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A Metropolitan Entrepreneur Par Excellence: Henry E. Huntington and the Growth of Southern California, 1898–1927

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

William B. Friedricks
William B. Friedricks
Affiliation:
William B. Friedricks is assistant professor of history atSimpson College.
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Abstract

Henry E. Huntington, according to the following article, placed his imprint on the development of his region, the Los Angeles basin, to an extent unique among urban entrepreneurs. His great wealth and foresight, and especially his interests in street railways, real estate development, and hydroelectric power, enabled him to become a de facto city planner for one of the most important metropolitan regions in the United States.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2: Real Estate in Business History , Summer 1989 , pp. 329 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

1 Crump, Spencer, Ride the Big Red Cars: How the Trolleys Helped Build Southern California (Los Angeles, 1962), 10.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Ingham, John N., The Iron Barons: A Social Analysis of an American Urban Elite, 1874–1964 (Westport, Conn., 1978)Google Scholar; Jaher, Frederic C., The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Urbana, Ill., 1982)Google Scholar; and Davies, Edward J. II, The Anthracite Aristocracy: Leadership and Social Change in the Hard Coal Regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1800–1930 (DeKalb, Ill., 1985).Google Scholar A book that returns the focus to the urban entrepreneurs' role in establishing prosperous cities is Folsom, Burton W. Jr, Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurs and City Growth in Pennsylvania's Lackawanna and Lehigh Regions, 1800–1920 (Baltimore, Md., 1981).Google Scholar

3 Recent works on Los Angeles concentrating on the post-1920 period include Bottles, Scott L., Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City (Berkeley, Calif., 1987)Google Scholar; Weiss, Marc A., The Bise of the Community Builders: The A merican Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Marchand, Bernard, The Emergence of Los Angeles: Population and Housing in the City of Dreams, 1940–1970 (London, 1986).Google Scholar

4 Fogelson, Robert M., The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 108, 123Google Scholar; and Marchand, Emergence of Los Angeles, 62–66. As Fogelson points ont, before 1920 the Los Angeles work force was largely involved in trades and professions, and the region's principal industries—which included flour mills, foundries, slaughter houses, and carpentry shops—were small in scale and oriented toward the local market. Large-scale industry did not really appear in Southern California until the 1920s. Rather than establishing branch factories in Southern California, national corporations continued shipping their products west until after the First World War, when rapid population growth and rising transit costs made it advantageous to build plants in the Los Angeles basin; see Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 121–30.

5 Although the discovery of oil in the 1890s certainly played a role in the region's development, oil's real impact was felt after 1910 when demand for petroleum rapidly rose with increased automobile sales, and especially after 1920, when large oil fields were found. Viche, Fred W., “Black Gold Suburbs: The Influence of the Extractive Industry on the Suburbanization of Los Angeles, 1890–1930,” Journal of Urban History 8 (Nov. 1981): 3–26Google Scholar, argues that although trolley lines—largely Huntington's—were responsible for the suburban development of the north, northeast, and western portions of the Los Angeles basin, as well as Long Beach, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, and Hollywood, the southern part of Los Angeles and northern Orange County were primarily developed because of the location of oil fields. Viche's article is provocative, but as he says, “this [his article] is not meant to depreciate the influence of interurbán transportation, but rather to place its role in proper perspective.” Thus, though oil appears to have been significant in the growth of some cities in southern parts of metropolitan Los Angeles, the interurban remained the essential component in laying out and developing Southern California.

6 Pomeroy, Earl, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (Seattle, Wash., 1965), 139–42.Google Scholar For more on the promotion of Los Angeles, see Elias, Judith W., “The Selling of a Myth: Los Angeles Promotional Literature, 1885–1915” (Master's thesis, California State University, Northridge, 1979).Google Scholar

7 McWilliams, Carey, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1973), 13.Google Scholar

8 Larsen, See Lawrence, The Urban West at the End of'the Frontier (Lawrence, Kans., 1978), 45.Google Scholar For a social and cultural sketch of the Los Angeles urban elite, see Jaher, Urban Establishment, 577–685.

