Bunker Hill, Los Angeles

The other day my buddy Bryan Moore (whose aunt you’ll remember from this post) sent me a link to a 1957 episode of Official Detective called “Pork Pie Hat.” Hey, he said, sure looks like Bunker Hill to me, but I’ll leave that up to your expert eye.

Holy-freakin’ heck.

It isn’t every day something turns up that isn’t in Jim’s book — though it can happen, as was recently the case with Abandoned — especially not something with this much Bunker Hill. Seriously, it’s almost too much Bunker Hill (jk, that would break all the laws of physics.) Plus, Harry Dean Stanton as a knife-wielding psycho! (I grew up on Alien/Escape from New York/Paris, Texas and especially Repo Man, and used to go see HDS play guitar in various local watering holes.)

So settle in and watch “Pork Pie Hat” (which is set in Milwaukee, and weirdly, features zero porkpie hats), and follow along below with a recounting of Bunker Hill’s appearances therein:

And there we are! Proving once again that there are still sources for vintage Bunker Hill-on-film lurking out there in a vast and untapped mediasphere!

If you know of any of which I might be unaware, don’t hesitate to contact me — oldbunkerhill@gmail.com

Until that time, God bless us, everyone!

Greetings! Though this is a Bunker Hill blog, I will on occasion cover tangentially-related subjects (like Chavez Ravine or Cooper Donuts, or even Disneyland), especially if there’s debunking to be done. Today’s debunking, though, is altogether unrelated to Bunker Hill. After being told for the millionth time that Roger Rabbit is a documentary, I’m finally giving in to my overpowering, long-fermented urge to douse the fervid, fervent flames of the “Los Angeles Streetcar Conspiracy” narrative.

*****

Los Angeles has a dark and hidden history, and here’s part of it you should know: we once had the largest, best run, most efficient, most beloved, most profitable, publicly owned streetcar system in the world. The Red Cars! But! The bloated plutocrats and greasy oligarchs said NO! Profits over people! A cackling cabal of big oil, big tire, and big auto conspired to buy up all the Red Cars and destroy them! Which they did! Then they needlessly replaced them with horrible nasty busses which people disliked so much they all went out and bought cars! And that, my friend, is the reason we now live in a dystopic autopian hellscape of traffic and smog and sprawl.

Not only that, but it was such a grand and shameless conspiracy, that Standard Oil and General Motors and Firestone Tire actually got taken to court and were found guilty of conspiracy and had to pay huge fines! But the damage had already been done to the poor beloved streetcars. All of America’s streetcars had been tossed in the sea by General Motors, and the corporate fatcats puffed contentedly on their cigars and just laughed.

Of course, none of that is true. “But Nathan,” you say, “the GM Streetcar Conspiracy is a real thing! Literally everybody knows about it!” Sorry to burst your bubble but no, the entire tale is twaddle and hogwash. Not even, like, there was a conspiracy but it wasn’t that bad. I’m saying no, it’s literally not a thing that ever existed. Don’t believe me? Read on!

***

Every time someone says “big auto and big oil ripped out the efficient streetcar in a freeway-building conspiracy, you know” they give you this look like “and now I’ve imparted to you secret knowledge they don’t want you to know, for it is the dark suppressed history of LA, be careful with knowledge so powerfully arcane” even though it was the plot of a movie that made $350 million and won three Oscars.

Seriously, during my 30+ years in Los Angeles I haven’t gone three weeks without someone saying “Who Framed Roger Rabbit, that’s a true story, you know!” If you don’t know the story, Roger Rabbit‘s premise is that Judge Doom — who looks so cartoonishly evil he makes the Indiana Jones Nazi meltingfaceguy look like Mister Rogers — has a plan to force people onto the roads, wherein he buys up the streetcars to destroy them and build freeways:

But none of that happened (it being, after all, a movie about people interacting with cartoons) but the event it’s purportedly based on did not, in fact, occur. The streetcar: not beloved, not efficient, not a public utility, not profitable, and most of all, not the victim of — or even involved in — a conspiracy in any way, shape, or form.

At this point pearl-clutchers exclaim “oh Nathan how dare you! You just hate rail! You obviously despise trolleys, and rail travel, and the people who use it!” Hey, do you know what I do all day when I’m not writing essays like this for you? I operate a railway. If I could go back and time and do one thing it would be ride the trolley around downtown and then out through some orange groves. But people like to mythologize and fetishize that which has been lost to time (e.g., Chavez Ravine; I cover that phenomenon a bit in the first three paragraphs of this) and to be honest I don’t blame them. I’ve been guilty of that too, a billion times, over the course of my life. But as a historian we must side with facts over anemoia and hiraeth. In any event, here we go…

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I will spare you the complicated early history of the streetcar in Los Angeles, and how it was formed, but what you basically need to know is that there were, in twentieth-century Los Angeles, two main streetcar networks, the Pacific Electric, and the Los Angeles Railway:

The Pacific Electric (PE), whose red-painted cars thus dubbed it the Red Car, was the larger and faster of the two, and was more interurban than intraurban, taking people out to Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Ana, and the like. The Los Angeles Railway (LARy) had yellow-painted cars, hence its common name The Yellow Cars; its lines were concentrated around downtown, but branched out into some suburbs. (Disclaimer: I am far from an authority on streetcars, and I know juicefans [known for loving that sweet, trolley-powering electric current] are understandably fetishistic when it comes to the topic. I am quite certain I will say something to annoy you [“he didn’t even mention that PE ran standard gauge and LARy was narrow gauge!”] so let me apologize in advance. Trust me, I get it. You can only imagine how I feel when people say Angels Flight is “Victorian.”)

The Pacific Electric Red Car, in brief: Henry Huntington began the Red Car in 1901. He didn’t do so to earn money from fares, or to make a great navigable city; it was just a tool to get people out to his new subdivisions.

After having done so, it could have been Hungtington’s right and due to simply dismantle the whole shebang; it was his property, after all. Instead, in 1910 he sold PE to Southern Pacific Railroad, who made it a subsidiary. Pacific Electric Red Cars reached peak ridership in the mid-1920s and began its decline, and though streetcars were losing money, Southern Pacific kept it so they could run freight on the tracks. Busses, though, were the future — in 1923 Pacific Electric began a joint bus venture with Los Angeles Railway called Los Angeles Bus Lines, to connect rail lines and expand service. Pacific Electric began switching their Red Cars to busses in 1925. In 1936 Pacific Electric bought an entire bus company, the Motor City Lines, to facilitate the switch to busses.

