In 1858, the outlook for business brightened in Los Angeles; and Don Abel Stearns, who had acquired riches as a ranchero, built the Arcadia Block, on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, naming it after his wife, Doña Arcadia, who, since these memoirs were commenced, has joined the silent majority. The structure cost about eighty thousand dollars, and was talked of for some time as the most notable business block south of San Francisco. The newspapers hailed it as an ornament to the city and a great step toward providing what the small and undeveloped community then regarded as a fire-proof structure for business purposes. Because, however, of the dangerous overflow of the Los Angeles River in rainy seasons, Stearns elevated the building above the grade of the street and to such an extent that, for several years, his store-rooms remained empty. But the enterprise at once bore some good fruit; to make the iron doors and shutters of the block, he started a foundry on New High Street and soon created some local iron-casting trade.
On April 24th, Señora Guadalupe Romero died at the age, it is said, of one hundred and fifteen years. She came to Los Angeles, I was told, as far back as 1781, the wife of one of the earliest soldiers sent here, and had thus lived in the pueblo about seventy-seven years.
Some chapters in the life of Henry Mellus are of more than passing interest. Born in Boston, he came to California in 1835, with Richard Henry Dana, in Captain Thompson's brig Pilgrim made famous in the story of Two Years before the Mast; clerked for Colonel Isaac Williams when that Chino worthy had a little store where later the Bella Union stood; returned to the East in 1837 and came back to the Coast the second time as supercargo. Settling in San Francisco, he formed with Howard the well-known firm of Howard & Mellus, which was wiped out, by the great fire, in 1851. Again Mellus returned to Massachusetts, and in 1858 for a third time came to California, at length casting his fortune with us in growing Los Angeles. On Dana's return to San Pedro and the Pacific Coast in 1859, Mellus—who had married a sister of Francis Mellus's wife and had become a representative citizen—entertained the distinguished advocate and author, and drove him around Los Angeles to view the once familiar and but little-altered scenes. Dana bore all his honors modestly, apparently quite oblivious of the curiosity displayed toward him and quite as unconscious that he was making one of the memorable visits in the early annals of the town. Dana Street serves as a memorial to one who contributed in no small degree to render the vicinity of Los Angeles famous.
Just what hotel life in Los Angeles was in the late fifties, or about the time when Dana visited here, may be gathered from an anecdote often told by Dr. W. F. Edgar, who came to the City of the Angels for the first time in 1858. Dr. Edgar had been ordered to join an expedition against the Mojave Indians which was to start from Los Angeles for the Colorado River, and he put up at the old Bella Union, expecting at least one good night's rest before taking to the saddle again and making for the desert. Dr. Edgar found, however, to his intense disgust, that the entire second story was overcrowded with lodgers. Singing and loud talking were silenced, in turn, by the protests of those who wanted to sleep; but finally a guest, too full for expression but not so drunk that he was unable to breathe hoarsely, staggered in from a Sonora Town ball, tumbled into bed with his boots on, and commenced to snort, much like a pig. Under ordinary circumstances, this infliction would have been grievous enough; but the inner walls of the Bella Union were never overthick, and the rhythmic snoring of the late-comer made itself emphatically audible and proportionately obnoxious. Quite as emphatic, however, were the objections soon raised by the fellow-guests, who not only raised them but threw them, one after another—boots, bootjacks and sticks striking, with heavy thud, the snorer's portal; but finding that even these did not avail, the remonstrants, in various forms of deshabille, rushed out and began to kick at the door of the objectionable bedroom. Just at that moment the offender turned over with a grunt; and the excited army of lodgers, baffled by the unresisting apathy of the sleeper, retreated, each to his nest. The next day, breathing a sigh of relief, Edgar forsook the heavenly regions of the Bella Union and made for Cajón Pass, eventually reaching the Colorado and the place where the expedition found the charred remains of emigrants' wagons, the mournful evidence of Indian treachery and atrocity.
Edgar's nocturnal experience reminds me of another in the good old Bella Union. When Cameron E. Thom arrived here in the spring of 1854, he engaged a room at the hotel which he continued to occupy for several months, or until the rains of 1855 caused both roof and ceiling to cave in during the middle of the night, not altogether pleasantly arousing him from his slumbers. It was then that he moved to Joseph Newmark's, where he lived for some time, through which circumstance we became warm friends.
