On Bunker Hill

Brother Can You Spare…?

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: September 21, 1937

Arrested on charges of stabbing J.T. Murray, 27-year-old laborer, as he stepped from a cafe at 234 East Fifth Street, was Charles Parsons, 19, of this address, captured with Victor Burk, 20, at Fifth and Spring Streets. Earlier, Murray had argued with two beggars who dunned him for a nickel, and a fistfight broke out. One of the beggars pulled a knife and stabbed Murray, who was taken to General Hospital with a belly wound that was expected to prove fatal. When frisked, Parsons’ pockets revealed a bloody knife.

A Masher Mashed

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: September 1, 1930

A young woman named Natalie residing at 1212 Wilshire Boulevard was menaced by a masher who followed her for several blocks in the early morning hours before finally succumbing to his urges and making a grab. Natalie defended herself, bashing her assailant over the head with a sack of grapes and then slashing his face with her keys. Hearing screams (it’s unclear who was screaming), neighbors called police, and at the above address they found Roy Roberts, 24, a transient, with bloody scratches all over his puss. He was arrested on suspicion, not of mashery, but of robbery. Perhaps he snatched the grapes?

Mrs. Kent’s Complaint

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: January 26, 1907

Baby stealing? That, and spousal cruelty, are the charges leveled against labor organizer Edward W. Kent, arrested while in the act of packing to flee Los Angeles. His wife, residing at this address, says she has been confined to her bed for months, and a week ago Kent gave their son to a Mrs. F. Borgel, who came to Mrs. Kent’s bed and tore the babe from her arms. It was at this point that the mother filed charges. She claims that her husband, a member of the Musicians Union and one-time candidate for San Francisco Supervisor, had become unkind to her around the time she learned that his reputation in their former home, Chicago, was less than pristine. He had hit her, pulled her hair and ears, made fiendish faces and screamed that he hoped she would die until she checked into a sanitarium on Hill Street. It was at which point her son was taken. An investigation is being opened, and when Mrs. Kent is well enough to appear in court, charges may be pursued against her husband at her discretion.

Boy Burglar Nabbed

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: December 22, 1904

Above, Hoyt Brown in 1910

Arrested at this lodging house in the act of burgling was the dapper, notorious Hoyt Brown (aka Frank Carlson), recently sprung from the Reform School at Whittier, but still rotten.

He was about 17 or 18 when, two Augusts back, while working as a bellboy at the Hotel Lillie at 534 Hill Street, Brown he was charged with having liberated valuables from rooms there, earning notice from detectives as "a sneak thief a grade above amateur at least" and "bearing the unenviable reputation of having made the biggest hauls of any local boy burglar in years."

Previously he’d been employed at the Hotel Savoy, and he confessed he’d made off with a watch and chain. But his biggest likely score was the Dice diamond robbery: he allegedly rifled the locked room of Mrs. F.H. Dice at the Berkeley Flats at Ninth and Main, stealing six still-warm diamond rings worth upwards of $1200 and numerous other gems while their owner chatted with a friend down the hall. Hoping to avoid publicity, Mrs. Dice hired her own detectives, and while a few baubles turned up in a local pawn shop, most of the rings were never found. Pawn broker I.J. Smith was himself convicted of a misdemeanor for buying two rings and sentenced to 50 days on the chain gang or a $50 fine. Smith doggedly gave the old gang a try, but came up with the cash after a few uncomfortable hours.

On the 1904 occasion, Flower Street residents had previously noticed Hoyt Brown hanging around suspiciously, and today he was found in the act of entering someone’s room. Arrested by Officer Hunter and frisked, his pockets revealed a variety of jewelry, including a wedding ring engraved within "John to Deed. May 1, 1890. Dec. 15, 1901" which no one in the house recognized.

