DAD'S ADVENTURES FROM MISSOURI TO LOS ANGELES

MISSOURI

Born in the County of Jackson, Township of Blue, Village of Mt. Washington, Missouri, on October 7, 1914, with the name of William J. Walgenbach.  We lived on C Street, three blocks from this depot. 

COLORADO

1915, We moved to Pueblo, Colorado.  

1919, We ventured to Denver, our first home in Denver was somewhere in North Denver on Alcott Street, near Elitch's Gardens.  The site is now the home of the Denver Broncos football team. 

Then we lived on 12th and Curtis in an apartment for a while.

From Curtis Street's cramped quarters, we went 3 blocks to 1315 W. 14th Avenue.

We moved to 2707 Arapahoe Street.  We had an old 1919 Overland and drove to Orchard, about 20 miles from Denver, to visit my Aunt May and Uncle Charlie. 

CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

1925, Arrived in LA on March 18, 1925.  My dad slept all night at the Lark Theater on Main Street near 7th Street to save rent money.  The following morning, he took us to the Bear Cafe where we had breakfast, then to 555 S. Grand, the Grand Central Market at 3rd and Broadway, located at 317 S. Broadway.  

We then visited the following establishments. 

Good Fellows Grotto on Main near 3rd Street. There's a little history of the restaurant here.

Peterman's Restaurant on the corner of 3rd and Main. 

Lyceum Theater on 2nd and Spring Street, 227 S. Spring Street, for movies. 

House where I lived at 601 East 22nd Street.  

440 Annandale Blvd, now Figueroa, new bungalow with 1 bedroom.  Loved it.  There was a hill on Roy Street off of Annandale, perfect for rollerskating.  

1440 1/2 Toberman Flat Apartment, neat and clean. 

Around the corner on Pico was a movie theater where I saw many silent pix there.

859 S. Wall Street, a 3rd-floor tenement community with a bath and toilet, and one bedroom; however, this abode held much joy and happiness.  Had a newspaper stand on the corner of 8th and Maple.  

I ran down to Kress Store on Broadway and bought my mom a comb for Christmas.

1936, Kress 5-10-25 Store, Los Angeles, January, 1936.  The caption reads, "Possibly located at 644-646 S. Broadway, Los Angeles."  This thrill of going to Kress may have been the ice cream counter. 

Caption reads, 

Interior view of the S.H. Kress soda fountain with it pristine white counters and black and white bar stools.  The sign reads "America's largest soda foundation installed in the S.H. Kress Store, So. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA.  275 feet long using Weber's dispenser."  

515 East 16th Street, a flat with a bedroom plus a toilet--a real thrill--down the street on the corner of 16th and San Pedro was a very livery stable where a milk company kept their horses; plenty of horseshoes; selling the [Los Angeles] Herald-Express, 1931-1962, and [The Los Angeles (Evening)] Record, 1895-1933, on 5th and Flower Streets, 1927.  Library across the street.  My dad helped build it in 1925.  There every day in the children's section reading all the books by the "great cartoonists."  

601 East 22nd Street, same house but they moved it.  This really was a special house.  Grandma Mulligan stayed here and took her twice to the Triangle Theater at 9th and Main Streets.  Mamie and Joe Scoleri stayed a day or two until they got settled.  

1929, Golf craze was at its peak in 1929.  Near Washington and Hill Streets.  It was only a 3 "holer" but it was fun.  My Uncle Jim, my mother's brother, at Shrine Auditorium and Jim Mulligan's Buffet at 11th and Broadway.  

1927-1929, School years were at St. Vincent's at Adams and Flower, grades 7th and 8th. 

Loew's State on 7th and Broadway were Sunday specials.  

1922, Loew’s, the parent company of MGM, opened the Loew’s State Theatre on one of the most prime (i.e. most highly trafficked) intersections in America: where Broadway meets 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 1921, and this photo was taken across the street in 1922. The movie playing there at the time was a flapper comedy called “Gay and Devilish” but it’s the banner at the top — PAGEANT OF PROGRESS AND INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION — that has me wondering what sort of new gadgets and inventions were on display.

I spent weekends at the Pansini Ranch.  [Hard to find the Pansini Ranch. Google says that it's up in Petaluma, north of San Francisco, a 6-acre horse ranch, and that would certainly be something where kids might stay, but not kids from Los Angeles, unless Dad scored a nice cash for transporation costs.] He owned the Savoy parking lots.  And garages apparently. 

