The Second Street City Hall: Part 1 -- Background and Construction

Introduction

Since 1853 there have been five buildings called Los Angeles City Hall.  The current city hall opened in 1928.  The fourth city hall, on the east side of Broadway between Second and Third Streets, was used for 39 years (1889-1928).  The third Los Angeles City Hall opened on Second Street in 1885.  It was the seat of city government for four years and also Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters for 11 years.  Despite these distinctions, the building is little-known.

The Second Street City Hall was designed by Los Angeles architect Robert Brown Young (1855-1914), who planned a three-story building at the northwest corner of Second and Spring, with a two-story wing of the main structure mid-block along Second Street.  However, only the two-story wing was ever built.  It was widely viewed as a failure soon after it was completed, and it eventually became a major civic embarrassment.  This may account for the apparent lack of an extant front-elevation photograph of the structure while it was owned by the city. 

When construction on the building began in late 1884, there was already standing a substantial, well-built brick building of two stories that had been Los Angeles City Hall.  So before getting into the story of the Second Street City Hall, a review of why it was built is in order.

Part 1:  Background and Construction

In August 1853, an adobe home that had been built in the 1820s at the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets  was sold by Los Angeles merchant and landowner John Temple (1796-1866) to the city and to Los Angeles County for a city hall and courthouse (the site is now mostly under Spring Street by the southwest corner of the current City Hall).  The city owned a one-quarter interest in the property, and the county owned a three-quarters interest.  A brick jail used by both the city and county was constructed behind the adobe in 1853, the first (non-adobe) brick building built in Los Angeles.  

This 1876 photo looks south on Spring Street from about Temple Street.  The building with the red dot on the roof, on the northwest corner of Spring and Franklin Streets, became Los Angeles City Hall in 1853.  Los Angeles City and County shared the building.  The taller building in the distance, below the green dot, is the city’s first synagogue, built in 1873.

John Temple also built a city hall/market house for the city of Los Angeles that opened on September 30, 1859.  It was located in its own block bounded by Main, Spring, Market and Court Streets, a site south of Temple Street that is now under the current city hall.  The city agreed to rent the building from Temple for 10 years, with an option to buy at any point over that period, and the city in turn paid Temple from money collected from vendors renting space in the market house portion of the structure.  

Among the ordinances approved by the city’s Common Council and Mayor on May 29, 1860, was this one pertaining to the city hall/market house built by John Temple the previous year.  This building was the second Los Angeles City Hall.  This clipping is from the June 23, 1860, Los Angeles Star.

In May 1869, Stephen A. Rendall and William M. Godfrey took a series of photographs that together form a panoramic view of Los Angeles.  This is a southeast-facing portion of that photo, with landmarks numbered for reference.  At left, number 20 is John Temple’s city hall/market house.  In the foreground, 18 marks New High Street, and at the right center edge 39 shows Franklin Street, which ran from Broadway (originally Fort Street) to Spring between Temple and First Streets.  Franklin Street was renamed several times; it was also Franklin Alley, Jail Street, Court House Alley, and finally, Court Street.

To the right of center, 36 and 37 are the brick jail and adobe municipal building, respectively, shared by the city and county.  The yard behind the jail is where gallows were erected to hang condemned prisoners.  Some prisoners were lynched by vigilantes from the gateway at the rear of the jail yard (and elsewhere).  The 10-foot-high fence around the jail yard was built to keep vigilantes out, not to keep prisoners in.

In the upper right corner, at the northwest corner of Spring and Second Streets, number 41 is the city’s first public school.  Originally known as School No. 1, it was later known as the Spring Street School.  The school property is the future site of the Second Street City Hall. 

However, by January 1861 the city was losing $153 a month on the building.  With the city eager to stop its losses, and Los Angeles County eager to get out of the old adobe at Spring and Franklin, the county took over the city hall/market house for its own offices and courtrooms beginning on May 1, 1861.  Los Angeles County did not actually buy the building until 1871 but used the building as its courthouse until 1891.

