Apply Now: Community Leadership Bootcamp

 Dear Readers:

By now, I'm sure most of you know that I feel quite strongly about preserving our historic places.

The LA Conservancy holds an annual Community Leadership Bootcamp to train preservationists. I was fortunate to be selected for last year's original bootcamp. It was very informative, and good practice for contributing statements to the Taix Historic-Cultural Monument nomination (I also shared my notes on Taix with the actual writer of the nomination). 

Apply by February 24 if you want to attend. I highly recommend it.

C.C.

An Eloquent and Fiery Speech

Before we begin:

Yes, I heard Taix was slated for demolition. Fingers crossed THAT doesn't happen (the Taix family's previous location downtown was razed to make way for...drumroll please...a parking structure for government offices...and long before that, they demolished their bakery to build the hotel that housed the original restaurant). Incidentally, good on the LA Times for finally getting Frenchtown's location more or less correct.

Don't forget the Saving Los Angeles Landmarks tour is Saturday, September 7 - one more week! The French Hospital will be the last stop. If you want the scoop directly from the nerd who tracked down Jeanne d'Arc (little old me!), get on the bus.

Anyway, just last weekend I was privileged to meet and interview Georges Le Mesnager's great-granddaughter (hi Denise!). At her request, I've dug up the speech Georges gave on July 14, 1889 - the centennial of the French Republic (French Angelenos threw a HUGE party). Consider this a belated Bastille Day entry, since on Bastille Day I was neck deep in a new job and scrambling to finish a commission. This is from a slightly longer article that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald two days later. In 1932, Le Guide Francais stated "his eloquent and fiery speech still rings in the ears of the older members of the colony."

MR. MESNAGER'S SPEECH. Ladies and Gentlemen—One hundred years have just struck on the clock of centuries—a century has passed since the day upon which the French, rendered desperate, by a sublime effort crushed their oppressors and destroyed the Bastille. It is to commemorate this event, which, by the influence it has exerted upon the human species, has not had its equal since Christ preached equality, that France has made its day of rejoicings, being desirous of keeping it sacred as the birthday of liberty. And upon this immense globe this day all Frenchmen concur in the deeds of their forefathers and proclaim their invincible attachment to the principles of '89. Eighteen hundred years of iniquity and misery had placed France within an inch of destruction. Pillaged, plundered, trodden under foot, she was becoming depopulated. And yet, even as now, our beautiful land was the garden spot of Europe. As now, her majestic rivers watered thousands of ever green meadows; her soil was covered with golden crops; numberless herds found pasturage upon her hills, the vines hid those beautiful grapes which make that good wine, which sparkles in the cup of the happy ones of earth. But the sound of the woodcutter's axe, the labor of the harvests was not accompanied as now by the gay song of the worker, because, having no hope that he would get his rights—in fact, hoping nothing—he struggled on in the throes of misery and starvation. Why could starvation exist in France? Because a King without fear or shame, selfish and cruel, unable to procure any more gold for his orgies, had sold to shameless speculators the monopoly of the breadstuff trade, and those human-faced monsters, armed with the royal mandate, went from hut to hut, robbing the peasant, of what remained to him after he had paid his tithes, taxes and the lord of the manor. The crops were sent out of the country by them ; they created famine in order to tear from the people their last economies, and to sell them bread at the price of gold. Reduced to dispute with wild animals the acorns of the oak and the grasses and wild roots of the forest, thousands died daily. Far above these agonizing creatures reveled the privileged class. Prince, duke, count, baron and marquis rivaled each other in splendor and wealth, all squeezing France to live upon sweat. For them all the good things of the earth, for them all the titles and honors; for the poor devil, cold, hunger, hardship and hard labor. For the one, silk, velvet, gold and diamonds; for the other, rags, insults, humiliation. For the one the sun and France, for the other a prison and the scaffold. And this unfair division had lasted over eighteen hundred years. All things have an end, and God was preparing himself to lay His heavy hand upon the guilty ones. Since a number of years thinkers and philosophers had been reminding the people that all men had a common origin, and that rich and poor, feeble and strong, little or big, must incline themselves before the law emanating from the only legitimate source of power — the will of the people. The people were murmuring. Louis XV. had used his celebrated sentence: "What do I care that the people suffer, so long as monarchy lasts as long as myself. After me may come the flood!" The son paid for his father's crimes and lost his life.  

