White Caps vigilante group sought justice via tar and feathers in 1889 San Pedro case

The White Caps movement started in Indiana in the late 1830s. The vigilante group used a variety of methods in order to maintain what they felt were proper community standards, especially in frontier areas with little formal law enforcement.

Its members usually were members of the community seeking to punish men who abused their wives, had shameless affairs, or were noticeably shiftless and lazy, and women who were considered to have loose morals.

White Caps tar and feather an unidentified woman in this drawing from *The Cincinnati Enquirer*,
Feb. 25, 1889, Page 8.

The White Caps took their name for the makeshift white hoods they wore while carrying out their often dubious brand of justice. Their practices strongly influenced the more well-known Ku Klux Klan, which arose after the Civil War. (The iconic pointed white KKK hoods and fancy robes weren’t adopted until the racist group’s revival in 1915.)

“Whitecapping” activities, typically carried out only under cover of darkness, included threats, intimidation, public shaming and more violent acts such as beatings, whippings, arson and tarring and feathering. Though racism played a part, especially in the South and Midwest, the White Caps in other groups of the country oftentimes were more pro-morality than anti-minority.

Drawing from *The Cincinnati Enquirer*,
Feb. 25, 1889, Page 8. Shamokin is a town in central Pennsylvania.

As E.W. Crozier noted in his 1899 book on the White Caps, “The original purpose of whitecapping was to administer punishment to (those) who lived in adultery and kept disorderly houses in the community.”

Offshoots of the loosely-formed group sprouted up throughout the country, and enjoyed a particularly strong renaissance during the late 1880s, which brings us to the local chapter that began operating in San Pedro at that time.

The White Caps caught wind of an incident of marital infidelity involving a Swedish carpenter and self-proclaimed local Romeo named Gustave “Gus” Braman. Braman, 28, who lived in San Pedro, got caught alone with a sea captain’s wife in the married couple’s Vinegar Hill residence in the early morning hours of April 22, 1889.

Capt. Koughan had been piloting the barque Lilian to Santa Barbara when he decided to come home early from the trip and surprise his wife. Though Koughan didn’t catch Braman red-handed, the circumstances were suspicious enough, and a heated argument ensued between the two men.

Headline from *Los Angeles Times*, April 25, 1889, Page 4. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* archival database)

The next day, Braman took the matter to court, accusing Koughan of having threatened to kill him during their confrontation. Koughan quickly was cleared of the charge.

It might have ended there had the boastful Braman not gone to a local saloon afterward, and, according the the Los Angeles Herald, told those assembled, “Yes, I have been sleeping with her (the captain’s wife), and what is more, boys, there’s four or five more up there that l am staying with, too.”

Word spread quickly, and the White Caps, many of them working men from the community, felt sufficiently threatened and outraged by Braman’s braggadocio to swing into action.

That night at around midnight, a group of about ten men wearing white hoods stormed into Braman’s 17th Street house. According to the Herald, one of them read from a sheet of paper: “In the name of the Lord, it is decreed that you be tied to a pole and tarred and feathered.” Braman later identified the man as Tommy Thompson.

The men dragged Braman outside, where tar was applied to the lower half of his body, followed by by the shower of feathers which stuck to the tar on his skin. They then marched him to Front St., where he was chained to a lamp post at roughly 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning before the men fled.

Headline from *Los Angeles Times*, May 23, 1889, Page 6. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* archival database)

He was discovered about 90 minutes later and taken to a druggist’s office, where he underwent the painful removal of the bulk of the tar and feathers. Later that day, he went back to court and testified against several men who had been arrested in the case by the local sheriff.

A few days later, on May 1, someone soaked the house and surrounding grounds of Braman’s house and set it afire, burning the house and everything in it to the ground. Braman was not home at the time. The arson seemed to be a fairly clear case of retaliation, but no culprit ever was found.

Seven men, including Thompson, were held over for trial and ultimately convicted that July, but only on misdemeanor charges of assault with a deadly weapon and inflicting bodily harm upon Braman. Their sentences ranged from a month in jail to a $50 fine.

As for Gustave Braman, he moved to Santa Cruz, where he was tried for murder and arson in 1891 in the death of his brother, Eric, in a house fire. The circumstances were similar to the arson incident that resulted in his own house being burned down earlier in San Pedro, but there was not enough evidence in the case to convict him.

*Los Angeles Times* rendition of the threatening card left by the “Mystic League” at a San Pedro tavern. Feb. 7, 1890, Page 2. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* archival database)

Despite the minor nature of the charges in the Braman case, it seemed to have had an effect on subduing the local activities of the White Caps. A Los Angeles Times story from Feb. 7, 1890 reported on an anonymous group called the Mystic League who were threatening a San Pedro barkeeper by leaving threatening calling cards, but apparently it went no further. No further activities of the group were reported.

Though they continued to be active in some parts of the country, many states began cracking down on the White Caps with more strident arrests and prosecutions of their members from the mid-1890s on The movement seems to have died down in the early 1900s, but another more virulent group, the revived KKK, would soon begin waging a far more terrifying brand of violence in 1915.

Note: This 1905 Edison silent film portrays the White Caps in a positive way.

Note: Gustave “Gus” Braman’s name has been misspelled widely in various newspaper accounts of the day as Bremen, Braeman, Brennan and Broman, among other variations.

Sources:

Los Angeles Herald files.

Los Angeles Times files.

San Pedro News Pilot files.

Santa Cruz Sentinel files.

“These racist vigilantes inspired the Ku Klux Klan and battled state governments for years | Whitecappers went outside the law and terrorized at will,” By Matt Reimann, Timeline website, Aug. 14, 2017.

The White-caps : a history of the organization in Sevier County (Tennessee), by E.W. Crozier, 1899. Republished by Internet Archive.

Wikipedia.

Hermosa Beach’s Golden State Silk Mills becomes the West Coast’s first silk processing plant

Exterior view of the new Golden State Silk Mills in Hermosa Beach. Oct. 27, 1925. (Credit: University of Southern California Digital Library)

During the 1920s, the small city of Hermosa Beach became the unlikely center of the West Coast silk industry with the arrival of the Golden State Silk Mills plant.

Up until then, the silk industry had been concentrated in the Northeast states, with mills there having to wait for shipments of raw silk from Japan to arrive via cargo ships in California, where they then had to be shipped east by rail at additional expense..

Why all the hubbub over silk? Because the fabric had become extremely popular in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the days before synthetic fabrics, silk garments, including everything from hosiery and foundations to elaborate dresses, had grown into some of the fashion industry’s most prized items. By the 1920s, silk manufacturing had grown into a highly profitable industry.

Woman modeling a strapless, close-fitting evening gown with a train in jacquard pattern silk, with long gloves circa late 1920s. (Credit: UCLA Library, Dept. of Special Collections)

When the Hermosa Beach Review newspaper announced the impending arrival of the Golden State Silk Mills plant in its issue of Feb. 23, 1923, the townspeople, and investors, reacted with enthusiasm. Estimates for the cost of the initial investment began at $1 million.

The proposed plant, to be built on two acres near the intersection of Ardmore Drive and Santa Fe Avenue (later renamed Pier Ave.) would be a complete silk processing operation.

Raw silk, imported mostly from Japan, would be made into finished fabrics by the plant’s weaving, throwing and dyeing machines. Raw material would be turned into finished product in ten days. It would be the first such operation ever on the West Coast, and would bring hundreds of jobs to the city.

