Monday, May 23, 2011

Higher education in Los Angeles, 1865-1910

1865

A first school of higher education is founded when Saint Vincent’s College began in rented rooms at the pioneer Lugo family’s former townhouse on the plaza at Los Angeles Street.  Reverend John Asmuth of the Congregation of the Missions was named first president and succeeded by Reverend James McGill, CM later that year.

1866

Oakland, ---the Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College was created by the California legislature.

1867


1868

St. Vincent’s College benefactor Ozro W. Childs donated the first permanent campus site at 600 N. Hill St.  At Hill Street and later on Grand Avenue SVC would last over forty-six years and matriculate a few pioneer Los Angeles literary figures such as mystery writer S.S. Van Dine, composer Ferde Grofe, and Krazy Kat comic creator, George Herriman.

March

23rd

University of California is chartered.

1869

Depression

John T. Gower of Hawaii began farming in today’s Hollywood.

Pío Pico, the former Mexican governor of California, opened the first luxury hotel, the Italinate Pico House. 

Sheriff James Thompson sold Rancho Encinos to the Garnier brothers.

Land speculators from San Francisco bought one half of Mission S. Fernando from the Pico family.

August

5th

SVC incorporated as the President and Trustees of St. Vincent’s College.

15th

SVC received charter from the state of California to convey college degrees and granted privileges of a university. 

 

September

23rd

University of California opened in Oakland.

1870

Los Angeles population now over 5000 but nearly all local native Americans are now dead from disease.

William Abbot’s Merced Hall opened as a community room at 418 North Main St. on the plaza.  

AF Gilmore bought 256 acres for dairy farming west of Los Angeles.

1871

Europe, --- microfilm used with carrier pigeons for messaging in the Crimean War.

Farmers and Merchants Bank founded by Isaias Hellman.
San Fernando Sheep Company formed.
Spanish-speaking Protestant Reverend William Mosher

1872

Real estate speculator and former slave Biddy Mason held founding meetings of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in her home on Spring Street.
 

1873

Los Angeles High School opened.

1875

At SVC Reverend Charles J. Bescher, CM was named President.

Winter

A Chinese temple was dedicated.

1876

Washington, ---Alexander Graham Bell awarded patent for telephone.

New York, ---Edison began data recording and Melvil Dewey published the Dewey Decimal System for library book classification.

Southern Pacific Railroad completed lines into Los Angeles.

The Cathedral of St. Vibiana completed, designed by Ezra Kysor.

Speaking of St. Vincents College, a visiting Austrian royal accounted “…is situated in the west end of town in a pleasant garden…it also contains a library and small chapel”.---Ludwig Salvatore, Los Angeles in the Sunny Seventies.

1877

New York, ---Thomas Edison records Mary Had a Little Lamb on tin-foil wrapped around a spinning cylinder, ---the phonograph.

Palo Alto, ---settling a "do a horse's four hooves ever leave the ground at once" bet among rich San Franciscans, a series of time-sequenced photographs of Leland Stanford's horse demonstrate the human phenomena of the persistence of vision.

1878

New York, --- cornetist Jules Levy recorded “Yankee Doodle” for Edison’s tin-foil sound recorder.

Rochester, ---George Eastman developed the dry gelatin photograph development process

1879

University of Southern California was secured with the benefactions of Ozro W. Childs, John G. Downey and Isaias Hellman.

1880

LA city population = 11,000.
USC began instruction of the Class of 1884.

1881

Paris, --- headphone and microphone technology developed.

1882

State Normal School opened downtown.

Future Loyola College benefactor and Los Angeles Times editor Harry Chandler arrived from his native New Hampshire. 

1883

Downtown electrified with street lamps.
St. Vincent’s College underwent major renovation at the Sixth Avenue campus.

Prohibitionist Harvey Wilcox bought real estate west of downtown to build a temperance community.

Flood.  

1884

A firehouse was built on the plaza.
USC founded a School of Music and held first commencement exercises.

May

Grand Opera House opened at 110 South Main.

October

The Chinese Theater opens at 212 Marchessault St.

1885

USC founded a College of Medicine and the John R. Tansey Chair in Christian Ethics.

1886

James David and Rhonda Jane Hill settle 110 acres in Chatsworth.
Harrison Gray Otis took control of the Los Angeles Times.
SVC purchased a block lot at Washington and Grand.

1887

New Jersey, --- Thomas Edison recorded pianist Josef Hofmanm.

Washington, ---Emile Berliner patented the gramophone sound recording system. using a flat disc which allowed mass reproduction.