This northeast-facing view of the Los Angeles County Courthouse – which had been built in 1859 to be Los Angeles City Hall -- was likely taken about 1886, after a one-story addition (seen near the lower right corner of the photo) had been built on its south side.  Spring Street runs across the bottom of the image. Market and Court Streets are on the north and south sides of the courthouse, respectively, and the east side of the courthouse faces Main Street.  

This east-facing photo may have been taken May 5, 1876. The 1861-1891 Los Angeles County Courthouse is in the upper left corner (green dot).  We also see the rear of the 1853 brick jail (red dot) and the 1820s adobe municipal building in front of it (blue dot), both shared by the city and county.  Franklin/Court Street runs along the right/south side of the jail yard.

      

This 1958 map with west at the top, Temple Street at right, and First Street at left, illustrates several eras of downtown Los Angeles history.  Part of the block with the current (1928) City Hall is at the very bottom.  New High Street with its angled alignment between First and Temple – now abandoned – is in the center.  Also shown is the current alignment of Spring Street; at left, shown by the dotted line through SPRING, is an indication of the street’s original alignment between First and Temple, which was basically parallel with New High Street.  Outlined in red is the site of the old city/county property at the northwest corner of Spring and Court (formerly Franklin) Streets, with the approximate locations of the 1820s adobe municipal building (solid black rectangle) and 1853 brick jail (open black square) marked.

Consequently, city government returned to the old adobe at Spring and Franklin and stayed there over 20 years, and the city also rented offices around town. The August 30, 1882, Los Angeles Times noted, “Almost every office required for the workings of the municipal government is hired from private individuals.”  As the cost and inconvenience of this situation grew, so did a movement to build a city hall.  On April 17, 1883, the Los Angeles City Council (which was officially known as the Los Angeles Common Council until 1889) called for a special election – to be held May 3, 1883 – to authorize $100,000 of bonds to obtain a site and erect “public buildings for city purposes.”  Only 20% of eligible voters turned out, and the bonds lost, with only 333 in favor and 467 against.

Undeterred, the City Council went ahead with its plan for a municipal building, which dovetailed with the Los Angeles City Board of Education’s desire to replace its School No. 1, which opened on March 19, 1855 as the first public school in Los Angeles.  The two-story schoolhouse was located at the northwest corner of Second and Spring Streets, which the City Council decided was the best available location for a municipal building.  On May 5, 1883, two days after the city hall bonds were voted down, the city put in a bid on the school lot.  

Here is a close-up of part of the 1869 Rendall/Godfrey panoramic photo shown above.  Below the yellow dot, number 40 is School No. 1 at the northwest corner of Second and Spring Streets.  In the foreground, a red dot marks the west-facing side of the whitewashed jail yard fence.  Again, New High Street is 18 and Franklin Street is 39.

This is an early photo of School No. 1, the two-story building directly under the yellow dot.  This photo appears to be older than the 1869 Rendall/Godfrey panoramic photo because 1) the trees above the jail yard fence on the south side of Franklin Street are shorter than in 1869; 2) buildings numbered 35 and 43 in the 1869 Rendall/Godfrey image are missing here; and, 3) we see the New High Street side of the jail yard fence (red dot) but before it was whitewashed.

This c. 1876 photo looks northeast at School No. 1 (yellow dot on roof) at the northwest corner of Second and Spring Streets.  Marked by a green dot on its roof is the city’s first synagogue (1873-1894), on Fort Street (renamed Broadway in February 1890) south of Second Street.  Marked by a blue dot is the Trinity Methodist Episcopal South Church on Spring Street, north of Second Street.  The church was built in 1875, became a commercial building in 1884, was badly damaged in an August 1887 fire and was torn down the next year.

This photo, almost certainly taken between the spring of 1883 and the spring of 1884, looks southeast across the corner of Second and Fort Streets, seen in the lower right corner.  Partially hidden by trees and once more marked by a yellow dot is old School No. 1, by now known as Spring Street School.  The First Presbyterian Church, opened in April 1883, dominates the foreground on the southeast corner of Second and Fort.  The church was partially dismantled in March 1895, moved up Fort Street (by then renamed Broadway) and rebuilt into a four-story lodging house known as the Franklin that stood until 1924.