The plan had clear financial advantages. Once trade relationships were established with Japanese suppliers, the cost of acquiring raw silk would be considerably less that it was for Eastern silk factories. In addition, the milder coastal climate would allow for longer periods of operation; most East Coast plants had to shut down, or at least kept exceedingly warm, during colder weather.

The Hermosa plant’s machines used electric power, which saved money and was quieter. Also, the expense of heating and humidity controls was reduced; Hermosa’s seaside climate proved to be ideal for silk production.

Ground was broken for the plant on Nov. 8, 1923. Construction of three main buildings and the acquisition and installation of its necessary machinery continued through 1924. In June 1925, the Golden State Silk Mills opened for business.

Interior view of the Golden State Silk Mill shows rows of machines which appear to be processing skeins of silk. Photo circa 1925. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

It started with fifty Wells looms, but that number would increase to more than 100 by 1927. The man from whom the specialized looms took their name, W.S. Wells, was brought in at Golden State as the manager of the throwing and weaving operations at the mill.

The plant thrived, moving shortly after it opened to 24-hour operation to meet the demand for its products, which were sold under the brand name Sunshine Silks. Silk garments were the height of fashion during the boom years of the 1920s.

Golden State continued to expand its operations. It opened the Hermosa Silk Spinning Co. at its Hermosa site on April 17, 1926. Its purpose was to spin silk yarn for the production of silk stockings and other hosiery, which would be produced at its other new onsite facility, Hermosa Hosiery Mills, Inc.

After the plant opened, the company’s dyeing operations moved to a new satellite plant in downtown Torrance, built near the Union Tool Co., west of Western Avenue.

The Hermosa Silk Spinning Co. & Golden State Silk Mills Inc., receives its first shipment of raw silk from Japan at Los Angeles Harbor in 1926. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

The much-ballyhooed first direct shipment of raw silk from Japan arrived at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro in May 1926.

Things were going so well that Golden State began building a second West Coast factory in San Diego in 1926. That plant planned to use raw silk from silkworms raised in Escondido on 325 acres of mulberry trees, the silkworms’ natural habitat.

Rows of machines inside the Golden State Silk Mills Inc., in Hermosa Beach in 1925. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

Golden State’s business continued to boom for the next couple of years, but several factors affected it adversely as the 1920s drew to a close. The most obvious was the arrival of the Depression in 1929, but the development of synthetic fibers such as nylon and rayon, the growth of the cotton industry in California and the vicissitudes of the fashion industry also played a role.

As the depression worsened, the once-thriving plant had to shut down in the early 1930s. New investors managed to raise enough capital to reopen the plant in 1935, but its glory days were behind it.

The date of its official demise is unclear, but, by all accounts, the Golden State plant lasted into the 1940s before shutting down.

It was replaced by another smaller textile manufacturing operation, Trader Al’s, which also operated a home furnishings store at the location.

After Trader Al’s closed, developers eventually transformed the entire site into the outdoor Plaza Hermosa shopping center, which opened in May 1985. Its anchor store is a Vons supermarket, which is still in operation.

View of two unidentified women at the Golden State Silk Mill, posing with hanks of raw silk from Japan. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

Sources:

Calisphere website.

Daily Breeze files.

Footnotes on the Sand, by Pat Gazin, Published by Martin Gazin, 1991.

Los Angeles Times files.

San Pedro News Pilot files.

Torrance Press-Herald files.

Ad soliciting stock investors from the *Los Angeles Times*, May 8, 1923, Page I17. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* archival database)

Pioneering Wilmington businessman Phineas Banning also helped mete out frontier justice

Shipping and mercantile magnate Phineas Banning became a larger-than-life figure after coming to California in 1851.

He founded Wilmington, naming the community after his Delaware home town. He brought the first railroad line to the Harbor Area and played a key role in the early development of Los Angeles Harbor as a seaport. He built the landmark Banning House in Wilmington, which stands as a monument to him.

On the other hand, Banning was not above doling out vigilante justice when he felt the situation called for it.

In his defense, Los Angeles in the mid-19th century has been described by many historians as among the most lawless cities in American history. There was no centralized police force and only a rudimentary justice system in the years following California’s advancement to statehood in 1850.

Public opinion rather than established legal procedures often dictated whether suspected criminals lived or died. Unfortunately, vigilantism, mob justice and lynchings were not uncommon occurrences.

Banning lived in the Harbor Area, but conducted most of his business up in Los Angeles. He grew increasingly concerned with the out-of-control mayhem in the burgeoning city, especialy after the particularly violent summer of 1853. Feeling that the somewhat feeble local law enforcement needed backup, he played an important role in the formation of the city’s first volunteer police force.

A crowd looks on at the lynching of Miguel Lashenais at the lumber yard on the corner of Temple Street and New High (Justica) Street, Los Angeles, in 1870. The body of Lashenais, who was lynched for killing Jacob Bell, hangs from the archway. Tents and other spectators can be seen on the Poundcake Hill in the background. The hill would later become the site of the Court House and then the Criminal Courts Building. (Credit: USC Library Digital Photo Collection)

He became an organizer and charter member of the Los Angeles Rangers, a mounted posse of about 100 mostly Anglo citizens meant to supplement the city’s fledgling law enforcement infrastructure. He also was one of the new force’s main financial backers.

While the organization may have had an effect in suppressing some of the more brazen crimes being committed in the city, its methods did consist mostly of hunting down suspected criminals and hanging them without a formal trial.

During its two-year tenure, the group executed in the neighborhood of 22 accused felons, and launched a prolonged vigilante movement in Los Angeles, according to historian Tom Sitton in his book, Grand Ventures: The Banning Family and the Shaping of Southern California (Huntington Library, 2010).

Following the Rangers’ demise, Banning helped organize the City Guard in 1855, whose goals were similar to those of the Rangers. In 1857, he helped form another group, the Los Angeles Union Guards, whose job was to respond to the perceived threat from Mormon settlers following the violent “Mountain Massacre” by Brigham Young’s followers, during which 120 emigrants were slain.

The tree-shaded residence of Phineas Banning in Wilmington, circa 1900. In front is a mule-drawn coach piled high with people. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

Los Angeles authorities feared violence from the nearby Mormon settlement in San Bernardino and wanted to be prepared in case of attack. The federal government intervened in Utah, however, and Young recalled the “California Saints” unit back home to that state, ending the threat.

The Union Guards dissolved, and Banning’s activities with militia groups subsided.

But he would resume such activities in a less official capacity in 1863. An explosion aboard Banning’s ship the Ada Hancock on April 27 of that year killed 31 people, including family members such as his brother-in-law William Sanford, friends and employees.

A few months later, a young drifter named Charles Wilkins killed rancher John Sanford, another one of his wife’s brothers, during a failed robbery attempt on a remote stretch of road in Fort Tejon near the Grapevine on Dec. 6.

Wilkins was arrested and indicted for the crime, which he freely admitted committing. As he was being brought back to jail following the indictment at the Los Angeles courthouse, he was surrounded by a vengeful mob, an omen of things to come.

The next day at his trial, Wilkins pled guilty. As he was being led back to jail, Banning, leading a group of his own men, stormed the courtroom and seized Wilkins. Seeking revenge for the crime, Banning led the men back to the corral he owned nearby at Aliso and Spring streets, where he and his cohorts promptly hanged him.

