Tag Archives: Olvera Street

Grist For The Mill, Part Two — Chapman’s Millrace

THE DISMAL SCIENCE DEPT./
THE THEATRE OF CONVERSION

THE RELUCTANT PIRATE

Joseph John Chapman was a Boston able seaman, a wharf rat trained in shipbuilding, mechanics, blacksmithing. In 1811, when he was 27, in what seems to have been an idealistic fit of democratic ardor, he sailed for Argentina to join the Bolivarian revolution against colonial Spain. Somehow Chapman ended up joining the crew of Hippolyte Bouchard, the “revolutionary pirate.”

Bouchard’s was a ship of fools, an invasive Foreign Legion, a corsair in the cause of libertad. In November 1818, Bouchard and his piratical crew, including Chapman, sailed down the coast of California, burning towns, threatening missions, and plundering lands. It was a daft attempt to liberate Spain’s beleaguered colonies by destroying them.

On a shore raid north of Santa Barbara, at Refugio, pictured above, Chapman was captured by the Californians. Somehow he convinced them he was harmless, and and had skills; anyway the clever Yankee prisoner was set to work in 1820 building new mills for Mission Santa Inez — a fulling mill and a grist mill. Fr. Zalvidea’s success with the Molino Viejo at San Gabriel had proved they could help a Mission grow.

Finished by 1822, Chapman’s mills were superb. And gorgeous. Which is modernism.

Chapman was granted amnesty by Gov. Sola, and immediately became known as the finest mechanic and construction foreman in Alta California. Shockingly, he then eloped on a sloop with Guadalupe Ortega y Sanchez, the belle of California. Her father had founded Santa Barbara! Chapman was not Catholic! When the couple were apprehended at San Pedro, Chapman reportedly faced a shot-gun conversion to Catholicism, and a re-wedding ceremony at La Placita church in LA. Perhaps in penance, Chapman was set to finish the framing of the roof of La Reina de Los Angeles. Chapman and a crew rode up into the San Gabriels, logged out timbers, hauled them by ox back to LA. He may even have agreed to pay for the bell he yoked in the belfry. In December, 1822, La Placita was finally finished, and the bell rung for a solemn and festive re-dedication procession, with all the citizens from miles around.

La Placita was an assitencia of San Gabriel; and when Fr. Zalvidea saw the fine job being done on the roofing, he gave Chapman his next job, building San Gabriel’s new mill — El Molino Nuevo — to replace the abandoned El Molino Viejo. (In the intervening years, the poor neophyte girls had gone back to rolling grains with metates, per George James Wharton). So between 1822-1824, the Yankee pirate-turned-millwright, dammed, dug, delved, daubed and did it.

The millrace is behind restoration fencing now.

With this mill right in the Mission’s front yard (above, middle right), Fr. Zalvidea had finally achieved his goal of bringing modern — indeed, state-of-the-art — capital improvement to replace the old wasteful production process of the province’s most necessary commodity. And Chapman didn’t just build the mill and the dam, he helped frame all the other new buildings, and even the famous Indian-crewed schooner, the “Guadelupe,” out of San Pedro, the perfect coasting-vessel to market their produce.

But 1822, Chapman’s banner year, also brought ominous rumblings to California from distant Mexico City. The anti-colonial Bolivarian revolution that Chapman had supported, had finally convulsed Mexico. The new republic was committed to overthrowing the Mission system entirely. Californians were naturally pro-Spanish, especially the Spanish-born Franciscans. It took 25 more years, and the American invasion, to absolutely put an end to the Missions. During those years, California grew, diversified, secularized. And the Californio mentality began to change: Spanish citizens were suspect, including the sullen conservative friars that were left in the province. Many Franciscans left California, and the Indians wandered away from the crumbling Missions.

Meanwhile, in 1824, a respected and solid and even admired citizen, settled down in the Pueblo with one of the most lovely brides California ever knew. The next year, when the river shifted course, the Chapmans were among the first to set up vineyards in the old river bottomland, that sun-drenched new strip adjacent to the Pueblo where they founded the California wine industry with cuttings of Fr. Zalvidea’s famous vina madre, the mother vine that still drapes the Pueblo in green today.