And the Los Angeles Railway Yellow Car: not started by Huntington, but he did purchase it in 1898. Same deal: ridership declined, and LARy began converting to busses in 1930. The Huntington estate sold the entity, in 1944, to National City Lines. They renamed Los Angeles Electric Railway to Los Angeles Transit Lines, but the yellow cars remained the Yellow Car. (If there are times I refer to the LARy post-1944, and you’re tempted to exclaim “but it was called LATL then!”, please accept my apologies in advance.)

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Now you know the two main streetcar players, and — before we get into the conspiracy weeds — here are some building block truths about streetcars: they were not a public utility, they didn’t make money, they were in fact not efficient, and people didn’t care for them much, and their being replaced by busses was a simple natural progression.

Four reasons the owners didn’t like streetcars:

Government price regulation. Despite being privately-owned, government regulators forbade streetcar owners from engaging in European-style zone pricing. That is, if you hop on the streetcar for five cents, you could ride as long as you wanted, as far as you wanted. Even when wartime inflation eroded that five cents to half its value, local government forced the PE and LARy to maintain the fare. (Turns out that much of Los Angeles’s much-derided sprawl has less to do with the oft-blamed automobile, but is because of the streetcar system, in that because of a lack of zone pricing, it was just as cheap to trolleyride to and from your suburb as it was to live near the city center.)

Government road upkeep regulation. The Los Angeles Public Utilities Board, besides prohibiting necessary price increases (despite the streetcars not being a public utility, but that’s your local government at work), also caused the streetcar companies to bleed money in that they charged them for pavement upkeep on the adjacent roads — pavement the railcar companies didn’t even use. Local bureaucrats literally forced streetcar owners to subsidize their competition, including jitneys, which were primitive road-using busses that poached waiting streetcar customers.

The unions. Trolleys were labor-intensive, as opposed to busses: there were two crewmembers on each trolley, the motorman and the conductor, as opposed to a lone bus driver. Labor unions were forcing streetcar companies to pay above-market wages, which is why the companies cut so many positions, leading, again, to busses. Ergo, many cars were converted (at some expense) to one-man crews in the late 1930s, but streetcar wages being above market still stung operators.

Forced service. Local government required streetcars to provide service on all the routes they owned, and thus forcing them to run on unprofitable lines. Naturally they turned to busses, which are cheaper to operate, and allowed them to revamp the lines.

Moreover, streetcars required expensive, dedicated rails, rails which required ten times the engineering time and expense of bus lines. And if a streetcar breaks down, that line is down until the trolleycar is removed/repaired/restored. If travel patterns change, the rail stays there (and again, the government forced owners to run your streetcars on every rail, even in the face of financial loss).

Conversely, busses cost less, carry more passengers, and could change routes with ease. No wire, no tracks, no catenaries, no electrical power plants, and no private rights-of-way to maintain.

But let’s not forget, people didn’t like streetcars, or at least not as much as we’re led to believe. At the peak of ridership in the early-mid 1920s, people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with overcrowded streetcars, poor service, and slow gait. This led to the voters passing the Major Street Traffic Plan of 1924, which allocated city money to widen and improve streets, allowing more people to have cars (which had recently become within the buying power of the working man) and thus an alternative to streetcars. Streetcars were noisy, slow, uncomfortable, and had no air conditioning (yes you could roll down a window, but busses had actual AC) and so it’s no wonder people were abandoning them. Sure, there was an uptick in streetcar ridership during the WWII gas rationing/tire rationing era, but post-1945, hot damn did people want the freedom and comfort of their own Plymouth.

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And now we address the whole “conspiracy” part of our program. But before I do, just as an introductory aside, do you know who was, historically, all hot n’ bothered to destroy streetcars? Progressives. “Traction ring magnates” were considered as evil as the “railroad octopus” and Progressives considered the private streetcar entities to be capitalistic kleptocrats, remnants of the Gilded Age to be destroyed (The Nation magazine, for example, was not a friend of mass transit). And long before you had National “Streetcar Conspiracy!” City Lines in the picture, Franklin Roosevelt and his Works Progress Administration — closest thing we ever got to socialism in America — looooved tearing out streetcars: FDR’s WPA was crucial to subsidized road building, and began ripping up streetcar tracks all over America. And let’s not forget progressive New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who in the 1930s worked tirelessly to dismantle the city’s streetcar system: “bus operation in place of trolleys is not only a boon to the citizenry of New York in that it provides faster, more flexible and more comfortable transportation, it also reduces noise, keeps traffic moving faster, and eliminates the danger of wet rails…” said the man himself. Anyway. Just something to remember when you’re pitching stones at those evil streetcar foes.

The Conspiracy. The story goes, there was a company called National City Lines. They were a “front” for big oil/tire/auto. They conspired to destroy the streetcars, which they did, but got caught, and were found guilty. And…scene.

National City Lines is formed in 1936 and — hold up: first, a quick and important sidenote about the PE Red Cars: So, National City Lines bought the LARy Yellow Cars (we’ll get to that). So why is the common narrative always about the Red Car? That’s largely due to Roger Rabbit —

— thus the Red Car is remembered than the yellow-garbed LARy system, so when the “conspiracy” is discussed these days, the tale invariably involves “the Red Car.”

Ladies and gentlemen, If you take one thing away from this entire post, have it be this: National City Lines (ergo by extension General Motors & their fiendish oil-pumping, tire-peddling friends) never touched one single Red Car in any way, shape, or form. Not one. NCL didn’t so much as look askance at a Red Car. So what was the conspiracy that destroyed the Red Car? Sorry to burst your bubble, but there was none. Southern Pacific, PE’s parent company, began abandoning rail service in large swaths because it was prudent to do so, and running streetcars was not part of their business plan in the first place. Eventually, come 1953, SP sold the works to Metropolitan Coach Lines, which was run by old Pacific Electric guys (particularly Jesse Haugh, a former PE executive) and these PE guys converted much of their rail transit to bus service (click here and here). Red Car’s nail in the coffin, though: Metropolitan Coach Lines/the Red Car was subsequently acquired by the government. In 1958 the (taxpayer-funded) Metropolitan Transit Authority, in league with the California Public Utilities Commission, took over and killed the Red Car. It was the California Public Utilities Commission — whose commissioners were appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the State Senate — who officially pulled the plug on the Red Car. Please never forget that, and don’t forget to to tell it to the next person (perhaps one of the 70,000 who “liked” this typical and falsehood-packed post) who says “big oil killed the Red Car.”