Hoyt Brown will go on to spend his twenties robbing homes from San Francisco to San Diego, between stints in San Quentin and Folsom prisons. He next appears in the local record in June 1910, when he’s discovered lurking in the closet of Mrs. A. Maurice Low, a visitor from Washington D.C. who’s stopping at the Stratford Apartments at Sixth and Burlington. Chased from the room by the shrieking Mrs. Low, Brown became an object of interest to the neighborhood. The noise drew the attention of Leon Godshall, a skilled sprinter who was playing lawn tennis nearby. He tossed his racket aside and chased Brown for several blocks, then tackled and held him until police arrived. Brown would unsuccessfully plead insanity over this last pinch, but was almost certainly sent back to prison.

The Annie Larsen Affair Comes to Bunker Hill

July 10, 1917

A resident of Bunker Hill was arrested today as part of a secret indictment issued by the Federal grand jury in San Francisco. Ladel P. Varna, aka L. Percy Ram Chandra of 318 S. Flower Street was charged with violating the President’s neutrality proclamation. He was suspected of being involved in the recent Annie Larsen affair, part of a "wholesale plot to assist the Hindus in an effort to throw off the British yoke."

The affair, and the trial that followed is too hopelessly confusing to relate here in any detail, but involved "German spies," the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and India’s Ghadar Party. The Annie Larsen, a barely seaworthy vessel, was loaded up with approximately 4 million round of ammunition, 3758 cases of small arms ammunition, 10,000 Springfield rifles, 10,000 bayonets, and 10,000 cartridge belts, and sent out to rendezvous with the Maverick, and transfer the cargo to the larger ship, which would then head for Southeast Asia.

But back to Bunker Hill for now…

A graduate of Delhi University, Varna had lived in the United States for about four years at the time of his arrest. When he arrived in San Francisco, he operated a fruit stand that did enough business to allow him to save up his money and purchase some real estate around Berkeley. Then, two and a half years ago, Varna moved to Los Angeles and took a job in a cafeteria on Fourth Street. He lived in a room at 318 S. Flower with four other men, and spoke perfect English

Of the charges brought against him, Varna said, "I know nothing about it except as the complain was read to me. It is all like a dream to me. I was in no conspiracy to violate the laws of this country and can bring witnesses to show what I have been doing ever since I landed. I have saved some money, but do not like to spend it on a lawyer. I won’t hire an attorney."

Varna had recently registered for military service, and said that he was wiling to go to war for the United States if he was called.

Bryan Mansion & Fleur-de-Lis Apartments/Capitol Hotel – 333 S. Grand Avenue

For many, the tragedy of Bunker Hill was seeing Victorian structures that had survived more than half a century torn down in the blink of an eye. While many homes did survive for up to eight decades, others like the Crocker Mansion had somewhat abbreviated lives, lasting a mere thirty years or so. The E.P. Bryan residence at 333 S. Grand, however, might possibly win the award for shortest existence of a mansion on Bunker Hill.

Elden P. Bryan was a Texan who landed in Los Angeles in 1886 and made a fortune in real estate, most notably selling H.E. Huntington his first piece of property. Around 1890, the Bryan family decided to reside in the quickly developing Bunker Hill neighborhood and construction began at 333 S. Grand Avenue. A superstitious man, Bryan allegedly halted construction and altered architectural plans numerous times to suit his paranoia. The finished product was an elegant home with two sets of stairs leading up to the front door. One set was made up of fourteen steps and the other twelve, deliberately designed to avoid the unlucky number thirteen. The real estate baron and his wife, Georgie, entertained other prominent Los Angeles folk at the residence, frequently receiving coverage in the society column

In 1904, Bryan was developing the Westmoreland Tract in the Wilshire-Pico District and construction commenced on an eighteen room home by architect Charles F Whittlesey, who incorporated his trademark reinforced concrete into the design. It is unknown if Bryan left Bunker Hill because Westmoreland was more fashionable or because he felt the Grand Ave residence to be unlucky after all. By 1906, the Bryan family had moved into their palatial new quarters and the home on Bunker Hill was gone, replaced by the Fleur-de-Lis Apartments and another house. The E.P. Bryan Residence has existed for approximately fourteen years.

