Wake Up, Sheeple! Part 2: The Sentous Brothers and LA Live

It's hard to believe that the pocket of downtown containing the LA Convention Center, Staples Center, and LA Live was ever quiet and rural. Back in the pueblo days, this land was on the outskirts of town and populated by Californio families.

But that changed when two brothers arrived - separately - from the French region of Haute-Garonne in the 1850s.

Louis Sentous, born in 1840**, came to California in 1853 to do some gold prospecting (there were a few smaller gold rushes after the big one) before moving to LA. Before long, he was raising cattle, selling dairy products, and running a butcher shop.

Louis married Bernath "Bernadette" Lasere, who was also from Haut-Garonne, in 1871 or 1872 (it isn't clear which date is correct). Their son Julius John was born in December of that year, followed by Marie-Louise (1873), Narcisse (February 1880), and Adele (December 1880).

I should note that some sources cite Louis arriving in 1871. However, there is plenty of evidence he was in California in 1853 and for years after. I surmise Louis traveled home to France to get married (it's possible he needed to find a bride; there weren't many single women in LA back then) and the census taker may have mistakenly put down 1871 as the year of arrival for both Louis and Bernadette.

The Sentous Brothers Ranch was near modern-day Jefferson and Western and may have been established as early as 1860. Their cattle are long gone; today, two fried-chicken chains, a bus stop, and a car wash can be found at Jefferson and Western.

In 1874, Louis moved his family to a farm in Calabasas. They moved back in 1877 (given that Miguel Leonis controlled much of Calabasas in the 1870s, who can blame them?). Louis owned the farm until he sold it in 1884, retiring to his home on Olive Street opposite what is now Pershing Square (the exact address isn't clear, but he would most likely have lived next to Remi Nadeau).

The 1883 city directory lists the L. Sentous and Co. butcher shop at the corner of Aliso Street and Los Angeles Street. However, the business prospered well enough that Louis set up the first meatpacking house in Los Angeles. The Sentous meatpacking plant (close to modern-day Culver City) was large enough that it was a stop on the Pacific Electric Railway's fabled Balloon Route, and the plant was the subject of at least one postcard image (more info here). Sentous Station was demolished long ago, but its location is still used as the La Cienega/Jefferson stop on the Expo Line.

Louis Sentous Sr. died in 1911.

Jean Guillaume Sentous, born in 1836, was a dairy farmer and wool rancher. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1854, 1856, or 1860 (sources disagree) after a stint in mining up in Calaveras County.

In 1867, Jean married Maria Theodora Casanova, born in Costa Rica to Spanish parents, at the Plaza Church. They had eight children - Narcisse (born 1868), Louis Jr. (born 1869), Francois (born 1871), Camille (born 1873), Heloise (born 1873*), Louisa (born 1876), Emely (sometimes written as Emila; born 1878), and Adele (born 1880).

There were two more Sentous brothers - Alphonse, born in 1850, and Pierre-Marie, whose birth year seems to be lost to history. Alphonse likely arrived later (there is no record of him in California until 1873), and Pierre remained in France. Little else seems to be known about either of them.

Like many other early residents who were able to buy land before the real estate boom of the 1880s, the Sentous brothers had considerable holdings, including a building block. The Sentous Block at 617 N. Main Street, built by Louis in 1886, housed both apartments and shops. In fact, former governor Pio Pico spent his last few years in an apartment in the Sentous Block (needless to say, he'd had some money troubles).

Jean Sentous established a dairy farm in 1856, on land bordered by Main, Washington, Grand, and 21st Streets. The land exchanged hands a few times and eventually became Chutes Park, one of LA's first amusement parks, in 1900 (sadly, in typical fashion, LAist neglected to mention the French guy who owned the land before that hotelier did).

There was a Sentous Tract, divided by Jean in 1861 and bordered by Pico, Georgia, Eleventh, and Sentous Street. The Sentous Street School was built at 1205 W. Pico in 1912, and later renamed Sentous Junior High School (the campus doubled as a night school).

Although Jean preferred family life to public life, he served as President of the French Benevolent Society for many years.

Jean died in 1903 at age 67 in his home at 834 West 16th Street (the 800 block of West 16th Street no longer exists). His funeral was held at St. Vincent's and he was buried at Calvary Cemetery. The funeral procession was the largest Los Angeles had ever seen (at least as of 2007, when this fact was cited in historian Helene Demeestre's Pioneers and Entrepreneurs).