Neither Banning nor any of his men faced any repercussions over the Dec. 17 lynching. In fact, the county Board of Supervisors later gave him a $200 reward for it.

Ad in *Los Angeles Star,* March 19, 1864.

One additional incident of “frontier justice” may or may not have involved Banning directly. It began a month earlier, in November 1863, when Manuel Cerradel was convicted of shooting and wounding a deputy who had been sent to arrest him for his involvement in the recent murder of rancher John Rains.

On Dec. 10, 1863, a week before the Wilkins lynching, Cerradel was being transported to San Quentin to serve his five-year prison sentence. He was taken aboard Banning’s boat, the Cricket, a steamer which ferried passengers through the shallower Wilmington port waters to larger ships offshore in the days before the harbor was dredged and enlarged.

A group of vigilantes boarded the boat, overpowered the sheriff guarding the prisoner, and hung Cerradel from the Cricket’s main mast.

By all accounts, Banning’s direct involvement in vigilante justice seems to have ended with the 1863 incidents. He spent the last two decades before his death in 1885 enlarging his businesses and dabbling in politics.

A statue of Phineas Banning looks over the Port of Los Angeles under cloudy skies at Banning’s Landing Community Center in Wilmington on Dec. 30, 2019. (*Daily Breeze* staff file photo)

Sources:

“Cricket,” Islapedia web site.

Daily Breeze files.

Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, by John Mack Faragher, W.W. Norton and Co., 2016.

Grand Ventures: The Banning Family and the Shaping of Southern California, by Tom Sitton, Huntington Library, 2010.

Los Angeles Herald files.

Los Angeles Star files.

Los Angeles Times files.

“Lynching in the West: Los Angeles Downtown Walking Tour,” Ken Gonzales-Day blog.

Reminiscences of a Ranger: Early Times in Southern California, by Horace Bell, Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, Printers, 1881.

A look at karate champion turned movie star Chuck Norris’ South Bay roots

Chuck Norris. Undated photo. (Credit: Chuck Norris Facebook page)

Chuck Norris may not have been born in the South Bay, but he spent a good part of his formative years there.

Ray Dee, a World War II veteran who worked as a truck driver, turned out to be an alcoholic, and the family saw little of him once they moved to California. It was left to Norris, the oldest of three brothers, to help Wilma raise her children.

Norris was enrolled in the first-ever class to attend newly opened North High School in Torrance in September 1955. Though not a star athlete, the introverted Norris did participate in North’s gymnastics program and play halfback for the school football team.

Chuck Norris, North High 1958 yearbook photo.

He was still known as Carlos Norris when he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from North in 1958. During boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, a Hispanic fellow recruit gave Norris the name “Chuck,” since Carlos is Charles in Spanish.

Norris’ life would change forever after getting his first assignment as an Air Policeman at the U.S. Air Force base at Osan, South Korea. While there, he developed a keen interest in the martial arts that would become a lifelong obsession.

He began his martial arts training by earning a black belt in the discipline known as Tang Soo Do. The principles he learned while studying it would later influence him to form his own discipline, Chun Kuk Do (“universal way”). After his Korean stint, he returned to the U.S. and was stationed at March AFB in Riverside.

Undated USAF mug of Chuck Norris, circa 1958.

He returned to the South Bay after his discharge from the Air Force in September 1962, and attempted to parlay his Air Police experience into a job working for the Torrance Police Department. When he didn’t hear back from the department right away, he decided to start his own karate studio in Torrance.

He opened Chuck Norris Karate Studios at 22543 Hawthorne Blvd., on the northwest corner of Hawthorne and 226th St. He built the business through constant public appearances and demonstrations of the sport at civic events, club meetings and schools.

The studio thrived. Meanwhile, Norris continued to rise in the karate world, winning his first middleweight championship title in 1968. He would go on to win five more titles, giving him six in a row, before retiring from competition.

He moved to Rolling Hills Estates in 1969, and would live there for the next 17 years, before moving to Orange County in 1986.

Chuck Norris Karate Studios ad, Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1971, Page Q29. (Credit: Los Angeles Times archival database)

By Nov. 1970, his Southern California chain of karate studios had grown to 6 locations: the main one in Torrance, two in Redondo, and one each in Sherman Oaks, Lakewood and Granada Hills.

He also taught many famous clients, including Steve McQueen, Priscilla Presley and members of the Osmond family. His friendship with McQueen led to McQueen encouraging him to try his hand at acting.

From left, karate masters Bob Wall, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. in the early 1970s. (Credit: Bob Wall photo via Hindustan Times)

Norris had made his first screen appearance in an uncredited bit part in the fourth and final Matt Helm film, “The Wrecking Crew” (1968), starring Dean Martin. But his career began in earnest with roles in a series of kung fu action films beginning with “The Way of the Dragon” (1972), starring martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

A young Chuck Norris, left, breaks a board held by his brother, Wieland, at an early 1960s karate demonstration. Wieland later was killed in action in Vietnam. (Credit: Chuck Norris Facebook page)

His screen presence continued to grow. In 1977, he landed his first starring role in the trucker/CB action film “Breaker! Breaker!”; his first lead role came the next year in the thriller “Good Guys Wear Black.”

“Lone Wolf McQuade” (1983), considered one of his best films, was a breakout hit, and led to a 1984 deal with Cannon Films, for which he made dozens of action pictures throughout the 1980s.

He turned to television during the 1990s, starring in “Walker, Texas Ranger” from 1993-2001 on CBS, an action drama series inspired by the character he played in “Lone Wolf McQuade.” (In 2010, Texas Gov. Rick Perry made Norris an honorary member of the Texas Rangers.)

He eased up on his acting career when “Walker” ended, though he continues to make the occasional film appearance, most recently in “The Expendables 2” (2012) with Sly Stallone. He also appeared in an episode of the CBS “Hawaii Five-0” reboot in 2020.

But Norris has kept busy on other fronts. He’s written several nonfiction and fiction books since his first, Winning Tournament Karate, was issued in 1975, several of them reflecting his strong Christian beliefs. He’s also participated in many philanthropic activities, especially those involving military veterans.

A longtime Republican since first campaigning for successful presidential candidate George H.W. Bush in 1988,, Norris endorsed Sen. Mike Huckabee during his 2008 presidential primary run, and did the same for another successful candidate, Donald Trump, in 2016.

He married Dianne Kay Holochek In 1958, after meeting her at North High. They had three children during their 30-year marriage. Following their 1989 divorce, Norris married his current wife, Gena O’Kelley. The couple had twins in 2004.

And, of course, he became a macho icon when exaggerated “facts” about his many powers began appearing on Internet websites in 2005. As the increasingly hyperbolic claims gained traction on social media, they led to a series of best-selling books.

Norris at first bristled at the silly fad, but eventually embraced it, using it to play up his image humorously in public appearances.

Norris and his wife currently live on a ranch in near Houston, Texas.

Sources:

Actor Chuck Norris poses with members of the 386th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron at an unspecified southwest Asia location on Oct. 29, 2006, during a USO tour. (Credit: USAF photo)

“Chuck Norris,” Classmates.com website.

“Chuck Norris: Biography,” by DANIEL and angelsunchained and Randall Parker, MBA, Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Chuck Norris Jokes and Facts website.