Perhaps the superstitious homeowner had been onto something. In the ensuing years, many residents of the building that replaced the short lived mansion would suffer severe misfortunes.

In 1907, John Harding was half a block away from his Grand Ave lodgings, when he was beaten within an inch of his life in a case of mistaken identity. Another resident, P.J. Sinclair, had been out of work for sometime before he decided to end it all by swallowing poison in 1938. Several days went by before his body was discovered inside the boarding house, along with the suicide note that read "I have not got the nerve or conscience to be a crook and under the present conditions it is better to die than to live." In 1932, Everett R. Todd thought jumping out the window of his room a preferable way to end it all. His reasons according to the letter he left behind were "the suffering I am causing so many people and because of nervousness." Then there was C.L. Devont, who was despondent over a failed marriage in 1934 when she shot herself in the heart . At least she was thoughtful enough to write a farewell note, leaving all her possessions to her estranged husband.

It wasn’t all gloom and doom at the Fleur-de-Lis Apartments, later known as the Capitol Hotel. In 1937, residents were involved in a 1,200 person written protest, objecting to the City Council’s proposal to replace Angels Flight with an elevator. The building also held the distinguished honor of housing Los Angeles’ shortest man, Angelo Rossitto, who was two feet eleven inches tall.

By 1962, "progress" had come to Bunker Hill and the Capitol Hotel went the way of its Victorian predecessor.

Image of Bryan Mansion courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Burn Melrose Burn

February 27, 1911. It‘s 9:30am, and Melrose Hotel manager Mark C. Bentz–nephew of M. W. Connor, owner–was in the office when stifling fumes and a dense cloud of smoke began to rise from the floor. He dashed down the stairs and into the basement where, in smoke so dense he nearly suffocated, managed at great length to extinguish the conflagration. Bentz discovered newspapers wadded up between the beams, blackened and scorched.

Bentz and Connor went searching through the house, cellar to garret, for some sign of a stranger, and were about to give up when the office again filled with smoke. Again there was a dash to the basement”¦nothing. This time the smokey cloud was emerging from the elevator shaft. San Bernardino papers (aha!) were extracted, smoldering, from between wooden beams therein. This time Bentz and Connor summoned the authorites.

Good thing, too, for as Sgt. Hartmeyer approached the Melrose, he saw smoke billowing from the structure”¦two alarms were sent to the fire department, a door and several windows were broken open, and a large clothes basket, filled with paper, blazing furiously, was doused.

No-one ever found out who the immolator of South Grand was, or what it was they were after. (Whether burning the Melrose inspired Kimberly to firebomb Melrose Place at the end of Season Three is a question, alas, for Darren Star.)

The original Melrose Hotel, 130 South Grand, was a thirty-room, five-story structure built by Marc W. Connor (on what was then called Charity Street) in the summer of 1889. Its architect was Joseph Cather Newsom. It was a center of fashionable goings-on, and society spectacle, and place of repose for honorable peoples.

(The house in the foreground, 142 S. Grand, is the Robert Larkins residence, which became the Richelieu Hotel ca.1890.)

In early 1902 Connor erected the far more box-like Melrose Hotel, its architect Thomas J. McCarthy, at 120 just to the west of his cupola‘d wonder, which became its annex, connected to the hotel proper by an arcade.

The dual Melroses persevered, all ornate of railing and careful of mitering, through the decline of, well, just about everything. By 1957, time had run out for the Melrose (one could say that Melrose place had been, if you will, canceled).

There wasn‘t anything left now but for little old ladies to amble by and mutter “oh, dear” and reminisce “I remember as if it were yesterday–the time President McKinley came to Los Angeles. We all came down and crowded around on the sidewalk–right here, right on this very spot–and listened while he made a speech from the front porch”¦”

Here, Mrs. Mary Connor Rasche, whose father Marc W. built the Melrose, poses before her father’s legacy some weeks before its demolition. (What’s that lurking in the background? With those clean modern lines, nary a gable or dormer to be seen? Why, it’s Paul Williams‘ LA County Municipal Court; here‘s an image from the great you-are-here website.)