Jean's son Louis Sentous Jr., who was just as popular as his gregarious father and uncle, was educated in Los Angeles public schools and St. Vincent's College before spending five years in France, attending the Seminary of Polignan and the Government College in St. Gaudens. Upon returning, he re-enrolled in St. Vincent's (which we know today as Loyola Marymount University) and graduated. Louis Jr. married Louise Amestoy, also from a notable French family (I will cover the Amestoys at a later date) in 1895.

Louis Jr. was President of the Franco American Baking Company for some time, developed real estate with his brother Camille, and served as LA's French consul for many years. (Demeestre mistakenly - but understandably - lists Louis Jr. as Louis' son. Birth records and Jean's newspaper obituary make it clear that Louis Jr. was in fact Jean's son.) Louis Sentous Jr. held several offices in the French Benevolent Society and was the Society's President for thirteen years, during which time the Society's membership more than doubled. In 1912, the French government made him a decorated officer of the French Academy for his years of service.

The Sentous family wasn't immune to trouble. In 1907, Louis Jr. and Camille were threatened by a deranged laborer, Quentin Prima, who demanded their assistance in courting their wealthy widowed aunt. Fortunately, Prima was promptly arrested.

Of Jean's other children, we know that Frank became an engineer, Narcisse bounced back home after a divorce, Adele and Louisa got married but Heloise did not (in the grand tradition of French women living very long lives, Adele died at age 90 in 1971), and poor Emely died when she was only 15.

The Sentous Block - incredibly - managed to survive until 1957. When it was finally slated for demolition (to build - what else? - another parking lot), Christine Sterling, the "Mother of Olvera Street", was so heartbroken that she put on mourning attire and hung a huge black wreath on the building's center door (as you can see in the picture below).

(Image courtesy of USC's digital library.)

Mrs. Sterling lamented "I had always hoped that the Sentous Building would be included in the city, county and state's plans to restore the Plaza area. But it looks like another part of our past is going to be carried away in a truck." (Emphasis mine. If Mrs. Sterling could see modern-day LA, she would probably be inconsolable.)

Sentous Junior High School closed in 1932, after only 20 years of teaching children (and adults). As the city expanded westward in the 1930s, more and more families moved out of downtown. The school was not demolished until 1969.

The rest of the Sentous Tract was cleared out and demolished around the same time to build (drumroll please...) a parking facility for the Convention Center. The Staples Center and LA Live came later. (On a personal note, I was harassed at LA Live by a racist scumbag who took issue with my beret and my ethnicity. I felt threatened enough that I didn't stick around to say hi to second opening band The Dollyrots, even though I love them - I bolted for the parking garage and beat it straight back to my apartment across town. That was in 2010 and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I'm never, EVER going to a Screeching Weasel show again.)

As for Sentous Street, it was renamed LA Live Way.

A few of LA's streets still bear the family's name. City of Industry boasts both a Sentous Avenue and a Sentous Street, and West Covina has its own Sentous Avenue. (Given later freeway construction and the proximity of the two Sentous Avenues, they may at one time have been portions of one continuous street.)

*Camille and Heloise were, according to existing records, born just six weeks apart. It isn't clear if this is the result of a clerical error or unlikely medical circumstances, or if either child could have been adopted.

**Multiple sources say Louis was born in 1848, but others, including his grave marker, indicate a birth year of 1840. Since young children don't normally go to a faraway country alone at age five, 1840 seems far more likely. Emigrating alone as a younger teenager would not have been that unusual for the 19th century (case in point: one of my great-grandfathers emigrated alone at age 14, lived in boarding houses until he got married, and - if his birth family was even still alive - never saw any of them again).

Jean Trébaol Vanishes

Sometimes, people just disappear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1909 newspaper blurb mentioning Trébaol's second hospitalization

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

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

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

1917 blurb about the Trébaol family's cows escaping

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

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

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

Jean Trébaol was never seen again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1919 news article with picture of Jean Trébaol

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the French Museum of Los Angeles/Bienvenue à la Musée des Français à Los Angeles

Today is my birthday.

What I would like to do is go to a museum.

Specifically, a museum that tells Frenchtown's countless stories.

