Sowing Seeds: How My Family Helped Build East Hollywood Over A Century Ago
Sowing Seeds: How My Family Helped Build East Hollywood Over A Century Ago
Our Origin Story in the Valley of Dayton Heights
One thing that always gives me a great deal of pleasure and pride is when someone asks me where I’m from. My answer starts with the same sentence: “My family came to Los Angeles in 1891.” I let the sentence soak in and watch the quizzical expression flash across their face before they respond with “18-91?” with the emphasis on the “18.”
In 1891, my great grandfather, George Albright, came to Los Angeles ahead of his family to look at property available for homesteading. He had his mind set on looking in Hesperia, near Victorville, California. But fate and luck are frequent travelers in our journey through life and the move to Southern California was no exception. We don’t know when or how, but shortly after his arrival at River Station, the precursor of Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Albright met a Mr. Reynolds who was looking for someone to help him homestead and develop several sections of land about four miles west of central Los Angeles.
It’s easy to envision the two men on horseback riding over the hills and small valleys of what at that time was the undeveloped wild land on the outskirts of the growing city. What is now N Hoover Street, and was then the western edge of town, would have given them a tremendous vantage point from which to absorb the beautiful valley below and, looking off to the right, the mighty San Gabriel mountains. In the little valley, Albright would have seen the orchards of fruit trees and the beautiful little stream running through rich farmland. He might have seen pictures of Hesperia, but he knew nothing could compare to the land he saw stretching out before him. That night Mr. Reynolds took Albright home for dinner with his family. As soon as he could, George took pen to paper and wrote his wife a letter describing what he had seen of the countryside, the opportunity for farming and the kindness and generosity of the Reynolds family. He would tell her this was the place he wanted their family to settle. My maternal great grandmother, Josephine Albright, arrived in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, 1891 with her and George’s three children: Roy, 14; Crystal, 2; and Wendell, 10 months.
The first people to live in this area had been the indigenous people of the Gabrielino Tongva Tribe. Later, farmers plowing the fields and children playing along the banks of the streams often found many of their relics. From the 1760s, California was settled by Spain, then became a part of Mexico until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo when it was ceded to the United States, becoming a state in 1850. During that period, many Mexican families moved into the area. And in the 1880s, Americans from “back east” began moving onto small ranches and planting orchards.
My grandmother, Crystal Albright, who arrived in Los Angeles when she was just 2 years old, remembered growing up with so many wild things: flowers, birds, and the occasional critter. There were streams and ponds where tulles and cattails grew and the fishing was good. These were also fertile stops for elegant formations of migrating geese as they traveled north in the Spring and south in the Fall.
When the rains came, it was a different picture. The people spoke of the area as “dobe heights” because the mud, or adobe, made walking a hazard. Gunny sacks tied over the shoes of man or beast made the going easier. But the rains came only for a short time and made the fields and hills all the more beautiful. As the small settlement grew, there were people of many nationalities and professions; farmers, carpenters, blacksmths, painters and surveyors all working together to make it a good place to live and raise a family.
Around N Hoover Street, the western city limit, there was a eucalyptus groove with picnic tables, swings, and teeter boards. On Sundays it was a popular place for the “city dwellers.” From here a little steam train called the “dummy” ran out along the present Beverly Boulevard, across the creeks and swimming holes to about Western Avenue, then north into the center of Cahuenga Valley. This was the only means of public transportation until Eli Clark and Moses Sherman built the first electrified rail system from the city center into rapidly growing Hollywood and many other now connected neighborhoods such as Pasadena and Altadena, Santa Monica, Ocean Park, and Redondo.
As the 19th century neared its close, a group of men formed the Dayton Heights Improvement Association and one of the first subdivisions was started. In a handbill advertising the Dayton Heights Tract of 586 large lots measuring 150’ x 50’, people were encouraged to act quickly to acquire the lots. This may have been the first time the name “Dayton Heights” was used formally. The “Heights” moniker might have been somewhat of an exaggeration, suggesting the hills surrounding the already lovely valley gave a view westward all the way to the ocean as well as north to the magnificent hills surrounding the Cahuenga Valley. The firm handling the sale of the lots was Day, Hinton & Mathes. I think it’s highly possible that the name “Dayton” might have come from combining the names “Day” and “Hinton,” and “Heights” was used for its marketing value. The subdivision started a building boom. Pretty little homes were erected and much of the farm land started to disappear.
The Albrights had begun to settle onto their new farm and, based on the arrangements they had reached with Reynolds, built a small house and barn at what would later become 537 N. Westmoreland Ave. Albright built a small irrigation system to flood the low lands and he planted corn that grew “as high as an elephant’s eye”, while fields of wheat and barley grew on the hillsides. My great grandmother, Josephine, raised domesticated turkeys and kept a large garden for food to feed the family. They also built a milk house that sat over the stream where they would keep the fresh milk, butter, cottage cheese and cream cold and ready to use or sell.
But there were still great ranches farther out in the valley and so the Albrights also started a gristmill. Ranchers on their way to Los Angeles stopped and left their barley to be rolled, their corn to be made into meal or cracked for chicken feed, their wheat to be ground into whole wheat or graham flour. The next day or two they stopped on their way home and picked up the finished products, less the amount the Albright family took out for their services. In those days, money was less valuable than food. Everybody raised what they needed or exchanged with their neighbors for what they didn’t have.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Dayton Heights was still primarily farmland. And it was, as it remained, a very multiracial community especially after the 1880s. My grandmother, Crystal, remembered the early Mexican settlers as the Lopez and Arnez-Rios families. White families relocating from the east were the Reynolds, the Ensign, the Wallace and the Brown families. The Albright family was the only Black/mixed-race family in those early days. But as farmland gave way to houses and apartments, the neighborhood grew with families and children.
Before the turn of the 20th century, there were only three schools in all the Cahuenga Valley: The Pass School in what is now Hollywood; the Los Feliz School in the hills at the head of Vermont Avenue, and the Cahuenga Township School, a mile or so west of the Albrights’ homestead, along the railroad track.
The children from Dayton Heights went to the Cahuenga Township School. In 1900, the Albrights, along with a number of local families, petitioned Mark Keppel, the County Superintendent of Schools, for a school in the neighborhood. After some time, this was granted and Dayton Heights Elementary School was finally opened on July 1, 1909 in a little store building near its present site at 607 N Westmoreland Ave.
While waiting for a local elementary school, several families now also had children who were of high school age. George Albright had been elected as president of the Cahuenga School Board, one of seven rural school boards in the “suburbs” of Los Angeles. George came up with the idea for the seven boards to band together and issue bonds to pay for a high school. The boards all agreed, the bonds were issued, and by 1903 Hollywood High School came into being. In fact, my then teenage grandmother, Crystal, was among the first full four-year graduating class of 1907.
In case you’re wondering how my great grandparents came to take the lead on setting up schools for the growing number of families and children in Dayton Heights and surrounding areas, I think it would help to take you back in time to learn a little bit of their backgrounds.
Check back in two weeks for part II of this four-part series!
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PLEASE NOTE: This article was supported in part by Quien Es Tu Vecindario, a local 501(c)3 in the neighborhood, through a grant from the L.A. County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery L.A., an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan.
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