On Bunker Hill

Stotts Landing

Among rank and file Depression-era Bunker Hill down & outers, Mr. A. E. Stotts was positive royalty among the sorry character contingent. Granted, he had the lovely Mrs. Stotts, and his apartment in the Alto Hotel at 253 South Grand, and his job over at Barraclough‘s Globe Dairy Lunch, but he‘s also tubercular as all get out.

Go ahead, tell him how romantic it is to be a consumptive, and he‘ll tell you a different story about swollen glands and night sweats and bloody sputum. Not to mention how the wife keeps sending him out to that sanatorium way the hell and gone in Daggett, you know, for his health, which finally cost him the aforementioned job at the Dairy Lunch, and though his wife has become the breadwinner as a waitress down there at his old place of employ, she sure has been getting chummy with that oft-lunching Herman Siemers fellow.

Mr. A E. and wife had met Herman J. Siemers at the restaurant, where Herman had lunched daily, and they’d befriended him, she more than he apparently. Not that Herman‘s offer to Mrs. Stotts of a moonlight horseback ride wasn‘t innocent; unfortunately, it‘s about the only thing in the world more romantic than consumption. This apparently riled A. E.

It‘s the Friday afternoon of November 11, 1932, and Mrs. Stotts has gussied herself up in full riding gear for a gallop in Rustic Canyon–Herman Siemers was a member of the Uplifter‘s Club, hoo ha! Siemers bounded up the stairs of the Stott‘s Alto Hotel, with all the good health of a man not wasting away from the inside, knocked on the door, and Mrs. Stotts opened. The two were not aware of the firearm-equipped white-plague addled Mr. Stotts lurking in the dark shadows.

Mr. A. E. lept from the depths and fired one shot into her heart. He turned on Siemers but elected not to keep to his chest shot MO: though at very close range, one bullet went through the crown of Siemers‘s hat, another grazed his left temple as it tore through the hat brim, another burned a path across his right temple on taking out the hat brim‘s other side. A fourth bullet struck Siemers in his right leg.

A. E., having done all he could do and with but one bullet left, dashed to the fire escape, smashed the window pane with his revolver, stepped out on the landing, placed the muzzle to his right temple and fired.

Siemers ended up in Monte Sano hospital with a broken leg, a powder burned face, and an irreparably damaged hat; Mr. and Mrs. Stotts in the grave, and the Alto with a newly vacant apartment.

(The turreted building on the NE corner of Third and Grand was the New Grand Hotel; the entrance to the Alto is roughly where the Grand Avenue Tower Apartments’ entrance is today.)

Alto Hotel image courtesy Arnold Hylen Collection, California History Section, California State Library

Newspaper images from the Los Angeles Times

Last Shore Leave

Location: 350 Clay Street
Date: June 3, 1946

In the not-quite-twelve hours since John M. Kelly was discharged from the Marine Corps, he somehow took up with Henry Ehlert, 44, and Dwight C. Lester, 23, of this address and John Graham, 43, a Naval chief petty officer stationed in San Diego.

Kelly’s first night as a civilian was a notable one: he and his pals drew the attention of Traffic Officer F.J. Rees, investigating reports of a holdup in an alley between Main and Spring, and when Kelly made a funny move when ordered to put ’em up, Rees shot half his face off.

Kelly survived long enough to be booked on robbery charges in the prison ward of General Hospital, while his pals cooled their heels in County Jail. But the lack of any follow up to this story makes one wonder if Rees had an itchy finger, and the arrests were meant to cover up an accidental shooting of an innocent man.

The previous November 10, hapless Dwight C. Lester, then residing at 300 S. Olive Street, somehow lost his footing, fell under the up-bound Angels Flight car and was dragged about 60 feet before engineer Elmer Miller heard him hollering and braked. He escaped with friction burns and lacerations. Below, a photograph of his rescue.

Reading between the lines

Location: 350 Clay Street
Date: November 25, 1919

John Roebling tells police that as far as his confused memory can be relied on, a man and a young woman clad in boy’s clothing chloroformed him in his room and relieved him of $20 before fleeing in a car. We cannot but suspect the full story is more interesting, and regret Mr. Roebling’s discretion.

