A Curious Dreamer


Oct. 5, 1907
Los Angeles

Hilliard Stricklin is a man with an urgent desire to do something for his fellow African Americans. He says that he came to Los Angeles from Chattanooga, Tenn., about 1895 with a few dollars in his pocket, worked hard and saved his money until he opened a grocery store at 2053 Santa Fe Ave.

What he wants most is to build a facility for the elderly and for orphaned children, naming it the Stricklin Memorial Home for the Aged in honor of his mother.

Two years earlier, Stricklin bought the old Pertinico Winery on Vermont Avenue just south of Pico, paying about $10,000 ($205,235.70 USD 2005). The white neighbors in Pico Heights assumed Stricklin was bluffing with his talk about helping the elderly until the day piles of lumber and a crowd of workmen appeared on the site.

And then they were furious at the idea. Neighbors accused Stricklin of extorting an extravagant price for the property under the threat of bringing blacks into the area.

[Warning: Dialect ahead]

Mr. Wrong, Edendale-Style

October 3, 1907
Edendaleedendale1

It’s 2006, and Edendale is the quaintest durn area of Silver Lake, where you may dine at the Edendale Grill and think back on when Edendale was full of Keystone Kops and horses from Tom Mix’s Mixville Studios.  You can mull over Edendale’s history as the birthing-place of identity politics, where gay rights began and Communists cruised the hills and bohemianism was actually daring.  And now, next time you’re in Edendale, I hope you think of Mr. A. B. Wright.

Mrs. Jennie Gamble bought a lot in Edendale when it was laid out in 1903, and built a nice little four-room cottage.  She decided to sell in 1907, and did so, to the aforementioned Mr. Wright, the $1200 deal was closed, and Mrs. Gamble deposited her deed with a trust company.  All fine and good, except for one thing:  A. B. Wright is black.

The neighborhood went nuts, threatening “dire things” and making uncomplimentary remarks to Mrs. Gamble.  A great banner was raised, announcing a mass meeting set for tonight to protest against the incursion.  

But the protest was averted, as R. R. Carew, original promoter of Edendale and a resident therein, “proved to be the Moses in the present difficulty, and led his people out of trouble.”  And he would have been in trouble indeed, in that he had personally assured prospective homemakers that no black family would be allowed to settle in the community.  What Carew said to Wright is unknown, but Wright did ultimately decide not to move his family into Edendale.

edendale2

There still aren’t a lot of black people in Edendale. 

About the upcoming Halloween Horrors tour

LOS ANGELES- On Saturday October 21, with a repeat 10/22, the 1947project debuts Halloween Horrors, its most disturbing Crime Bus tour yet. This five-hour jaunt spans downtown, Hollywood, Echo Park and the Eastern San Fernando Valley while offering a grimly hilarious look at more than two dozen peculiar and long-forgotten crimes, including several with a Halloween theme. Vintage crime scene photos are featured, with passengers urged to BYOBB (bring your own barf bag), always a smart idea when Crimebo the Crime Clown is in attendance.
 
Following September’s three sold-out Real Black Dahlia tours, hosts Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak have dug into the archives to uncover such terrible tales as the lady dope dealer left with her eyes gouged out on Echo Park’s Lovers’ Lane, the one-time silent screen star who died alone and was gnawed on by her doggy, the trick or treat murder of the handsome hairstylist, the unsolved Hollywood Boulevard "ape man" candy clerk slaying, an astrologer and a palm reader who didn’t foresee being killed by the women they loved, Silver Lake’s exploding gun shop, the poignant death of the bravest dog in Hollywood, plus visits to Bela Lugosi’s home, Crimebo’s tales of Halloween celebrations gone terribly wrong and history of holiday pranks in Los Angeles, plus light-hearted oddities like the mysterious midnight disappearance of thousands of cucumbers from a Hollywood farm.

Crime Bus passengers will make a pit stop at Tai Kim’s East Hollywood Scoops gelato shop, nicknamed Spoocs for the day and featuring a selection of scary Halloween-themed frozen treats like Bloody Mary Gelato, Black Current and Blueberry Sorbet, Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) and more.
 
1947project has quickly built a reputation for the most eclectic and well researched crime history tours in the Southland, with its popular Black Dahlia, Pasadena Confidential and Nightmares of Bunker Hill Tours, and feature stories in The Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Weekly (cover story), LA Alternative Press (cover story), BBC News, Pasadena Star-News, KNX News Radio and a "best of LA" nod from Los Angeles Magazine.

Passengers on this eye-opening, funny and informative tour will leave with a new understanding of Halloween in old Los Angeles, and the promise of nightmares. It is highly recommended for natives and newcomers, crime and history buffs and anyone who likes to seek out the unexpected.

For more info, or to reserve your seat, drop us a line. 

His Bags are Being Sent

sewerratOctober 3, 1907
Los Angeles

During tonight’s dinnertime—the fashionable hour for society at the Hotel Van Nuys at Fourth and Main (Morgan & Walls, 1896) a furry friend decided to hobnob with the upper crust.  Strolling in through the Fourth Street entrance like the most gracious of chaps, of which there were many in the lobby, came a great husky sewer rat.  vannuys

Pandemonium ensued:  “Dainty Parisian lingerie and open-work stockings appeared on view.  Gallant gentlemen dropped their cigars and ladies jumped on chairs, but still the rat stood his ground.”

Porters and elevator boys descended, and Mr. Rattus fled the scene through a hole in some missing wainscoting (the Van Nuys undergoing some changes to the lobby).  Immediately the house ferret, kept in the engine room for just this sort of affair, was thrust into the opening.  

A loud, chilling three-round bout ensued inside the wall, and the ferret emerged bloody and beaten.  The rat stuck his nose out his hiding place as if to challenge all comers, and another ferret, this one less soft and over-weight, was sent in to dispatch the venturesome intruder. 

The story headline says the rat was killed, but the actual tale makes no such mention.  Without a body, I’d say Mr. Ferret merely bragged about besting his opponent, and Mr. Rat went off to the Rosslyn, or perhaps the King Edward.

(The Van Nuys became the Hotel Barclay in the 1930s [adding a magnificent art deco neon blade sign]. The Barclay is now one of the many “28-day-shuffle” transient hotels in the area, where monthly rent is $360.)

 

The Mystery of Felt Lake


Oct. 3, 1907
Stanford University

Chester Silent was among the most promising young men of Delta Tau Delta at Stanford. The son of Judge Charles Silent and prominent in Los Angeles social circles, Silent, 22, had excelled in his studies and upon graduating with a law degree in the Class of 1907 had begun graduate work at Stanford and was expected to head to Harvard.

His fraternity brothers described him as being fairly quiet and reserved