At the same time, the council also looked into purchasing as a city hall the Los Angeles County Courthouse, which over 20 years earlier had briefly been the city hall.  The County Board of Supervisors said they couldn’t just sell the courthouse to the city; the building would have to be auctioned off to the highest bidder (it would be sold in December 1890 for $100,500).  The city became disinterested with the old courthouse, however, because on May 7 the city’s bid of $31,000 on the School No. 1 lot turned out to be the winner, $4,700 higher than the bid of Los Angeles banker John Bryson.

Since the bond vote had failed in May, the city had to look elsewhere for the $31,000 to pay the Board of Education.  In August 1883 the city sold its one-quarter interest in the lot at Spring and Franklin Streets that contained the old adobe municipal building and brick jail to Louis Phillips for $14,400 (Phillips later purchased the county’s three-quarters interest and in 1887-88 built the Phillips Block on the site), which the city turned over to the Board of Education in September 1883.  Eventually, in January 1884, after a final payment of $10,000, the city received the deed to the School No. 1 lot, although the Board of Education rented the school from the city through June 30, 1884.  On February 4, 1884, the City Council adopted an ordinance dedicating the lot, which fronted 120 feet on Spring and 165 feet on Second, as the location “for the erection of public municipal buildings.”

This is a portion of a c. 1884 photo looking east from atop Bunker Hill.  In the lower right corner is the mostly vacant northeast corner of First and Fort Streets, where the Los Angeles Times will build its headquarters in 1886-87.  Marked by a green dot, the Los Angeles County Courthouse can be seen near the upper left corner.  Below and to its right are the white adobe government building and 1853 brick jail (red dot).

The Phillips Block, seen here in 1889, was quite a change from the old municipal adobe and brick jail it replaced.  Spring Street is in the foreground, with little Franklin Street at left.  The Phillips Block opened in 1888 and was torn down after a fire in late 1912.

On May 12, 1884, the City Council’s Finance Committee asked the Board of Public Works to look into constructing only a jail on the property and fixing up the old School No. 1 building into city offices.  A week later, the Board of Public Works reported that such a project would cost at least $15,000.  By June, the City Council had added a fire station, or as it was then called, an “engine house,” to the new building and advertised for proposals.  The ad called for construction of a two-story jail and engine house, which would be “part of a City Hall to be subsequently built,” and renovation of the old school building into a council chamber, a courtroom, and offices for eight different city officials, including the mayor.  The total cost was not to exceed $21,000.

The June 19, 1884, Los Angeles Herald carried the city’s request for proposals to build a two-story jail and engine house (fire station), as well as to fix up the old school building. 

The city received just three proposals – from architects R. B. Young, John Hall, and the firm of Hazeldine & Delane – which were referred to the Board of Public Works on July 1 (the 1884 Los Angeles City Directory lists eight other architects/architectural firms).  On July 8 the board asked for and received another week to review the proposals but on July 15 returned all three plans to the City Council without a recommendation. 

Finally, on July 22, 1884, the council met to consider the plans.  A motion to adopt Hazeldine & Delane’s plans failed (the vote was not recorded), as did a motion to adopt the plans of John Hall (by a 5-6 vote).  Finally, the City Council voted 6-5 to accept the plans submitted by R. B. Young, architect of the Hollenbeck Block, then being erected on the southwest corner of Second and Spring, across from the city hall lot.  One councilman did not vote, and three were absent from this important meeting.

Prior to the vote, one of the councilmen, Dr. Loring W. French, claimed to have been offered $100 to vote for Young’s design.  Doctor French did not identify who made the offer, but said the person also indicated he had $500 to spend to get Young’s plan adopted (presumably to secure the votes of other council members).  Young, who was at the meeting, said French had misunderstood, because Young had meant he would rather have his plan chosen than have $500.  That explanation, while plausible, does not account for the initial $100 offer.  We’ll never know if Young made a clumsy attempt at bribery (either personally or through a third party), but council records show Dr. French voted against adopting Young’s design.

