Wholesale District, Los Angeles

[2] In early days, Los Angeles Street, to the west, was considered the "heart" of the Wholesale District,[3][4][5][6] which over the years expanded southerly along the same thoroughfare, and, to a lesser extent, northward.

One of the largest leases ever concluded in the District, up to then, was for a fireproof seven-story-plus-basement building on the east side of Los Angeles between Seventh and Eighth streets.

At that time it was announced that "The biggest structural enterprise yet launched in the wholesale and jobbing district" would go ahead with two ten-floor fireproof loft buildings to be erected by M.J. Connell at the corner of Seventh and Santee.

The purchase price was "well up toward a million dollars," and the sale was made to P.M. Daniel of the Pacific Crockery and Tinware Company, president of the Los Angeles Board of Trade, who was presumed to be representing other investors as well as himself.

Buildings on the site were to be leveled, and "fine business blocks adapted to the need of wholesale houses" would be constructed in such a way that the Southern Pacific Railroad would have access to the Alameda frontage for easy loading and unloading of goods.

The idea for such a district was taken from a similar project in St. Louis, Missouri, and its backers stressed the advantage for Los Angeles merchants in competing with San Francisco in Northern California.

[8] It was said also that the new center would "enable the Southern Pacific Railroad to place its cars at the very doors of the various wholesale houses, and the saving to the trade of this city will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a result of dispensing with drayage."

[18] A lumber yard had to be removed from First and Alameda to a new location near the La Grande depot[19] A Los Angeles Times opinion article on January 6, 1899, however, argued against completion of the project, which would redound to the advantage of the Southern Pacific as opposed to its rival Santa Fe Railroad.

Woodworth on San Pedro "where for more than a quarter century the hospitality of old Spanish families has been dispensed, and which for many years was the center of much of the social activity of the city."

A contemporary account noted that "Around the Woodworth home there are beautiful grounds, and a really refreshing oasis in the desert of brick walls, dingy store fronts and shabby buildings in the neighborhood.

One of the most prized features of the grounds is a noble magnolia tree, notable for the profusion of its waxy flowers, and flanked to the eastward with a row of stately fan palms.

Architects Morgan & Walls promised two four-story brick buildings with plate glass for the first story and a main entrance of polished marble and oak.

In April 1912 the definition of the Wholesale District spread farther east when plans were announced for the construction of a fireproof warehouse, the largest in the city, by F.W.

The area was categorized as a "sink of iniquity" because of asserted prostitution as well as the existence of "dives which are allowed to flourish in the center of the wholesale district on Los Angeles Street.

Reporter David Farrell wrote that "burglars clamber from one building to the next in search of air vents, attic doors, any place they can break in.

He called the District a "realm of cinder block and sheet metal, a landscape hard by the concrete shore of the Los Angeles River.

Business owners reported spending thousands of dollars for protection like security guards, video cameras, iron fences and concertina wire, only to have them soon circumvented by thieves, who quickly offered stolen goods for sale on the sidewalks or elsewhere in the District.

[3]The owner of the Pacific Crockery and Tinware Company next to the burning building refused to allow firemen to fight the blaze from the interior of his store, so the men had to retire.

Then the north wall of the building collapsed and smashed through the roof of the Crockery and Tinware Company's store, "setting it on fire in fifty places."

The stock of the crockery store was destroyed as the fire fighters were forced to combat the flames leaping up in huge piles of packing cases filled with straw.

George Stoll & Company, a large wholesale business dealing in coffee, tea and spices at 447-449 Los Angeles Street, escaped destruction on February 2, 1904, when either sparks from a roaster or a "lighted cigar stump" ignited a pile of packing cases but the flames were extinguished by firefighters, "some of them crawling along the floor with a line of hose" to the rear of the building.

The firebox alarm was pulled by a passing police officer, but help was slow to arrive because most of the nearby engine companies were fighting another fire at Fifth and Main streets.

A two-story brick building occupied by the Holbrook, Merrill and Stetson Hardware Company, which took up nearly half the south side of the 200 block of Los Angeles Street, was severely damaged in a three-alarm fire in the early-morning hours of June 20, 1906.

Ladderman Adolph Hermanson was killed on December 29, 1906, while he was fighting a massive fire in the Cohn, Goldsmith & Co. building at 210-222 South Los Angeles Street.

Seeing the extent of the flames before even arriving on scene, he stopped the horses and sent in a second and third alarm from a fire-alarm box; this precaution brought more men to the site to battle the blaze and saved the other buildings on the block.

Driven by high winds from the mountains, a blaze in the headquarters of the Zellerbach Paper Company at 115-23 North Los Angeles Street threatened to spread to adjoining buildings on April 6, 1909, and "the heart of the great wholesale district was in danger."

A spectacular fire on the evening of March 17 sent "a mighty shaft of flame" into the sky and destroyed a warehouse belonging to the Pacific Wood and Coal Company on Seventh Street at the Santa Fe Railroad tracks.

Firefighters escaped serious injuries in the general-alarm fire when a burning wall collapsed upon them, but they "quickly extricated themselves uninjured from the mass of debris and continued with their work."

Four workers were killed and at least 25 others injured when a machine exploded with a powerful blast at the Imperial Toy Corporation factory at East 7th Street and Santa Fe Avenue and blew a hole through the roof of a building that had been built in 1913 by Henry Ford to be his first California auto plant.

On May 16, a fire at a smoke shop warehouse on so-called "bong row" (300 block of Boyd St.) turned into an explosion when "excessive quantities" of improperly stored butane and nitrous oxide ignited.