The speaker here described eloquently the rising of the masses, the attack upon and the falling of the Bastille, and the twenty years of republican triumphs that followed under the devise of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. 

Continuing, the orator said: Years have succeeded years, and liberty, for which the French have suffered so much, has become deeply rooted, and other nations, emboldened by our example, enlightened by that beacon called "89," have everywhere raised their voice. With the exception of dying Turkey and Russia, which is about to be born, all nations have imposed upon their kings a constitution containing their rights. Monarchies are in guiding strings until the day when they will be overthrown. Today all thinking and studious men, those with a developed mind and generous aspirations, greet '89 with enthusiasm, and declare themselves ardent disciples of its political creed. Everywhere the most advanced people have joined their banner with ours. To you, Americans, it is needless to say that we love and honor the land of Washington, without forgetting our France. Our arms, as those of our forefathers, would be valorous enough to defend our adopted land, but our hearts are large enough to harbor interlaced the star-spangled and the tri-color flags. 

The speaker also paid a graceful tribute to the people of Belgium, the Canadians, Italians aud Swiss, and concluded by saying that France cannot perish, because if she were to disappear the European equilibrium would be destroyed, and the world, leaving its axis, would roll in oceans of trouble and wars, gradually growing more bloody until it would finally return to barbarism. "'Vive la France.' Vive la Republique!"

 Eloquent and fiery, indeed.

I Saw What You Did There.

I have been seriously researching Los Angeles' Frenchtown for two and a half years. I created this blog to share its stories and keep the community's memory alive.

Over the summer, I approached several media outlets - most in Los Angeles, one in Paris - and pitched an article on the history of Frenchtown, from Louis Bauchet's arrival in 1827 to the sale of the French Hospital in 1989.

Not one of those media outlets ever bothered to respond.

Last month, I found out why.

On August 3, I called out three LA-based writers for failing to include French Angelenos in recent, relevant articles pertaining to LA history. Had they researched their articles thoroughly enough, I do not believe this would have happened in two of the cases. (I believe one writer excluded the French deliberately, since she mentioned EVERY other ethnic group's respective benevolent societies throughout the city's history. Her editors apologized...eventually.)

It seems one of the other writers (who writes for more than one of these outlets...) has chosen to retaliate.

The LA Weekly recently published an error-filled, omission-ridden history of Frenchtown, cranked out by the same writer I took to task for an earlier article excluding the Frenchmen who worked so hard to solve LA's water problems. (I will not post links to any of her articles because I refuse to encourage "writers" who do not research and fact-check properly.)

The errors in the article are as follows:

• Philippe Fritz's name is misspelled.
• "We" do NOT call Frenchtown "Chinatown." The original core of Frenchtown straddles Little Tokyo and the Commercial Street industrial area, and bleeds into the Civic Center. While it is technically true that much of New Chinatown was part of Frenchtown first, this is a grossly inaccurate oversimplification of how the colony changed and eventually dissolved.
• Jean-Louis Vignes arrived in 1831, NOT 1832.
• Vignes did NOT bring Cabernet Sauvignon grapes with him from Bordeaux. For years, he used Mission grapes. He imported Cabernet Sauvignon grapes later to improve the quality of wines at El Aliso. (He also imported Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc.) Additionally, he did NOT emigrate directly to Los Angeles. Vignes spent a few years managing a rum distillery in Hawaii before boarding a ship bound for Monterey (and quickly moving on to Los Angeles) in 1831.
• El Aliso was named for ONE specific sycamore tree - the giant one you can see in the background picture for this blog.
• Vignes did NOT produce the first "California Champagne." His nephews Pierre Sainsevain and Jean-Louis Sainsevain did, under their Sainsevain Brothers label. Which they did AFTER they bought El Aliso from their 75-year-old, finally-retired uncle.
• "News of Vignes' success" did NOT "trickle back" to France. His sister, who hadn't heard from him in several years (no one had; he'd been pressured to leave France), sent her son Pierre Sainsevain to California to look for him. Only after Pierre found Vignes did he get in touch with his family and friends, suggesting they move to California.
• Vignes' family home was NOT ON THE SITE OF CITY HALL! In the 19th century, the block where City Hall now stands was taken up by commercial buildings. El Aliso, including Vignes' house, stood roughly where Union Station is today.
• There were THREE French mayors of Los Angeles, not two. The writer completely omitted Joseph Mascarel, who - in spite of being unable to read or speak English very well - defeated Damien Marchessault's re-election bid in 1865. (This is a particularly serious exclusion, since Mascarel was the only French mayor of Los Angeles who was actually born in France. Prudent Beaudry and Damien Marchessault were both from Quebec.)
• NO mention was made of Beaudry's importance as a developer. (When I finish researching my entry on Beaudry, you'll understand what an insulting omission this was.) 
• The French Hospital was built on the corner of College and Castelar Streets. It's true that LA's street grid has undergone many changes, but as historical references consistently place the hospital at College and Castelar (NOT "Hill and College"), this should have been noted to omit confusion.
• Additionally, I would not call the French Hospital "private" when it is widely considered LA's first public hospital (by those of us who give a damn about it).
• Taix French Restaurant moved to Echo Park in 1962, not 1964. 1964 was the year the original restaurant was torn down (to build yet another damn parking lot...). (Seriously, Taix's history is on their website. It would have taken all of five seconds to fact-check this.)
• The French Benevolent Society did NOT own plots in Evergreen Cemetery (although Victor Ponet did serve as President of the Evergreen Cemetery Association). The Society had a plot at the old City Cemetery (which is now a Los Angeles Board of Education parking lot).
• French Angelenos referred to handball as "jeu de paume". Why the hell did she use the Spanish word "rebote"?! (Call me crazy, but I somehow don't think this estie de cave understands a word of French.)
• NO mention of the various French World War One relief organizations in LA? Really? REALLY?! (Somewhere in the great beyond, Lucien Napoleon Brunswig, Georges Le Mesnager, and Dr. Kate Brousseau are quietly crying into their wine.)

Later references, which I'll admit are easier to research, are more accurate. However, there is another matter that, frankly, is more upsetting than the errors listed above.

I believe the writer mined some of her content from this blog.

Accusing someone of plagiarism is a pretty serious act, and I have been sitting on my hands for a month now, wondering if I should do it. But I remain convinced she is guilty.

Specifically:

• In my first entry, I listed the many professions held by French Angelenos. This writer mentions some of them in the article, including their contributions to the city's water system. Here's the kicker: in a previous article for Curbed LA, the same writer completely ignored the contributions of Damien Marchessault, Jean-Louis Sainsevain, Prudent Beaudry, and Solomon Lazard. I called her out for this in my August 3 entry. Gee, did she read this blog?
• The existence of French walnut farmers is not a widely-known fact. Yet, somehow, this writer knew about them. I wonder if that has anything to do with my mentioning walnut groves on this blog.
• The fact that Frenchmen supplied Los Angeles with ice and salt is REALLY not well-known. I have mentioned it on this blog (you'll read more about it when I get to Damien Marchessault). Now where exactly did she find that fact? (I found it in a book that has been out of print for many years. But that book is VERY rare - I spent years looking for a copy - and since she has already proven to be a sloppy researcher, I'm not convinced she actually went to Central Library to read their copy of the book.)
• A disproportionate number of the Frenchmen mentioned by name have been covered, or at least mentioned, here. BUT...some extremely important French Angelenos, not yet covered here because I am still actively researching them, were omitted.  

I won't bore my readers with a blow-by-blow breakdown of the writer's sentence structure and word choice, but there are a few lines that look like they were lifted from my blog and edited juuuuust enough that she presumably thought I wouldn't notice.

Well, I did.

I saw what you did there. I'm shocked, saddened, and angry.

When I began pitching articles over the summer, I hoped to share an accurate, well-rounded history of Frenchtown with Southern California and the rest of the world. This "writer", who has connections I don't have and never will, stole that opportunity from me AND submitted an article filled with so many inaccuracies I'm shocked the Weekly's editors failed to blacklist her on the spot.

If you want to use content from this blog, ASK ME FIRST and CREDIT ME. I spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and money (rare old books aren't cheap) telling these stories. And I'm sure as hell not doing it for personal glory (of which I have none). This blog is not about me, it's about the undeservedly forgotten French of Southern California. But since I'm doing all the grunt work, I should be credited.