A Man Named Stinko

215 North Hill Street

May 10, 1931

It was bad enough to be saddled with the moniker Stinko Gursasovich ”“ how could things possibly get worse? On the morning of May 10, 1931, the 42 year old laborer would find out. He was out walking when he suddenly felt hungry. Heading to his room at

215 North Hill Street

to fix himself a sandwich, he decided that he needed to stop for a snack first. Problem was, there wasn”™t a single canned ham or loaf of bread to be had anywhere in the area. It was then that he decided he”™d break into the cellar of a house at 1037 Alpine Street ”“ surely the homeowners would have left some tasty treats in the cellar.

A neighbor saw Stinko creep into the basement through a window and immediately phoned the cops. The LAPD had recently installed radios in their cruisers, so officers Webb and Hamblin made it to the scene in a mere 90 seconds. The hapless perpetrator wasn”™t familiar with the latest crime fighting advances, and was promptly arrested and booked on a charge of burglary.

Let”™s hope Stinko made it to his cell in time for lunch.

Susie Miller on the Loose

Date: July 3, 1904
Location: 200 Block of Flower Street

15-year-old Susie Miller was a pretty brunette with a vivacious disposition who loved to play the violin. She also loved Willie Miller, a 15-year-old butcher’s apprentice, and he loved her — the two were already talking about marriage. But Susie’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Miller disapproved of the match so strongly that they uprooted the family from their home in San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles in the hopes of squashing the love affair.

The family settled in at a pretty little yellow bungalow on the southwest corner of Flower and Second, and Susie’s brothers quickly found work — although the Times was quick to point out that they only took jobs to occupy their time, not because they needed the money. Samuel Miller was somehow affiliated with the streetcar business in San Francisco and described as "a man in good circumstances." Even little Susie got in on the fun, taking a job as an operator at the Home Telephone Company, just down the street.

And then, on the morning of July 3, 1904, Susie Miller disappeared.

She told her mother that she’d asked to work the 6 a.m. shift at the telephone office in order to have the 4th of July off, and left home at 5:30 that morning. However, when Susie didn’t come home for lunch, Mrs. Miller began to worry. She called the telephone office and was informed that Susie had, in fact, tendered her resignation on June 28, and that there was no 6 a.m. Sunday shift. The family began to panic, and called police to report her missing. However, they just as quickly lied and told the police that she’d returned home, not wanting the story to be reported in the paper.

By July 5, there was still no word from Susie, and they decided to come clean.

Yes, there was Willie in San Francisco, but Susie also had another beau in the wings, a man named Harry, last name unknown. Mrs. Miller said, "Susie met him over the telephone in conversation to begin with and afterwards saw him and told me he was an awfully pretty boy and that she could almost love him." All they knew about Harry was that he claimed to be from San Diego, and that his father owned a gold mine. Their suspicions were heightened when Willie sent a telegram from San Francisco saying he had not seen Susie.

Millie Leach, one of Susie’s co-workers at the Home Telephone Company, told police that she’d accompanied Susie to the train station that Sunday morning. Susie told her she was going to San Diego, but when she purchased her ticket, Millie swore she heard her say, "Frisco."

So, where was she? Had she run off with the derelict son of a gold miner, eloped with her hometown sweetheart, or fallen prey to a worse fate?

The Times wrote, "The scheming of a Sherlock Holmes could not have more successfully covered her tracks."

But where police and reporters alike were stumped, Susie’s family rose to the occasion and worked to track her down. Samuel Miller went to San Francisco, and submitted young Willie to some hard questioning, during which the boy cracked. Susie had gone to a San Francisco hotel owned by her aunt, a woman with whom the family did not keep in touch. Once she heard her father was on the way, she crossed the bay to stay at the home of another aunt in Vallejo.

After being recovered and returned safely home to Los Angeles, Susie explained herself saying that she meant to write home, but after taking off, it seemed like "a good joke" to let her family wonder where she was. Then, once the police got involved, she was too scared to tell them where she was. Outsmarting the LAPD is one thing, but dear old dad is quite another.

Brunson Mansion – 347 South Grand Avenue

The demise of Bunker Hill conjures up image of bull dozers doing the bidding of the Community Redevelopment Agency, leveling the landscape of the once colorful and picturesque neighborhood. While the CRA’s master plan dealt the final blow to Bunker Hill, the demolition of victorian structures in the area had been taking place for decades. The Brunson Mansion at the corner of Fourth Street and Grand Avenue was an imposing structure that seemed destined to stand indefinitely. Instead it would last less than four decades and become an early victim of the City’s obsession with the automobile.