Anyway, back to the reason you’re here today: You have been told that National City Lines, who was really General Motors, bought the streetcar system, and killed it to replace it with busses and autos, and there was a trial, and they were convicted. Big Auto was convicted, you will be told, of conspiring (in Judge Doom-like fashion) with Big Oil and Big Rubber to destroy the streetcar. And that’s why America no longer ha streetcars.

Except that’s all hooey, the lot of it:

National City Lines is formed in 1936. In 1939 the president of NCL approached — not General Motors — but a company called Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing, for financial assistance. The money NCL got from Yellow Truck — Yellow Truck being a subsidiary of GM — meant that money came a requirements contract. Standard stuff, and altogether legal: it said that NCL needed to use GM’s money to not go and purchase equipment from competing companies. That’s it. People have dug into NCL’s records and GM’s records from here to Timbuktu and there is zero evidence that GM held sway over National’s management; no evidence of managerial control, nor did they have any say regarding National’s movement from streetcars to busses.

In 1945, National City Lines bought the LARy Yellow Cars. NCL bought a lot of lines in the United States, about 10% of the lines in the country. In some areas NCL began to convert to busses, and in other areas they actually expanded electric rail. But all we hear about is their conspiracy to destroy all of America’s rail.

Before I get into the particulars of why that’s not true, let me state something nobody ever mentions: there were 600 major metropolitan areas in America with streetcars. National City Lines got their hands on about 60 of them, so, again, only ten percent of America’s rail is thus tainted by some sort of “streetcar conspiracy.” If it required a conspiracy involving General Motors and Standard Oil to demolish those 60 rail centers, what happened to the other 540? Seriously, tell me. 540 urban areas had streetcars, and they ripped out their streetcars. Without the involvement of National City Lines, without being tainted by a nefarious streetcar conspiracy. (Yes, I’ve been on the old trolleys in New Orleans, San Francisco and Boston, and yes, I’m aware that there are some places like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia that run modern light rail on their old streetcar-dedicated right-of-ways; so subtract those and a few others and tell me why the other 530 or so major American urban streetcar areas abandoned their streetcars without the input of National City Lines.)

So: was National City Lines brought up on charges of conspiracy to destroy streetcars? No, they were not. Defendant National City Lines — and by extension the old bugaboos of GM, Standard Oil and Firestone Rubber, via Yellow Truck & Coach — were brought up on two counts:

Count One: Violating Section One of the Sherman Antitrust Act (the SAA is Gilded Age legislation that prohibits monopolies; it famously broke up Standard Oil. Read more about it here). NCL were accused of trying to secure control of transit-providing companies, which they were not trying to do, ergo, they were acquitted. As in, found not guilty and absolved of wrongdoing regarding accusations of restraint of trade. Got it? Ok.

Count Two: Violating Section Two of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They were accused and found guilty (upheld in appellate court, U.S. v. National City Lines, 186 F.2d 562 [7th Cir. 1951]) of selling busses to themselves. Literally nothing to do with streetcars. When NCL was laying out new bus lines, they committed the “crime” of using their own busses. For example, who were some of the witnesses for the prosecution? Pacific Ford Motor Coach, and Twin Coach Company, who testified that they lost out on business when NCL (who, again, had a tying agreement with GM) bought GM busses. But Pacific Ford and Twin Coach said that just wasn’t fair. The government thus brought NCL up on charges, because being your own customer is illegal under antitrust law.

So the jury said awwww and found GM guilty of selling itself its own busses.

Let me sketch a rough analogy for you. Let’s say you had a restaurant — you open a vegetarian restaurant, and you have a plot of land out back so you grow your own vegetables. Farm to table kinda thing. But the government comes in and says you can’t feed people your own vegetables, because that’s not fair to your competition. You have to buy your vegetables from your competitor (and tough luck if those vegetables when not as tasty and more expensive). You can’t use the ones you grew yourself, but must buy someone else’s, because that’s fair.

NCL was fined $5,000. “That’s an outrage!” screeches literally everyone, “they got a slap on the wrist for conspiring to destroy the streetcar!” First of all, again, the accusation and judgement had absolutely nothing to do with streetcars, but point being, $5,000 was the absolute maximum fine they could get for selling busses to themselves. The government set that fine long before the trial began; it wasn’t a slap on the wrist imposed by some pro-Big Oil judge, or whatever conspiracy theory you have.

I feel like this cannot be stated often enough: In the court’s opinion, there were, certainly, damaged parties — competing bus manufacturers. But there was never a mention of electric railways.

And again, there were hundreds upon hundreds of cities who never had a smidgen of GM/NCL influence, and they dismantled their streetcar systems just fine on their own (American cities, heck: the UK, Japan, and countless other nations have but a fraction of their original tram systems, and GM/NCL wasn’t there, either).

So, after National City Lines was convicted of the very non-streetcar-related crime of selling busses to itself in 1949, you’d think that would be the end of the story, right?

Nooooo.

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Enter Bradford Snell. It’s 1974, here comes Snell, he’s an antitrust attorney from San Francisco. Snell had been bankrolled by the leftist Stern Fund to write a paper about how General Motors was eeeevil, and had destroyed America’s streetcars. This was the genesis of the streetcar myth. Snell became a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly and there testified to the Senate that Pacific Electric was forced by National City Lines to convert to busses and then, because people would be so horrified by the busses, they’d buy automobiles. Yep.

Seriously, that was actually his argument—here is a direct quote from Snell, that Pacific Electric’s plan was “to convert its electric street cars to motor busses — slow, cramped, foul-smelling vehicles whose inferior performance invariably led riders to purchase automobiles.”