If you want to make this right, take whatever the Weekly paid you for that inexcusable pisse-froid mess of an article and donate it to one of the French nonprofits with offices in LA. That's how you fix this, sous-merde.

And please: change jobs and move to another city. You have no right to call yourself a writer and you have no business living in my hometown (let alone desecrating its rich history).

(To my regular readers: the next three entries will be on LA's three French mayors. I'll be damned if I'm going to let some crosseur de crisse de tabarnak with no integrity, no research skills, and the IQ of plankton get the last word on Frenchtown.)

Standing Up to City Council

Los Angeles is just as corrupt now as it was when Frank Shaw's goons were harassing reformers like Clifford Clinton.

Regular readers know that I was not called on for public comment during the Taix landmarking hearing. I wasn't the only member of the public who wasn't called.

This isn't an isolated event, either. The same thing happened with the Stires Staircase Bungalow Court and, more recently, the Chili Bowl.

This is a blatant violation of the Brown Act. Every member of the City Council is complicit (shame on all of them).

The LA Conservancy has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Put very simply, a judge can legally require the City to obey state law.

Read more here and sign the petition. There's a link to tip off the Feds, too, if you happen to be privy to anything illegal on a Federal level.

I'll be able to post more regularly once I get my internet access sorted. Coming soon: a study in the many, many changes to the French Hospital over the years.

AI-Free and Proud Of It

With the WGA strike in effect, it's well-known that one major sticking point is the possible use of AI in entertainment writing. I'm not a WGA member, just a nerd with a blog and the occasional byline elsewhere, but I'm not a fan of replacing human writers. 

The other day, my dad asked me to explain what ChatGPT was. 

I explained that ChatGPT is an AI chatbot, and you can prompt it to generate all sorts of content. I mentioned that AI is being pitched as a way to generate ad copy, articles...and blog posts...and that screenwriters are concerned about having work taken away by AI bots, or having to fix scripts generated by AI bots. 

Dad asked me to try an experiment in ChatGPT: prompt it to write an article about the French in Los Angeles and show it to him.

I warned him that it was going to be terrible. 

I tried generating several different versions, and they were almost as bad as the mistake-heavy clickbait that's still floating around out there. Almost.

Here are some of the highlights - or is it lowlights? Anyway:

One of the most notable French architects to work in Los Angeles during this time was Paul J. Pelz, who designed many of the city's most important buildings, including the Los Angeles Public Library and the Bradbury Building.

Hilariously incorrect. First of all, Pelz was born in a part of Eastern Germany that isn't even close to France. Second, he lived in Washington D.C. after immigrating. Third, while he did design the Point Fermin lighthouse in San Pedro (lighthouses being one specialty of his), he had nothing to do with Central Library or the Bradbury Building.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, French immigrants continued to arrive in Los Angeles, and the French community began to grow.

Uh, not quite. The biggest influx came between 1850 and 1860, and after the railroad arrived, the French became a smaller and smaller portion of the City and County's population. 

Many French citizens settled in the city's affluent neighborhoods, such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where they established businesses and built impressive homes.

Uh, I've spent 9 years working on a map that says otherwise. Relatively few French citizens settled in rich Westside neighborhoods, and even then, most of those I've found were celebrities living amongst other celebrities, such as French filmmakers Jean Renoir and Louis Malle. (One outlier: Thomas Pedy, who was in the cutlery business and lived close to where the Four Seasons is now.)

The French Consulate in Los Angeles serves as a hub for French cultural and economic activity in Southern California.

Good luck getting them to return an email (I have tried).

The history of the French in Los Angeles dates back to the late 19th century when a small number of French immigrants arrived in the city. However, it was not until the 20th century that the French community in Los Angeles began to grow significantly.

This is so, so wrong that it made me cackle like a wicked witch in a Disney movie. 

During the early 1900s, French immigrants began to settle in the city, attracted by job opportunities in the oil and gas industries, as well as the growing film industry. Many of these early French immigrants were from the southern region of France, particularly from the city of Marseille.