And so, it being 1957, the Melrose had to go.

“One of the wrecking crew workmen observed that it took more than a
year to build but only eight hours of giant claw and four-ton sphere
hammering to lay the once proud building to the ground.”

Ah, the March of Progress. One can hear it goosestepping along, even now.

In any event, should you wish to visit the site of the former Melrose, please patronize this parking structure.

Melrose ca. 1895 courtesy California Historical Society, University of Southern California Doheny Memorial Library

Melrose 1957 courtesy Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, University of Southern California Doheny Memorial Library

Other images Los Angeles Times and you-are-here.com; postcard, author’s collection

I Want to Live!

121 North Flower Street

April 15, 1953

The most sensational trial of 1953 has to have been that of Barbara Graham. The defendant was accused, along with Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, Baxter Shorter, and John True of the beating death of Mrs. Monahan during a home invasion robbery. The crime itself was so banal that it may not have made it to the front page of the LA Times at all, and it definitely wouldn”™t have stayed there for as long as it did had it not been for Barbara, an attractive 29 year old prostitute and drug addict.

The story had all of the elements of a lurid tale from a sleazy detective magazine. Barbara Graham, abandoned by her teenaged mother in Oakland years before, had spent time in the same reformatory where her mom was an alumnus. Barbara had worked as a prostitute, and had become addicted to drugs. She”™d been introduced to her co-defendants by none other than her husband, Henry, a small time career criminal. It was rumored that not only was Barbara having an affair with Perkins ”“ but also that she, Perkins, and Santos were frequently engaged in threesomes. The press had a field day.

The crime itself was apparently the result of misinformation given to Perkins. He was told that Mrs. Monahan (former mother-in-law of Las Vegas gambler Tutor Scherer) had a sack full of money and jewelry that she kept in her home (the same kind of tragic misunderstanding would result in the brutal murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959, and become the subject of Truman Capote”™s brilliant novel, “In Cold Blood”).

On the night of March 9, 1953, the gang drove to Mrs. Monahan”™s home in Burbank. Barbara knocked on the front door and told the woman that her car had broken down, and asked to use the telephone. The men were waiting right behind Barbara and before Mrs. Monahan could respond, they all pushed their way into the house where they immediately started screaming at her. The gang of strung out miscreants kept demanding to be told where she kept her money and jewelry.

Mrs. Monahan repeatedly told the crooks that she didn”™t keep cash at home, but they were so hopped up on drugs and adrenaline that they didn”™t believe her. One version of the story was that Barbara started to beat the victim with a pistol while the men laughed and egged her on. The older woman was beaten to the floor by “Bloody Babs”, as she would later be dubbed by the press, who then smothered the victim to death by tightening a pillowcase over her head. Not surprisingly, Babs”™ version of the story shifted the blame onto her partners. But as far as the law was concerned, since all the defendants were present during the commission of the murder, they all shared the guilt.

It wasn”™t until the suspects had been identified and arrests had been made that the tale would take a turn onto Bunker Hill. Once the drugs and false bravado had worn off and the specter of possible death sentences began to loom large, it was a sure thing that a member of the gang would look to the law for a deal. It was Baxter Shorter who decided to save himself by spilling his guts to the DA. Shorter was an ex-con and a known associate of LA”™s premier gangster, the diminutive but lethal Mickey Cohen. Shorter”™s friends got wind of his visits with the DA, and they became very nervous.

Baxter and his wife Olivia lived in an apartment at 121 N. Flower, and it was from that location that Shorter was kidnapped by two men. In a photo shown to her by police, Olivia identified one of the kidnappers as Emmett Perkins. The other man was almost certainly Santos. No shrinking violet, Olivia tried halting the kidnapping by brandishing a 30-30 carbine at the husband snatchers, but they told her that they”™d shoot her where she stood if she didn”™t back off. Olivia told the cops that she had seen a female in the men”™s car. She wasn”™t able to get close enough to provide a description of the woman, but she was able to describe the car as a 1951 Dodge or Plymouth five passenger coupe ”“ coincidentally, the same kind of car owned by Barbara. Once the car sped away, Baxter Shorter vanished forever. Nary a bone fragment nor a tooth would ever surface, and he would be declared legally dead in 1960.