Daily Breeze files.

Los Angeles Times files.

The Official Website of Chuck Norris.

Torrance Press-Herald files.

Wikipedia.

Undated jeans advertisement circa early 1980s.

Chuck Norris appears in an episode of “Room 222.” Ad from Long Beach Independent, Nov. 25, 1970, Page 28. (Credit: Long Beach Press-Telegram archives)

Developer Don Wilson overcame zoning controversy to build Marble Estates in Torrance

One of the entrances to Marble Estates in Torrance at 232nd St. and Crenshaw Blvd. (Nov. 2020 photo by Sam Gnerre)

It’s hard to overestimate how much the city of Torrance relied on the oil industry in its early days. Southern California as a whole experienced a frenzy of oil exploration and production during the 1920s, and the South Bay was no exception.

Union Tool Co., the city’s first major manufacturing firm, built its large plant in Torrance in 1912. The oil industry-related equipment and machinery it produced meant big business in the surrounding area as well as on a wider scale.

Undated photos of Torrance oil derricks. Photo courtesy Torrance Historical Society.

The oil fever hit Torrance hard in the early 1920s. Much of the city south of Carson Street was blanketed by oil derricks, and newspapers of the day are filled with reports of oil production from the hundreds of wells.

Major companies soon swooped in, including Standard Oil, which obtained rights to the vacant land known as the Marble Fee property that concerns us in today’s post from the Marble family. It quickly ramped up oil production on the 200-plus acres located southwest of the intersection of Crenshaw and Sepulveda boulevards.

The wells remained productive through the 1930s, but by the end of World War II, output had slowed considerably. The property, zoned for industrial use, became mostly just vacant land by the mid-1950s.

Don Wilson. Torrance Press, March 25, 1962, Page A-5. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)

Enter developer Don Wilson. Wilson was one of the biggest players in Southern California’s post-World War II housing boom. Wilson was particularly active in the South Bay, and eventually would build thousands of homes in Torrance alone.

Readers may remember him from the controversy surrounding his Southwood Riviera Royale tract, where protests arose in 1963 over alleged racial discrimination against Blacks who attempted to buy houses there.

Wilson acquired the rights to the Marble Fee land in 1959, and planned to build about 600 free-standing single family homes on 155 acres between 230th and 235th streets in a development to be called Marble Estates.

He had one problem: the land was zoned for industrial use, not residential development. He figured to take his case to city zoning authorities once he had sorted out various legal technicalities and was free to build.

Wilson and fellow megadeveloper Ray Watt even asked for and received tentative approval on a 5-1 vote from the Torrance City Council to rezone a part of the property in 1959. (Watt’s firm eventually would build the adjacent New Horizons housing development.)

The one dissenting council vote came from Mayor Albert Isen. He was alarmed by the amount of land being swallowed up by developers during the postwar housing boom. He was concerned that no land would be left for future industrial development, which would end up hurting the city’s financial stability.

Full page ad favoring changing the zoning from industrial to residential for the Marble Estates development. *Torrance Press*, Oct. 4, 1961, Page B-7. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)

Sure enough, when the rezoning issue reached the planning commission for approval in April 1961, Isen and his allies opposed it. They called for delay in further development until the city could conduct a complete plan for its industrial land.

The battle between industry boosters and residential developers dominated local headlines for the next 18 months. The debate included full-page political ads in the Torrance Press and Torrance Herald. The council seesawed on the issue, reversing course several times from endorsement to disapproval and back again.

The city council finally approved the $30 million development ($257 million when adjusted to 2020 dollars) at its Tuesday meeting on Dec. 4, 1962, and Wilson was free to begin building. (His original plan to build 600 homes had been scaled back to about 350.)

Two essential parts of Wilson’s plan went a long way toward guaranteeing the success of Marble Estates: the addition of a new school and an adjacent new city park in the area.

Hickory Elementary School opened at 2800 W. 227th St. in September 1961. With the development of all the new housing nearby, the Torrance Board of Education decided in February 1963 to increase its student capacity from 400 to 1200 students.

Hickory Elementary School in Torrance opened in 1961. (Nov. 2020 photo by Sam Gnerre)

The 1962 accord with the city called for the developers to provide land for a new city park. In 1964, Wilson set aside land next to the elementary school for the development of Hickory Park, which he sold to the city at a greatly reduced price in 1964. Ground was broken for the 5.8-acre public park on April 2, 1966, and the park opened a few months later.

The school/park combination served to make the Marble Estates homes even more attractive to buyers, who quickly scooped up the houses at prices starting from $38,750.

According to the real estate site Zillow, home values in Marble Estates currently range generally from around $900,000 to $1.4 million. Its convenient location, sense of community and relatively sheltered location in the heart of the city continue to make it an appealing place to live.

*Palos Verdes Peninsula News* ad, Nov. 18, 1965, Page 19. (Credit: *Palos Verdes Peninsula News*)

Sources:

Daily Breeze files.

Inflation Tool website.

Los Angeles Times files.

Palos Verdes Peninsula News files.

Torrance Press-Herald files.

Zillow website.

*Palos Verdes Peninsula News* ad, June 9, 1966, Page 23. (Credit: *Palos Verdes Peninsula News*)

Christopher Wilder’s savage crime rampage included a stopoff in the South Bay

FBI mugshots of serial killer Christopher Bernard Wilder.

On April 4, 1984, Tina Marie Risico went to the Hickory Farms store in the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance to fill out an application for employment. From there, the 16-year-old Shery High School student’s life suddenly took a terrifying cross-country detour.

While she was applying for the job, a man approached her, handed her his business card, and told her he was the manager of a local modeling agency. He offered to take her for a drive so he could photograph her for a potential modeling job.

Christopher Wilder at a *Seventeen* magazine competition at the Meadows Mall in Las Vegas on April 1, 1984 . Victim Michele Korfman was last seen at this event. (Credit: *New York Daily News*)

He gave her an initial payment of $100 and took her to the beach, where he shot photos of her. When she asked him to drive her home, he pulled a gun on her and forced her to stay in the car.

Her nine-day cross-country odyssey with Christopher Bernard Wilder had begun.

The 39-year-old Wilder was a former race-car driver who owned a successful electrical contracting company in Boynton Beach, Fla., north of Miami. He owned a home, a condo, and property in the area.

He was born in Australia on March 13, 1945,, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1970. He was indeed a professional photographer who shot beauty contests and did freelance work for magazines. In addition, he raced Porsches, mostly for his own enjoyment.

He also was a vicious sexual predator. His dark side surfaced in 1977, when he was charged with sexual battery, but acquitted. In 1980, he was convicted of the same charge in Palm Beach, Fla.

He returned to Australia in 1982, where he was charged again with sexual battery after using his photographer guise to victimize two 15-year-old girls. But after paying the $400,000 bail, he skipped the country and returned to the U.S.

He raced in the Miami Grand Prix in February 1984, and a day later, 20-year-old part-time model Rosario Gonzalez disappeared. She had been working at the Grand Prix. It was the start of a crime spree that would land Wilder on the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

By the time he reached the Proud Parrot motel on Pacific Coast Highway in Torrance on April 3, he had brutalized additional victims in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Nevada as he worked his way west.

He checked out of the Proud Parrot, now the site of Norm’s Restaurant, on the morning of April 4, and headed to the mall.