WRONG! The first French immigrant arrived in 1827, the first big wave began in the 1840s, the French were a tiny fraction of LA's population by 1900, and back in the day, most French immigrants went into winemaking, sheep ranching, or farming. Oil and gas came quite a bit later. Regular readers may recall that Prudent Beaudry accidentally struck oil on one of his hilltop properties while digging a well.

Also, while LA's French community came from all over France and French Canada (with some outliers from Belgium and Switzerland), there were relatively few arrivals from Marseille. LA's most represented region of France was the Basque Country, hands down.

Le Mesnager founded the French Hospital in Los Angeles, which later became the French Hospital Medical Center...

George Le Mesnager is one Frenchman LA should remember, and for good reason - but he had nothing to do with the founding of the French Hospital, which became the Pacific Alliance Medical Center. He was still a teenager when the cornerstone was laid. While the hospital was being built, he went back to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. 

...and the city hosts several French-themed events each year, including the Bastille Day Los Angeles festival.

I FREAKING WISH. LA used to have a huge Bastille Day celebration, but has rudely ignored Bastille Day since 1968. (Hey Mayor Bass, who exactly does one have to be to get City Hall lit up like the Tricolor on July 14?)

...there was a French community that settled in the downtown area of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly around the area of Main Street and Arcadia Street.

It was early-to-mid-19th century, and the intersection is close, but wrong. The hub of the French Colony was at Alameda and Aliso Streets.

The French community in Los Angeles was not as large or well-established as in some other American cities...

While I have yet to make an exhaustive study of the census, one reliable figure estimates that the French accounted for one out of every ten Angelenos, and another put the figure closer to twenty percent. Ten percent is pretty significant (for comparison, 11.6% of Angelenos are of Asian descent and 9% of Angelenos are Black; would you call either of those populations insignificant? I wouldn't). Twenty percent certainly isn't small.

One of the most prominent French neighborhoods in Los Angeles was located around the intersection of Main and Winston Streets. This area was known as "French Town" and was home to many French immigrants who worked in nearby factories and shops.

Main and Winston is on the edge of the Toy District, southwest of what was called "French Town". It's almost a mile away from the hub of the French Colony. (What is it with anyone, human or bot, thinking Frenchtown was a mile away from its true location?)

Another notable French community was centered around the city's historic Olvera Street, which was originally a Mexican marketplace but became a popular destination for tourists interested in experiencing the city's Spanish and Mexican heritage.

While there were some French activities in the Plaza area, Olvera Street was definitely not the hub of French LA. Don't get me started on the bot's description of Olvera Street (which was probably originally an alley). 

There were French-owned shops, restaurants, and hotels, as well as a French-language newspaper called "La Gazette."

The first half of this sentence is correct. The second half made me cringe. LA has had several French-language newspapers over the years (possibly as many as 10), but I have yet to find a single reference to one called La Gazette.

However, the legacy of the French community can still be seen in the French-style architecture of some of the historic buildings in the Bunker Hill area, as well as in the French names of some of the streets in the area, such as Grand Avenue and Figueroa Street.

ChatGPT must not be aware that Old Bunker Hill was annihilated decades ago. There is nothing on modern-day Bunker Hill that I would classify as resembling French architecture. Also, while there are some French street names (Beaudry, Mignonette), Figueroa's origins are distinctly Spanish, and Grand Avenue got its name when residents tired of jokes about living on Charity Street. 

Today, there are still a few French-inspired businesses and landmarks in the downtown area, such as the French restaurant Taix, which has been in operation since 1927.

Taix's downtown location was lost in 1964 (for a parking facility, of all things). The restaurant's sole surviving location is in Echo Park...for now.

The French writer and journalist Charles Lummis also settled in Los Angeles in the late 19th century and played an important role in promoting the city's cultural heritage and history.

This blog has tremendous respect for Charles Fletcher Lummis, but he was from Massachusetts.  

Some of the most prominent French winemakers in Los Angeles at the time included Jean-Louis Vignes, Charles Kohler...

Charles Kohler was prominent enough to have Kohler Street named after him. However, he was German. 

Do I need to go on, or have I made my point?

With the sole exception of the quotes pasted above, this blog has always been, and will always be, free from AI. I type every word, and I always will.

What's In a Name?

I finally got a chance to start watching Bosch: Legacy.* 

I highly recommend it, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help cringing when the very first scene of the first episode involved multiple instances of Vignes Street being pronounced "VIG-nezz". 