The Turnverein Hall opened and Hazard’s Pavilion erected at Olive and Fifth to replace the Merced as a civic meeting hall.

The Sepulveda House opened at 622 N. Main Street.

The Los Angeles Panorama Company stages The Siege of Paris on a lot on South Main St.  Earlier that year another panorama was staged at Washington Gardens at Washington and South Main. 

At SVC Isidore Dockweiler received the first college degree.

February

1st

Hollywood appeared on a sub-division map for $150 per acre.

The Los Angeles Ostrich Railway Company links Dr. Sketchley’s farm in Los Feliz to Hollywood.

April

20th

A group of Presbyterian clergy and laity found Occidental College in the Boyle Heights suburb of Los Angeles.

September

Needing even more space despite the renovation and with booming real-estate speculation St. Vincent’s College moved southwest to a much larger site at Washington Street and Grand Avenue. Designed and constructed by J.V. McNeil Construction, the new campus boasted a modern furnished College Library.

1888

London, ---Handel’s Israel in Egypt recorded at the Crystal Palace.

Washington, DC, ---Emile Berliner improved the gramophone sound system, using a flat disc which when developed would allow mass reproduction.

New York, ---George Eastman developed a low-cost box camera.

Farming west of downtown spured the Cahuenga Valley RR (future Southern Pacific RR) to form. 

Los Angeles City Hall and County Court House was erected.
The Los Angeles Theater opened at 227 South Spring.
Founder of Title Insurance and Trust Company Otto F. Brant arrived from Ohio.

1889

Vienna, ---Johannes Brahms recorded his Hungarian Dance no. 1 in G minor.

Author and real-estate speculator Mark Sibley Severance published the first Angeleno novel, Hammersmith, The Harvard Days (1876).


1890

New York, ---Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, images of tenement life in the city.  Cylinder sound recordings issued commercially.

Cellulose data punch card.  Paper data punch card.  Player piano music rolls

City population = 50,000.
City water and sewer system improved. 

Future educator and major leader of an early American educational reform movement David Snedden (SVC ’90) left Los Angeles for study at Harvard College.


1891

US Senator Stephan M. White and Santa Clara College alumnus gave Saint Vincent’s College commencement address.   Today LMU prizes the William H. Hannon Library Terrance Mahan, SJ Department of Archives & Special Collections Papers of Senator Stephan M. White.

The Burbank Theater opens as first stock house.


1892

At Saint Vincent’s College, Reverend J. W. Hickey, C.M. was named President.
Vassar alumna Katherine Carr began teaching Latin and English at LA High.
Oil discovered.
Edward L. Doheny built mansion at Chester Place.


1893

National economic depression.

Fall 

Merchants Association formed.


1894

Washington, DC, ---Emile Berliner’s US Gramophone Company began marketing the vulcanized rubber sound disc. 

New York, ---the intriguing Kinetoscope entertainment machine that allowed a viewer to watch moving pictures swept the nation beginning along the arcades on New York’s Broadway, ---the birth of the American motion picture industry.

The curriculum at St. Vincent’s College included Rhetoric and Sciences for the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Sciences and Civil Engineering.   The library benefited with support from the new Bishop, Dr. Thomas Conaty, the well-known national orator and former Rector of The Catholic University of America and his personal library of books.

The Burbank Theater.
Imperial Music Hall on Main Street.
Los Angeles Theater

January

City Council appropriated $10,000 for a public works program to put unemployed to work.

April

Merchants’ Association sponsored La Fiesta de Los Angeles

June

Richmond, Indiana, ---Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat project motion-picture.

New York, ---an installation of Edison’s Vitascope projector at Koster & Bials Music Hall allowed a “movie” to be seen in concert, quickly became a novelty and then standard fare in American town hall and vaudeville theaters.

SVC formed an Alumni Association and held Commencement Exercises at the Grand Opera House. 

1895

Washington, DC, ---Emile Berliner founded Berliner Gramophone Company. 

New York, ---Marconi’s wireless radio transmission from Italy to North America.  Thomas Edison proclaimed newspapers in the future will be delivered by phonograph.  The Edison company began development of a belt-driven Kinetoscope synched with a   phonograph.  

Vaudeville offered at Mott Hall downtown.

 June

SVC held Commencement Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.


December

Paris, --- the motion-picture La Sortie des usines Lumière debuted.

31st

Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit opened at the Grand Opera House at 110 South Main.

1896

New York, --- vaudeville’s Keith’s Union Square Theater exhibits Lumiere Cinematographe.

New Jersey, --- the Edison Company released the motion-picture, The Kiss.

