Harry Chandler

Harry Chandler. . , A Force on the Face of the Valley , Chandler Boulevard cuts across the San Fernando Valley, where wheat fields once grew - along with the ambitions of the man for whom the boulevard is named, Harry Chandler. , He was a political powerbroker, a real estate mogul, and a newspaper publisher who used the power of his presses to promote Los Angeles' fortunes, and his own. , As a college student in New Hampshire in 1882, he took a dare that changed his future, and Southern California's: he dived into a vat of starch. The prank damaged his lungs and sent him to Los Angeles to recover. , Here, he worked in the orchards of the San Fernando Valley, and then as a $12 a week circulation clerk at the Los Angeles Times. When he quickly boosted circulation, he caught the eye of the publisher, General Harrison Gray Otis. , Chandler rose steadily in the newspaper. By 1894 he had become both Otis' business manager and his son-in-law, marrying Otis' daughter, Marian. , Chandler was determined to found a dynasty. He promised his children $100 for each grandchild, according to Emmy-winning filmmaker Peter Jones, in the documentary Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times. , A Newspaper Shapes a Region , He used the paper to advance his projects and his politics. He devoted rivers of ink to praising Republican politicians and slighting Democratic and pro-labor ones. , He was a civic booster who promoted movies, aviation, and the creation of the Coliseum, the Hollywood sign (originally a huge ad for real estate), the Biltmore and Ambassador Hotels, Douglas Aircraft, and Caltech. Newsweek magazine once described him as the "Midas of California." , Where his flamboyant father-in-law loved attention (Otis had an ornamental cannon on the hood of his car), Chandler preferred anonymity. He expanded his holdings and his family. Eventually, more than a million and a half acres would pass through his hands, much of it in the San Fernando Valley. , Consortium, or Conspiracy? , In 1905, a Chandler consortium quietly purchased 16,000 acres in the northern San Fernando Valley , right before Los Angeles announced it would bring water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, through the Valley. , To this day, suspicions endure that the infamous land deal and water grab were as much about enriching Chandler and his cohorts as about bringing water to Los Angeles. These suspicions formed the basis of the 1974 Oscar-winning film, Chinatown. , Shady or not, the deals made the Valley boom. The aqueduct opened in 1913, and ultimately changed the Valley from a vast agricultural expanse to a prosperous residential, industrial, and business suburb of Los Angeles. , In 1927, some of the 47,000 acres that Chandler and a syndicate had purchased became North Hollywood. Chandler Boulevard was named for him in 1926, the year before North Hollywood acquired its name. Chandler died in 1944. The Tribune Company in Chicago acquired the Los Angeles Times in 2000, ending 119 years of the family dynasty’s ownership.