Forgotten French LA Virtual Tour 7/12

Back in March, I canceled and refunded all Lost French LA tours through mid-April. I had hoped to be giving tours again by June at the latest.

Obviously, that hasn't happened. Between the latest spike in coronavirus cases, clashes between protestors and police (the tour route passes close to City Hall and I do NOT want a tour guest getting hurt), and air quality taking a very steep dive from heavy fireworks usage and resulting fires, I don't know when I'll be able to do a walking tour again.

But I do have seven years of notes, lots of pictures, and Zoom installed on my laptop. And I can show you around, so to speak, from my living room.

Join me next Sunday, July 12, at noon (Pacific Standard Time) for a virtual visit to Forgotten French Los Angeles. It's not quite the Bastille Day parades that French Angelenos used to have, but I believe a virtual celebration is better than none.

Tickets are available here. Since so many people have limited funds right now, I'm pricing tickets at just $5 for this webinar only. That way anyone can afford to attend.

See you next Sunday on Zoom!

Ten Highball Glasses and Seven Cafés de Paris

I was practically raised in antique stores, and I still like to "treasure hunt".

Shortly after starting this blog, I found one of my favorite treasures: ten vintage highball glasses labeled Café de Paris, with an address on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I was told they're from the 1950s, which looks about right.

Vintage glasses from Café de Paris

7038 Sunset Boulevard is now the Sycamore Tavern (temporarily closed due to COVID-19). It was built in 1940 and remodeled in 1963.

Researching the Café de Paris itself posed a challenge...there have been at least seven in LA County between the 1870s and the 1970s. Several of them existed at times that overlapped. And many resources (ESPECIALLY newspaper articles) don't distinguish between them very well or at all.

The earliest Café de Paris on record in Los Angeles did not, surprisingly, belong to a French restauranteur. Jerry Illich, a Croatian chef who had a rivalry of sorts with Victor Dol, co-owned the restaurant with one of the Marcovich brothers (who were also Croatian). If it were still standing, it would be in the Pueblo, next to the Masonic Hall. A surviving ad from LA's premier Spanish-language newspaper of the day, La Crónica, indicates that it was open by 1877.

"Cafe de Paris" ad from La Crónica, 1877

For those of you who don't read Spanish, the restaurant was open day and night, had private dining spaces for ladies (in the 1870s, it was somewhat taboo for unaccompanied women to eat in a restaurant), and, in spite of the name, the restaurant served "all styles" of food. (Want to class up a restaurant? Slap a French name on it, even if you aren't French and there are tamales on the menu.)

A 1911 article in the Venice Evening Vanguard documents the opening of a different Café de Paris, this one presumably (with libraries closed, I could only find a digitized card catalog citation) in Venice. 

A 1919 article in the Los Angeles Herald began "Marking the final passing of the last of the old Bohemian resorts of Los Angeles, it became definitely known today that on Feb. 1 the Cafe de Paris will pass into the hands of the Chinese." Mme. Zucca, retired opera singer and widow of the restaurant's owner, was selling the cafe to return to Italy. A 1913 article indicated that Zucca's Café de Paris served only French food (in contrast to the Calle Principal/Main Street Café de Paris) and that it was located at the corner of Arcadia Street and North Los Angeles Streets - south of the Plaza and just a block from the heart of Frenchtown.

There must have been a Café de Paris in Santa Monica, as a 1944 Desert Sun blurb indicates that its owner, Ernest Garbaccio, had purchased a house in Palm Springs. The blurb describes this Café de Paris as "a popular night club and cafe". (I do wonder if this might, possibly, have been the same Café de Paris that opened in Venice in 1911, as some people who don't live all that close to Los Angeles tend to confuse the two. With research facilities still closed, it's difficult to be as thorough as I prefer.)

The best-known Café de Paris in Los Angeles history is easily the 20th Century Fox studio commissary, still in use today. The commissary, which is not open to the public, made use of an existing French restaurant set and hasn't changed since 1935.

Enough said.

At least one Café de Paris existed in south LA County - it opened in the 1960s as an addition to the Fortune Room steakhouse in Gardena.

No, I haven't seen it...I'm not sure when it closed .

And finally...the Café de Paris on Sunset Boulevard.

Café de Paris

7038 Sunset Boulevard

The postcard pictured above is of roughly the same vintage as the highball glasses, and the addresses match. This is THAT Café de Paris.

Digitized 1940s and 1950s phone books for the City of Los Angeles seem to be maddeningly elusive (and, as mentioned, I can't exactly go to the library right now). I was able to find a listing for Café de Paris, at the Sunset Boulevard address, in a 1955 street address directory, but I haven't been able to determine if they opened in 1940 when the building went up or if they were a later tenant. A Los Angeles Times article from 1957 names Café de Paris as a noteworthy source for French cuisine and mentions its "alfresco dining" (note the awning on the postcard above). 