Young planned a three-story city hall with an estimated cost of $65,000.  A July 29, 1884, Los Angeles Herald article provided a description of Young’s design, although most of the details pertained to the two-story engine house and jail, which would be built first and fronting on Second Street as a wing of the larger structure.  Young’s design put the city hall’s west wall on the west property line.  This is likely why Young did not include any windows on that wall; presumably they would be blocked by a future adjoining structure. If Young made plans for renovating the old schoolhouse, which the city had asked for, they were not mentioned in the article, and no description of them has survived.

Young’s city hall design was briefly described in the July 29, 1884, Los Angeles Herald.  Fixing up the old schoolhouse into offices wasn’t even mentioned.

Over 70 years later, Young’s 1884 floor plans and elevations (drawn on glazed linen cloth) were found in a file room at Los Angeles City Hall.  The November 1956 photograph below looks west at the Spring Street elevation of Young’s city hall.  The shorter tower on the left faces Second Street and is atop the west side of the two-story jail/engine house.  The arched gateway at right was at the end of a driveway and provided access to the jail yard behind the jail.  

A woman identified as Sarah Day poses next to a page – which was no doubt taped to the wall with great care – showing the Spring Street elevation of architect R. B. Young’s July 1884 city hall plans.  It is not known if these plans are still in the city archives.

The information with this photo states that the city hall would have “occupied a lot 98 by 92 feet.”  This must refer to the footprint of only the main city hall building; when built, the jail/engine house alone would be 61 feet wide (the entire city hall lot was 120 feet on Spring Street by 165 feet on Second Street).  However, the July 29, 1884, Herald article reproduced above says the city hall’s Spring Street frontage was 104 feet, and the Second Street frontage was 150 feet.  How can we reconcile all these numbers?

If we add the jail/engine house’s 61-foot width to 92 feet, we get 153 feet of Second Street frontage (not 150), with room remaining for the main building’s Spring Street entrance to be set back 12 feet from the sidewalk for a total of 165 feet on Second Street.  Also, if we add 98 feet to a 14-to-16-foot-wide jail yard driveway on the north side of the main building, we get 112-114 feet of Spring Street frontage, with room for the main building’s Second Street side to be set back six or eight feet from the sidewalk – as the jail (Police Headquarters), on the west side of the engine house, looks to have been – for a total of 120 feet on Spring Street.  If this is the case, the Herald reporter misinterpreted the plans and included the front of the engine house on Second Street (which was not set back from the sidewalk) as part of the Spring Street frontage.

Here is a closer look at the plans from another version of the previous photo.  The arched entrance to the jail yard is on the far right.  The city hall clock faces east across Spring Street.  On the first floor, there are four windows on either side of the double-doored main entrance.

Above the red line is the engine house portion of the structure, which was not set back from the sidewalk on Second Street.  On the first floor there is a door, and there is a window above it on the second floor.  To the right of the blue dot is the angled corrugated iron awning in front of the Police Headquarters, which was set back from the sidewalk and on the east side of the engine house.  Above the green dot is a bell hanging from the top of the tower.

Despite a winning city hall design having been chosen, more delay ensued.  On August 8, the City Council voted to postpone any further action on the new city hall for three weeks.  On August 18, the council’s Finance Committee submitted a report which apparently reminded everyone that only $11,000 had been set aside to build a jail and fix up the old School No. 1 into city offices, and the City Council appointed a committee to meet with architect Young to determine if he could alter his plans to build a jail and engine house for $11,000. 

The answer was no, so the full council accepted the committee’s recommendation to take $5,000 from the fire department fund and $4,000 from the cash fund and add those amounts to the $11,000.  That added up to only $20,000, but perhaps Young had said $20,000 would be enough, because the council went ahead and advertised for bids to build the jail/engine house and fix up the old school building into city offices.  