Imagine, if you will, a surviving 19th century building converted into a museum (in a way that preserves its original bones as much as possible, of course).

Imagine a giant (fiberglass, of course) bottle of Sainsevain Brothers Wine outside, beckoning visitors and reminding attentive passersby that French-owned vineyards once dotted downtown Los Angeles.

Perhaps there is even a rear courtyard where visitors can see wine grapes growing - Mission, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Sauvignon Blanc (i.e. the varieties Jean-Louis Vignes grew at El Aliso long before Union Station was built on the site). Replicas of 19th-century winemaking equipment are also on display (we mustn't expose authentic artifacts to the elements!).

Inside, an entire gallery traces California's wine industry from Louis Bauchet and Jean-Louis Vignes through the present day. Bottles, winemaking equipment, and personal effects, carefully preserved behind glass, bear the names Sainsevain, Vache, Mesnager, and Nadeau (among others). Perhaps, if we are really lucky, Pierre Sainsevain's steam-powered stemmer crusher will be on view.

A second gallery tells the overall story of the French in Los Angeles.

Bricks from the zanja madre, surviving pieces of hollow log pipe, and an original iron pipe speak to the struggle for safe, reliable water in Los Angeles and to the forgotten Frenchmen who gave it their all - Jean-Louis Sainsevain, Damien Marchessault, Prudent Beaudry, and Solomon Lazard. Surviving pictures of Sainsevain's water wheel and the founding members of the Los Angeles City Water Company bring to life the difficulties of hydrating a parched city.

Pharmaceutical ads and medicinal packaging speak to LA's early French pharmacists - Chevalier, Viole & Lopizich, and the Brunswig family. Photos and very old medical equipment represent Dr. Nadeau (no relation to Remi), Dr. Pigne-Dupuytren, and the French Hospital.

A wall of old maps, perhaps with tiny LED lights representing the path of the Temple Street Cable Railway, show Prudent Beaudry's massive impact as a developer.

Paul de Longpré's pretty flowers adorn a wall - and perhaps someday the Seaver Center will loan out a few of Henri Penelon's paintings.

A case of antique watches, jewelry, and hardware, alongside modern-day aerospace materials, testifies to the importance of Charles Ducommun, the talented Franco-Swiss watchmaker who founded California's oldest corporation.

The evolution of law and order in Los Angeles might be seen in a case displaying photos of the Lachenais lynching, Judge Julius Brousseau's gavel, and perhaps the badge of Eugene Biscailuz, former LA County Sheriff and founder of the California Highway Patrol.

Perhaps one of Victor Ponet's cabinets has survived. Perhaps it displays milk bottles from the Sentous, Alpine, and Pellisier dairies. (Heck, I'd be happy if one of Ponet's coffins survived and was in decent enough condition for display.) And perhaps a copy of the Doors' album "Morrison Hotel" - built on Ponet's land - hangs on the wall, linking long-forgotten LA with still-in-living-memory LA.

A sizable wall case shows glassware, dinnerware, menus, matchbooks, and other items from French-owned restaurants. I just might be thrilled to death to point out the glasses from Café de Paris that are on permanent loan from my personal collection*. But we all know Philippe Mathieu, creator of the French Dip, is going to be the star here (even if he did move back to France when he retired).

One unique display stacks fruit crates high, with labels reading Model, Basque, Daily, Popular, and Golden Ram. Next to the stack? If we are very lucky, a surviving jug from Bastanchury Water - since all of those brands were based on the Bastanchury family's enormous orange grove in Fullerton.

Surviving pictures and the odd schoolbook speak to LA's French educators, ranging from Father Lestrade and his boys' boarding school to Madame Henriot and her Francophone private school to the modern-day Lycée Français. Perhaps there is even a clipping from one of the olive trees used to create olive oil in a contest at Caltech during Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau's tenure.

World War One is recalled, perhaps, by a rare surviving plaster statuette of Pedretti's Doughboy (sold to raise funds for the statue), Lucien Brunswig's dispatches from war-torn France, Georges Le Mesnager's correspondence with General Pershing, and artifacts from the many French war-relief organizations headquartered in LA (and, probably, chaired by Brunswig). Perhaps there is even something that belonged to Dr. Kate Brousseau, who used her brilliant bilingual mind and Ph.D in psychology to rehabilitate traumatized soldiers.