The residence known as the Brunson Mansion was built in the early 1880s by Judge Anson Brunson who resided on the bench of the Los Angeles County Superior Court before stepping down to serve as a lawyer for the lucrative Santa Fe Rail Road. According to the L.A. Times, the residence was “a dark red house, large, compact, dignified, in the center of sloping lawns walled up above the level of three streets.” The house was so large it had a Bunker Hill Avenue and a Grand Avenue address, before settling on 347 South Grand as its official label.

The Judge resided at the home with his wife Angela until the early 1890s when details of his torrid affair with the widow of a Civil War General came to light. In December 1892, Mrs. Brunson filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion, extreme cruelty and adultery. She was supposedly in possession of hotel registers and love letters, one of which read like “an extract from a French novel,” documenting the relationship between her 60 year old husband and Mrs. General George Stoneman, 10 years his junior. The Judge had left the Grand Ave property and taken up residence on Flower Street and Mrs. Brunson stayed in the mansion until she was forced to sell it in 1894. While Judge Brunson denied the existence of a romantic relationship between him and Mrs. Stoneman, when he died in October 1894, he left all his possessions to “my dear and faithful friend, Mary O.H. Stoneman.” Years after the mansion was long gone, locals felt that the “ghosts of unhappinesses remained there,” haunted by “the husband and wife who for years lived as strangers under the same stately roof.”

One of the mansion’s next owners was Dr. B.F. Church, who with his wife, used part of the house as their residence where numerous social gatherings were held. The doctor converted the other part of the house into the short-lived Los Angeles Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital aka The Eye and Ear Infirmary until 1901. Eighteen years later, B.F. Church, who had suffered years of mental problems, would throw himself out of an office window at 7th and Grand, plummeting to his death in front of a lunchtime crowd.

In the early years of the new Century, the 18 room property became the Hotel Brunson. Its thirteen years as a boarding house would see little incident other than almost getting burned down by a wayward firecracker in 1904, and the shooting of a burglar by a hotel resident in 1909 (the police followed the trail of blood and apprehended the suspect at his nearby home).

By 1917, the automobile had come to Bunker Hill and the owners of the property at 347 South Grand decided that a two story brick garage would be more lucrative than a hotel. In April of that year, the furnishings of the Brunson Hotel were auctioned off, and stately structure which was once a “show place of the city” was demolished and replaced by an auto mechanic.

Three views of the Brunson Property 1894, 1906 & the garage in 1950

All photos courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
All quotes from the Los Angeles Times

Suicide Writ Large at Clay Central

Before the Community Redevelopment Association swung its scythe across Bunker Hill, one building tried to do itself in. This structure was by all evidence a living, cursed thing, and like the House of Usher disappearing into the tarn, it acted to remove itself from this world. Shades of the Overlook Hotel–someone or something used the old exploding boiler trick to force this assembly of apartments from its supramortal coil.

I speak of the Hotel Central, aka the Clayton Apartments, aka the Lorraine Hotel. Change the names all you want, there‘s something wrong at 310 Clay Street. Kim‘s numerous posts about the place attest to that.

The spot was a trouble magnet even before the hotel‘s erection. Back when 310 was a double dwelling, it attracted kerchief-weilding lady-gagging burglars.

By 1910 the Hotel Lorraine stands on the site and Jerome Hite elects to shoot his wife in the neck.

Come 1914, proprietor-of-the-place Claude Mathewson–gets, what, tired of watching the walls bleed? listening to the screaming faces jutting from the washbasin mirror?–elects to pop two new holes into his lovely wife and one into his own head.

Shortly after, in that room where try as one might the blood just never quite washes out, a real estate titan is taken down for sordidness.

A year later, the establishment, now named the Clayton, has become a veritable den of iniquity. The new proprietor is a Mrs. Florence Cheney. According to her, the property is owned by Leon Levy, “about whom no one concerned could give any information.”

Mrs. Cheney shows up again as a witness in the 1916 Percy Tugwell trial; Percy robbed and murdered Senator‘s-daughter Maud Kennedy, and while Mrs. Cheney asserted that Maud may have committed suicide because she was being threatened by boxer Louis “Cyclone Thompson” Astosky, her character and thus credibility were attacked mercilessly.

Leon Levy decides to get out of the 310 Clay business after changing its name again to the Hotel Central.

Things stay quiet at 310 Clay for the next couple decades or so…acts of ill fortune befall its residents elsewhere.

In 1922, for example, Frank Macey, son of a wealthy Phoenix shoe dealer, dropped from sight for a week after staying in the Central. He ended up as a nameless bloody pulp in County Hospital, hovering in and out of consciousness, until at last identified as the prodigal Frank.