This September 25, 1884, Los Angeles Herald advertisement implies that architect R. B. Young drew up plans to fix up the old schoolhouse into city offices, but if he did, the details are unknown.

On October 14, 1884, contractor J. D. Campbell’s low bid of $18,175 was judged to be the winner.  He was allowed a further $300 to fix up School No. 1 (according to what plans is uncertain).  On October 28, the $18,475 contract with Campbell was approved, and he was given until the end of April 1885 to finish the job.  Work on the building began in early November 1884, and on November 26, the Los Angeles Herald assured its readers that both superior stone and cement were being used in building the city hall’s foundation.

November 26, 1884, Los Angeles Herald

However, questions soon arose regarding the quality of the stone and cement, leading to an inspection of the construction site by the City Council on December 30, 1884, reported on the next day by the Los Angeles Times.  One councilman found two or three stones on the west side of the building that “crumbled at every blow of the hammer,” but architect R. B. Young insisted that those stones were sound, as they “would harden after a few weeks exposure to the air.”  Another councilman stuck his penknife, up to the handle, into another stone, but Young coolly explained that the outside of the stone “was shale and might be expected to flake off.”  When another member of the inspection team struck the same stone a few blows with a hammer, the stone “was reduced almost instantly to a pile of what was little better than wet gravel,” causing the stones above to collapse. 

Though expressing astonishment, Young assured the inspectors that “I don’t think you’ll find five such stones in the whole building.”  Nonetheless, the councilmen found several other stones they felt were unfit to use in construction.  In early December, Young suggested some changes to the city hall design; those changes may have been among those recommended by the Special Committee on Public Buildings and approved by the full City Council on January 6, 1885.  The changes included the addition of one-eighth more cement to the mortar and using granite instead of sandstone on the front of the building.  The council did nothing about the sandstone foundation; the general opinion was that the best sandstone that could be had in the area was being used.

Construction proceeded through the spring of 1885 and past the contracted completion date of April 30.  One of the last things done, on June 5, was to hang the boiler-iron gates of the jail yard.  The City Council officially accepted the new city hall on June 16, 1885 and met in the building for the first time on June 30.  Confidence Engine Company No. 2, one of the city’s then-volunteer fire companies, moved into the engine house on July 1.  Chief of Police John Horner and Police Headquarters officially transferred to the new building on June 18.  Prisoners did not immediately relocate from the old 1853 brick jail (which the county would continue to use until December 1886), first due to a delay in appointing a jailer and then because the nominee for the position was caught in a raid on a gambling den.

The June 26, 1885, Los Angeles Times carried this note:  “The photographs of the police force, handsomely set in a big frame, adorn the new police office.  The collection is a present from T. E. Stanton.”  The image above is probably that collection.  The print is small, but “Stanton” is on the lower left corner of each photo. The large photo in the middle is of John Horner, Chief of the LAPD from May 13 to December 22, 1885.

The final cost of the Second Street City Hall looks to have been $20,265, since that is the figure architect R. B. Young’s pay for the building was based on.  Young’s contract with the City Council has yet to be discovered, but he asked for $810.60 (4% of $20,265).  However, the council allowed only $607.95, or 3%.  This would not be the last time Young and the City Council disagreed on what he should be paid.

An article in the May 17, 1885, Los Angeles Times described the two-story police headquarters/jail/engine house and reiterated that it was part of a larger, as-yet unbuilt portion of the city hall, whose primary entrance would be on Spring Street.  The jail/engine house was said to have 61 feet of frontage on Second Street (the building’s lot was later measured to be 61.76 feet wide in the front and 61.93 feet in the rear).   The top of the mansard roof was 42 feet high, and on the west side was a 25-foot-high tower from which was hung Confidence Engine Company No. 2’s bell.  Atop the tower was a 22-foot-high flagpole.  The front of the building was light-colored pressed brick with San Gabriel granite trimmings and galvanized iron cornices painted brown.