Nickelodeons began running in downtown Los Angeles arcades as “movies” start becoming standard fare at vaudeville theaters.

Col. Griffith J. Griffith deeded thirty-five hundred acres of Rancho de los Felix to the City of Los Angeles for a Griffith Park.

Occidental College in Boyle Heights moved to Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles.

At St. Vincent’s College, George Herriman left school to become an illustrator and engraver for the Los Angeles Examiner.

At USC a law school began.

April

New York, --- the Edison Company introduced the Vitascope projector at Koster & Bials Music Hall.

June

SVC held Commencement and Literary Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.

July

A Vitascope projector was installed at the Orpheum downtown operated by Edwin S. Porter.

20th

The Vitascope was purchased by Thomas Tally and reinstalled at Tally’s Phonograph Parlor at 311 South Spring Street.

1897

S. D. Sturgis built a Los Angeles automobile for J. Philip Erie.
USC began coursework in dentistry.

June

SVC held Commencement and Literary Exercises were held at the Los Angeles.

1898

Europe, ---Edison’s unlicensed Kinetoscope was used to create the nascent moving-pictures making industry.

Germany, ---Valdemar Poulsen patents the Telegraphone magnetic steel wire sound recording system.

New York, ---J. Stuart Blackton reenacted on motion picture film The Battle of Manila Bay using photographs pasted on wooden sticks propped with an painting as a backdrop in a small basin of water.

Los Angeles Symphony formed.

At SVC on Grand Avenue J. E. A. Linn, C.M. was named President.  The Saints restart reformed collegiate football with games over the next ten years versus Commercial High School, Colorado School of Mines, Los Angeles High School, Occidental College, the Orange Athletic Club, Oregon Agricultural College, Pasadena High School, Pomona High School, Sentous Street School, Shackville, University of Denver, University of Utah, Westlake and YMCA.

June

SVC held Commencement and Literary Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.

1899

The Los Angeles Theater advertises mutoscope pictures of Pope Leo XII “taken at the Vatican by the American Biograph Co”.

June

SVC held Commencement and Literary Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.

1900

Los Angeles population now 100,000 and Hollywood is five-hundred.
Oil is discovered on the Gilmore dairy farm west of Los Angeles.
Automobile Club of Southern California founded.

1901

Washington, --- Victor Talking Machine Company founded by Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson.

J. W. Eddy built Angels Flight.

Washington Gardens at Washington and South Main became Chutes Park, a theater, zoo, midway and park.  

The Unique “family” vaudeville house opens at 456 South Spring.

June

SVC holds Commencement at the Elk’s Hall and Literary Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.

1902

New York, --- Edison wax cylinder records began mass production.

William Randolph Hearst began to publish the Los Angeles Examiner from headquarters on Broadway.

Los Angeles amended city charter to prohibit vice city-wide. 
The Unique moved to 629 South Broadway.
Hollywood chartered as a city.

April

Thomas Tally opened the Electric Theater on Broadway and began programming motion-pictures.

June

SVC held Commencement at the Los Angeles Theater.

September

The Cineograph Theater began programming motion-pictures.

1903

Paris, --- the Lumiere brothers patent color photography.

New York, --- Hungarian immigrant and future Loyola University of Los Angeles benefactor William Fox remodeled a Brooklyn arcade into a moving pictures theater and began to acquire vaudeville acts.  Hungarian immigrant Adolph Zukor invested in an electrical arcade on 125th St. and soon opened the Automatic Vaudeville on Fourteenth with hundreds of peep machines grossing over $100,000 in the first year.   Edwin Porter produces The Great Train Robbery.

Moses H. Sherman purchased 16,000 acres of Porter Ranch on the old mission lands.

Across the street from SVC, the Los Angeles Tourists Baseball Club played the first game at Washington Gardens.

Casino Theater at 344 South Spring St opened as a burlesque, billiard and waxworks hall. 

Orpheum moved their vaudeville show to the Los Angeles Theater at 227 South Spring.

June

SVC held Commencement and Literary Exercises at the Los Angeles Theater.

18th

Mason Opera House opened.   

December

A. J. Morganstern opened the Broadway, a flagship for a new California theater chain.

1904

New York, --- Julian Eltinge emerged as a major star on Broadway.

Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood was founded accommodating 250 people built on Hollywood Boulevard.

Abbott Kinney developed Venice of America on the beach of Los Angeles.

August

Belasco Theater opened.

November

New York, --- Marcus Loew and David Warfield form People’s Vaudeville Company to operate an arcade on 23rd Street.


