Imagine a very long hallway lined with portraits. It's Los Angeles' corridor of power. At the far, shadowy end, in 1781, Col. Felipe de Neve, Spain's governor, draws a little map of the town of Our Lady of the Angels. Behind him, Father Junipero Serra, controversial mission founder, seethes at this intrusion of secular authority. In the background, the elders of the native Tongva settlement of Yangna turn away, powerless.
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The Men Who Made The City
The equation used to be Empty Space+Desire=Power. Now the formula isn't clear.
THE POWER ISSUE
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday August 20, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 53 words Type of Material: Correction
L.A. history: An article on the history of Los Angeles in West magazine's Aug. 13 Power Issue said Arcadia Bandini's third marriage was to a "leading San Pedro real estate owner." In fact, she was married twice. It was her niece, also named Arcadia Bandini, who married a San Pedro real estate owner.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday September 03, 2006 Home Edition West Magazine Part I Page 5 Lat Magazine Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
The Power Issue: "The Men Who Made the City" incorrectly stated that Arcadia Bandini's third marriage was to a San Pedro real estate owner. She had two marriages. It was her niece, also named Arcadia Bandini, who married a real estate owner.
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That tableau appears over and over. In the foreground of nearly every portrait, there's a man and a real estate deal. At the margins are the indigenous and ordinary people of Los Angeles.
Power in this city was--is--divided and withheld.
In the Mexican period, there are dashing men on horseback, the original sprawlers of Los Angeles, lords of cattle and haciendas. (Pause for a moment before the beautiful Arcadia Bandini, born in 1825, the wife, in succession, of three busy Yankees. One was the largest landowner in Southern California, another was an early developer of Santa Monica, the last a leading San Pedro real estate owner. She died very rich and a symbol of where power in Los Angeles resided.) In 1847 you see the portrait of Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, who stands heroically over occupied Los Angeles while newly Americanized rancheros fade into debt defending the title to their haciendas.
Then, for 60 years, there are no portraits in the corridor, just pretty landscapes with a dusty, violent town sketched in the distance.
Only after the wild real estate boom of 1887 and the earthquake of 1906 (which broke the economic grip of San Francisco, where the real power had shifted, wielded by bankers dealing in land, railroads and political office) do more portraits--whiskered and grave--appear: Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Los Angeles Times and a real estate developer; Henry Huntington, heir to railroad wealth, a transit mogul and developer; Edward Doheny, millionaire oil wildcatter; Alphonzo Bell, wildcatter and real estate developer; Abbot Kinney, tobacco heir and a developer with Progressive intentions; Gaylord Wilshire, developer and Socialist gadfly; Moses Sherman, transit mogul and one of the subdividers of the San Fernando Valley; and Times Publisher Harry Chandler, Otis' son-in-law, builder of one of the largest fortunes in Southern California and founder of the contentious family whose power, even in its decline, still shapes the city.