After picking up Risico, he drove to San Diego, where he sexually abused and tortured

*The Collector* by John Fowles was one of Wilder’s favorite books.

her. The pair then headed east again, through New Mexico and Texas, then north to Chicago. Fearing for her life, Risico cooperated with Wilder as he continued his spree.

She helped entice Dawnette Sue Wilt to join her in the car with Wilder at an Indiana shopping mall. He forced Risico to drive while he assaulted Wilt in the back seat. Wilt was held captive for two days before an enraged Wilder stabbed and abandoned her in upstate New York. She survived.

By now, a nationwide manhunt for Wilder was underway. He grew increasingly desperate as he and Risico headed toward New England. Fortunately for Risico, he had grown to like her, so long as she cooperated with him.

When they reached Boston on April 13, Wilder bought Risico a plane ticket at Logan Airport, handed her a few hundred dollars in spending money, and put her on a plane home. It was Risico’s first-ever airplane ride.

Gas station attendant Wayne DeLong talks to reporters in Colebrook, New Hampshire. He told them he was giving Christoper Wilder directions to Canada shortly before the shooting occurred. (Credit: The Associated Press)

After dropping Risico off, Wilder, apparently sensing the authorities closing in, made a beeline for the Canadian border.

He stopped at a gas station in Colebrook, New Hampshire, where his car was spotted by two state troopers. They identified themselves to him. He ran to his car and retrieved a .357 Magnum. One of the troopers, Lew Jellison, struggled with Wilder to keep him from shooting himself, but he didn’t succeed. The bullet went through Wilder’s body and struck Jellison in the chest.

Wilder then fatally shot himself a second time. Jellison survived his wound.

Christopher Wilder lies slumped over the steering wheel of his car after shooting himself as police tried to apprehend him in Colebrook, New Hampshire, on April 13, 1984. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Meanwhile, a traumatized Risico got off her flight home to LAX that same day. She then took a cab to Hermosa Beach, where she decompressed by shopping for lingerie at The Tushery on Hermosa Ave., followed by more shopping at the General Store.

Shellshocked, she later told the Los Angeles Times: “I couldn’t cry. My mind was just so blank. I thought, ‘I can’t cry. I don’t care. I’ll just go shopping.’”

Eventually, Wilder would be determined responsible for the murders of ten women and the assaults of many more victims. Authorities can’t really be sure of the total number of victims, as the bodies of many additional suspected victims never have been found.

Christopher Wilder as seen in a 1981 video dating service tape, released by the FBI. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Australian authorities later revealed that Wilder’s criminal past stretched back to 1962, when he pleaded guilty to participating in a gang-rape at a Sydney beach. He was put on probation and received electroshock therapy.

They also suspect him in the 1965 strangulation deaths of teenagers Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock in the beachfront dunes near Sydney. The girls had been strangled, raped and stabbed. Wilder was a suspect, but never was charged.

After his death, police found a copy of the 1963 John Fowles novel, The Collector, in which a man keeps a woman prisoner in his basement against her will until she dies, among his possessions.

The body of Christopher Wilder is unloaded from Delta Air Lines air freight terminal at Palm Beach International Airport to a waiting hearse on April 17, 1984. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Sources:

“Christopher Bernard Wilder,” Murderpedia website.

Daily Breeze files

Los Angeles Times files.

“The Snapshot Killer: Inside Christopher Wilder’s murderous spree across two countries,” by Duncan McNab, 7News (Sydney, Australia) website, Jan. 20, 2020.

Rancho San Pedro land grant heiress Maria Dolores Dominguez de Watson left a lasting legacy

Boundaries of the ranchos south of Los Angeles shown on undated map. Rancho San Pedro shaded in dark grey, center. (Credit: Title Insurance and Trust Co.)

The Dominguez family’s role in the history of the South Bay and Harbor Area began with the King of Spain granting the area known as the Rancho San Pedro to soldier Juan Jose Dominguez in 1776.

Maria Dolores Dominguez de Watson. (Credit: Findagrave website, photo added by Kathryn Sepulveda-Canning)

Dominguez, who never married, settled on the land in 1784. Upon his death in 1809, the land passed to his nephew, Jose Cristobal Dominguez. When he died in San Diego in 1825, his son, Manuel, took over management of the Rancho.

The ambitious Manuel built a large ranch house on Dominguez Hill in 1826. Now known as the Dominguez Adobe, it remains the oldest home in the South Bay. Manuel married Maria Engracia Cota on Dec. 7, 1827.

During their long and prosperous marriage, the couple would go on to have ten children, eight girls and two boys. Two of the girls died shortly after birth. Among those who survived was Maria Dolores Simona Dominguez, born Sept. 25, 1838, at the family’s ranch home that her father Manuel had built 12 years earlier.

Manuel Dominguez (Credit: USC Digital Library)

As Maria was growing up into what historians have described as the loveliest of the Dominguez daughters, the social and political landscape around her began undergoing seismic changes. California became a key battleground in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. After statehood was achieved in 1850, tensions between the American settlers (Americanos) and Hispanic natives (Californios) remained high, often exploding into violence.

Manuel Dominguez sensed that the state’s new ruling class might look to acquire his land by methods either legal or nefarious, and determined to find his own legal representation to help protect it. He found that in the person of James Alexander “Jack” Watson, who first visited the Rancho as a guest in 1854.

Watson, born in Washington, DC in 1821, had been a Texas Ranger known for his quick trigger and expert marksmanship before arriving in San Francisco in 1850. There, he pursued his legal career, slowly drifting from a rough-and-tumble law enforcement past into the more genteel pursuits of jurisprudence, and, later, politics.

Dominguez liked Watson as a potential suitor for his daughter Maria. He felt that he had the ability to protect his daughter from physical harm, as well as the legal smarts to keep the Rancho from falling into predatory hands.

According to family lore, the teenaged Maria hid under a bed upon first meeting Watson, out of shyness and in awe of his fearsome reputation. He acted as a perfect gentleman, though, and their eventual marriage at the Plaza Church in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 13, 1855, brought much happiness to the family.

The couple moved north to Monterey in 1856, where they would live for the next five years while Watson served as head of the U.S. Customhouse there.

Maria, now known legally as Maria Dolores Simona Dominguez de Watson, had her first of four children in 1857; a fifth born in 1858 died in infancy.

Following his Customs stint, Watson won election to the California State Assembly, where he served four terms. He bought land and built a home at 16th and Alameda streets in Los Angeles, where he began to turn his attention from politics to successful farming and vineyard operations.

Maria Dolores Dominguez de Watson, seated, with her four sons, from left: Patrick, James, Robert and Manuel. Photo circa 1886. (Credit: Watson Land Company)

He died there suddenly of a heart attack on Sept. 16, 1869, at the age of 48. Maria, who never remarried, was left to raise their four children, all of whom were under ten at the time of Watson’s death.

Her father died in 1882, and, following the death of her mother in 1883, and the Rancho San Pedro was partitioned officially in June 1885 among his six surviving daughters. Dolores received property in Wilmington, as well as land near the site of the original Dominguez home.

In 1887, Maria moved her family from Los Angeles back to the Rancho. In 1892, they moved into a three-story house in Wilmington. With her children fully grown, Maria sold that house after asking for and receiving permission in 1913 to live at the family Dominguez ranch house.