Let that sink in: Snell said National City Lines forced PACIFIC ELECTRIC to do this. As you know, NCL never had any dealings with PE. Ergo, Snell is an idiot, a liar, or both. (Spoiler alert: it’s both.)

Snell’s argument also hinged on the “truth” that busses were inferior to streetcars. Of course busses were more flexible, easier to run, cheaper to run, and actually profitable. (But hey, this is government! They don’t care about the owners of things.) What about the ridership? Well the streetcar was louder, slower, it jerked you about on less comfortable seats compared to the cushy bench seats of 1950s busses (yes, I am aware that many streetcars had upgraded from wooden to upholstered, but still), there was heating and air-conditioning, etc.

Most importantly, Snell testified to the Senate that back in 1950 GM had been convicted of a “criminal conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation” — which, of course, they hadn’t. Like saying NCL worked to destroy Pacific Electric…was he consciously lying, or just making stuff up with all the best intentions? Oh wait, it’s the same thing.

Anyway, there were hearings about this through 1974. They made the news largely because San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto testified to the Senate that GM was “a monopoly evil” and LA mayor Tom Bradley (quite incorrectly) testified “GM scrapped the Pacific Electric” — of course, it turned out SF and LA both had lawsuits against GM and Alioto and Bradley had financial interests in screwing GM, so naturally they lied to the Senate. Yay!

Then in 1987 60 Minutes picked up the tale and said our streetcars were “murdered by conspiracy.” It’s absolute trash, but it’s a fun watch for the vintage streetcar clips. Between the 60 Minutes piece and Roger Rabbit, every Gen X’r in the world ardently argues the conspiracy narrative.

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And now to wrap up. We know that natural forces sickened the Red Car until your local government pulled its plug. But what of the Yellow Car? If General Motors didn’t rape and murder it, as you’re so constantly told, what happened to it, exactly?

So LARy is bought by National City Lines. The Yellow Cars are largely converted to busses through the 1950s — (and before you say yeah! evil GM busses! they actually replaced most streetcars with ACF/Brill electric trolleybusses) until by 1958 only five (of the original 25) streetcar lines remained in operation — the J, P, R, S and V. These were sold to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (today LA Metro). Just as a public agency had destroyed the whole of Pacific Electric Red Cars, it was a public agency that destroyed the last of the LARy Yellow Cars. Between 1958 and 1963 it was your tax dollars (well, your grandparents’ tax dollars) that sent all those Yellow Cars to the National Metal and Steel Corporation junkyard at Terminal Island, where they were broken up for scrap.

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Let me reiterate, I love rail. I would have loved riding the streetcars (I love riding them in Perris) just as I love running an Edwardian-era electric train in downtown Los Angeles, so, count me among the juicefans. Plus, L.A. streetcars began with a Bunker Hill connection — in that the first line, the Sixth & Spring line, was founded in 1874 by Judge Widney, who resided on Hill near Fourth.

That said, I’m not going to allow you to believe things that aren’t true. Also, you’re not allowed to complain about losing our old streetcar system if you’re not willing to ride the 114 miles of rail transit we currently have in Los Angeles (including, I might add, the longest light rail line in the world). That’s right, even after destroying the streetcar, Los Angeles still has the largest light rail system in the United States.

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Oh, one other thing: if you raise an eyebrow at my use of “busses” rather than the more traditional “buses” that’s because one of the objects in my greater “old LA” collection is this —

— and if that says busses, then, so be it!

Remember how I recently had the good fortune to uncover some previously unseen Astoria images? Well, something similarly rare and unknown just bubbled to the surface again, and it’s a doozy. An image was posted by famed Angels Flight operator Will on his saturdaystationagent Instagram account; you might remember my shout out to him and the good work he was doing posting oodles of Angels Flight clips.

Point being, he posted this ca. 1935 image:

HOLY CARPS! A vintage interior of Court Flight!

Of course we all know and love Angels Flight, of which there exist vintage interior images —

But until this moment I’ve never seen an image inside Court Flight.

Court Flight, of course, was Bunker Hill’s other funicular. It was built by the Observation Tower Company in 1904/5 and ran until 1943. The best online account of its history is by Christina Rice and can be found at the OnBunkerHill site, and naturally it gets a full page in the book Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. See the esteemed Ms. Rice discuss Court Flight in this video at 5:08 —

But have you ever seen an image of the interior of Court Flight? NEITHER HAVE I.

Where did this image come from? I don’t know! I wrote Will and he said he got it off the internet, but forgot to note where, and now, should you perform a reverse google image search, nothing comes up.

Did you look at the Court Flight image and immediately think “huh, what, huh? that’s Angels Flight” — can’t blame you if you did! Here’s a comparison of the Court Flight car to the Angels Flight car.

Nearly identical; that’s because both cars are from the able hand of the same man: Leopold Suck.

Leopold Suck was born in in Chicago in 1857 to his German-born parents Justus and Theresa (Ruttencutter) Suck. He came to Los Angeles about 1885 and worked as a carpenter and contractor. In 1903 he built a one-story brick building at 316 East Second Street, which served as his place of business, from which he did all sorts of small homes, façade remodelings, and building additions. He died in 1944 (possibly from heartbreak, having seen Court Flight go up in flames in 1943).

The Angels Flight cars are obviously his work, given their similarities. While there’s no contemporary smoking gun proving he designed the Angels Flight cars, his daughter’s testimony is pretty convincing:

“Wait,” you say, “he built the Angels Flight cars about 1900 but built some more in 1904? Huh?” Fair question. So, a quick history of the Angels Flight cars, as long as you’re here:

The first cars, from the Flight’s debut on Dec. 31, 1901, were basically an open box with a wee roof atop —

But then in November 1903, when the grade was made uniform via lifting the flight up onto an elevated trestle — Angels Flight got new cars, which looked like this:

I would assert that these 1903 cars are the cars we use today. The waters get muddied a bit because the papers inform us, in August 1910, that the Flight got “new cars.”

I am of the opinion that the Herald is wrong. There was a lot of newness in 1910, to be sure: a brand new arched waiting station at the bottom, a large new station house up top. I believe Eddy hired someone — possibly, and probably Leo Suck — not to build new cars, but to give the existing cars a redo. The windows were made into ovals (I think this was via a cutout applied to the square glass, since the oval window treatment didn’t last through the end of the ’20s, and the windows were returned to their original square) and the top end of each car was extended to add an open-air “smoker’s seats.”