9 See Collis Potter Huntington Estate Material, Huntington Vault Material, box 3, Last Will and Testament of Collis Potter Huntington, Henry Edwards Huntington Collection, 24/5. This material is located in the Huntington Librany, San Marino, Calif. [Hereafter the Henry Edwards Huntington Collection will be abbreviated HEH.]

10 Fulton, William, “Those Were Her Best Days': The Streetcar and the Development of Hollywood before 1910,” Southern California Quarterly 65 (Fall 1984): 238.Google Scholar

11 Los Angeles Examiner, 12 Dec. 1904.

12 For more detail on Huntington's attempts to build a Pacific Electric line to San Diego, see Friedricks, William B., “Henry E. Huntington and Real Estate Development in Southern California, 1898–1917,” Southern California Quarterly 71 (Winter 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For explanation of the relationship between the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, see Trottman, Nelson, History of the Union Pacific: A Financial and Economic Survey (New York, 1923), 319–32Google Scholar, and Hofsommer, Don L., The Southern Pacific, 1901–1985 (College Station, Texas, 1986), 58–59.Google Scholar

13 Dumke, Glenn S., “Growth of the Pacific Electric and Its Influence upon the Development of Southern California to 1911” (Master's thesis, Occidental College, 1939), 119Google Scholar; Jaher, Urban Establishment, 612–13; Stimson, Grace H., Bise of the Labor Movement in Los Angeles (Berkeley, Calif., 1955), 200–201Google Scholar; Perry, Louis B. and Perry, Richard S., A History of the Los Angeles Labor Movement, 1911–1941 (Berkeley, Calif., 1963), 4–6Google Scholar; Kelker, De Leuw, and Company, Report and Recommendations on a Comprehensive Rapid Transit Plan for the City and County of Los Angeles (Chicago, 1925), 17–34Google Scholar; and United States Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910. Abstract of Census and Supplement for California (Washington, D.C., 1913), 568–69, 684.Google Scholar For a comparison of Los Angeles's population growth with that of other U.S. cities, see Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 78–79.

14 See, for example, the Los Angeles Times, 9–10 July 1905.

15 Southern California Edison, The Greater Edison (1917), 5.

16 Derived from Huntingdon's personal balance sheets, 1900–1927, HEH 11/2/1–4.

17 In 1920 the Los Angeles basin's streetcar network was divided between Huntington and the Southern Pacific. By this time, Huntington was willing to get out of the unprofitable Pacific Electric because he believed it had largely served its purpose of providing transit lines to many of his subdivisions. In a complex transaction that involved trading of stock, Huntington became the sole owner of the profitable, intraurban, downtown-oriented Los Angeles Railway, and the Southern Pacific secured outright ownership of the interurban Pacific Electric. For more information on this deal, see Huntington Vault Material, box 1, and HEH 34/A/4.

18 Banham, Reyner, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (New York, 1971), 34.Google Scholar

19 For more information on the layout of the Los Angeles basin and the impact of the automobile see, Foster, Mark, “The Model-T, the Hard Sell, and Los Angeles's Urban Growth: The Decentralization of Los Angeles during the 1920s,” Pacific Historical Review 44 (Nov. 1976): 459–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bottles, Los Angeles and the Automobile; and Monkkonen, Eric H., America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities and Towns, 1780–1980 (Berkeley, Calif, 1988).Google Scholar

20 See Banham, Los Angeles: Four Ecologies.

21 Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1989.

22 Quoted from Dumke, “Growth of the Pacific Electric,” 114.

23 Us Angeles Times, 12 April 1903.

24 Foster, “Model-T and Los Angeles's Urban Growth,” 476–77.

25 Santa Ana Blade, l June 1906, quoted from Crump, Ride the Big Red Cars, 77.

26 Ibid., 114.

27 Foster, “Model-T and Los Angeles's Urban Growth,” 473. Foster noted the importance of streetcars to pre-1920 Los Angeles by examining the relationship between trolley lines and street location. Using Los Angeles City maps drawn between 1902 and 1919, he found only a few streets located more than six blocks from a trolley line. See, Foster, “Model-T and Los Angeles's Urban Growth,” 476.

28 Jaher, Urban Establishment, 612–19. Harrison Gray Otis was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Harry Chandler was the general manager of the Times and Otis's son-in-law.