Maria Dolores Dominguez de Watson lived in this house at Watson Station just north of Wilmington in the late 1800s. (Credit: Watson family photo)

Having already done stints as cattle ranchers, vinters and farmers, the family turned to land acquisition and management in Maria’s later years. With the help of Los Angeles lawyer Henry O’Melveny, the family formed the Dominguez Estate Co. in 1910, the Dominguez Water Co. in 1911 and the Watson Land Co. in 1912.

The Dominguez Estate Co. dissolved in 1967, but the other two companies still are operational, with the Dominguez Water Co. becoming a public utility in 1940.

Aerial view of the Dominguez adobe ranch house and the Claretian seminary. Undated, post-1924 photo. (Credit: Historical Photo Collection of the Department of Water and Power, City of Los Angeles)

The Dominguez family also played a key role in the development of the American aerospace industry by allowing the sponsors of the International Air Meet to hold their event free of charge on the Rancho’s hillsides in January 1910. The pioneering event, and followup meets in 1911 and 1912, generated great public enthusiasm and inspired a generation of aviation industry innovators.

An oil well gushes in the Reyes oil field on Dominguez Hill in 1924. (Credit: Watson family photo)

In 1922, the Dominguez family donated the 17 acres that contained the Dominguez Rancho to the Claretian Missionaries with the promise that it retain the family name.

A year later, wildcat drillers struck oil in the Dominguez Hills, giving the family a new source of wealth: lucrative oil leases. With part of the proceeds, they built a two-story seminary for the Claretions near the ranch house.

Maria Dolores Simona Dominguez de Watson died at 85 of natural causes on Sept. 16, 1924. Her funeral at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, which her family had helped build, ws “full to the streets,” according to the news accounts of the day.

She had survived and, ulitmately, had prospered during an age of rapid and often jarring transitions from agrarian to urban life, managing to keep her family’s future secure along the way.

The Dominguez ranch house with its covered walkway and arcade, a lawn and a large pepper tree in foreground. 1929 photo. (Credit: UCLA Library, Dept. of Special Collections)

Sources:

California legacy: The James Alexander Watson-Maria Dolores Dominguez de Watson family, 1820-1980, by Judson A. Grenier with Robert C. Gillingham, Watson Land Company, 1987.

Daily Breeze files.

Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum website.

Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, by John Mack Faragher, W.W. Norton and Co., 2016.

Findagrave.com.

Los Angeles Times files.

The Rancho San Pedro: The Story of a Famous Rancho in Los Angeles County and of its owners, The Dominguez Family, by Robert Cameron Gillingham, Cole-Holmquist Press, 1961.

San Pedro News Pilot files.

Rancho San Pedro map showing the 1885 division. (Credit: CSUDH Archives)

Manhattan Beach’s Neptunian Club has given the city’s women a voice since 1909

The Neptunian Women’s Club opened its permanent clubhouse at 920 Highland Ave. in 1926. (Credit: Manhattan Beach Historical Society)

“Labor Omnia Vinci.” Work conquers all.

When ten women led by Jessie Bell Smith in the then-unincorporated and sparsely populated Manhattan Beach area decided to get together and form a club on May 26, 1909, they chose that noble Latin phrase as an aspirational motto.

Because of their nascent community’s proximity to the ocean, they also decided to name their organization the Neptunian Club, after Neptune, the Roman god of the seas. The club was the first one to be formed in Manhattan Beach, three years before the city’s official incorporation in December 1912.

Its members immediately threw themselves into a variety of projects. The club’s first priority was to make every effort to bring incorporation to the new city. Most were wives of either community officials or prominent business leaders, and they used their influence to help bring the new city to life.

Neptunian Club members in front of their first clubhouse at the Cleaver Building in Manhattan Beach in 1915. (Credit: Manhattan Beach Historical Society)

From the first, they planned social events, including the staging of a July Fourth picnic and fireworks in the summer of 1909. They created a giant American flag for the city, worked to help clean up the Manhattan Beach pier area — they posted a sign that read, “Commit No Nuisance” — and they pushed hard to establish the city’s first school, Center Street School, which would open in 1914.

In addition, Neptunians began the first public library in Manhattan Beach at their original headquarters in the Cleaver Building between 12th and Center streets. (Center St. later would be renamed Manhattan Beach Blvd.) We discussed the formation and history of the Manhattan Beach Public Library in an August 2018 post.

Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, or sea moss, helped control drifting sands in Manhattan Beach. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to the civic efforts we’ve already mentioned, the Neptunian Club deserves credit for advocating for the establishment of the city’s fire and police departments and the formation of the city’s first Boy Scout troop. They picked up on an idea that had begun at the Santa Monica pier by dropping flowers taken from their own gardens from the city pie into the waves on Memorial Day, in honor American soldiers killed in war.

In the fall of 1915, they even succeeded in helping with the beach city’s problems caused by blowing and drifting sands. They asked the City Council if they could plant “sea moss,” also known as mesembrayanthemum, on the dunes and hillsides where blowing sand was a problem. The solution worked, and the plants were maintained and expanded for years afterward.

After meeting in their own homes during their first year, club members scored the Cleaver Building meeting place by promising the owner that they would clean it up and make necessary repairs in exchange for a rent-free gathering space.

The first Neptunian Club meeting place, far left top, and developer William Smith’s real estate office, closer small building at left, on The Strand in 1915. (Credit: Manhattan Beach Historical Society)

When founder Jessie Bell Smith died in 1913, her husband, developer William Smith offered the Neptunians two lots on Third St. as a site for their new clubhouse. The group first accepted, then later demurred, saying the site was “too far out of town” to be workable.

The Neptunians still wanted to memorialize their founder, though. In 1914, they began a fundraising drive to build a memorial water fountain to Smith, to be placed at the intersection of Center St. and Manhattan Avenue.

Plans called for it to be built from sea stones, so club members, and eventually, community members began bringing up large smooth stones every time they went to the beach to contribute to the effort.

The Neptunian Club had this memorial fountain, right, built in 1915 in honor of its founder, Jesse Smith at the Intersection of Center St. and Manhattan Ave. (Credit: Manhattan Beach Historical Society)

Built in 1915, the fountain immediately became a local landmark. One side of the fountain was for animals to drink from, the other for humans. It was topped by a trident with an electric light at the top.

Unfortunately, a drunk driver in a Rolls Royce smashed into it and destroyed it in 1928. It was never rebuilt.

The club shut down nearly all activities with the onset of America’s entrance into World War I in 1917, concentrating instead on volunteering for American Red Cross efforts to provide supplies for injured soldiers. It would do the same during World War II.

In November 1924, club members voted to finally build its own clubhouse. The Neptunians paid just over $500 for a lot at 920 Highland Avenue. Contractor Fred Young, husband of a member, began to build the structure in 1925. Construction ended up costing just $5,000, $500 less than the original estimate.

The new clubhouse opened in 1926. With the exception of a 1955 addition, the Elizabeth Meacham Hall, the building remained in its original state until well into the 21st century.

In 2015, the Neptunians instituted a four-year renovation program that modernized the building, including its familiar exterior.

Dawn Whitney-Hall’s tile mermaid mural was unveiled in 2007, and removed in 2018. Photo by Jacquelyne May. (Credit: *The Beach Reporter*)

Controversy erupted in 2018 when a mermaid-themed tile mural by artist Dawn Whitney-Hall that had been installed in 2007 was removed in order to install a glass wall without notifying the artist.