Perhaps there are still surviving items from the City of Paris - LA's biggest and best early department store. Perhaps they could be artfully arranged into a life-size diorama of a fashionable, well-to-do lady's boudoir, circa 1880.

Maybe, just maybe, an entire wall could be "papered" with blown-up images of the city's forgotten Francophone newspapers - Le Progres, L'Union, L'Union Nouvelle. (There was reportedly a fourth paper early on, called the Republican, but I will be very surprised if there are ANY surviving copies.) One of those newspapers was still being published in the 1960s. Just saying...

Remi Nadeau, quite possibly the greatest Angeleno who has been forgotten by the remote frontier town he helped to turn into a world-class city, really deserves his own gallery (if not his own museum). But even one case of artifacts would be a damn good start.

In the middle of it all, I for one would love to see a scale model of early downtown LA - which, with a little magic from projectors, can layer "LA now" over "LA then" when a switch is flipped.

Perhaps a third space - a small theater - showcases French Angelenos in film. Any surviving scraps of film shot at Blondeau's Tavern - Hollywood's first film studio - segue into the stunts of aviatrix Andrée Peyre, cut to Claudette Colbert, and perhaps finish up with Lilyan Chauvin (who went on to teach at USC). It would be a no-brainer to use the space for special screenings, too.

I have so many more people, places, and accomplishments in my list of future blog posts that I won't even try to list them all here.

But here's the problem...

I can't go to this museum.

It doesn't exist outside of my own head.

Chinese Americans make up 1.8% of LA's population (county-wide, the number rises to 4%). They have their own museum AND the Chinatown Historical Society (both of which, by the way, are based in buildings constructed by French immigrants).

Mexican Americans make up 32% of LA's population. They have their own museum.

Japanese Americans make up 0.9% of LA's population and have largely spread to the suburbs (hello, Torrance!). They have their own museum.

African Americans make up 9.6% of LA's population. They have their own museum.

Los Angeles' itty-bitty Little Italy (try to say THAT three times fast) grew out of Frenchtown (two of the French Benevolent Society's founding members were Italian), vanished during the war, and is now part of Chinatown. They have their own museum.

Should these ethnic groups all have their own museums? Of course they should. They are all a part of LA history and they all have their own stories to tell modern-day Angelenos (and whoever else is listening).

For a good chunk of Los Angeles' history, the city was 20% French. Until sometime around the turn of the 20th century, only Californios outnumbered them.

I have written about the founders of California's wine industry, humble hoteliers (wait until I get to the fancier ones), a pharmacist who threw himself into supporting World War One, a renegade general, entire families of ranchers, LA's first struggling artist, and the city's first priests.

I have barely scratched the surface. There are HUNDREDS of stories left to tell.

And one doozy of a question to ask:

Why doesn't Los Angeles have a French-American Museum?

I've previously addressed the fact that the Pico House hosted a temporary exhibit on French Angelenos in late 2007/early 2008. But it lasted less than six weeks, ran during the busy holiday season (not a time when most people want to go to museums), and has, of course, since been forgotten (go on, ask anyone who isn't French if they remember it...I'll wait).

The forgotten French community in Los Angeles deserves to be remembered just as much as every other ethnic group that has ever made a home for itself in LA. We deserve our own museum - a permanent one.

Alas, I don't have the funds or the connections to do this myself.

Can anyone spare several million dollars (damn LA real estate) and a resourceful curatorial staff?

*I do indeed own glassware from the shuttered French-owned Café de Paris in Hollywood (an extremely lucky flea-market find). And if a French-American museum ever does open its doors in Los Angeles, I'll happily - enthusiastically, even - loan out some of those glasses. I'll lead tours, give lectures, you name it. I want our stories told.

A Very Brief History of French Bakeries in Old Los Angeles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Incredible Sainsevain Brothers

(Image courtesy of the California State Archives. View more here.)

There were four Sainsevain brothers in all, but two of them - Pierre and Jean-Louis - had a strong impact upon Los Angeles and other areas of California.

Their mother, Marie Vignes Sainsevain, was the sister of Jean-Louis Vignes. In 1838, thirteen years after her brother was compelled to leave France, she sent twenty-year-old Pierre, a carpenter, to California to see if his uncle was even still alive. Eight months after the ship left France, Pierre landed in Santa Barbara and continued on to Los Angeles.