29 For the best account of the subdivider's role in city development and the rise of urban planning, see Weiss, Community Builders, especially 9–13, 79–140; and Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 106–7.

30 Weiss, Community Builders, 3.

31 Huntington's real estate holdings were largely in the northeastern portions of Los Angeles County, an area of over 4,000 square miles. He owned about 35 percent of present-day Alhambra and shared ownership of the central business district of Glendale. In Pasadena, he held a majority interest in the Oak Knoll area, as well as property west of Annandale Country Club, land on North Lake Avenue, and 1,000 acres in the city's Rosemead section. In addition, Huntington owned about 25 percent of the land in San Gabriel, about 25 percent of South Pasadena, and approximately 75 percent of San Marino. Furthermore, Huntington owned business properties in downtown Los Angeles and held a substantial interest in Huntington Park and Vernon. He retained 90 percent of Redondo Beach, a minority interest in Huntington Beach and Beverly Hills, real estate in Long Beach, and land in Newport Beach. All of these areas became densely settled over the course of the twentieth century. Information on Huntington's landholdings come from transcript of interview with A. G. Walker, 1 March 1960, HEH 19/1.

32 For more information on the use of deed restrictions to determine the makeup of subdivisions, see Weiss, Community Builders.

33 See William R. Staats Co., Oak Knoll pamphlet (1906); Oak Knoll Tract Map, 1912, HEH 9977; Los Angeles Examiner, 3 Dec. 1905; and Wilson, Carol Green, California Yankee: William R. Staats—Business Pioneer (Claremont, Calif, 1946), 94–95.Google Scholar

34 Fogslson, Fragmented Metropolis, 154.

35 See, Los Angeles Herald, 10, 14 June, 5 Ott. 1903, and 14 Sept. 1907. See also prospectus for Alfred Dolge Manufacturing Company, 8 May 1903, and the articles of incorporation for the Dolgeville Land Company, 9 May 1903, HEH 11/5/3; PE Topics 2 (Dec. 1906), 56–57. Other manufacturers that set up in Dolgeville included Electric Heating and Manufacturing Plant and Tallyrand Manufacturing (makers of metal pipe); see advertisement for Dolgeville, PE Topics 2 (Nov. 1906).

36 Henry E. Huntington to William Kerckhoff, 20 July 1904, HEH 7658.

37 See Dumke, “Growth of the Pacific Electric,” 45; Swett, Ira L., “Los Angeles Railway,” Interurbans 11 (1951): 41Google Scholar; and Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Railroad Supplement, Sept. 1908.

38 Myers, William A., Iron Men and Copper Wires: A Centennial History of the Southern California Edison Company (Glendale, Calif., 1983), 60–61.Google Scholar

39 Hereford, Robert, A Whole Man and a Half Centun-1890–1940 (Pacific Grove, Calif., 1985), 55–67Google Scholar; Big Creek cost sheet, 24 Jan. 1914, HEH 11/7/2; William Salomon and Company to Henrv E. Huntington, 26 Oct. 1911, HEH 9780; and Huntington's personal balance sheet, Dec. 1911, HEH 11/2/1.

40 Los Angeles Times, 9 Nov. 1913; Big Creek cost sheet, 24 Jan. 1914, HEH 11/7/2; Redinger, David, The Story of Big Creek (Los Angeles, 1949), 10–11Google Scholar, 31–32, and Myers, Iron Men, 109.

41 In 1917, Huntington sold PL&P to Southern California Edison, increasing the generating capacity of the latter firm from 120,000 to 260,000 horsepower. Southern California Edison explained to its stockholders that the acquisition of PL&P (which had built generating capacity beyond its demand) made it possible for the firm to expand its business for several years without building new generating facilities. See Southern California Edison, Annual Report, 1916 and 1917.

42 Board of Public Utilities, City of Los Angeles, Annual Report, 1912–13, and 1913–14.

43 Marcosson, Isaac F., A Little Known Master of Millions: The Story of Henry E. Huntington—Constructive Capitalist (Boston, 1914), 23–24.Google Scholar

44 Huntington Land and Improvement Company, Board of Directors Minutes, 5 Aug. 1927, HEH 1/F41/C.