He made friends with the Blondeau and Grass families, with whom he spoke French. They urged him to move to Hollywood.
At an exhibition of his paintings in Los Angeles (which he had sunk all his money into), he met Daeida Wilcox Beveridge. When he spoke to her about his wish for a house in Hollywood, Daeida acted swiftly. She gave de Longpre the site of her own home, three sixty-five foot lots on the west side of Cahuenga, one lot north of Prospect Avenue.
The Beveridges moved their old wood farmhouse where Harvey had died one block north to Yucca Avenue. With their real estate business booming, they built a beautiful home for themselves at Prospect and Wilcox Avenues.
De Longpre built his house, studio and guesthouse in 1901. A year later, the artist offered Daeida three of his paintings for the corner lot at Prospect Avenue so he could enlarge his flower garden.
Daieda’s ability to balance business and art worked beautifully. The more morally clinched, Wilcox-minded locals lapped up de Longpre. He painted flowers, not nudes. With its arbors and profuse floral varieties, the de Longpre home became one of the great tourist attractions in Southern California.
The artist at home with his flower paintings.
de Longpre’s house was the most popular of Hollywood’s tourist attractions.
The de Longpre residence, looking north from Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards.
Daeida (Wilcox) Beveridge’s residence on the northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue (demolished).
Dr. Palmer described de Longpre as the master of free column publicity. Visiting writers and reporters were the artist’s special guests. Fawning articles flew out worldwide. Hollywood’s frostless belt became famous. Thousands of visitors came to tour his home and gardens, requiring a spur of track up Ivar Avenue to unload them. A tourist who missed seeing the gardens and gallery was said not to have done Southern California. Real estate salesmen could depend on de Longpre to be the first stop when showing prospective Midwesterners local land for sale.
In his studio, filled always with at least fifty finished flower paintings, de Longpre stood aloofly as herds of seasonal visitors shuffled across his oriental rugs, ogling his filigree chairs, plush loveseats, and floral art.
Ancillary businesses bloomed. The largest, Hollywood Prints and Hollywood Art Company, photographed and colored de Longpre’s paintings and sold them internationally as prints and postcards. It operated at Prospect and Gower Avenues, behind the 1901 home of retired Indiana meat packer, Sanford Rich. Rich’s nephew ran the business.
Every year, on his birthday, de Longpre invited Hollywood to a lawn party, and everyone joyfully went. Evening smokers for gentlemen were also favored invitations.
Harvey Wilcox’s widow turned out to be a less ardent Prohibitionist than her neighbors. Daieda and Philo frequently dined at the de Longpre table, where wine was a necessary beverage. Culturally, it was the peak for Daeida, who had waited so long for Hollywood to revive.
The de Longpre residence main salon.
GEM OF THE FOOTHILLS
With its cachet of local talent and botanical wonders, Hollywood became a Mecca for homeowners. Industrial barons, whose fortunes came from oil, brewing, meat packing and mercantile, built homes in Hollywood. At $350 an acre, land was pricier than other areas. Land in Senator Cole’s Colegrove to the south sold for lower prices, with homes built for a frugal $1500.
The Beveridges made a large land sale to a couple named Glidden. They bought the north side of Prospect between Vine Street and Ivar Avenue in the late 1890s. The Gliddens quickly subdivided the northern portion, selling lots along Yucca Avenue out of their new home at Prospect and Ivar Ave. They subdivided so successfully that they built themselves a better home at northwest Franklin Avenue and Beachwood Drive.
Finished in oak and mahogany, the new house had stained glass windows depicting the California missions in the upper halls. Each bedroom had a bath. The Franklin Avenue estate also boasted rare trees and shrubs. In 1922, Mr. Glidden would trade the house for property in downtown Los Angeles. The home stands in 2002 as a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. Two apartment buildings and a gas station occupy its once elegant front yard.
The Gliddens sold the remaining half of their Prospect block in 1901 to George Hoover. Hoover built a large home on the northwest corner of Prospect and Vine where he lived until his death in 1924. In his Civil War youth, George Hoover had been a messenger boy for General Sherman. He made his money in Pennsylvania and had retired to a large home in Los Angeles’s Westlake Park in 1889. He arrived in Hollywood to help Whitley develop a business center at Prospect and Highland.