Barbara maintained her innocence until the end. Being a mother of three, she may have avoided the death penalty if she hadn”™t made the mistake of offering a fellow inmate $25k to provide her with an alibi for the night of the murder. Unfortunately for her, the cellmate was actually a cop, planted to befriend her and gather information. Barbara”™s blunder had doomed her to death.

Santo, Perkins, and Barbara would all die in San Quentin”™s gas chamber on the same day.

Graham”™s execution was the paradigm for cruel and unusual punishment and would be the topic of many impassioned editorials, even by supporters of the death penalty. On the morning of her execution she”™d dressed in a beige wool suit and brown pumps, and had tried to prepare herself to face death. She was scheduled to die at 10:00 am on June 3, 1955, but was granted a stay until 10:45 am. Her execution would be delayed one more time, causing Barbara to ask “Why do they torture me?” Finally at 11:28 am Barbara was blindfolded at her request, and was led from the holding cell to the gas chamber.

In a macabre moment the executioner, Joe Feretti, gave the condemned woman a bit of advice: “Now take a deep breath and it won”™t be so bad” ”“ to which she replied, “How the hell would you know?”

For a fictionalized account of Graham”™s story, rent a copy of the 1958 film, “I Want to Live!” starring Susan Hayward.

Bunker Hill: A Hotbed of Spiritualist Fraud!

On October 16, 1924, Los Angeles Times reporter Charles Sloan took rooms at the Alexandria Hotel under the name of Dr. Chamberlyn Snow, and arranged a meeting with William A. Jackson, President of the National Independent Spiritualist Association, Inc. (NISA).

He wanted to set up practice as a spiritualist and medium in Los Angeles, he told Jackson, but was unable to get a permit under the city’s ordinances regulating the operation and advertisement of spiritualist practice. That license would require that "Snow" be ordained by a recognized spiritualist organization, and the problem was, he told Jackson, "I don’t know a damn thing about spiritualism."

This was, Jackson said, no problem at all. All Snow needed to do was to produce a check for $175, and he could be ordained as a spiritualist minister and healer. Snow gave his money to Jackson’s wife, Lois A. Jackson, secretary of N.I.S.A., and all was in order.

On November 7, 1924, acting on Sloan’s information, warrants were issued for the arrest of the Jacksons, the 8 other directors and officers of NISA, and 36 mediums and spiritualists in Los Angeles, on charges of criminal conspiracy, attempts to obtain money by false pretense, larceny by trick and device, and other related charges.

The NISA headquarters were located in the Lankershim Building at 3rd and Spring, and many of those arrested lived right on Bunker Hill.

Besides the Jacksons, who resided at 223 S. Flower Street, were Professor Bernard of 316 1/2 S. Broadway, Mabel Tyler of 318 W. 3rd Street, and Michael Crespo, BS, MS, and PhD, the so-called "miracle man," who lived at 145 S. Spring.

The bust led to an investigation of over 200 spiritualist groups, 48 of them located in Los Angeles. The cities of Alhambra and Long Beach set about passing ordinances that would make the practice of spiritualism illegal.

Crespo was the easiest target and first major conviction of the bunch, found in violation of the State Medical Practice Act, and guilty of performing illegal marriages and divorces.

NISA records revealed that the organization boasted a membership of over 235,000 people, and held property valued at $112,000; more importantly, they had ordained approximately 5500 people. In many cases, they had not followed the organization’s rules that those ordained would have to "demonstrate the gospel, philosophy, and science of continued existence after so-called death according to some commonly accepted or approved methods of the NISA."