Whitney-Hall had hoped the mural would be saved, but the club maintained it was not salvageable. A settlement was reached, and the newly remodeled club opened on May 14, 2019.

More than a century after the founding of their club, the Neptunians have lived up to their motto through world wars, economic depressions and the ups and downs of the club itself, which is still going strong.

The renovated Neptunian Women’s Club, sans mural, in Manhattan Beach in November 2020. (Photo by Sam Gnerre)

Sources:

Beach Reporter files.

Daily Breeze files.

“History,” City of Manhattan Beach website.

Los Angeles Times files.

“The Neptunian Club of Manhattan Beach, 1909-1974,” Mary Pyatt, Janet Schulpke and the Historical Committee, Manhattan Beach Historical Series, Publication No.2, 1974.

Neptunian Club website.

A Walk Beside the Sea: A History of Manhattan Beach, by Jan Dennis, Janstan Studio, 1987.

The newly remodeled event space inside the Neptunian Women’s Club in May 2019. Photo by Kristin Farmer. (Credit: *The Beach Reporter*)

Architect Irving J. Gill’s plans for the new city of Torrance had varying levels of success

Irving Gill’s Pacific Electric railroad bridge spans Torrance Blvd. in this view looking east in June 2020. (Photo by Sam Gnerre)

After Irving J. Gill accepted the job as chief designer for the development of Torrance from the new community’s developers in 1912, the renowned architect came up with ambitious plans both for its business and its residential areas.

Some of them remain historic fixtures in Torrance to this day. With its simple, graceful arches, the Pacific Electric bridge over Torrance Blvd. serves a symbol of the city to

this day; it was accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Gill’s Pacific Electric railroad depot on Cabrillo Ave., now repurposed as The Depot restaurant, remains one of Torrance’s most elegant older buildings.

Not all of his ideas took root, as we’ll find out, but not for lack of innovation and ingenuity.

Gill was born in Tully, New York, near the Finger Lakes district south of Syracuse, on April 26, 1870. He got his first job at 19 as a draftsman for a Syracuse company. He then moved to Chicago to work for an architectural firm where he toiled alongside fellow apprentices that included Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1893, he chose San Diego as the site of his own new architectural firm, partially for health reasons. His health and his business flourished there. He designed several important buildings, including the Ellen Browning Scripps residence, the La Jolla Women’s Club, and the Balboa Park administration building, all of which still are in use today.

In the spring of 1912, he beat out four other architects competing for the job as chief architect for Torrance, then under development. H.H. Sinclair, general manager for founder Jared Sidney Torrance’s Dominguez Land Co. He would spend the next year working on his plans, often with landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

Artist rendition shows the planned Pacific Electric railroad depot in downtown Torrance designed by Irving Gill. *Los Angeles Herald*, July 6, 1912, Page 5. (Credit: *Los Angeles Herald* archives.)

That same year, he designed the Pacific Electric depot at 1250 Cabrillo Avenue, which served Red Car passengers. The nearby railroad bridge over Torrance Blvd. ferried workers over the busy street to the new large factories such as the Union Tool Co. and the Llewellyn Iron Works that were located just north of the city center.

The Hendrie tire factory in Torrance. Circa 1919 postcard. (Credit: CSUDH Archives)

Gill also designed one of the city’s first major factories, the Hendrie Rubber Tire Co., built in 1911. The tire manufacturer on Border Ave. was a fixture for decades. It became the Eno Rubber Co. in 1926, before Rubbercraft took it over in the early 1930s. The Rubbercraft factory remained in Torrance through the 1980s before relocating to its current site in Long Beach, where it still operates.

In addition, Gill designed the first home of the First National Bank of Torrance, which opened in 1913. Neither the original rubber plant nor the bank building have survived, but Gill’s Brighton Hotel on Cabrillo Ave. still stands, though in altered form. Two other Gill hotels across from the Pacific Electric depot, the El Roi Tan and the Murray, have since been demolished.

The first home of the First National Bank of Torrance was in this one-story building, foreground, designed by Irving Gill. (Credit: *Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California*)

All of these structures had elements of has come to be known as Gill’s early modernist style. His buildings had simple designs, clean lines and few frills. He liked working with concrete, which was sturdy, easily moldable and, importantly, fireproof. In fact, a Sept. 15, 1912, Los Angeles Times story on the new Torrance development was headlined, quaintly, “Southland City That Will Boast None But Fireproof Buildings.”

Gill also had ambitious plans for the new city’s residential district. He planned to build 100 model homes for factory workers who wanted to live near their jobs in the city in the residential district south of downtown Torrance. If successful, they would have been easy to duplicate throughout the district.

Picture page showing Gill prototype houses in Torrance, from the Sept. 1913 issue of *Sunset* magazine. (Credit: *Sunset* magazine)

Gill told the Los Angeles Herald in 1912 that “the whole secret” was “privacy and cleanliness.” One wall of each was built purposely without windows, and it faced the windowed side of the neighboring house, giving privacy to each family.

As for cleanliness, the houses were designed austerely, with few adornments. Their concrete floors sometimes were curved where they met the walls, eliminating crevices to promote easier cleaning. There were no baseboards, moldings, exposed beams or other design frills inside, and basic stucco walls outside.

Beginning in 1912, about 10 of the model homes were built in the 1800 and 1900 blocks of Gramercy Ave.

Built in 1912, this house at 1819 Gramercy Ave. in Torrance originally was part of Irving Gill’s worker housing experiment. Though somewhat updated, it still retains some of Gill’s simple design elements. (Credit: Google Earth)

Sadly for Gill, his home design ideas proved to be perhaps a little too modern for their intended audience, Torrance factory workers and their families. They reacted against the lack of decoration and finery in the spartan houses, considering them nowhere near fancy enough.

After a contentious city meeting during which they aired their complaints against Gill, no more of his houses were built. Writing on the Curbed Los Angeles website, Steven Treffers identified only three remaining examples from Gill’s noble experiment still standing as of Feb. 2014.

A photo of Gill’s factory worker housing tops this *Los Angeles Times* ad from March 23, 1913, Page II12. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* historical archives database)

Gill moved on to other projects in the Los Angeles area, such as the tony Laughlin Park development in the Los Feliz area, before returning to northern San Diego county, where he continued to design buildings during the 1920s.

In the late 1920s, Gill settled in the Oceanside area, where many later examples in his slightly more ornate style still exist. One of his final designs, the original Oceanside Blade-Tribune newspaper building built in 1936, still stands and has been repurposed as the Blade 1936 restaurant.

Gill married for the first time at age 58 in 1928, and died at his wife’s family’s ranch in Carlsbad on Oct. 7, 1936.

The Depot restaurant in Torrance, seen here in 2010, occupies the former Pacific Electric depot designed by Irving Gill. (Photo by Sam Gnerre)

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Findagrave.com website.

Historic Torrance: A Pictorial History of Torrance, California, by Dennis F. Shanahan and Charles Elliott, Jr., Legends Press, 1984.

“Irving Gill, father of modern architecture,” by Patrick Sisson, Curbed website, Oct 12, 2016.

“Irving Gill, Homer Laughlin and the Beginnings of Modern Architecture in Los Angeles, Part 1, 1893-1911 and Part II, 1911-1916,” by John Crosse, Southern California Architectural History website, Jan. 20, 2015.

Irving J. Gill Foundation website.

