanish-speaking majority - had earned enough money to buy 800 acres of land in what is now Gardena. The Amestoy Ranch - bordered by Rosecrans Avenue, Prairie Avenue, Marine Avenue (originally Amestoy Avenue), and Vermont Avenue - was born.

Don Domingo took it a step further, importing Merino sheep and Rambouillet rams. By 1880, he owned an estimated 30,000 head of sheep.

In 1871, Don Domingo co-founded the Farmers and Merchants Bank with Joseph Mascarel, Charles Ducommun, and a M. Lecouvrer. The original Farmers and Merchants Bank building is still standing at 401 S. Main Street and is Historic-Cultural Monument #271. (The Farmers and Merchants Bank that is in business today is not the same institution. The original F&M folded into Security First, Security Pacific, and eventually Bank of America.) He was also one of the first members of the Chamber of Commerce.

Don Domingo didn't just own ranch land, he owned an entire block downtown. In fact, he owned the entire block where City Hall now stands. And he built the Amestoy Building on one of the lots in 1888.

 The building stood three stories high (plus a cupola) and had one of the first elevators in the city. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner dubbed it LA's "first skyscraper" (even though the Nadeau Hotel, built in 1871, was four stories tall and had the city's first-ever elevator).

In 1889, Don Domingo bought Rancho Los Encinos from son-in-law Simon Gless. He wouldn't own it himself for very long; he passed away on January 11, 1892. He was one of the richest men in Southern California at the time, and had been the county's largest taxpayer.

The surviving Amestoys sold the Gardena ranch in 1901. There is still an Amestoy Elementary School serving the area.

Members of the Amestoy family began to sell off portions of Rancho Los Encinos in 1916. They lived on the property and held onto the last 100 acres (including the surviving ranch buildings and pond) until 1945. The adobe was repurposed as a sales office for the suburban tract homes surrounding the property, and plans were made to tear it down after the houses sold. Thankfully, concerned neighbors fought hard to save the last piece of the rancho, and it has been a state historic park since 1949. There is still an Amestoy Avenue running north-south through the Valley, dead-ending at Ventura Boulevard not far from Los Encinos State Historic Park.

As for the Amestoy Building, it quietly stood in City Hall's shadow until 1958. When it was condemned, the Los Angeles Times published an obituary of sorts for the aging red-brick building, long since dwarfed by the gleaming white skyscrapers surrounding it.

In typical fashion for Los Angeles, the Amestoy Building was replaced with a parking lot.

Booking Now: Lost French L.A. Walking Tour

Did you miss my LAVA Sunday Salon back in September 2017?

Did you attend the Salon, but want to know more?

Did you only just recently find this blog?

I am pleased to announce that I have partnered with Airbnb Experiences to offer a 2-hour walking tour of Lost French Los Angeles (special pricing for the first 10 guests who book the tour). You can even book through the widget in the upper right corner of this blog.

After seven years of researching and mapping the French in Old Los Angeles (500 places so far), I know where all the surviving sites are - and where the lost ones used to be. I'll also be relating some of the best stories that time forgot.

Early L.A. was extremely dangerous, so a couple of these stories do involve murder. For this reason, I've set the minimum age at 13. If any family groups would like an all-ages version, email me (through Airbnb, or losfrangeles at gmail dot com) and I'll set up a special tour.

Tours are scheduled for Saturday; if anyone who wants to book a tour is only available on Sunday, email me with your availability and I'll schedule a special Sunday tour.

Please be advised: Airbnb requires photo ID verification. Be sure to add your ID within three days of booking or Airbnb will cancel your reservation.

Tour groups max out at 10 guests, so this will be a more personal experience than one of my lectures.

Goodnight from Frenchtown,

C.C.

P.S. Blogger has been eating my replies to comments for months and won't fix the problem...if you comment and would like a response, or if you have any questions, please include an email address so I can get back to you.