Jean-Louis Vignes was doing quite well, in fact - so much so that much of the extended Vignes/Sainsevain family relocated to Los Angeles.

Within a year of arriving at the El Aliso vineyard, Pierre was traveling to Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco by ship, seeking new buyers for Uncle Jean-Louis' popular wine and brandy. He succeeded in making the very first wholesale wine transactions in the history of California. The following year, he was running Uncle Jean-Louis' sawmill near San Bernardino.

Bigger things were in store for Pierre: in 1843, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted him Rancho Cañada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo - nearly 6,000 acres in what is now Santa Cruz County. California was still part of Mexico, and normally land grants were only given to Mexican citizens. Pierre did become a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1844 (he is sometimes referred to as "Pedro Sainsevain"), and Governor Pio Pico confirmed the grant in 1846.

In 1843, Pierre built a sawmill near the rancho with another French carpenter, Charles Roussillon, as a business partner. In 1844, he opened a flour mill. In 1845, he married Paula Suñol, daughter of Antonio Maria Suñol (owner of Rancho Los Coches in modern-day Santa Clara County). In 1846, Pierre and Roussillon built a schooner, the Antonita, on the beach at Santa Cruz (and sailed her to Hawaii to have a copper bottom installed). Pierre and Paula's son Jose Miguel was also born that year.

Every schoolkid in California knows that gold was discovered near Coloma in 1848. Pierre went to the mines with his father-in-law and Roussillon. Although the mining town of Don Pedro Bar was named for Pierre (he was nicknamed "Don Pedro" as a mark of respect by Spanish-speaking friends), the party soon tired of mining, and moved to Stockton to sell supplies to Gold Rush miners.

The town of Don Pedro Bar no longer exists, but the Don Pedro Dam and Don Pedro Reservoir still bear Pierre's name.

In 1849, Pierre and Roussillon went to San Jose, the original state capital of California, and built a large two-story adobe on Market Square. They intended to run a hotel, but instead, the building became California's first State House. Ever the achiever, Pierre also served as a delegate to the California Constitutional Convention that year.

In 1855, Jean-Louis, an engineer, joined his brother and uncle in Los Angeles, and the family expanded production at El Aliso. The brothers had their own storefront selling Sainsevain Brothers wine in San Francisco by 1857, with a wine cellar producing Champagne (well, California's first sparkling wine, anyway). Pierre even hired Monsieur Debanne, a former Champagne maker for Veuve Clicquot, to make Sainsevain Brothers Champagne. The following year, El Aliso was leading the state in wine production, turning out 125,000 gallons of wine and brandy.

Jean-Louis also had a personal accomplishment in 1855. He went to France to visit his two sons, who he had not seen for nearly seven years (remember, international travel was significantly harder, longer, and more expensive then than it is now). During this trip, he met and married the widow of a sea captain (I can only assume Jean-Louis' first wife had died at some point). Jean-Louis left his younger son, Paul, and his stepson, Charles Lepaon, in France to complete their schooling (many of LA's earlier French families sent their sons to school in France, so this was hardly unusual), but returned to Los Angeles with his older son, Michel, his new wife, and his stepdaughter, Honorine.

Meanwhile, on the business front, Champagne/sparkling wine production is always risky. It's often more cost-intensive than still wine, San Francisco does not get as cold in the winter as the Champagne region does (Champagne's cold winters create a dual fermentation process, which means more bubbles), and in those days it was MUCH more common for Champagne bottles to break or explode.

To make matters worse, the Sainsevains used Mission grapes (which weren't quite acidic enough to get the desired result), the Champagne was only aged for one year (five or six years is customary), and during the first year of production, one out of every five bottles exploded. While it's true that Champagne bottles have always had some risk of exploding, this level of loss is extremely high, and Sainsevain Brothers' employees had to wear protective gear in the wine cellars to avoid being badly injured by flying shards of glass. The Champagne experiment, while seemingly successful at first, ended up costing the brothers $50,000 (about $1.4 million today) and had to be shut down by 1862.

It wasn't all bad news while the experiment lasted - the brothers sold 300 cases a month, shipping some of them to New York and Philadelphia. They sent Champagne to President James Buchanan, who praised its taste and thanked them generously for it in a letter. When the French government opened its Los Angeles consulate in 1860, Sainsevain Brothers Champagne was served.