My favorite part of Court Flight interior image are the wonderful mirrors. Naturally you’d need to check your hair and makeup before alighting the vehicle!

Today those mirrors wouldn’t last two minutes before being carved up by jerkweeds (in the manner of an Angels Flight window, for example).

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Hope you have enjoyed this post! Many thanks to the mysterious Internet for providing the Court Flight image, and to Will for posting it. Here’s to many more Bunker Hill finds!

Ok, I know this is really off the topic of Bunker Hill, and I am well aware there is zero reason to get worked up about something posted in the reeking cesspool that is TikTok. But I write about Chavez Ravine because of Bunker Hill, so now I’ll write about Disneyland because of Chavez Ravine, making Disneyland the dopey, ungainly cousin of Bunker Hill. And away we go:

I began writing about Chavez Ravine (e.g. this/this/this) because the story shared similarities with Bunker Hill (government removes the poor and disenfranchised “for their own good” etc.). I kept at it largely because the Chavez story gatekeepers were so shameless in their continued production and promulgation of lies.  The Influencer Class and their agenda-setting, narrative-shaping output factory simultaneously repels and fascinates.

Ergo, I’m going to harp on another Chavez-flavored example related to, of all places, Disneyland. This TikTok —

@erasedcalifornia

They called it progress. But in the 1950’s, entire Latino families were forced out to make room for Disneyland- no compensation, no justice. This is what they don’t teach you in history class. #californiahistoryunfiltered #erasedhistory #latinohistory #ushistory #californiahistory #mexicanamericanhistory #thisisamerica #disneylandtruth #anaheim #tiktokhistory

♬ A ballad with piano and strings, inspired by ghost towns and abandoned buildings(1206646) – Yasu

— has had 150,000 views, with nearly 15,000 likes and 11,000 shares. It got shared on Instagram and garnered another 3,000 likes. It involves the story of how, before Disneyland, a bunch of land in Anaheim was a “thriving Latino neighborhood” until “the city seized the land through eminent domain” after which “entire communities were bulldozed without any compensation.” So yes, I’m here to talk about it today, because it’s the exact same (purported) story as Chavez Ravine.

The Chavez Ravine story, though, at least has a kernel of truth at its core (progressive politicians did, in fact, use eminent domain to extirpate the communities there). But the Disneyland story, as shoehorned into the Chavez narrative, is just stupidly, laughably false. 

If you chose not to watch the video, here’s a transcript:

They built the happiest place on earth by destroying someone else’s. Before Disneyland, a thriving Latino neighborhood existed here. It was filled with homes, families, and orange groves. These were passed down through generations. But in the 1950s, the city seized the land through eminent domain. They claimed it was for public use, but then sold it to Walt Disney. Entire communities were bulldozed without any compensation, no memorial, and no plaque in the park. Families who once lived there now buy tickets to walk on the land they lost. Today, millions visit the park, yet almost no one knows what was here before. This story isn’t just about Disneyland; it’s about how American progress continues to erase communities of color. Disneyland calls itself the happiest place on earth, but for the original residents, it marked the day everything changed. Comment if this was never included in your history class. Follow for the stories they attempted to bury. Share if someone needs to hear this. 

This is all a con. A fraud. The deceitful contentions are as real as their adjoining images, which were spat out in AI — here for example is a “photo” of the now-destroyed “thriving Latino neighborhood” —

— and again, yes, I know that attempting to counter TikTok’s perfidy-peddling propagandists is a fool’s errand (so I’ll try to make this quick and we can get back to the posting of cool Bunker Hill stuff). Anyway:

Come with me back in time and examine the land through aerials. Here are today’s boundaries of Disneyland, as bordered by Walnut, Ball, Harbor, and Katella —

And here’s Walnut/Ball/Harbor/Katella in 1960, five years after the park opened:

And the same area in 1953, two years before the park opened:

What do you notice? It’s all orange groves. Nothing remotely related to “neighborhoods” and “entire communities” as erasedcalifornia so sternly states.

“But but but,” you say, “the families who owned those orange groves were Latino and they had their land stolen!” Nope. We actually know who the families were who voluntarily sold their land to Disney (selling the land being the exact opposite of erasedcalifornia’s narrative that “the city seized the land through eminent domain. They claimed it was for public use, but then sold it to Walt Disney. Entire communities were bulldozed without any compensation“) and here are their names:

“Ok yeah but” you say, “all the owners were of European descent but LOOK! Dominguez! THERE’S a Mexican name! THEY definitely had their land stolen! Then their farmhouse was bulldozed!” Nope again. The Dominguez family had a ten-acre lot (which is 6.25% of Disney’s 160-acre purchase) and on that lot was a farmhouse:

And not only did the Dominguez family sell their land voluntarily, but Walt Disney saved their 1,300 square-foot 1920s farmhouse, where it stands in Disneyland to this day.

Oh, and it gets better. So not only did the sole Latino people involved in Disney’s Anaheim land deal not have their house seized, and not only was it not bulldozed, but their palm tree was saved, too:

This Canary Island Date Palm was planted in 1896 by Timothy Carroll, Anaheim’s first horticulturalist, for that ten-acre tract’s landowner, Wyran Knowlton. In 1920 Knowlton’s daughter Laura Irene Knowlton married Pablo Vincent Dominguez, which is how the ten acres “became” a Dominguez property. Pablo (who went by Paul) & Laura built the little house in 1925, in which their son Ronald Dominguez was born in 1935.

And it gets better still: not only was the young Ron Dominguez not “run out” of his property in 1954, but after the park opened he walked into the personnel office and applied to be a ticket-taker. Over the course of an illustrious 40-year career there, he was promoted to the position of Executive Vice President of Walt Disney Attractions. So while “erasedcalifornia” insists they are being “erased”… the only Hispanic folk (well, half-Hispanic, since the Knowltons came from England and helped settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony) that could have possibly been erased sold their land to Disney, who kept the Dominguez home, kept the Dominguez tree, AND honored Dominguez with a window on Main Street, when he retired in 1994:

So, if the entirety of erasedcalifornia’s story is such easily disprovable poppycock, why did they put time and energy into making the video? Apparently it was just to fan the flames of racist hatred. Among the thousands of comments on the Instagram and TikTok post are many like these —

The comments go on an expand from there, into anti-American, anti-capitalist invective. Hey, you wanna be a racist communist that hates America, you do you, baby. Knock yourself out. But piece of advice, try to have an argument that’s at least based in some minuscule semblance of fact.