In 1826, with San Gabriel soaring to new prosperity because of his agricultural improvements and his ruthless organizational plan of native alcaldes driving teams of neophytes on set projects, Fr. Zalvidea seems to have had a nervous breakdown. He was “retired” without duties to San Juan Capistrano, then in 1842 to San Luis Rey. His mind had completely retired from reality; witnesses reported he would swat away demons, and scourge himself ritually (as did Serra), and sit entranced, occasionally shouting a scrap of prayer. Others thought him completely sane, only a bit lost in mysticism. Like most Franciscans, he never accepted the concept of Mexican California or the secularization of the Missions; the irony being, that his efforts to build a modern foodstuffs-shipping corporation at San Gabriel, had been itself, that process of secularization. And as we shall see, with the Missions winding down, the center of production shifted to the towns, particularly El Pueblo de La Reina de los Angeles.

NEXT PART: “Capital; Milling; Capitol Milling!”

The Fort Hill View — Gone Forever

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The white blur down the hill is Pico House.

During this last week of September 1846, Seubula Varela issued a pronunciamiento and posted it in the Plaza. Varela was a Mexican patriot, aka, a young hot-head, in the U.S.-occupied Ciudad. Varela somehow had printed a pronunciamiento against Maj. Archibald Gillespie, the U.S. Marine left by Stockton to command the humiliated capital city. Gen. Jose Castro and Gov. Pio Pico had already fled to Mexico — taking the treasury from Monterey, and the provincial records and archives from Los Angeles, with them, respectively.

The earliest photograph of Los Angeles, taken from Fort Hill. That’s the water-tank in the center; the two-story Lugo Adobe behind it; then the glint of the LA River and top right, distant cienegas; in between, the fields and orchards. It’s possible that the HUGE sycamore along the road to San Gabriel, is “El Aliso”, the sacred home-tree of Yangna. Middle right is Carre de los Negros; The white-gabled adobe at right is the Carillo Adobe. La Placita Church and churchyard cemetery are at bottom, far left.

An expensive, handsome renovation has redeemed the monument; now the hipsters won’t overlook a dry, needle-spiked ruin from their balconies.

[A pronunciamiento is a traditional Spanish political appeal — a kind of matching-grant challenge, declaring things very bad, proposing public rebellion, and inviting fellow citizens to mount up under command of whomever issued the pronunciamiento.]

Fortunately, Gen. Andres Pico and Gen. Juan Flores were the first to mount up, so the 600 tardier volunteers were relieved to find that the silver spurs had already taken over command from Varela’s red-hot espuelas.

Pico House, built in 1870 atop the Carillo Adobe, gleams like an Italian palazzo when Viewed from Fort Hill. The swank, modern hostelry was developed with Pio Pico’s proceeds from the sale of the SFV to Isaac Lankershim.

The surprised Americans troops were driven from the Plaza up to the top of the hill rising behind La Placita Church, which thereupon became “Fort Hill.” They whipped up some earthworks, but had no water or food and had to surrender. Before they did, they sent the famous Juan Flaco, “Hungry John” galloping through the Californio lines, and he began his breathless, epic 400-mile ride to Monterey to report the revolt and to request relief for the beleaguered Americans. The Californios wasted no time marching their 50 Marine prisoners of war back to San Pedro at lance-point. Yankee, go home!

The Lugo Adobe (I think now a Catholic girls’ school) and La Placita both got shake-shingle rooves! That’s the adobe of Agustin Olvera, just above the clump of trees at the left. This is just about the time the City changed the name of Vine Street to “Olvera Street,” to honor the U.S.federal judge.

Later, when Cmdr. Stockton, and/or Gen. Kearney, retook LA, the famous Mormon Battalion were ordered to build Fort Moore on the hilltop. Here, on July 4th, with the whole Plaza of LA in view, the 4th of July was first celebrated in LA, 1847, of course with cannons booming and a concert of band music. Which displays, of course, were thoroughly enjoyed by the Angelenos.