In 1923, Sander Serrano, 22 year-old graduate of USC, was playing pool at 155 East First when he was accused of jostling another player. For this he nearly lost his arm to his penknife-wielding opponent, who severed a slew of arteries and stabbed him in the throat.

A 1936 beer parlor fight at 121 South Main resulted in the stabbing of Hotel Central resident Walter Paine.

And so it goes, until the hotel could take no more, or had claimed enough souls, or something otherwise unknowable to mere man.

Mid-day, November 27, 1953. O. B. Reeder, a 73 year-old retired printer, was bent over a table preparing Christmas gifts for mailing. Houses of Hell hating the Christmas season and all, the boiler exploded in rage, sending Reeder‘s door across the room and into his back. Directly across the hall, from where resident Gus Poulas‘ guardian angel had guided him elsewhere, the room was completely wrecked, all tumbled furniture and great cakes of plaster torn from the walls.

The boiler room itself was obliterated into a mass of twisted metal and piles of timber and concrete wall blocks. Plaster from walls and ceilings was concussed to floors throughout the hotel. The windows and doors in the first three floors were cracked or blown out by the explosion, which attracted a large lunchtime crowd of spectators to the Hill Street section of the Grand Central Market. (The back of the hotel towered over a Hill St. parking lot:)

Making the incident all the eerier is owner/manager William Ogawa‘s statement that while the boilers were under repair, he was certain that gas to the boiler room had been turned off when the boilers went out of order several days previous.

In any event, everything was rebuilt, doors rehung, windows reglazed. Less than a decade later the scythe swung and all that was 310 Clay was at the bottom of a landfill, the CRA accomplishing what the Lorraine/Clayton/Central couldn‘t do itself.

But remember what I said about the spot being a trouble magnet even before the hotel‘s erection? Is there some sort of Poltergeist-style burial-ground whatnot at work here? Flash forward a hundred years from our tale of the simple double residence.

310 Clay at lucky number 13:

The site of 310 on the Ghost Street that is Clay:

On that very spot. February 1, 2001. What spanner of the underworld was tossed into the heavenly works of a newly-located Angels Flight?

This is the ground zero of Clay Street. Clay Street, the street that had to be destroyed. The street whose very name–clay–symbolizes (via Nebuchadnezzar’s dream) the division of an empire, and the end of a kingdom.

Hotel Cental photographs courtesy Arnold Hylen Collection, California History Section, California State Library

Newpaper images from the Los Angeles Times

Trouble at the Bella Napoli

Location: Second and Hill Streets
Date: September 2, 1917

When George Luvich walked into the Bella Napoli Cafe with the intention of encouraging Mrs. Ethel Vluanik to leave with him, he certainly didn’t expect to make the next morning’s headlines as a "crazed Austrian" who had "[run] Amuck." But you know how these things can escalate.

Sure, Ethel didn’t want to go, but she would have, if it wasn’t for that do-gooder movie actor Eugene Corey (presently residing at the Hotel Northern, real name Gino Corrado), who took it upon himself to come to the lady’s aid and remove Luvitch from the building.

Well, what would you do? Luvitch pulled a gun, went back in and chased Corey out the back door, where he hopped the fence and went straight to the cops, the dirty fink. Patrolman R.P. Marks, several colleagues and a few newspapermen drove towards the Bella Napoli, arriving on the scene just after Luvitch shot at a man standing across the street, then ran south down Hill Street. As Marks pursued him, Luvitch wheeled out of a doorway and pulled his trigger twice, but the gun misfired. Marks managed to disarm the gunman, and he was marched off to the pokey on charges of attempted murder and assault.

If you’re a serious L.A. crime buff, you have been reading this tale with a slight sense of familiarity. Bella Napoli, you muse, isn’t that the place where the visiting New York mobsters got it and went face down in their ragu? Ah, but that was a different Bella Napoli, on Vermont Avenue, in the distant year 1933. Here’s a nice little apology ad the proprietor took out in the Times after the incident.

And the photo at the top is Eugene Corey in middle years, channeling George Luvich for a role.

The Strange Tale of Ladda’s Captivity

215 North Hill Street
April 18, 1911

Ladda Trcka didn”™t realize when he played in the vacant lot adjacent to his home in Columbus, Ohio, that he was being watched. The angel faced ten year old boy was too young and innocent to find anything sinister in the behavior of his forty-four year old widowed neighbor, Nellie Hersey. He thought nothing of being invited into her parlor, where she would caress him and offer him more candy than he could consume in a single sitting.