On February 26, 1925, the Jacksons were found guilty of issuing certificates to unqualified persons, allowing them to circumvent city ordinances regulating the practice of spiritualism. William was sentenced to 90 days in prison and a $500 fine, and Lois to 30 days in prison and a $250 fine.

City Prosecutor Friedlander said of the proceedings, "If this prosecution… has done nothing else, it has at least stripped the highly colorful veneer of an organized group of religious imposters who were preying upon a class of credulous, superstitious, and unthinking people and brought to the surface a detailed and elaborate method of fraud."

When NISA’s charter was revoked by the state on December 2, 1925, Harry Houdini wired his congratulations to the staff of the Times, saying "It was well done. You have thrown an obstacle in the path of fraudulent spiritualism which will last for years to come."

Image from the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Brousseau Mansion – 238 South Bunker Hill Avenue

Many of the Bunker Hill mansions went away without much fanfare, their existence blighted by high rises and retained only in the faint memories of former residents. Others, like the Brousseau Mansion, held on long enough to be captured on canvas by the many artists who descended upon the Hill in its final years. The graceful beauty of the Victorian residence shines not only in paintings and photographs but also in the accomplishments of a couple of its most notable residents.

Located on South Bunker Hill Avenue, between Second & Third Street, the house was one of the Hill’s earliest, built around 1878 by Judge Julius Brousseau. While many early residents of the Hill found themselves tangled up in scandals involving kidnapping, adultery and suicide, according to the LA Times, “no citizen of Los Angeles had a better reputation for integrity and good citizenship than Mr. Brousseau.” The family, including two sons and two daughters resided at the stately mansion until the death of Mrs. Brousseau, around 1901, followed by the Judge in 1903. The Brousseau boys would go on to try their hands at various vocations and daughter Mabel would become a fixture of the City as a respected music teacher. Kate Brousseau, the eldest of the Judge’s children would prove to be one of Bunker Hill’s most extraordinary residents.

Kate Brousseau began her teaching career around the age of 20 and was at one time employed as a French instructor at the State Normal School, located where the Central Library now stands. She also gave French lessons at the family home for 75 cents per visit. In the mid 1890s she began studies at the University of Paris where she was “the only woman student in a Greek class of sixty members.” Upon her return from France, Kate would frequently translate French literature which was then published in the Los Angeles Times. She would go on to earn a PhD in psychology, serve with the French Army during WWI and assist the French Army with the rehabilitation of shell shocked soldiers after the war. Kate publish numerous books with subjects including race and education and became an internationally known psychologist, teaching the subject at Mills College from 1907-1928. Although she was born in Michigan and despite her many travels, Kate Brousseau still called Los Angeles home until her death in 1938.

Soon after the Brousseau clan vacated 238 S. Bunker Hill, the residence became a boarding house like so many others on the Hill. A one time showpiece of the neighborhood, by 1939 the twenty-one room house was broken up into 13 units. Of the many occupants who came and went during the mansion’s half century as multi-housing, the most famous was probably “the funny old man with the birds.”

From the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

When the Community Redevelopment Agency began its scourge of Bunker Hill, many artists and photographers descended upon the neighborhood, desperate to “preserve” the buildings before they were gone. Little did these artists know that a resident of 238 S Bunker Hill had been painting scenes of the neighborhood for years. His name was Marcel Cavalla, and by 1963 he had been a resident of the Brousseau Mansion for twenty three years. A retired pastry chef, Cavalla lived alone with his pet birds and painted to “pass the time,” using the finished products as wallpaper to keep him and the birds company. Before the house was demolished, Cavalla was “discovered” by a fellow artist and his work received a month long showing at a local art gallery. Suffering from cancer, Cavalla was able to live out his days at the Brousseau residence until his death in 1966. Leo Politi would include a portrait called “Marcel” in his 1964 tribute Bunker Hill, Los Angeles : reminiscences of bygone days.

By 1967, South Bunker Hill Avenue had been wiped off the map and the Brousseau Mansion along with it.