Perhaps it’s less that people need to be America-hating racists, than it is some people’s need to crap on anything fun. I’m sure that’s enormously psychologically gratifying, though in the end being a toxic gaslighter does one more harm than good. So hey, erasedcalfornia and your ilk, along with finding some stories with truth to them, get some therapy.

There’s two weeks till Hallowe’en and it’s time to put your Hallowe’en gift-giving into overdrive! (Yes, I know, you’re mostly buying things for yourself, but who better deserves them?)

Might I suggest a copy of Bunker Noir! It’s a true crime compendium replete with murder, suicide, bootleggers, serial killers, bar brawls, deadly fires, lizard men, and most terrifying of all, building demolitions!

And it’s ON SALE! Regularly $30, it’s now a scant $20. Buy it on eBay, or on Amazon, but bear in mind you’ll be paying taxes and shipping that’ll send it north of twenty bucks. However, toss me $20 via Paypal (marsakster@gmail.com) or Venmo (@Hugo-Eckener) and (please make sure I have your mailing address) I’ll eat the taxes AND the postage!

Here are some SATISFIED CUSTOMERS!

*****

As long as we’re on the subject of spooky stuff, might I further suggest you purchase some ’tis-the-season sundries from Morguewear? They carry all the whatnot you need in life — shirts, pillows, coffee mugs, candles, notebooks — but conveniently emblazoned with vintage graphics advertising caskets, hearses, embalming fluid, and other fun stuff.

Take a look at their wares, here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Morguewear

I’ve always had a fondness for the Astoria:

The Astoria was, of course, featured prominently in one of my first posts for OnBunkerHill, about Robert Nixon and his fiendish visit there. The hotel was thereafter a key part in this expanded retelling from 2022, and naturally it showed up in both BHLA and Bunker Noir! —

But I feel bad that this handsome Mission Revival apartment-hotel is forever linked to Nixon and the grisly Worden murders. I always thought it would be nice to talk about the Astoria in a more general way…in a perfect world I’d find an image of the lobby, but I’d never hold out hope that that would happen.

Well…

So the other day I was on this really annoying Facebook post where people were looking at a normal Angels Flight image and insisting “this is AI!” and I had to disabuse them of that notion. Yes, I know, I have much better things to do, but, in performing this task I also noticed some fellow had mentioned “my grandfather ran a hotel up there at the top of Angels Flight called the Astoria” and, suffice it to say, that was Fortuna’s reward.

Because this fellow, Joe Orndorff, is the grandson of none other than Joseph Edward Harrigan, manager of the Astoria!

Naturally, I wrote and asked Mr. Orndorff if by any chance he had vintage images of his grandfather and/or the Astoria. Did he ever! Ladies and gentlemen, Astoria manager Joseph Edward Harrigan:

Joseph Edward Harrigan was born in Indiana on July 15 1880, the eldest of nine children, to Patrick Joseph Harrigan and Ellen (Bailey) Harrigan. The Harrigan family go back to County Offaly, Ireland, emigrating to America in the 1840s; his mother’s Bailey family are of English stock, and some of the first settlers of Virginia (1630s) and Maryland (1660s). Harrigan is standing, of course, riiiight there:

Isn’t that a great image of the Astoria? Which you’ve never seen before! Here it is in all its glory!

Here’s a shot of the Astoria lobby!

Where were these folk sitting, exactly? Well, you walk in the front door, turn right, and face south. The two windows at the right front on Olive:

And here is Joseph E. Harrigan’s daughter Helen (Joe Orndorff’s mother) bouncing her son/Joe’s brother Chris on the roof of the Astoria in 1941/42:

There’s the same fire escape —

But back to JE Harrigan:

Harrigan was, as mentioned above, an Indiana boy, born in Grass Creek, Fulton County, Indiana in July 1880 (or perhaps 1881, as it says on his draft paperwork). He moves to Butte, Montana and marries Helena in June 1909; he works for the Baxter Furniture Company. Helen is born to Joseph and Helena in 1915, and Harriet arrives in 1918. They move to Los Angeles about 1919, where he gets the job at the Astoria.

And right off the bat, he has to deal with unpleasantness:

In 1921 Joseph and Helena buy this nifty bungalow at 124 South Manhattan Place:

And they took trips — as a Santa Barbara native, I’m thrilled they toodled up the coast to my hometown:

In 1937, of course, Harrigan makes the papers across the country after the Worden murders.

Joseph Harrigan has a heart attack in 1944. Writes grandson Joe in a message to me: “In 1946, my mom — perhaps influenced by lurid film noir plot lines popular at the time — had him exhumed to see if he had been poisoned by some shady business associates. The coroner report, however, showed only heart disease.”

Helena lives at 124 South Manhattan Place until she passes, ten years later, in October 1954. The lovely home is demolished come 1956 in favor of an uninspired nine-unit dingbat.

But wait, there’s MORE Astoriana!

And that’s my post with all-new (to you and me, anyway) Astoria images. Thank you SO MUCH Mr. Orndorff for sharing your family’s wonderful Astoria history with us!!!

**********

But you know, as long as I’ve got you here…we all love Bunker Hill in the moving pictures (especially Angels Flight). The Astoria made some nifty appearances on the big screen — let’s look at some!

Last post involved people I couldn’t identify, so, here I am doing that again. This time we’ve got a couple Kodachrome slides from August 1968, of a young couple outside the Courthouse (as seen on p. 17 of Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill) with a novelty sign:

Naturally, my impulse was to go and shoot the same spot today:

(What can I say, I like then-n-now photography.)

I was moved to post the images of this couple, in part, due to how much they remind me of my aunt and uncle, Olivia & Andy.