In 1859, Pierre sold his rancho. Uncle Jean-Louis sold his nephews the El Aliso vineyard for $42,000 - about $1.06 million in 2016 dollars - by far the highest price ever paid for a single property in California at the time. In 1861, with California wines being sold on the East Coast for the first time, another Sainsevain Brothers shop opened - this one on Broadway in New York.

Unfortunately, there were more financial problems: Jean-Louis Vignes' adult children sued their own cousins, accusing Pierre and Jean-Louis of underpaying for their father's vineyard. This may sound hard to believe, considering the brothers paid more for it than anyone else had ever paid for land in California at a time when Los Angeles was still a dusty pueblo, but it did indeed happen, and the brothers lost in court. Pierre and Jean-Louis dissolved their winemaking business and sold El Aliso in 1869. The brothers were so financially devastated by the Champagne failure and the lawsuit that the county sheriff auctioned off their possessions and remaining wine stock to cover their debts. (Trademark documents in the California State Archives suggest that the San Francisco wine store and the rights to the name Sainsevain Brothers were likely sold to another team of vintners, Mercado and Marsh.)

Jean-Louis was a Mason, and according to one source, was the first Grand Master of the city's first Masonic lodge, located in the original pueblo. A different source conflicts with this; the facts may well be lost to history. We do know, however, that he was a major player in Los Angeles' eternal struggle: water.

In 1863, Jean-Louis was awarded a contract to improve the city's primitive water system (and I do mean primitive; zanjas, or open ditches, were still in use). However, it proved so difficult and costly that he quit. Two years later, when another contractor gave up after only eight months, Jean-Louis was offered the contract again.

This time, Jean-Louis called for help: Damien Marchessault, former mayor and Water Overseer, partnered with him. In an area called "The Cornfield", now Los Angeles State Historic Park, Jean-Louis built a dam and water wheel to feed one of the city's first backup supplies of water, the Sainsevain Reservoir (long since replaced by Radio Hill Gardens). He and Marchessault also began replacing the city's first pipes - hollowed-out logs - with iron pipes. Unfortunately, in 1868, severe flooding undid all of their hard work. This final failure would be a factor in Marchessault's tragic death. An improved water system would eventually succeed under Prudent Beaudry, Solomon Lazard (both French), and John S. Griffen (more on that later).

It may be difficult for modern-day Californians to imagine a time when the state didn't have one out of every eight U.S. residents crammed into its boundaries, but in the 1860s, California had a seemingly endless supply of wide open spaces presenting new opportunities. One of them was Rancho Cucamonga.

Pierre bought the Rancho Cucamonga vineyard in 1860, and Jean-Louis began managing it in 1867. The brothers introduced "new and better" varieties of grapes, according to Harris Newmark. However, their vines were destroyed by grasshoppers in 1870 and 1871, causing more financial trouble. Despite several ownership changes, Jean-Louis was kept on as the vineyard's manager. A bottle of his own sweet white wine won first place at the 1877 Southern California Horticultural Fair.

The brothers, undaunted, also built houses in San Bernardino (it isn't clear whether any of these houses still exist; they'd be well over a century old by now).

Pierre moved back to Santa Clara County and produced wine (under the Menlo Park label) successfully. His claret won "Best Wine" at the county fair in 1868. By 1870, he was making 20,000 gallons of wine per year, but he closed the operation in 1874. That year, Pierre and Jean-Louis bought land in Hawker Canyon, building a large stone house and reservoir.

Jean-Louis owned a lumberyard at the corner of Alameda and Jackson Streets, although the dates are unclear (much of Jackson Street is now gone, meaning the corner itself no longer exists). The brothers shipped lumber up and down the California coast via schooner. In 1869, Jean-Louis sold a different property to Eugene Meyer (despite the German-sounding name, Meyer was also French), who built the Aliso Tract on it.

The ever-restless Pierre went to Central America (some sources say Peru) in 1874 or 1875, returning to San Jose in 1880. He began producing wine again, and invented a steam-powered stemmer crusher (a device that de-stems and crushes grapes) in 1882. When Paula died in 1883, Pierre returned to France.

Although I can find no record of Jean-Louis marrying for a third time (hell, I can't even find a record of his first marriage), a court record from 1882 suggests he was married to a Florence Matilda Sainsevain (another source suggests she was Charles Roussillon's sister). The Los Angeles Herald described him as an "old pioneer" in his death notice (2/17/1889).