“Irving J. Gill: Simplicity and Reform.” AD&A Museum, UC Santa Barbara.

“Irving John Gill (1870-1936),” San Diego History Center website.

Los Angeles Herald archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Olmsted District Torrance California, Survey of Historic Resources website, City of Torrance.

“The Rise and Fall of One Architect’s Modern Torrance Utopia,” by Steven Treffers, Curbed Los Angeles website, Feb. 6, 2014.

“Newspaper’s history celebrated at Blade 1936 restaurant in Oceanside,” by Pam Kragen, San Diego Union Tribune website, Sept. 25, 2019.

“TORRANCE TRACT | Designed by The Olmsted Brothers | Historic Preservation,” by the Torrance Historical Society, City of Torrance website.

Several South Bay cities have discriminatory “Sundown Town” legacies in their past

Hundreds of Torrance demonstrators, NAACP-CORE members and supporters jammed the sidewalks in the city’s Southwood housing tract in 1963 to march for fair housing. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

During the first half of the 20th Century, real estate developers couched racial discrimination under the legalese of “restrictive covenants.” City fathers seized beach property set aside for minorities under the pretext of wanting the land for a city park. And a developer’s refusal to sell housing to African-Americans in 1963 made national headlines.

These incidents all occurred in the South Bay. They are part of the “sundown town” phenomenon documented by author James W. Loewen in his landmark book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (The New Press, 2005). (Loewen died in 2021.)

Loewen notes that In sundown towns, minority groups, most often Blacks, were told through overt or implied messaging that they not only were not welcome to live there, but also were not allowed to even be there at all after dark. The name comes from threatening signs some cities posted that stated, usually using offensive racial epithets, “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You In (name of city.)”

Sign at the Sunkist Gardens veterans housing tract on Vermont Ave. south of Slauson in Los Angeles illustrates the racial discrimination that existed in the postwar housing market, where many properties had restrictive covenants that barred Blacks and other minorities from buying or renting homes. Sept. 28, 1950 photo by Irving C. Smith. (Credit: University of Southern California Digital Library)

There’s no photographic record of such signs being posted in the South Bay, though some people remember or have been told by older relatives that they once existed. The discrimination usually was more subtle. But not always.

Take the pamphlet of “Protective Restrictions” published by the Commonwealth Trust Co. for the new exclusive development, Palos Verdes Estates, in 1923, which state, in part, under the heading “Racial Limitations”:

“No part of said property shall be used or occupied or permitted to be used or occupied in whole or in part by any person of African or Asiatic descent or by any person not of the white or Caucasian race, except domestic servants, chauffeurs or gardeners of other than the white or Caucasian race may live on or occupy the premises on which their employer resides…”

Such blatantly discriminatory legal provisions would not be outlawed fully until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1948, Shelley vs. Kraemer, opened the door a crack by declaring restrictive housing covenants as unenforceable, but it took the actual 1968 law to end their use.

Women in bathing suits in the back of a truck on a hayride to Bruce Beach in Manhattan Beach. Top to bottom, Susie Thorton, Grace Williams, Mary Mingleton, Grace Harris. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

In Manhattan Beach, the city took over a section of the coastline that developer George Peck had set aside in 1912 between 26th and 27th streets for minorities, making it one of the few beaches in the area that allowed people of color.

The city booted out the residents and seized the property in 1929, but the city park that they stated they wanted to build there didn’t come into existence until more than three decades later.

After renaming the park several times, Manhattan Beach finally acknowledged its past by renaming the park Bruce’s Beach in 2006, after the Bruces, a Black family that had established a beach club on its property there in 1912.

In September 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law returning the title for the property to the Bruces. The family formally received the deed to the two parcels of seaside land in July 2022, more than 90 years after their descendants and the original owners, who were Black, had the land taken from them for racially motivated reasons.

The city of Inglewood also had sundown regulations, and, according to Loewen’s database, even had posted “sundown” signs. It was mostly white until the 1960s. A variety of factors, including increasing immigration, “white flight” to the suburbs following the 1965 Watts riots and the loosening of restrictions on housing, have led to the city becoming home to people of color.

It certainly wasn’t that way back in the 1920’s, when the Ku Klux Klan regularly conducted operations there, including a violent 1922 raid that resulted in the charging of various South Bay public officials and businessmen. 37 were indicted in the incident, but all were acquitted.

Hawthorne city sign in 1957. After decades as a sundown town, the city has become racially diverse in recent years. (Credit: University of Southern California Digital Library)

Nearby Hawthorne, home of the Beach Boys, also had race restrictions for decades that kept minorities from the city. At least two former residents, including former school board president Pam Sturgeon, recalled hearing that the city had racial “get out of town by sundown” signs at its city limits during the 1930s, according to Loewen.

Much like Inglewood, the city has become much more ethnically diverse since housing restrictions were eased. Minorities now make up the majority of Hawthorne High School’s student population.

Nor was the South Bay’s largest city, Torrance, immune from the practice. Mega-developer Don Wilson caused a firestorm of controversy to engulf the sleepy suburban community in 1963 when he refused to sell houses in his new Southwood Riviera Royale tract to Blacks.

Front page headline from *Torrance Herald*, July 11, 1963. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)

Members of the NAACP and CORE already had begun organizing protests at Wilson’s new Torrance property, as he had been sued the year before for alleged housing discrimnation at at his Dominguez Hills project in Carson.

The resulting civil unrest from protests, sit-ins, marches and other incidents — actors Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts joined one such march — brought the city unwanted national attention.

Classified ad for home for sale in Lomita, then unincorporated, from the *San Pedro News Pilot*, Sept. 8, 1945, Page 6. (Credit: *San Pedro News Pilot* archives)

As the above classified ad illustrates, other South Bay communities also may have employed less visible exclusionary policies during the first half of the 1900s.

According to the 2018 edition of Loewen’s book, most, if not all California cities no longer have “sundown town” policies. Most of them broke with the practice because of the Fair Housing Act, the 1960s civil rights movement, school integration and a variety of other social factors.

Do former sundown cities have a responsibility to disown their past restrictive and, at times, openly racist practices? It’s an open question, but Glendale,Calif., for one, has done just that.

In October 2020, it became the first city in California to pass an official resolution apologizing for its dark past policies of racial exclusion and discrimnation. It joined La Crosse, Wis., and Goshen, Ind., as the only cities to pass such resolutions — so far.

Outlined portion of text of *Los Angeles Times* ad: “No industries, asylums or public nuisance businesses are permitted, and race restrictions are to be rigidly observed. There will also be proper conservation of trees parkings and mountain reservations.” April 6, 1924, Page E16. (Credit: *Los Angeles Times* archives)

Sources:

“California Towns Where Blacks Feared Sundown,” by Quinci LeGardye, California Black Media, Precinct Reporter News, Sept. 4, 2020.

Daily Breeze files.

Los Angeles Times files.

“An Old Brochure Reveals How the Palos Verdes Peninsula Became a Massive Planned Community,” by Glen Creason, Los Angeles magazine, Aug. 27, 2019.

“The Oregon Black Laws,” The History of Social Justice in Oregon (OSU blog).

San Pedro News Pilot files.

“Something Has Gone Very Wrong… | The Homepage of James W. Loewen.

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, by James W. Loewen, : New Press, 2018 (illustrated edition).

Torrance Press-Herald archives.