There has been considerable debate over how Vignes Street should be pronounced.

Vignes means "vines" in French (fitting for a vintner from Bordeaux), and in French, "vignes" (referring to vines) is pronounced more like "veen" (I'm simplifying, but I'm sure you get the idea). 

However, French rules of pronunciation don't necessarily apply to proper names. Case in point: Taix is pronounced "Tex". 

The few references to pronunciation I can find state that Jean-Louis Vignes' surname is pronounced "vines". Frances Dinkelspiel, who is an award-winning journalist, the author of Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, and a descendant of another prominent Los Angeles winemaker (Isaias Hellman), says it's pronounced "vines". 

Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times helpfully suggested via Twitter that an older newspaper account might spell the name phonetically. In 9 years of digging as deeply into the family as I can, I have yet to see that.

(I checked again, since more old newspapers are digitized each year. No luck again, and to my consternation multiple newspapers - mostly small ones based in NorCal - mistakenly claimed that El Aliso winery was on the site of Union Station - no wonder that tired myth has hung around for so long - and a 1972 article in the Desert Sun referred to to Vignes as "young". He was, in fact, 52 when he arrived in Los Angeles. I also found a very long and detailed article about Vignes' children suing their cousins for a cut of El Aliso. Boy, did it get ugly!)

When Jean-Louis Vignes was alive, French speakers outnumbered English speakers by a wide margin (incidentally, Vignes himself was the reason for this). The Vignes-Sainsevain family was prominent enough in a town of about 6,000 people (about one-tenth of whom were French) that the pronunciation of their names was probably well known, and Vignes (who died long before English became LA's dominant language) was "Don Luis del Aliso" to most people anyway.

None of this is still the case in 2022, 160 years after Vignes' death. Most Angelenos don't even know who Vignes was.

So I'll just put this out there: Are there any Vignes/Sainsevain descendants out there who would be so kind as to clarify how "Vignes" is pronounced?

I suspect it's "vines" (for starters, I trust Dinkelspiel's expertise). Maybe it was "veen", and I've also heard "vin-yay".

But there's no way in hell it's "VIG-nezz"; what native French speaker would brutally butcher their own name like that in a city where most people spoke Spanish or French? Hearing "VIG-nezz" makes my ears bleed (and I'm a metalhead with noticeable traces of Valspeak in my speech, so THAT is saying something). So I'm hoping we can get some clarification on that and hopefully send "VIG-nezz" to go live on a nice vineyard upstate with its friends "Pick-o" and "Sepple-veeda".

*I'll let you find out for yourselves which classic detective novel was referenced in the first episode. I was also amused when one character stated that his family made their money first with gold, then steel, then aerospace - shades of the Ducommun family.

Our Names Are On The Street Grid, For Crying Out Loud

 After 7.5 years of mapping about 500 Forgotten French LA sites, I think I have a pretty good idea of what was located where.

Most of what we had has been lost over the years. As a result, most people have NO idea about the city's French history. Out of sight, out of mind. But we did not, in fact, vanish "without a trace" as another historian has claimed. There's plenty of evidence if you know where to look.

Frenchtown is long gone - lost to redevelopment by about 1940 (except for the original Taix restaurant, which remained until eminent domain took it away in 1964). The El Aliso/Sainsevain Brothers vineyard was buried by the Civic Center, Little Tokyo, and the north end of the Arts District. The 101 Freeway wiped out the Jennette Block and half of the Garnier Building. Ducommun Yard is now a bus parking lot. Many, many properties became parking lots.

What we do still have, though, are French street names. 

It's unusual for street names to change. We did lose a few, but we still have most of our French street names.

Let's take a ride.

Plaza/Union Station

Chinatown

Civic Center

Boyle Heights

The Valley

Griffith Park area

The Hollywoods

(Normandie, one of the longest streets in LA County, runs through Koreatown and South LA, but it's included here because it begins in Hollywood. Also, the street may have gotten its name due to Mayor Joseph Mascarel, a retired sea captain who owned a farm in Hollywood.)

The Westside

Koreatown

Downtown

Beaudry Avenue and Victor Street. Not pictured because I can never find anywhere to park and I know better than to take a picture while driving. Also, honesty compels me to admit I'm not sure whether I should call this area "downtown" or refer to the older name of Temple-Beaudry (since Temple-Beaudry was razed for the 10).