Jean-Louis died in Pasadena in 1889. Pierre died in France in 1904.

The 1883 Los Angeles City Directory lists an "M. Sainsevain" operating a feed store at the corner of Turner and Alameda Streets. However, there were already so many Sainsevains in Los Angeles by 1883 that it isn't clear who exactly this was. Pierre's son Jose Miguel was sometimes called Michael, and Jean-Louis had a son named Michel (to complicate things further, in French, "M." is an abbreviation of "Monsieur"). I had considerable difficulty fact-checking this entry because there were multiple Jean-Louis Sainsevains in the Sainsevain family, nearly all living in Southern California.

Multiple old maps list Sainsevain family property in Fontana (the city gave it the official address of 14804 E. Summit Ave.). The Sainsevain surname, albeit with a savagely butchered spelling, is sprinkled across the Inland Empire. Etiwanda, Fontana, Jurupa Valley, and Rancho Cucamonga all have places named after the brothers. There was a Sainsevain (spelled correctly) station on the Southern Pacific rail line near Rancho Cucamonga, but I have not yet been able to determine its precise location or its fate.

The Sainsevain brothers led incredible lives - and incredibly, no one remembers them. Case in point: Los Angeles used to have a Sainsevain Street*, but now it's a distant memory just like its namesakes.

*An 1868 map shows Sainsevain Street ran between Aliso and Commercial Streets, with Alameda and Vignes as cross streets. Comparing that map to modern maps, it appears that Sainsevain Street was realigned and incorporated into Commercial Street. As the original location runs very close to what are now freeway ramps, the street was most likely moved/destroyed to make room for the 101.

The Artist: Henri Penelon

Certain modern-day Angelenos say they're into their art (usually meaning they're auditioning for an art film so weird even I won't watch it) and grumble that no one appreciates them. They have nothing on Henri Penelon, the city's first artist.

Henri Joseph Penelon* was born in Lyon, France, around 1827. The exact date of his arrival in Los Angeles is unclear - he was not listed in the 1850 census, but Harris Newmark claimed Penelon was in the Pueblo by 1853, and tax records indicate he owned a property on Calle Principal (now Main Street) by 1856. (Surviving photographs indicate his studio was on the second floor of the Downey Block, also home to the Lafayette Hotel, on Main between First and Second.) Penelon had a business partner by the name of Adrien Davoust, who co-owned the Main Street property.

Penelon was one of the founding members of the French Benevolent Society, founded in 1860. Before the French Hospital was built in 1869, Society members helped care for the French community's ill and injured. Nowadays we'd say he did volunteer work in the community.

In 1861, heavy rains and flooding spelled disaster for the pueblo of Los Angeles. La Placita, the Plaza Church, was so badly damaged by a leaky roof that its front wall collapsed into the street. Penelon was contracted to paint the rebuilt church inside and out. And paint he did.

Henri Penelon most famously painted a mural of the Madonna and Child over the church's door, flanked by angels (probably the city's first public work of art). He lettered the church's marble tablets. He may have painted the church's ornately framed Stations of the Cross (which are consistent with his other work). He added an inscription to one of the walls: Los Fieles de Esta Parroquia á la Reina de los Angeles, 1861. (I have no idea what that means. Penelon could speak Spanish quite well, but I'm another story.)

In Harris Newmark's words, "he added some ornamental touches."(Ouch.) Supposedly, some of the Pueblo's more artistically inclined residents hated the mural and found the new church distasteful. (Ouch, again.)

To make matters worse, there was a persistent suggestion that Penelon, who made most of his living from photography, painted over photographs instead of starting with a blank canvas. While Penelon had little (if any) formal training, no one has ever produced any evidence of this ridiculous rumor being true. (And we think today's Twitter-feuding celebrities are childish jackasses...)

Surviving photographs indicate that the mural was painted over sometime between 1932 and 1937, and plastered over in 1950. A tile mosaic was installed in the same spot in 1981. The lettering on the marble tablets was visible at least as late as 1932; it isn't clear if it still dates to 1861 (the lettering would now be 155 years old; your guess is as good as mine). The Stations of the Cross are, to my knowledge, still on long-term loan to a church in Mexico. (Ouch...again and again.)