When José Mascarel opened his Vista del Mar tract in 1901, A.G. Bartlett rose from a sick bed to inspect and buy seven acres at Prospect at Argyle Avenues. An Englishman who for twenty years ran Bartlett Sheet Music in downtown Los Angeles, he built a large home at the summit of his property where he lived until his death in 1923.
Many considered the fifteen-thousand-square-foot Bartlett home one of the finest of the era. It had a reception room, a library and a music hall that seated an audience of two-hundred-and-fifty for Mr. Bartlett’s opera-singing daughter. The terraces on the south and west sides had promenades over sloping gardens with panoramic views. Mr. Bartlett’s interest in botany brought rare shrubs and exotic plants to the estate. His gardens eventually had a collection valued at $100,000 including species found nowhere else on the continent.
In 1902, the Janes house appeared on Prospect Avenue as a model home in the Whitley tract. With the same architect as the Whitley tract house known today as the Magic Castle, the Janeses’ Queen Anne Victorian cottage boasted hardwood floors, stained glass windows, large front and back yards, and the most modern of kitchens.
The Janes family bought the three-bedroom house in 1904 after arriving by train from Aurora, Illinois, where their father, Herman, had retired from the furniture business. Three sisters and a brother, Carrie, Mary Grace, Mabel, and Donald, came with their parents.
The Janes sisters, after inheriting the house from their parents, lived there to old ages. Originally, their nearest neighbor was a block away. By the time the last Janes died (Carrie in 1982) the house stood in the middle of a very seedy Hollywood Boulevard.
Glidden House, 6065 Franklin Avenue
The Janes House on Hollywood Boulevard was a Whitley tract home. (1986 photo)
Vine Street headed north into the hills from Hollywood Boulevard. George Hoover’s home is on the far left and the Bartlett residence is at the right. The empty field in right foreground is now the Pantages Theater.
The Bartlett Estate (demolished) at Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue. The middle view is taken from Hollywood Boulevard.
HIGHLANDERS VERSUS CAHUENGANS
One of Whitley’s initial actions for the Ocean View Tract was to zone Highland Avenue for business. George Hoover became president of the area’s first bank, Bank of Hollywood. That business opened in 1901 in a brick building close to the northeast corner of Prospect and Highland Avenues. Hoover also won the contract to build the Hollywood Hotel at the intersection.
In May 1903, the first wing of the hotel opened. A self-contained country resort with thirty-three rooms and two baths, it had its own power station and ice plant. For the hotel’s opening, Whitley brought officials and prospective homebuyers in special streetcars. After an excursion along Prospect Avenue to see the mansions and a trip to the top of Whitley’s hill (Whitley Heights), attendees got a speech from partner Gen. Otis in front of his Outpost while he waved an American flag. At a banquet in the hotel, diners tossed accolades to Whitley. Paul de Longpre preceded Col. Griffith, who announced a hotel on his recently purchased Olive Hill. (That project never happened). Los Angeles Mayor Meredith P. Snyder promised to pave Sunset Boulevard to Hollywood. Moses Sherman, with a sweeping gesture to the Highland and Prospect intersection, exclaimed, “Behold what God hath wrought.” God had also wrought for the area a general store, a Masonic Lodge wit
h stores at street level, and Hollywood’s first dentist’s office.
Whitley, Mary Moll, and other nearby property owners foresaw a booming commercial intersection at Highland Avenue. All they needed to do was grade Highland into the pass and route traffic their way. This conflicted greatly with Dr. Palmer’s plans. Still living at the Sackett Hotel, Palmer saw Prospect Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard as the town’s future center. The idea of newly developed Highland tapping into the San Fernando Valley, “anxious to pour its rich agricultural products and demands for manufactured goods,” frazzled his nerves. The trade historically belonged to the Pass Road, now named Cahuenga.
Highland Avenue north of Hollywood Boulevard into the Cahuenga Pass.