Big, husky, hearty Jacob Kuhrts, by birth a German and now living here at eighty-one years of age, left home, as a mere boy, for the sea, visiting California on a vessel from China as early as 1848, and rushing off to Placer County on the outbreak of the gold-fever. Roughing it for several years and narrowly escaping death from Indians, Jake made his first appearance in Los Angeles in 1858, soon after which I met him, when he was eking out a livelihood doing odd jobs about town, a fact leading me to conclude that his success at the mines was hardly commensurate with the privations endured. It was just about that time, when he was running a dray, that, attracted by a dance among Germans, Jake dropped in as he was; but how sorry an appearance he made may perhaps be fancied when I say that the door-keeper, eyeing him suspiciously, refused him admission and advised him to go home and put on his Sunday go-to-meetings. Jake went and, what is more important, fortunately returned; for while spinning around on the knotty floor, he met, fell in love with and ogled Fräulein Susan Buhn, whom somewhat later he married. In 1864, Kuhrts had a little store on Spring Street near the adobe City Hall; and there he prospered so well that by 1866 he had bought the northwest corner of Main and First streets, and put up the building he still owns. For twelve years he conducted a grocery in a part of that structure, living with his family in the second story, after which he was sufficiently prosperous to retire. Active as his business life has been, Jake has proved his patriotism time and again, devoting his efforts as a City Father, and serving, sometimes without salary, as Superintendent of Streets, Chief of the Fire Department and Fire Commissioner.
In 1858, John Temple built what is now the south wing of the Temple Block standing directly opposite the Bullard Building; but the Main Street stores being, like Stearns's Arcadia Block, above the level of the sidewalk and, therefore, reached only by several steps, proved unpopular and did not rent, although Tischler & Schlesinger, heading a party of grain-buyers, stored some wheat in them for a while or until the grain, through its weight, broke the flooring, and was precipitated into the cellar; and even as late as 1859, after telegraph connection with San Francisco had been completed, only one little space on the Spring Street side, in size not more than eight by ten feet, was rented, the telegraph company being the tenants. One day William Wolfskill, pointing to the structure, exclaimed to his friends: "What a pity that Temple put all his money there! Had he not gone into building so extravagantly, he might now be a rich man." Wolfskill himself, however, later commenced the construction of a small block on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union, to be occupied by S. Lazard & Company, but which he did not live to see completed.
Later on, the little town grew and, as this property became more central, Temple removed the steps and built the stores flush with the sidewalk, after which wide-awake merchants began to move into them. One of Temple's first important tenants on Main Street was Daniel Desmond, the hatter. His store was about eighteen by forty feet. Henry Slotterbeck, the well-known gunsmith, was another occupant. He always carried a large stock of gunpowder, which circumstance did not add very much to the security of the neighborhood.
On the Court Street side, Jake Philippi was one of the first to locate, and there he conducted a sort of Kneipe. His was a large room, with a bar along the west side. The floor was generously sprinkled with sawdust, and in comfortable armchairs, around the good, old-fashioned redwood tables, frequently sat many of his German friends and patrons, gathered together to indulge in a game of Pedro, Skat or whist, and to pass the time pleasantly away. Some of those who thus met together at Jake Phillippi's, at different periods of his occupancy, were Dr. Joseph Kurtz, H. Heinsch, Conrad Jacoby, Abe Haas, C. F. Heinzeman, P. Lazarus, Edward Pollitz, A. Elsaesser and B. F. Drackenfeld, who was a brother-in-law of Judge Erskine M. Ross and claimed descent from some dwellers on the Rhine. He succeeded Frank Lecouvreur as bookkeeper for H. Newmark & Company, and was in turn succeeded, on removing to New York, by Pollitz; while the latter was followed by John S. Stower, an Englishman now residing in London, whose immediate predecessor was Richard Altschul. Drackenfeld attained prominence in New York, and both Altschul and Pollitz in San Francisco. Of these, Drackenfeld and Pollitz are dead.
Most of these convivial frequenters at Phillipi's belonged to a sort of Deutscher Klub which met, at another period, in a little room in the rear of the corner of Main and Requena streets, just over the cool cellar then conducted by Bayer & Sattler. A stairway connected the two floors, and by means of that communication the Klub obtained its supply of lager beer. This fact recalls an amusing incident. When Philip Lauth and Louis Schwarz succeeded Christian Henne in the management of the brewery at the corner of Main and Third streets, the Klub was much dissatisfied with the new brew and forthwith had Bayer & Sattler send to Milwaukee for beer made by Philip Best. Getting wind of the matter, Lauth met the competition by at once putting on the market a brand more wittily than appropriately known as "Philip's Best." Sattler left Los Angeles in the early seventies and established a coffee-plantation in South America where, one day, he was killed by a native wielding a machete.