Painting murals is hard work, and Penelon was assisted at La Placita by a new arrival from France - Bernard Etcheverry, then 21 years old. We'll meet him again in a future entry.

Penelon was married to Emilia Herriot, twenty-five years younger than he was (sources disagree on whether Emilia was born in France or San Francisco, but she was certainly of French parentage). Their daughter Hortense was born in 1871, with son Honore following around 1874. 

It has been said that Penelon hand-tinted photographs (a common practice until color film made tinting obsolete). Supposedly, at least one other photographer contracted with Penelon to tint his pictures. The Museum of Natural History's archive of Penelon's known photographs shows no evidence of tinting. It is certainly possible, however, that he did tinting for other photographers without necessarily tinting his own pictures (or, alternately, that his surviving pictures just didn't happen to have been tinted). Without physical evidence, we may never be completely sure.

Still, Penelon was a working artist with a family to support. It is hard to imagine that he would turn down paying work, especially if it meant not having to take so many out-of-town photography jobs. (In a situation all too familiar to today's aspiring stars, Henri Penelon took pictures to pay the bills, but his true love was painting, and as photography replaced traditional portraiture, he worked as a photographer so he could also afford to keep working as a painter. The backs of his photographs bore the stamp "H. Penelon, Artistic Gallery, Los Angeles" - which could reference either trade - along with an artist's palette.)

In an interesting twist of fate, Penelon once turned down a young Swedish photographer who applied for a job, deeming him too young and inexperienced. The photographer, Valentin Wolfenstein, set out to prove Penelon wrong - and the two later took turns working for each other.

Henri Penelon was a portrait painter. In fact, the only known painting of his that is not a portrait is an idyllic scene called The Swan and the Rabbit (interestingly, it is signed "H. Penelon 1871"; his portraits weren't signed). His other subjects were all people - nearly all from well-to-do Californio families (Penelon was fluent in Spanish and friendly with Californios, which probably helped him secure patrons).

One portrait in particular may very well be suffering from a case of mistaken identity. Long assumed to be Concepcion Arguello of Monterey, it was later assumed that she must be Concepcion Arguello of San Diego, a relative of Pio Pico. To make things even more confusing, the portrait was later identified as Feliciana Yndart by an acquaintance. A picture of Sra. Yndart in the Natural History Museum's collection is said to strongly resemble the painting, and another surviving Penelon portrait is of Jose Miguel Yndart, Feliciana's husband.

Penelon's best-known portrait, however, is likely the equestrian portrait of José Andres Sepulveda (who owned most of modern-day Orange County), astride his winning racehorse Black Swan. That portrait now belongs to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (if making a trip, call ahead to confirm that it is on display). As of this writing, it is the only one of Penelon's surviving works that I have seen in person.

Penelon is also credited with introducing the carte de visite to Los Angeles. Cartes de visite were tiny prints or photographs used as calling cards. In Penelon's case, at least two surviving examples were hand-painted.

Henri Penelon traveled to Prescott, Arizona on a photography assignment in 1874. He died suddenly during the trip (none of my references list a cause of death) and is buried in Prescott.

The 1880 census lists Emilia and Hortense living with relatives, with Emilia keeping their house. Curiously, I could find no reference to Honore. The 1888 city directory lists Honore as a student living in Boyle Heights (which was, at the time, LA's first suburb).

In the 1950s, Penelon's granddaughter walked into the Museum of Natural History (which was also the county Museum of Art; LACMA wasn't a separate entity yet) looking to donate two of his paintings. Less than a century after his death, none of the Museum staff knew who Henri Penelon was (OUCH!). Today, thirteen of Penelon's surviving paintings belong to the appointment-only Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. I sincerely hope I will be able to see them myself one day.

If you have deep pockets (or at least deeper pockets than I do), please consider sponsoring Penelon's equestrian portrait of Don Vicente Lugo. I, unfortunately, don't have that kind of money.

Want to see one of Penelon's earliest photographs? Just look at the background image for this blog. Not only is it the earliest known photograph of Los Angeles, it is credited to Penelon.

Even though his surviving works are now prized by those in the know, LA's first artist remains forgotten.

*Penelon's first name is often incorrectly written as "Honore", "Horacio", and/or "Henry"; historians searching old records for the man should make a note of this. (As someone whose first AND last names have been brutally butchered too many times to count, I am acutely aware of spelling errors when researching my own people.)