The west side of the ground floor, facing Second Street, was occupied by the engine house.  To the left of the 20-foot-wide arched entrance was an office for the Fire Department’s Chief Engineer.  Also on the ground floor were bunks, closets, and restrooms.  The ceiling was 18 feet above the cement floor, which had a turntable in the center (Fire House No. 1, designed by architect William Boring and still standing opposite the Los Angeles Plaza, also had a turntable when it opened in September 1884).  In the rear was a rack for washing horses, as well as stalls for four horses and a room for their manure.  A staircase in the rear led to a balcony that overlooked the horses and accessed an adjacent hay loft.  The same staircase led to two firemen’s rooms on the second floor that had beds, a washroom, and restrooms.  There was also a sliding pole nearby.

This might be the oldest available photo of the Second Street City Hall, seen here on the right side of the street.  The photo looks west on Second from Spring Street and may have been taken around the early summer of 1886.  The August 19, 1886, Los Angeles Times noted that “The sidewalk in front of the police-office has been fortified with curb posts and chain,” but those seem to be absent from this image.

Above the red line is the same part of the building marked by a red line on the close-up of architect Young’s July 1884 city hall plans.  The corrugated iron awning over the Police Headquarters is again marked by a blue dot, as it was on the close-up of the July 1884 plans.  There does not appear to be a bell in the tower.

Across the street from City Hall is the Hollenbeck Block, with the First Presbyterian Church and its tall steeple behind it.

There is also a two-image stereoview version of the previous photo; this is the better of the two images on the stereoview.  At the right edge we can see a bit of the City Hall’s east wall.  In the middle of Second Street is a car from the Second Street Cable Railway, which ran from Second and Spring Streets west over Bunker Hill to what is now Beverly Boulevard and Belmont Avenue.  The railway operated from October 1885 to October 1889.

To the right of the engine house was the main staircase leading from Second Street to the rooms upstairs, which also had 18-foot ceilings.  Above the engine house was the 34 x 40-foot Mayor’s Court. 

(In 1876, the California Legislature passed an act establishing a City Court in Los Angeles.  The mayor was the court’s ex officio judge, so it was often called the Mayor’s Court. There was no jury; the mayor heard the cases of people arrested for offenses like Vagrancy or Drunk and Disorderly, then sentenced those he found guilty to a fine or jail time or both. Los Angeles Mayor William Workman, according to his son Boyle, particularly disliked being judge of the Mayor’s Court, and he convinced state assembly representative G. W. Knox of Los Angeles to introduce a bill that would relieve him of that responsibility. On March 7, 1887, Governor Washington Bartlett signed legislation that abolished the Mayor’s Court in cities with more than 10,000 people, among which was Los Angeles.  Eleven days later a relieved Mayor Workman transferred the court’s function – police court – to City Justice H. C. Austin.)

From the Mayor’s Court there was access to a small balcony overlooking Second Street. To the east of the Mayor’s Court was the 25 x 40-foot City Council Chamber.  In between the two larger rooms was the 9 x 18-foot Mayor’s Office.  All three rooms had 10-foot-high windows overlooking Second Street.  In addition, the second floor was arranged so that it would have direct access to the main city hall building when it was built. 

Based on the few available descriptions of the Second Street City Hall, these are my very modest attempts to approximate its floorplans when it opened in mid-1885 (I did not show the fireplaces, closets, restrooms, and most of the doors, the exact locations of which were not given, nor the exact thickness of the walls).

On the ground floor, the private offices of the Police Chief and Chief Engineer each had fireplaces, as did the large police office.  In the engine house, the two alcoves contained firemen’s bunks; there were also closets and restrooms on the first floor, possibly under the wide main staircase.  My guess would be that the manure room was behind the rack for washing horses, but I’m not sure.

Many photographs clearly show the four windows on the west side of the second floor’s north wall, between the back of the engine house and the front of the jail.  The windows below them on the first floor are clearly indicated on two 1888 maps, but those windows are not clearly seen in any photograph.  The ceiling of the 18-foot-tall engine house was higher than the ceiling of the one-story jail to the north, so it is possible the engine house had windows high up on its rear walls.  However, the engine house was described as dark and poorly ventilated, so it is also possible that those first-floor windows did not exist in 1885 and were added in a later renovation.