1905

New York, --- Adolf Zukor installed a 200-seat Crystal Hall movie theater above the Automatic Vaudeville arcade.

Cincinnati, --- Marcus Loew installed a 110-seat movie theater above an amusement arcade.

Future film pioneer, D. W. Griffith cast as an native on stage in Los Angeles in Ramona.

The Novelty Theater opened at 523 South Main and later renamed the People’s Theater.

At Gilmore’s farm in western Los Angeles the Gilmore Oil Company formed and would later start the Farmers Market and auto speedway, Gilmore Stadium.

At SVC, Edward Doheny donated a set of Remington rifles, a one dollar Student Library fee was instituted for budgeted book collection and Dr. Charles C. Conroy, KHS began a forty-six year career in the History Department. Five years after yet another renovation, St. Vincent’s College made plans to move west once again and purchased eighty-six acres of Rancho La Cienega o Paso de Tijera in western Los Angeles.  However these ambitions would be set aside when after fifty-five years, the Vincentians would in a few short years elect to withdraw from college work in Los Angeles.  

USC opened the School of Pharmacy.

1906

Chicago, --- Rreformers are castigating the new film business when Carl Laemmle opened his first theater, The White Front.

Pittsburg, --- Adolf Zukor visited Harry Davis’s Nicklelodeon and shortly after began buying theaters in the steel capitol, Philadelphia, Boston, Newark and Coney Island to begin renting and exhibiting the Great Train Robbery.

San Francisco, --- the Grauman family lose movie house, the Unique in earthquake.

Lee DeForest invented the vacuum tube signal amplifier.

The Shrine Auditorium opened on Jefferson Blvd.
The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart opened the College for Girls.

Burton Green formed the Rodeo Land and Water Co. and platted the city of Beverly Hills

Temple Auditorium opened on the former site of Hazard’s Pavilion at Olive and Fifth.


July

In Milwaukee, Mutual Film Corporation began as Western Film Exchange founded by Wisconsin natives John R. Freuler, Harry E. Aitken and Roy Aitken.

1907

Haverhill, Mass. --- Russian immigrant and future Loyola College benefactor Louis B. Mayer renamed an old burlesque house the Opheum and began exhibiting movies.

New York, ---William Fox began a film distribution exchange, the Greater New York Rental Company.

The SVC Saints play the Los Angeles Angels and a barnstorming New York Giants in baseball at Chutes Park.

Winter

William Selig began shooting The Count of Monte Cristo in Los Angeles.

The Silverlake Reservoir in Edendale was completed in a picturesque hilly rural neighborhood just northwest of downtown.

1908

New York, --- the Edison Company, Eastman Kodak, American Mutoscope and Biograph Company form the Motion Picture Patents Company.

William Selig moved his Chicago-based motion picture company to California and built a new studio in Edendale.  The Selig Company soon began to collect wild animals including African lions to be used in production.

The Majestic Theater opened in the Hamburger Building, 845 South Broadway.

1909

New York, --- the Buffalo Convention agreed on a standard for mechanical music (piano) rolls manufacturing.

Laemmle released Hiawatha.

Father Healey Dramatic Society formed at Saint Vincent’s College.  The Saints met the USC Trojans for American football.

Selig Polyscope Co. filmed The Heart of the Tout at 8th and Olive.

1910

New York, --- Adolf Zukor met Carl Laemmle in Germany and returned from Europe with rights to exhibit the Passion Play.  Zukor and Loew consolidated.

Los Angeles population 319,000.

Alumnus Willard Huntington Wright began his career as a literary critic for the Los Angeles Times. Later he adopted the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine famously as a pioneer LA Noir mystery writer and created the popular Philo Vance character.

Los Angeles Times Building bombed.
Father Healey staged The Man on the Box.
Hollywood annexed by City of Los Angeles.
David Snedden (SVC ’90) published The Problem of Vocational Education.
Griffith and Biograph completed film in Los Angeles, In Old California.

At Washington and South Main Arthur S. Hyman acquired the theater lease at Chutes Park offering vaudeville and films.  The Hyman Theater opened at 804 Broadway.

February

New York, --- Edison formed distributorship network, General Films Co.

March

2nd

Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company formed to develop the entire southern half of Ex-Mission San Fernando Rancho.

May

Laemmle and other Independents form Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company.

Aiken formed Mutual Film Corp.
Laemmle formed Universal Pictures.

June

The New Broadway at 833 South Broadway opened.

September

Clune’s Theater opened at 528 South Broadway featuring vaudeville and first-run films.

Pantages Theater opened at 532 South Broadway featuring vaudeville and long-run films Pantagescope.

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