1966, The Savoy Garage, at the corner of Olive and 4th Street, Los Angeles.

Bret Hart Library on 23rd Street.

We moved to 37th and Woodlawn next to St. Stephen Catholic Church at 37015 Woodlawn.

Then to 143rd W. 39th Street.

1932, Then to 601 W. 41st Drive.  This was my favorite.  We had a fireplace and a wall desk, a wide, wide street.  Went to all of the Olympic Games at the nearby Coliseum for free. 

1917 1/4 Daly Street, Los Angeles, CA

306 North Atlantic Blvd., Alhambra, CA

179 W. Chestnut Avenue, San Gabriel, CA

2912 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

126 1/2 North Avenue 23, Los Angeles, CA

"The Father of Los Angeles' Parking Lots," Jack Smith, August 23, 1988.  The article is about Andrew L. Pansini, 1918-2011.

A foreigner flying over Los Angeles in a helicopter might think the city was mostly parking lots and swimming pools.

Today many of the old open lots have been replaced by parking structures in which drivers may have to pay up to $14 a day to park. I have paid as much as $2 for a half-hour, both in lots and structures. Buildings have been torn down to create parking lots, and there are surely more parking lots than churches.

It all started with one man, an Italian immigrant named Andrew Pansini, and, as expressed in the title of a sentimental biography of Pansini by his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Pansini La Haye, “It Started With a Nickel” (Nickel Publications, Newport Beach).

Pansini opened the first parking lot in downtown Los Angeles in August, 1917, on the northwest corner of 4th and Olive streets. It cost 5 cents a day.

He was born in the Adriatic seacoast town of Molfetta, on the heel of the Italian boot--one of eight children. When he was 9 his mother and father died within a year. Andrew (then Andrea) became a cobbler’s apprentice, and applied himself with such industry that at 15 he had his own shop. Knowing that Italian women liked to be noticed, he invented the ringing heel--a brass bell implanted in the heel.

With the help of an uncle and an older brother who had gone before him, Andrea (now Andrew) landed in America four days after his 16th birthday. He worked as a stock and delivery boy in Hallinan’s general store, Bloomfield, N.J., and studied English in night school. His wife-to-be, Mary Catherine Hoffman, was a bookkeeper at Hallinan’s.

At 19 he went to work for the Borden milk company in Montclair, N.J. It took him three years to save enough for the engagement and wedding rings. He started his own dairy business, but bacteria in the raw milk ruined him. He left his wife and their son in Bloomfield and struck out for California by train.

When Andrew Pansini arrived in Los Angeles in 1916 he had 11 cents in his pocket. He hopped on a milk wagon at the depot and rode to the dairy, where he talked himself into a job. He got an extra job as a soda jerk, bought an old Studebaker for $50 and started a taxi service, sent for his family, and opened a fruit stand at 9th and Broadway.

Later he acquired a secondhand Winton for his one-man taxi stand at 4th and Hill. One day he saw a peg-legged man motioning drivers to the curb and charging 10 cents to watch their parked cars. Why not charge drivers to park on an off-the-street vacant lot? After all, there were 95,654 automobiles registered in Los Angeles County (compared with 4,282,766 in 1986).

He borrowed the money from his wife’s frugal father to lease a lot at 4th and Olive. He put up a sign: PARKING 5 CENTS A DAY. On the sixth day he waited until midnight for his first and only customer to leave. He had taken in 25 cents--5 cents for parking and a 20-cent tip. At the end of six months, Savoy Auto Parks (named after the ruling house of Italy) had taken in a total of $15.

Pansini refused to give up. He sold his Winton for $800 and leased a second lot at 5th and Grand. In 1920 he started what was to become a Los Angeles tradition--knocking down old buildings to make parking lots. Between 1920 and 1945 Pansini wrecked 85 buildings, and a newspaper warned, “Look out for Andrew Pansini or he’ll be wrecking the whole of Los Angeles.”

Soon the Savoy Auto Park sign, a red, white and green circle (the colors of the Italian flag), pierced by a white and green arrow, became ubiquitous in downtown Los Angeles. In 1929 there were 90 Savoy Auto Parks.

When San Francisco’s Union Square garage opened in 1942, Pansini had the contract to operate it. With young men gone to war, he hired his first women. He lost thousands of dollars the first two years, but it finally began to pay.

I have no doubt that some smart young immigrant is starting out today, with sweat and vision, to make his fortune in L.A.