Michel Cartier helmed this Café de Paris, and it was popular with fine dining aficionados as well as clubs. Guests included the Club Francais de l'Institut International of Los Angeles (which aided French newcomers in everything from language lessons to house hunting), the Club Culturel Francais (a 1969 clipping names Claudia Taix as a member), and - gasp - even non-French civic and cultural groups (too many to list). 

A newspaper blurb from July 1969 named French restaurants celebrating Bastille Day. Café de Paris went all out, hosting special $5 dinners and dancing over Bastille Day weekend - Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (July 14, 1969 was a Monday). 

Café de Paris could be adaptable, however - the 1969 Thanksgiving menu offered turkey as one of its main-course options.

Does anyone out there know when Café de Paris closed its doors? I haven't been able to find a mention of it after about 1977.

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.

It's Not Too Late to Save Taix

Regular readers (and anyone paying attention) know that Taix's longtime home, a French Country-esque building on Sunset Boulevard, is doomed.

But what if it doesn't have to be?

There are few surviving remnants of Old French Los Angeles. Of the 500 French-associated sites I've catalogued on a Google Map over the past 7 years, there are only about 25 still standing in Los Angeles County.*

Does Taix - one of those rare survivors - really have to be demolished so this revolting abomination can dwarf everything else in Echo Park?

New owners Holland Partner Group** initially claimed they would preserve some of Taix's current features. The newer rendering indicates that isn't the case.

According to a former tenant, Holland Partner Group is also a bad developer and a bad property manager (the company is vertically integrated).

Well, what do we really expect from out-of-town developers? They're not invested in the community. They don't care about Los Angeles or its people. They see "LA" and get dollar signs in their eyes.

But what if we could landmark Taix and give the building some protection? What if it could even be incorporated into a (hopefully far less ugly) housing complex?

I'm not anti-housing. I'm against housing misuse. Apartments should never be illegally run as hotels, livable vacant homes should never sit empty and rot by the thousands while ordinary Angelenos struggle to afford inflated rents, and shiny new luxury apartments (which we have more than enough of) should never displace existing affordable housing. Successful cities have a mix of housing at a mix of pricing levels for every class of resident. That problem can't be solved by one new development. Although I dislike excessive taxation, a vacancy tax might provide landlords with a stronger long-term incentive to keep units filled with full-time renters.

Want to save Taix? Sign the petition here.

Join Friends of Taix if you're on Facebook.

And if you're close enough, help the restaurant keep going by ordering takeout or delivery.

*Not counting street names, park names, school names, memorial plaques, or cemeteries.

**To clarify: the Taix family still owns the restaurant business. Holland Partner Group owns the building, the land it's on, and Taix's overflow parking lot nearby.

The King of the Castle

It's no secret that the Pyrenees Castle is up for sale. It's been on the market for so long that the asking price was recently reduced.

Nor is it a secret that the fabled chateau is a notorious murder site. Phil Spector purchased the property in 1998, and just five years later, killed Lana Clarkson inside the mansion.

I won't get into THAT ugly mess, as it's been done before. I will say that I wasn't surprised when it happened, since one of my parents had a terrifying firsthand experience with Phil Spector's bizarre behavior and hair-trigger temper.

Instead, let's go back to simpler times and meet the castle's original owner, Sylvestre Dupuy.

Sylvestre Julien Dupuy was born August 4, 1878 on the Rancho Rosa de Castille (modern-day Cal State LA - my dad taught there and never knew the property's history). When Sylvestre's mother passed away, his father took him and his siblings back to France.

As a young boy growing up in the Pyrenees, Sylvestre admired a large and elegant chateau close to where he lived. Someday, he would build one of his own.

Sylvestre wouldn't see Los Angeles again until he was 14 years old, returning with an older brother. Several years later, his uncle Jean Pedelaborde decided to return to France, leaving Sylvestre his grazing land on Rancho Rosa de Castille's hills. Sylvestre would soon lease neighboring plots and plant grain fields - in addition to raising sheep, of course. (I'm pretty sure every French Basque Angeleno must have raised sheep at some point). According to an old newspaper article, he found it cheaper to rent or lease grazing land than to own it outright. Sylvestre's sheep grazed everywhere from the Plaza area to the eastern suburbs.

Sylvestre married Anna Candelot in 1899. The couple had four children - Frank (1902), Marie (1903), Peter (1904), and Henry (1905). By 1910, the Dupuy family had relocated to the San Gabriel Valley, where land was still plentiful. Sylvestre was patriotic - he registered for the World War I draft  despite being 40 years old. He was also active in the Lafayette Club.