When Fort Hill was “The Hills:” PHINEAS BANNING led that ghastly LA phenomenon — “Hilltop levelling” for a millionaire’s super-villa.

Then Fort (Moore) Hill became — think about it — the city’s first Protestant cemetery. Then a clip-joint beer garden, where folks could “roll back home” after a bender. Then Phineas Banning Built His Dream House. Then the LAUSD mangled the site with a horrible succession of school buildings; then the 101 Freeway obliterated the site. Still, until this summer, you could see down to the Plaza from Fort Hill, or up to the hill from the Plaza. It was the most famous view of Los Angeles for many years.

It’s gone – almost completely. Though in fact, they’ve left JUST enough of a sight-line to grudgingly admit the idea that the View was worth preserving, so they left a twenty-foot-wide canyon through their canopy of balconies.

The tiny white box, center, is La Placita

No sign for the Plaza; or the Pueblo; or La Placita; or Fort Moore Hill monument.

Just to rub it in, I actually like filling that space with residential units. It makes all kinds of sense. But overpriced hipster lofts identical to these are everywhere,while the city has lost a vital organ here — a link to geography, and to history, and to the unique spirit of Los Angeles. Sigh. At least they put in a staircase. Though note, no crosswalk links the flights across streets.

Street Plan of Los Angeles, 1850

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http://imgzoom.cdlib.org/Fullscreen.ics?ark=ark:/13030/hb4w1009kr/z1&order=2&brand=calisphere#

Click above for a really cool illustration of the City as it stood on the eve of California’s statehood, during the Ord Survey of 1849-50 that began re-shaping this old provincial Ciudad into the modern American metropolis of LA.

Francisco Avila’s Adobe — Cmdr. Stockton’s HQ — Christine Sterling’s Castle in Spain — LA’s Oldest House, 1818

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Thank Western States Jewish History for this outstanding map of historic streets and sites around the Plaza. Avila’s casa is #14 on the right. Note that an ell appears stretched out lazily into Vines Street, which became Olvera Street. Maybe Francisco wanted to have an indoor tap over the Zanja Madre, which flows right down the alley. In the sleepy Pueblo property lines were fluid, and needs-based. Under American rule, the ayuntamiento realized that to participate in the new Yankee land speculation game, they’d need gridded lots. So the City hired Edward Ord to prepare a four-square survey. This started to fix LA’s modern street plan, and the Avila-Rimpau family may have had to tear down half their casa. Still, regular streets enabled the real beginnings of LA Wheel Estate. See the “Camino Para San Fernando,” now Hill Street through Chinatown, then San Fernando Road; and “Calle Aliso”, which going east, forded the muddy River at El Aliso Vineyards, then tracked through the plains of East LA towards San Gabriel Mission. To the west, Aliso was extended and in the 1950s, was turned into the 101 Freeway, obliterating the entire left-hand-side of this map. It’s Progress.

The adobe is shaded by an ancient California pepper tree. Originally Peruvian, they were first planted at Mission San Luis Rey in 1825. The tree’s pretty shade and spicy berries made it very popular with all the Californios; it has become naturalized here, and remains an emblem of Old California. It seems that Christine Sterling planted this one, maybe 90 years ago.

Music was central to life in early Los Angeles. Musician-farmers were actively recruited – “a beneficial profession” – by Gov. Felipe de Neve to be among the pobladores of LA. Music was played and sung by all classes of people daily at home. Richard Henry Dana wrote that he’d never heard people with such beautiful voices as in Alta California. And in church, the Mission Indian choirs became famous among amazed European visitors for their perfect pitch and Roman Latin in the masses and motets. Traditional Mexican tunes were at the center of all civic ceremonies and events; a wedding or a fandango could go on for a week.

