Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuckaluck
Fountains? What about canals or zanjas?
Pershing Square, circa 1880
uscdl |
Apparently a zanja ran along the 5th and Olive sides of what-was-to-be Pershing Square in early days.
As Pershing Square has come up again and some great pix of the Title Guarantee and Trust Building have been posted, I thought I'd set down what I've read about the pioneer family that once owned the block to the north of the park (not officially a park until declared so by city ordinance in 1870). One of the few bits of real estate in the city, another is the Plaza, that's never changed hands.
In 1866 Captain Ariel Merrick Hazard (1797-1873) and his son-in-law, Harley A Taft purchased the remote, rural block bounded by 5th, Hill, 4th and Olive for $9.80 at an obviously-not-terribly-well-attended tax sale. The final price may have been closer to $30 after fees and "advertising" were figured in. (Compare this to the $450 paid by Robert Stark in 1870 for the even more remote block bounded by 7th, Flower, 8th and Figueroa:
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/23/local/me-15827 - link first posted by
ProphetM)
Capt Hazard (originally from Vermont), his wife, Eleanor, and children, including
Mary Eleanor (1841-1933)
George Washington (1842-1914) and
Henry Thomas (1844-1921) had come to Los Angeles in 1854 by covered wagon from Michigan. Harley Taft (1826-1906) arrived from R.I. traveling around the Horn.
Mary E Hazard and Harley Taft were married in LA in 1856.
Harley and Mary built a home on 5th St near Hill, facing the Park and raised a family. Desperate for neighbors they offered free house lots along the Olive St side of the block. There were no takers. Their son, Alfred Z (1864-1936), was the second of six children, only three of whom lived to adulthood.
An undated view of the original Hazard-Taft house, on 5th St, facing the Park
(it's also in the photo above):
http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4...0house&f=false
Later, Mary and Harley built a second, larger home on the corner of 5th and Hill. This view is circa 1890:
http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4...0house&f=false
(These homes were cleared, of course, in 1904 to build the California Club, which in turn, fell in favor of the Title Guarantee and Trust building in 1930.)
George W Hazard, a businessman, was also our most important early historian. Between the 1880's and 1905 he amassed a wealth of photographs and other material on Los Angeles. The collection is housed at the Online Archive of California:
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark...88916qc/admin/
"Of all the local collectors who have given their time and energy to the fascinating pursuit of collecting old material, Mr Hazard is far and away the leader. He has gathered thousands of photographs and negatives. With him this is a hobby...Mr Hazard has been most energetic and zealous in gathering everything possible relating to the early history of Los Angeles. He has photographs of pioneers, views of buildings, views of historic structures in the interior - everything that has borne on the life of the county has been fish to his net. He himself can turn almost at will to any view illustrating a point he desires to make, but this facility is possessed by no one else. His collection has has been of so great importance that on recent occasions he has been called to the witness stand to testify as to the condition of property at a given time, always with the photographic proof to sustain his evidence."
Quoted from "Preserving Historical Data" by WS Broke, July 1911 issue,
Out West magazine
http://books.google.com/books?id=GW4...rendall&f=true
(link first posted by
Flyingwedge)
Geo. W. Hazard's saddlery shop:
islandora
Henry T Hazard returned to Michigan for his law degree at Ann Arbor. Back in LA he married Carrie Geller became a practicing attorney and started a political career, serving as City Attorney and twice as Mayor. He had no time for the elitist Chivalry Democrats. Henry was often a speaker at the Mexican Independence Day celebrations in the 1870s, which were attended by big crowds of people of goodwill from all ancestries, captivating the throngs with a rousing speech in fluid Spanish on each occasion.
It is
remembered that at the outset of the Chinese massacre of 1871, Hazard was in a barber's chair being shaved when a mob formed outside.
"Just as he was, with his face covered with lather . . . , he mounted a barrel in the middle of the street and remonstrated with the crowd, attempting to stop it. He was rewarded by being shot at."
It was Henry, as you aleady know, who built Hazard's Pavilion in 1887 next to his sister's house on land once sold by the family to George Lehman (of Round House fame) for that purpose, before Lehman lost everything to bankruptcy in 1879.
Circa 1887-1897 view of the back of Hazard's Pavilion. The roof and upper story of the second Hazard-Taft home can be seen at 5th and Hill:
usc digital archive (first posted by
e_r)
detail
The interior of Hazard's Pavilion, thronged in 1903:
water and power
Henry T Hazard Park, 2230 Norfolk St, East LA (a zanja ran through it and, at one time, a train):
http://lacreekfreak.wordpress.com/20...#comment-11334
Alfred Z Taft, Harley and Mary's surviving son, grew to adulthood on Pershing Square, married and started his own family on the Hazard-Taft homestead block, but by 1892, already with several children (there were seven in the end), AZ and his wife, Blanche, were finding Pershing Square much too urban and started looking for a new place to build. They looked at property on Hill between 12th and Pico, but thought the $200 price was too high. Instead they moved out to bucolic, temperance-minded Hollywood, taking AZ's parents, Mary and Harley, with them, buying land on the north side of Hollywood Blvd (then Prospect Ave) where Taft Ave is today. AZ planted lemons and did extremely well. He helped start the cooperative Cahuenga Valley Lemon Exchange and developed a way to make lemons last, even if shipped long distances (the lemons are thoroughly washed and then waxed, the method that is still used today). AZ also continued to commute to work downtown as a clothier, a job he finally gave up when he started selling Hollywood real estate out of a shed behind his home.
An undated photo of the pretty Taft farmhouse in Hollywood, surrounded by a white-picket fence. The porch faces south and east:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9W4...lywood&f=false
In 1906, the year his father Harley died, AZ Taft's health failed and he moved to Arizona. Alfred Z, Jr (1889-1941), one of the Taft grandkids born back at Pershing Square, dropped out of UCLA (then on the Vermont campus) to handle his father's business interests. Under his father's direction, AZ, Jr enthusiastically embraced a real estate career, turning the lemon orchards into the Taft Tract. He replaced the family home at Hollywood and Taft with the Taft Realty office (
GW tells the tale:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=11318 and
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=54180) and erected the Taft Building (Walker & Eisen, 1923) on the SE corner of Hollywood and Vine, putting the family's stamp on a second famous LA location. Mary Hazard Taft, the girl who came across the plains by covered wagon in 1854 lived on until 1938, celebrated for being the second-oldest lady in Hollywood (after Caroline
Wakeman).
The Taft Building entrance:
http://movie-4-buzz.blogspot.com/201...ng-up-for.html
A twilight view:
http://movie-4-buzz.blogspot.com/201...ng-up-for.html
Taft Ave on the still lovely Taft tract:
gsv
More info:
The Historic Core of Los Angeles by CC Roseman, R Wallach and I Taube, 2005,
http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4...0house&f=false
The Story of Hollywood by Gregory Paul Williams, 2011:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9W4...lywood&f=false
When Hollywood and I Were Babies by Sally Taft Teschke, Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1934:
http://allanellenberger.com/category...ral-histories/
Taft Building History:
http://tafthollywood.com/history.html
LACreekFreak on Hazard Park. It has a great history:
http://lacreekfreak.wordpress.com/20...#comment-11334
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