To bolster his argument that Cahuenga Boulevard was ground zero for new business, Palmer could only point to Knarr’s livery stable at Sunset and Cahuenga. It had installed the area’s first electric sign. (When the sign’s eighty-five light bulbs had initially lit up, many locals thought the barn was on fire.) A local newspaper, the Cahuenga Valley Sentinel, operated from a shed, formerly a one-room real estate office at the southeast corner of Prospect and Cahuenga. Otherwise, Cahuenga Boulevard still had the artifacts of its pioneer past: a wagon shop, bakery, lumberyard, and the wooden Chinese laundry. The Sackett Hotel seemed like a hick cousin to the Hollywood Hotel. As an extra snub to Palmer, the Hollywood Hotel hired its own house doctor.
The first wing of the Hollywood Hotel on the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.
Palmer could not initially convince Daeida Beveridge of the threat. She was content to sell lots to homeowners. Hollywood had enough rivalry with Senator Cole, who, to Philo’s dismay, had added a popular golf course.
The influx of new children filled the Pass School at Sunset near Gordon Street to capacity. Both Colegrove and Hollywood disputed its future. Colegrove wanted to enlarge the schoolhouse to serve both communities. Hollywood, and certainly Daeida with her own children, wanted something closer. While Daeida’s father-in-law mediated the dispute, Daeida settled it for good by donating her fig barn at Prospect and Ivar Avenues for a primary school until something more permanent could be built nearby.
The Beveridges opened a post office in the Sackett Hotel, not only making Hollywood official, but also eliminating trips to Colegrove for mail.
The Highland business development still irked Palmer terribly. After Whitley’s company stealthily bought enough property on the south side of Prospect Avenue to zone the street officially for residences only, Palmer declared war. Cahuenga Boulevard was going to start some business-improvement.
It’s hard to imagine Daeida or de Longpre wanting to live in the middle of the commercial district Dr. Palmer coveted. What Daeida Beveridge did mind was going to church in Colegrove.
Hollywood Boulevard east from Orchid Avenue in 1904. The Hollywood Hotel is left of center. Mary Moll’s strawberry field is in the foreground.
The Methodist Church, southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street (demolished).
COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
Every Sunday, Daeida Beveridge, a devout Episcopalian, and family boarded a rented tally-ho with neighbors for a ride to Colegrove’s Episcopal church. Senator Cole and his family, along with Scottish, English, and Canadian lemon growers, filled the congregation. After years of this routine, Daeida and others objected to traveling to Willoughby Avenue and Vine Street for worship. She offered a pepper-tree-shaded lot on the south side of Prospect at Ivar Ave. Her gesture combined philanthropy with self-interest.
To the Cole family’s astonishment, the majority of the congregation, even the rector, accepted her offer and abandoned the Colegrove church. By 1903, Prospect Avenue had its first church, St. Stephen’s Episcopal. The Coles and their neighbors refused to attend. Five years later they raised enough money for a new church of their own.
German Methodists had been the first organized religion in the Cahuenga Valley. They met in a small wooden shed at Cahuenga Boulevard and Selma Avenue. Daeida Beveridge gave them the lemon orchard on the southeast corner of Prospect and Weyse (Hollywood and Vine) where they built the Hollywood Memorial Church (also called Methodist Church, South) in 1903. The abandoned building at Selma Avenue became Hollywood’s first firehouse and, later, Vern Alm’s gas station.
The second-oldest religious organization, the Hollywood Christian Church, had its first sanctuary on Cahuenga Boulevard, three lots north of Sunset Boulevard on land donated by Daeida Beveridge. Selling that, they moved twice until they settled in 1910 into a renovated brown house known as the “bungalow church” on the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street.
St. Stephen’s on Hollywood Boulevard (Prospect Avenue) on the south side near Ivar Avenue (demolished).
Catholics worshipped in Hollywood starting in May 1904. St. Vibiana’s Cathedral downtown established an independent parish, the Church of Blessed Sacrament. With a primary school, it stood on the southeast corner of Prospect and Cherokee Avenues amid a landscaped park.
Other congregations met in halls or tents, saving donations until they could afford a modest piece of property for a someday-to-be-built church. Some used the Masonic Hall at Highland Avenue. The Baptists built a church south of Prospect on Las Palmas Avenue in 1905. The Presbyterians bought land on Gower Street north of Prospect in 1909 but did not complete their sanctuary until 1922.