The Avila Adobe curators have done a fine job of displaying the musicophilia of early Los Angeles.The guitar and castanets were caballero arts that connected a striving frontier Don and Dona with the graces of Hispanic traditional culture. Violins, concertinas, flutes and fiddles came on Boston ships and with Boston sailors to San Pedro, and brought in French and German and Italian and English classical dance music, galops and intermezzi, airs and reels. Of pianos, there were only one or two in the whole province, until the wealthy ranching period after the Gold Rush put them in many salas, where they would be eagerly shown off to visitors hoping to find someone who could play them.

COME FOLLOW THE BAND — HOW CMDR. STOCKTON MOVED IN

In January, 1847, the house served as headquarters for Naval Commander Robert F. Stockton, when he retook the enemy capital, “The Angels,” after a bloody march up from San Diego. Like most Angelenos, Encarnacion Avila had fled with her family as the Norte Americanos marched in to occupy Alta California’s capital to the martial swing of a Marine Band.

The legend goes that Dona Avila left the shuttered house in the care of a servant boy, warning him strictly not to let anyone in. As the lively marches, polkas and airs drifted down Vines Street from the Plaza, the spellbound boy, who had never heard a brass band or Yankee music before, couldn’t help himself. He crept out and drifted up to the Plaza to watch the Mexican colors torn down and the Stars and Stripes run up. Just then, Stockton’s quartermaster stalked down Vines Street, hunting for provender; he saw the open door, and peeked into the sumptuous sala. By ancient common law — the law of the unlocked door — he entered and commandeered the adobe on the spot for Stockton’s personal bivouac.

As downtown Los Angeles boomed and degenerated into “Los Diablos” in the 1860s, 70’s, and 80’s, the Avila-Sepulveda-Rimpau family reluctantly abandoned downtown (like all the old Californio families). They thus became unwitting absentee landlords of an urban slum, renting out the adobe as a cheap flop-house and more or less forgetting it existed. The City finally condemned the property in 1928. (For more on “absentee landlordism in California”I refer Patient Reader to Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty.”)

CHRISTINE STERLING MOVES IN — “MOTHER OF OLVERA STREET”

“Today I stood in the silent rooms, saw the crumbling walls, the boarded-up windows, the dirt and neglect. I remember taking from the public library a book on the “History of Los Angeles.” It was a picture of this old house labeled “American headquarters in 1847.” I walked out into the patio. The fine old pepper trees were now just barren stumps. A pile of rotting garbage replaced the flowers which once blossomed there. But in spite of it all, the spirit of those men and women who lived and loved here in this old home still lingered about the place.“

— Christine Sterling’s diary, 1928

Christina Sterling, late 20s
Olvera St., late 20s

Patient Reader might remember the story of how Christine Sterling, an educated and artistic San Francisco widow/divorcee, came upon the Avila Adobe with a sign declaring it “Condemned by Order of the City.” Remember how all her romantic swirling dreams of Old California, what Carey McWilliams dubbed “the Spanish Fantasy Past,” became crystalized in that moment, in her fight to save the Avila Adobe, and preserve Olvera Street. “I closed my eyes,” she wrote later, “and thought of the Plaza as a Spanish-American social and commercial center, a spot of beauty as a gesture of appreciation to México and Spain for our historical past.” Desperate to save the adobe from demolition, she posted her own hand-written sign beside the red-tag.
“Let the people of Los Angeles show honor and respect to the history of their city by making sacred and inviolate the last of the old landmarks and that spot where the city of Los Angeles was born.”

Recall how she convinced the Rimpau heirs to give her a long-term lease on very generous terms. Ponder how her vision became diluted and adulterated by racism and commercialism and ego. Then recall how Ms. Sterling, essentially by the same “Open Door” policy that served Stockton, subtly just moved in to the Avila Adobe when her own times got hard, and lived in its cool shady recesses until her death in 1962. She was certainly the longest-dwelling tenant the building ever knew. Since she kept it more or less open as a living museum during her residence, I don’t think anybody really minded. But it was her “cultural appropriation” that justified the actual appropriation. The acceptance of Anglo Los Angeles that it has always been the historic center of Mexican culture in America, began when Christine Sterling felt the spirits of Old California stomping around the Avila Adobe, as they always have.

The Valley Village View

Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.