Mid-City

Nadeau Drive. Not pictured because I'm never in Mid-City.

Mid-Wilshire

Masselin Avenue. Not pictured because I haven't been to Mid-Wilshire in years.

South Los Angeles

(To clarify: these are pre-1946 street signs from my personal collection. Nadeau Street is in South LA. Leonis Street no longer exists. If you want an antique LA street sign, hit up VintageStreetSigns on Etsy.)

Whittier

City of Industry

Not pictured: Amar Road. 

Vernon

Commerce

San Pedro

Lost to renaming:

Dupuy Street in Temple City ("too hard to pronounce", allegedly...come on, it's "doo-pwee"). It became Primrose Avenue, but there is still a short residential cul-de-sac called Dupuy Circle.

Sentous Street downtown. The Sentous tract was redeveloped into (what else...) a parking lot for the Convention Center, and Sentous Street was renamed LA Live Way.

Henriot Street in Cypress Park. The name changed to Dayton Street, or Dayton Avenue, in 1896. Dayton later changed to North Figueroa Street.

Lost to redevelopment: 

Leonis Street downtown - not the same as the Leonis Street in Commerce or Leonis Boulevard in Vernon. Miguel Leonis named the street during his lifetime. Commerce and Vernon would not exist for many years.

Prudent Street, lost sometime between 1888 and 1894 due to redevelopment east of Alameda Street.

Marchesseault Street just below Olvera Street, which was likely obliterated because it ran into the Vice District. But it's coming back (sort of)! 

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.

Some Forgotten French Papers of Old LA

One of the most annoying aspects of researching French LA is that some historical documents, especially those written in Northern California, either completely ignore the French Colony in LA or - at most - treat it as an afterthought.

A reader pointed me toward the California Historical Society Quarterly's four-part series on the French-language press in California, written by one Clifford H. Bissell. I wasn't optimistic, but I always check these things out just in case. The CHS is known to have an impressive collection of newspapers.

Part one: blah blah blah NorCal.

Part two: blah blah blah more NorCal.

Part three: blah blah blah it's like the southern half of the state doesn't exist.

Part four: blah blah blah NorCal NorCal NorCal...then, long after I'd abandoned hope, a section on the French press in Southern California began on the thirteenth page. 

FINALLY.

I've mentioned the Spanish-language newspaper El Clamor Público before. For a brief period of time, the newspaper printed a page in French - not surprising, since editor Francisco P. Ramirez learned French from his godfather Jean-Louis Vignes. After the French page ended its run a few months later, the occasional French-language article, letter, or ad continued to run. This is also not surprising, since many French Angelenos picked up Spanish before (or instead of) English.

Two years after Corsican-born F. Tamiet founded L'Union in 1876, Tamiet disappeared. L'Union's editor F.V.C. de Mondran, who had left to establish Le Courrier de Los Angeles, used its debut issue to explain that Tamiet had forged checks, embezzled money, and left debts behind. The French Benevolent Society's meeting minutes from much of 1877 are missing, possibly because Tamiet was the Society's secretary at the time and may have been destroying unflattering records. 

Mayor Joseph Mascarel was the second owner of L'Union. Bissell does insult Mascarel's intelligence, claiming he was nearly illiterate (I have never seen anything to indicate this claim is true). 

As for F.V.C. de Mondran, aka Frédéric François, Vicomte Cazeaux de Mondran, his newspaper career seems to have been short-lived, as Le Courrier only lasted a few issues, and he left town soon after that (although unlike Tamiet, he didn't leave any sort of mess behind him and doesn't seem to have had a known reason for leaving). 

Pierre Ganée founded weekly paper L'Union Nouvelle in 1879, not long after L'Union folded, and remained editor and publisher until he passed away in 1902. The paper was widely read by most French-speaking families in Southern California, and was still being published when the Herald-Express ran its last issue in 1962.

Le Progrès followed in 1883, helmed by Dr. Pigné-Dupuytren and then Georges Le Mesnager, neither of whom really had the time to both keep it going and attend to their other jobs. For a time, J.P. Goytino, notorious son-in-law of Joseph Mascarel, edited the paper, but he left to focus on the Basque-language Eskual-Herria. (Goytino had a well-earned bad reputation that goes far beyond the scope of this entry. He was particularly notorious for being a scam artist and a slumlord.)