More Methodists built a stucco church on the northeast corner of the newly named Hollywood Boulevard at Ivar Avenue in 1910. Frowning on worldly diversions, Methodists perfectly matched the philosophy of Hollywood founder, Harvey Wilcox. The local W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) used this church for their weekly Tuesday afternoon meetings. When Hollywood became mired in scandal in the 1920s, this church became Hollywood’s moral center.
Because of all the church-raising, when the movie business arrived, every major Christian denomination prayed along Hollywood Boulevard.
The First Methodist Church, northeast Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue (demolished).
Hollywood Christian Church, southwest Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street (demolished).
Church of Blessed Sacrament, southeast Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue (demolished).
SHORT STORY OF A CITY
In 1903, petitions appeared requesting that the County Board of Supervisors change the name of Prospect Avenue to De Longpre Avenue. Although Daeida Beveridge and the Los Angeles press favored the action, local opposition arose. Some names appeared on both pro and con petitions, indicating how fractious the community had become. Though the name change did not occur, the street was referred to more often as Hollywood Boulevard.
Schisms also occurred with the proposal to make Hollywood an independent city. Daeida Beveridge considered the action too costly. Additionally, she felt having the name Hollywood applied beyond her housing subdivision did not benefit her family’s interests. Her husband, father-in-law, and Mr. Sackett joined her in opposing the proposal. Most everyone else felt that crooks ran Los Angeles, that their taxes were not going for local improvements, especially streets, and that Hollywood had become the name for the area. As for the suggestion that Los Angeles annex Nopalera, L.A.’s water board quashed the idea. There wasn’t enough water in Los Angeles for more people.
In the middle of August 1903, with only the men voting, Hollywood incorporated as the “City of Hollywood.” The boundaries went from Normandie Avenue on the east, Fairfax Avenue on the west, Sunset Boulevard on the south and the hills to the north. It had a population of seven hundred.
The first act of the city attorney was to choose the poinsettia as the official flower. The new city motto altruistically emphasized “Harmony and Economy” while the battle between Cahuenga and Highland escalated.
Many in the Highland faction suspected that the new mayor, George Dunlop, favored the Cahuengans. He was an old friend of the Wilcoxes and was living in their house when Harvey died. A bachelor resident at Sackett Hot
el, he had married Sackett’s daughter, Zella. Dunlop was also a friend of Dr. Palmer. Many felt he would be too supportive of Palmer’s ambition to make Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevards the town’s center. Dunlop stepped aside. Sanford Rich, who had real estate interests across the valley, became the first mayor.
The Highland faction convinced the newly formed Hollywood Board of Trade that it needed something more official than Mr. Bartlett’s living room for headquarters. The board, composed of every mover and shaker in town, accepted two free offices at Highland Avenue. Tit for tat, the Cahuenga faction immediately secured the Hollywood Police Department. Daeida Beveridge donated land on Cahuenga Boulevard south of Hollywood Boulevard for the one-room station behind a rose arbor. A concrete cell also appeared. The only criminals to sit in the cell were those who broke the law against public drunkenness — including the man who had built the jail.
Hollywood Boulevard runs through the middle of photo. Orange Drive is at right. Hollywood Union High School is at top center.
New houses appeared in the foothills north of Franklin Avenue, 1906.
The city hired two policemen, first on horseback, then on bicycle. One officer recalled that his biggest problems were automobiles racing down Sunset Boulevard at 85 miles per hour and, whenever he rested under a tree at Hollywood and Vine, children throwing lemons at him.
Although law and order had not been a local issue since the Vasquez days, the City of Hollywood had plenty of new laws. As everyone expected, the first law banned liquor sales. The Labaigs at Sunset and Gower had anticipated this and sold their business the previous year. The new buyer continued to sell alcohol until arrested and asked to leave town. The Blondeaus across the street saw their business, along with the Pass’s Eight-Mile House, parched. Also prohibited in Hollywood were transporting liquor through the city; concealed firearms; the use of firearms; bicycles on the sidewalks (of which there were very few); speeding of any kind whether horse, bicycle, automobile, or any riding machine; slaughterhouses; the destruction of street trees without permission; pool halls; bowling alleys; glue factories; slot machines; and gambling. In acknowledgment of the ugly, stinking oil industry that profitably consumed Hancock land south of Colegrove, a law banned oil wells as well.
The Story of Hollywood Page 5