There were just two windows on the east side of the building, one on the ground floor in the jailer’s office and another above it on the second floor. Those windows were likely meant to open onto a light well created by construction of the main part of the city hall building.

There were probably three staircases to the second floor.  One started at the main entrance on Second Street and probably went straight up to the second floor.  Another staircase ascended through the rear of the engine house, accessing a hay loft and balcony on the way (the hay loft was almost certainly directly over the horse stalls, but the exact location of the balcony, which was said to overlook the stalls, is unclear).  A third staircase began at the rear of the police office, and I believe it joined with the engine house staircase just below the second floor.

On the second floor, the Mayor’s Courtroom and the (Common/City) Council Chamber both had fireplaces, and the two firemen’s rooms did as well.  Within the firemen’s rooms were two restrooms and a washroom.

The main entrance to the Council Chamber was probably at the jog in the hallway, to the right of the staircase leading up from the front entrance.  The main entrance to the Mayor’s Courtroom was probably to the immediate left of that staircase. Both probable door locations are marked by red Ds. The bell tower on the roof was above the Mayor’s Courtroom, behind the balcony.

On the east side of the ground floor, facing Second Street, was the police office.  It was 25 x 50 feet, with black-and-white floor tiles; its 12-foot-high windows were shielded by a corrugated iron awning.  The police chief’s office, with a vault in the rear, was on the east side of the main room.  To the rear of the chief’s office was a coat room and the jailer’s office.  Behind those rooms was a passageway to the future main city hall building.  In back of that was a large safe-deposit vault(s) for the City Auditor and/or Treasurer, to be accessed from the main city hall building when it was constructed.

At the rear of the police office were two doors.  The door on the right led to the jail kitchen.  The other door opened onto the jail’s 6-foot-wide, 40-foot-long main corridor, which was lighted by a skylight.  The one-story jail, directly behind the engine house and police office, was 60 feet wide by 40 feet deep, with 2-foot-thick sandstone walls, “finished over with block cement in imitation of dressed stone.”  The jail’s roof was corrugated iron.  The floors were cement and had drains leading to the building’s sewer connection so the cells and corridors could be washed and cleaned. 

Upon entering the main jail corridor from the police office, immediately on the left was a door leading to a corridor with three cells for the most dangerous prisoners.  Each of these cells was 7 x 10 feet, and one, the “strong cell,” was lined with boiler iron.  Back on the main corridor, the first cell on the left was the 4 x 8-foot “cooler” (with two rows of perforated iron pipe overhead to spray water on uncooperative prisoners), followed by a 4 x 7-foot cell.  Next was an 18 x 34-foot “corral” for drunks, which had nine beds and was lighted by a barred skylight (that opened for ventilation) and three barred windows on the north wall facing onto the jail yard behind the jail.  The bars on the windows were five-eighths of an inch thick.  On the opposite side of the corridor was the 9 x 16-foot women’s cell, with a window and skylight.  Folding iron beds were attached to the cell walls.  All the cells had a toilet; the “corral” had two.

(Even if the three 7 x 10-foot cells were designed to hold two men each, add those six men to one man in the 4 x 7 cell and one in the 4 x 8 cell, plus one man for each of the nine bunks in the drunk tank, and you have a jail designed to hold 17 male prisoners, plus perhaps two or three in the women’s cell.  This is what architect Young designed and the City Council approved for a city that by mid-1884 had about 25,000 people.)

The jail yard at the very rear was 60 feet wide by 20 feet deep.  Opening onto the jail yard was a 10 x 12-foot store room, with “appliances for washing the wounded.”  The jail yard was surrounded by a 12-foot-high wall, with an arched gateway in the east wall for access to Spring Street along the driveway on the north side of the planned main city building.  The gateway was probably about 10 feet wide.