Sylvestre's agricultural activities were successful, but he also invested in oil and worked for Walter P. Temple's Temple Townsite Company (developers of Temple City). He helped convince the Pacific Electric company to extend a Red Car line to Temple City, and a street was named for him (it was later changed to Primrose Avenue). There is a reference to Dupuy owning a general store.

In the 1920s, with business booming and Los Angeles expanding, Sylvestre decided to build a grand home on a three-acre hilltop property overlooking his ranch lands in Alhambra.

Scottish-born architect John Walker Smart was commissioned to bring Sylvestre's childhood memory of that elegant chateau to life. Thirty rooms - ten bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a basement AND a wine cellar (the Dupuys made their own wine), and more made up the 8,600 square foot mansion.

Artisans were brought over from Europe to work on the Pyrenees Castle, and work on it they did: the elegant interior boasted maple floors (recycled from Alhambra High School's original building) and elegant wood paneling, crystal sconces, chandeliers, marble floors in all eight bathrooms, and a marble foyer.

The grandeur continued outside - a massive fountain in the courtyard, tennis courts, recreation areas for the Dupuy children, and strategically placed guard towers to protect everything. The property was so vast and elaborate that the landscaping still wasn't quite complete when Sylvester passed away.

The Pyrenees Castle cost Sylvester Dupuy $500,000 (or about $7.3 MILLION in 2020 dollars). He paid IN CASH.

Locals and tourists alike have gawked at the Pyrenees Castle ever since it was built. And since the Dupuys liked their privacy (apart from the occasional celebration, i.e. entertaining French athletes during the 1932 Olympics), rumors began to circulate about the big, beautiful, mysterious castle on the hill.

One of the more common stories was that the house's owner was an automobile mogul who never let anyone see him enter or leave the property.

Another legend had it that East Coast gangsters lived inside the house (not the weirdest story that could have been invented, given that there were some real-life East Coast gangsters living in LA at the time).

Yet another rumor held that only two or three of the chateau's rooms were ever lit and that the rest of the vast home was kept in perpetual darkness. Ghost stories circulated, too.

But more than anything else, there were tall tales of secret entrances and secret passages - hidden garage entrances, an elevator inside the hill, tunnels, secret passages, and hidden rooms. (In fact, there was one secret passage - from Anna's closet to the attic.)

None of it was true, of course. In 1939, Anna and Henry Dupuy finally had to go on the record with the Los Angeles Times to explain that the Pyrenees Castle was just a very big family home. They didn't even give the house its nickname - to the unpretentious Dupuys, it was "the house on the hill", or even "the hill".

In 1928, Sylvestre took Anna and two of the children, Marie and Peter, on a trip to France. Passenger manifests show that they sailed through the port of Le Havre and returned via the port of New York.

Unfortunately, Sylvestre's oil investments tanked in 1936, wiping out most of the family fortune, and he passed away on April 22, 1937.

Sylvestre had left enough assets for Anna, three of the couple's children (Frank lived in another house), and their families to continue living in the chateau until they sold it in 1946 for the pittance of $60,000 ($847,000 today).

The mansion was then converted into eight large apartments. Anna Candelot Dupuy lived in one of the apartments until her own death three years later. (Records disagree over whether Anna financed the conversion or whether the next owner did.) The surrounding ranch lands were turned into tract housing. The Dupuys are buried at Calvary Cemetery.

As for the castle, it fell into disrepair, changed hands over and over, was abandoned and vandalized, and was purchased by Chris Yip in 1985.

The house had been treated abominably - broken windows, a leaking roof, severe scarring to the hardwood floors, and even holes in the walls and ceilings where vandals had torn out the sconces and chandeliers. Yip had the floors, paneling, and roof tiles restored, but updated the kitchen and bathrooms and added some modern conveniences.

Chris Yip bought the chateau for $585,000 and put $500,000 into fixing up the house and grounds. He intended to retire there. But in the end, it was all too much, and the Bank of Hong Kong foreclosed on the mortgage.

By now, you've heard the rest. One wonders what the Dupuys would think of the shocking murder that took place in their elegant marble foyer.

Alhambra doesn't have any historic preservation ordinances, and notorious murder sites are often altered or even demolished to deter gawkers. Can anyone spare $4.4 million?

The Other Rémi Nadeau

(Dear readers: the ads are only supposed to appear in the sidebar. I am trying to get that fixed.)

When I began researching Old French Los Angeles seven years ago, one name came up again and again and again: Rémi Nadeau. Victorian Los Angeles aficionados should be familiar with Rémi as well.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was another Rémi Nadeau - one still living. 