A true Pasadena Love Story: Alec Andrew Johnson (my mother’s brother) was shopping at Whistle Stop Trains on Colorado one day in 1966, and immediately fell in love with the gal behind the counter. They got hitched in May 1967 at Westminster Presbyterian on Lake. And yes, after 58 years, they’re still together!

So I like to think these unnamed two from our 1968 Hill Street slides are similarly blessed with long life and marriage. If you know who they are, let me know!

Oh, and as long as we’re on the subject of letting me know stuff…one of you certainly knows who designed these:

We all know the monumental terracotta Courthouse sculptures by Albert Stewart and Donal Hord but what about these guys?

I look at a lot of slides, hunting for images of Bunker Hill architecture. The Hill’s built environment had character, which was documented, fortunately, because photographers shot images of the Hill — especially in its declining days, so as to capture the area’s rich personality.

Less evidenced in the photographic record are the Hill natives, who also had character, and no lack of personality:

I was combing through some random Los Angeles slides when this collection of six caught my eye and I exclaimed “holy heck! That’s 244 South Bunker Hill! And who is this guy?!”

The first question being, when we these shot? When you’ve got a pile of slides, their dates are often stamped on the mounts (but sometimes not, in which case if you’re lucky someone wrote “Uncle Bill, April ’61” on them or something). Or you may deduce their approximate age by their mounts. However, in this case, these slides had been rehoused in blank modern plastic slide mounts.

But, here’s a clue. This, for example, is a 1959 Cadillac—

—so the shots postdate autumn ’58, and 244 South Bunker Hill Ave. was demolished about mid-1964.

244 South Bunker Hill Avenue is notable for being the first Bunker Hill structure to be purchased by the Community Redevelopment Agency:

This was, of course, discussed on page 68 of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles:

The house had been built in 1891 by Henry LaRue Crittenden, Los Angeles branch manager of Liebig’s World Dispensary (Liebig’s was a famous purveyor of nostrums, most notably “invigorating” tonics made from beef extract and alcohol). Henry, wife Lena, and daughter Elsie began renting out rooms after the financial crash of February 1893. The elder Crittenden died of bronchitis, aged 61, in December 1894, and the property became a rooming house proper soon after.

Now let’s look at these kooky pix —

The above image shows neighbor-to-the-south 246 South Bunker Hill Ave. 246, the former Ira Smith house, is notable for having been during its final years the home of Rose-the-Cat-Lady, immortalized by Leo Politi in his book of Bunker Hill watercolors (seen here, with the original, at LAPL Central) and in my book Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.

The question remains, of course, who was this guy? Who were both of them, in their dirty trousers and whisky-soaked shirts? I have no idea. I checked phone books from the era; there was an Edith Marshall in Apt. 6 at 244, but no fellas listed. (Believe it or not, kids, once upon a time not everyone had a phone.)

Then I checked the newspapers for any mention of 244. Interestingly, there are two obituaries from between 1958 and 1964 that raise an eyebrow —

Maybe? But Frank Donovan was, according to FindAGrave, 91 years of age when he passed. Neither these guys in photos strike me as nearing their nineties.

Now we’re talking. According to FindAGrave, Greene was 65 when he passed. Either of these fellows — especially Mr. Beard — have the look of a hard-worn 65, and nearing the end. Unfortunately, the usual digging in Ancestry, FamilySearch, and various newspapers yielded nothing more about the elusive Mr. Greene, save that he was born in Ireland, and his mother was clan Ryan. He as well had two brothers, Joseph and Martin; perhaps these two photographed men are brothers? Of course it’s just as likely this deceased Greene character was simply one of the other boarders there at 244. Or for all we know neither of the characters pictured here even lived at 244.

Will we ever know? You tell me! Heck, these could be your great-uncles! Spread the word and let’s unravel this mystery. If you’ve any input, leave a comment below, or contact me.

POSTSCRIPT: Almost immediately after I posted this on the 10th inst., esteemed researcher Ronald Bodtcher linked to (in his comment below) the 1960 Los Angeles County Great Register: Los Angeles City Precincts 301-650. Therein can be found the listing for Precinct 942, which was the west side of the 200 block of Bunker Hill Avenue, and the east side of the 200 block of Grand Avenue (which looked like this).

In said voter rolls, we can find the listings for four people who inhabited 244 SBHA:

…a Thomas Foust, a Thomas McDonald, and a Thomas Walsh (evidently it’s required you be named Thomas to lodge at 244, unless you’re a lady, like Edith Marshall). Mr. Bodtcher notes in his comment there’s a Frank Walsh at 223 South Grand (behind 244 to the east) and posits, could they not be brothers, engaged in some roughhousing together, or perhaps with one of the other Thomases?

Will we ever know? It may seem a fatuous ask, but — if I make it to the Father’s House — don’t think I won’t query the King of Kings about this fellow. I may even meet him there!

***

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of the Hill’s denizens, check out these kids making zines about old Bunker Hill! They’re part of Bunker Hill Refrain, who recently put out this absolutely incredible video about the Hildreth/Hopecrest.

Bunker Hill was, of course, featured in many a splendid noir picture. That (along with the Hill’s depiction in hardboiled prose) is the subject of Jim Dawson’s indispensable Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero! (If you do not own this book, remedy that immediately.)

Once in a great while a heretofore unknown (to me, at least, and not in Jim’s book) example-of-Bunker-Hill-in-cinema pops up: in this case it’s Bunker Hill’s brief appearance in Abandoned, a 1949 Universal picture about black market baby rings.

I would never have known Bunker Hill made an appearance in Abandoned had I not dug up an interior shot of the Biltmore Theater squirreled away in my collection of Los Angeles negatives. When I looked up the Biltmore’s entry on Bill Counter’s wonderful Los Angeles Theaters blog, there was Gale Storm walking up Grand! (I have a particular fondness for Storm, since a poster from one of her pictures hangs in my upstairs hallway. Plus her name is Gale Storm, I mean, c’mon.)