One day Nellie suggested to Ladda that they go off together and see the world. How could any ten year old boy pass up an adventure like that? Ladda crept stealthily out of his family home one night and biked to Toledo, where he was joined by Nellie. It was then that Ladda”™s slavery began.

At first Nellie and Ladda moved from town to town, and he did see some of the world as he”™d been promised. Then in 1898 he and Nellie arrived in Redondo Beach, where he was immediately forced to go to work. He worked every day, and each week he dutifully turned his paycheck over to his captor. Keeping Ladda as her slave proved simple for Nellie ”“ she provided the boy with few clothes and no pocket money, and didn”™t even take him to a barber to have his hair cut.

For several years the boy followed the routine dictated to him by Nellie. To prevent him from becoming restless and attempting to leave her, the woman told Ladda that she had heard that his entire family had passed away. Making him believe that he was an orphan was another way in which Nellie made the boy dependent upon her.

The boy was unaware that his family was alive and that, even as the years rolled by, they continued to search for him. Ladda”™s brother Otto even became a detective so he could solve the case of his missing brother.

Finally, in April 1911, Nellie was at her home at 215 North Hill Street when she received word that she was being sued by Ladda for damages in the amount of $13,090 ”“ payment for his years of captivity.

The news that Ladda was alive and well in Southern California reached Ohio. Otto came out to offer his support as a brother, and his services as a detective.

Evidently, Ladda”™s circumstances first began to change when he fell in love with a girl, Belle Strathorn, whom he”™d met on the beach. Belle helped him to acquire new clothes, and a haircut!

The Los Angeles Times”™ coverage of the twisted tale made veiled references to some of the darker aspects of Ladda”™s years as Nellie”™s slave. The newspaper described details of the law suit as “lurid” — the story hinted that Nellie”™s interest in Ladda had been anything but maternal, yet never went further.

That Nellie was infatuated, even obsessed with the boy seems obvious. Less obvious is the date when he and Nellie cease to cohabitate. When did she move to Bunker Hill? And why did Ladda decide to sue for eleven years, and not the full sixteen years that he appears to have been a captive? Also, according to Ladda, Nellie had been married several times, and she”™d taken many lovers as well. Was Nellie married or involved in affairs while simultaneously keeping Ladda as a prisoner?

There were so many tantalizing questions without answers, as the newspaper never followed up on the story beyond the initial report.

A Red Light Raid: 317 S. Flower St

May 22, 1919
317 S. Flower Street, Saratoga Hotel
A building permit for a 3-story brick lodging house that would become the Saratoga Hotel was issued to W.W. Paden and Louis Nordlinger in the summer of 1914. A year later, the hotel was offered for sale, exchange, or lease, offering "long lease, good furniture, and cheap rent."

By 1919, the hotel had already acquired something of a reputation, and was home to many show business types. On May 22, A.W. Gifford, head of the City’s Purity Squad led a raid on the hotel and arrested 32 people on charges of living in a house of prostitution. Members of the Purity Squad had taken rooms at the Saratoga during the week prior to the raid, and gathered evidence during that time.

Police tore apart the Saratoga’s 200 rooms, confiscated hundreds of bottles of liquor and beer, and questioned all occupants. Anyone who could not prove steady employment, and any man and woman found together in the same room without a marriage license were taken to City Jail.

Many of those arrested said they worked in the movies as extras, but police determined that "extra work is not considered real work."

The next day, however, 22 of those arrested were released without charges. The owner of the hotel, Charles H. Price of Monrovia, assumed responsibility, and promised to install a new building manager in an agreement forged with City Prosecutor Widney. Widney explained away the releases, claiming that the raids were staged merely "to break up certain conditions believed to exist."

So, it wasn’t a whorehouse… but it might have turned into one if left unchecked. Thanks Purity Squad!

An angry letter to the editor followed on the heels of the raid, signed only "Justice." It read:

"How is a stranger, a girl alone in a strange city, for instance, to know positively that she is in a respectable neighborhood or house? She may have places recommended by the YMCA, the YWCA, the Bible Institute, and yet find herself in an undesirable location. Nobody can be certain.

What do you think of five men in civilian clothes with no badges or authority — or, at least none visible — bursting into the room of a girl at an unseemly hour, insulting her, accusing her of crime, when she knows absolutely nothing of the reason for such an assault… Do you think five ruffians like that, cowards, would do so if a man were in the room with a gun? Hardly."