Rémi Allen Nadeau was born in Los Angeles in 1920, attended University High School (my mom's alma mater), and became an Eagle Scout. While majoring in American and World History at Stanford University, Rémi became an Army Air Corps officer through ROTC.

After completing his BA in 1942, Rémi served with the 320th Bomb Group, flying combat missions and serving as an intelligence officer. He was discharged in 1946, having achieved the rank of Major. 

Rémi returned to Los Angeles, where he met Margaret Smith. They married in 1947, and had three children - Christine, Barbara, and Bob.

Rémi had already completed his first manuscript, City Makers, in 1946. After its publication in book form in 1948, it would become a bestseller. City Makers details the people who made Los Angeles into a world city. Rémi Nadeau the freighter is mentioned, of course. (I have the 1948 edition. The city-map end papers are to die for.)

Rémi continued to write history books while working as an editorial writer for newspapers. In time, he became a public relations executive, then special assistant to the United States Attorney General. Rémi wrote speeches and statements for AG John N. Mitchell, AG Richard Kleindienst, and President Richard Nixon.

This would be an impressive career on its own, but Rémi continued to publish history books every few years. 

The Water Seekers followed City Makers in 1950. 

Los Angeles: From Mission to Modern City (one of my favorites) was published in 1960. Tellingly, the introduction is all about traffic. (Sometimes it's comforting to know my hometown hasn't changed that much.)

California: The New Society hit bookstore shelves in 1963. California had recently become the nation's most populous state. Was it really so different from everywhere else? Rémi seemed to think so. 

Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of California: A History and Guide followed in 1965. (I, for one, would love to use this book as the basis for a road trip...and not just because I'm under quarantine and have a bad case of cabin fever.)

Fort Laramie and the Sioux Indians came along in 1967, then The Real Joaquin Murieta: Robin Hood Hero or Gold Rush Gangster: Truth vs. Myth (too many colons, I know) in 1974.

In 1980, Rémi retired from the world of public relations and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in History from UC Santa Barbara. He published Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt Divide Europe in 1990, then The Silver Seekers: They Tamed California's Last Frontier in 2003.

Rémi's longtime home was in Encino, south of the 101 and west of the 405, in a house high up on a hill overlooking the Valley. My family's neighborhood was less than 5 miles away. 

I always wanted to interview Rémi. But I put off contacting his publisher. No matter how much I read or how many hours I devoted to research, I still felt that I wasn't informed enough to pick his brain (I hadn't even launched this blog yet). I was aware of the fact that he was over 90 years old, but I still couldn't bring myself to reach out.

Rémi died of natural causes in 2016 in Santa Barbara. He was 95.

I wish I'd at least tried to get in touch with him.

If any of my dear readers have been wanting to do something or talk to someone - just do it when you get a chance. Life's too short to have regrets.

Museum Madness

By now, you've probably heard that LACMA is actively being torn down.

And for what? A Wilshire Boulevard-spanning, obscenely expensive campus that won't even have enough room for the permanent collection?

No one wants this museum except for a handful of billionaires (who, by the way, are passing the costs to YOU, the taxpayer) and a man with the audacity to assume he can do better than William Pereira. To do all of this during a pandemic, while ordinary Angelenos are struggling, is inexcusably wasteful and selfish.

Send a clear message to the museum's director by signing this petition update.

And now that the steam hissing out of my ears has had a chance to dissipate...

I have a lot I want to accomplish before I expire. Publish my book, tear up a parking lot and put a salvaged historic building on the site, become a bestselling author so I can buy up historic properties and keep them from being destroyed...but I've mentioned previously that I'd like Los Angeles to have its own French-American museum someday.

One of my recent tour guests (hi Jacques) asked me about that. The fact of the matter is, a museum is a VERY costly undertaking (even if you'd be thrilled with a very old and very small building) and I don't have millions of dollars. So far, all I have is a vintage set of highball glasses from a defunct French restaurant in Hollywood, some old bottles from Broguiere's Dairy, and two books signed by historian Remi A. Nadeau (great-great-grandson of the freighter Remi Nadeau).

A lot of us are deep-cleaning and reorganizing our homes right now. If anyone has anything they no longer want that would be a good fit for such a museum, I'd be grateful for first refusal. (Please do not entrust me with any treasured family heirlooms until and unless I can get good security and good insurance coverage. I would never forgive myself if something happened to them.) 

To heck with it - these are uncertain and scary times, but life's too short not to dream big.

And if anyone happens to have a building lying around (who am I kidding, right?), drop me a line. I have several ideas for multiple revenue streams. (Note: Blogger is STILL eating my comments, so include an email for a reply.)