Anyway, at 28:26 Storm and Dennis O’Keefe (click here) are walking north on Grand Avenue, between Fifth and Fourth:

See the sign next to O’Keefe’s shoulder? That’s a neon blade reading “Sherwood Apt’s” which can be seen at 10:59 in Bunker Hill 1956:

A return shot can be seen in 1955’s Target Earth:

Note in the Target Earth image above, to the north of the Sherwood (read about Sherwood resident, the doomed starlet Helen Lee Worthing, here), is a rounded tower and a scalloped parapet. That’s the Granada:

They then walk up to the Granada—

Then there’s this nifty return shot ↑ of Raymond Burr spying on the two. It was shot with rear projection: the actual across-the-street structure at 414 South Grand was an apartment house called the Boyd, which contained no commercial space:

Angels abound! This is the City of Angels, after all. And I do work at Angels Flight. It seems only fitting that I should become steward of the most magnificent of our angels. A fallen angel, at that.

I speak, of course, about a Richfield Angel. Born at the high point of interbellum Los Angeles, silent protector of us all, until cast to earth by the pernicious hand of progress. And now, it is my duty to protect him.

What is a Richfield Angel? Our story begins in 1876, up near Newhall, when the first gusher was brought in at the Pico Canyon oilfield. California oil strikes continued; Union Oil was formed in Santa Paula in 1890. In 1892 Edward Doheny struck oil just west of downtown Los Angeles, and from there, Southern California became one of the world’s great oil-producing regions. Countless hydrocarbon concerns sprung up including, in 1911, the Richfield Oil Company.

Through the 1920s oil companies built mammoth Los Angeles office buildings for their headquarters (I wrote a piece for DTLAX Magazine on the subject back in 2009) —

—but what do you notice about these edifices? Pretty standard Beaux Arts massing, all rough-hewn stone and neoclassical decorative elements. Sure, the California Petroleum Building has a setback tower, but it’s still replete with Spanish Gothic ornament.

Richfield Oil was having none of it. They needed to build an HQ, and it was going to express modernity. Richfield was known for its high-quality gasolines, as favored by race car drivers; Richfield showcased sculptures of streamlined race cars as advertising. Similarly, the company knew that the greatest advertisement would be a remarkable Art Deco building that declared this is the future.

So in 1927 they bought the northwest corner of Sixth and Flower streets, then called up the architectural firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements and said “hey! You got that Stiles Clements fellow there, he’s good! Give us something amazing!” And this is what Clements came up with:

That’s right, an Art Deco height-limit skyscraper, done in black and gold (get it? Black gold?) with a giant neon tower intended to evoke a derrick.

And ringing the top of the structure were forty of these fellows:

Needless to say, the Richfield Building was far too wonderful to exist in this world of ours. After a scant forty years, it had to be torn down. (There’s so much more to be said about the Richfield, and, if inclined, you may learn more than you ever wished to know by watching my lecture on the subject, though be forewarned its picture and sound leave much to be desired.)

During demolition, Cleveland Wrecking removed the angels and hauled them to their yard, where they were available to the public at $100 a pop. People carted them off become yard ornaments. A vast number of them disappeared.

Naturally, I’ve always wanted one (well, I’ve always wanted ten, but would content myself with one). I did manage to get a couple of the Richfield’s upper floor elevator indicators, from the son of a guy who’d worked the demolition:

But still, an angel eluded me. A couple of my friends had them! Eric Lynxwiler (who designed Bunker Hill, Los Angeles and Before the Freeways) and Rory Cunningham (past president of the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles) were both proud owners:

Then about a month ago, I was contacted by Margot Gerber, Executive Director of the Art Deco Society. The conversation went something like this:

Margot: Hi, so, I was just contacted by a woman whose uncle recently passed, and—

Me: —and he had a Richfield angel and I need to go get it!

Margot: Huh? How did you know?

Me: BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS CALL FOR THIRTY YEARS

I get in touch with the woman, who is absolutely lovely, and who is thrilled the angel would go to a good home. Her uncle, Donald Ray Alexander, was born in 1933 and had been, for many decades, a court reporter downtown; in his younger life he had worked for Texaco, so, there’s an oil connection. Nothing is known about when or how he came into possession of his angel, other than it was now at the Silver Lake home he’d purchased in 1979. Did he buy the angel from Cleveland Wrecking in 1969 and relocate it there a decade later? Or was it there when he moved in?

Whatever its history, it was coming home with me. This wasn’t a matter of simply loading it into the back of your SUV — at about 900 pounds, you’re looking at a professional moving company with a liftgate truck. I went through a couple of companies before I found one willing to tackle the task, but, a few days ago, it happened:

In his new home:

Obviously, he’s going to need a custom plinth built, one that will angle him back a bit so he’s not staring at the earth. Staring at the earth was, of course, his original purpose, but that was back when he was being viewed by people from a hundred feet below:

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I came to be the current steward of this magnificent beast. I know what you’re saying…that belongs in a museum! I don’t disagree, but we’re not there yet. There are two dozen major cities who have museums dedicated to their city’s history and culture — heck, New York alone has two. Maybe someday we’ll get there. Until then, what remaining years I have will be spent caring for this incredibly important fellow.

*****

Oh, one last thing, in case you’re thinking “hey, this blog is about Bunker Hill! The Richfield wasn’t on Bunker Hill!” You are correct, of course, but I’d say that the Richfield was an important touchstone in the community consciousness of Hill dwellers. Gordon Pattison, who grew up on the Hill, remembers well its looming presence, and the marvelous animated letters lighting up the “derrick” in the night.

Here, then, are some images that detail the Richfield’s proximity and relationship to Bunker Hill:

The Richfield shares its sad fate with Bunker Hill, being demolished in 1969 — same year the last two Bunker Hill houses got torched, and Angels Flight was dismantled.

The Richfield is enormously important in having galvanized our preservation movement. Its 1969 loss is roughly akin to New York’s 1963 demolition of Pennsylvania Station, which prompted widespread outrage and a renewed appreciation for architectural heritage. When Angelenos talk about the most lamented of our lost landmarks, the Richfield usually tops the list (there’s a reason it made the cover of Cindy Olnick’s L.A. Landmarks Lost and Almost Lost). Demolition permits were pulled for the Pellissier Building/Wiltern Theater twice in the late 1970s; the prospect of losing another Clements-designed ZigZag Moderne tower lit a fire under the nascent Los Angeles Conservancy.

So if there’s a silver lining to her demolition, it’s that.

Well, two silver linings: now I have a Richfield Angel.