Belgian-born Charles Raskin (whom we've briefly met before) founded Le Gaulois in 1887, but ceased publication in 1891 due to being called to Brussels for his other job (agent for the Red Star Line and Compagnie Générale Transatlantique). Subscribers were turned over to L'Union Nouvelle after the final issue of Le Gaulois. Raskin also used the final issue to call out J.P. Goytino. 

Roughly translated:

An unfortunate and miserable vagabond, let's name him, J.P. Goytino, a former resident of the Los Angeles County Prison, has particularly taken on the task of vilifying us. We know full well that he belonged in France, for three years, to the Congregation of the Ignorant Brothers, under the name of Frire Lupulus, and that he was guilty of a series of unnatural crimes. Forced to leave France as a result of these misdeeds - and also as a result of acts of fraud and forgery committed to the detriment of his uncle, Mr. Bernard Etcheverry, he failed in California. Everyone knows that he owes only to the accidental death of his cousin Léonis, not to occupy a cell today in the state prison in San Quentin. It was as a result of his fortuitous release that he became editor of Le Progrés! Our readers know what has been achieved.

Félix Violé came on board at Le Progrés - the very same newspaper that had inspired Félix and his brother Jules to come to Los Angeles - in 1890. 

The 1891 city directory lists a Le Progrés Californien, with no editor or publisher listed, and there seem to be no other references to it anywhere. Perhaps it was short-lived, like Le Courrier, but with no surviving copies. That left Le Progrés as L'Union Nouvelle's only serious competition.

Ganée was certainly an opinionated editor. L'Union Nouvelle leaned Democrat until 1896, when Ganée's disapproval of President Cleveland's trade policy prompted him to switch the paper's allegiance to the Republican Party. Bissell adds "It was very anti-British, and seemed obsessed with the likelihood of the world's being dominated by the Anglo-Saxon races, i.e. Great Britain and the United States. It was rabid on the subject of Dreyfus."

(The less said about Ganée's opinion of Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted twice, and the subject of a cover-up when the real traitor was uncovered, the better. Ganée was eventually forced to admit Dreyfus' innocence.)

Ganée was equally mistaken about the Spanish-American war, believing Spain's navy to be superior to that of the United States. Oops!

Jean Trébaol edited Le Progrés either with or under the direction of Goytino, but left after a squabble and founded Le Français. He proudly advertised it in English as "the only French newspaper in Southern California established, owned, and published by a Frenchman." This must have come as news to Pierre Ganée, the Frenchman who established, owned, and published the long-running L'Union Nouvelle. In the end, Le Français merged with L'Union Nouvelle in 1900, and Trébaol went back to his old job: teaching. Like Tamiet, he mysteriously disappeared in 1919, but I'll dig into that another time.

Bissell notes that in 1895, a semi-weekly called La Concorde appeared, published by Mrs. L. Pavlides, a Parisian married to a Greek doctor. The paper was short-lived; Bissell states that the couple moved away and that no copies were known to exist.

At the start of the twentieth century, there was one French newspaper left standing: L'Union Nouvelle, of course. After Ganée died in 1902, Jacquard Auclair assumed publishing duties before selling it to Adrien Davoust, Ganée's former assistant, in 1904. 

By this time, L'Avenir had appeared. It disappeared after 1906.

Le Courrier Français (not to be confused with 1878's Le Courrier) appeared in 1917, billing itself as an "independent, progressive weekly newspaper of the French, French-Canadian, Belgian, and Swiss Colonies, and also the French reading public in Los Angeles." (See, I told you French LA wasn't totally homogeneous!) It merged with San Francisco-based Courrier du Pacifique in 1939.

L'Union Nouvelle, once again the last newspaper standing, ran its final issue in 1962.

The French Colony died multiple deaths - the railroad, the land boom, Prohibition, the freeway - but between the last French newspaper dying out, the original location of Taix (last survivor of the French Colony) being demolished for government buildings, and Bastille Day getting the shaft in 1968, I feel comfortable saying that the 1960s are the decade that wiped the French Colony from the city's collective memory.