While the jail/engine house was being built, the old School No. 1, just to the east on the on the same lot, had neither been torn down nor, apparently, renovated (no city official was reported to have moved into the renovated school).  On May 12, 1885, the City Council approved a plan to sell the old school; it would be advertised for two weeks then sold to the highest bidder and moved off the lot.  Apparently there was no interest in the structure, because it was still in the city’s possession on July 28, 1885, when the council revisited what to do with the old school.  They considered renovating it either as a one- or two-story building, and they considered the plan of architect Young to construct a new building of five or six (the record is not clear) rooms from his design for the main city hall building at a cost of $3,000.  Ultimately, on August 4 the council voted to simply tear down the old building, and it was completely razed by August 14. 

On June 30, 1885, the City Council had passed a $245,000 bond ordinance that included $65,000 for a city hall, which would be the main city building R. B. Young planned to add onto his already-built jail/engine house.  The Los Angeles Times editorialized for the bonds, arguing that the city would save $6,000 a year on rent by consolidating municipal offices in an expanded city hall. 

On August 2, 1885, the Times provided some of Young’s detailed plans for the main building, which the City Council had asked him to prepare back on May 26.  The plans were estimated to cost $65,000, the same amount he had said in 1884 his city hall design would cost, before the jail/engine house was built.  How much, if at all, his city hall design changed from 1884 to 1885 is not known.

The August 2, 1885, Los Angeles Times detailed architect R. B. Young’s plan for the main part of the Second Street City Hall.  The Spring Street side of the building is described as being set back 10 feet from the sidewalk.  

On August 17, voters approved the bond ordinance by a four-to-one margin.  It seemed that the city would now have the money to build the rest of architect Young’s design, and the larger, main part of the Second Street City Hall would soon rise above the northwest corner of Second and Spring.  

End of Part 1 of 4


I want to thank Paul Spitzzeri of the Homestead Museum for his assistance with researching the history of the old City/County municipal adobe and John Temple's City Hall/Market House/County Court House, and I also want to thank Todd Gaydowski and Michael Holland of the Los Angeles City Clerk's Office for their assistance researching the Los Angeles City Archives.



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Image Credits:

1876 south on Spring: 19977 @ Huntington Digital Library

June 23, 1860 Los Angeles Star: STAR_695 @ USC Digital Library

May 1869 Rendall/Godfrey Panorama: CHS-7179 @ USC Digital Library
c. 1886 Los Angeles County Courthouse: 1989-0460 @ CA State Library

May 5, 1876, looking east: 487373 @ Ernest Marquez Collection, Huntington Digital Library

The New Los Angeles Plat Book, Volume 2 (1958), Sheet 297 -- rbm-a-Platt-1958 @ USC Digital Library

May 1869 Rendall/Godfrey Panorama: CHS-7179 @ USC Digital Library

Pre-1869 south on Spring: gpf.0926 @ Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

c. 1876 northeast at Spring St. School: Stereo-0098 @ CA State Library
c. 1883-84 southeast at Second and Fort Streets: CHS-7385 @ USC Digital Library

c. 1884 northeast at old adobe city hall and brick jail: CHS-1856 @ USC Digital Library
c. 1889 Phillips Block @ UCLA/Seeing Sunset

June 19, 1884 Los Angeles Herald @ Library of Congress

July 29, 1884 Los Angeles Herald @ California Digital Newspaper Collection, UC Riverside

1956 photo of 1884 Young City Hall Plans: EXM-P-S-LOS-ANG-CIT-BUI-625 @ USC Digital Library
Close-up of 1956 photo of 1884 plans: EXM-N-11998-001~1 @ Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, USC Digital Library
September 25, 1884 Los Angeles Herald @ Library of Congress

November 26, 1884 Los Angeles Herald @ Library of Congress

1885 LAPD Photo Collection @ ladailymirror.com

1886 West on Second Street with City Hall at right: 00067362 @ Los Angeles Public Library
1886 Stereoview west on Second Street: P-034-040 @ Hazard-Dyson Collection, Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

1885 floorplans by me

August 2, 1885 Los Angeles Times @ ProQuest via Los Angeles Public Library