Wanamaker - Early Beverly Hills

The research for this book has taken more than 30 years of collecting information, photographs, and memorabilia. For preservation and further study, the author has been creating an archive for the Beverly Hills Historical Society. The chapter about the Beverly Hills Hotel was written by Beverly Hills historian Robert S. Anderson, whose grandmother Margaret Anderson and her son Stanley built and operated the Beverly Hills Hotel. The information and photographs contained in this book are from Bison Archives, a historical archive of Southern California and the Los Angeles area as well as the development of the motion picture and television industries in the United States.

Marc Wanamaker created Bison Archives in 1971 while researching historical data of the motion picture studios in the United States for an encyclopedic history. The archive was compiled from thousands of sources of photographs and research materials, particularly from motion picture studios research libraries and film location files that the studios had been collecting since 1915. Many of the photographs in this book have never been published and are a historical record of Beverly Hills streets, estates, buildings, and landmarks.

The photographs for the Beverly Hills Hotel chapter were provided by its author, Robert S. Anderson, who continues to research and archive the history of his family and their pioneering involvement with the development of Beverly Hills.

The author wishes to thank the many institutions and individuals over the years that helped with the collection of research on the history of Beverly Hills. Some of the more important contributors to the research of Beverly Hills include the following: Jill Tavelman Collins, president of the Beverly Hills Historical Society; Robert S. Anderson, Winston Millet, and Phyllis Lerner, past founders and presidents of the Beverly Hills Historical Society; Elinor Quinlan and Fred E. Basten; the Beverly Hills Parks and Recreation Department; Jeff Hyland; Marty Geimer; Ira Goldberg; and Alan Bunnage. Some of the historical source materials were researched from Pierce E. Benedicts History of Beverly Hills , Charles Lockwood, Beverly Hills Historic Resources Survey by Johnson and Heumann Research Associates, the Beverly Hills Citizen Newspaper of 1947, and the voluminous research files of Bison Archives.

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THE POST-RANCHO PERIOD

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With the end of the 19th century, the ranchos of the Los Angeles area were becoming subdivided, having been purchased by Anglo entrepreneurs. Nearly the entire rancho was divided into 75-acre farm lots, with the center being the proposed town of Santa Maria. By the 1880s, the rancho began to be acquired parcel by parcel by Charles Denker and Henry Hammel, managers of the elegant and prosperous United States Hotel, located at Main and Market Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The Hammel and Denker Ranch soon grew into a country settlement, which became the first farming community in the area. With the land boom of the 1880s, easterners flocked to California in search of real estate bargains. In 1887, the Coldwater School District was formed and a small school opened at the entrance to Coldwater Canyon. In 1900, with the boom in the oil business, a group of investors including Burton Green, Charles A. Canfield, Max Whittier, Frank Buck, Henry Huntington, and W. G. Kerckhoff, through their Amalgamated Oil Company, purchased the Hammel and Denker Ranch holdings for development. With the coming of rail transportation throughout the Los Angeles area, the lone station on their property was named Morocco Junction. The only place where you could find this name was on a trolley station that was once located at what is now Santa Monica Boulevard and Canon Drive. After drilling for oil, the company instead struck water. The company reorganized into the Rodeo Land and Water Company and turned to the development of the land into a residential community in 1907.

MAP OF EL RODEO DE LAS AGUAS RANCHO, 1868. When Maria Rita Valdez de Villa had her rancho property certified in 1868, G. Howard Thompson, deputy U.S. surveyor, mapped out the ranchos boundaries. The inset shows the drawing made from the original rancho map of 1838, which accompanied Maria Ritas original claim.

RODEO DE LAS AGUAS PLAQUE. This plaque in Coldwater Park was dedicated by the Native Daughters of the Golden West in 1949 to commemorate the meeting of the streams that freely flowed out of the hills into Rancho San Antonio or Rancho Rodeo De Las Aquas.

LAST RANCHO INDIAN BATTLE SITE. This plaque marks the site of the last Indian battle, in 1852, on Rancho San Antonio. The site at Chevy Chase and Benedict Canyon Drive was commemorated in 1930 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

ANTONIO ROCHES ADOBE, 1900. This crumbling adobe house was one of several on the Hammel and Denker Ranch that dominated the area in and around what is now Beverly Hills.

ROCHES ADOBE, 1900. Pictured is one of several buildings that later constituted the Hammel and Denker Ranch during the 1880s. The Roches Adobe buildings were once located in the area of what is now Third Street and Robertson Boulevard, just outside the present-day boundaries of Beverly Hills.

BENITO WILSON AND FAMILY, 1878. Benjamin Davis Wilson is pictured with his second wife, her son Edward, and her nephew Tom. Wilson was a former mayor of Los Angeles in 1851, and by 1865, along with his partners he formed the Pioneer Oil Company. He and Henry Hancock purchased Rancho San Antonio (El Rodeo de las Aguas) in 1854 from Dona Maria Valdez de Villa.

GEORGE HANSEN RANCH, 1890s. The Hansen property was located near Sunset and Alpine at what was once a part of the Maria Valdez land grant. George Hansen was a Los Angeles city surveyor who mapped out the subdivision of the entire former Rancho de las Aguas in the 1880s.